The Stages of Personal Development from Midlife and Beyond

 

In order to live your full wild and precious life, from midlife and beyond into the 2nd half of life, you to be aware of the stages of personal development.  You need to develop the persona or what is known as the ego.  To live a life of meaning and purpose is to engage consciously with personal development to the point where the ego expands into what is beyond the ego.  This expansion has been called by the mystic Joseph Benner “The Impersonal Life.” This impersonal life has nothing to do with the experience of emotional coldness.  The fully lived life is the union with that which is both personal and impersonal.    The paradox of the fully lived life is the extent to which you give your life utterly to that which is beyond your idea of the separate sense of self you call the personality.

 

There are many maps to guide you in through the stages of personal development and beyond that have been given throughout the history of human development.  In this blog and its related website this Irish writer and storyteller will be concentrating on those stages of personal development life that hold such potential during midlife and the 2nd half of life. These are the stages of life from anywhere beyond the ages of your late thirties and early forties until the time when you leave the vehicle  of the body that is within this time and space dimension.

 

 

There are many ways of viewing the work of personal development and beyond and I am going to begin with a very simple structure that has been recognised within various cultures throughout the world.  This structure is more easily recognised in the lives of women but is no less important in the lives of men.  This is a three tier structure that is an easy to follow stages of personal development map.

 

Woman                                  Man

Maiden                                 Master

Mother                                 Father

Crone                                   Warrior

 

The names given to the stages of personal development and beyond for men are names that this writer and storyteller has chosen.  I have chosen them more as a reflection of the names given to the stages of personal development and beyond as reflected in the life stages of women.  Throughout this blog and its related website the third stage of the human development cycle will be given more poetic names.  The crone cycle in women will be referred to as The Dangerous Old Woman (DOW).  This reference is taken from the audio recording by the storyteller and Jungian analyst Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes.  This audio recording is available from the Sounds True catalogue of inspirational teachings.  The warrior life stage in men I will refer to as the Wild Old Wicked Man.  (WOWM).  This is the title taken from a poem of the same name by the Irish poet W.B.Yeats.  The word wicked in this context has nothing to do with being evil.  The wickedness referred to here is the courage to become all that you are here to be.

 

There are many personal development blogs on the web.  These focus, as the name suggests, on the development of the personal.  These cover various topics that are important to what I will refer to as the first stage of life.  This is the stage of personal development where the personality is being carved out of experience following adolecence.  This is the age from around eighteen to twenty one years through to the late thirties and mid forties.  For most people this is a period of career development and a full on working life.  It is the building of a family and the acquisition of an identity that you learn to establish.  During that time you acquire many skills that are needed to develop you in all kinds of ways.

 

The kinds of skills that are needed in the first half of life might include all or any of the following as being recognizable personal development skills:-

 

Time Management

Goal Setting

Positive Thinking

Financial Management

Organisational Skills

Relationship Skills.

 

Each job will have its own set of skills that one can develop and which in learning such skills will develop the personality.  This development is encouraged by the media, the educational system, business and the culture.  There is more than enough information available on these early stages of personal development  on various personal development blogs and websites to give you material to develop the persona for several lifetimes.  This is information that is to be valued and used.

 

This will assist you to in moving through such early stages of personal development.  These skills are necessary to the first stage of life.  For the woman that is the stage that transits late maidenhood toward the later stage of motherhood.  Note here that you do not have to be a mother in order for this information to be of value.  The first stage of life for the man transits the period of the late young master to late in the cycle of the father.  Again you are not required to be a father in order that the material in this blog be of benefit to you.

 

I have concentrated the invitation from this blog and its related website on the stages of personal development called midlife and the transition from the midlife stage into that stage of life called the 2nd half of life.  I have chosen to do this because it is a transition that our culture does not handle very well and this leads to much unnecessary suffering and can include the ending of long term relationships during these stages of life.  It is my purpose and my passion to illiviate suffering in any way that I am graced to do so.  This is essentially through writing and storytelling.

 

These stages of personal development are well mapped periods of transition within indigenious cultures.  These periods of transition had recognised rituals and practices that ensured that the individual moved through these life stages into the fullness of the wild and precious life they were gifted to share with their community. The important thing to recognise for many of us living today is that we are all living longer.  Future generations will, through the benefit of modern medical science, live to be over 100 years old.  This means that the second half of life can become a wondrous opportunity to live a long and precious life.  This will be a life that gives you the opportunity to live with the power and the expansiveness of the Dangerous Old Woman or the Wild Old Wicked Man dynamic.

 

However, while this powerful and expansive dynamic is available to each and everyone of us while living in a body of a certain age there is the issue of what is called the period of transition.  This stage of personal development is often experienced as the midlife crisis.  Beyond the midlife crisis there is the transition period called the menopause.  This transition happens in the lives of both men and women.  These cycles of life are driven from beyond the personality.  The midlife crisis is a call from the soul as is the transition for the man or woman who is moving through the menopause into a different life cycle.

 

In each of these phases, or cycles, there are changes happening for the individual on many levels.  These include:

 

Physical

Psychological

Emotional

Spiritual

Cutural

 

All these levels need to be taken into account in order to move from one cycle to another.  In any given cycle there is going to be resistance.  Resistance is a form of birthing.  It is likely to be painful.  This pain is to be acknowledged and not denied.  The real problem is not the birthing of the new but the still brith of the new.  This is because we are afraid of leaving what is known.  To avoid this transition from one stage of personal development to another.  We refuse to journey from the first half of life through midlife into the opportunity of a deeper stage of development.  It is to avoid the opportunity of development of the persona into the radiance of being.

 

The focus of this blog and related website is to provide you with an awareness of the cycles and stages of personal development  and the physical, psychological and other levels of change inherant within such cycles.

 

The other intention is to show you what kind of life is available to you should you choose to have the courage to move through such stages of personal development  with conscious intent.

 

Then there are the practices that assist you in moving through these cycle.  These practices are a different kind of technology.  These practices that I will share with you are what I call sacred technologies.  They work to reveal what is sacred within you and what will sanctify you and allow you to enjoy a real experience of sanctuary.  This is a sanctuary from the rollar coaster ride that is often experienced within these periods of transition that most people resist.

 

Whenever it is appropriate to do so I will share with you my personal experience of these periods of transition.  It is my experience that it helps tremedously to know that what you are experiencing is not something that makes you a terrible person.  This can cause you to isolate yourself.  By sharing my own experiences I hope to show that it is a natural stage of personal development and beyond.  It just happens to be one that is not spoken of because of fear and shame.  It is the loss of that which is known and thus is associated with loss of control.  The good news is this.  That which is beyond the persona is vast.  It is infinite potential.  It is the opportunity for the culmination and the harvesting of what is truly valuable within you.  It has the potential to take you into dimensions of human experience that you cannot imagine but that you can be the knowing and the living.

 

One major aspect of the movement through  personal development stages in the 2nd half of life and beyond is what I will call the contract.  Personal development and beyond requires intention, commitment and practice.  This is the holy trinity of the evolution of consiousness.  These three are needed to prepare the ground for the wild and precious life that is intended to be lived through you in the 2nd half of life.  This is not a luke warm commitment.  It isn’t something that you fit in when everything else is accomplished and when you happen to feel like it.

 

The revelation of the wild and precious life that comes to fruition in the Dangerous Old Women and the Wild Old Wicked Man is not for those who are lukewarm.  In this blog and its website I will be giving you practices and invitations that, if you pracitce them, will allow your life to be graced in ways unimagined.  Such a grace requires solid ego boundaries and with such grace comes tremendous responsibility that is best exercised with humility.

 

You are a Dangerous Old Woman or a Wild Old Wicked Man in training.  This training harvests the gifts and talents that creation birthed in you beyond the time of your birth into form.  These gifts are not necessarily the same as those skills you learned in the first half of life.  The skills that equip you in the first stages of personal development are not the skills that will assist you in the transition between midlife and the 2nd half of life.  You might consider this writer and storyteller not as a personal trainer, but your impersonal trainer.

 

Through this blog I train you in the practices of transition.  I train you to connect not to the finite within you but the infinite within you.  I train you not so much in the practice of time management but the direct knowing of the timeless within you.  I train in the practice of revelation. As an impersonal trainer I train you in directly knowing that you are not only loveable but you are Love incarnate.

 

The difference between a personal trainer and an impersonal trainer is that most of the work is not about gain but about letting go.  There is  one central aspect to this impersonal training.  In a word, one that will be repeated through this blog, the central technique to learning to live a wild and precious life is the practice of trust.

 

I essentially train you in trusting the process of becoming who you are intended to become.  Through this blog I will mentor you to trust the cycles within you and the deep heart’s core within you.

 

As an impersonal trainer, a trainer beyond personal development, I don’t add anything to you but share sacred technologies that reveal the power, the grace and the beauty of who you are already. 

 

This grace, power and beauty is who you are and always will be.  The quest I, as an impersonal trainer, invite you on is one of revelation.  This revelation of who you are deepens as you integrate the various stages of personal development that life invites you to live and to Love.  Are you willing to claim your birthright as a person and being of such grace, power and beauty?  It is my hope that you make this quest a truly heart felt intention.  It is my purpose and my passion to keep inviting you in full knowledge of the outcome.  This is no better illustrated than in the words of my own impersonal trainer.

 

Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving — it doesn’t matter,
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times,
Come, come again, come.

- Rumi

 

Another key aspect of integrating the stages of personal development and beyond is the aspect of forgiveness.  Even if you have broken your committment one hundred times you are still to come back again and again.  This transition into the 2nd half of life is not a caravan of despair.  You are being invited here into the beauty of who you are and ever will be.  You are to forgive your so-called mistakes.   This being able to forgive is an essential stage of personal development and beyond. You are to forgive the fact that you will resist the process.  However, this is not a licence to indulge your resistance.  Your work is to become an alchemist of love.  You become a true magician.  You learn to change the lead of doubt into the gold of trust,  knowing the glory of who you are and who you are always becoming.

 

If you are so intent then one step you can take is to subscribe to the ‘Personal Development and Beyond’ Newsletter.  This will keep you connected to the true potential within you.  It will help ground you in the opportunity that is available in the second half of life.  It will help your transition during the period of midlife that is often filled with more crises than is acknowledged.

 

It is my purpose and passion to assist in the flowering of the beauty and grace you are here to be.  In that sense I am a kind of midwife.  I assist in the birth of the beauty and grace that creation in its love of its creation (which you are) birthed you into form to celebrate in this time and space dimension called the human experience.   This birthing and flowering happens within all the stages of personal development and beyond.  However, it is important to know that what you love in one stage of personal development often becomes the very resistance to the movement into the next stage of personal development and beyond.  It is this resistance that is necessary for the birth of the new within you.   Understand this and it will go some way to your avoiding unnecessary suffering.

If the time is not right for you at this moment to make a commitment to your personal development and beyond then you might like to bookmark this page.  Simply press Control+D and this will allow you to do so.  Let me finish by saying thank you for taking the time to read this far.  I hope that we might meet again on the pages of this blog and that together we can build a world where the Dangerous Old Women and the Wild Old Wicked Men can become elders to the young who so need inspired leadership and courage to become all that Love asks to be birthed within them.

 

 

Let it be so.

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