When I looked at my “revised chapter” tonight, I didn’t like it. I went back to the original chapter and decided it was much stronger and to the point. So, in the endless schizophrenia of the writer, I brought it back.
Tonight I am in a motel in Rushville, NE with meetings at Piya Wiconi scheduled for tomorrow. All is well in the world.
Jamie
CHAPTER SEVEN
Five Levels of Human Spiritual Development
Years ago I worked in a juvenile care center and a young person, Scott arrived at the center when he was fifteen. I had taught him years earlier in a diagnostic classroom when he was in third or fourth grade. Scott had me mystified. He was considered borderline retarded and looked and acted that way and yet, during his first few weeks in the center, a strange anomaly appeared. Scott was into wires. At one point I was walking up to the house and a loudspeaker wired to the roof of the house greeted me loudly. I was afraid to talk anywhere in the house because our wire whiz had every room bugged. I didn’t even know where or how he was finding the materials to do these things. Borderline retarded? It didn’t make sense.
One night on a night shift, I took his cumulative file out and started sorting his life out piece by piece. The file was thick. Scott had two violent, alcoholic parents and a younger brother and sister. When he was five, the family went into crisis and the kids were pulled out of the home. Scott had tried to be Mom and Dad but couldn’t. Scott was in preschool. During this time his intelligence was tested by some “test giver” and found to be borderline. When he entered school, he was placed in special education. He had never, in ten years, gotten out of special education. In the previous five years he had been in seven different foster homes. He was amiable, friendly and a complete people-pleaser. His primary goal, at fifteen, was to be left in the same foster home until he graduated.
I could find no other test results in his entire file. It appeared that Scott’s entire school career had been determined (or predetermined) by a test given to a confused, scared, unhappy five year old. It made me furious. I tried to take Scott to Alateen-the agency managing the care center would not permit me. They said it was not a part of his treatment plan. I was furious with the system and decided to teach Scott “how not to be retarded.” We had great fun. We worked with how he held his head and shoulders and how he avoided eye contact. We practiced new speech patterns, trying to develop more confidence and assertiveness in his tone and presence. Scott began to feel as if maybe he wasn’t retarded. We had a great time and I hope, in my heart, that his goal was realized. When Scott left the center, so did I.
The developmental trail is very delicate and should be treated with profound care and respect. In the following pages we will trace this path, giving fullest attention to how each stage relates to us as children or adults. The information presented here is taken from several sources and describes five levels of growth and development.
Stages Versus Levels of Development
Could a child be more highly developed than his or her parents? Could he be more intelligent than our best tests would indicate? If we actually adopted this line of thinking, it would force us to let go of the idea that we always know what is best for our children.
Dabrowski and Piechowski, two researchers, gave some intriguing answers to some of these questions. Their information set up a small aha in my mind as I studied it, and I present a gross simplification here.
Most of our common thought about human development is that it occurs in a linear A to B to C progression and that one stage leads naturally to the next; creeping leads to crawling which leads to walking. The research done by Dabrowski and Piechowski disagrees. They say that the brain operates at various levels of thinking as well as stages according to the neurological processing and the way that the brain interacts with itself. As we mature, the old brain connects with the midbrain, which connects to the new brain (this is a painfully simplified description). Primitive thinking comes from the primitive old brain system, and abstract thinking emerges from the new brain. They further state that what pushes the brain to form these higher-level connections is the amount of conflict experienced by the individual. Conflict, by their definition, rises from a discrepancy between “what is” and “what ought to be.” In other words, we have a higher vision of our lives that doesn’t match our current reality.
As the brain develops, it must make a leap from one level of functioning to the next. Once we have made this leap, the old brain system becomes unavailable. It is rather like having an outage to disconnect an old power system prior to firing up the new system. This is called the “theory of positive disintegration” for good reason. The movement to a higher level of development is often caused or aided by crises. Likewise, children or adults making this leap have what Dabrowski calls several types of “overexcitablity.” It is as if they are charged in the body, mind, or emotions with the special energy needed to make this leap.
I introduce this material here for two reasons. First is that we must consider that our young people may be making a leap that we have not ever made. It is possible that because we have done a decent job as parents, this higher level of development is available to our child. Secondly, we must be careful not to misdiagnose this “overexcitablity” as hyperactivity. How awful to consider labeling such precious brain development as Attention Deficit Disorder and putting the child on drugs that may bring the leap of development to a dead end.
Piechowski lists five different types of overexcitability: psychomotor, imaginational, sensory, intellectual, and emotional. When a child displays one form of this overexcitablity, we must pay careful attention. The current fad of diagnosing children with “brain dysfunction” is frightening. We may be killing the potential before the leap is made. It is a terrible mistake to make-treating spiritual growing pains as if they were an aberration or an illness. The movement described here is a spiritual and emotional movement from concrete, logical thinking to higher, nonlogical realms of spirit, creativity, and philosophical exploration.
The levels of development presented in the following pages are much simplified in order to create a framework for identifying where we are on the path. As is true of all descriptions of human experience, these are not absolute truths but descriptions and guides.
A chronological stage depends upon where we happen to fall on some predetermined timeline: infant, toddler, teen, etc. A developmental level depends upon how capable our brain is of making the right connections. One of the primary distinctions between the higher and lower levels of functioning was, as mentioned earlier, the ability to notice “what is” and have a desire for what “ought to be.” This information appears in the research and writing of Dabrowski, and Piechowski as well as the work of M. Scott Peck, Joseph Chilton Pearce, Abraham Maslow, and Joseph Fowler. Below, I summarize to create a framework from which to view levels of spiritual and emotional development.
Level One: Chaos
Chaos comes in many forms. To the child, a wonderful chaos is the result of an immature brain being asked to absorb so much information. The child bounces around reality like a red rubber ball bumping up against whatever is presented and learning along the way. For the most part, we accept and forgive their chaos because it is cute and fun to watch, and because they are children. It is their nature to explore, experiment, and bond with the world around them. When this process is allowed to unfold naturally, the child quickly becomes aware of and moves into the next level-the rules.
Adult chaos, however, is quite different. Although a physical maturity has been reached, the brain is still unable to make sense of all the input it receives. Confusion rules. The chaotic adult can’t seem to get it together on the inside, although outwardly they may look great.
Chaos can be quiet-or noisy and destructive. For me, chaos was directed inward, the confusion most apparent in my isolation and depression. I had no bar brawls, no DUI’s, no obviously bizarre behaviors, but still I lived in chaos with minimal coping skills. I was still the shy, quiet child that had spent her developmental years with her nose in a book.
For examples of noisy chaos, one need only hear an AA speaker or read a newspaper. Violence, car accidents, and families in complete turmoil top the list. Two men shooting it out on an interstate highway, a woman cuts her baby’s head off because she thinks he is a clone, a woman on a date gets raped. There are endless examples of noisy chaos.
The chaos, be it inward and quiet or noisy and violent, is still chaos. The brain, like a runaway train, is out of control. We do not so easily forgive or accept the chaos in adults as we do with children. We expect that because their bodies are adult bodies, their brains must be also.
By adulthood, when we should be standing on a firm foundation, many of us end up on a table with weak, wobbly legs. What Maslow calls the “good preconditions” needed to develop full humanness were not present. The adult, essentially, is operating at the level of the child, except the pressures are intensified by his or her so-called adulthood. This flawed and faltering development cannot hold us steady and strong enough to do any further explorations of the Self.
Recognizing Level One chaos can be difficult because it has become our normal. For many years, I roamed around in my quiet chaos wondering what was wrong with me. I could find no solid reason for how I felt. Many of us cannot. Only a tiny percentage of people experience the noisy, violent end of chaos.
Crisis is the chariot of change. It blocks all the exits, closes off all alternatives, and forces us to admit powerlessness. With any luck at all, the crisis does not kill us but moves us to the next level of development.
Level Two: The Rules
When the child begins to see himself as a separate being (about age four), he moves out of chaos and into Level Two. He notices that not only is there a world separate from his own body, but that world seems to have a form or structure, an order to it. At this stage the brain becomes sophisticated enough to begin sorting out all of the various aspects of reality and how the pieces fit together. There are rules in the language, rules in the family, rules for staying safe, and many rules that are just rules. The rules and routines allow the child to feel safe and secure, to know what is going to happen and when. The brain is still not much good at abstracting or going beyond these simple forms. It needs structure.
A child perceives things in an immature way. For example, when I was about four my dad remodeled our house and moved the basement stairs. I remember seeing him in the basement with the missing stairs. My fear was overwhelming. My Daddy was trapped in the basement. My poor immature brain was unable to comprehend how he would get out of the basement.
When I had the day care center, I was constantly amazed at how the kids thrived within the routines we created. With no knowledge of how to tell time, the three, four and five-year-olds alike knew within five minutes when it was time for snack, lunch, nap, or Mom to arrive. Vary the routines and they would grow agitated and anxious.
Adults in Level One chaos often enter Level Two with a bang. The chaos has become a flood, and the Level Two Rules a lifeboat. M. Scott Peck often refers to this rapid entry as a conversion experience because the chaos is instantly laid to rest when the rules are embraced. The classic examples are the alcoholic who joins AA or the individual who finds a spiritual path and is saved. Even the tight family structure of Amway can sometimes provide the firm rules and structure that allows chaos to fade. This transition is often marked by a dramatic, “I see the light at last” type of experience or “I once was lost, but now am found.”
With this ordered structure comes a time of renewal and rest. Anxiety fades and is replaced with a sense of peace and belonging. Adults are every bit as attached to the Level Two structures as those children in the day care center became attached to the daily routines. The structure represents safety, stability, and a place to grow. To test this, simply poke a bit at an alcoholic’s program or a Christian’s religion and see how they respond. They will fly out in full defense of their chosen set of rules.
This response is exactly right. While we are immersed in this stage of our development, the adopted rules are our lifeline. Like the infant monkey that clings to its mommy’s back, we ride along in this structure to buy the time we need to grow.
In the meantime, we educate ourselves, learn to better manage our brains, take risks with other humans, establish intimate relationships, build new social skills and practice being real. We come out of hiding and, perhaps for the first time, get an inclination that we may not be as flawed as we secretly suspected or that the world may not be out to get us. With any luck at all, we may even learn to laugh at ourselves and our need to take it all so seriously.
For me, those early years in recovery with Alcoholics Anonymous were like a love affair. I lusted for more and more of what the program had to give to me. I knew real joy and pleasure for the first time in my adult life. The meetings, coffee times, and potlucks were the highlights of every week. For the first time, I truly entered the university of the self and became the subject of my own study. The knowledge that AA was everywhere on planet Earth shrunk the globe for me and taught me that I could go anywhere in the world and feel the same safe acceptance I felt here in western South Dakota. It was liberating.
Oddly though, as I turned more and more inward, my love affair with my Level Two structure began to fade, and I became restless and dissatisfied once again. I questioned what was wrong with me. I didn’t know that a new movement was underfoot.
Before describing Level Three, I want to make a final point about Level Two. The process of separating from any structure we adopt is frightening. As children, we stay within the supposed safety of the family for many years as we grow and develop. The same may be true for our second family structure, but just as the teen must begin to find ways to separate off from the nest of Mom, Dad, family, and home in order to seek his fortune, so do we arrive at the same point as adults in Level Two. Our continued growth depends upon this successful separation.
A majority of our society hovers in Level Two unable or unwilling to make the break to Level Three. We know the rules, we know how the game is played, and yet within us there is still an ache, a longing to go on. Unless we respond to and fully understand the nature of that longing, it is easy to misread it as “something is wrong with me.”
How terrible to treat these vital signs of human growth and flowering potential as a mental illness and dump lithium or Prozac on our desire to know the truth. At this moment, I know too many people who have prescriptions from psychiatrists to medicate what are, in truth, spiritual growing pains. Pharmaceutical drugs may have an important part to play for the individual whose chaos has become life threatening, but the vast majority of people on these drugs are displaying symptoms of spiritual growth-not mental illness. My suggestion is, “Buyer Beware.”
Restlessness, sleeplessness, depression, despair, an inner ache, a longing for more, dissatisfaction with life, as well as real physical symptoms of migraines, low back pain or illness are often attempts to break through the barriers of our own limited existence.
As I studied these levels, I realized that this pull away from firm structures and rules is the natural energy of adolescence. When we have done a good job as parents, the child is ready to make this leap at age fifteen or sixteen. Moms and Dads, when your young teen begins to rebel and question every rule, when they try to dump the religion you have so lovingly given them, when they seem to doubt and wonder and contemplate, it may only look like depression or rebellion. However, it may be the child’s attempt to make the magical leap toward what you so badly want them to have-a love of self and others, compassion, a sense of union with the world, and an intimate, personal knowledge of God. Relax. Know that if they are displaying these symptoms of growth, it could mean that you have done your job well.
It isn’t designer jeans, a car, or better grades that will fill their need. Support them into this next level. Give them challenges, choices, models, and support. We are too quick to fear these dramatic changes in our children-changes that result from this expansion of self. We have been indoctrinated into fearing the changes and thinking our child has gone astray.
Unless we feed the need for knowledge, unless we provide models for further development, unless we willingly wonder with them, it is at this critical point that the spiritual energy nature so generously provides can go astray.
Level Three: Testing the Rules
Level Three of the life adventure is when the road turns inward. No longer can we just blindly accept the rules. Now we must make our own. Nature has built in an inner sonar of the self, like a tuning fork that vibrates or refuses to vibrate when a note is struck in the outside world. This vibration, if we make the transition to this level, becomes our personal guide.
I remember the emergence of this level for a brief period in my late teens, before it was driven underground for two more decades. I drove my parents and teachers crazy with my questions and opinions. War, racism, Vietnam, social structures, rules and rules more rules-all simultaneously came under critical attack. It is such an irony-my rattling of every cage was the very best indicator that my parents and teachers had done it right. I was exactly where I was supposed to be developmentally, but because most of society hovers comfortably in Level Two, they didn’t know what to do with my energy and endless questions or my strange overexcitability
In my earlier work as a practitioner of Neuro-linguistic Programming, these levels of development explained many missing links. I didn’t understand why my clients couldn’t reach for a larger vision, why they clung to the rules, or why they wanted me to spell out for them what needed to happen next. On occasion, I would get a client who actually was ready for Level Three investigation, but rarely.
The levels of development must be climbed in order. We complete Level Two and then we go on to Level Three (although the lines are not so clear). The astute parent or therapist must be able to recognize which developmental level the individual is approaching. Now when a client asks for the rules, I try to direct them toward healthy groups and structures. When they feel constrained and restricted by their groups, I encourage them to stretch out and make new rules based on an inner guidance.
Level Three is about defining the rules by which we choose to live. At this point, we choose our belonging and become self-defining. This can be a demanding and surprising examination that often requires action and change. We may discover earlier life choices were made for all the wrong reasons: to please others, for prestige, because we couldn’t say no or we didn’t know what we wanted. At this point, if we belong to a group that no longer fits, we must drop it. If our career was chosen with the criteria of former chaos or set of rules, we must leave it. If friends don’t fit, we move on. If we don’t like a person’s tone of voice or how they treat us, we speak (out loud and to that person) our dislike of the pattern. Every discovery requires risk and courage. It becomes increasingly painful to not be true to the self. Our familiar hiding places are fouled and useless.
There is no grand conversion to Level Three. Instead, we tentatively pick our way through a lifetime of old behaviors and beliefs. In Level Two we re-cover, but in Level Three we un-cover. Not an easy task.
The longer we refuse to risk this level of self-examination, the more life loses meaning and purpose. In Level Three we begin to strike a note that sets up a wonderful vibration in the inner tuning fork. From this growing inner connection with the self, we cross the border into Level Four where we display what Maslow termed “self-actualizing” behaviors.
Level Four: Making the Rules or Self Definition
Level Four is where we begin to grow solid in our new ways of defining life. Essentially, we now make the rules by which we live, but we make them from a greater sense of connection and compassion. The peak experiences and actualizing indicators Maslow spent much of his life studying are fairly common occurrences in Level Four. Dreams, intuition, inner communications, visions, ideas from nowhere are all a part of Level Four.
Science, unable to capture the elusive characteristics of this level of development, for the most part gave it up as an unlikely subject of study. Science cannot find the facts to support the existence of Level Four reality. In fact, even those of us that have had these powerful experiences are at a loss for words and have great difficulty not sounding crazy when we talk about them.
So much of the New Age thought would have us believe that there is no work involved at this level of development. This is wrong. There is no lazy way to realization, no short cuts. However, what we begin to discover is that if attitudes and beliefs change, there is tremendous pleasure.
Level Five: The Re-Evolution of Soul
The journey from the head to the heart is a long road. In Levels Three and Four, the rules and values salvaged out of Level Two settle into the heart and become (or already were) a part of who we are. They no longer stay in the brain as a thought but sift into the being and become our experience.
Love thy neighbor as they Self. Love others unconditionally. To thine own Self be true. In Level Five these are not rules but ways of being, deeply embedded in who we are. One of my teachers said that only one in a thousand arrive at this place-and only one in a thousand of those who arrive find real attainment.
M. Scott Peck, at a workshop in Billings, Montana, spoke of our tendency to consider Jesus Christ five percent human and ninety-five percent divine. Elevating him in this way makes his attainment impossible for the common man. If we reversed these percentages and considered Christ to be five percent divine–and ninety-five percent human-suddenly the pressure is on. It means that every human on earth has the potential to reach the same level of development as Jesus Christ. How much safer it is to continue to elevate him, to endlessly wish for high levels while cataloging all the convenient excuses and reasons why it is not possible for us to reach his lofty height.
Think of the implications if we were to take on actually living in this highly developed way. Can we risk building true intimacy without gossip, or blame, or judging others? The most common form of pseudo-intimacy is when two or more gather at another’s expense. Sometimes the discussion will even have overtones of concern but is still just gossip. Tight bonds form even as they wrap around another person’s neck. He, she, they or even it will permeate these discussions.
Do we dare to be different? Can we be our real selves even in the face of conflict and rigid disapproval? Can we be strong enough or will we simply comply? The responsibility of higher levels of development–of the heart– requires that we monitor thought, word and action.
Why have I presented this lengthy discussion on the Levels of Development here, in a book on adolescent initiation and rites of passage? When we bring this discussion back to our earthly concern about how to turn children into highly functioning adults, we are faced again with the need to challenge the child.
Most important to our discussion of youth initiation is that one characteristic of this upward movement is the tendency to question all existing rules and ways of being. The dark periods of adolescence-and the pushing against constraints-are indicators both that the child is advancing and that the parents have provided the right environment for that to happen. In other words, when we associate rebellion with adolescence this may be a good sign. Making the developmental leap requires that we question all that has come before and run it up against a world that we envision as ideal. Otherwise, how can we ever make real changes in this world?
I remember this feeling from my own adolescence. Out of the safe nest of my family, I awoke up one day with a million questions about the life they offered me. I drove my parents crazy challenging our society, our religion, and our government. My parents began to think maybe they had done something wrong as parents. My teachers tried to get me back into line with the current thought. Now I see that challenging existing systems was the natural movement for my own higher development.
Overexcitability as a Diagnosis
In our current culture over five million children have been diagnosed as Attention Deficit Disordered (ADD) or Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Recently at Borders bookstore I counted thirteen books dealing with this issue. In A Blueprint for Success: ADHD and the Family, a booklet published in 2002 by The Shire Company (manufacturers of Adderall XR, a Ritalin look-alike) the company assures us that “We can now safely say that ADHD has a neurobiological basis-that is, there is a physical problem in the brain. Therefore, ADHD is not the result of bad parenting, divorce, sibling rivalry, or other family-related environmental factors.”
This is a terrifying and informative sentence. It frightens me that conferences and educational materials intended to educate are actually advertising products for the drug companies. This same booklet makes no mention of food, allergies, eating habits, educational systems, or ways to ensure our brain stays “balanced.” Of course human development has a neurobiological basis, but according to this statement, we must look for the problem in the brain when the child is excitable or distressed.
We are in a time when children are being diagnosed disordered by the millions. How terrible to consider treating the potential movements to the higher levels of brain development as if they were an aberration or illness. A recent issue of Time Magazine (August 2002) had an article about bipolar disorder and spoke of diagnosing a two-year old with this disorder and putting him on drugs. This trend must be stopped. Parents have a responsibility to read and study the facts of these potent psychotropic drugs before allowing their children to be placed on them-and not depend upon the research provided by the drug companies themselves.
The fragile, developing brain is still a relatively unknown creature. I anticipate a terrible backlash from this rising trend twenty years from now-but by then it will be too late for many of the children now taking these drugs. In all fairness, I don’t deny the existence of true neurological problems. The brain is still a great mystery. In a recent conversation with a psychologist friend, he reports that in the twenty years of his practice, he has never before seen the level of disturbance that he sees in some of the children that have come to see him in the past two years. “Some of these kids are crazy,” he said to me. How does a six year old get crazy? There are many factors that need to be studied in open, independent research (not product based). We should be looking at the food and water supply, the actual neurological effects of video games, television, and other imputing sources. All are players in this game of the brain.
My reason for including Dabrowski’s theory of positive disintegration is to emphasize that when things look darkest, sometimes that is the moment before the greatest leap of development. We have to take care not to abort the new birth before it has a chance to complete itself. Our young people should question and challenge. And we should question and challenge them back. Diagnosing their distress as a psychological disorder is a fundamental error that we can’t afford to make. Our world needs their bright minds and highest functioning brains. We need them sharp, ready, and fully initiated.