#5
Eco-Awakening is Only One Major Life Passage
This is the fifth part of a seven-part Musing (one per week).
Friday, June 15, 2018
The shift from egocentric to ecocentric awareness is a profound awakening, but
all
major life passages are equally so. During every passage between stages on the Soulcentric Developmental Wheel, our consciousness reorganizes, broadens, and deepens; our center of psychospiritual gravity shifts; our circle of identity expands; the way we participate in and contribute to the world transforms; the developmental tasks to which we apply ourselves change; and there is a shift in the archetypes with which we most resonate and that most inform us.[1]
Our first awakening in this life is birth, indisputably a radical shift in world and experience. So, too, is the passage during our fourth year of life when we first become conscious of ourselves as separate individuals; this awakening is, in essence, the birth of the ego, a passage I refer to as Naming, following van Gennep.[2] Puberty is the next major life passage, a moment when the world again shifts radically and we fully awaken to the world of peer group, sex, and society.
In the contemporary egocentric world, the next true, major developmental passage for most people is … death. But in
healthy
human development (and with a long enough life), the SDW proposes five major passages between puberty and death. I name these Confirmation, Soul Initiation, Induction, Crowning, and Surrender, and discuss them at length in
Nature and the Human Soul
.[3] Each is a radical awakening and each entirely distinct from transcendent awakenings.
The occurrence of transcendence (e.g., the encounter with God, enlightenment, nondual realization,
satori
, etc.) does not require the attainment of a developmental stage beyond middle childhood (although its experience, the meaning ascribed to it, and its psychological, spiritual, and interpersonal benefit and relevance are all likely to vary in accordance with stage). Indeed, most contemporary Western experiences of transcendence arguably take place during psychological early adolescence, the stage in which the ego’s primary concerns are social acceptance and social authenticity. By itself, the experience of transcendence, as profound as it may be, does not advance our developmental stage. Eco-awakening, in contrast, always occurs in psychological early adolescence but does advance our stage — from the egocentric to the ecocentric version of early adolescence. And soul encounter, as discussed below, usually first occurs in what the SDW envisions as psychological
late
adolescence and is seen as an essential experience for progressing to the developmental stage envisioned as true adulthood. Because transcendence by itself does not advance our developmental stage and because both eco-awakening and soul encounter do, the latter two awakenings are more facilitative of growing up than is transcendence.
