Is it true that knowing future challenges can help us decide about how to go about the challenges we face in the present moment? (This question organizes this message.)
I'll list the stages, the challenges (italics), and the corresponding attentional abilities (bold) here:
PLAY/CREATIVITY: exposure to environment--exploration
PURPOSE: persistence/mitigating impulsive drives or distraction--concentration
UNDERSTANDING: tolerate ambiguity--relaxation
APPRECIATION: willingness to engage at each moment--mindfulness
CLARITY: acceptance of tasking materiality, or "integration", "doing one's work"-- inspiration
NONCONCEPTUALITY: justice--harmony
ABIDING: serenity (here the desire/task/challenge and ability are not different from each other)
(These tasks are similar to Erik Erikson's challenges, although it is probably more effective to look at achievement not in a fail/succeed manner but rather in how competent or expert one becomes at each ability. It is possible to have only a minimum competence and advance. Having a great deal of expertise makes subsequent advancement smoother and more certain.)
The challenges, which phenomenologically validate the work it takes to develop the abilities, should be easier to understand (than the abilities or the need for these abilities) somewhat accurately from the perspectives of earlier stages. Actually encountering the exemplary challenges in one's own life places one close enough to the desire for and then the actualization of the exemplary abilities if one trains adequately.
Motivation is applied and valued more or less inductively. With experience, one gains greater ability in this application. More or less deductively, problems are avoided before their stage is set (some people consider this to be wisdom) and preparation can be planned. When we rush or get ahead of ourselves in personal development, motivation is experienced as agitating, producing dissatisfaction, impulsivity, and a feeling of pressure while activity becomes diffuse and we misunderstand our purposes. When progress is insufficient or too slow, meaning diminishes and motivations float; there is often a sense of ennui or depression; cycling, we repeat old behaviors that seem to have lost their pay-off, a good deal of their value, because they are no longer progressive for us. When/if enough progress is then incorporated, wholesome behaviors are felt as healthy, foundational, supportive, and perhaps even enjoyable again.
Besides fulfilling normal, daily social responsibilities, it is helpful in this way to neither go too fast nor too slow. Personal mood, physical and financial strength, and social environment--including our competence at meeting our current responsibilities and how fulfilled/supported we perceive ourselves to be--will determine the amount of energy and attention we can or should put into progress. In other words, it sometimes makes more sense to take care of immediate needs (like paying the bills) rather than pushing for personal development (like avoiding the bills in order to meditate).
Rhythm [1], or healthy cycles (sleep, diet, exercise, socialization, etc.), is important for maintaining energy. Enough focus on the present moment [2] helps us feel adequately connected, maintaining relevance between our actions and our situations--which develops confidence and a sense of ownership of our experience while affirming novelty and exploration. Progress [3] throughout linear time develops a sense of meaning. We have some degree of flexibility and resilience concerning how we proportion awareness of these different times, and remaining within our personal degree of flexibility concerning this proportion allows for serendipitous moments of eternity/immanence [4] to arise. We experience breaks--which may either be/become breakdowns or breakthroughs--when we exceed our flexibility and resilience concerning this proportion. Thus, it is possible to force "peak" moments or "breaks". Frequency and intensity in this sort of forcing the issue disrupts the smooth consistency of progress accordingly.
When the way forward cannot be seen, we tend to either languish or force the issue. Forcing breaks allows the possibility of arbitrary (rather than intentional, conscious) progress by incorporating some sort of radical, novel experience. Depending on one's attitude, the situation, and the nature of whatever novel experience, the change resulting from these breaks can be felt as progress, regress, or simply random change. If one understands personal progress, forcing the issue and languishing become unnecessary.
By balancing the movement from experience to structuring general heuristics and that from general heuristics to specific exploration, by wisely applying one's motivation, and by finding one's sense of proportion in affirmation of these four times, consistent and healthy progress becomes a real possibility. The actuality of the world--tathata or abundance--guarantees that an accurate understanding by itself is not satisfying or limiting, that the game does not end in Mephistopheles' Faustian trap. In other words, guidance is not fulfillment, but it can be helpful.
Knowing what can occur concerning personal progress increases our ability to determine when to focus our efforts on either what feels like the external situation or what we experience as internal at any given moment. This knowledge is an effective panacea for limiting beliefs. Actually applying this knowledge, living in appreciation of living, is an antidote for the conflicting emotions that can arise due to finitude or ignorance.
If there is always more for one to do, it is not contradictory to express this knowledge as knowledge; expressing knowledge is not a claim to actualization, then, but a recognition of potential. (And if there are moments where nothing needs doing, that may be just fine too.) There is a difference between rest/relaxation and consistent serenity; there is a difference between inspiration and actualization.
Copyright 2007 Todd Mertz