Signs of Maturity in the First Three Stages of Life – The Treasure Consideration

Signs of Maturity in the First Stage of Life

 

A child has fully adapted to the first stage of life when
he or she shows the following signs:

a. The child has achieved physical, emotional, mental,
and psychic independence from the mother, and is moved
towards a more complex socialization with adults and
peers. From the moment of birth, and then continuing
throughout the first stage of life, the child is adapting to
the fact that he or she is a person autonomous from the
mother. When this adaptation is complete, when the child has
fully grown beyond the feeling sense of identification with
the mother, then the child can be said to be fully
individuated, and mature in the first stage of life.

It is important to note that even in the maturity of the
first stage of life the child is still functionally
dependent on others. In other words, the child is still not
capable of living independently on his or her own without
the help of adults. What has been relinquished is the
feeling sense of the “two-who-are-one” bond with the mother
and a happy resolution about the child’s actual circumstance
of dependency on, rather than identification with, others.
At the point of maturity in this stage, the child naturally
turns outward in his or her feeling towards the greater
realm of relationships with others, because the
concentration on the mother as the sole source of
sustenance, support, and identification has been
outgrown.

b. The child feels sustained by food, other
individuals, and the Divine. For the young child, the
mother is intimately associated with the sense of
sustenance. Because of this, food (and the whole
relationship to food-taking) is one of the primary arenas in
which an individual’s maturity in the first stage is
demonstrated. A child who is mature in the first stage feels
sustained, and has a healthy and uncomplicated relationship
to food. Similarly, the child feels sustained by other
individuals upon whom he or she depends. And most
importantly, the mature first stager feels sustained by and
connected to the Living Divine, who is the Ultimate Source
of support and love.

c. The child demonstrates a feeling orientation to
other people and the realm of nature. As the first
stager has increasingly relinquished his or her
concentration on the mother, he or she has naturally become
increasingly aware of and sensitive to relationships with
others. Thus, simultaneous with maturity in the first stage
of life, the child demonstrates an awakening of
feeling-sensitivity to the relational realm. This truly
marks the point of readiness to begin the second stage. At
this point, the mature first stager should be responsible
for the rudimentary relational practices of using manners,
being respectful of adults, and being responsive and
obedient when asked to go beyond himself or herself.

Completing the Work of the First Stage of Life

In The Dawn Horse Testament, Beloved Adi Da Samraj
makes it clear that very few individuals complete the work
of the first stage of life within the first seven years.
Most of us begin the second stage with unfinished business,
or what Beloved Adi Da Samraj calls a “Workable (Even Though
Un-Happy, or self-Contracted) Settlement”. An individual who
is not fully mature in the first stage of life tends to
associate individuation with a feeling of separation. This
primarily involves the sense of being separate or cut-off
from the Divine. Secondarily, it also manifests as a sense
of doubt or anxiety relative to all others upon whom one
depends for love.

Incomplete adaptation to the first stage of life is also
characterized by an unwillingness (to some extent or
another) to relinquish the feeling of dependency upon one’s
mother, or others in general. An unhappy or irresponsible
relationship to food and food-taking is also a sign of
unfinished business in the first stage of life.

It is definitely optimal for children to complete the
full adaptation to the first stage of life by the age of
seven (or the beginning of the second stage) because this
provides the base of free energy and attention for continued
growth in the second and third stages. However, this is not
always the case. In fact most adults (and even many second
and third stage children) have an incomplete adaptation to
the first stage of life. Beloved Adi Da Samraj has
Gracefully accounted for this by indicating that any
unfinished business from the first three stages of life is
completed in the initial period of adult practice in the Way
of the Heart, as part of the listening-hearing process.

 

Signs of Maturity in the Second Stage of Life

 

Beloved Adi Da characterizes maturity in the second stage
of life in the following manner:

… the second stage of life is fulfilled when the
individual has realized a state of social individuation. In
other words, the individual is free, not merely of the
unconscious bond to the mother, but free of the parent-child
style of relationship altogether. He or she can function as
a socially independent or free individual responsible to the
adult community. He or she is not yet an adult, or a person
who can go into the world and do what he or she wants, but
rather he or she is a physically and socially individuated
person who is responsible to and is to be guided by the
adult community. . . . [March 1, 1983]

There are two specific components involved in the
maturity of the process of socialization.

They are:

a. The individual has fully learned about the etheric
energy dimension, and is responsible for it. The individual
knows how to communicate through the etheric energy field,
and how to be sensitive and helpful to others in terms of
etheric energy.

b. The individual is capable of transcending the
presumption of unlove, and living as “I love you” in
relationship with others.

Like the first stage of life, most individuals only
partially complete their adaptation to the second stage of
life by the beginning of the next stage. As Beloved Adi Da
Samraj says in The Dawn Horse Testament, “The Second Stage
Of Life Tends To Develop Only To The Degree Of A Tentative
(or ego- Based and Ultimately Unsatisfactory) Resolution Of
the relational and social character.” An individual who is
struggling with issues of self-esteem, self-doubt, or doubt
of the love of others is still dealing with incomplete
second stage business. The second stage egoic presumption is
characterized by the feeling of being rejected, and the
feeling that we must, in turn, reject or punish others for
their unlove.

Another sign of incomplete adaptation to this stage is
not being fully sensitive to and responsible for the etheric
dimension of life. This includes responsibility for one’s
own etheric energy, one’s effect on others relative to the
etheric dimension, and the communication of positive, happy
energy etherically. And a fully mature second stager should
also be responsible and unproblematic in regard to the
functions of elimination.

Obviously, this sensitivity to etheric energy and the
knowledge of how to conduct it in relation to self and
others is a remarkable and important adaptation, one that
most adults still very much need to develop. And the
capability to transcend the ritual of betrayal and the
tendency to punish others when they fail to love (or even
when they only seem to fail to love) is a major
developmental step. As it stands in this day and age, almost
every adult on the planet is dealing with this issue until
the day they die. Reflecting on this, we can understand what
a great process of learning is involved in this stage. How
fortunate we are to have Beloved Adi Da’s Graceful Help to
extend to our children, and to help us complete this
important adaptation!

Like the first stage of life, we can (and indeed, must)
complete our unfinished business from this stage in the
listening-hearing stages of adult practice in the Way of the
Heart, so that we may go on to the advanced and ultimate
stages in Beloved Adi Da’s Divine Heart-Company.

 

Signs of Maturity in the Third Stage of Life

 

Beloved Adi Da Samraj has Said that “the third stage of
life is the summary or the crown of the early life of the
individual who has achieved competence and responsibility
for everything that you ordinarily call human.”

Maturity in the third stage of life is characterized
by:

f. Basic human equanimity.

g. Discriminative intelligence.

h. Responsive heart-feeling.

i. The active impulse (or counter-egoic will) to always
continue to grow (by self-transcendence, and, necessarily,
by entering into the devotional and, eventually, Spiritual
context of the fourth stage of life).

Beloved Adi Da Samraj summarizes maturity in the third
stage of life in the following Talk:

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: The third stage of life is
mature when the individual enjoys integrated responsibility
for the whole of the living being (physical,
emotional-sexual, and mental). In that case, he or she is
able to be present as a clear will and as love under all the
otherwise frustrating or pleasurable conditions of ordinary
human experience. To truly begin Spiritual life, in order to
move on to the advanced and ultimate stages of practice in
the Way of the Heart, you must be mature in this sense.
Otherwise, you will have no stability of will and love to
keep you in the practice.

Those who are constantly complaining and regressing in
the practice of the Way of the Heart are simply not yet
mature in the ordinary human sense. They are weak of will
(thus of mind) and of love (thus of life and body and
feeling). Prepare yourself first. Become strong in the human
way and waste no time in that preparation. Otherwise you
will only suffer a life and future that is mediocre,
foolish, frustrated, obsessed, and unawakened to Truth and
Happiness. [October 3, 1977]