Ep 46 - Psychological Maturity

hello everyone welcome to the psychology and spirituality a bridge to a better life discussion I am your host Marcia trano and with me is Peter Hayes Peter welcome back it's so good to have you if you haven't really met Peter or saw him uh heard him in previous episodes uh Peter is the president of the spiritist group love and light Newark New Jersey and it's always good to have you with us Peter I want to just tell you that I Peter has been with us several times and I hope you keep coming back Peter but uh as I said before if you don't know about him let me just take a moment to introduce him or U to talk about some of the things he's done that's noteworthy specifically Peter contributed with over 60 episodes of the radio program living Spring on cardak radio he was also on the editing staff for the spirits book by the US spiritist Federation and currently he is serving in the board of directors of the us spiritual Federation as well as being an active participant in the Tri State spiritist Federation Peter thank you I I can only say that thank you for all that you do thank you if this is the first time you are watching listening to this podcast like program please note that our program psychology and spirituality quickly talks are based on the works by Joanna deangeles and we're here because those books the content of that what we call the psychology collection the it offers a safe space to confront compare correlate and expand spirituality Concepts from the psychological lens and bringing insights actionable tips right Peter and some real world advice if they're there for us today's episode is brought to you You by our friends at spiritist group love and light and to know more about that organization please visit www.l andlight nj.org overall the program sponsored by Amy Brazil Manu the TV I'm sorry the international spiritist Council in the United States spiritist Federation and please hit sub subscribe if you haven't already done so and if you want to know more about what

Manu the TV I'm sorry the international spiritist Council in the United States spiritist Federation and please hit sub subscribe if you haven't already done so and if you want to know more about what we're doing check us out at www.sirius.com any feedback any question any thoughts uh critique uh additions to the topic uh write to us and I'd love to perhaps even pick up some of your feedback for a later episode but we are here today to discuss a very interesting topic right Peter psychological maturity and before I ask Peter to really talk more about it I just wanted to for us to to to start to think about this whole world about psychological maturity with a different term Peter right which is Yung uh you defines the the term the process of individuation as the process of self-realization and what un means is that once we we you and I find and we experience meaning and purpose in life we somehow find ourselves and somehow we now become who we truly are or who we truly supposed to be right and uh I I just wanted to to to talk about it because it's so interesting he he talks about individuation he talks about Persona the shadow Ana self and he always does the the Deep self or the S self with the uppercase yeah the capital S thank you and uh and it's just very interesting um because Peter if we start to to think about about it right when we start when hear Yung or read Yung talk about those uh this process of individuation the process of self-realization the stages of individuation it's all about having the courage and of course the energy to to to to look inward right to explore to assess and and understand where am I and we don't have to give a grade I'm an a A+ it's just where am I and um and I even think Peter if we were to to to Really take a broad sweep of humanity as a whole we could perhaps say that we humans you and me are the I think Jah theangel calls it the only ethical animals among all of this so what I'm thinking is yeah yeah that means that we're pretty high in the in the

perhaps say that we humans you and me are the I think Jah theangel calls it the only ethical animals among all of this so what I'm thinking is yeah yeah that means that we're pretty high in the in the evolutionary scale but boy we have a long way to go right it's uh really maybe in that evolutionary scale we are maybe step number two of a thousand I don't know this is my thought but let's talk a little bit about this individuation process and the psychological maturity that it entails can you talk a little bit about it Peter before I try to focus on young a little bit okay thank you very simply uh we are born egocentric it was put to me once this way it's a child's right to be egocentric to believe that he or she is the center of the universe because we're since we are born helpless and we're born in need of assistance for everything it should not be at all surprising ing that we are naturally going to be egocentric and there's um um Joanna Angeles talks a lot about transpersonal psychology yes and one of the founders of transpersonal psychology is a person named Ken Wilbur who's one of the considered one of the pioneers and he wrote a very readable book called a theory of everything and in that book he mentions a test and forgive me I'm going to paraphrase this a little bit but the was done on children and I'll get to the point of what the test reveals the test was they took five-year-old children or somewhere around that age they would show them a card one side was say blue and the other was orange okay they would show the card to the to the child which color are you looking at I'm looking at Blue okay and then they show the other side of the card which is orange and then they flip the card back okay which color am I looking at Blue so the child at five or 4 as far as that child was concerned both sides of the card were blue not blue and orange the same test was done with a seven-year-old okay what color do you see they showed you know both sides of the card I see blue what color do I see

both sides of the card were blue not blue and orange the same test was done with a seven-year-old okay what color do you see they showed you know both sides of the card I see blue what color do I see you see orange what was discovered is that around the age of five more or less children are not capable of distinguishing between their point of view and anyone else's point of view they don't have that brain capacity once children reach the age of about seven again normal healthy development then they get to distinguish between what they see and what somebody else sees and that there could be a difference so it's part of our nature to have this egocentric base but as we grow older of course the goal is to become more uh C human Centric meaning to or World Centric to start thinking about others Beyond ourselves and this is something that many adults do struggle with how many adults out there are really fully mature uh and completely uh trans positioned out of the egocentric of phase enough yeah that we really are not in some ways a little too needy a little too selfish a little too self- preoccupied in some way and and and even uh before you keep going right what the words that come to my mind is that egocentric thinking let's say Beyond age7 right age five uh if you say oh Marc you're such an ego entric person what I understand by that is that I'm really insensitive I'm really unable to relate right Peter to to to be affectionate to to to do things that uh I am looking around in my environment and I I am sensitive to the needs of others beyond my own does this make sense to you absolutely because it would be very hard to form relationships with people that are give and take if we're not really able to look beyond our own immediate needs so you know just the ability to listen to somebody and to take in what somebody is going through is a very important skill and hopefully we all have that as adults but if we don't then you know it it is very difficult to form relationships yeah can I can I add

ke in what somebody is going through is a very important skill and hopefully we all have that as adults but if we don't then you know it it is very difficult to form relationships yeah can I can I add something um Peter because you you said it's important for us to to develop right to go beyond that very uh natural egocentric uh stage of a child and and I keep thinking okay what if I don't right as you said hopefully we all do but what if I don't and I I keep thinking that if I don't it can lead to to a number of uh uh behaviors that we can call it bad behaviors right I'm I'm doing air quotes here because it can be somehow uh correlating um to say things that we see a lot in our society today uh like over accumulation of possession of things or becoming isolated right right or or selfish or if I have more I I'm unable to even think about uh the possibility of sharing and or very immature in terms of uh holding on to a grudge right I think that's the the the the problem in being stuck in that very natural phase of a human being right I let's imagine for a moment Marcia that you and I are two years old and we're going to play and have a toy and I would like to play with toy that you have and you might hand your toy to me but then you may not want to hand your toy to me because how do you know you're gonna get it back sure that kind of thing so that's a noral reaction for a small child but what happens when we're adults and we kind of carrying that around still and we have this issue of not really trusting other people yes unfortunately yes un and yeah and when we can't trust other people well there may be good reasons not to trust certain people but assuming we have some discernment really unable or uncomfortable with learning how to share and how to to do give and take it not only makes us rather lonely but it also um it's again very hard to be with somebody who just only focuses on themselves and I think we'd pay a huge price for that yes and you know it's not imagine it's not easy to go

ther lonely but it also um it's again very hard to be with somebody who just only focuses on themselves and I think we'd pay a huge price for that yes and you know it's not imagine it's not easy to go from being egocentric to relinquishing that enough by the time we're into adulthood that transition smoothly I mean it would be nice if all of us could do that without too much difficulty but it's you when we think about it it's quite a struggle to be to do that because that's a major shift and our orientation and if we were to be very caricatures here right uh or uh even um preconceived notions of what would that be what pops up to my mind and I I know Joanna d'angeles talks about it is those uh individuals that are just ruthless right they're they're criminals they are cruel in their demeanors in how they judge people there is a sadle masochistic bent to to their lives so so I think it's important for us to to talk about what it is to be psychologically mature understand that if we're not there deep consequences of a life of immaturity but go ahead I think we we we got away from what you were talking so let's go back to to what you were saying Peter please I I I do want to get to to Carl Young but I'm going to shift Direction just a little bit sure on a few things that I've read recently about the development of humanity I've been looking at a book I haven't finished it to be honest but it's a book called uh sapiens it was a New York Times bestseller by um uh youv all Noah Harari which is very again very readable very compelling book and there's a few things that are touched on in that book and I'm just going to say a few broad comments about it because I was interested in the book because I've been interested in understanding a little bit more about how we got from say the era of the cave person you know when we had Homo sapiens was just one of the human species on the planet there were neanderthals and other types and so what happened and one of the points it's made is that over the

e person you know when we had Homo sapiens was just one of the human species on the planet there were neanderthals and other types and so what happened and one of the points it's made is that over the last old 70,000 years or so there started to be a significant cognitive shift and uh homos sapiens by around 30,000 years ago give or take were the only species of human beings on the planet at that point home neanderthals had pretty much died out one of the reasons for that appears to be that neanderthals if a group of them got together they would roam around and pack some things but if there were large numbers of them their ability to cooperate was limited one of the things sapiens could do was that we could function well in larger numbers if say 150 of us or more got together we could find ways to work together and I mentioned this because I think this is very relevant in terms of the overall state of humanity and also in terms of psychological matur as we went from being foragers meaning hunter gatherers to entering the era of agriculture agriculture happened more or less around 10,000 BC that had huge impact on the way Humanity developed it led to civilizations developing it also meant that tribes of hunter gatherers foragers started to decrease significantly and the whole agricultural phase had a huge impact on the planet biologically speaking certain species died out and so forth why am I mentioning this because in order again going back to the theme of cooperation as we continued through history our ability to increase and multiply regardless of what one thinks of that really depended a great deal on cooperation dependent on a lot of things yeah and if we were all just completely totally 100% selfish and never figured out any way to cooperate well we wouldn't be here today I think that's safe to say it's so sad isn't it but and it's so simple it's a very basic point and yeah yeah something we still struggle with enormously absolutely as we used our intelligence which Joanna andela talks a

to say it's so sad isn't it but and it's so simple it's a very basic point and yeah yeah something we still struggle with enormously absolutely as we used our intelligence which Joanna andela talks a lot about the spirit of Scot ification talks a lot about int intellectual development he created systems in which we really couldn't go backwards so even if we you know if a bunch of people felt like well we should go back to the Earth and we should become Hunter gathers again it's not possible anymore I mean the whole agricultural system that we started with depended on large groups of people remaining stationary and it's interesting to think that human beings didn't develop that pattern until only roughly 12,000 years ago that very short period of time before that uh human beings wandered around and would cover a large uh large area of territory in a in a lifetime whereas it's interesting right this is a just a parenthesis here because we moved from this migratory Behavior due to survival right and and we going to agriculture da da da da da da and today uh and I'm just saying this as I'm thinking quickly on the the uh pandemic that we've been through recently which is largely a consequence of this enormous M migratory Behavior now with air travel everywhere in you know on the planet where we are exposed to different types of uh of uh diseases or whatever and I just think it's funny because it's not survival or is it right Peter Well it certainly depends on cooperation yes yeah yeah true sometimes we cooperate very well with each other and other times we do not and yet I think one of the overall lessons that can be taken from the way human beings developed on the planet have to be able to cooperate just to shift gears a little bit um you know when we talk about philosophy and religion and and developing our spirituality not just uh an emotional platitude of it would be nice if we did all that we should we should all love each other because it's the right thing to do it it has to do with if we don't

g our spirituality not just uh an emotional platitude of it would be nice if we did all that we should we should all love each other because it's the right thing to do it it has to do with if we don't we are going to be in big trouble period I love it I love it it's not just because it's nice it is we don't right this Angela talks about moral development and moral of course is very important as a complement to oural development yeah and again if we don't have moral development what we don't have a choice if we want to survive because quite capable of of being parasites we we have a long history of being parasitical but we also have a history of learning how to cooperate use our intelligence find more innovative ways to live again with mixed consequences on the planet but so the challenge that we all face is are we going to develop our moral intelligence and enough to counter or be more in harmony with our intellectual intelligence in ways that will ensure that we have a reasonably good chance to survive and yeah Peter just real quick because um I I believe in the the book The conscious being right at the beginning right Joanna deangeles talks a little bit about the that uh the notion of and and I think you you mentioned this before you alluded to it that we cannot go back right and and what she talks about in terms of this this uh process of maturation from a an intellectual and she talks physiologically right physiologically you may be a a result of I don't know your your nervous glandular system hormones your hereditary etc etc but she also brings a different uh system I don't know if system is the best word but she beyond the physiological uh development of all of us from our maturation psychological maturation she also talks about spiritually speaking now we're talking about the Mortal Soul right and she she brings the notion of we have a body we have a spirit and we have this this uh spiritual body or perispirit as she brings it and she even talks about this

alking about the Mortal Soul right and she she brings the notion of we have a body we have a spirit and we have this this uh spiritual body or perispirit as she brings it and she even talks about this Paris spirit this this um uh spiritual body is the biological organizer uh I don't know if you remember reading that right and this uh this this biological organizer models our body as a tool for growth and development which also includes our intelligence uh does this make sense to you yeah I'm going to I'll try to not to bounce around too much but um when she talks about the Paris Spirit there's a nice quote in in conscious being where um the way spiritism understands I know I've talked about this before but I'll repeat it U the way understands a human being is that we're a spirit we have the Paris Spirit which is the body of the spirit the link between the spirit and the physical body so we have Paris Spirit physical body and there's a nice line in conscious being where she says that the spirit and the Paris Spirit work together and then when the body passes yeah Spirit kind of records that information and she doesn't put it quite this way but it's kind of like a computer analogy the suggestion is the Paris Spirits recording information from Life in the body and then it kind of uploads that to the soul to the spirit and then the spirit uses that to reprogram or program itself for the next Incarnation yeah mean I I I never Ed the term uh to me Peter the the words that come to my mind are imprinting right so my experience in this body of mine and all that I go through the ups and downs the worries or Joys whatever it is our landscape of emotional um experiences or physical experience and intellectual experiences they are all printed if you will into that uh that peris spirit and there there are direct consequences for when we what was the term that you use your upload to the next next time yeah you don't like the word upload it's more a collaboration between the soul yeah and

there there are direct consequences for when we what was the term that you use your upload to the next next time yeah you don't like the word upload it's more a collaboration between the soul yeah and Paris spirit because the soul has to somehow incorporate the information via the Paris spirit and then figure out what has to happen next because the way spiritism understands reincarnation is that we do make some decisions about our next Incarnation on Earth absolutely certain spiritual level so part of what makes that possible is the spirit has to respond to whatever the Paris Spirit has recorded and the Paris spirit is recording whatever choices both the spirit made but also life in the body and what choices we made did we take good care of our health did we not take good care of our health did we uh did we um live a long old age or did we behave ways that shortened our life did we deliberately commit suicide because all of those choices whatever they are have consequences on the Paris Spirit and the Paris Spirit records those consequences and and I'm want to say um Peter what does it all mean right what why why are we even talking about it when we should have been talking about psychological maturity and there is a direct correlation right because on one hand when we talk about body Spirit Soul Paris spirit all of those things that are uh can be really readily accessible if you are familiarized with the the philosophical content of uh spiritism right so it's almost uh uh very easy to access but what it means is that we are just the sum of all of our experience today and before but the other consequence of of of this definition is that our minds as the tools for what we need to evolve intellectually physically right from the uh the homo sapiens as you were talking earlier but also our psychological maturity so it's very interesting at this point for us perhaps Peter to talk about how this immortal Souls different types of experience and incarnations really are the direct

t also our psychological maturity so it's very interesting at this point for us perhaps Peter to talk about how this immortal Souls different types of experience and incarnations really are the direct directly responsible for that development of our deep self as Yun calls so that now we are talking about individuality and personality right uh how does it all together do you want to talk a little bit more or do you want to uh if you finished talking about the book uh specifically yeah I'm gonna pull a few things together via Jo Angeles generally speaking both in books like the conscious being but other books from Joanna deangeles she talks about transpersonal psychology yeah when we talk about psychology as a whole and I'm not an expert on this but psychology in beginning with Freud focused more on the effects of our early childhood and what the consequences of our past has been on the present young certainly focused on that but he was also very interested in what happens to us near the end of our lives too yeah young was different from Freud because young believed that we had uh or at least he seemed to be suggesting strongly that we do indeed have a spirit but uh to go back to something you were saying before psychology does understand that part of our person personality is formed by our physiology and our genetic makeup that does play a role in it but only up to a point yes as I understand it it's a percentage of our personality to date but it's not it doesn't tell the whole story so um Joanna de Angeles is very interested in transpersonal Psychology which developed in the late 60s with people like Abraham masloff was considered a Pioneer even though he's more of a humanistic psychologist but he yeah he did predict near I think you guys mentioned this in another episode but he predicted um around the year 1967 that there would be some kind of a fourth force in yes psychology well transpersonal psychology to play devil's advocate for a moment is not fully accepted by the mainstream

ed um around the year 1967 that there would be some kind of a fourth force in yes psychology well transpersonal psychology to play devil's advocate for a moment is not fully accepted by the mainstream psychological Community but Joan andela is absolutely certain this is where things are going and one of the things transpersonal psychology does is that it's does at least some within that field would say we have a spirit fundamentally not just you know our physiological makeup and that's it so it's it's moving away from the materialist view of things and in doing that IT Joanna de angelist goes One Step even further by saying okay transpersonal psychology in acknowledging that we have a spirit is also really opening the door to reincarnation yes now I don't all transpersonal psychologists believe in reincarnation but there's room within the field of transpersonal psychology to say that we do have an immortal soul and as we've talked about I think in the past if we do that has enormous consequences for the nature of our existence to put it mildly so um that's one way in which um Joanna de angelist focuses on the significance of transpersonal psychology which again is a pretty big theme in a lot of her books she often comes back to that one way or another and the other thing she points out which is certainly true about transpersonal psychology is that it's a it's it it draws upon the Western understanding of our El but also the Eastern understanding of ourselves so from Joanna to Angeles like I think her book plentitude you know she does touch on Buddhism for instance and touches on on other Eastern religions in terms of the difference between the left brain and the right brain the book conscious being that the left brain is more rational and and and the right brain is more um how do you say say it uh more ethereal not ethereal but more uh abstract abstract and design bent right correct correct yeah and so part of what I think transpersonal psychology encourages is to find ways to

you say say it uh more ethereal not ethereal but more uh abstract abstract and design bent right correct correct yeah and so part of what I think transpersonal psychology encourages is to find ways to integrate the left brain and the right brain more um now I'm going to shift attention a little bit to go back to Carl Young if I may course to go back to that question you raised at the beginning about maturity psychological maturity um as I understand it young had uh described four different phases of our development and again I don't know if one has to get too deeply attached to these terms but there's athletic phase the warrior phase the statement phase and more of the spiritual phase again because young was also interested in what happens to us when we're older whereas Freud seemed to focus more on what happens to us when we're young as as shaping who we are now as adults and when Carl Young talks about the athletic phase it's more that early childhood phase up through the teenage phase where as we were saying before it's normal for us to be very self-absorbed our own needs and so forth and it's also of course that period where we're trying to explore the world and understand what boundaries are and what limits are and and we have some idea sometimes we learn the hard way when we get hurt physically for for doing things that are not so smart like gee what happens if I put my hand in fire oh ouch oh that's what happens you know kind of thing um so once we get through as we then start to move out of the uh athletic phase and go into the warrior phase which would be early adulthood that's that period where we start to figure out what is our real call in in life do we know what that is um one of the great ways of handling one's College Years is to begin to understand where we might want to go in the future what we're really interested in sometimes people go into college and they know exactly I'm going to do this and this and this and that's fine but it's equally interesting when people go

in the future what we're really interested in sometimes people go into college and they know exactly I'm going to do this and this and this and that's fine but it's equally interesting when people go through a period of dis Discovery in college where they have no idea what they're going to do and then then something starts to emerge out of it so it's interesting that that we human beings we could go either way sometimes people know at an early age what they're likely to do and other times uh people like Mother Teresa for instance she knew early on on what her calling was and she you know started very young uh moving into the world of of being a Christian people may not figure out what they're doing until well into adulthood but that Warrior phase again early adulthood is where we're trying to figure out what direction we're going to go in but also that phase where we do start to take on more and more responsibility it's where we hopefully have enough he healthy ego development that we know how to go after the kind of direction we want in our lives what do we want to do as a career Direction who do we want as a partner do we want to have a family how are we going to go about finding the right person to have a family with and so forth so and then the next phase is the statement phase where it's more focused on parenting I'll say something very obvious which is once you become a parent your life does change significantly you know yes uh so your focus is different you're more likely to be focused on on being a caretaker again all of this is connected to psychological maturity because hopefully and Joanna Angeles talks about this in her book self-discovery by the way that part of forming a very healthy family is very connected to the relationship between the wouldbe parents and she there's a nice quote that she quotes from um montesorri Maria montor sorry yeah no yeah she was montor was asked when should when should um people start uh planning a family um oh about 20 years before they do it

ce quote that she quotes from um montesorri Maria montor sorry yeah no yeah she was montor was asked when should when should um people start uh planning a family um oh about 20 years before they do it you know I love it so her point point was is that it's essential that a wouldbe couple before children come along have the right kind of healthy mature relationship again psych maturity in which it's not just about physical attraction and and uh having fun and all that or exdents or accidence right unplanned yeah yeah I remember a health teacher from high school who was a very funny guy and very entertaining very blunt he said getting pregnant before you're ready to is dumb don't do it don't do it he did have a point of course but Joan and Angelus does talk about the importance of you know have some mindfulness when we believe or or certain we want to have a family you know make sure we've got the right kind of relationship with whoever we're with that it's sustainable because needless to say if you have a relationship that's more about chemistry and passion and sexual desire well all of that's fine but if that's really all that is in a relationship it's just not going to last yeah it's unsustainable right a long term obvious point but but how many people make this mistake yeah yeah easy to make a mistake like that and yet so going back to the warrior phase from Carl Young um uh you know as we focus on trying to have a family career and everything else that we're going to have in our lives it's that period of of where hopefully we have enough healthy ego development that we're able to go after the things that we want by going after I don't mean being authoritarian or over ambitious about it but the thing is a lot of times people get stuck in the Warrior phase you know they're only focused on getting ahead having a career whatever it is and then later they kind of go oh is that all there is to it is there nothing else and so maybe there's an emptiness that might begin to emerge

focused on getting ahead having a career whatever it is and then later they kind of go oh is that all there is to it is there nothing else and so maybe there's an emptiness that might begin to emerge absolutely I'm not saying having a family's right for everybody but the ability to have a family certainly has a profound impact on what life will be like for us as we age and whether or not we have uh a connection to people within a family so that we're not alone because how often are people psychologically unhappy if all they did was focus on their careers and uh I would say maybe a small some people are okay with that but what if somebody just focused on their career maybe had a family but ignored it either because they unconsciously wanted to maybe they couldn't help it but whatever the reason and then later on realized it was kind of a price to pay for that yeah yeah I can just imagine the the hurt that such a a life produces in all involved right Peter so now going forward I I mentioned before the statement phase already so again that's more focused on parenting and caring about others and starting to give back to others perhaps a little bit more than when we were younger again these are not rigid categories you know people can do a little bit of both you know different phases of their lives and then the last phase is more the spiritual phase which we're more likely to enter into as we get near the end of our Lives maybe the last 30 plus years of our lives whatever it is but that spiritual phase where we start to try to connect more with the self as you mentioned the self with the capital S our deeper selves inside yeah and it's interesting that I believe in uh Confucianism and and uh I believe Confucianism was did this and maybe Buddhism too there is kind of a tradition where if you spent most of your life as a young person you know working and doing some kind of work you then when you reach that old as you get near the retirement age it's that period of your life where

re if you spent most of your life as a young person you know working and doing some kind of work you then when you reach that old as you get near the retirement age it's that period of your life where you will will make an effort to focus on your spiritual self I mean actively do so and so I don't know that our culture necessarily encourages that per se but I think it's it's something that I think a lot of people do care about well let's think about real quick and I know we're we're coming okay close to an end Peter but uh when you ask is this something that our culture really emphasizes or promotes and I'd say no unfortunately for a capitalist consumerist Society right where the engine for capitalism is the production of and consumption of things right you're only as good as you're able to produce and and this is uh I think we're really about to go into a shift and this is my belief my personal belief that we're about the humanity is about to go to a tremendous shift into this Paradigm of life in in a western Society in a new paradigm and the so-called great resignation is just one symptom of of that shift where we and and so many not not me but so many uh younger uh professionals uh are just they cannot do it they came to a point very early not late as Yung mentioned but they they came early on in their 20s and their 30s coming to term that life as is is a life without meaning which puts us into the the end of or conclusion of today's discussion right Peter which is mental and psychological maturation um is really all about meaning it's about understanding um what where we are and have this larger perspective relative to how fulfilled we are with life and fulfillment is not born out of producing things or uh consuming things but it's really all about that uh uh as you mentioned before that uh notion of uh collaboration cooperation of being part of a a larger Community but also understand that um um from a spiritual perspective uh a lot of the things that we hold on so much we we put meaning are

n of uh collaboration cooperation of being part of a a larger Community but also understand that um um from a spiritual perspective uh a lot of the things that we hold on so much we we put meaning are ephemeral they're temporary if indeed they all related to that physical part of our Lives not our spiritual lives right so I just wanted to maybe Peter if you could just wrap it up with uh telling uh us what are your thoughts regarding what this real maturity this real psychological maturity should be for all of us I think real psychological maturity is that we find a healthy balance between are addressing what our real needs are which are not based on distortions distortions would be like what you were saying before about only the career matters only consuming matters only acquiring more and more stuff matters so forth but whatever our emotional needs are and to some extent our material needs too but whatever what is a healthy expectation of our needs our personal needs can we balance that also with with the with caring for others and being compassionate towards others and not uh and learning how to to give and take and also very important part of psychological maturity is to move away from the dualistic personality the dualistic personality is I'm right and everybody who disagrees with me is automatically wrong one country is right every other country that doesn't think the way my country does is wrong my group is the right group and the rest of you you're over there somewhere and maybe you don't even deserve to exist that kind of mentality that sort of thinking is more of a dualistic mentality and it's also immature so part of what is essential to psychological maturity is that we understand how to both care for our needs but also care about the needs of others absolutely truly yeah go ahead it's learning to let go right it's learning to uh and I'm going to be uh very uh uh potentially very uh silly here but it's just learning to love right learn to be empathetic learn to to to

h go ahead it's learning to let go right it's learning to uh and I'm going to be uh very uh uh potentially very uh silly here but it's just learning to love right learn to be empathetic learn to to to individuate in in terms of what you're saying earlier right becoming a a non dualistic type an integral being that accepts all the aspects of who I am as a as a soul that is inhabiting a physical body but has a very long long journey rich with experience rich with emotions Rich of with accomplishments and most important rich with uh a sense of belonging because we're all in this together and a very important thing is it's not about that we all must think the same way we must all interest or the same value system more about that we learn to accept one another truly accept one another for our differences even when we have huge disagreements about things ABS each other in Sp to that yeah yes that's a very obvious thing to say but how much do people struggle with this a lot and until we can move beyond that kind of immaturity we're we're going to this will continue to be a big struggle yeah so our invitation to all of you who's out there listening to to episode is to just open your right being courageous to to to look to assess who you are in what state that you are embrace all the imperfections that you still see but also Embrace with courage all there is to come it's a beautiful Journey this journey toward individuation and uh it's one that requires us to be more more mature but Peter thank you so much for being with us today I appreciate it and until the next time see you later see you later thank you it's a pleasure to be here thank you