^^^ adder, thanks so much for sharing. I was out of my depth when I made the BPD comment and happy to hear someone add a personal perspective. When I read the description of BPD I say "geez, did I have that too?" and it certainly didn't stop me from using psychedelics, but I'm sensitive to the suffering some on BL and elsewhere describe when they relate their use of psychedelics and don't want to feed the story that its all fun and mind expanding goodness.
^^ nuube, just wanted to add that I loved your quote:
Considering the current line of thought is that personalities are more or less set in stone form the age of 6, (The Jesuit boast, 'Give me the child for his first seven years, and I'll give you the man" accurately reflects this).
It is totally in line with the understanding that was given to me by my teacher Michael Brown, former peyote shaman and author of "The presence process." I have found little else in the way of support for it except my experience so I'll remember that quote and you might even see me using it here and there. In his book he describes "the pathway of awareness and the seven year cycle". It's been remarkably accurate in my experience and I can't help but gush a bit when I find others sharing the same things. Short of reading the book, it goes something like this:
In the womb: we exist in a vibrational state of beingness. The trauma of birth is experienced as a hellish and traumatic separation from this state of being. They say it is more traumatic than death. Rebirthing techniques and Stanislav Grof's work are other modalities that directly address this. Some of the most difficult experiences that arise when using psychedelics are a reliving of this event.
First seven years of life (0-7): our primary means of relating to the world is through emotion. First and foremost we emote to communicate with the world and to our experience. Traumas in our emotional state at this age determine the patterns we are stuck reliving for the rest of our lives if we can't address these. Our personality isn't solidified yet in my understanding at this age, but the nature of emotion is such that it will cause our personality to solidify in a particular way over another.
Second seven years of life (7-14): now we develop concepts and mental constructs as the bedrock of reality. "We spell words and sentences: our spells and sentences." How we use concepts limits or expands our reality. Other techniques like neurolinguistic programming techniques (NLP) address the spells we cast with language.
Next seven years of life (14-21): now concepts take the back seat. It becomes about what we can get in the physical world — the world of actions and reactions. Our personality solidifies and externalizes. Now we relate to the world at large, we direct our careers so we can make a living and we solidify the body image we want to project. We form relationships with some and not others. Object-relations theory and many others also attempt to address our physical fixations.
Ok, this is over-simplified and I'm just trying to give a taste of it. We have all these capacities at all stages, but these stages are the major perceptual developmental stages we go through. It is the pathway awareness follows when it enters the world. It also highlights the real golden nugget in all this:
spirit transforms and shapes emotion
emotion transforms and shapes our mental constructs
mental constructs transform and shape the physical
I don't see this as being more or less correct than anything posted here. What I love about it is that as a framework it integrates it all. The depth to which this has been true has blown my mind a million times. Hence my name levelsBeyond. Consequently I can't shut up about it but I've learned to contain it better. I'm still living out the patterns everyone else is but with an unshakable realization that miracles are our birthright. Blessed be your journey Nuube and everyone here. Thanks Zaravoth for creating this opening for all of us to share. I'll stop now 8) :D
