Personal development

It is often overlooked that our body does not stop going through transformations when we have gone past puberty. Of course, growing up is a big deal and the changes are dramatic, culminating in puberty and the ensuing years when the hormone-induced turbulence of our minds gradually calms down. This often coincides with the time when our brain is fully developed, more or less around the age of 25.

But why stop there? If anything, this is a clear sign that the body and the brain develop at different speeds. Is it too strange an assumption that mental and spiritual development might have different speeds as well? Maybe we should be looking beyond the obvious physical changes we go through when growing up and focus on the things that are less than obvious. Clearly, we continue to learn new tricks beyond the age of 25 (yes: I know that learning is easier when your brain is more pliable, but that does not mean it becomes impossible after that time!) so why is it so hard to imagine that besides learning things we could also be able to ‘change our mind’ on a range of intellectual and spiritual matters?

Spiritual development seems to be a bit of a stop-and-go subject: many people – even the ones actively looking for enlightenment – appear to get stuck for periods of time and then suddenly become aware of some element they disregarded and move forward in a big way. I like to think of this as ‘an idea whose time has come’, when all the pieces suddenly fit and the mind comprehends something it could not quite make out before.

This, to me, is the ultimate personal development: a sudden insight rather than a continuous learning activity. There is a lot of learning out there that anyone can pick up, but insight is something personal, that rattles your belief system, shakes you up to the core. Mostly, this is a joyful occasion that leads to rearranging beliefs and the material life forever in a way that no amount of learning could ever achieve. I believe that personal development of this sort never stops and can hit us at any time of life: from your teens to old age, there is a chance of sudden shifts in perception.

embrace that shift and make it your own in mind and spirit