Three Stages of Development

By Simona Rich+ in All Articles, Self Improvement

The development of humanity (or the so called evolution) is not going like a straight line, but more like a spiral, or, as I imagine it, like a circle. At first the humanity is very much connected to the spirit. Then people gradually forget their souls by paying increasingly more attention to the material stuff outside. They enter into the stage of inactivity, laziness and ignorance.
This laziness, however, is only a temporary state. When people become aware that their lives are purposless and they haven’t achieved anything, they are ready to enter another state of being which is about activity and achievement. This is the most material stage of all because people are focused on material rather than spiritual achievements.
With time, however, this stage also comes to an end. People wake up to see the craziness of the external world: what brings happiness will surely bring sadness later; If you laugh one day, you will cry another day; Every situation can be viewed from a positive and a negative point of view; The duality is everywhere – you can’t avoid it. It’s the nature of the material world.
This realisation forces people to find a way back into their souls, and thus they come full circle. At this spiritual stage they find a never ending joy inside themselves; they go back to a simple way of living which agrees with nature; They feel God in everything.
That’s why I imagine the progress of the humanity like a circle – it’s like a snake swallowing its own tail.

Image taken from Google Images

At the stage of laziness and ignorance people still feel the spirit. The ego has not got a complete grip on them. However in the material/activity stage people are completely egoistic. That’s the case with the Western world, however a lot of people at this time are awakening there and rapidly shedding their egos. Such people come from many environments, and can be students or teachers, office or factory workers or anyone else for that matter.
They are the ones who leave their complicated lives in search of truth. These are the people who start finding joys in the simplest of things and these joys are more heart-warming than the ones got from a complicated life. Such people are coming full circle, back to where they came from.
Personally the more I reduce ego, the less my happiness depends on the external world. If my mind would not be controlled by anything external, I would call this stage a complete mastery of life.

The hippy way of life

Now some people confuse the hippy way of living with the simplicity and spirituality development stage. Unfortunately most people choosing such a lifestyle are deluding themselves. The hippies that I see in India (and there are a lot of them here) are very scared and disappointed people. They are running away from their problems – they try forget their disappointments and unrealised goals by engaging in destructive actions.
These kinds of people have weak characters and they try to destroy their own bodies by smoking, drinking and using drugs. They act this way to punish themselves for being failures. They rent extremely cheap accommodation in cheap Asian countries and waste their lives doing nothing much. So this kind of life may seem peaceful and spiritual to an ignorant observer, however such people actually regressed into the lower stages of development. They are going through the laziness, ignorance and inactivity stage of development.

Coming full circle for real

Although not many, there are a few people who have really come full circle. They left their worldly lives and found God in simplicity. Such people are naturally joyful: they may be living in the most basic conditions and engage in no entertainments, yet this inner joy is always present in them.
Another quality found in all such people is that they would never want to go back to their previous ways of living. Not because they are scared to face problems found there, but because they see the stupidity of the life they left behind.
Such people are very deep – it’s impossible to exhaust their knowledge and wisdom, because they are connected to their source.

The third stage of development comes naturally

Now would I advise everyone to aim for such a life of simplicity? Far from it. Some people are just not ready for it and living this way would harm them more than do them good.
This simplicity comes naturally to those who turn to spirituality. However people who are in the Tamastic stage (it’s a sluggish, depressed and lazy quality in people) cannot jump right into the Sattvic (joyful) stage without going through the Rajastic (activity and complexity) stage.
So for people who are very inactive and suffering from low moods it’s necessary to read books which would inspire them to action and the achievement of success. Only after this stage would the need for simplicity arise.
A person can be stuck in one stage all her life; Some people are blessed to make a leap from one stage to the next, and a very few ones complete all three stages of development in one lifetime.
Some people are born lazy and moody and stay like this all their lives. Some people remain active and goal-oriented till they die. And some people live all their lives being peaceful, content and connected to God. It’s also possible to regress, as with the hippy example.
(A side note: sometimes I give advice that seems contradictory to some. I may advise in one post to simplify life and meditate to become desire-free as desires create suffering. In another post I may give tips on how to achieve your desires and thus become successful. Please understand that both of these types of advice is correct, they are only aimed at people of different stages of development. It’s important for people to only take advice which they resonate with rather than blindly following a teacher.)
So the three stages of development are as follows:
Simplicity/Spirit/Inner joy – Inactivity/Moodiness – Complexity/Action
…and back — a full circle, like a snake swallowing its own tail.
Humanity goes through these three stages as individuals, nations and races.
For example, Africa is just starting out; Asia is booming; Europe is collapsing… back into spirituality (such transitions can be really hard). Also keep in mind that it’s a cycle – these stages our world went through before, and will go through in the future.
Also if a country or a continent goes through a particular development stage, some individuals there might be going through a different stage of development. So within Africa, for example, which is in the Inactive state, the majority of people would be in the same kind of state. However some people would be in the Active or in the Spiritual stages. It’s likely that in such case the circumstances would become favourable for an individual to leave the country and move to a place going through the same development stage as the individual – the law of attraction in action.

Summary

I hope that with this post I gave you some insight into the three major states the humanity goes through. This, hopefully, will help you to more understand different kinds of people as well as the cycles of this world.



Source:http://www.personal-development-coach.net