He’s at it again. My younger brother Nicholas has the strangest ideas. The problem is that they sometimes make so much sense to me. The precocious boy read dad’s college-level developmental psychology textbook over school break and now he thinks we have it only half right and are omitting a really important part that’s needed for our healthy development.
So here’s how it goes (or rather here’s how I understand his ramblings/insights.)
“We simultaneously live on two levels,” he screams. This is what’s normal for our species. We need to know this if we are ever to understand what’s going on and our place in it.
According to the textbook what seems important is learning how to accomplish tasks as separate individuals. We each need to learn how to walk, feed ourselves, ride a bicycle or skateboard, succeed in school, hold a job, etc. These are all important life skills to be sure. However, they all focus on development on the individual level, also known as the personal dimension of growth.
According to Nicholas, there also exists a transpersonal dimension of growth. This can easily be observed in children (and adults having a contemplative/philosophical moment) when they ask (or ponder) questions like: “Why are we here?”, “Where do we go when we die?”, “Is there a greater purpose to my life?”, “Are we evolving in a specific direction?”, “Am I living my life with this direction in mind?”
These questions all concern our development as members of the human species where our sense of self expands beyond (trans) our personal dimension to include our connection to all of humanity. Nicholas says that we need to be helping children develop on both a personal and on a transpersonal level. We live simultaneously as specific individuals and as connected members of humanity. He says that all of our saints, prophets, and spiritual leaders like Jesus, Buddha, Mother Theresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King – he keeps on naming people – all acknowledge this! He talks about many indigenous cultures that focus equally on our transpersonal dimension and on our personal dimension. He says that if we are ever going to raise healthy children that both dimensions of our existence need to be nourished and evenly balanced.
He talks about an ocean and individual waves in the ocean and uses the analogy of our being both a unique wave (the personal dimension), and our being a part of the entire ocean (the transpersonal dimension.)
I am worried as I think he is right. I am hopeful as we can easily look at ourselves this way and live our lives as being two-dimensional. What do you think? Do you experience yourself as living in both dimensions? Are you willing to see yourself as ‘two-dimensional you?”
As always- Gita
For more info or for a more academic article, please check out Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt
Alias “Gita”, Dr. Neal Klein is an esteemed author, professor, dance professional, and co-founder of the Possibility Detectives.
