Every Seven Years (7) You Change

About the Author

Tony Crisp is an internationally renowned expert on dreams and their interpretation and is the author of the bestselling Dream Dictionary: An A to Z Guide to Understanding Your Unconscious Mind. Based on material from thousands of dreams gathered during three decades of research, the Dream Dictionary has become a classic of the genre, with a previous version being translated into seven languages worldwide.

Tony has worked at the vanguard of the personal development and self-help movement for more than fifty years, co-founding in the 1970s one of the first human growth centres in the UK. In addition to teaching and leading groups in self-development and yoga, Tony has worked variously as a photographer, journalist, writer, psychotherapist for twenty years and broadcaster both in the UK and abroad, acting as LBC’s resident dream therapist for seven years.

Tony’s website, DreamHawk.com, is one of the longest running dream interpretation sites in existence, with thousands of people accessing its database of dream symbols, interpretations and reference material every day. He has five children and currently lives alone in a cottage in Wales.

I ntroduction

The First Cycle: 0-7 Years

The Second Cycle: 7-14 Years

The Third Cycle: 14-21 Years

The Fourth Cycle: 21-28 Years

The Fifth Cycle: 28-35 Years

The Sixth Cycle: 35-42 Years

The Seventh Cycle: 42-49 Years

The Eighth Cycle: 49-56 Years

The Ninth Cycle: 56-63 Years

The Tenth Cycle: 63-70 Years

The Eleventh Cycle: 70-77 Years

The Twelfth Cycle: 77-84 Years onwards

Living Forever

INTRODUCTION

Are you the same person now that you were fifteen years ago? In fact, are you the same person you were just seven years ago? Most of us have heard the old saying that every cell in the body is changed over a period of seven years; but recent investigation has uncovered facts of far more significance to us as human beings. This concerns the emotional, physical and mental changes that seem to occur in approximate seven-year intervals.

Of course, there are no fixed boundaries and so we may achieve these levels of maturity at any period of our lives. So what follows are simply the general changes you may find. Rudolph Steiner, the great teacher of Anthroposophy, said that the seven-year cycles continue throughout life, and are of the utmost importance to doctors, teachers, psychiatrists and the social sciences. Without some smattering of these changes it is difficult for anyone to understand the relationship of any given individual with his or her environment.

I have tried to summarise what Steiner, myself and others have said about the cycles. By way of introduction, I feel it is important to say that as humans, in fact as any life form, we are creatures of great polarities.

We exist strung between enormous duality – sleep and waking, male and female, pain and pleasure, light and darkness, life and death, and death and resurrection, war and peace, matter and anti-matter, negative and positive, the void and bodily existence. To be whole we need to accept and meet these opposites. In the pursuit of love we need to recognise that we must integrate the other gender to become whole.

One of the great paradoxes of our lives is that we constantly go through such enormous changes every day. Each of us is immersed in a ‘river’ of constant change. If you think about it, you have been carried, pushed, impelled by this current as you were moved through babyhood, childhood, teenage and adulthood, and there are more stages of growth beyond adulthood. And as we pass through these changes we die to our old self in order to change to the new. We actually experience ‘dying’ but most people are so out of touch with death, because they are scared of it, that they do not recognise the experience as such.

I use the words ‘death’, ‘life’ and ‘inner world’ a great deal, and to make what I write understandable I need to explain where I get these ideas from, because most people do not understand.

To start with, while we sleep our conscious self is largely or totally unconscious, and while we dream our voluntary muscles are paralysed – therefore another will or motivating force moves our body and creates our dreams. So, in life and sleep we have two powerful actions working in us. The first is our waking experience based on having a body, its limitations, vulnerabilities and a particular gender. This is our Conscious Will. Our second Will is the power that gives us life and in fact runs all our important life processes, such as our heartbeat and digestion, and in sleep continues to express as dreams. This is our ‘life’, to which I have given the description Life Will.

That is not a new idea. Many ancient thinkers and writers have expressed it in one way or another. For instance, Jakob Boehme, who lived between 1575 and 1624, wrote:

Thou must consider that there are in thy Soul two Wills, an inferiour Will, which is for driving thee to Things without and below; and a superior Will, which is for drawing to Things within and above. These two Wills are now set together, as it were, Back to Back, and in a direct Contrariety to each other; but in the Beginning, it was not so.

Here is an experience of my own

In 1953, when I was sixteen, and already deeply interested in the possibilities of the human mind, I took a course in deep relaxation. I practised every day for three months, tensing my muscles, relaxing them, then passing my awareness over and over my body, dropping the feeling of tension and letting go. After three months I was quite proficient. One evening, after coming home from dining out with friends, I went to bed thinking I would leave my usual practice, but in the end decided to practice even though it was late. After going over my body several times I suddenly lost my right arm. I had no sensation of it other than space, hugeness. Then I lost my left arm, and – my whole body. It was like falling through a trap-door into the stars. I had no sense of having a body. Thoughts had ceased, except for a murmur apparently a thousand miles away. Yet in blackness, in immensity, in absence of thought I existed vitally as bodiless awareness. We think that we are our body because we have no other experience of our existence. So, we identify with our body and so are terrified of dying – which in a sense is what we do every time we go to sleep and leave our sense of a body behind.

“I felt at the time, and still believe it correct, that I had fallen asleep yet remained awake. Waking, critical awareness had been taken through the magic doors of sleep into a universe we seldom ever see – deep dreamless sleep.”

The world I entered was a completely different world than waking consciousness – I call it the ‘inner world’, and it gives one access to areas of experience normal waking life does not.

Now, coming to my use of the word ‘death’, I use it to mean that any one of us can enter the inner world if we know how to die to our own ego and conscious, thinking mind. So, as described above, I have learnt to die to my conscious self by entering that amazing and huge world.

So when I mention Life in this work, I am referencing the huge possibilities that are open to us all, once we have learnt how to still the ego and calm the surface life in order to access our inner world.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that in addition to the summaries included in this short book of the work of others in relation to life cycles, my own observations on the subject arise from having lived a long and full life, much of which has been given over to the study of my own and others’ inner lives, with the result being that I am able at times to have a broader view than many.

The First Cycle: 0-7 Years

One of the most important of these cycles is the first, from birth to seven years of age. Its importance lies in the fact that it is the beginning of everything, the foundation upon which the later structure will be built. Birth gives individual life to an infant body. Even at birth, this small being already has its given potential of intelligence, creativity and personality. But this potential has to come to terms with its environment, which includes its own body. In a human being we cannot have awareness without consciousness; we cannot have thinking without the tools of thought such as language, concepts or ideas. So during our early years we are largely moved by the instincts of hunger, need for love, survival, protection and support, along with pain and the impact of our environment. All this while we build up the inner, mental structures that in later years will allow us to think, to feel, and to be aware of ourselves as an individual.

The most important of these inputs is that of the unconscious behavioural responses we learn. From the moment you are born, perhaps even prior to that, you are learning, or there are pressed upon you, responses to what you are experiencing. The culture you are born into is a huge ready-made set of behavioural responses. For instance, an Australian aborigine would easily respond to a huge living grub/caterpillar by eating it. This would be a very difficult behavioural response for most Northern Europeans or Americans. As babies we learnt everything from whether we respond to opportunity with fear or eagerness; to love with fear of warmth; to food as a glutton or with healthy appetite.

At birth there is a very different physical and glandular system than in later years. For a start the sexual organs have not developed, meaning responses to sex and sensation are very global. Also the thymus is very large and in later years becomes smaller. It has been said this, in these early years, gives the child a very primitive response to truth, right and wrong, and what later become moral codes. So the child only slowly develops any real sense of social morality. In a way a baby is a wild animal, and only slowly develops ‘human’ qualities.

But something so mysterious happens to us during this first seven year cycle that once done it can never be fully undone. The Roman Catholic Church recognises this by saying that if they can have the first seven years of a child’s life that is all they need to insure a lifelong influence. Napoleon also observed that as the twig is bent, so the tree will grow. This is borne out by seeing the cases of children who have been lost and brought up by animals during these formative years. Even with the best tuition they never learn to become a self aware personality as we know it. Time is a mystery to them, and even though their brain size and function is normal, they never approach the usual capabilities that education gives to modern women and men.

So, in the first cycle we pass through an incredible process of learning. This includes motor movements, speech, relationship to ourselves and to our environment. And that means learning a vast amount about what is useful, entertaining or harmful; about what responses we get from others, and developing habits of response that may be difficult to change in later years. We learn a sense of personal awareness and move toward becoming an individual. In other words, we learn to say “I” and know what we mean.

The learning of language is like a powerful computer programme that gives us the ability to develop an identity and self awareness. This is shown again by children reared by animals. Language also adds limitations which we can overcome if we recognise them. The life of Helen Keller throws an enormous light on such children’s ability to learn. Helen was struck dumb and blind at an early age when she had only learnt one word, so was like a child reared by an animal. She lived life as such without self awareness until the age of eleven. Then she was taught by a deaf and dumb teacher and remembered the first word and quickly began the climb to become a human person. [Source: The Story of My Life by Helen Keller].

The stories of such children’s lives show us the enormous influence the early years of learning have on our mind, and how language is like a huge computer programme that alters our natural awareness, allowing us to have self awareness and a personality.

Rudolf Steiner would add that during this first stage of development the developing inner forces are working to transform the body of the child from one that was inherited from the parents, to one that represents the full personality of the child.

Emotional Age

Something often overlooked about the stages of growth is one’s emotional age.

From age zero we are completely dependent upon the loved person for our needs, physical, emotional and social. Great anger, jealousy or pain are felt if the loved one relates to anyone else, is lost, or threatens to leave. If we do not mature beyond this emotional age, in adulthood this enormous feeling reaction may also be felt at a time of emotional withdrawal of the partner, even if there is no sign of an actual physical withdrawal on their part. In the infant and toddler there is a desire for unconditional love and a need to be always with the loved one. In an adult with this developmental level of love, sex may be a part of the relationship, but the main need is a bonded connection. This is sometimes felt as a need to have the loved person want us as much, or as desperately, as we want/need them; possibly the greatest fear, one that can trigger great anger or an enormous desire to placate or earn love, is the threat or fear of being abandoned. Obviously many people never develop beyond this level.

The point is that certainly in the past, and still today in many parts of the world, abandonment means death. The greatest and most prominent drive in a baby animal is to stay connected with its parent or group; if it doesn’t it will almost certainly die. That instinct has been built into us as vulnerable animals for millions of years. The baby cannot help but feel that imperative. It will react with tremendous emotional force, swinging between extremes of placation and murderous rage. In a baby that can simply be noisy, but many adult still carry this ‘baby’ inside them, and its responses can be tragic for them, or even end in murder.

This is so important, that if during this and/or the next, second cycle, any feelings that you were abandoned or lacked love were felt, then you need to be aware that you have a huge time bomb that can be triggered in your life.

Adult men and women with that time bomb in them can become painful victims of their desperate need for ‘love’. This can happen at any time of life, even the late sixties or beyond.

A woman can be triggered by any signs that a man or woman ‘loves’ her, and can be so hypnotised by such attention that she becomes a sexual slave for a man, and when he has finished with her, or she demands a loving and not just sexual relationship, is cast off, often leaving great painful wounds.

A man can equally fall in the same way. So it is important to recognise whether you have been the victim of abandonment, sexual assault as a child, or just unloving parenting. If so, recognise you are very vulnerable when someone takes an interest in you.

Another very important part of a child’s life that is barely recognised in our culture is that we all learn enormous amounts in a similar way to how a fox cub learns from its parents – without any verbal communication. Just as a fox cub ‘learns’ how to hunt from its parents, so we absorb the deeply etched survival strategies of our parents simply by being around them. The process instinctively draws in the survival tactics that perhaps even our parents themselves have never really been aware they live by. In doing this the higher animals learn what cannot be passed on as instinct, what is not ‘hard wired’ into them. This holds in it a tremendous advantage because ‘hard wiring’ takes a long time.

So, not only can one have a ‘gene pool’ from which our body is formed, there is also a ‘behavioural pool’ acting as a similar resource. This does not so much shape the body, but certainly gives form to the character and responses. But we absorb not only the helpful attitudes and behaviour of our parents but also the awful strategies many people use to survive.

So if we can develop something of the ability to stand outside the attitudes that most of us identify as ‘us’, it is useful to see if we can find and assess these deeply buried behaviours.

The Second Cycle: 7-14 years

The second cycle, from seven to fourteen, continues this growth. The concepts and association of ideas and emotions that began in the first cycle begin to be discovered by the child. The physical changes also prepare the growing personality for the next stage. The thymus gland decreases rapidly in size, allowing the development of a sense of right and wrong and social responsibility. A sign of this physical and psychological growth is the loss of our milk teeth and the emergence of our adult teeth. This marks an entrance into a new maturity.

The child has learned, with the advent of its concepts and developing emotions, to create an inner world of its own. It is a world of heroes, heroines, danger and vivid imagination. As the thymus fades, and the sexual organs develop, the personality glides into the turbulent world of puberty and adolescence.

Sometimes it is already evident, even from the preceding cycle, the direction of interest and activity the child will take in maturity. Although for the very observant this might be seen in very early years, it becomes more evident as one approaches puberty. This may show itself in what they play at imagine themselves as. I noticed my son often playing with aeroplanes; as an adult he learnt fly and also the skill of hang gliding. Sometimes this love cannot support them financially but they choose it as a second path.

In all, this cycle is a time of inner expansion when we begin to experience and test abilities in the broader sense of the outside world. We may learn to share and interact, controlling earlier instincts in favour of group dynamics. The habits learned in the first cycle are now part of the character of the growing child.

Erik Erikson and his theory of personality

Erik Erikson was a psychoanalyst known for his theory on psychological development of human beings. The development of identity seems to have been one of Erikson’s greatest concerns in his own life as well as in his theory. He studied the Montessori Method of education, which focused on child development and sexual stages. He is best known for his book, Childhood and Society. His notes on childhood development are therefore helpful in understanding the growth stages we need to pass through.

Competence – Industry vs. Inferiority: School-age/6-11. Child comparing self-worth to others (such as in a classroom environment). Child can recognize major disparities in personal abilities relative to other children. Erikson places some emphasis on the teacher, who should ensure that children do not feel inferior.

Fidelity – Identity vs. Role Confusion: Adolescent/12 years till 18. Questioning of self. Who am I, how do I fit in? Where am I going in life? Erikson believes that if the parents allow the child to explore, they will conclude their own identity. However, if the parents continually push him/her to conform to their views, the teen will face identity confusion.

Intimacy vs. Isolation: This is the first stage of adult development. This development usually happens during young adulthood, which is between the ages of 18 to 35. Dating, marriage, family and friendships are important during this stage in life. By successfully forming loving relationships with other people, individuals are able to experience love and intimacy. Those who fail to form lasting relationships may feel isolated and alone.

On ego identity versus role confusion, ego identity enables each person to have a sense of individuality. According to Barbara Engler in her book Personality Theories (2006), when role confusion occurs, “the inability to conceive of oneself as a productive member is a great danger; it can occur during adolescence, when looking for an occupation.”

Because in the West we are often pushed to become a part of the huge industrialisation of society, and through the influence of some parents’ belief that they know in what direction their child should go, young adults are often left in conflict about their own innate direction.

Here is an extract from a dream, as an example:

I am at my original flat but come across an extra room or sometimes a part to the flat no one knows about. I am always surprised when I find it, but inside myself I know of its existence. It is as though it belonged to me although I am unaware of ever having used it. It is usually a bedroom but sometimes a lounge with a bed in it. It’s obviously lived in. The bed is unmade and it’s a little untidy but comfortable. I feel very familiar with it but recognise none of the contents as mine.

The dreamer explored this dream and discovered it held her artistic abilities left to her from her father’s influence. Because the father and mother didn’t get on well, he left. The mother subsequently told her daughter that her father didn’t amount to much and to forget him. So, she was delighted to find within her the gifts he had left her. See Individuation

The Third Cycle: 14-21 years

This is the third cycle, from fourteen to twenty-one. During it we become conscious of ourselves in a new way, and with a different relationship to life. One might say we become ‘self-conscious’. The emotional range expands in all directions and with this a new appreciation of music, art, literature and people begins. It is found for instance that at puberty the ability to distinguish subtler tones of colour and sound develops. Besides this the person might go through the difficult struggle of breaking away from home life and/or parental influence. It naturally produces conflict as the person learns some degree of independence. Also, the opposite sex, or sex as an urgent impulse, usually becomes all important as the new emotions pour in upon our personality.

Just before or during this cycle females face a great adjustment: the start of menstruation. For a young woman this may be particularly potent for it confronts her with the fact that she is part of nature’s cycles, that her body is not totally her own and that Life in her has its own agenda. It connects her with the forces of death and renewal occurring within her during every menstruation. It connects her with the tremendous link with natural forces of mothering and the strength of womanhood and the female principle in nature.

Because of the new range of feelings, many youths experience a different relationship with religion and life’s mysteries. All this, as one approaches the age of twenty-one, produces an individual with some sense of social and individual responsibility; or if not that, the beginning of a sense of a direction or life purpose. This might not be recognised as such at the time. But it is a time of searching for life purpose, independence, a realization of choices plus a testing of social and personal limitations as well as an awareness of a burgeoning sexuality. As this is a traumatic period of life for most of us, it is also likely to be a time of many unforgettable dreams.

The period is a time of adding maturity, dignity and poise to the person. If these changes have not occurred by the age of twenty-one, then the person has in some way not covered necessary aspects of development, and both psychology and the law recognise that they are lacking maturity.

This third cycle is also one of great and sweeping changes, sexually, physically, emotionally, morally and mentally. Such enormous changes often do not occur without an experience of loss. In this case the world of childhood is fading, or it might even be torn away, leaving scars.

It is also a time when many new features of the personality have their beginning, i.e. the religious sense, appreciation of the beautiful, of music, literature and art etc. Although such things have their beginnings here, they sometimes remain undeveloped until later years.

Because of these changes, and because such a lot is being revealed in these years, it is obvious why so much thought should be given to early marriage. Because of one’s changing viewpoint, the particular partner one would choose at the age of seventeen or eighteen is likely to be different to the partner chosen at twenty-one and beyond. See Surviving Love and Relationships

The emotional development at this age is possibly seen as initial uncertainty or clumsiness concerning emotional and sexual contact. It often involves desire to explore many relationships, unless there are forces of introversion or personal and social uncertainty at work. We are still finding out what our boundaries and needs are, and the sexual drive is in full flood. Any partner we have at this time may be loved for one’s own needs, rather than out of recognition for who the other person is. The person during this cycle may experience great emotions of romantic and spontaneous love, that are often difficult to maintain in face of challenges we meet in developing a more mature personality.

Many women often remain at this stage of emotional development, and search for romantic teenage love dreams their whole life, causing much emotional pain. Men may not move from the very genital phase of this period, so go on a lifelong search for the next woman’s vagina to fill with their dreamed of big penis and great manhood.

An example of a woman’s dream explains this:

Example: I dreamt of being with a woman who was desperately seeking a man. I was also with my own female companion. I believe the woman had been suddenly dropped by her man, and I and my partner were close and with her.

Still in the semi-awake state I tried ‘being’ the woman, and had a very clear response. I experienced being her, but was also me with experience of seeing into myself in some degree. I saw that the woman, like most of us, was a female creature whose instinctive drive was to find a mate. But she was not aware of this as an instinctive drive but as a personal feeling. As such she had become, like many women and men, lost in a huge web of personal ideas about whether they were attractive, sexy, with many complications about love, gender mixed with childhood unconscious traumas and the heartbreak all that brings.

In some degree, to become a mature and full individual we must accept that we are not alone but an integral part of the huge process of life and therefore of everyone and everything. One of the great areas of learning for this period of time connects with how we meet other adults outside our family. We begin to turn toward strangers for important reasons such as intimate attention and appreciation; looking for a mate; finding others to work with or acknowledge our own ideas such as music, writing, etc. We try to make things happen in human society, and so meet the co-operation and antagonism of others more fully than protected childhood and its groupings allowed.

During the change from adolescent to adult, one of the greatest of our childhood needs becomes apparent in the way we meet situations, and the choices we make. The need is for parental enthusiastic love and recognition of oneself as a unique person. If we have not received this love we carry in us such pain and need, it influences all our decisions. Even without any maltreatment, the lack of love traumatises us. There are so few of us who have actually received this love to the degree we needed, that the dealing with this inner lack is one of the major tasks before us if we are to reach our full potential. This is often worked out in our relationships and the tribulations that arise out of our desperate need for, or pain regarding, intimacy.

Becoming a Woman

In this cycle which last from thirteen to twenty you go through the massive change of leaving your childhood and facing becoming a woman. In today’s world girls are bombarded with images and suggestions of what it is to be a woman. This happens very strongly in the western world where huge forces of advertising and influence for commercial interests have developed very powerful methods to gain a way into your life. So I am going to say things to you that you may not accept or believe at first, but I feel are important for you to have heard.

First, you are an animal, a female mammal. To have reached the point of becoming a human female you went through millions of years of animal life. If you doubt that you must realise that you are left with a reptile and mammal brain as well as the human brain.

The neurologist Paul MacLean gave a definition of these physiological and psychological facts of our brain in 1990. He said that these levels of the brain work like “three interconnected biological computers, each with its own special intelligence, its own subjectivity, its own sense of time and space and its own memory”.

Prior to MacLean’s findings it was assumed that the highest level of the brain, the neocortex, the human brain, dominating the other lower levels. MacLean, and since him others (Earl K. Miller), have found this is not so. In fact Miller was recently able to demonstrate that the older brain learns fast, and it gradually ‘trains’ the prefrontal cortex.

Returning to MacLean’s definition the base brain is the Reptilian. The next level he called the Mammalian or Monkey Brain, and the third is called the Neomammalian or Human Brain. See Levels of the Brain

To ignore that we carry our animal past with us and that we are still very influence by our past, can lead us to live in a way leading to enormous confusion and emotional pain, because in doing so we are living a life in conflict with oneself. Such conflict can lead to the depression, being lost in relationships, painful or passionate, and anxiety and panic attacks.

It can also help us to realise that consciousness on our planet started in the slime of creation, the slime we return to, to procreate. And from that slime which is a vehicle for our seed to exist in, our awareness goes through the whole process of evolution, the dividing of cells, as happens in plant growth, the forming of structure and organs as with animals, the creation of a creature with gills such as fish use, and on to a human form ready to breathe air, carrying our seed onwards.

Yes, you grew from a seed, but no plant or creature grows from a dead seed, and each living seed carries within it all the past gathered from all its forebears. So, the seed in your mother’s womb is as old as and even older than human kind, and you carry that wisdom or memories in you. But in this life you developed a new brain, and the memories you gathered this time are what you built your personality from, but beneath that is a very huge and ancient self. For in a real way, you are simply a conscious personality riding an ancient beast, your body. If you value this wonderful animal you ride, you will care for its needs; it needs exercise, food it has been eating for millions of years that has not been made by manufacturers, like white flour and white sugar products; so eating and drinking what nature produces, and a need for sexual expression in some form.

Being in touch with your ancient self is the way to wholeness. It might help you to make contact with that wonderful wisdom and growth energy if you try Intuition – Using It

Because the cell that you grew from has a vast life experience, for the cell started its life when life began on Earth. A cell doesn’t become old it is immortal, for it keeps dividing and doesn’t die. Of course it produces your human body, but to do that it does not produce an exact copy because it does this to experience a separate self you call your ego or personality. In that way it gathers new experience which is carried forward in the eternal sex cells.

So, as a human woman you have a massive background of being many, many life forms. What was said above points to you arising not simply through evolution but through immense cosmic principles, a form of cosmic mould or archetype. Older cultures recognised that and though up the title of Great Mother. For somewhere, deep below the surface of your waking mind, this stream of life starts its flow. In underground caverns it moves through channels formed in ancient times, bringing life to all those tiny lives that, separate or in unity, form the shell you call your body. Within the universe of yourself you are a young goddess playing at creation with the stuff of life. Whatever thought or feeling, longing or emotion you harbour takes form, and is given life, beautiful or awful as it might be. And when you do not own that power, when you push back any part of that flow into the dark caverns of your mind, where fears and wounds, black angers or unspent vengeance lurk in shadows, they are given life. They grow strong until they wrestle with you, invade the living tissues of your body with their sickness, or burst out into the world as action.

“There for any to see the splendour – Of this most ancient goddess – Revealed and revealing – She was and is the revelation.”

So never think you are simply a no account human female. For though you arise from an ancient mould, the same as any mammal, you have a uniqueness through personal memories, we call personality.

It is important to see if you can feel the lioness within you, because otherwise you might remain one of those helpless modern screaming females who are victims to their own fears and panic and end up being hurt, abused or even murdered. Of course, there are thousands of other strategies you are capable of once you are open to your wider self.

Sometime see if you can explode in angry energy – it helps if someone threatens you. Believe me it is possible, and if you learn a few self defence moves it gives you so much more confidence.

The wider self can also warn you about opportunity or danger.

Another big part of being an adolescence, and something that will become a dominating part of you is your sexual nature. Remember that you evolved from animals, and sex was a natural part of their existence. As such they didn’t think about it, study it or wonder if they were good at it – after all, they/we have had millions of years living with it – they just did it.

So, don’t make it terribly personal, because sex has been an urge not just for millions of years, but billions. Because, honestly you are basically another mammal driven on by nature itself. But as humans we make the whole business very complicated by our thoughts, our emotional reactions, and from the immense advertising cleverly disguised as truth. You cannot completely escape from its influenced, but you might be able to mitigate it a little by understanding what you are facing.

Example: I dreamt of being with a woman who was desperately seeking a man. I was also with my own female companion. I believe the woman had been suddenly dropped by her man, and I and my partner were close and with her.

A huge adaptation you will meet concerns your sexual feelings, which in turn includes your emotions, your self image, your dress sense and many others things. We are each unique, and because of factors such as self confidence, level of physical and psychological strength, traumas we may hold within us, difficulties or ability in meeting challenges we will choose different paths to sexual expression. To list the main ones:

A heterosexual and long term relationship; with or without children
Relationships with a number of partners, none of which you choose to stay with long.
A polygamous relationship either with one man and several women, or a single woman with several men.
A homosexual relation ship with just one partner or with several different partners.
No sexual relations but a friendly partnership, or a non sexual life without partners; also maybe a religious loving life.
Quite a number of people are neither one nor the other, so are married with children but are also homosexual.
Some choose to either act out becoming the opposite sex, or have a sex change.

In one sense we have enormous choices how we express sexually. In another sense we may be pushed to choose because of fears, traumas, or programming by parents, peers, and social and media influence. See Programmed

All of us are born with genius as a fundamental part of us. But of course things get in the way of it expressing. Our body for instance, our programming from parents and culture, also our inherited attitudes such as – “I was always told I was no good and would not amount to anything.” When or if you are feeling hopeless and helpless watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNZVV4Ciccg

Your personal consciousness is a mirror in which your innermost hopes, longings, fears/terrors and genius are made real. They are made real of how you react to and experience people, animals and relationships. Perhaps your genius has been buried deep, but it is there by the immense number of lives that left traces of genius, or persistence against odds, of curiosity or love. See Ancestors 2 – Seed

If you are unclear about that take time to recognise that as a personality you are almost totally unaware of what is taking place in your body right now. You are not aware as personal experience of the huge history of evolutionary changes your being has gone through in order to become you. You perhaps have little conscious insight into the massive background of social, religious and family influences that go together to enable you to function as an individual and a social entity. Your self consciousness may not include awareness of how your present personality was shaped out of those influences. Maybe you do not know what the major life lessons are that confront you, or what your innate genius and passions are.

In general you are barely awake of whom you are! But that is not unusual; most of us are in the same boat. Only here and there does an individual wake up with such wide awareness and shine with light, love and creativity. Yet that light and love is in everyone. See Edgar Cayce

Any journey we take into uncertainty takes trust in ones own innate processes and genius. Without calling it genius, it takes trust in oneself, ones own innermost voice. In general we are barely awake to who we are! But that is not unusual, most of us are in the same boat. Only here and there does an individual wake up with such wide awareness and shine with light, love and creativity.

The Fourth Cycle: 21-28 years

The cycle that follows from twenty-one to twenty-eight, can more or less be called a process of enlargement and refinement. It is the period when we mentally and emotionally enter into adulthood. We start to build the foundations of our careers and intimate relationships with a driving energy that we hope will gain us entry and respect in the larger world.

One of the most marked features of this cycle is the developing sense of discrimination. The faculties of insight, intuition, judgement and understanding begin to come to the fore. The personality softens and begins to mellow. The sparks of interest that were awakened in the previous cycles begin to be developed along more definite lines. The abilities of the last cycle also flourish. The adult emotional age may begin to emerge if one has successfully grown through the previous levels. This shows as a growing sense of recognition of the needs of one’s partner, while not denying one’s own. It is followed by an ability to be something for the partner’s sake without losing one’s own independence or will. One becomes more aware of the issues that colour or influence relationships and meeting them in co-operation with others. Independence and connection can appear together instead of opposite ends of a spectrum. We move toward becoming caring sexual partners through discovering each other’s needs and vulnerability.

Sometimes we make people into our satellites in a relationship. We do not see them as themselves, but as someone or something which serves our personal needs or fears. We use the person much as we might use a car, as something waiting to fulfil us. I use the word satellite though because we see the person as someone attached to us, orbiting around us, responding to our signals.

This is really about not recognising that each person is unique and different from ourselves. This factor of difference in other people is of immense importance and underlines a lot of human problems and misunderstandings. Even so, if that is recognised and understood, independence and connection can appear together instead of opposite ends of a spectrum.

In this cycle we also begin to confront the issues that we were born with or which arose through the challenges and pains of our infancy and childhood. These usually show as the way in which we handle intimate relationships, whether or not we can really meet in partnership with the opposite sex, and how we respond to the external world, its challenges and opportunities.

At this time what is revealed may not be addressed as a personal problem or issues to be healed or re-evaluated. Such issues will be faced more directly later if not dealt with now.

The Fifth Cycle: 28-35 years

The changes become more subtle as the years pass. This cycle is one where the creative process of mind becomes most active. Researchers and inventors seem to make their greatest advances during these years. It is interesting to note that physical science finds evidence of the reason for this in the fact that the association centres of the brain come to their peak efficiency at about thirty-five years of age.

This is even more interesting when we see that most of the great religious teachers and philosophers came to some vital experience at thirty-five. Jesus, Buddha, St Paul, Dante and Jacob Boehme were all in the region of thirty-five years of age at the point of their greatest insights. It would seem then, that if there is an inspirational influence at work in the life, it would possibly reach its peak during these years around the age of thirty-five.

Here we take stock of ourselves and the emotional influences that have shaped our personality. We begin to determine what is ‘us’ and what traits we have been pressured by family, peers or society to adopt. It is also a time in which we begin to ask ourselves the big questions of who and what we are, that is if we have not done so beforehand. Who or what are you?

If you have never wondered about this it might be worth trying to because as I mentioned elsewhere, if you haven’t given time to learning how to improve the quality of your life – not the quality of your house or work – it is worth investing some of your efforts in doing so, because later years may present you with what you have not dealt with inside you.

A first step in this direction is to recognise that your personality did not arise out of your own efforts. Then you offer yourself to be acted upon by whatever underlies your existence. And this offering means some measure of becoming empty, of becoming receptive or surrendered to an action other than that of your own thoughts, your own emotions, anxieties and habits.

A technique that is ages old is to sit daily and ask that question for at least twenty minutes – Who am I, or what am I? That is the total practice, but its simplicity hides a great deal of hidden value. Although it may sound very cerebral – that one sits and responds to a question – in fact the thinking mind is transcended and you come to realise that you are the answer, not your thoughts or emotions, not what your work is or your dreams are – but you.

A person using this practice described it to me as follows:

I had been posing the question for days, ‘Who are you?’ Suddenly I realised that it was a silly question, because I was the answer. All thought then stopped and I existed as the answer. My being had always been this. In this state there was an awareness of being connected with everything around me, in the beginning of creation. This was the first day.

You need to be clear that you already are this Self, but perhaps you haven’t realised it. If you are it, why haven’t you realised it?

The answer is that the noise of your thinking, your desires, your concepts of yourself and the world are like loud music covering up the simple melody that constantly plays as yourself. Your awareness of existing has been lost in an enormous mass of language and feelings about who you are, what you are, what the world and life are, and these you take to be real. As explained at the beginning, these are only attempts at copying reality.

What is meant by that is that virtually everybody believes their thoughts and ideas are reality. But our thoughts are all word and concept based, and words are sounds or images attached to what is experienced and are like photocopies of reality. Reality doesn’t have words or thoughts, it just is, and the real you is exactly the same. When you think of a friend or loved one, your thoughts and feelings about them are simply that – your thoughts and feelings.

As T S Eliot wrote, in The Four Quartets:

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

This is mentioned because you are about to enter your greatest period of creative realisation. Make use of it. Even practising the waiting as Eliot described would be excellent. I imagined waiting for a friend without expectations, feeling that when they arrived I would feel a tap on my shoulder. It worked.

The Sixth Cycle: 35-42 years

From the thirty-fifth to the forty-second year, depending upon one’s personality and what one’s circumstances allow, one begins to feel a new restlessness. In some degree a desire to share whatever one has gained through life with others comes to the surface. Thus we find many successful business men building libraries, or aiding colleges and the arts at this period in their life. What has been developed or realised can be taken to greater subtlety during this period. This is almost like unfolding something, perhaps similar to the way a flower unfolds a bud that has been developing in earlier phases of its growth.

Every Seven Years (7) You Change | Body & Mind | dreamhawk.com