The Spiritual Art
of Maturity
Cheryl Sanders
Every human being goes through an experience that is comparable
to Parzival in the story by Wolfram von Eschenbauch, Parzival. In this grail story, there are many levels from which one can
hear the tale that is being told. There
is the adventure of a medieval knight seeking the holy grail, there is the
esoteric story of the spiritual evolution of consciousness and the soul’s
awakening in the world, and there is the coming of age story of a young man
protected from the world until the moment he chooses to step into it to seek
his destiny, beyond the confines of his protective home. In every version, there is evidence of
the progress of the psyche from innocence to maturity. The ever-awakening into a new realm of
maturity is the guiding/guardian angel drawing Parzival toward his future,
and keeping him on the path of his true destiny, even when his desire and
passions would compel him into whole other tantalizing directions.
In our time we view maturity as something we either are or
never want to be, because of certain connotations associated with what it
means to be “mature”. There
is not much about “maturity” that seems appealing, and in fact,
it is mostly considered what must be present to be responsible, but does not
involve anything enjoyable. Once
we thought of being mature as something begun after adolescence, and refined
over a lifetime of success and failure, experience and ever deepening feeling
and thought. Then, as we entered
the age just previous to “retiring”, we were looked upon as “mature”
moving toward wisdom. This notion seems to be degenerating into a more derogatory
criticism of maturity as “old”, “aged”, “senile”
or “burdensome in no longer being useful, and in fact, becoming a nuisance”.
While such characterizations may portray a lack of sensitivity, our culture
represents older age in these kind of terms. The worst possible evolution of these attitudes is not in that
the young may carry them, but that they may be carried by the ‘mature’
themselves.
But back to Parzival.
When this young man steps onto the stage of the world, he is so totally
innocent he does not even know his own name. We think what a nightmare this must be, but if we look
closely at the image, we see there the true nature of our own becoming someone
in the world. How many of us ever
know our true name in the sense that we “know ourselves” in and of
our own true soul and spirit? This is more than a sophomoric reference to
philosophy; it is the very essence of coming to maturity with the determination
of Parzival, who in every moment was willing to risk his entire life for the lesson
of that moment that would awaken the inner knowledge of his being. Parzival set out to discover who he
was, and found he was the King of the Grail castle that watches over the
spiritual tasks of all mankind. He
was helped enormously by the keepers of the Grail community, but he never knew
this, and had to learn through agonizing trial and error how to stay true to
his family, his community, his own heart and the human realm that is echoed in
the spiritual world. He had to
learn to ask the questions that would keep him on the right path that would
heal the Grail King that he was to replace, and thereby heal the Grail
community, that they might remain in service to the whole of the physical and
spiritual world. So, too, do we
have to learn to ask the right questions to learn our true name and to keep us
on the path of our true destiny?
The human task of coming to “maturity” is not about
aging. (Parzival was less than 20
when he attained the Grail and fulfilled his destiny calling.) One could view the Parzival story as
the story of a life that became a work of art. We may not become the feature character in a novel for the
illumination of humanity centuries after our time, but we do have the capacity
to make of life a work of art.
First, we must begin to understand maturity as becoming ever more whole
in and through our very being. It
is about learning to ask the right question, and hearing the gesture in the
question that is the physical and spiritual gesture contained therein.
The questions in Parzival are simple, yet contain the
consciousness of being poised on the threshold between me and you, all and
none, life and death.
The questions are:
1. What Ails
Thee?
To ask this question in our time we must
open the heart as an organ of perception – we begin by going through
the world to know the inner heart of the other. This requires that we develop the capacity to recognize and
enter into the field between;
the field that holds the third; the capacity for compassion; the sense of
hearing the other/not ourselves in the other.
It is the mature response that recognizes that I do not ask out of
curiosity or revulsion, but out of true heart forces that empathically know
your pain is also mine, is also the pain of every human suffering that has
been or will be forevermore. It
is the maturing of consciousness into the capacity of empathy.
To ask this question in our time, besides
opening the heart as an organ of perception, we must develop with the open
heart the awakened perceptions of living qualities of time.
For example, the true sense of time coming from the future that reveals
destiny through memory of the future; not as in prediction and control, but
rather through the sense of that which comes toward us, drawing us to it,
as much as everything that we have been given from the past.
Remembering the future makes it possible for us to step into and stay
in the field, so that compassion turns to empathy, and the sense of the living
quality in the speech of the other becomes perceptible. In other words, what lives in their words
that wants to be heard? This
is more than simply understanding what the other says, it also understands
what wants to be said that is inexpressible.
It is that part of maturity that knows I do not help you as a way to
help myself feel better or stronger, in control or incapable of being touched
by your pain. It is the maturity
that comes with unconditional giving, that only is possible through the mature
heart of true perception. It
is the maturing of soul into the capacity to hold, and, ultimately to heal.
This becomes the question of ‘Service’. Not service that has become a commodity
to be bought and sold, but service as a sacred act that has as its goal the
uniting of soul and spirit, the living and the dead, the conscious soul with
the invisible angelic realm. It
is service for the sake of the whole world, just as the Grail community was
for the sake of all the earthly and heavenly kingdoms. Whom does the Grail serve asks us to recognize service as sacred.
Service as that which is defined within us through relationships with
others, our destiny and the destiny of those we encounter daily.
It is the maturing of joy into the capacity to bless.
Maturity then, becomes not just something
that happens by chance to greater or lesser degrees, depending on ones
circumstances; maturity becomes a sacred art that can be recognized and
refined. Any art form that is
within our conceptual grasp is by its nature also mysterious and filled with
esoteric implications for the future of itself and humanity. Why not our own lives, which are
ultimately the model of every art we have yet held up as the resonance of the
sacred spiritual realms. We are
called now to present something more of our lives than the results of our outer
works. We are called to the Grail
community to bind the sacred with the profane, the eternal with the temporal,
and the purely innocent life with the crafted and refined maturity of the
awakened heart. Such is our work,
whether we be 20something or 90, if we can but awaken to its call.
Parzival begins as a fool and comes to
the point of being a conscious fool. He moves from innocence to wisdom, the
path of maturity. The wisdom he comes to is not just the wisdom that we gain as
we age, but is actually the wisdom we are given the opportunity to learn,
observe, understand and receive from those who precede us in age. Elder wisdom is passed on to those on
the verge of becoming elders if we are able to stand in an attitude of
receptivity.
Watching the world not being able to
receive the wisdom of those who precede us…we are still, even in our
30’s and 40’s believing we are immortal. We are seduced into believing we can “preserve”
our youth like we do fruits and vegetables. But ‘elder wisdom’ is not wisdom of the aged; it
is wisdom that is coming toward us from the future. It is the wisdom to be present to all the awakenings that
are offered and available; the visible and the invisible; the thinking, words
and very individuality of the other.
Elder wisdom is the awakened higher senses in service to the stream of
time from the future.
Some of the most awakened individuals are
not necessarily chronologically older.
Those who follow the life of inner development over time
can develop elder wisdom; but certain experiences are necessary to awaken
consciousness toward comprehensive human experience. Elder wisdom now, in our time, is more crucially needed, and
more universally ignored, than at any other time in recorded history.