About the Class
Just as we have evolved physically, we have also evolved psychologically. As we mature, we retrace the developmental paths forged by our ancestors.
With his stages of Cognitive Development, Jean Piaget was amongst the first to identify and document the maturity model as it unfolds from age zero to adolescence. Similarly, Erik Erickson proposed a further eight stages of psychosocial development encountered in our adult life.
More recently, Clare Graves and Don Beck defined a set of development stages that relate to our worldview – this they called Spiral Dynamics. From ‘magical thinking’ through to ‘might is right', lawful and noble ways of being through to more enlightened states, the history of consciousness also displays clear paths of progression.
Late in his life, the Swiss psychologist, Carl Gustave Jung observed that our overriding cultural ethos would also undergo a periodic transformation, adding that we are now living in such a period. Jung suggested that we are now moving from the Piscean Age into the Age of Aquarius. This, he felt, would be a tumultuous period.
A mood of universal destruction and renewal has set its mark on our age. This mood makes itself felt everywhere, politically, socially, and philosophically. We are living in what the Greeks called the Kairos- the right moment for a “metamorphosis of the gods,” of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious human within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science… So much is at stake and so much depends on the psychological constitution of the modern human.” ~ C. G. Jung
The various stages of Spiral Dynamics align with the various astrological aeons. As our consciousness matures, we pass through these ages, in the same well-defined order as prescribed by Spiral Dynamics as well as the precession of the equinoxes.
We stand at the dawn of a new era. Collectively, we are in the process of developing a new myth, that is, a new reason for being.
