The Five Stages of the Soul by Harry R. Moody

Author:Harry R. Moody [Moody, Harry R.]
Language: spa
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Confronting the Death of Our Dreams

At some stage in our busy existence we must define the things that are fundamental to our lives and prune the rest. "Let us cultivate our garden," Voltaire wrote. If we are to be filled with a Higher Spirit, whatever name we give this Spirit, the first thing we must do is become empty enough to receive it.

One day a scholar visited a spiritual teacher and announced that he had come to attain knowledge.

The teacher said nothing but poured the scholar tea. The scholar waited for some words of wisdom; the teacher continued to pour.

Finally the tea filled the cup, then overflowed the brim and spilled all over the floor.

"What are you doing?" the scholar shrieked.

"You are like this cup of tea," the teacher replied. "Filled up, overflowing with your own opinions and plans and desires. Until you empty your cup completely there is no way I can fill it with the knowledge you request."

The middle years of life, we know from many sociological studies, are a time in which people typically begin to realize that their youthful plans and ambitions will never be fulfilled. In The Seasons of a Man's Life, Daniel Levinson talks a great deal about the dreams we fashion when we are young. "In its primordial form," Levinson writes, "the Dream is a vague sense of self-in-adult-world. It has the quality of a vision, an imagined possibility that generates excitement and vitality. . . . It may take a dramatic form as in the myth of the hero: the great artist, business tycoon, athletic or intellectual superstar."

In a subsequent work, Levinson turned his attention to midlife women respondents, where he discovered many parallels with his male subjects.

One major female subgroup, the Homemakers, as Levinson dubbed them in his study, had opted to bypass a career and "keep house." Now at age forty to forty-five this group found themselves facing a major life crisis. In their early married years the homemakers had made a conscious decision to devote themselves to the role of mother, wife, and keeper of the household. In return they expected a due measure of familial love, financial security, and the self-satisfaction that comes from domestic devotion.

Over and over again, Levinson discovered, women from the Homemaker category felt cheated and deprived. Many spoke of sacrificing their youth for an unreal dream. Others complained that they had done their duty but were never granted the promised rewards. The typical Homemaker respondent, according to Levinson, "felt totally trapped. Her marriage was almost intolerable, yet divorce seemed worse—she had no place to go and no adequate way to take care of herself financially and socially."

Levinson's findings are not surprising, considering the limitations that homemaking forces on today's career-oriented women. Strangely enough, however, women in the workplace who were surveyed fared no better in terms of fulfillment. Many complained of bumping up against a "glass ceiling," the invisible and unspoken corporate promotion barrier. But

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.