Knowledge and the Three Stages of Life

The New Message talks about three overall stages of life, overlapping stages: stage of dependency, independence and interdependence. And within each of these stages, they color your approach to relationships with yourself, with others, even with the world.

Now we all start out in a state of dependence, most certainly—complete dependence as an infant. But even when we reach about two years old, there starts to be a thrust of will. They call it the “terrible twos”—parents call it the terrible twos—a thrust towards independence, but not a very big thrust. And after that, I guess children begin to acquiesce to dependence because it gives them structure and safety and security, and…Ah, here it is. Thank you.

But there’s no guarantee that someone will go through all three of these stages in life. In fact, it’s probably pretty rare in the way that the New Message talks about this. And this has a lot to do with why relationships with people don’t work, why they’re bound to fail. It has a lot to do with where you are in this natural evolution within you because if there was nothing infringing upon you or conditioning you, in an ideal sense, you would go through a stage of dependence, independence, and finally reaching a state of interdependence as part of your natural evolution. But because this rarely happens, certainly there’s many forces that are interfering in this process to hold you back or to reshape you, to keep you within the bounds of family and culture and religion, or to dissuade you by other things, taking you off course.

But living in the world is a very unnatural thing for us, given who we really are. It’s a foreign experience, given who we really are. And so we have to go through these stages.

And I’d like to talk about these three stages—because this is a very big subject and I can’t cover it all in one evening—to talk about how this affects your relationship with Knowledge. In a state of dependence, you look for Knowledge, if you’re even willing to look at Knowledge, as an ultimate form of welfare—spiritual welfare. Wow, you don’t have to do much. Just be in the moment and wait for guidance. And Knowledge will just walk you through life and spare you from all of its great hazards and tribulations, teaching you wonderful things along the way.

So when you’re in a state of dependence, you look at Knowledge as a force to take over your life. This is very common in religion, that you give your life to God and God will just manage your life and you won’t have to worry about very much, as long as you hold to the creed and do what you’re told to do.

From a dependent state, Knowledge will remain silent. Though you may entertain yourself with beatific phrases and long writings of splendor, Knowledge will remain silent because you’re not ready to take responsibility for yourself, or to own your part of that responsibility, which is the management of your mind and your life. Big task.

But it’s not Knowledge’s task to run your daily affairs or to organize your thoughts or to give you direction in all decisions that you face—only the bigger things that really matter. So there’s no way that you can sit back and let Knowledge just guide you in all things because it won’t do it, because you’re abdicating your part of the responsibility coming from a place of dependence. You want to be dependent. You do not want to have to take on the mantle of responsibility; make difficult decisions; face your errors; deal with a world that’s chaotic, unpredictable and disharmonious.

So at some point, you begin to exert a will or desire for independence, which is an intermediate stage in the overall picture. And in the state of independence, if you’re willing to even consider that Knowledge is a reality, you want it to definitely be an asset to support your plans and goals and aspirations, and to be a confirming force for the decisions that seem to give you what you think you want.

So here, Knowledge is kind of like a servant, an errand boy, who’s going to do favors for you and help you get what you want. In an environment like this, because it’s so fraught with dishonesty, Knowledge has to wait. Only if you’re about to do something extremely reckless, give your life away to someone or something that’s inappropriate, or enter a hazardous situation, might there be an intervention to strongly discourage you or warn you.

But because you’re willing to take responsibility for at least part of life that is your responsibility, Knowledge has a greater opportunity, now, to engage with you that really wasn’t there before. Knowledge is not going to guide you if you insist on being a child, beyond being a child, because you won’t do your part. You won’t follow the prescriptions that are given to you. You won’t exert discipline. You won’t face difficulty. You will retreat and withdraw further and further into yourself. And this is where religion becomes delusional, harmful and destructive.

But in your natural development, as you enter the stage and pass through the stage of independence, exerting your will, making your decisions, facing the consequences. You begin to find that you’re really not very good at leading your life. Beyond maintaining yourself at a fundamental level regarding your bigger decisions, you have a very poor track record. And you begin to realize that you need a greater power to assist you, and that you’re willing to assist it.

But the struggle to become independent from dependence—very big. There are whole cultures and societies and religions that seek to keep you in a dependent and subservient state; to adopt its lines of thinking, belief, admonition and values, which are artificial and probably have nothing to do with who you are. And most people will conform to that with a lot of grievance and resentment because whoever stays in a state of dependence, for example, will begin to resent those who govern them, even if they’re given security and stability. They’ll resent their providers because they’ve paid a terrible price for maintaining that position. They’ve lost authority and direction. They’ve lost self-trust, self-confidence. They feel weak, helpless, victimized.

So getting into a state of independence where you begin to think your own thoughts, make your own decisions, even if you run counter to your family, your culture, your society and your religion, and all the values therein, it’s really quite an achievement.

But it’s not the final stage because in the final stage you know that you can do very little in this world alone. You only have certain strengths, certain capacity, certain opportunities and certain adversities. And you’re very limited alone. And that can lead to a real opening, not to give yourself away, not to go back into dependence, but to bring your strength in alignment with a greater strength.

And here, Knowledge becomes, or has the potential to become, a relationship. And a relationship is based on what you can do together—what you do for Knowledge, what it does for you—not as a bargaining thing, not as a contract, but as an inherent understanding.

And you will be the captain of your ship, but you will allow Knowledge to be the keeper of the mission. And the mission determines what the ship is for, what it’s equipped to do, where it must sail and whom it must need. And as a captain of the ship alone, you don’t know what the mission is unless you’re the master and commander of the ship.

Knowledge will reveal to you stage by stage, step by step, what you must do next. For you to understand the mission, you would have to be very far down the road, very mature regarding yourself: strong, self-aware, courageous; able to take charge and able to yield, depending on the situation; able to rise, able to withdraw, able to claim, able to release; become a responsible person.

So it’s reaching the state of interdependence that is the ultimate achievement, but you have to pass through these stages. And, you know, you always have an element of dependence in you. You always have an element of will, independence. You’ll struggle between what you want and what you know. But when you find out that Knowledge is not some foreign agent that’s been placed within you to determine your life, but is, in fact, the Intelligence that represents who you really are, until that can be really felt and experienced, there’s a competition for power. Who’s in charge of my life?

You may love the blessing, but you may resist the responsibility.

So I say these things so you might see yourself within this panorama. How much within you still wants to give in and live without the mantle of responsibility for your life? How much of you wants to determine your life and kind of use God as a resource for that purpose? Because these are the errors of conflict, restraint and resistance of things that hold you back—fear preference. Preference is all fear anyway. It’s all the fear of not having—all these things that compete.

So the other day in the Chat in the Free School, I gave a recommendation for an exercise to look at all the things that you’re holding on to whether they be relationships, possessions, where you live, who you want to be, your investments in what you’re trying to be—all the things that you hold on to and will even defend, if threatened—and then consider how much Knowledge has to work around all of these obstacles within you. You’re not simple enough yet to be free from this kind of incessant conflict internally.

So with our many Steps to Knowledge, there are important thresholds where you choose again. Will you go forward with the invisible light or will you withdraw to defend or protect something that you either have or that you’re sure that you want? In this, Steps to Knowledge, and in fact, the New Message, lay out the landscape for you very clearly, internally and, to some degree, externally.

It says an interesting thing about rebels. It said a rebel may rebel against his or her family, or even his or her culture, but then they join a group that they completely align themselves with and become fully dependent upon. So rebels don’t really represent the kind of independence and interdependence that we’re talking about here. They’re just reacting against, but not breaking free from. They’re not yet free to move through society and culture as a free thinking free agent. They’re not independent.

And somehow you cannot jump from dependence to interdependence. It does not work. And Knowledge will give you time, even years, to experience independence sufficiently so that you can become able to respond and response-able enough that your relationship with Knowledge can begin to come into being to such a point that you rely upon Knowledge to do what it’s here to do, and it relies upon you to do what you came to do, which is all the same in the end.

That’s my thought for tonight.