The foundation of all things human. Early attachment bonding experience dictates the nature of the trust and security relationship between unconditionally loving, warmly attuned and resonant parents or caregivers and the child. Lacunae in early attachment bonding experience, which are unfortunately all too common, create individuals who react to hurts and unwanted experiences with a survival orientation, and who are not aligned with feelings of inner security, serenity, and the reality of what is actually happening. Such individuals, who are most of us, are arrested at a point in their maturation. This “stuckness” compromises lifelong learning.
Published in Chapter:
The Self-Cultivation Model of Lifelong Learning: Toward Post-Egoic Development
Avraham Cohen (City University of Seattle – Vancouver, Canada), Heesoon Bai (Simon Fraser University, Canada), and Karen Fiorini (Simon Fraser University, Canada)
Copyright: © 2014
|Pages: 19
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-6260-5.ch018
Abstract
This chapter takes the prevailing anti-aging sentiment and cultural practice as the starting point of a critical analysis and shows that the modernist worldview of materialistic individualism is at their foundation. Exposing and critiquing the limiting deficit understanding of human aging and human development in this worldview, the authors propose a developmental model that moves beyond materialistic individualism and egoic development and sees human beings becoming progressively integrated into larger and larger circles of being that include not only human others but also non-human others such as Nature and Cosmos. This wider and holistic vision of human development is influenced by classical Asian philosophies that posit post-egoic notions of human being. Using biographical materials to identify the themes relevant to post-egoic development, the authors sketch a model of lifelong learning and growth with what they see as essential elements of such growth: secure bonding and connection, nurturance and nourishing, spirituality, self-cultivation and inner work, community development, virtue cultivation, healing, meditation, and contemplative practices.