Most of us will be familiar with the stages of human development: even if we haven’t had children of our own to experience it on an on-going basis. Uncle and friend-of parent duties will, almost certainly, have exposed us to the terrible twos and to teenage tantrums. Not that every child displays challenging behaviour as they go through these phases. Apparently I didn’t particularly. Why? Maybe I’m an old soul who’s been through it all before, or maybe I was so scared of my mum I didn’t dare! (Don’t worry, whatever happened then, my mum and I have a very good relationship now).

As I understand it, the terrible twos are when a child realises that it’s a separate being from its mum. That does sound like a major challenge to work through, so I suppose we can forgive some tantrums! Likewise the desire to be your own (young) adult self as the teenage years progress. With so many pressures on everyone these days, particularly susceptible youngsters, again, it’s not surprising that tempers flare and angst is high on the agenda.

What I’m wondering is how conscious evolution might impact on this growing up process?

For an adult, the conscious evolution process is about immersing ourselves in the Cosmic Consciousness and, in so doing, becoming more whole and engaged in the world as our true self. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger called in Being in the World, Chinese philosophy might call it living the Tao Way. Either way, as we become more conscious, we recognise the many ways our conditioning may have been keeping us separate from the cosmic flow. Indeed it has become ever more obvious to me that so many of the conventional ways of modern society serve to detach us from the very life-force and meaning of life that would otherwise give life meaning!

Thus, my conscious evolution journey is helping me to become more tuned-in to life so that I know when it’s appropriate to put myself first and when to put others.

It occurs to me that such knowing would be really helpful to toddlers and teenagers. How much easier to seek a balance between self, parents and family when you have an underlying connection into the Cosmic Consciousness which is even more powerful, wise and reassuring than the relationships with guardians that you’d like to loosen . . . and evolve out of.

The question raises many other points, not least how the conscious evolution process might differ for those not yet in adulthood? As far as teenagers are concerned (and I’ve met some pretty evolved ones), I suspect that the lack of life-experiences is probably an advantage: rather than ‘normal’ life having squeezed out last vestiges’ of intuition and higher awareness, they are more likely to still possess some awareness of the natural cosmic consciousness inherent in a new-born babe. Similarly, any transcendent experiences (a feeling of being ‘at one’ with the universe) may be recent and even on-going.

For a toddler, not yet exposed to the objectivism of a typical education system or the rationalism of science, being in the flow is probably still a natural thing. So wouldn’t this be the best time to help and enable an individual to become a fully conscious adult? Such ideas are not new: Steiner and Montessori schools, for example, emphasise the development of the whole child through working with nature & creativity, for example. With children encouraged to play and discover in their own way and time, so they learn to be their natural selves: rather than unlearning how not to be, which can happen in conventional education.

In my own case, I was encouraged to help my dad with his extensive gardening and DIY, for example. My primary school (in its thatched premises) had many lessons raising our awareness of the wonders of nature (such as growing our own beans or peas) and regular music sessions. Add to that regular outings to National Trust (historic) properties and sand-castle building (this at age 11 on a North Wales beach) and perhaps my current comfort with cosmic, evolutionary, consciousness makes sense! Secondary education brought it all to a crashing halt but until then, maybe I was already on the right path . ..