From a young age I've been obsessed with learning. I think of life as a school where we are all students and teachers. I like this metaphor and for the most part it works well for me but I think there can be some potential pitfalls associated with ceaseless personal development, including:
-never feeling good enough
-always looking for the next book/course/seminar
-having a lot of knowledge but little wisdom
Our minds are restless, never satisfied, and if our learning comes from the place of feeling inadequate or insecure then it will never be truly fulfilling. Conceptualising our growth as though we are buildings which we are always adding floors to is very different to the growth of a seed which contains all its potential within. One is incomplete, the other as whole at every stage even as it is becoming more.
No-one looks at a baby and says:
"Look how undeveloped that child is, how poor its language and motor skills are! It's useless! It would be a lot better if it could walk and talk.
Yeah, I'd like it a lot more then."
And yet how often do we apply these judgments to ourselves, our abilities and each other?
Do the words "personal development" imply that we are trying to be better than we are? And if so does that mean we are not good enough?
I would suggest that the idea of personal development comes from the egoic mind, and self-realisation is a higher ideal. For me it is like the difference between instruction and 'education' which comes from the Latin educare, "to bring out that which is within." And yes, by that definition I would say that most of what we call education is in fact instruction.
It is interesting that the words 'personal' & 'personality' derive from the Latin word 'persona' which means 'mask'. This would suggest that personal development means mask development...and I did not expect to end up there when I started writing this.
What lies beneath the mask?
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