The Stages

Infancy

Intuitive-Projective, 2 -6, 7 years old

Mythic-Literal, school age

Conventional, puberty/adulthood

Reflective, adulthood (greater maturity)

Conjunctive, adults whose spiritual path is their priority

Universalizing, adult who gives their life

Before two years of age

Positive: trust and mutuality

Limitation: Lack of sufficient childhood nurturing

Ages 2 -6 or 7

Positive: Birth of imagination and understanding the world through images

Limitation: Lack of sufficient input from parents and others to help the child sort out fantasy from reality. Adults exploiting the child—God will get you! The devil will get you!

School age

Positive: Child begins to integrate beliefs and behaviors. Stories and myths help give meaning to experience.

Limitation: Taking everything literally, trying to be perfect, feeling like a bad person if neglected or mistreated.

Puberty/Adulthood

Positive: a knowing of who I am and what I want to do with my life. Faith is usually integrated if the person is to continue growing.

Limitation: May be too sure of one’s beliefs, too much in conformity with one’s religious culture, one’s faith may fail in difficult times.

College age/Adulthood

Positive: Capacity for critical reflection with minimal or no guilt

Limitation: Excessive confidence in the conscious mind and critical thought, loss of the mystical, the mythical, the surprise of the transcendent

Adults who have made their faith a priority

Positive: The rise of the ironic] imagination, ability to hold paradox [characterized by often poignant difference or incongruity between what is expected and what actually is]

Limitation: A lethargy due to no clear statement of truth, old understandings are insufficient to energize, new understandings have not yet arisen.

The called, the saint, the prophet

Positive: The person becomes "love and justice" to the world.

Mother Theresa

Billy Graham

Delai Lama

Abraham Heshel

Rumi

Buddha

Martin Luther King

Limitation: Physical