The Transcendental: The Church Project

Emotional Maturity

March 9, 2024

Let's talk about emotional maturity from a spiritual lens. 'Cause I find that when people talk about emotional maturity, they would either put it in the perspective of 'being the bigger person' or 'not being emotional' and I suppose the word 'emotional' is used as an umbrella term for being predisposed to feeling a range of emotions that a lot of people find difficult being exposed to and because they tend to fall on the not-sunny side or spectrum. I don't like other people's concept of being the bigger person because sometimes, things get interpreted a certain way and it drops somewhere beside the point and you kind of just go: You don't get it. People think being the bigger person means you allow yourself to be a doormat or just be on the receiving end of something not good and be just passive. To be the 'bigger person' which actually to me is being 'the bigger perspective person', you have to pair your assessment of the situation with a decision. In the case of a situation that's not good or doesn't serve your good, being the bigger perspective person requires not just going: This isn't good for me. but also leaving the situation 'cause if you were to stay, then the assessment becomes for nothing. Another example would be when faced with a situation where the assessment is it's not healthy to match energy as in with revenge, for you to be the bigger perspective person, then you have to disengage or in spirituality terms, 'cut the cord', the cord being what binds your energy with the other person's energy.

Being a bigger perspective person they say makes you smart, but I don't think it's got a lot to do with being smart but more to do with gaining clarity about an experience. 'Cause when people link being smart with being the bigger person, what I see is people think that matching energy is 'stooping down somebody's level' which is just a nicer way really to say 'being equally stupid'. But from a spiritual lens, being the bigger person is a result, I think, of the person choosing peace and harmony over conflict and chaos amidst a bad situation and finding out that that choice reveals or carries with it the solution to the problem. And the more he finds this to be the thing, the more he rises up from a bad situation to a state of peace and harmony, the more he becomes a bigger perspective person or a person with emotional maturity.

It's actually just dealing with opposites, and here, the axis is between peace and harmony and conflict and chaos. When you have a bad situation, then it's conflict and chaos, and where you find the solution or what you gotta do is on the opposite side or seeking peace and harmony. And with finding the solution and doing what needs to be done, you get an emotionally mature person. So, I'd say an emotionally mature person is a skilled navigator of the waters of emotion not because he is smart but because he seeks peace and harmony when faced with conflict and chaos. He is solutions-oriented. He has the ability to see things from a broad perspective. And it's come from experience.

'Cause a lot of mastery is about experience. What makes somebody a master of something is his experiences. And in the case of emotional maturity, well, this person has had a lot of emotional experiences. And he didn't come out the other end less mature than when he started, he actually had emotional growth. This is like a wise judge people go to to settle things because where people can't see how to resolve a conflict, he has a broader perspective and that's what makes him able to see the solution. Where people see half and half, he sees the whole. He appears non-emotional and even cold but that's because he's not caught in the conflict or chaos or the drama of it. 'Cause you could only get caught in conflict when you have yet to find the solution.

It's not that he's tired of conflict but there's no conflict, he's not caught in conflict. But when this person finds himself in a situation, of course he would experience conflict, it's just that he won't be staying there because he has developed the emotional maturity to navigate situations like that. Emotionally mature people don't like participating in conflict. That doesn't mean you won't find them where there's conflict but instead of participating, he would be navigating his way out of that. Again, solutions-oriented. And he knows that the solution can't be found in participation but getting out of it to a state of peace and harmony.