Have you ever been to a workshop, had an amazing and inspiring time, knew that your life was forever changed for the better, and then within a few weeks of the experience, you were experiencing the same old habits patterns and felt dejected?

At some point we all have.

As people interested in personal development, we attend trainings and workshops, we read books, and we seek guidance. In this process, we gain access to tools, insights, and models of excellence in communication and in being. However, regardless of their promise, these do not always make the lasting and pervasive impact on our behavior that we expect them to.

Why not?

This is the result of confusing peak–and often profound–states with stages of development.

As we move through those stages [most often--unconsciously] we experience this differently. From unconscious to conscious to super-conscious. From pre-rational, to rational, to trans-rational. From shallow to deep to deeply reflective and inspiring. From instinct to intellect to intuition. From body to mind to soul with each level transcending and including the former. From ego-centric to ethno- or natio-centric to world-centric. From selfish to care to universal care with each successive stage giving us more emotional freedom and a greater sense and sensibility of responsibility in the world.

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Jennifer went to a weekend workshop. While there, she was exposed to “what ‘the best’ do the achieve emotional mastery”. While there she experienced consistent access to peak positive emotional states, had more choice than she had ever experienced, and left certain that her life would never be the same.

And she was right—but not in the way she thought.

After about two weeks, she found her life settling back in to the same emotional rut as before the workshop. Daily events bothered her easily. She was testy and snapped at people. She found that all of the “mastery” she’d thought she had evaporated. She started to get upset about that and began to judge herself She decided the workshop “didn’t work”.

Michael went to a weekend experience. There he learned that he was making people wrong to make himself right and that he had little choice around who he was being in the moment. This led to him take responsibility for many of the challenges in his relating with others and patch many of them up. He transformed his relationship with his parents, a sibling, and his ex-wife. It was truly an amazing experience. It was mere weeks, though, before he was back to the same old blame-righteousness dynamic as before—isolating others and himself in the process. At first, Michael was confused, but then realizing that he needed to integrate the insights he had been exposed to, he hired a coach and began the challenging work of building the muscle of responsibility and giving others freedom to expand into the space created by this choice.

Samantha had long been up to the game of evolving how she related to the events in her life and how she related to herself—evolving her ego and her emotional responses. She enjoyed attending events where different speakers offered various insights and tools. At the same time, she knew there was no substitute for building the muscle of emotional choice and ultimately—freedom. This requires contemplation, meditation, and practice while exercising the facility of witnessing her self. No one can give her this. No single event can provide it. She knew that here very Self was an organic and emergent process. Just this knowledge alone gave her tremendous freedom emotionally.

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And emotional freedom is really what it is all about, isn’t it? To be happy in the face of great challenges. To transcend guilt, fear, anger, jealousy…

That is not to say that peak states—be they from an event, an intentional medicinal rutual, a powerful meditation, or sitting with a spiritual teacher are not to be valued. In fact they are to be cherished. However, they are not to be yearned for or identified with. They are to be used to inform us as to what is possible. And as I have written before, the game of evolution is about integrating the insights we have been exposed to. So that states become permanent traits. It is important, however, that we not confuse the two, as it is our stage of development that will inform what responses we behaviorally demonstrate in the world. And this–our behavioral responses–is far more important than any insight or peak experience we have had.

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