Stages of life are part of the journey of the soul on planet earth, whether we realize it or not. Our lives move in seven-year cycles whereby we shift to a new focus, new priorities and new areas of living every seven years.
Understanding these stages of life more deeply gives us additional spiritual reinforcement for our journey. With this deeper understanding, we become more patient with people, we ride the waves of living much better and we can appreciate those times of life vigorously.
When we align with our soul nature and these stages of life, living is easier. We satisfy our deeper desires and feel at peace with ourselves. We create a positive and rewarding life for ourselves and others.
Seven-Year Stages of Life
Have you felt shifts in your life at certain times? Sometimes, people are moving along in life and everything appears fine on the surface, but changes are taking place within, maybe even unnoticed by those around them.
The people undergoing these shifts may not even be fully conscious of these transitions themselves. However, the winds of change are blowing inside. Priorities are shuffled. Deeper questions are quietly being asked.
Sharpening Inner Awareness
The more individuals can make the unconscious conscious and be truly honest with themselves, the more rewarding these life shifts will be. With increased awareness, life tends to flow more easily through each stage of life. We make adjustments as needed.
Being loyal to ourselves is a key as we maneuver through society and experience these stages or cycles of life.
As William Shakespeare has said,“To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”
Tapping into Higher Resources
When changes are needed, know that you are not alone in your journey, your searching, your questions, and with the challenges you face. The latter provides an opportunity to learn and grow. These challenges can be smooth or difficult, depending on how much we tune into our inner being and resources.
You can tap into an inner wisdom that goes beyond the outside information and advice. This inner wisdom can be called inner guidance, angels, guides, God, or other higher sources. When your connection to it is clear, you have a better sense of the source of this wisdom yourself.
Higher Sources Help Those Who Help Themselves
You need to be willing to do your part to pursue your dreams and interests. Your inner guidance or angels wouldn’t do it all for you. If they did, you would not learn or appreciate your lessons and experiences. Like seven-year cycles, our experiences take place so we can evolve to be the souls we are.
When we take time to regroup each stage of life clearly, the journey can be even more rewarding. We acquire wisdom from our lessons at each life stage and can apply them to the present.
When you understand your seven-year cycles more deeply, you can harness the waves of energy behind these stages of life and make the most of them.
Knowing these life cycles also helps lighten the sometimes rougher times, such as providing moral support to those experiencing angst during teenage years or an unsettling mid-life crisis. These are two examples of ways people can apply their understanding of these life cycles and tune into their inner resources.
First Stage of Life: Our Personality Cycle
The most important stage of life is the first seven years. As the Jesuits say: “Show me the boy before the age of seven and I will show you the man.”
Our personality is greatly influenced in these years. This is a time we soak up so much from our environment, and much of that absorption of thinking and emotions will either work for us, or against us later in life. We can call them positive guiding principles or they can be “blocks” or limiting concepts.
We often wind up with a mixed bag of pluses and minuses. Then, as we progress through life, relationships, jobs and varied experiences, we are sorting them out. What makes this life process easier is building on the positive and learning to identify and heal any limiting concepts.
A Life Process
As we clarify our own beliefs instead of another’s concepts or attitudes we picked up along the way, we can tune into our deeper wisdom. This clarification is what helps us learn the lessons we are here on Planet Earth to master.
Our inner strengths help us stay on our life path and get the most from the journey. These same strengths and qualities help us through the challenges and to avoid many of the pitfalls.
On the other hand, if we lack understanding about our limiting concepts, they can continue to show up in our lives until we clarify and free ourselves from those thoughts and habits. Self-defeating thinking and blocks rob us of the true joy and deeper fulfillment that we are here to experience.
We can overcome these limitations from childhood! Often, these habits and ways of thinking are passed down from one generation to the next. Our parents, or whoever raised us, could only pass along to us what they had acquired themselves.
Self-understanding holds the key to capitalizing on our positive qualities and helps to identify and release patterns that work against us.
The answers are often inside. If you do not feel you are tuning in clearly, it’s just a matter of opening up your inner communication. We have practice technique sessions and private consultations to help you unfold a clear inner connection.
Have the Stages of Life Worked for You?
If you want to learn more about how this understanding has worked for you, you are welcome to review each of these stages of life or cycles of life provided on this web page . This life review is best done when you are relaxed and uninterrupted.
You can tune into your Seven-Year Cycles of Life and mentally review each one. How does it apply to you? Do you relate to the cycle and what you experienced and felt at that time? Were your life experiences aligned with the cycle? Or, maybe you were not consciously connecting within for some of these times?
Three important items to remember as you review your past cycles of life:
- Whatever happened in your past is an opportunity to learn and grow.
- You did what you could with what you knew at that time.
- There are no mistakes only stepping stones on your journey.
Aligning with these Stages of Life
Did you see how these cycles of life influenced you through the earlier years and beyond? Do you sometimes act like your parents or say what they may have said in certain situations? Otherwise, do you take time to get more of a feeling of what comes from your own inner being?
Was developing the intellect a priority for you in the 7- to 14-year cycle with all your questions and searches in the outside world? Were you able to get help from those around you at this time, including your family, peers, teachers and others? Did you learn what you needed? Or, on the other hand, were you feeling outer pressures or given an overload of unnecessary information that made it difficult?
The good news is that you made it through this sometimes challenging cycle and probably learned much in the process.
During the adolescent years of 14 to 21, did you take time to look into your identity? You may have had a certain persona to live by and present to others. We all tend to do this to some degree.
You probably had particular friends, activities and even clothes? We often want to express our own unique identity, which may be very different from the identity of our parents.
By the time you reached the Maturity Cycle of ages 21 to 28 were you ready to get out in the world and live your life, making your own decisions and being more in charge of yourself?
These are the types of questions that can come up as you look through these stages of life. You can go back and review these different periods of your life at other times for more insights.
Timing with these Stages of Life
You may see how you fit in with these stages of life, or not. These cycles are clearer to us when we are tuned into our inner being and unshackled by the influences of the outside world. This is why it can be helpful to get away to a relaxed and peaceful place to regroup.
The outside world and certain experiences can push and pull us into cycles earlier or later. We may even bypass some of these stages of life. Examples are women who begin having children quite early in life or people who leave home in their earlier years to go out in the world. Or, we may have mastered one cycle and move into the next one earlier.
If we are not taking time to tune in and connect within, we may not notice the inner urges that come along with each stage of life. We may be so involved and influenced by the outside world that we don’t listen to our own natural flow.
Inner Forces to Follow the Cycles of Life
If people do not connect within and align with these cycles, they may feel pressure as the years go by. They did not take time to experience and reap the benefits of each stage of life. But now, you can clarify and do what you feel is important for you.
For instance, people could be returning to “Seek the Kingdom Within” (age 28-35) later on. They may do more searching and questioning about life, who they are and their purpose for being on earth. You know, those types of little queries that can pop up at times.
Some people experience a feeling of having unfinished business from a previous cycle. An example of that could be an individual who did not take enough time for “inventory of their lives” during that life cycle of 49-56, so they undertake their inventory (often unconsciously) later.
Sometimes people are confused and without a sense of themselves or these cycles. They may not be attuned to their inner being and natural rhythms. They may be pressured by their outer world and not taking enough time for themselves and what is important for them.
Tapping Into These Cycles
You have arrived at where you are today for a reason. If you have survived up to this time that, by itself, is an accomplishment. Perhaps you may not realize the guidance you received from angels, God, or an Inner Guidance along the way?
In regrouping your life experiences, you can tune into your inner being and inner guidance. You can do more than ever before with what you know now.
You can learn from the past and plan for the future. All you have is the present. You can make the most of it, if that’s what you want!
In-person and on-line programs are available to delve deeper into these topics. Have a great time on your journey through your stages of life.
Learn More
You can discover more about these cycles and related topics on:
- Tuning in more clearly to your inner being and true feelings.
- Clarifying and living your unique purpose.
- Healing any concepts that may be limiting you.
- Communicating clearly with your inner guidance or angels
Links to Other Pages
Finding Meaning on Life – Four Key Questions
SpiritualGrowthKeys.com Home Page