My reply moved to: Balancing the Mechanics and the Spiritual

And congrats about the baby! Honestly it will totally change your life when he / she arrives! My daughter is 15 months old now – and she has taught me more about myself and life than anyone else ever has! Funny thing; most people want to tell the baby how it should be acting. So it’s pretty neat when you take a step back and let the baby tell *you* how it actually acts.

I noticed that we kind of see self- and personal development somewhat similar. The owner’s manual to a baby is cool, like the one for my car too. Essentially I see nothing wrong with the idea of learning how the baby “works”. All sorts of “machineries” need to be learned first

When it comes to self development, it is (un)fortunately more complex. But I’m sure we could use here something like ‘An owner’s manual to the soul’ or ‘An owner’s manual to the mind’. Even ‘Self Development for dummies’ would be cool to have on the bookshelf.

All right, to put it more seriously, I agree on self development being a process and eventually you yourself are the ultimate supervisor for what you are up to on the inside. Where I see this differently is that I think there is a definite need for a framework. The nature of the framework varies of course, it can be defined in various ways. I am just saying that there must be one. I agree that the time of gurus is up, which I am not sure yet if it is good or bad. And also books by themselves don’t help you. But I can see the process unfolding only within some framework.

The “language that can be understood by each individual person” is not possible within the present overstressed usage and acceptance of lateral thinking. Maybe this is why gurus are of no use any more – they prefer vertical thinking, analogies, symbols, all on the contrary of how we all were taught, in the present cultural milieus.

PS: My baby is on the way, a question of days now. Maybe I should by one of those manuals right away