The 4 Stages of Adult Development According to Jung

Based on his practise and experience, Carl Gustav Jung identified four stages through which an adult person may spiritually evolve. These stages are not necessarily linear and they aren’t pre-determined either. This means you may, or may not, go through each stage, and you can also jump back and forth depending on your consciousness level, purpose and ability to deal with your life’s circumstances.

There is, however, a certain degree of evolution from one stage to the other. While in the first two stages, the athlete and the warrior, we are mostly worried about our physical body and social status, we become more oriented toward others from the third stage (the statesman) onwards. In the last stage, the spirit, we are finally able to create and attract what we need in this lifetime. I will tell you more about each of these stages next.

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The Athlete

• our primary identification is with our physical body and how it functions
• our happiness and sense of worth are a function of our physical appearance and abilities
• we judge attractiveness based on the shape, size, colour, and texture of our body parts
• we also judge the appearance of our car, house and clothes
• we believe we will only be good as our performance, attractiveness, and achievements

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The Warrior

• we feel compelled to conquer the world and to demonstrate our superiority
• we are driven by the “need” of subduing and defeating others in a race
• we are busy with goals and achievements in competition with others
• we experience anxiety as we endlessly compare our success with others
• we worry about the future and about what/who may interfere
• status and position in life are obsessions

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The Statesperson

• we want to know what is important to the other person
• our primary purpose is to give rather than to get
• we can remain an achiever and quite athletic but our inner drive is to serve others
• we are grateful for what shows up in our life
• we start our journey towards inner peace

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The Spirit

• we recognise our Higher Self
• we become a co-creator of our entire world
• we manage to navigate through the circumstances of our life
• we become manifesters
• we are aware that we are an infinite and eternal energy or consciousness residing in a body
• we are passionately drawn to our inner world

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I hope you enjoyed to know more about these four different stages. Can you identify with any of them? Let me know in the comments below what you think.