Growth is a difficult process, requiring both endurance and commitment. As we outgrow one stage of development we need to be able to move on to the next with a minimum of discomfort. Nature provides for this by making it possible for us to create inner charts of our progress by which we can navigate.

In order to make sense of ourselves within the world, at a very young age we create the first of these blueprints, or maps, to which we can add as more information comes in. This map is an open circle, a spiral. At its core is one central belief, great love, or assumption around which we organize other, related beliefs as we acquire them. A child's original map is probably organized around its mother as the center. As we mature, our map gets more sophisticated, and it's the alteration of this map that is so painful in growing up.

As long as new information doesn't affect our central beliefs we can absorb it without discomfort. One day, however, something new comes into our lives--another human being, an event we perceive to be a failure, a problem we can't solve--and our blueprint suddenly requires enormous reorganization. The new information does not jibe with the core assumption upon which we base our persona. It becomes necessary then, to undergo a kind of disintegration; we feel confused; we're lost; we don't know what we feel. We struggle through these emotions and, eventually, put the map back together again, including or rejecting this new knowledge. We are reintegrated.

This is one of the reasons drugs are so dangerous for young people to take. Instead of going through the growth process --disintegration is painful, after all--people take drugs to feel better, at least momentarily. But the drugs stunt their growth and they remain emotionally immature. Until they are willing to endure the pain of disintegration, reorganize their inner map, and reintegrate around a more mature belief system, they can grow old, but they cannot grow up.

Sometimes, especially when we lose someone we love, this disintegrating process goes all the way to our very core and we think we just might die of it, but what really happens is that we are forced to redesign our core beliefs. For example, the map I used most of my life was organized around the core belief that love between a man and a woman was all that mattered. Around that were arranged such concepts as self sacrifice for the relationship, and the man comes before my family. In fact, at the center of my map was not me, but him.

Then I got divorced. My core belief was annihilated. The center of my life was gone. I was a failure. I had chosen the wrong man to place on the throne of my heart, and was probably incapable of choosing the right one.

Though it took several years of painful growth, I finally did reintegrate around a stronger center. My core belief now is that I am here to learn and to teach, to give everything I can to the world and to the people around me. At the core of my map is not a man, but the universe and all the world, my belief that I can make a difference, that in some small way, I matter. At the core of my map is, not the egotistical "me," but the universal "me," the "me" that recognizes its connections to all that is. I'm comfortable with this, as well as completely certain that it will not last. Sooner or later I will be called on once again, as we all are, to redesign my central beliefs.

Disillusionment and disintegration are necessary acts upon the path of growth. Although it is exquisitely painful to re-map our core beliefs, it is also incredibly valuable. The phoenix that rises out of the ashes of self, the newly integrated individual, is certain to be the best we've ever been.