The 3 Stages of Mastery (with a bonus stage)

[Razard86]

 

The Beginning Stage of Simplicity 

When you are first exposed to something that you wish to pursue it seems simple enough, sure you don't know what you don't know but you are excited. As you continue on the path you make certain realizations and start to build your mental map to make sense of the thing you are pursuing. In the beginning you think it is simple. After constructing the map you pursue higher challenges and consistently you advance until you hit limits some call them thresh hold guardians or the boss for that stage. To overcome this boss/limit you need to drop a limiting belief. There is some belief you have that is incorrect and is causing you to keep hitting your head against the wall. Eventually through some discomfort you figure it out and continue on.

The Stage of Growth of Ever Increasing Complexity

This keeps happening over and over and over and as you go up through the levels your map gets more and more complicated and sophisticated. Eventually you reach a point where you are able to see so many perspectives, so many possibilities. At this point you are confused because even though you can see everything you don't know which perspective to adopt. You rack your brain and at this point in your search for the truth you realize the infinite nature of the thing you have been pursuing. So what is the solution?

The Stage of Unification/Simplicity

Ultimately all maps are tailored for the individual so you realize that you must adopt a perspective that is tailored for you. So you access your strengths and weaknesses and take your broad perspectival view and fit it like a glove to a hand to your nature in that field. This is the highest stage of the pursuer/player/actor of that field/game. At this point the player is producing their own individual laws and theories of how to navigate this field. Their perspective while tailored to them is flexible to be applied to others who might differ due to their ability to see universally in that particular field. This is the Stage of the Master.

Bonus Stage: The Stage of the GrandMaster/Sage

This individual desires to teach their mastery to others and through implementation and training of students they learn the pitfalls and traps that others may fall into (that they themselves might have forgotten) while also being able to see their field from fresh eyes (the eyes of their students) thus bringing them closer to the beginner mindset, when they did not know. Through their students they relearn their field, and relive their journey anew through a different perspective and gain greater knowledge as the changing of the times will impact the field of study they are teaching in some way. Thus the Grandmaster/Sage must update their field to be applicable and relatable to current modern times that differ when they Sage was developing. This will continue further until the Sage dies or retires. 

If you notice the stages I listed are a cycle, all of life follows this pattern. From simple to complex, to simple to complex. 

1. In the beginning one must learn through simplicity because they are not at a level yet to handle complexity

2. After sufficient experience and gradual increase in ability the complexity deepens and majority of growth.

3. Simplicity returns after much experience and integration

4. Complexity returns in attempting to translate and continually update for the times the teachings, but each attempts are in how to make teachings more simple so they are easier to learn and grasp. 

Such is life!!!

Edited July 26, 2022 by Razard86

[Eph75]

Great post, I'm glad you made it. 

Another way to look at this is to keep cognitive complexity as one developmental line. 

Then, you have your meaning making process that goes through a perpetual short cycle;

• Sensing - or noticing
• Making sense - or trying to understand
• Responding - or creating some kind of impact on self/other
• Then returning to the sensing around the impact created. 

We need to push into the outer boundary of our own, ever increasing complexity, into the land of chaos, where our current sense making is insufficient, to catalyze our further growth of cognitive complexity. 

If we don't, we stagnate. 

We will be help by our society to reach a certain complexity, and a certain flavor of sense making, but at some point we stagnate unless we press further, by our own devices, or the devices of the universe. 

As our sense making shifts towards growing increasingly complex, more and deeper meaning is created, serving an increasing depth of the information on which our responses are made. 

We will grow increasingly impactful, being able to take more information, perspectives, and eventualities into account, and create increasingly simple responses, that lead to increasingly beneficial outcomes, whatever that might be, which [the outcomes] is a product of that very same sense making.

Wisdom is a result of this process; the ability to accommodate a high level of complexity in our minds, to allow ourselves to produce simple, yet effective responses, that are impactful towards some purpose. 

Wisdom quotes are a great example, they simply tend to make sense, also to those that have not experienced the underlying complexity that went into that wisdom quote, as such quotes range anywhere from motivational to deeply profound, depending on the meaning making of the recipient, served by the complexity within the simplicity. 

The depth of profundity can only be fully seen though a lens that allows for the depth of complexity, that produced the wisdom. But, that wisdom can be life changing to many who do not, without needing to grasp the actual depth. 

One sub-stage in the process of what you describe is the loss of own perspective, where there being so many perspectives seen, and no single perspective being invalidated, resulting in no single perspective being the preferred one. 

I'd say this is related to the emotional detachment of "own" perspective, and a fear of reattaching, having yet to discover that loosely leaning on to preferred perspectives still does not equate to re-identification with, but being able to choose and shift perspectives more, as the tools they are, and to, use the right tool for the right job. 

That's where we get lost in mental maturation, around complexity, and deconstruction, without proceeding into the reduction phase that leads to wisdom, philosophical and practical use, instead of just increased the amount of information produced in the process, attributing some false value to the complexity itself, reducing ourselves to information horders. 

Sorry, went into a bit of a rant. 

1 hour ago, Razard86 said:

Such is life!!!

Such, indeed, is life 

Edited July 26, 2022 by Eph75

[Razard86]