 Development Model
This development model is an infrastructure that can help us understand our practice. This adds to the human infrastructure, and is part of design that helps us understand Holy khandha and Sacred Wound as they arise in practice - mainly Ch2.
In offering this description of design, as usual zandtao does not ask you to believe it or accept it as truth; learn through your own experience what you believe. But you can use it as a tentative model in the following way. Partially accept the model as true, then in this partial truth does the model give you some understanding that can help with your practice? Develop your practice. As the restrictions go and your consciousness (space held for consciousness) develops, maybe insights will arise to add to your understanding. These insights will give you experience of the model but in the end if there are no insights don't accept the model as true - look for a different approach to building your practice with a different understanding.
1) Prebirth:-
Plan of consciousness - Nature decides what your seed of consciousness is to learn, zandtao thinks of these seeds as part of the karmic plan. In this plan appropriate parents are chosen whose personalities apply the way the plan wants to teach.
2) Early life:-
From birth the seed of consciousness builds its host whose personality essentially lives life where the consciousness learns as the pre-birth plan. Around the seed this personality is aggregated with body, feelings, memory and perceptions, and mental processes - in some cultures known as khandhas (aggregates).
3) Adversity - conditioning and conformity
The learning of lessons is not easy, this learning arises in adversity as the personality interacts with parents and society. During this adversity there arises the survival process that protects the inner and creates the facade of self-esteem for the outer, the greater the adversity the stronger the clinging to this survival process.
4) Upbringing - conditioning and conformity
This survival process continues into adulthood as the seed is protected and the needs of the facade of self-esteem are met to survive in society - get a job etc. Fear and intimidation within society leads to increasing clinging to the shell both in terms of the outer facade and the inner protection. For inner protection a loving home is needed, without a loving environment to nurture the seed dukkha protects until there is sufficient strength to risk learning about love in our society.
5) Starting awareness
At some point in early adulthood can begin awareness of the seed, this Eckhart called firstgrace. For some people this awareness becomes a lifelong journey, for others it can be buried by the conditioning and conformity of upbringing as we don't live in a culture that recognises seed-consciousness - no mainstream CoA.
6) Developing Practice
After firstgrace awareness of the path (awareness of the developing seed) only becomes possible through the development of practice to break through the conditioning and conformity. This practice has 2 components:-
7) Releasing restrictions
With awareness of the path comes some understanding of conditioning and conformity, and the need to release the restrictions that arose as a consequence of the survival process. The more we learn of how this survival process affected us, the more we can release the restrictions.
8) Sacred Wound
When this development is discussed as a survival process and releasing restrictions, we do not feel the full impact of the importance of this process. But there is a whole package of development and consciousness that gives rise to this process. Through design we choose our parents in prebirth, but this choice is concerned with following the path. Therefore our parents who themselves underwent conditioning and conformity will unconsciously be party to the building of these restrictions. Understanding the roles of parents and how they contributed to the survival process becomes central to the release of restrictions as part of our lifelong journey, and some call it the Sacred Wound. zandtao sees this understanding (of Sacred Wound) as an aggregate that arises as the seed and its personality interacts with society, and has called it the Holy khandha because the survival process aggregates as egos around the same khandhas (of body, feelings, memories and perceptions and mental processes) that the seed uses to form personality. When releasing restrictions we release attachments that have formed around these khandhas; in life we all have this additional aggregation and releasing the restrictions enables us to follow our paths - hence zandtao's personal description of Sacred Wound as a Holy khandha.
9) Holding space for consciousness
Once we release the restrictions that built up in the survival process then we have started to empty contents of consciousness, but we are then vulnerable to further conditioning and conformity. So our practice requires a second component - holding that released space for consciousness. Especially early on the path, when we release restrictions there is a tendency for repeating the process of attachment similar to the survival process of conditioning and conformity. But we can resist that cycle through the primary component in our practice of holding space for consciousness. For zandtao this holding space developed into bringing in consciousness as directions - love, wisdom, sila and truth - and skills - mindfulness, focus and embodiment, but any description of consciousness is limiting.
10) From Awareness to Purpose
Through our practice we clear away the conditioning and conformity of upbringing, and from awareness and awakening we begin to understand purpose as consciously loving and evolving consciousness.
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