The 4 Stages of Our Nature — A psychological theory

Omitting the nature vs nurture debate, this thesis is defining nature as whatever sense of self, or defining characteristics inhabit a person at any point in time. The point in time is the crux of it, how we ideally inhabit four separate stages of identity, though the time-frame is significantly differentiated by our life circumstance, and in many cases, the evolution never completes. Two of the stages of nature are more unobservable, while two make up the majority of our life-times and are therefore more obvservable. One can make up the greater majority of our life-time, which is probably the most common equation.
These four natures are:
Original, Reactive, Integrated, & Transcendant.
Original nature:
Original nature is the stuff that can only be observed by a parent very early on about their child, more specifically their baby since the point of the next stage is that our nature is immediately defined by how we react to our environment. In an ideally nurturing environment, the thread from original to transcendent nature would be uninterrupted. However, this is probably a thing of fiction, and so in the majority of cases, our original nature is altogether irrelevant. We move on then to:
Reactive nature:
Reactive nature is how our personality, our sense of self, our behaviors and traits develop in reaction to the environment that we are set it. The traumas & the situational difficulties as well as the privileges that define us. We become quiet because the other siblings are making too much noise. We learn to be invisible because there is an abusive person in the house. We become nurturing, perhaps more than we would choose, because someone else in the house needs more nurturing (a younger sibling perhaps) than we do. These are typically traits that are practical to the environment, and whose reaction is measured by the measure that they are reacting too. The extent in which we are conscious of reacting, the age in which we must do the reacting, depends on how we may proceed to our next, most common life nature — our Integrated nature.
Integrated nature:
Integrated nature happens by not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It is coming to terms with our reactive nature and trying balance our sense of self with the traits that we have so honed, quite unconsciously. It requires a sense of awareness that things have been put into motion. A person may still resent certain qualities that they were forced to assume, but they begin to have a certain sense of peace with it, and start to lean into their strengths rather then their defined weaknesses. Integration allows for a sense of self, not definite, but a control over one’s narrative that becomes greater as time goes on. “Find out who you are and do it on purpose” to quote Dolly Parton.
All of these natures are a process however, so I would speak of someone being between their reactive and integrated natures, rather than a definite demarcation. Just a note.
The issue of course is that if the reaction in the period of one’s childhood is necessarily severe, and therefore the reactive nature is pronounced, than one rather feels like throwing the baby, so to speak, clear out the window. Transcending extreme trauma, trying to find peace and strength in debilitation is a task monumental. Integration is possible, but will take time.
The difficulty is also due to our construct of person-hood and how we are “supposed” to evolve. We allow children to have phases, teenagers can rebel, and even up to college we’re allowed a certain amount of experimentation. Typically, the process of integration happens in these years. For those who have suffered egregious harms, however, their integration is much more likely to be afforded later on — putting them in a culture of personhood where a complete change of self can be seen as strange, immature, a “cry for help” etc., when it is in fact simply a natural process that is more accepted within the earlier confines of youth and feels culturally disorienting when it happens later.
For the process between one’s reactive nature and one’s integrated nature is indeed a bumpy road, it’s like an internal war tribunal, a congress at odds, a negotiation that requires year-long upending, re-writing, and even if it reaches its first conclusion, is doubtful to be a perfectly construed affair.
Transcendent nature:
Transcendent nature is what Jung would call individuation. It’s an understanding of self that is not defined by self but by one’s part in the greater self — the universal experience. It requires a fair amount of lived time in the integrated nature, imo, to take the leap into the unknown, which is akin to an acceptance of death, a communion holy, a letting go of relationships, pains, and all of the identities that lay within the reactive and integrated self. It is the closing of the circle as it is undoubtedly the same as our original nature, though now, observable and reflective.
Individuation is seen as this holy mountain — but not every man and woman even reaches a full stage of integration! That is the process/nature/stage we should be focusing on and seeking to help those in its pursuit!
Thanks for reading.
