Being Emotionally Mature, by Dr. Paul Leon Masters

Audio version read by Rev. Steven Lane Taylor, B.Msc.

So many people, so very many adults! As we travel through life, one thing becomes very apparent when observing people in general, and that is how few have actually become emotionally mature. Most, it seems, have never grown up emotionally. While their bodies may pose an adult image, juvenile childishness often remains hidden within, awaiting the next event in life that will summon this immaturity out into the light of day.

It appears that although the body grows and the years pass, very few individuals outgrow the immaturity of their adolescent years. Is it any wonder then that so many emotional clashes occur among so-called adults? Without having achieved emotional maturity, outbursts and arguments appear, resembling children on a playground who have lost control.

What a tragedy it is that the importance of developing into emotionally mature adults is not taught to children—even at a very young age—to plant the seeds that obtaining emotional maturity is one of the great goals of life, and to achieve it is truly an accomplishment worth seeking. What needs to be taught to our young people is making a virtue out of acquiring emotional maturity.

If, however, they slip past their youth and then, through their own inner reactions to outside events, realize that they are behaving in an emotionally immature manner, there must be the hope that they can turn it around and achieve emotional maturity.

The best and quickest way to acquire emotional maturity as an adult is spiritually—through attunement to God’s presence within oneself. Through God’s presence:

Childish thoughts are replaced with wisdom.
Childish outbursts are replaced with calmness.
Childish denials are replaced with acceptance of responsibility.
Childish moods are replaced with emotional consistency.
Childish reactions are replaced with positive God-centered self-assurance.

As with everything in life, meditation opens the doors of the mind to healing, and God is the healer. It is God’s presence that is the ultimate maturity in the universe. This ageless presence of God, that has had eternity to become mature, is within you. Direct meditational contact with God’s presence within you actually puts you into the energy consciousness that is part of God’s eternal maturity. Such energy integrates itself as part of the surface levels of your mind. All of life is, after all, an exchange of energy.

Everything to which you might emotionally react is a field of energy. If, through meditation, your mind is filled with God’s emotional energy, then it will be that energy that will react in an emotionally mature way to whatever experience is taking place in your life. More than anything you can do, meditation is the best way to acquire emotional maturity, as well as universal or spiritual maturity.

Under the influence of the God consciousness within you, you will see what is taking place through God’s perspective. You will view and comprehend life’s events from a higher perspective. You will see things increasingly through the eyes of God, or see the whole picture and meaning of what occurs. Your reaction will be tempered by the influence of God’s eternal wisdom. Such a reaction will provide you with emotional maturity during challenging moments and times in your life.

The Bible says, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, but when I became an adult, I put away childish things.” And so it should be in the life of every adult. There comes a time when one’s reaction to challenges must be tempered with maturity. Of course, this assumes that a person has matured! All too often, people fail to mature, regardless of their years.

To achieve this maturity in your reactions to life and its challenges, you must first be aware of the problem of controlling your emotional reactions. Upon such awareness, it is then best to let God heal the lack of emotional maturity. The best way to realize this is to release all childishness to God’s healing presence within you.

This should be done often, until one day, during an emotional challenge, you find that you are no longer reacting with childishness, but rather with the calmness and wisdom of a person who has achieved emotional maturity. Until such time, continue to affirm the release of all childishness to God’s presence within you.

God is with you, and working with you and through you. There is no need to revert to the dramas of emotional immaturity. You become a channel for solutions to whatever challenges life presents to you, and to those closest to you, toward whom you feel a sense of responsibility. You are free; you are emotionally mature!

Dr. Paul Leon Masters

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