Pattern Of Life 
Our lives are as cyclical as Nature’s dances: days follow nights, light follows darkness. The seasons turn and return. How about the dances within the stories of our lives?
Seven Year Cycles
Ancient spiritual traditions view our life-cycles as made of sets of seven years. Think back to the time you were 7, 14, 21 and so forth. Were there significant events in your life around these junctures?
When I look back on my life, I realize that the seven years’ cycles are as precisely highlighted as a textbook… Each juncture brought a peek experience that was often life changing.
When I was seven, my brother was born. Being an only child for so long, I suddenly had to get used to sharing my room, and my parents’ attention. This was definitely a big conclusion of my first seven-year cycle. How was your seventh year?
The First Seven Years
According to Anthroposophy (the ‘Path of Knowledge’ developed by Austrian scientist and philosopher Rudolf Steiner, 1861-1925) a child shares its mother’s etheric body or aura from birth to the age of seven.
In the same way that an embryo is nourished by its mother’s blood stream in uterus, so is a child engulfed in its mother’s energy field, until the time of dentition: the falling of baby teeth and the development of a child’s own teeth, usually around the age of seven.
As a mother, I experienced the validity of this spiritual observation. My daughter was “tied to my hip” for most of her early years. Not only physically was she constantly at my side, it also felt like emotionally and spiritually we were moving in the same sphere.
Once her first baby teeth started falling, a new phase arrived: an individuation begun, and independence started emerging in her. When a child’s body starts to make its own teeth, there is physical, as well as spiritual evidence, that the child’s own life-force is capable of creating.
Though this may seem like a small thing on the surface, it is a huge affirmation of autonomy, of standing on one’s own feet, of making one’s own blueprint in the world.
The Second Cycle
Between the ages of seven and fourteen, a being develops its own aura, it’s own spiritual cocoon.
In ancient cultures, this cycle prepared children to adulthood. Elders taught the young to gather and grind grain, to hunt for meat, to weave, to gather herbs and learn of their medicinal values, to make shelters in the wilderness.
In indigenous cultures this was the time when Rites Of Passage were celebrated. In our contemporary culture the emphasis is different. Children at these ages certainly build their own cocoon, and its mostly a social one, which shuts most parents out.
This often results in a separation deeper than parents would like to see, perhaps because of the lack of eldering and mentoring, which in ancient times fostered independence within a container.
In Western cultures we may need to look into how we can rebuild the tribal community containers that we lost.
From Childhood To Adulthood
The transition from childhood to adulthood is still celebrated close to the age of fourteen.
In some churches there are celebrations of Confirmation around this age, and the Jewish tradition marks Bar/Bat Mitzvah as the point from which one is no longer considered a child, but an adolescent.
These demarcations are not meant to be symbolic. They mark the beginning of the adolescent’s responsibility to its society.
Again, this was much more pronounced in older times, when youth actually contributed to their family and tribe’s survival. Their tasks included hunting, taking care of younger siblings, making meals, weaving, woodworking, fire tending, and so forth.
Adolescence Is Expansion
Around the age of fourteen, youths start exploring and experimenting with what was, until now, strictly adult territory. Since there are hardly any tasks provided them by society, this need for expansion is focused primarily on taking active interest in the other sex.
This is a natural enfoldment of this life cycle, yet needs to be balanced with service to community. At this age adolescents start making their own place in the world, relying more on their friends rather than their parents, spend more time away from home, and generally carving their own niche in the world.
In order to do this, teens develop a sense of morality: they want to know the truth, to be ‘fair’, to hold their parents accountable to their word, and to have a clear boundary between right and wrong. This expansion from the cocoon allows for adults to be made out of children.
Adulthood
21 years is considered by most cultures to be the age of adulthood. The transition is behind us. We are now full grown adults in our society’s eyes, as well as our own.
In many cases young adults will take time to explore the world at the end of their formal education, motivated by curiosity and the need for expansion, which is the tail end of their previous 7-year cycle.
Around the age of 21, though, they will start settling for a direction that is motivated by will power, such as college or the beginnings of a career. This phase is symbolized by the spreading of wings, and an internal arrow that points to the direction of flight.
Anthroposophic Message
In athroposophy the message from birth to seven years to underline all activities is: “the world is good.”
The philosophy behind it observes that in the first seven years, the child, who is a spirit that came to explore Earth, is still somewhat a stranger in a strange land. A reassuring, nurturing, and safe environment will create a picture of the world as a good place, which will serve the child for the rest of its life.
From 7 to 14: “the world is beautiful.” And from 14 to 21 years: “the world is truth.”
The years between 7 and 14 is when the child is fully engaged in creative endeavors. From homework to art, from friendships to projects, the child has the opportunity to create beauty. Around the age of 14, when an adolescent’s moral sense becomes acute, we are encouraged, as adults, to strive to stay in integrity and model truth in all our actions.
Each 7-year cycle we live, is a full musical spectrum. Each provides us with the opportunity to complete a phase of growth. The orchestration of our life’s octaves together, will result in our unique life song.
DeAnna L’am, author of Becoming Peers – Mentoring Girls Into Womanhood, leads workshops and creates ceremonies in California and internationally. She welcomes dialogues with her readers. Visit her at: www.deannalam.com