Can a monastery ever be an ideal setting for Integral growth?

As the human psyche needs to go through various levels of development across different intelligences, and as such a process is unavoidable and inevitable for a complete and integral growth of an individual, especially if their goal is to reach the highest possible level, which is true in the case of monastics, are the monasteries, especially the traditional ones, which emphasize the absolute above all else and work the seekers of the absolute to live a life that can facilitate such a realization, ever really able to facilitate such a level of growth among the memebrs of its community?

Since their narratives and their interpretations mostly revolve around only the highest level, are these schools not bound to ignore or undermine the growth of someone stuck at a lower stage?

As a result, are these traditional monasteries doomed to create what Ken sometimes calls, “Enlightened neurotics”? Or somehow these systems work, in their own unique ways, with their own unique interpretations, to grow the monastics into fully functional adults and help them reach the highest, without them ever leaving the walls of the monastery? What are your thoughts on this?

The The Glass Bead Game, a novel by Hermann Hesse, addresses this question in my opinion. I am relatively new here myself in this part of the integral-verse.

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Seems a self-answering question. Just from a Zen context alone, A good teacher would historically kick students out after a while in order to force some semblance of integration into society at large. Even then, as has been pointed out by Doshin Roshi from his “Integral Zen” platform, monastic life hasn’t typically approached establishing essential psychological groundwork and shadow work alluded to here.

But really, we know this already, and isn’t it ultimately an individual matter? It’s not like everybody walking through monastery gates comes from the same moldable jelly.

Indeed. Thanks for sharing!