Anderz

Maslow's insight explains why what I call the fluid ego is necessary in order to transcend conflict. The crystallized ego at the personal stage of development is a rigid, narrow and personal structure which dictates our thoughts and actions. And since the crystallized ego is a fixed and limited perspective it causes conflicts all over the place. The crystallized ego is a result of society which in turn only cares about the mechanical functioning of our egos. Society doesn't care about death and suffering of the individuals as long as it itself survives. In fact, society depends on people growing old and dying in order to replace the old "batteries" with new ones that can carry the progress of society further. If people lived forever at the personal stage it would cause society to stagnate.

Yes, Maslow was one of the founders of transpersonal psychology; from Wikipedia: "The thinkers who have set the stage for transpersonal studies are William James, Carl Jung, Roberto Assagioli and Abraham Maslow.[7][6][8][9][10]"

Spiritual teachers such as Eckhart Tolle and J. Krishnamurti have pointed out that when we look at something with out thinking we observe the thoughts about that object instead of seeing it directly. Mainstream psychologist Abraham Maslow has mentioned something obvious that I have overlooked. Embarrassing. I guess it has been my subconscious hiding the obvious from my conscious awareness. Maslow said that when we observe something with our usual thinking we interpret what we experience through our own narrow and personal knowledge, memories and beliefs. So we then misinterpret what we experience! Leo quotes from Maslow about that in this video: I will search for more information from Maslow about transpersonal stages. It seems that he knew about that.

Manipulation is a form of lies. And even the subconscious ego patterns within us are filled with manipulation strategies for survival. And since those are parts of the perceived necessary behavior for survival it leads to all kinds of conflicts. The mind at the personal stage literally makes up its own conflicts as concepts and takes it for how reality is. The situation is even worse than in the story about Don Quixote who at least was fighting external windmills. The crystallized ego is fighting its own internal "windmills". Leo has this video with a comprehensive explanation of all kinds of lies and manipulations we do, knowingly and unknowingly at the personal stage of development.

If society is completely manipulated, then what about our own personal ego? First it's useful to recognize what our personal ego is, which is that it's a part of, and a result of the social ego structures in society. And even if we have worked a lot on cleaning up our own tendencies to manipulate, our persona remains! The persona is the phony front we present outwards, hiding our inner self. And what is the persona? It's complete manipulation! Haha, it's almost funny if it wasn't so grim. So we then recognize our own manipulation at the personal stage. And if we try to modify our persona, then that's just more manipulation. Instead it's the whole crystallized ego that needs to be recognized and dissolved. Dissolving the crystallized ego doesn't mean a destruction of the personal self. Instead it's a blending that takes place when the crystallized ego melts into the larger transpersonal stage. And instead of a crystallized ego, a transpersonal fluid ego develops.

One problem with taking society at face value such as in the 9 stages model of ego development and in Spiral Dynamics is that the huge manipulation in society is basically completely overlooked, or it's even a part of the manipulation itself. Everything in society is manipulated to the core. The reason is that our whole civilization is a collective ego structure. Those in power keep the true knowledge and the true intents secret in order to maintain control within a whole power pyramid of ego manipulation. And the bigger picture is that even the collective ego structure is a necessary development in order to produce a unique civilization and creativity. The problem is that it also results in enormous amounts of conflicts and friction. We have probably reached a point in history where the ego stage has served its purpose and now needs to be transcended.

Leo talked in the video about how people at lower stages of development tend to make too much distinction between what is practical and what is impractical. That made me think: is there any difference at all?! From a nondual perspective there isn't any difference between practical and impractical. Of course it's possible to say that about anything, even between good and evil. But I think the distinction between practical and impractical is much less than for example between good and evil. I will practice deliberately treating everything as neither practical nor impractical. It's society that has conditioned us to think in terms of practical vs impractical for its own survival needs. It's time to see through that mechanical Pavlovian-style conditioning hammered into us by society.

The individual self at the personal stage is very valuable. So it's difficult to see how one can allow the separate self to dissolve. It can seem like a destruction of the valuable and unique personality. What I believe will happen is that the valuable personal content will be preserved, because there is meaning and purpose to the development of the personal self. Without separate personal identities and without the ability to think for ourselves we would remain at the animal pre-human level. So I count on it being safe to dissolve my entire crystallized ego! And expect that my personal content will be preserved. The only way to be sure is to actually go through the process and see what happens. I will let my tensions in body and mind dissolve as a part of that process.

Something I found really useful is to learn about the ego stages Leo talked about and use that as a kind of mirror to reflect one's own personal self in and compare it to. And also, to notice all the trick one's own mind plays. I noticed that my own mind makes a distinction between my practical life and my abstract thinking about general things. In fact, it's all the same conceptualizations! But there are different kinds of emotions and sensations depending on what the thoughts are about so the mind gets tricked into believing that the differences are absolute when in reality they only have different feelings attached to them.

Really great content in Leo's new video I think. However, I have a sense that Shunyamurti is correct, that the ego is like a lousy film that needs to be transcended. Of the nine stages of ego development, the 8 first stages are about improving the ego. That's like improving how to crawl on the floor instead of learning how to walk, as the ninth stage.

Yay, Leo's third video about personal development published. Surely this will include transpersonal development.

Yet another thing Leo said is that even if we transcend our own ego it doesn't mean that the collective egos we are a part of become enlightened, not even for example an ashram. Good point. Yikes, does this mean that in order to truly reach the transpersonal stage the collective egos also need to be transcended?! Then that's a huge process. And actually, it may explain why so many spiritual teachers still seem to be at the personal stage of development. Because they still need to be a part of society which is made up of a bunch of collective egos.

Aha! I now realized that the increase of complexity needed in society will include information technology. The current U.S. - China divide in information technology today is only a temporary stage towards a global information system (see my previous post about Hegelian dialectic). And the Chinese tech giant Huawei I think will play a key role for implementing the global and massively interconnected system necessary in order for the world as a whole to reach a high enough level of complexity to allow a collective transpersonal stage to emerge. The west and particularly the U.S. will reject Chinese information technology but Huawei's open source solutions have a potential to become global I think or at least push the world in that direction.

Leo also said that as organisms develop into complex system, they form an inside that needs to be protected from the more chaotic outside, the external environment. Very interesting point! My interpretation is that what needs to happen for the transpersonal stage to emerge collectively for humanity is that the outside (the external environment) becomes as complex as the inside (the individual person). When that happens, the difference between inside and outside disappears and the world becomes one single organism that transcends the personal stage, both individually and collectively.

Leo said that the ego as self-preservation is irrational, even the collective egos are irrational. Why is the ego irrational? My take on it is to think of the world as a single "body". It would be irrational if in a single body the liver was at war with the kidneys or if the right hand was in conflict with the left hand. That would be insanity! And indeed people like Eckhart Tolle have said that society is insane. Collective egos are irrational just as individual egos are irrational because they live in conflict with each other, like organs fighting each other within the same body. And the Body of Christ I defined as everybody at the transpersonal stage. Here Jesus explains the transpersonal stage that transcends conflict, and how it's irrational to only love your loved ones:

The personal stage of development also includes collective egos since society and the individuals are one whole system. I mentioned earlier that nations are at the personal stage. And I came to think of how on the collective level the transpersonal stage means global governance! And it means global government control. Today the world is dominated by the private markets. Even money actually is today controlled mainly by the private banking sector. What will happen is that governments will replace the private money creation with central bank digital currencies. But it will be a global digital currency I think! Such as IMF issuing e-money that each nation converts into their own version, e.g. e-dollar, e-euro, e-pound and e-yuan and so on. But a global currency is just one part. There will also be an increased role for institutions like the UN, Interpol and the international courts etc.

Shunyamurti said in this new video: "It is between desire and fear that the ego is crucified." And he said that the ego level of mind has to be stilled, flatlined and eliminated as an interference pattern and as an identification with the I-thought. That's a radical view of the transpersonal stage, but I believe it's the correct one. As long as there identification with thinking as a separate self it's the personal stage of development.

Trump banning TikTok is one thing, banning WeChat is way bigger. The Executive Order also prevents U.S. companies from interacting with WeChat: Almost all payments by Chinese citizens today are done electronically with smartphone apps and American brands such as Nike, McDonald's, Disney and Starbucks use WeChat for sales according to this video: And that applies to both in the U.S. and in the rest of the world, including in China. I don't know how many U.S. brands, stores, cafés and restaurants are doing business in China, but it's probably a lot. And without being able to sell to the Chinese citizens it will hurt these U.S. companies.

Since trust is confusion, the practice of trusting the universe can be improved further by observing the confusion within oneself. Understanding the confusion makes the trust turn into clarity. And then even the trust drops away and what remains is certainty. Uncertainty is a result of the mind trying to predict things. And the mind believes it has to predict things because it sees the universe as untrustworthy and so the ego has to put in a lot of effort in trying to predict and control things, events, people and situations.

Trust is confusion! We don't trust for example that 2+2 = 4, we know that directly. So for trust to have meaning there must be uncertainty, and when there is uncertainty genuine trust becomes impossible. So trust is guesswork, or to use a more scientific term trust is based on estimation which may or may not reflect the actual situation. And distrust is just the opposite side of the same coin of trust.

There are some things that the crystallized ego trusts more than other things. Maybe the most trustworthy is the Gregorian calendar. That's the calendar most used in the world. Calendar time is extremely trustworthy since it's grounded in the movement of the earth around its axis and around the sun. The second most trustworthy thing for the ego is money. And the ego loves certainty so it has a love of money, which is problematic since it's a very narrow form of love that causes huge amounts of conflicts and friction. Trusting a higher power can be called faith. In this new video Brad Johnson talks about faith which I'm curious about and will take a look at.

At the personal stage of development when there is trust it's kind of phony, haha, because the crystallized ego is always uncertain about whether something really is trustworthy or not. And especially the ego distrusts the universe as a whole because it thinks that the universe will kill the physical body. But I found that it's still useful to use trust at the personal stage even to trust the universe as a whole. It's still a somewhat phony trust since the ego is still uncertain but it can be used as a practice. When I deliberately practice trusting the universe I start to feel calmer! So there is an actual relaxation of worry and tensions with the practice of trusting life.

Is the situation as horrible as Shunymurti described it? Oh, yes! I think it may be even worse than that. Because people at the transpersonal stage cannot communicate with us who still are in the personal stage of development other than on our own level. This means that even if there are people at the transpersonal stage, they appear to us as still being in the personal stage. To "die before you die" and "let the dead bury the dead" mean that even physical death is transcended. But as long as those at the transpersonal stage still are trapped in the collective personal stage of the world, their physical bodies die as if they still were at the personal stage, trapped in crystallized egos. So it's a really nasty situation. Physical death is a result of the personal stage of development. The crystallized ego slowly tortures the body to death while at the same time numbing out the constant feelings of torture in the heart. I read in a medical article that we cannot feel pain in our heart (we only feel what is called referred pain). That's because the ego has disconnected the feelings of the heart even on a physical and neurological level.

The true transpersonal stage is a complete shift of consciousness, and not merely a set of new beliefs added to the crystallized ego. Because even though the transpersonal stage includes the aspects of the individual self, it's not with the ego as a foundation. The crystallized ego has to dissolve, for its entire structure is based on the false belief in a separate self. In this video Shunyamurti has a pretty serious explanation of the shift needed:

Now even Russell Brand is talking about transpersonal development: I like Russell's approach which gives a new perspective. And he isn't even a spiritual teacher!