Jodistrict

This is why I work with a shaman. I have a living example in front of me of a highly advanced spiritual person, so I can see for my self that it works. That beats a lot of empty words printed on the Internet.

"At the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit. And that center is really everywhere. It is within each of us." - Black Elk Black Elk was a medicine man and warrior of the Oglala Lakota people. He was certainly tribal and grew up stage purple. The above quote could be seen as expressing non dualism. These people were highly conscious. Spiral Dynamics is leaving out too much reality and creating a cartoonish stereotype to maintain the consistency of their model. https://discoveringnonduality.com/2019/01/14/black-elk-and-the-center-of-all-of-us/

The comments I am reading here about stage purple sounds like the stereotype images of racist 1940s cartoons. Like a figure with slanted eyes represents a Japanese man. Or a native has a bone through his nose. Is Spiral Dynamics really this shallow? Is this a theory dreamed up in an ivory tower by theorists who have not actually had real contact with tribal people (who still exist on the planet)?

That requires proof. Where is your evidence?

When I first started taking Bufo Alvarius, my heart would beat fast, but that went away after doing it a few times. If you have heart problems, I would be very careful and stick to low doses. The shaman I go to said that he has seen Bufo stop someone’s heart under a high dose.

I am disputing the inference that some are drawing from spiral dynamics that higher stages of the spiral are more conscious than lower stages. The fat woman is unconscious of the fact that she is killing herself with food. This is unconscious behavior. Someone who mistakes a movie for reality, who thinks he understands reality because he has seen a movie is unconscious. In the jungle, this would be like mistaking a crocodile for a log. In industrial society millions of people are sleepwalking through life and still survive. If you sleepwalk in a jungle, you die. Watching 8 hours of television a day is not evolving. The tribes were about more than survival, they had shamanism and a rich cultural life.

This is another value being promoted by the influencers of a modern complex society. But even here, it has limited success since people still tend to form their own tribes in urban neighborhoods. Tribes in the jungle keep the peace by being separate from each other, which is easier to do in a jungle. They still may use the same river – a river would be like the Wal-Mart of a jungle. A tribe doesn’t see the river as a resource so one tribe doesn’t try to control the river – like is commonly done by industrial societies. So yes everyone is welcome at the jungle Walmart, i.e. river.

Movies are made by orange stage societies. Of course, people in modern society perceive their way of life as comfortable, and can’t imagine any other way of living. A fat lady who needs an electric cart to find the twinkies in Wal-Mart is higher consciousness than a native who can spear a fish at 40 feet, because she is stage orange.

If complexity is the touchstone of development, then a ball of yarn is highly developed. Or a totalitarian world system with every human implanted with chips to monitor their thoughts and actions would be highly complex.

Development is a world full of happy people who live in harmony with nature. I have been basically trying to clear the record because there were a lot of harsh comments here on stage Purple that are based on imagined prejudices and not direct knowledge. People from an ethnocentric and materialistic lens fail to see the brilliance of our ancestors. These people were highly conscious. I am not sure whether this is coming from the baked in prejudices of spiral dynamics or if it is spiral dynamics being misinterpreted. The modern world is developed in knowledge for technology but has little wisdom. Our only hope of survival is to rediscover this ancient wisdom. There are still tribal societies on the Earth who know how to live in harmony with nature and can teach us to reconnect.

This again assumes the stage orange value of "progress". The seed is the tree.

This is expressing the values of a stage orange culture. Living in the jungle is the opposite of being drunk. If you aren't alert, it won't take long to be bitten by a snake. It is also the opposite of losing consciousness. Sitting in an office 8 hours a day and then going home to watch TV is how you lose consciousness.

For me, Bufo Alvarius is the purest journey. It takes one minute for the mind to drop away. There aren’t any stories. Just the feeling of pure presence and connection.

If you stick to Mexico, the information is already available on the Internet, i.e put keywords in Facebook search.

As I mentioned, Everett was a Christian missionary who spent years trying to convert the Pirahãs. He eventually gave up and lost his faith. They converted him. He later found out that they have resisted over 200 years of missionaries trying to convert them. Here is an interesting encounter with the Pirahas, when he was trying to covert them. The Pirahã men then asked, “Hey Dan, what does Jesus look like? Is he dark like us or light like you?” I said, “Well, I have never actually seen him. He lived a long time ago. But I do have his words.” “Well, Dan, how do you have his words if you have never heard him or seen him?” They then made it clear that if I had not actually seen this guy (and not in any metaphorical sense, but literally), they weren’t interested in any stories I had to tell about him. Period. This is because, as I now knew, the Pirahãs believe only what they see. Sometimes they also believe in things that someone else has told them, so long as that person has personally witnessed what he or she is reporting. Notice that the Pirahas have an epistimology that makes them virtually scam proof. Their requirements for evidence is more rigorous than the rules of evidence of the US Federal Courts. This is an example of stage Purple intelligence. Everett, Daniel L.. Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle (Vintage Departures) . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

In the Buddhist scriptures there are many examples of men who became instantly enlightened by hearing the words of the Buddha. But in modern society, people meditate for decades without any improvement. Could it have been the different in culture? The men in Buddha’s time came from tribes and had the tribal world view and a non materialistic mindset. It didn’t take much for them to transition into full enlightenment. The purple stages were overcome through violence, not because they lacked anything. Thus, the conquering stages had better military strength. Having thousands of people as slaves building irrigation systems for the Nile is not an improvement of cognitive ability.

One interesting account of a contact with true tribal people has been written by Daniel L. Everett in “Don’t Sleep, There are snakes”. Everett was a linguist and Christian missionary. After years of living with the tribes he renounced his faith realizing that they were happy and had a better way of life. Maybe, true enlightenment is to return to stage purple. “Looking more closely at Pirahã language and culture, there are other, equally important lessons for us. The Pirahãs show no evidence of depression, chronic fatigue, extreme anxiety, panic attacks, or other psychological ailments common in many industrialized societies. But this psychological well-being is not due, as some might think, to a lack of pressure. It is ethnocentric to suppose that only industrialized societies can produce psychological pressure, or that psychological difficulties are found only in such societies. True, the Pirahãs don’t have to worry about paying their bills on time or which college to select for their children. But they do have life-threatening physical ailments (such as malaria, infection, viruses, leish-maniasis, and so on). And they have love lives. And they need to provide food for their families. I have never heard a Pirahã say that he or she is worried. In fact, so far as I can tell, the Pirahãs have no word for worry in their language. One group of visitors to the Pirahãs, psychologists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Brain and Cognitive Science Department, commented that the Pirahãs appeared to be the happiest people they had ever seen.” Everett, Daniel L.. Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle (Vintage Departures) . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Living in a jungle is like living in a grocery store. Maybe that's why they were never motivated to develop agriculture.

Stage purple is still relevant. There are still uncontacted tribes, mostly in Brazil. They are living meaningful and sustainable lives in harmony with nature and apparently have found no desire to walk up a spiral for the sake of self improvement. Their way of life is being increasingly threatened by the stage orange thirst for resources. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140804-sad-truth-of-uncontacted-tribes Spiral Dynamics does not show a growth of consciousness, but a growth in military capability. The tribal societies were destroyed by violence (e.g., the American Indians). They are whole and complete in themselves and can exist in harmony with nature forever if they are left alone. It’s modern society which is unbalanced and unsustainable. http://www.gobarefootblog.com/environment/how-many-earths-do-we-need-to-live/

It's more about the connotation. https://doubleblindmag.com/what-does-entheogen-actually-mean/

An observation that the present modern society is terribly unbalanced and unsustainable. People seek balance for their own stability and happiness.

I don’t agree with Spiral Dynamics and its progress bias that puts “purple” on the lower end of a spiral. Anthropologists say that the cultures of the indigenous tribal people were as sophisticated and complex as modern society. Furthermore, their lifestyle is actually sustainable, unlike modern society which is unsustainable and threatening the very existence of the planet. And the argument that they were primitive and violent is the weakest given all the people killed in World Wars I and II. Also, people are generally happier when they are living in small communities and connected with each other. And their animistic beliefs in the sacredness of nature are missing in the materialistic modern societies which see nature as a “resource” to be exploited. Instead of a spiral, maybe there is a cycle from balanced to unbalanced to balanced.

Stage Orange uses the word “psychedelic”. Stage Green says “entheogens”.

I have been to ceremonies in Mexico, but not the US. Ayahuasca is safe as long as you meet the screening requirements, like not being on any antidepressants. The most important thing is to have a facilitator who knows how to create a safe space and take care of people. You could ask for a half or quarter cup to start, and take more later if that isn’t enough.

Taking Ayahuasca alone is a bad idea. I have been to a lot of ceremonies and have seen many purges and how extreme it can get. Even a trip sitter is not going to know what to do if you freak out. You want a real healer who knows what to do and how to process the experience. The goal is to be healed, not retraumatized.