Ninja_pig

This image is truly historic. It may not be fun to be seeing modern history unfold, but a t least it's interesting.

Also, I believe it might be quite difficult to really understand spiral dynamics from the stage blue vantage point. You might not be stage blue but stage green or something like that. Few adults in modern America are stage red. It's primitive by today's standards. It might be best for you right now to use religion to move beyond that stage, rather than the advice of integral psychology. Embody the best you can the values of Christianity or Hinduism or whatever your faith may be.

I think when it comes to integrating a previous stage, it's not about trying to act out that stage, but trying to understand it, embrace it, and accept it. What you have to do is bring up these shadow qualities within yourself, and understand where they are coming from. Then you must fully accept them into your own identity/being, and then you will have the ability to transcend into the blue stage. You can identify shadow elements in yourself by seeing the insecurities you have or negative qualities you project into others. Usually our projections are actually just the unwanted qualities within ourselves. A technique for working though your shadow is using the "3 2 1" method proposed by Ken Wilber. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://bhavanalearninggroup.com/wp-content/uploads/321-Process-for-the-Shadow.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwix5Yn6x9uJAxUIMtAFHULZIY4QFnoECB0QAQ&usg=AOvVaw0Cq9RxBkWRsdpQcNQ7BocK

I like how the brand new forum member's first post is accidently very meta in a forum that prides itself on being meta.

Wow! This feels like a stage Orange version of enlightenment to me. "It's all a dream, so just achieve things for the hell of it!". I very much like your description philosophy. Depending on what spiral dynamics stage you are at, you will form different conclusions from the perspective of an awakened state. The stage Green person might reason "Life is just a dream, so let's just love one another and hold nothing back". The stage yellow person might say "Life is just a dream, so free your mind and behold the beauty of creation through the pursuit of understanding ". Of course, every conclusion is the correct one, so just keep going for that dream Life of yours... Until you don't want to anymore.

Beautifully said. The universe is a verb, not a noun. God is just god-ing in the eternal now. Because of this reality is actually the ultimate good. It's pure divinity and nothing else.

The purpose of life is to live

I personally like "do nothing" meditation. You can also try transcendental meditation. I recommend experimenting with a few techniques to see which one gives you the best results. I said in my original comment you should do 2 hours a day, but this is probably too much to start out with. Two 20 minute sessions each day will suffice at first and then you can increase it later as you see fit. As I said, just practice it for like 2 weeks and the results will speak for themselves. The purpose of meditation is to still/calm your mind to the point where you have a highly enhanced ability to focus. Once you have stilled your mind sufficiently, it is much easier to see your thoughts, emotions, and ego for what they are. You will be able to observe an internal experience or think about something for a very extended period of time. This basically corresponds to an increase in consciousness because now your subjective experience is more cohesive and stabilized. There are probably more things that meditation gives you but this is what I have noticed myself. Increased consciousness won't "solve" your social anxiety. It will probably help you work though it though. By become more aware of your emotions you will be able to see social anxiety as a natural feeling that simply exists in your experience, rather than a force which completely prevents you from talking to strangers. The only real way to solve social anxiety is to find some good friends that you feel comfortable and accepted around, and also face your fears by talking to strangers. If you are having trouble with motivation, start small. You clearly WANT to increase your consciousness, you just don't have the discipline to do so because your mind is too messy. It's a mistake to want to go and start doing 2 hours a day right at the beginning because you will inevitably give up before a week has passed even if you are already starting to see results. Start with 2 20 minute sessions each day, and just do that for 2 weeks or a month. If you feel so excited about it that you want to do more, spend that energy doing something else like getting work done, exercising, or whatever. Meditation is very effective at calming the mind and after a little while you will be more able to discipline yourself because to a calm mind discipline comes naturally.

@ChrisZoZo True. I definitely only do it moderation (< once per month). It doesn't have psychedelic effects otherwise.

Here are some things I wrote down after a spiritual awakening I had on weed. It has been slightly edited to be more coherent and some extra things have been inserted to explain the thoughts. Extra thoughts will be marked with {}. God is actually the ultimate good and the universe as it is is actually perfect. You just can't see that because you are looking from the perspective of a human. {You are God but you are pretending you are a human}. When you awaken you start looking form the perspective of God. God is speaking directly through all spiritual masters. All spiritual masters sufficiently awakened will all be God speaking through them. This is because they are all speaking from the perspective of god. This is how Fred Davis can know through {your own} words if you are awakened. He is just recognizing himself. God evades all concepts. Only when you can transcend your ego and look from the perspective of God can you truly understand the nature of God. It is always god doing the human, and never the other way around. The nature of the universe and the physics of it are not at all related to consciousness, it's just consciousness is imagining the best possible dream. Because it is the only dream. {The fact the universe is the way it is right now makes it the best possible universe, and that's the only way it can possibly be.} You weren't born, you won't die, you are eternal. You don't go anywhere when you die because you don't exist. You are just the light coming from a TV, but even less material than light. "You are that" {A commonly uttered phrase by certain spiritual teachers}, what an unhelpful phrase. It won't help you wake up but it instills faith when your spiritual journey reaches a critical point and you awaken. Faith is the realization that other masters are more awake than you, and doing what they say because you can see God in them. Faith is trust in your spiritual teacher. Trust that God would say {what the teacher said} if he was fully awake. God wants so badly to wake up. Therefore a spiritual master will lure anyone partially awake like a magnet. You are not God, you are God. Both completely correct, just different ways of saying the same thing. {Talking about Islam now} When Mohamed made these crazy and ridiculous rules {Misogynistic and archaic recommendations for living}, he was just awakened and trying to explain things and make people do what would bring them closer to God. But Mohamed was unwise {He lived during an earlier time in the history of civilization} and the methods he gave to become closer to God are very flawed. Being the people we are today, more evolved {societally speaking}, we can see that the way of life of fundamental Muslims is wrong and nonproductive in many ways. The praying is good, bug not the misogyny. The worshiping God thing might actually bring us closer to God, but there may be more efficient ways. We kind of have to decide who we follow and how we go about that by deciding what teacher to follow. If we follow the Christian path, you will reach God in the second person, if you go the Buddhist path, you will reach God in the first person. I need to read ken Wilbur again to see which one is more correct, if either. Also they are both correct totally. They are not over-simplifications. Yes the bible is the word of god, but that was God speaking through ancient people. They were less evolved when it came to their thinking (not their genes). God has something different to say now that he is speaking through modern humans. He will say some things that agree with his past self and some that will contradict, but both are him saying it. Those that do not have the God realization, you didn't quite get there yet. Keep following who your favorite spiritual teacher is and do what they say. There is an unlimited amount you can awaken I think. If you think there's a limit it's because you haven't awakened enough.

When we're talking about raising consciousness, the practices you have listed would definitely work. Any practice where you are observing some part of your experience closely is effective. The most straightforward and most effective practice is meditation though. It would do you well to simply meditate for 2 hours a day. Your progress will speak for itself even after only 2 weeks or so. I would recommend reading some books or watching some you tube videos which detail what you will probably experience as your consciousness increases, so that you can gain more confidence in your practice as you see these predictions come to fruition.

@fopylo First of all, the book "Mastery" by George Leonard inspired me greatly. I saw with great clarity that if there was anything I wanted in life, it was to build a skillset that allows me to improve every day, contribute to society, and easily enter states of flow or deep work. I basically, many different times, sometimes using a journal and sometimes not, wondered "What is the best life I can imagine for myself that even has the slightest chance of being possible". I also have given myself a chance to try many different things throughout my college education that I have even a passing interest in. This has allowed me to observe how I preform in different settings and whether I like them or not. I have also tried on a plethora of different habits or techniques to see how I like them and what I have has worked the best so far. Mostly, I think for anyone who wants to make a good life vision, I think it is important to be curious about who you are, and carefully think about who you want to be. I think just doing this over a long period of time is how you develop a life vision that you like and are willing to work hard to achieve.

Personally, I write down my vision in my journal every day. It's part of my morning routine. I like your extensive list, but I try to keep my vision simple because it makes it easier for me to focus on. I often find that trying to create some grand plan for my life is not that useful when it comes to taking practical steps to achieve my vision. Instead, I try to focus on being consistent with habits that I know will get me to where I want to go. I keep a calendar and every day I make 4 quadrants in the box for that day. I have one quadrant each for meditation, exercise, reading, and skills development. I try to fill out all 4 quadrants every day with some kind of progress. So when I'm journaling about my vision I write down my 4 main goals and why I want to achieve them: I want to master physics so I can understand the world deeply, create new theories of my own, satisfy my curiosity, become smart, and be a master at something. I want to become very physically fit so that I look good, feel healthy, and have good cognitive health into old age. I want to feel comfortable in my body. I want to meditate often and become very conscious so I can have good mental health, have good self control, focus, and memory, and understand myself and reality better. I want to become a machine learning engineer so I can be on the forefront of technological development, have a job that gives me lots of freedom, pays well, and is something that I am passionate about. These goals may not seem all that ambitious or glamorous, but I have considered these for a LONG time. I am quite sure that these are the best goals for me right now. There are obviously a lot of details to sort out when it comes to achieving them, but I think that just reminding myself of them every day is a big step. It makes me remember to live my life on purpose and be cognizant of the future.

Are you a frequent user of psychedelics? This could be hyper charging the pattern recognition portion of your brain! Anyway, I wouldn't get to worried about it. You may want to get into physics or mathematics if your brain is this hyper analytical. It could bring you a lot of joy. https://www.susanrigetti.com/math

This video could help you with the people pleasing an inability to express yourself in the face of others. Also, maybe try finding some friends that you feel very comfortable around? I understand this could be quite difficult if you are autistic, but I'd bet it's not impossible. I think the best thing you can do for yourself is focus on accepting yourself and loving yourself more. Things that helped me with this have been: developing friendships, self help in general, meditation, journaling, working on myself, and psychedelics. Journaling especially can help with thought loops. You might also venture to try therapy if that option is available to you. Perhaps you could try this exercise: When you think of something which you think others will not accept, write it down that opinion in its fullest form. Then, later, you can read that thought out loud by yourself. Then, you can read it to others. This might help you have more confidence in what you are saying and get you more used to expressing yourself. It is a high virtue to be vulnerable around others, and risk making yourself look stupid. To be scared to say something and say it anyway is perhaps the best way to develop more confidence in conversation. Let me know what you think of these suggestions!