Edvard

Guys, the positions or opinions of people are not what determines the stages, rather it's probably better to look at the assumptions and worldviews behind the positions when looking at where people are at (although not even that is definitive in many cases), if there's gonna be any use for this model. Nitpicking certain phrases and isolated opinions of people, like of Obama, is counterproductive and feeds delusion in regards to a model. When you say; "oh, Obama says this, so he must be that", it is simply because you have a different opinion than him, or a different understanding on an issue. And maybe it is because you have different assumptions related to the stages, and maybe it's because Obama is a system thinker, and maybe you are not. Who knows? (BTW, I'm not an Obama worshiper, agreeing with everything he says, but he was brought up here) I recommend this one, BTW:

So you say it's necessary to have every stage, but at the same time you label anyone who believes in certain aspects of a certain stage to be less developed, given that you say I must be Blue because I don't think someone needs to be "less developed" (than say Orange or Green) just because they may want to die for a cause. Every stage is right in some sense, which kind of leads to the logical conclusion that it makes sense to adopt certain characteristic views of all those stages without necessarily being at that stage.

If you read that I said I have been secular minded and liking Obama my entire youth.. how can I be Blue? I understand it if you treat SD as an ideology, where my ideas about one subject doesn't fit your understanding of the model. Sadhguru doesn't just respect the military for politeness, he sees the value in what they are doing. Btw., pacifism, according to the Dutch site Leo gave credit to in his video, is typical for Green. Not Yellow, not Turqoise.

I'm not sure, but I find it hard to believe I'm anything below green, going by the model. I liked Obama, and has always been on the secular, liberal spectrum of thinking throughout my youth, while I would say changing quite a bit the last 2-3 years in the way I see things, identifying less with secularism and liberalism, but still preferring that over conservatism. I could have aspects of different stages, and I'm not sure exactly how accurate SD is, although I certainly can recognize a lot of aspects of it, and no doubt, there is an evolution going on.

I don't agree with that. We all have beliefs, but the thing about Blue, if we go by the model, is that it identifies with the beliefs and hold them as absolute truths, ie. handed down by a personal god, or similar. You can still believe your nation is good and worth protecting, and seeing the value in contributing to that, being willing to sacrifice your life for people because you also can count on others to do the same for you, and for there at all to exist a nation where people can thrive. Protecting the nation also protects your right to go to school, to practice yoga, to speak freely. We count on other people, and are better off in a society where we share this burden of protecting values that we share. Not necessarily through military, but that's an important part of it.

Yeah, and my point was also that maybe you may wanna risk your life for the nation as orange, yellow, coral, etc. This is not exclusively blue. I can tell you one thing for sure. There are not only blue people in the military, especially not these days, in developed countries.

Good thing blue people exist then. Or maybe it's not exclusively blue. I'm not saying you necessarily are saying that.

To me you seem to be conflating "level of development" with how informed a person is, or how he interprets information. My view of Trump could be a lack of information simply. You don't know what Trump thinks, but maybe you understand politics better (or having more info), IDK. He is pragmatic, and he is not stupid. And I said he doesn't seem like yellow, and probably isn't. My head was certainly concerned about him for a while (because every person I respected despised him, like i.e. Sam Harris and Secular Talk), and I would probably vote for Hillary if I was a US citizen, but there was also a lot of truth in what he was saying, although applied to a certain portion of the population that thought a certain way. Trump exploited their situation, and no one else seemed to understand it, seeing Trump winning. How do you explain that? He obviously saw something the liberals didn't. BTW, my personality is very far from Trump's, but I know that there is no right or wrong personality, and Trump's could have its benefits. He is acting in response to his environment. And as I said, he may be Red/Orange. You just sound like a fundamentalist when you say that somebody would absolutely act "this" if they were "that". You could be right in the sense that Trump is not ideological, which makes red, orange and yellow open. But he does get along with people, even enemies of the US, and that takes an open mind, not a closed and wild one. On a personal level he also gets along with Obama, calling him "a very good man", which a typical Red person probably never would do... My suggestion or theory is that he is a mix of both red, orange and yellow, but that's a very open one. You also said that Trump and Kim may be Turqoise acting like Red, but maybe that was a joke. So what stage do you think I'm at? You should be able to see that now, who claim to be strongly yellow? My take on your level is Green tapping into Yellow. But that's just based on my understanding of SD.

Any information would have the potential to change my views in certain direction, that's why I keep an open mind with such a huge lack of info. Do you have all the info about Trump, not to mention especially the way he thinks? What do you know about politics that makes this clear for you?

@Leo Gura When it comes to Trump, in example... While I think he probably is far from yellow, I can't really rule it out, because when it comes to US politics, there are so many factors, and Trump probably knows more about them than me. It's also hard to know whether his behavior was actually necessary for winning the election and to keep his support, but wanting to be president because he saw something coming as a result of the elitists continuing having power. All it makes sense to evaluate him on are the things that he is actually thinking. I disagree with him on climate change, but I actually do think he may believe in global warming. But sometimes I don't think he does anyway. I'm just very uncertain when it comes to Trump, he is very confusing to me. As a person, I don't really think he seems bad at all. He's funny and has an unconventional way of talking. In some sense he is refreshing. You can't really compare him with typical red personal traits. His eyes aren't lit up of ignorance in the way the Neo-nazi's are. Then again, maybe he is a disaster... but then again, most people who critizise him were almost fundamentalists in regards to dismissing the mere possibility of him winning the election... so many of the liberals have been wrong about him on so much. And also, he is in fact quite right about the media... they do often ignore important aspects of situations when critizising him, especially during the election. Given that too, it's hard to make up a decent picture of situations given the amount of fake news... because to some extend that is a real thing on both CNN and FOX. But sometimes it suddenly comes a news story that makes me think; - Oh, maybe Leo is right in that he is red anyway... but maybe I just didn't understand the full reasoning behind his behavior.

@Leo Gura When you talk about someone being a mix between different stages, I would point out that that could at certain times (not always of course) indicate that they are actually yellow or beyond, given that all stages have elements of useful traits, something that yellow sees.

@Cudin Yeah, that too, and it's very related to this... but also the idea that a «nonmaterial» «decision» can make body parts move is also beyond words mindfucking.

Something weird strucked me today, right now. I'm sitting on my bed with albows on my thighs, totally paralyzed, because I realized that I don't know how to do anything. How do I stand up? I can just make a «decision» to stand up, and then it just happens... that's magic man... there's no way I can explain it. Do the thoughts determine it? Probably not, but the thoughts could be a basis for making the decision to stand up, after evaluating certain outcomes. But then what ultimately makes it happen? I decide... and it happens... but how is this decision defined? And how does it happen? Is it that the body is the mind, and the decision is part of the dream, and really illusory? How do I make the decision to change my life? I have all these thoughts saying this and that, a lot of noise, but then I could make an intellectual decision, but THEN I also have to evaluate whether it's worth the effort to get up. And maybe I bite the bullet and eventually get up, but having no idea how I did it, and then I did it without even knowing how to do it... how is that possible? I guess it's possible in a dream. Consciousness can produce it... but then again, we also wanna be practicle. How do I get up?

Right, but how could this be applied to be better at taking action? Maybe there is no simple answer. Maybe it's just supposed to be a struggle in order ro achieve things. Or just training the mind to make less noise..

Sam Harris isn't an atheist, he just sometimes accept having that label for practical reasons and the associations the word «god» has. It's just a word. God would be the source of creation, but God has traditionally in culture for most people meant a personal figure in the sky, and in that sense he is an atheist, and so is you I guess...

- Eckhart Tolle He goes on: «Nothing is simply denial. But no thing means there's a presence there, but it has no form. Nothing that you can grasp. There is no shape and no thought and no name. The ancient Chinese call it the Dao; which cannot be named. (...) The Dao that can be named or spoken of is not the true Dao.» From (About 31 mins in)

I.e. many Christians don't want stem cell research, Muslims don't have that problem. Why? Because the Bible says life begins at conception, while the Koran says it happens some time later (I think couple of months). Advertising the killing of infidels is a really bad metaphor if killing infidels is viewed as a bad thing.

If there is only one truth, then surely no religion can be The Truth. Which means that there are differences between them. For a fundamentalist the fundament matters, how the different holy books are written matters. For people who value the Koran, different behaviour will result depending of how committed the person is to what the text says. Religion is really ideas for how to live life, and how the books are set up matters. So, the Koran is not the Bible and vice versa. Jesus is not Mohammed. Who you idolize matter. Beliefs matter. It's not just the same.

Felt like sharing some thoughts. What other reason can there possibly be to do life purpose than to get sex? At the bottom of it, what else could be the underlying reason? It's all ego, which is not even true because ego is non-ego. It is what it is, we're just surpressing it - and that's kind of the problem. We want sex, but do we? If it wasn't, selling tomatoes would be perfect. Eckhart Tolle would be fine with that. He said he wanted to do it if he didn't succeed as a writer. But also, after hearing about coral and «being cognition», it's again about meeting you authentic biological needs, it seems. The idea that a biological creature is here to respond to its environment. The funny thing is that the same goes in a different way for red, orange and yellow as well, while blue, green and turquise is again wanting to distance from this survival-, «meeting my needs» -pattern. So one would imagine the same goes after coral. So then what is this game in the end? (I am by no means overly educated in spiral dynamics) The paradoxical nature of life seems to be that when the ultimate reason we tend to regard porn as unbeneficial, is because it's distracting you from achieving a life where you will get laid. Haha. I mean, what else? Of course you could include fulfillment, passion, etc... but why do we have passion, and why do we strive for fulfillment? Maybe it's because it makes us think that there is another purpose than to survive and reproduce? That it's an evolutionary resonse to us guilting ourselves for the underlying goal of chasing sex, so we trick ourselves into thinking there is another reason, like passion, curiosity and fulfillment. Or religion. Life is still a puzzle though, and it's very complicated. Might as well try to figure it all out, so we try enlightenment. But why chase enlightenment? Hmm... because that's the true path to become happy, but problem is, we don't really want to be happy -- we want sex... so we easily chase enlightenment with that in mind, even when we think we are not, because part of succeeding in life is being right about things, so one may think that pursuing Truth must definitely be right... and special... and fulfilling... and in extremely subtle ways, honorable... that's why it's so hard. And we trick ourselves all the time. But we're already enlightened, and yet we may even know this conceptually, but still suffer.

Things still arise in consciousness, and one thing that arises is death of a life that yes the mind has come up with, and that may be due to the condition of the mind from a previous life, perhaps, but this is the question. Duality is what makes life life, even if it's ultimatelity nondual. The mind generates dualities, like life and death. The mechanism behind this generation is still a mystery, partly because yes, there is no self, there is no you in control as an ultimate planner, it's just consciousness expressing itself. This is how I see it at this point, which I think is important to say, and given that you have changed your mind on things you have seemingly presented as knowing absolutely, what about actually admitting that you don't really know? You are speaking from the human mind, and also thinking and interpreting with the human mind.

The way I see it is that life comes as a package, really. The experiences plays themselves out, and just be with it, accept that what comes up comes up. When you die, then that is part of the package. This one moment will still be there, though. What on one level could make it scary is that it's unknown, but so is everything in life, ultimately. This moment is all you have. But the content of this moment dies instantly. Nothing is permanent, except for the Now. We get born and reborn every day, week, year, and life.

Right. It's probably true it comes a lot down to that pyramid. It's a little like, I kind of see it behind the horizon that if I got to the point your talking about, with sex all day and money, it would be boring and it's not the be all end all. But then you self-actualize... for some reason though.... so the question becomes, what is that reason? I think this depends a lot. I mean, at some point one sees that you can do whatever you want with your life, and also what happens happens, what is is, and you just get this drive to do good things and be kind to the world, and you do these things as a natural bi-product of just being. Now, does this have something to do with evolution, is there a certain gene that makes us become like this? There certainly seems to be a psychological evolution leading to more of what we would call kindness and compassion, not to mention "cosmic thinking" as Sadhguru puts it, saying it's very important that intelligence is combinded with having "cosmic identity", or something similar to that. So, like, one thing seems true when I ponder it a little more. Humans have indeed evolved the capacity to think and conceptualize, to reason, and we evolved that for the purposes of survival and reproduction, but now that we have that capacity, it seems we indeed can go away from that process using our thinking to understand that what matters is happiness or being at peace, or at least understand how meaningless our suffering is, and what generates it, if we manage to be honest, which indeed is hard given our evolutionary baggage. And who knows whether there is some divine plan to this or not. In some sense it has to be, we are God in a sense after all, although I can't understand God by thinking with the human mind I put myself in the perspective of, or whatever I did... I don't think I even had a choice in creating the universe. It's getting deeper..

Well, why care about human suffering then? If we are going to design a morality based on suffering, what matters is not who or what the sufferer is. Why should we care about humans if we don't care about rats, from a holistic and consistent moral perspective? I liked the post. And I laughed of the suggestion of taking it to the vet. Imagine the vet's look when someone comes in with a rat that was found. Makes you think about what morality to humans actually is... With that said, you may also have a point - which is inevitable given that morality is concept.

But God could still invent time? It experiences itself through different perspectives and could design any purpose it wants, also beyond each individual perspective, I could imagine. There's so much we don't know, I think. I'm not sure if an enlightenment experience can make you know everything about the mind of God. Then, why is it that Leo's life is unfolding right now? Why not as Edvard? There are only two (slash, three) options for this; either it's a coincidence, or it has a larger purpose, or it is part of a larger «process». I'm starting to think a little about this. Life is just so mysterious. Even after enlightenment - I guess that's when you really start to realize and appreciate how mysterious it is. As human, I don't really know anything, and I can't even know that... maybe I'm deluding myself in saying that I don't know anything - I don't know...

Now the real question begins; is it in the interest of God for less cows to be killed? Is there some goal, higher purpose, or order in the myriad of infinite «dreams» that God experiences itself through? That's an interesting one. Maybe, just maybe, God has set it up so that it experiences itself throughout history of a specific mankind at a time, and now it concentrates on this one, on Earth, so that I will be reborn into the same Earth in the next life, so that the actions I took in my previous lives will affect the reality of the next one. Just a wild theory, but not any wilder than the imagination God had to dream the dream it's already dreaming today.