Hero of Time

Is there an orange spirituality? You said there isn’t any leapfrogging over stages. So if I’m leaving the predominately blue ideas about life, I need to actualize at a healthy version of orange before I get to move on to green, etc. My biggest resistance to orange is that it is presented as anti-spiritual. So if I need to go through orange, I want to hang onto my spirituality. Hence: is there an orange spirituality? Or is spirituality incompatible with orange?

Oh yes, very much so. I understand that I tend to look down on the stages below us, and fear the stages above me. I would hope that what I fear in orange is what is unhealthy about it. I would hope that what I desire in orange is what is healthy about it but I haven’t manifested yet.

@bejapuskas I tried to associate the thought process with a spiral dynamic stage. So, orange text is coming from a primarily orange thought pattern, green from green, red from red, yellow from yellow. It’s not entirely accurate, of course. One paragraph could very well be orange AND green.

LOL, I JUST pulled that video up, @Colin.

I am currently reading Make Time by Jake Knaap and John Zeratsky, and when I’m done your book recommendation, @Colin, looks wonderfully delightful. Thank you for the share! Because of my heavily blue upbringing, science has been something I haven’t looked upon with a great deal of positivity. Science is the servant of the blue document (the Bible for me, raised in the Bible belt). Meditation has been very helpful for me as well, and knowing your book recommend has an orange-accessible meditation practice sounds promising. And you have a gamer brain? OK, sign me up. This sounds great. I’ve been finding I enjoy reading the paper version of books more than anything lately, why do you like the audio version so much?

Right now, I want to find an authentic spirituality inside orange. Much of what is holding me back has been blue thinking about God and the devil. They are not “out there,” they are impulses inside me. @Leo Gura talked about how I am the devil, and it follows that I am also God. This is a blue-shattering realization. A belief that has been holding me back is that I can try a certain amount in my life to improve it, but then I rely on praying to an external God to pick up the slack where I left it. This belief needs to go. I am not giving orange a genuine go, and it has led to a laziness in my life that has me stuck in a loop of mediocre attempts at something valuable, failing at it, and then blaming the results on bad luck, or being cursed, or whatever else Jung talks about where our subconscious thoughts appear in our lives as fate. Here are the thoughts that led up to this realization, and I colored them according to the spiral dynamic stage I’m speculating they are coming from. === I am at peace because I truly believe that every stage has value, so wherever I truly am in the spiral, that’s OK. This is not a contest with other people. But I am at unrest because I know I can work towards a better future tomorrow, starting with comparing myself to who I was yesterday, not who someone else is today. I am at peace because I know that everyone is on this journey, and my part in the whole is to focus first on sorting myself out, learning where I am making mistakes, and working each day to correct wrong thinking and introduce good behavior that doesn’t simply affect me, but affects others positively. I do not stand alone; what I do has an impact on the whole. But I am at unrest because my spirituality has been very blue and I’m realizing that I haven’t actualized beyond a stage blue in terms of how I approach the world, practically. It is a profound thought to me right now that I can look intently at the mistakes I’m making in my life and not feel that I myself am a mistake, that I am being punished because I’m breaking the rules of the dogma of the spirituality I was raised with. The mistakes I make reflect wrong ACTIVITY, not wrong IDENTITY. I am at peace because in time, I will travel up the stages when I have properly manifested at my current stage, so do not rush to skip stages. I do not need to fear stage green even if I want to actualize at yellow. I think the truth is that while some parts of my thinking have transcended beyond orange, I am emerging from a worn out blue into a useful orange. But part of me thinks that I should be higher than this, better than this. But then I remember that we are all trying to climb higher, and we are at our best when we are all working towards a better future for ourselves, which makes a better future for all of us. So, let’s just start with the idea that you can improve your life a little today by comparing it to what you did yesterday, and not beating yourself up for the failures you make. You will make mistakes, and it’s only by looking at them accurately that you can change and develop. And we really must stop using prayer as asking a God out there to magically make my efforts more effective. That has created a laziness in us to where we think we can do minimal efforts to produce change, but we are falling short and wasting opportunities that could actually change our circumstances. Shouldn’t I be more advanced than this? Patience. You’ll get to the next stages in time. Let’s just focus on getting to a healthy orange. Love yourself, improve yourself, recognize that as you improve yourself it will positively affect those you love, and the theory is that it’ll keep extending to even bless your enemies. You’ll eventually find that green is going to be appealing to you, and you’ll figure out a way to become a healthy green, too. One day at a time, my friend.

Today’s popular psychology seems very good at legitimizing a victim mentality. Jung got me started on shadow work via Jordan Peterson. These two videos were the strongest catalyst in my journey. One from Leo, one quoting Jung. Fair warning, the Jung one can be terrifying if it really lands on you.

Wow. What a colliding of zones! Fantastic example. Makes me want to consider one day of veggies only.

Last night I was discussing spiral dynamics with a friend who is also listening through @Leo Gura's series on the topic. I made a speculation and wanted to submit it to the group for reflection and criticism. I’m sure I’m very wrong on this, but the idea was too intriguing for me to pass up. In Jungian self-work, an individual must first confront his shadow (the disagreeable aspects of his/her personality) and then his anima (in men) or the animus (in women) before a genuine encounter with the self can occur. When properly integrated, the shadow allows a man to properly integrate his feminine side (anima) and a woman to properly integrate her masculine side (animus). What if a person’s shadow is orange or green, and his anima / her animus is the opposite color? And in order to achieve tier two, you have to integrate both of them? This would mean that I’m currently trying to develop as a man so my shadow contains very warped masculinity I am trying to integrate. These are typically orange traits. Once properly integrated, I will be ready to encounter my feminine side (typically associated with green values). For me, I was raised very blue with mostly blue values and some orange thrown in. I have not integrated a healthy orange yet, and know I need to before trying to integrate into a healthy green (as Leo’s green examples mostly piss me off, LOL)

Listen to / watch Leo’s latest Spiral Dynamics videos. When you’re getting pissed watching, you’re the stage below that one. ?

Saturday, June 30th, 2018 Trying to figure out why when it feels like I’m just starting to get some momentum, I completely self-sabotage myself and lose all resilience to keep going. Before, when I’d fall down, I’d spend a great deal of time lamenting my failures. I want to get back up quickly, I have not responded well to this week. The biggest thing making me unstable is the difficulty of letting go of my ex-wife. Letting go of her and embracing my life without her, with all its responsibilities resting on my own shoulders, has constantly left me feeling paralyzed. I wished it got me motivated, but I just want to disappear. But I’m not dropping off. There’s much ahead of me that I can’t see yet.

I don’t know if there’s a “fix” for this, but new muscles to exercise. Or thought processes to let go of. I’ve been using some EMDR treatment after only becoming aware of this a couple of months ago. I’m also looking into assertiveness. I’m getting close to buying @Leo Gura‘s book list just so I can get that book on spiritual yoga, as I believe I’ve also stored trauma in my body that needs to be released and let go of. so no, I haven’t fixed it. I’m pursuing how to let it go and forgive.

@NoSelfSelf Yes, that’s what the literature indicates. An attachment failure usually occurs around 2-3 years of age if there’s abuse or neglect, and that part of your brain doesn’t develop in lock step with other parts of your brain. And yes, it’s often expressed in values like, “What other people need is more important than what I need,” and “I look to others’ needs to guide how I will life my life.” We are not very connected to our own desires because we don’t trust that our intuition will serve us. We usually think of our intuition as something that gets us into trouble.

Oh my goodness, this and all of this. What a great encouragement!

@Nagma I'm sorry to hear about your experience. It must be very discouraging to be at a time in your life where you feel you ought to have a high degree of optimism, only to be faced with the reality that you don’t have any. I have been helped my a very inexpensive ($29 USD) suite of tools called The Self-Authoring Program. In a couple of hours, it helped me come to terms with some things in my past that many therapy sessions hadn’t uncovered. Perhaps it might help you as well. It was originally designed for college students, so perhaps it might help you?