Authentic Orange Spirituality

[Hero of Time]

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.

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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.

[Colin]

Nice , I dig the colored paragraphs.

A book I read recently that reminds me of stage orange spirituality is Mind Hacking 


It explains concepts you might hear in a more serious spiritual teaching, in a playful, humorous way that uses a lot of science metaphors, as well as science fiction metaphors.

Leo said that meditation is one of the best ways to transcend stages, and this book has a wonderful explanation of concentration meditation, which presents it in a sort of gamified way which speaks to my gamer brain. 

I love this book and I highly recommend the audiobook over the text if you are interested.

[Hero of Time]

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?

[Colin]

It has embellishments, music, guided meditations, he voices some characters, and he speaks like a stand-up comedian.

[Colin]

This is a good summary of the book if you want more info before deciding to read the book
 

 

[Hero of Time]

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

[Colin]

Brian is great 

[bejapuskas]

@Hero of Time  Why did you decide to colour the paragraphs?  

[Hero of Time]

@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.

Edited January 19, 2019 by Hero of Time

[bejapuskas]

@Hero of Time  I see, did you think about distinguishing healthy and unhealthy orange?

[TheAvatarState]

@Hero of Time you seem to be in a very interesting position. You're obviously extremely open minded as you've processed some of Leo'd videos and shattered your blue paradigm. That in itself is life changing!

But let's try to understand why the stages are like they are, and how that applies to you individually. Orange is the ego backlash to stage blue. Orange is denying spirituality all together, and materialism becomes the new religion. Science is only conducted from the materialist paradigm/metaphysics. 

See, I don't get the impression you could buy into that. As a SOCIETY we had to evolve that way (and we'll be moving fully into green soon), but for you specifically, considering your knowledge and resources (Leo and others), you're not materialist. Buying into Orange on the spiritual line of development would probably be regression. You see, spiral dynamics can be applied to many lines of development, and it's normal to be at different stages in different areas. 

For spirituality, as you seem to be a spiritual person, you should look to green. Actually, green is pretty close to blue on the spiritual side, cause remember that the pendulum swings back from orange to community-centered. The major shift you need to make is to change your understanding of God from external (blue) to internal (green+). Shift your focus from prayer to personal development. Shift your focus from a relationship with an external God to your relationship with yourself and others (also you). 

All that being said, there's nothing wrong with science, it's fantastic. But I think you realize there's a lot more to life than that. Cultivate the proper perspective, and see that to orange, science is a religion. The major problem with ANY stage in tier 1 is that they're not aware of their own limits. Practice humility and acceptance of all walks of life, and that will get you far.

[Hero of Time]

1 hour ago, bejapuskas said:

I see, did you think about distinguishing healthy and unhealthy 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]

@Hero of Time Some of the things that for example your orange side is saying sound very helpful to grasp in my opinion  Don't forget, that you can be in different colours in different lines of development. For example, my education line was yellow, but my thinking line was still orange, so I had to meditate more.  

[bejapuskas]

What Eckhart Tolle is describing in this video - thought being trapped in itself - basically happened to me (and many others most likely)  It was mostly caused by this categorizing everything into stages... It became almost useless and also annoying after some time, be careful about that  

[Leo Gura]

@Hero of Time What exactly are you asking?

[Forestluv]

@Hero of Time James Swartz is at a high spiritual level within an Orange framework of reason. 

[Hero of Time]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@Hero of Time What exactly are you asking?

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? 

[Leo Gura]

@Hero of Time Well, firstly you should know that the stuff you were doing at Blue which you call "spirituality" was mostly fantasy, group-think, & egotism, not genuine spirituality. So very little is actually lost by letting all that go aside from your ego taking a beating (which is precisely spiritual!).

Secondly, don't wait to reach some Spiral stage to do genuine spirituality. You can begin it at any time (if you dare).

For example, you could go take a psychedelic tomorrow and experience God in 30 minutes. No need to wait. And that's just one simple example.

And finally, for me stage Orange "spirituality" felt a bit like recognizing the wonders of the universe through science and rationality. This is pretty weak when compared to genuine spirituality, but it can be exciting. Most great scientists become scientists because science is their way of doing spirituality (connecting with the wonder of nature & existence). They just aren't conscious of this yet. If you look at someone like Neil DeGrasse Tyson that's what he's doing every time he speaks publicly: he's scratching his own spiritual itch, via science.

Spirituality is really nothing other than the exploration of yourself, the exploration of the universe, the taking in of nature in a conscious & truthful way. You are God exploring itself. The big problem with stage Blue is that it prevented you from ACTUALLY exploring yourself. Now you are free to go explore and see what can be discovered.

Don't use Spiral Dynamics to limit yourself. You can go straight for Turquoise teachings right now! You might not be able to stomach or understand them, but you also might! So it's worth a shot. You could start doing Kriya yoga tomorrow and see huge shifts in consciousness within 3-6 months. It's not guaranteed, but you won't know till you try.