Difference between awakening and turquoise?

[electroBeam]

I've read the books and looked up Leo's twisted definition of turquoise, and I'm still very confused on the differences between awakening and turquoise.

You guys conflate the 2 a lot. Its almost impossible to tell the 2 apart. 

Based on traditional spiral dynamics literature, turquoise models a sociological (not psychological) value system which stands out from the rest on the value of holism. Its extremely large picture. You see the value and how everything connects together on an intuitive level. It differentiates itself from yellow in that its intuitive. You don't get lost in the mind, you feel how things are connected. The other difference is in yellow you primarily view things through hierarchies, structures, etc. How things are different to each other. In turquoise, the emphasis is in the connectedness, or how everything relates as one thing. 

Awakening, is when the matrix collapses. Its when the thing under the matrix (Love, Bliss, Wisdom) is revealed to you. Its when you see this entire thing as made of imagination or 'pixie, magical dust' instead of atoms. Its the deconstruction of ego and the world. Turquoise is about understanding the matrix, but not going beyond it. 

Awakening happens at all stages of the spiral, and doesn't correlate to different stages. 

Lastly, spiral dynamics was made by academics. So any reference to mysticism or supernatural stuff, or siddhis, etc. Was an invention leo made and stuck it on turquoise. There is no mysticism or eastern philosophy in the original spiral dynamics model.

So as far as my understanding is concerned, you could be turquoise, yet as enlightened as Trump. I don't see any correlation at all to being turquoise, and being mystical. Mysticism is way beyond and on a completely different plane to spiral dynamics. And spiral wizardry isn't that useful to spiritual work anyway. Its only really applicable for getting groups of people cooperating together effectively. In terms of being happy, leave that up to eastern philosophy. 

So why do people here talk about turquoise and enlightenment, mystical and supernatural stuff so much? Why did Leo emphasise lots of supernatural and mystical stuff in turquoise when its got nothing to do with turquoise? Most supernatural people are purple btw. And green people like reiki healers. No where near turquoise. 

[Artsu]

Ascending up the spiral is a spiritual process. That is why spiritual people ascend higher.

Some stuff you said was good but you form some faulty conclusions.

[australia1]

It's just a model. It doesn't actually 'exist'. Obviously Leo interpreted stage Turquoise differently to those who made the model (hence why they made him take the video down I think). 

I'm sure if someone has a specific sort of awakening it would enable them to connect the dots in a much more big-picture way. So it makes sense as to why people would correlate Turquoise with awakening. 

But yeah Leo has said as well that people in stage purple can have awakening experiences and that they aren't one in the same. But in a society of mostly stage orange, green and some yellow people, I'm sure an awakening experience would definitely lead to jumping up the spiral. 

Wouldn't you agree?

[Fadl]

Turquoise: you know how to explain God to other people.

Awakening: you know God.

[electroBeam]

50 minutes ago, australia1 said:

I'm sure an awakening experience would definitely lead to jumping up the spiral. 

Wouldn't you agree?

Nope. You can be an enlightened tarzan, but still a tarzan. 

Plenty of shamans way more awake than Leo out there, yet barely above purple. 

Zen enlightened masters that believe women can't enlighten.

And then there's my personal XP. Many many many many many many mystical experiences and awakenings yet still as blue as a pair of balls being squeezed by the rock.

And the spiritual teachings I resonate with the most are extremely advanced, but very blue. Yet they are so advanced that the spiral doesn't even matter. Its a spec compared to infinity.

And people actually change colour based on their environment. Chinese international students are blue in China, they come over to a democratic nation and start cheering to free the nipple...

37 minutes ago, Fadl said:

Turquoise: you know how to explain God to other people.

Awakening: you know God.

Love it, thats a nice way to put it. 

[Rilles]

59 minutes ago, Fadl said:

Turquoise: you know how to explain God to other people.

Awakening: you know God.

Lol, I can ape that easily, doesnt mean I know what God means. 

[Fadl]

1 hour ago, Rilles said:

Lol, I can ape that easily, doesnt mean I know what God means. 

Everybody is trying to ape it my friend.

[hyruga]

Why care so much whether it's turquoise or awakened?

 

Edited August 11, 2020 by hyruga

[ToriVictoria]

I have seen awakened people in many stages, but perhaps at certain colors the awakenedness doesn't last 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Do you knt what I mean?

I think that as we enter into a bit of yellow and turquoise, we are able to fully experience the flow of enlightenment and feeling of being awake and detached from our ego, without fear etc ... for hours at a time.   In other words, BLISS.

I see a lot of turmoil in those struggling to exit blue and exit green.  Do you guys see this, or is that just my perception due to my cultural backqround and experiences?

I feel that I have some developing turquoise, and I enjoy the concepts of magic, astrology, energy healing...   I don't get caught up in in though, yet I understand there is a lot of science behind ancient rituals and magic, that we do not understand.  

Being Turquoise to me means that I don't HAVE TO KNOW and UNDERSTAND everything, but I am not turning to blind faith... I just KNOW and I feel bliss, don't judge myself or others, and don't compete to produce the most, get spiritual the fastest, be the wisest, be the best... I just BE ME!   I have my moments where I feel overwhelmed by the world, sad, confused... but I am not totally Turquoise... I do have probably a bit of blue, orange, green in some areas... as we all do

[Vittorio]

4 hours ago, electroBeam said:

Nope. You can be an enlightened tarzan, but still a tarzan. 

Plenty of shamans way more awake than Leo out there, yet barely above purple. 

Zen enlightened masters that believe women can't enlighten.

And then there's my personal XP. Many many many many many many mystical experiences and awakenings yet still as blue as a pair of balls being squeezed by the rock.

And the spiritual teachings I resonate with the most are extremely advanced, but very blue. Yet they are so advanced that the spiral doesn't even matter. Its a spec compared to infinity.

And people actually change colour based on their environment. Chinese international students are blue in China, they come over to a democratic nation and start cheering to free the nipple...

Love it, thats a nice way to put it. 

There are different degrees of enlightenment. Enlightenment itself is just a label 

[integral]

Integral theory covers this, the difference between waking up (states) and growing up (stages).

Edited August 11, 2020 by integral

[Leo Gura]

@electroBeam You make valid points. In retrospect, I did conflate them and I might re-shoot the Turquoise video to correct for that.

At the time of shooting, I felt that ultimately we have to push towards nondual and mystical understanding, which requires leaving behind the Spiral model.

Basically once you get to Yellow+, you should start seriously getting into nonduality and mysticism and transcend all models. Spiral Dynamics cannot give us the deepest levels of understanding and development that we seek. So I was trying to bridge that gap.

Ken Wilber's model is actually better.

The problem with Spiral Dynamics is that the people who invented it and teach it are not themselves awakened or mystical. This severely limits their understanding of human development. Ken Wilber has corrected for that.

[Akemrelax]

Leo has mentioned that Enlightenment is NOT stage turquoise in his videos. This was clear to me from the start. I’m sure you missed something.

 

 

 

 

 

@Leo Gura I thought you made that distinction clear. You could be enlightened but be at stage blue or any other stage. Turquoise is intuitive whereas yellow is left-brained lost in the mind. 

[Leo Gura]

@Akemrelax Of course I made that distinction clear. But there is a further issue/question of how much genuine mystical understanding is present at Turquoise according to the official Spiral Dynamics narrative.

It seems to be possible to be at Turquoise while mystically/spiritually clueless. And my explanation didn't account for such a travesty.

Part of the problem is that we have so few Turquoise examples to analyze and the official narrative is not very clear as to where genuine mystical insight and nondual understanding falls on the model.

The deeper question is: What does spirituality look like at Yellow and Turquoise?

[Max_V]

@Leo Gura Do you think there is overlap in the chakra system and SD? For example, Stage Yellow spirituality would be more manifested and centered in the third-eye, and Stage Turquoise spirituality moves towards crown, etc. 

[Leo Gura]

39 minutes ago, Max_V said:

@Leo Gura Do you think there is overlap in the chakra system and SD? For example, Stage Yellow spirituality would be more manifested and centered in the third-eye, and Stage Turquoise spirituality moves towards crown, etc. 

No

We have to be careful not to muddle things up. They are very different systems.

[Max_V]

@Leo Gura I see.

It is so apparent to me though, that certain stages on the spiral have very specific places where their energy and internal focus fixates. Do you negate that completely? 

[electroBeam]

4 hours ago, Akemrelax said:

Leo has mentioned that Enlightenment is NOT stage turquoise in his videos. This was clear to me from the start. I’m sure you missed something.

I was making a point from a holistic standpoint. Not based on some 1 liner Leo said for a couple of seconds in a 2 hour long video. Don't take things so literally. 

I'm not attacking Leo, my question was to further understand where Leo was getting at with mysticism and spiral dynamics. 

If you actually watch the video, and actually look at his post in the turquoise mega thread, 60% of turquoise according to him is highly related to mysticism. Non dual experiences, paranormal phenomena, etc. Stuff which the original model doesn't talk about. And even if Leo doesn't conflate the 2, his fanbase definitely does, and I take the general collective perception of his fanbase into account, along with what he says personally, because it derives more implicit understanding about what spiral dynamics is, and how it affects behaviour on a collective level. 

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@electroBeam You make valid points. In retrospect, I did conflate them and I might re-shoot the Turquoise video to correct for that.

At the time of shooting, I felt that ultimately we have to push towards nondual and mystical understanding, which requires leaving behind the Spiral model.

Basically once you get to Yellow+, you should start seriously getting into nonduality and mysticism and transcend all models. Spiral Dynamics cannot give us the deepest levels of understanding and development that we seek. So I was trying to bridge that gap.

Ken Wilber's model is actually better.

The problem with Spiral Dynamics is that the people who invented it and teach it are not themselves awakened or mystical. This severely limits their understanding of human development. Ken Wilber has corrected for that.

Making a wider point that spiral dynamics is meant to be dropped around tier 2. Gotcha. How did I miss integral theory, only looked at it briefly but it aligns very well with my experience. That's a model I have to study. 

I'm curious about the paradox of the non linear and linear aspects of waking up in relation to the spiral. You're implying that once you get above a certain stage, waking up starts to ramp up in intensity: so a linear progression from growing up to waking up. Yet there is also a non linear aspect, because you can wake up at any time on the spiral. Once you experience timelessness, this point becomes interesting. 

And what's interesting is, spiral dynamics is a great predictor for how worldviews work on a worldly level from a particular perspective, but then completely breaks down from another perspective. And its both a great predictor for how things work, and completely breaks down, simultaneously. 

For example, spiral dynamics makes complete sense for how stage blue societies worked in India. From a worldly perspective. Yet if you read stories about how enlightened beings (tantra in particular) behaved. Their behaviour is completely undefined from the spiral, for example the story of Padmasambhava. And if you've got any experience with enlightenment, you actually understand and have lived the perspective of enlightened beings like Padmasambhava (once you experience eternity, immortality, no ego, timelessness, etc) And seeing those 2 perspectives (SD and enlightenment perspective) work simultaneously is interesting. 

Anyway, I'm just being a nerd. This stuff isn't practical or important for most people. 

Edited August 11, 2020 by electroBeam

[Leo Gura]

@electroBeam As I said elsewhere, Spiral Dynamics does not model mysticism. So when you start applying it to Jesus and Buddha it won't make much sense. Spiral Dynamics sort of assumes as a baseline states of consciousness which are roughly material.

If you do a lifetime of yoga or psychedelics it will all fly apart, at least while you're in those higher states.

[electroBeam]

4 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@electroBeam As I said elsewhere, Spiral Dynamics does not model mysticism. So when you start applying it to Jesus and Buddha it won't make much sense. Spiral Dynamics sort of assumes as a baseline states of consciousness which are roughly material.

If you do a lifetime of yoga or psychedelics it will all fly apart, at least while you're in those higher states.

But what if you were trying to analyse Jesus's values for a school assignment. And completely forget about the mysticism aspects of him (or completely deny them if you're an academic). 

He must have some values right? There must be some sort of SD conclusion you can project with some accuracy or conviction?

Or maybe not. Maybe where you peg Jesus actually depends on your level of development. If you're the pope, you peg him at blue, if you're more awake, you peg him at a different point in the spiral because you recognise the more mystical aspects of him.

Oh right maybe that's what you mean by SD assumes everyone is at a particular baseline of consciousness.