From Stage Green to Stage Blue: The "New Age" to Jesus Phenomenon

[Aquarianwolf999]

Hi guys! This is my first post on the forum and I wanted to ask you all about something that I've been trying to figure out for a couple of years now.

So back in the beginning of 2020, two of my friends (who I had known since high school and had grown closer to starting in 2017 when our interest in spirituality converged) became born-again Christians out of nowhere and we stopped hanging out. I've spoken with them a few times since and it feels like a mind virus has taken them over. They speak and think like completely different people from who I used to know but I guess that's the point of being "born-again". It had only been a month since I started sharing my thoughts with them about spiral dynamics when they changed. They told me that spiral dynamics was inherently judgemental and that they had found the Truth by surrendering themselves to Jesus.

Since then I've witnessed four acquaintances become born-again Christians and denounce the "New Age" deception. I've also come across many social media influencers experiencing this shift. Elliot Hulse is one example. Matt Blackburn who shares great info on holistic health and biohacking became a born-again Christian but only for a couple of years as he is no longer Christian. The "New Age" to Jesus phenomenon seems very widespread right now and traditionalism is becoming very popular online.

Now with this context laid out, here is first my question:

How is it that people who at one point seemed to be genuinely interested in and practicing self-actualization and spirituality(Stage green or above) suddenly become fundamentalist, born-again Christians(Stage blue)?

To add more nuance to this situation, one of my very good friends is an Eastern Orthodox Christian interested in the mystical, self-realization aspects of the tradition. He has been on a spiritual journey, deeply exploring and practicing numerous world religions and spiritual paths, for close to a decade. He is the only person I've met who rather than denounce and exclude everything he used to be interested in before he found Christianity (psychedelics, meditation, breathwork, introspection, etc.) has actually integrated it into his new worldview. He has taken mushrooms while going to Church for example. I disagree with him on many things, but we share much more in common than I do with my other two friends who became "born-again", non-denominational Christians. With him, I've been able to have hours-long discussions on metaphysics and epistemology whereas I cannot with the "born-again" folks. 

Have any of you experienced friends or family going through this shift from stage Green or above back down to stage Blue? I'd love to hear your thoughts and insights!

Edited February 1, 2022 by Aquarianwolf999

[Bob Seeker]

They had never integrated and evolved through the earlier stages of blue or orange. They got these new age ideas from culture, but had never actually evolved up to stage green.

you can’t skip stages, by and large. You need to start from the start.

stage blue resonates with them at this point in their development.

Edited February 1, 2022 by Bob Seeker

[Preety_India]

They are blueeeeeee. (and they always were.. Blueee) 

[Jodistrict]

Most people aren't pscyhologically able to live in an open state of inquiry and surrender to one of the organized religions providing all the "answers" to their questions.    

[hyruga]

When you experienced lots of deaths around you, you will get closer to God. Then you will reach true stage blue. After that then we can talk about higher stages.

But SD is just a model so it is not always correct. 

There are priests/pastors who are of higher consciousness than those people at stage orange.

Edited February 1, 2022 by hyruga

[Ya know]

Repressed shame and alleviation of suffering through surrender to a higher power is my guess.

When you say born again, do you mean they are dogmatic preachers of Christianity without nuance? 

They are judgmental and demonizing towards others, consider sinning to be the ultimate evil?

 

As Bob and Preety mentioned - you can only grow as high as your foundation is solid. People love to think they're more developed then they actually are, and life will throw them curve balls which reveals the flimsy nature of their development. 

Awareness of the spiral is a yellow trait, but theory and practice are two different things. When life crises occur intellectualism can only do so much to heal wounds of the psyche. What you may see as a regression is an ego returning to an early stage of development to re solidify to grow higher once again.

 

Jesus specializes in saving people from themselves, their ego. When done honestly without the intention of being holier than thou, it can be one of the most important steps in a personal development journey. Instilling values of integrity, honesty, humility, love, peace.

Edited February 1, 2022 by Ya know

[Ya know]

As for your other friend, he has understood the teachings at the turquoise stage. The teachings of Jesus speak to him at a deeper level due to his depth of understanding. 

An analogy of two chefs with different skill and the same recipe works. The quality in outcome is apparent despite the same materials. 

Edited February 1, 2022 by Ya know

[Raptorsin7]

If a person is in new age self help spaces and not receiving much benefit from the mental masturbation that comes along with these spaces, then surrendering to a higher power and really listening and practicing the words of Jesus will be a major improvement

[yetineti]

@Aquarianwolf999 Maybe they seemed interested in it because you were. 
 

I’ve had friends paraphrase my words back to me or even hold a conversation about certain ideas. 
 

But rarely a ‘ah-ha’ moment; sometimes though. Most times they’re just talking.

Sometimes they get it enough just to scare them into doubling down on their dogma.

Many possibilities, but quite odd your story about so many becoming ‘born agains.’

I do not know really. Just from this post though, I like your curiously and what seems to be an opposition to this new Jesus stuff.  

Edited February 1, 2022 by mw711

[Lyubov]

I’ve seen this before. Some YouTuber did mushrooms and was actually quite green in appearance but then all of a sudden they are a hardline Christian. My understanding of it is that each stage builds on the next. You can fall back onto whichever one you are mostly deeply grounded/rooted in if something challenging happens in your life (ie your tree falls over). It’s actually very challenging and I theorize most people aren’t actually yellow or turquoise but have built themselves up to it. If their survival needs and world view are greatly challenged they will sort of fall back on the stage their roots were originally set in in order to get grounded again and get some reference points back into life. Some pick up artist for instance tripped hard on mushrooms and became quite blue. Before they were very toxic orange in appearance. 

[Aquarianwolf999]

Thank you so much, guys! I wasn't expecting such a quick response. These are all really good points and seem to confirm some of my hunches as well as provide some new insights that I had not considered.

@Bob Seeker @Preety_India I can definitely see this being true. I probably should have realized it back then because, unlike my current Eastern Orthodox friend who I can have a really deep, back and forth discourse, my other two "born-again" friends would just repeat back to me what I said in a slightly different way or they would just nod and say "that's interesting" or "that's deep". It also makes sense that they were blue the whole time because they actually grew up in a Christian family.

@hyruga Yes, SD and Integral Theory are just models at the end of the day. When applied in real life they end up being quite fluid. My Eastern Orthodox friend has demonstrated to me that Christianity is not solely relegated to stage blue and you can be at much higher stages while also being Christian. I think the denomination has a lot to do with it because I participated in several of the Bible studies at his Orthodox church and the Church Father said that you can read the Bible through a literal/historical lens, a metaphorical/allegorical lens, and an inspirational lens. Whereas my two "born-again" friends take every word of the Bible literally. They are part of a non-denominational church which is a type of Protestantism.

@Ya know I absolutely agree! Experiencing trauma can very quickly re-calibrate someone to their most developed stage and if that stage happens to be Blue, then they'll go back to it even if they were exploring Orange or Green. By "Born-Again" I mean extremely devout protestants. They typically take the Bible literally and don't understand the history of how it was written. They also adopt a radically new vocabulary and speak like someone who is in a cult (perhaps this is just my judgment of their newfound enthusiasm). Common "Born-Again" denominations are Pentecostal, Charismatic, and non-denominational (don't let the name fool you, it is a denomination of Protestantism based on how they view the Bible and practice their faith). 

@mw711 It's not an opposition by any means. I recognize the importance of fully developing and integrating each stage so I was fascinated by people seemingly jumping backward from stage green to stage blue. But from all the insights people have shared on this thread, it's clear to me that this is a necessary phase in people's development if they haven't fully integrated stage blue. I guess that's why it's called spiral dynamics: growth isn't in a straight line. 

@Lyubov Absolutely! You're further solidifying some of the insights people have shared here. Even though it was a bit startling at first to see such a shift when my friends changed two years ago, I've learned so much about human psychological and spiritual development by remaining open-minded and asking them questions whenever we did see each other. This has also allowed me to talk with my Eastern Orthodox friend and holy crap, I had so many assumptions about his worldview that were shattered when I actually started prying beneath the surface. At the end of the day, as Leo said "Don't confuse the map for the territory" when it comes to spiral dynamics, integral theory, or any other model. The truth is always more nuanced than it appears at face value.

Edited February 1, 2022 by Aquarianwolf999

[Aquarianwolf999]

7 hours ago, Jodistrict said:

Most people aren't pscyhologically able to live in an open state of inquiry and surrender to one of the organized religions providing all the "answers" to their questions.    

Do you mean most people aren't able to be open while simultaneously surrendering entirely to one religion? I think I know what you're saying but I don't want to misinterpret it. 

[Dryas]

I'm guessing they haven't integrated Orange

[Husseinisdoingfine]

I first heard about this phenomenon when one of my favorite New Age YouTubers converted to Christianity and became a Conservative, I stopped following him since.

 

[mememe]

@Aquarianwolf999 might be that despite spiral dynamics being a good model to explain a lot of historical phenomena in sense of phylogenesis and also developmental in sense of onthogenesis, it might not give answers to social phenomena in sense of linearity of time or regression in sense of its idealism.

the current green is sometimes lacking in true support, it can be rough, superficially orange and create a feeling of loneliness and schatteredness in the face of reality, or a future, if there is no tangible community with a value system at hand which also gives a blue/regulatory moral framework. all to often green can play out orange or red. some people seek the love of community before liberty. if both feel untrue in their claims they choose the ones more loving in their actions it’s the same phenomenon as with cults, if not mainstream probably perceived as purple.

it all resolves as far back as into beige from where all thoughtstreams arise. its no-choice and choice, sometimes at the same time the more important part about it is: choice.

Edited February 1, 2022 by mememe

[BipolarGrowth]

The Holy Spirit is one of the best fruits one can gain from any spiritual work. As someone who was raised Christian, has experienced the effects of the Holy Spirit firsthand and had it verified by Christians, and has a friend from Actualized who has become Christian and denounced other forms of spirituality, this phenomenon is really no surprise to me. People go to spirituality actually wanting a difference in their day-to-day lives. As much as Christianity fails in providing this to people at times, all of the other spiritual practices fail to provide this to people at times as well. I think the issue is that people do not go deep enough into eastern spirituality or new-age stuff to see it actually make a solid and unshakable impact on them that they can’t possibly deny. This is caused by bad practice. Then they revisit Christianity, and it actually works because they are actually open to it and prepared to get some real benefits from it when they really weren’t in the place to be likely to feel the Holy Spirit when they might have tried Christianity before. 
 

Now, I think the sad thing is that almost everyone on both sides of this fence fail to see that a relationship with Jesus is not at all against other forms of spirituality, regardless of what the Bible says or what any other spiritual schools and belief systems say. IMO, it is a failure to take spirituality far enough that leads to this switch where people throw out much if not everything they learned from other forms of spirituality when they decide to go into fundamentalist Christian mode. It is a failure to take Christian mysticism far enough that leads people to go full-on new-age or only into eastern spirituality and act as if Christianity is not quite a potent tool to connect to Truth. 
 

The main issue we have with the state of modern Christianity is that herd mentality has run amok to the point that the deeply useful elements within Christianity are not utilized well and no one thinks for themselves. 
 

Spiral dynamics is judgmental and flawed. So is every other finite way of looking at and compartmentalizing the world which certainly includes modern Christianity. An individual human being is more complex than the entire system of spiral dynamics, and people fail to see this time and time again and start to create a new culty belief system around it which in turn brings out the system’s flaws when it gets taken too far. 

[Fearless_Bum]

I noticed this as well. It's because the separate self needs a belief system in order to perpetuate itself. 

Every belief system will defend itself from others, and if it's belief system is destroyed, it'll just fill in the void with another one. 

The new age belief system is still a belief system, there is really no better belief system if we are speaking about liberation, they are all the same.

In fact many spiritual friends only hold the belief that we are all one and God and defend themselves from science and religion.

If you're triggered by another belief system, that's only on you. 

[Jodistrict]

4 hours ago, Aquarianwolf999 said:

Do you mean most people aren't able to be open while simultaneously surrendering entirely to one religion? I think I know what you're saying but I don't want to misinterpret it. 

Most people give up the search for truth and instead accept the fake answers provided by organized religion. 

[The Lucid Dreamer]

It’s possible to adopt stage green - stage turquoise ideas while actually being around stage blue cognitively.  Steven Bancarz is a great example of this.  

[Yarco]

Two different issues going on.

Progressive people are turning to more progressive forms of Christianity like Evangelical, born-again type stuff. I consider this "pop Christianity", lots of leaders in the movement only seem to be trying to sell books, form mega-congregations, etc. It makes you feel good without having to do much or make any sacrifices.

Personally I consider this a watered-down form of Christianity. Many protestant denominations nowadays don't even use wine for communion, or do it at all. People don't fast or even do lent. Their religion is a once-a-week thing but not a daily pillar of their lives. They allow LGBT people not only into the church, but into positions of leadership within the church. If we're being honest, I don't think true Christianity is compatible with modernity, so I don't like how people have cut out the parts they don't like to make it more applicable to the modern world.

Why do people do this? People want answers, easy answers. Especially as times get tougher. It's easier to just stop searching for truth yourself and let someone tell you what truth is.

A second issue is going on where Conservatives and right-wing people are turning to Orthodox Christianity or Catholicism as a way of rejecting modernity and returning to traditional family values. I think these people are being more honest, at least they're willing to embrace the dark past and roots of Christianity and own it.

Like the rest of society at the moment, even Christianity is getting highly polarized to opposite ends of the spectrum.

Edited February 1, 2022 by Yarco