Why do some progress much faster than others?

[IAmReallyImportant]

This depends on how you define progress. Because, it is just a concept and what you think about.

However, the conventional understanding of progress depends on so many factors, that you cannot break it down. Parenting, environmental factors,  genetics, brain efficiency etc.

Now, people can speculate and it is basically luck, if they are right. But they may would know it in 1000 years from know.

Moreover, progress depends on where you start.

[Husseinisdoingfine]

9 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

If your mom beat you, you will have a much harder time of it, for example.

Me! 

The memory still hurts and negatively affects me today.

[axiom]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@axiom Well then, I should give you candy-asses more beatings.

You have no idea how long I've been waiting, nor how much I've been yearning to hear these honeyed words. 

[Yarco]

Intuitively I would think that environment and upbringing plays the biggest role.

But I have a friend who is a perfect case study and I don't know if environment was the reason. He made a great life for himself and has a doctor/lawyer type job. Despite coming from a house with irresponsible parents and growing up in poverty. In high school he had to work a part-time job and give money to his parents just to keep the utility bills paid and to keep them from going bankrupt. 

He's got two brothers. One ended up with a mediocre job building cabinets. The other is a deadbeat loser that still lives at home with the parents and smokes weed / plays video games all day at 25.

I've spent a lot of time thinking what separates the successful child from the deadbeat one. They grew up in the same house with the same parents, went to the same schools.

For one thing, my successful friend is only their half-brother. All 3 kids share a mom but the other 2 brothers have a different dad. So maybe genetics plays a part. I do think there's a decent IQ difference there.

Other than that it might just be an innate internal drive to strive for greatness and create a better life for yourself. Some people settle into the mediocrity they're born into, others have a desire to rise above it.

Is it just genetic or maybe did he have a teacher that really inspired him, or some other event in his life that the other 2 kids missed out on? I dunno. Maybe also that the successful one is the oldest and the deadbeat is the youngest/baby might have something to do with it as well.

Just one anecdotal example.

Edited June 9, 2022 by Yarco

[Oeaohoo]

4 hours ago, Oeaohoo said:

...or you would be Milarepa…

It didn’t occur to me earlier but Milarepa is actually a great example of negative early-life experiences ultimately causing great spiritual progress:

In his early life he was involved in a family feud and ended up falling in with a black magician, who helped him to curse the enemy side of the family. The curse killed all of them and so incurred a tremendous amount of negative karma on him. He had to spend the next 10 years diligently resolving the negative karma he had accumulated, which culminated in his awakening.

A story of redemption, as is only fit for a barbarian age such as his and ours! The trouble is that we now live under the “Church of No Salvation”…

[Gesundheit2]

1 hour ago, Yarco said:

I have a friend who is a perfect case study and I don't know if environment was the reason. He made a great life for himself and has a doctor/lawyer type job. Despite coming from a house with irresponsible parents and growing up in poverty. In high school he had to work a part-time job and give money to his parents just to keep the utility bills paid and to keep them from going bankrupt. 

Sounds a lot like me haha!

[Loba]

Having other people around, spreading their ideas and opinions actually hinders individual's imagination, the process requires that a person go within and bring out what is inside them, and culture is a huge boon to creative thought - those which are given vast amounts of time alone tend to progress because they are able to bring out their true selves - this is why wise people often go off on their own to grow.

Communities can make you stupid.  That's why people fail when it comes to trying anything new.

Just my 2c.

[Kshantivadin]

5 hours ago, Oeaohoo said:

Haha. "I am God", obviously! "You could be Milarepa", don't be so foolish!

[Loving Radiance]

@thisintegrated Grace is a mysterious force. Some people who had a shit childhood and upbringing sort themselves out in a few months with help from a therapist. Some other people had a great childhood, where they were loved, held, seen and encouraged by all and still they spend decades in therapy. There seems to be a unique sense of love in those people who grow faster compared to others.

@Husseinisdoingfine Are you in therapy to process this? You will suffer less and experience more joy later on when you start early.

Edited June 9, 2022 by Loving Radiance

[Flyboy]

I'd say curiosity and open-mindedness are key.  Both nature and context are important for these, especially being in environments than allow continued growth and integration.

That said, those of you "born into Green" are likely less Green than you realize, as you probably have a bunch of holes in the Red/Blue/Orange stages, and may even "believe" Green as an ideology rather than truly integrate it, which is really Blue!  (e.g. you're Blue about Green values)

I had the (mis)fortune of being born into Blue, grew myself into Orange, got plunged by my work environment into Purple/Red (fighter pilot), and then finally had a bunch of smart Green people pull me along.  I've arrived at a Yellow that is uncommonly experienced with the lower stages, and hard-fought.  Without this kind of experience though, it'd be more like intellectual bypassing.  Even then, it's worth acknowledging we all have holes in our development and should constantly be on the lookout for them.  

[thisintegrated]

18 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

If you were born 1000 years ago, you would be a fucking barbarian.

Is this solely because life was harder back then, and everyone had to be more aggressive to survive, or is the average default/initial human level of development increasing over time?  I.e. are babies born in 2022 more evolved than babies born 1000 years ago?

 

2 hours ago, Flyboy said:

That said, those of you "born into Green" are likely less Green than you realize, as you probably have a bunch of holes in the Red/Blue/Orange stages, and may even "believe" Green as an ideology rather than truly integrate it, which is really Blue!  (e.g. you're Blue about Green values)

 

2 hours ago, Flyboy said:

That said, those of you "born into Green" are likely less Green than you realize, as you probably have a bunch of holes in the Red/Blue/Orange stages, and may even "believe" Green as an ideology rather than truly integrate it, which is really Blue!  (e.g. you're Blue about Green values)

I had the (mis)fortune of being born into Blue, grew myself into Orange, got plunged by my work environment into Purple/Red (fighter pilot), and then finally had a bunch of smart Green people pull me along.  I've arrived at a Yellow that is uncommonly experienced with the lower stages, and hard-fought.  Without this kind of experience though, it'd be more like intellectual bypassing.  Even then, it's worth acknowledging we all have holes in our development and should constantly be on the lookout for them.  

I'm assuming by "being born into Blue" you mean bornto Blue parents?  I'm pretty sure even Sadhguru's parents were Blue.  I don't think anyone at Yellow+ here had Yellow parents.

 

2 hours ago, Flyboy said:

I've arrived at a Yellow that is uncommonly experienced with the lower stages, and hard-fought.

What does that even mean?  Everyone starts at beige, including everyone who's Turquoise.

 

4 hours ago, Loba said:

Having other people around, spreading their ideas and opinions actually hinders individual's imagination, the process requires that a person go within and bring out what is inside them, and culture is a huge boon to creative thought - those which are given vast amounts of time alone tend to progress because they are able to bring out their true selves - this is why wise people often go off on their own to grow.

Communities can make you stupid.  That's why people fail when it comes to trying anything new.

Just my 2c.

Balance is needed, imo.  Get what you can from one stupid community and move onto the next.  Getting trapped within your own ideas is worse than getting trapped inside a community.

 

9 hours ago, IAmReallyImportant said:

This depends on how you define progress. Because, it is just a concept and what you think about.

Moreover, progress depends on where you start.

Spiral Dynamics progress.  And iirc everyone starts at Beige.

Edited June 9, 2022 by thisintegrated

[Kamo]

@Matthew85

21 hours ago, Matthew85 said:

@Kamo Since all of these factors are being imagined, what do you feel is the real cause? Perhaps we design these factors in advance depending how we want the game to unfold for us. Interesting question. 

I think it seems like the real cause would simply be the movement of imagination itself. Kind of like how flowing water makes up a stream but the stream is constructing itself on the fly. So how ever the water ends up is just due to its journey along the stream bed. The water is going to take the form of what ever shapes are in the terrain. There are only prior conditions that give rise to specific circumstances. So looking for a cause for anything becomes an infinite process. Like asking what caused the big bang and so on. So the conditions and circumstances mentioned by David Hawkins makes the most sense to me. 

Edited June 10, 2022 by Kamo

[IAmReallyImportant]

8 hours ago, thisintegrated said:

Is this solely because life was harder back then, and everyone had to be more aggressive to survive, or is the average default/initial human level of development increasing over time?  I.e. are babies born in 2022 more evolved than babies born 1000 years ago?

 

 

I'm assuming by "being born into Blue" you mean bornto Blue parents?  I'm pretty sure even Sadhguru's parents were Blue.  I don't think anyone at Yellow+ here had Yellow parents.

 

What does that even mean?  Everyone starts at beige, including everyone who's Turquoise.

 

Balance is needed, imo.  Get what you can from one stupid community and move onto the next.  Getting trapped within your own ideas is worse than getting trapped inside a community.

 

Spiral Dynamics progress.  And iirc everyone starts at Beige.

Spiral Dynamics is an inaccurate model and @Leo Gura only explains his personal version with own additions, which are not proven. Not logically and not with evidence. So it is used as a tool to make unproven subjective speculations look proven and scientific. It is not.

[PenguinPablo]

I would say sincere unwavering interest. You always come back to wondering, questioning, and so on... The cumulative effect of that cannot be understated. 

[thisintegrated]

7 hours ago, IAmReallyImportant said:

Spiral Dynamics is an inaccurate model and @Leo Gura only explains his personal version with own additions, which are not proven. Not logically and not with evidence. So it is used as a tool to make unproven subjective speculations look proven and scientific. It is not.

I think his views are more valid than those of the original Blue creators tbh.

 

7 hours ago, PenguinPablo said:

I would say sincere unwavering interest. You always come back to wondering, questioning, and so on... The cumulative effect of that cannot be understated. 

So.. curiosity = IQ = stage??

 

[IAmReallyImportant]

14 minutes ago, thisintegrated said:

I think his views are more valid than those of the original Blue creators tbh.

You "think" they are more valid? It doesn't matter what you think. You are one of billions of people.

[IAmReallyImportant]

Nowadays every random booksmart guy with an IQ of around 125 and no significant educational background can come around, push a theory into existence, call it science and manipulate naive  and gullible people to actually believe it. I feel sorry for the people who actually created spiral dynamics.

I am a little bit angry that truth doesn't matter anymore, don't care much about this guy.

Edited June 10, 2022 by IAmReallyImportant

[thisintegrated]

15 minutes ago, IAmReallyImportant said:

You "think" they are more valid? It doesn't matter what you think. You are one of billions of people.

Sorry I'm not quite as important as you.  Would you be happier if I wrote a book and referenced myself?

[Oeaohoo]

9 hours ago, IAmReallyImportant said:

Spiral Dynamics is an inaccurate model and Leo only explains his personal version with own additions, which are not proven. Not logically and not with evidence. So it is used as a tool to make unproven subjective speculations look proven and scientific. It is not.

I agree but it doesn’t matter too much here. The important question would be what makes certain times better for spiritual progress than others. Even if spiral dynamics is a relatively dumb model, it still might help answer this question.

[AtheisticNonduality]

1 hour ago, IAmReallyImportant said:

Nowadays every random booksmart guy with an IQ of around 125 and no significant educational background can come around, push a theory into existence, call it science and manipulate naive  and gullible people to actually believe it. I feel sorry for the people who actually created spiral dynamics.

I am a little bit angry that truth doesn't matter anymore, don't care much about this guy.

Nowadays every random bookretarded guy with an IQ of around 115 and no significant educational background can come around, push a theory out of existence, and declare it unscientific and a manipulative action, a cause of naive victimhood, and something that requires absolute gullibility.