Tier 1 vs. Tier 2

[AtheisticNonduality]

2 hours ago, JoeVolcano said:

That's why you're stuck.

The only movement there is, is out of ego.

It's not just simplification, it's tracing all the leaves back to the trunk and then the roots. Differentiation has no value when you're just differentiating non-essentials and can't see the forest for the trees.

It's almost as if you didn't understand what I wrote. You prefer rambling on about "the ego" as if that is supposed to help develop yourself. I'm only being acrid because this idea is absurd, the idea that all problems are traceable back to the ego, when evidently they are not.

 

Conflating Turquoise with mysticism is Leo's fault 100% for not explaining it correctly. Turquoise is a cognitive stage. That's what the model means. It is not inextricably attached to mysticism. At all.

The superior model is Wilber's anyway, which includes stages which are in inextricable connection to various states of awakening, this being where awakening and cognitive development must intersect.

 

[Carl-Richard]

37 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

Maybe that's just infinite intelligence being freed of egoic constraints.

It's the contents of the mind becoming more complex.

[Carl-Richard]

24 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

They are not really mine. I got the thing with nth person perspective from Cook Greuters models.

I know, but I don't know what it means other than some vague intuition.

[AtheisticNonduality]

@JoeVolcano Our only disagreement is you have an obsession with the ego, and I don't.

Cheers

[Carl-Richard]

21 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

Cognition is contents?

Is that your definition or is that SD canon?

I'm using a mainstream definition of cognition from cognitive science and psychology, i.e. the qualitative aspects of the personal mind. Spiral Dynamics are in the same vein as earlier cognitively oriented stage theories like Piaget, Kohlberg etc. However, mysticism and self-transcendence is about transcending cognition; it's transpersonal, it's beyond qualities. It's not about developing cognition. There does exist stage theories that are less cognitively oriented (or fully orthogonal to cognition), both in traditional psychology and mystical traditions, but SD is not that.

[Nilsi]

This is about the Cook-Greuter analogy; I think the relevant stages to understand there are the "Autonomous" and the "Construct Aware" stages.

I think the 1st person, 2nd person... nth person framework is quite useful (although Im not sure I fully comprehend it) and I will try to lay it out here briefly.

1st person: Bascially unable to take other perspectives but ones own

2nd person: Now able to see that others also see me

3rd person: Now able to see self and other as separate persons and thus able to compare self and other

4th person: Now able to see the 3rd person self as embedded in history 

5th person: Now able to see the 4th person self as but one way of making sense of live (this is where language and science is really questioned)

nth person: the nth level of abstraction that one takes on making sense of life

So the Strategist (Autonomous; 4th person; what I would consider to be the equivalent of Yellow) is the last stage where one understands oneself as a separate self. The strategist is able to look at his own historical context and thus his own developmental arc, so he understands that different people are at different stages of development and therefore is able to treat others appropriate to their levels of awareness. The Strategist believes that each person is responsible for themselves and their own growth (this tracks quite well with your hypothesis of Yellow caring primarily about itself). This stage to me seems to capture the whole Stoa/Rebel Wisdom kind of paradigm quite well.

The Magician (Construct Aware; 5th-nth person; which I want to make the case for, is potentially what were looking for to be Turquoise) is able to see that his way of understanding and meaning-making is only one out of an infinite possible ways. For the Magician, the separate self is an abstraction - an idea rather than a literal reality. Language is understood as a way to freeze existence, to understand existence by containing it in bite sized chunks of knowledge - in an attempt to both make sense of the impermanence of the human self and to understand the reality of human existence; this is seen as beneficial in daily functioning, but as ultimately illusory. The experience of the self now includes both knowledge of ones connection to everything else, as well as the actual experience of those connections as the self. This tracks quite well with Turquoise which is described as "Self as part of larger, conscious, spiritual whle that also serves self." This is NOT non-duality yet, as it kicks this can down the road to the literal nth degree.

I think it is inevitable to set nonduality as some kind of ultimate telos for cognitive development and then just keep adding new, more complex stages in between, as they emerge and are comprehensible. Its always hard for me to self-reflect how much of that view is just the nature of how development unfolds and how much is informed by my own spiritual pursuit (which should not be a given in a developmental model).

[AtheisticNonduality]

@JoeVolcano I said before:

Quote

1. there's the physical environment "out there" that is separate from our body 2. there's our body 3. there's our body's emotions 4. there's our mind's emotions 5. there's our path into a deeper part of the mind 6. there's our subconscious 7. there's our intellect 8. there's that which is above the intellect, "the supraconscious".

Usually the ego is only meant to be one or a few of these, so there are certainly possible issues outside the ego.

If there's a problem in the physical environment (like a storm killing people), that is not a problem with the ego.

If there's a problem with the body (like a contagious disease), that is not a problem with the ego. If there's a problem with the body's emotions (like rage issues swelling up and contorting muscles), that could be a problem with the ego if the ego is identified with it; or it could not be since the ego is disidentified with it and lets it be an autonomous shadow.

If there's a problem with the mind's emotions (like depression, anxiety, the whole list of stereotyped "contemporary" disorders), that could be a problem with the ego if the ego is identified with them and has them as a sign of it fighting against something that it is not; or it could not be, if the ego is disidentified from them and is letting them be free as an emotional rather than an egoic phenomenon, if the instincts and the intellect have been separated perhaps.

If there's a problem with our subconscious, I don't really think you could argue that's a problem with the ego since the subconscious is, by definition, not conscious to our personal identities, but some denials of the ego could cause the subconscious to respond compensatorily accordingly.

If there's a problem with the intellect (like retardation as stupidity or obsession as insanity), perhaps that is a problem of the ego, or a problem of not enough identity rather than too much.

The supraconscious definitely is not holding problems of the ego, though I say it may, in fact, have issues with itself if its structure is flawed in some way.

[Carl-Richard]

39 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

Reality is mystical.

Some models or ways of talking about reality are mystical. Reality is reality. I swear all my disagreements with people regarding SD always boil down to them having some naive realist conception of reality. I'm an epistemic pragmatist: SD is not reality, mysticism is not reality; it's all conjecture.

[Nilsi]

7 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

This is about the Cook-Greuter analogy; I think the relevant stages to understand there are the "Autonomous" and the "Construct Aware" stages.

I think the 1st person, 2nd person... nth person framework is quite useful (although Im not sure I fully comprehend it) and I will try to lay it out here briefly.

1st person: Bascially unable to take other perspectives but ones own

2nd person: Now able to see that others also see me

3rd person: Now able to see self and other as separate persons and thus able to compare self and other

4th person: Now able to see the 3rd person self as embedded in history 

5th person: Now able to see the 4th person self as but one way of making sense of live (this is where language and science is really questioned)

nth person: the nth level of abstraction that one takes on making sense of life

So the Strategist (Autonomous; 4th person; what I would consider to be the equivalent of Yellow) is the last stage where one understands oneself as a separate self. The strategist is able to look at his own historical context and thus his own developmental arc, so he understands that different people are at different stages of development and therefore is able to treat others appropriate to their levels of awareness. The Strategist believes that each person is responsible for themselves and their own growth (this tracks quite well with your hypothesis of Yellow caring primarily about itself). This stage to me seems to capture the whole Stoa/Rebel Wisdom kind of paradigm quite well.

The Magician (Construct Aware; 5th-nth person; which I want to make the case for, is potentially what were looking for to be Turquoise) is able to see that his way of understanding and meaning-making is only one out of an infinite possible ways. For the Magician, the separate self is an abstraction - an idea rather than a literal reality. Language is understood as a way to freeze existence, to understand existence by containing it in bite sized chunks of knowledge - in an attempt to both make sense of the impermanence of the human self and to understand the reality of human existence; this is seen as beneficial in daily functioning, but as ultimately illusory. The experience of the self now includes both knowledge of ones connection to everything else, as well as the actual experience of those connections as the self. This tracks quite well with Turquoise which is described as "Self as part of larger, conscious, spiritual whle that also serves self." This is NOT non-duality yet, as it kicks this can down the road to the literal nth degree.

I think it is inevitable to set nonduality as some kind of ultimate telos for cognitive development and then just keep adding new, more complex stages in between, as they emerge and are comprehensible. Its always hard for me to self-reflect how much of that view is just the nature of how development unfolds and how much is informed by my own spiritual pursuit (which should not be a given in a developmental model).

I found these graphs quite useful in trying to wrap my head around this whole thing.

 

Edited August 5, 2022 by Nilsi

[Carl-Richard]

@Nilsi Why are you talking about Cook-Greuter anyway? It's a different model.

[Nilsi]

30 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

@Nilsi Why are you talking about Cook-Greuter anyway? It's a different model.

Its a different model but its kinda trying to explain the same thing, so I think its quite useful to compare the two and see how they can inform each other. They both have noise in them that should cancel itself out to some degree if you put them together. This is like saying "Why are you talking about the Quran, when we are trying to make sense of the Bible." Why do you think you can understand this model in a vacuum? All your sensemaking is informed by millions of sources anyway, so why not make it explicit?

Im not sure if you are trying to undestand what Beck meant with Turquoise (in which case the comparison would not help) or if you are trying to understand what Turquoise actually is.

I would rather have this be a 500 post thread, then keep it "clean" and have it not go anywhere.

Edited August 5, 2022 by Nilsi

[Carl-Richard]

11 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

Did nobody ever tell you that cognition isn't personal in the first place?

Why can I not read your thoughts, or feel what you're feeling, or see what you're seeing?

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, JoeVolcano said:

Yeah reality is reality. But in your frame of reference, that doesn't mean at all what you think it means. In the language of your frame of reference, it means reality is mystical.

I don't understand. What do you mean by mystical?

 

1 hour ago, JoeVolcano said:

That's actually not what I mean just now. Even in an objective physical reality, nothing about the functioning of your mind or brain or body is actually personal, any more than anything around you is. It takes a specific cognitive function to make some things appear as being personal and others as not. But even that cognitive function itself, functions non-personally, just like everything else. The universe itself non-personal. If a meteor hits earth and wipes out all life, it's not personal. If you get cancer, it's not personal. If you need to take a shit, it's not personal. If you have a thought, it's not personal. It's all just itself, as it is. In exactly the same way that reality is reality.

What do you mean by personal?

[Nilsi]

14 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

@Nilsi It occurs to me that Jed's "Spiritual Warfare" book is meant to be a practical read for getting to Human Adulthood. As such, the character it holds up as an example (Lisa) is only just a fledgling even by the end of the book, and doesn't really know yet where it's all going.

The upside of this is that it's easily relatable, but it's only a starting point. The downside is that it doesn't give you an example of a more mature version that is better established in the new paradigm. Although such an example would probably be less easy to relate to as such.

So don't take Lisa as representative in that sense. That said, you already know examples from the turquoise megathread (insofar as those are accurate, I won't comment on that), so more of the same isn't necessarily better. And the main value of "Warfare" is Jed's own exposition, so I'd still recommend it as my first choice on the topic, if I had to pick only one.

But if you should want to read more, "Damnedest" has a more established example in the character of Sonaya, and "Incorrect" talks about the transition of someone called Jessica. And all three books have top notch exposition on the topic that should be of practical value for someone who wants to make the journey and make sense of the destination. And so do all his other books for that matter. But I'd say just start at the beginning.

I will read it.

But, again, I would rather know what this stage, if it exists as such, looks like when embodied by an actual person. Im still not entirely sure, that spiritualty and stage development arent getting conflated here.

This is just so hard to find common ground on. We would kind of have to define all those concepts first and then what were actually trying to figure out. Im not even sure what Im trying to get at here.

Edited August 5, 2022 by Nilsi

[Carl-Richard]

3 hours ago, Nilsi said:

Its a different model but its kinda trying to explain the same thing, so I think its quite useful to compare the two and see how they can inform each other.

Ok. However, a comparison is not an explanation, unless you can explain the comparison. An explanation reduces something to more fundamental concepts. For SD, the obvious choice there is Western psychology, but not necessarily.

EDIT:  I'm sorry, I misspoke. An explanation is just the act of reducing something to something else, so it may include a comparison, but that's not the kind of explanation I'm looking for

[Nilsi]

33 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Ok. However, a comparison is not an explanation, unless you can explain the comparison. An explanation reduces something to more fundamental concepts. For SD, the obvious choice there is Western psychology, but not necessarily.

I find it hard to explain things down to fundamental concepts honestly. Where do we draw the boundary? I'm not going to bother to explain anything in terms of neuroscience or whatever, and I don't know developmental psychology well enough to work this out from some kind of fundamental principles. I think very intuitively, so for me comparing these two models connects a lot of dots in my mind and that's how I usually reach insight, rarely do I study a field so thoroughly to be able to explain it down to the micro level (I tried to do that with molecular biology once, but it's just way too painful for me).

So, I don't know. I'm just floating some ideas and see what works and what doesn't, that's how I usually come to conclusions about things. I'm not a scientist and I don't have a very high IQ, so I'm mostly trying to let my creativity and curiosity carry me as far as that's possible 

Edited August 5, 2022 by Nilsi

[Carl-Richard]

11 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

I find it hard to explain things down to fundamental concepts honestly.

I'm sorry, I misspoke. An explanation is just the act of reducing something to something else, so it may include a comparison, but that's not the kind of explanation I'm looking for  

[Nilsi]

1 minute ago, Carl-Richard said:

I'm sorry, I misspoke. An explanation is just the act of reducing something to something else, so it may include a comparison, but that's not the kind of explanation I'm looking for  

Fair enough.

[Carl-Richard]

34 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

I'm trying to say that the natural course of human development is away from our conventional and limited sense of self and reality. You said "mysticism and self-transcendence is about transcending cognition; it's transpersonal", as though it's a spin-off of regular development. But it's not, it's the main course and inevitable destination.

Ok. That's just like, uh, your opinion, man. I'm not talking about "human development" (whatever that is). I'm talking about SD. I'm not placing all of human development under SD.

[AtheisticNonduality]

@JoeVolcano The structural (personal) development and mysticism (transpersonal) development have to remain distinct, to explain Red and Blue genuine spiritualities, real nondual experiences filtered through lower cognitions, or those with high cognitions and lowly developed mysticism experiences / spiritualities. We could say the two have to become merged at some point, but it isn't Turquoise. You could have somebody that is Turquoise in some areas and still with shadows in others, like Green or Blue or Red or Orange and such. And even that is not the same as awakening. And I would not say awakening is the only real line of development. You could have an awakened maliciousness.