Tier 1 vs. Tier 2

[Eph75]

4 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

mysticism is not reality

Mysticism lives within the gap, inbetween two perceptions, where one is impossible to exist within the others' understanding. 

What's apparent to you, is mystic to a prior understanding. 

What's mystic to you, may or may not be real from a more developed mind. 

It's literally impossible to say what's not possible. 

From the perception of experience and understanding, "this" is reality.

Although, the concept of reality is really fluent at this point, and there's more than just "one reality", or from a meta perspective, a reality that encompasses multiple realities, or just one encompassing whole that is interpreted as whatever "reality" ones sense making is able to create. Ultimately all co-existing at once, and they're all equally true, just fractions of the same. 

Edited August 5, 2022 by Eph75

[Nilsi]

27 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

They aren't distinct, except as viewed through your underdeveloped lens. It's just that earlier stages can't see the full picture yet.

I don't want to comment on awakening anymore because you have an uncanny knack for completely misrepresenting it despite my best efforts.

You're being pretty colonialist about your views for supposedly being so highly developed. All you're saying is "get on my level," which is cool, but you're not even really specifying where you are coming from. You just appeal to mysticism or awakening, as if that had anything to do with what we're talking about here. 

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, JoeVolcano said:

I place SD under human development. Consider SD a map and human development the territory.

We're only talking about maps here. If you think you can ever talk about the territory, you're deluded.

[AtheisticNonduality]

2 hours ago, JoeVolcano said:

They aren't distinct, except as viewed through your underdeveloped lens. It's just that earlier stages can't see the full picture yet.

You've previously said that thisintegrated would make a better authority on this subject than you. thisintegrated has said that I am Turquoise, so clearly there is something stuck between you and him, which could be his higher development which you've intimated about. Or, if he's still wrong, this actually proves the difference between awakening (his higher development) and structure, especially cognition, (his wrongness about my SD standing)---thereby proving me right, my cheery friend.

[Carl-Richard]

28 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

If that's what he said then I'd be interested to hear his take on it.

He calls everybody Turquoise.

[AtheisticNonduality]

25 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

He calls everybody Turquoise.

He said Ken Wilber was Yellow.

 

 

 

All of these disagreements are mendable by recognizing a distinction between self-actualization and self-transcendence. You could choose to focus on one or the other, yet they are not just distinct in phraseology but have distinct meanings. But still further agreement could be found between them, and between us, if we know that while self-actualization and self-transcendence are distinctly existing as separated realms (possible dualities like form vs. formlessness, self vs. selflessness), they do have a mergence at some level of self-actualization. Once one reaches the highest potential heights of self-actualization, self-transcendences becomes impossible to avoid, and I agree with @JoeVolcano 100% on that.

[Carl-Richard]

53 minutes ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

All of these disagreements are mendable by recognizing a distinction between self-actualization and self-transcendence. 

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is not SD though  That's actually a good example of a traditional psychology model which has less emphasis on cognition (throwback to one of my earlier posts).

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

Once one reaches the highest potential heights of self-actualization, self-transcendences becomes impossible to avoid, and I agree with @JoeVolcano 100% on that.

When it comes to mysticism and my rigid view of SD, I like to think of it as a synergistic relationship rather than it being an inevitable marriage at the higher stages. In other words, maximizing one aspect of development will naturally increase the chances of exploring new avenues of development or maxing out other existing avenues (it's both a statistical thing and a functional thing). To say that there is absolutely no overlap between different aspects of life is of course stupid, but to place very different models along the same developmental line is also stupid imo.

[AtheisticNonduality]

@JoeVolcanoAny development from child human to adult human is what I mean by self-actualization. Realizing that you are not a human at the highest levels is what I mean by self-transcendence. Self-actualization is development of the self (child to human, increasing in complexity through maturation); self-transcendence is going beyond the self, is outside the self.

This might be an extreme ego or an extreme example, but take the fact that ego dissolution is not synonymous with awakening. A schizophrenic (schizo = split, phrenic = mental) has an ego that is destroyed through multiplication: they have multiple egos talking to each other and multiple realities with conflicting rules and all sorts of hallucinatory or cognitive paradoxes. This is disintegration, not integration. There needs to be a principle of unity in the organism, so that is the function evolutionarily for the ego. If we use self-transcendence to see beyond the ego, there still needs to be the self-actualization structure so that the self is at its high and developed point, not a void of the psyche or a collapse of the psyche. This is why the "spiritual warfare" against one's own self appears as complete nonsense to me.

I would also argue self-transcendence is possible at the lowest levels of self-actualization, so self-transcendence is not "above" self-actualization as a developmental stage but rather is a condition of reality or a basic truth that awakening gives you access to. It is a truth, however, that becomes enmeshed in the higher stages, like I said.

19 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

When it comes to mysticism and SD, I like to think of it as a synergistic relationship rather than it being an inevitable marriage at the higher stages. In other words, maximizing one aspect of development will naturally increase the chances of exploring new avenues of development or maxing out other existing avenues (it's both a statistical thing and a functional thing).

I meant the Wilber equivalent of SD (Red, Amber, Orange, Green, Teal, Turquoise, "Indigo", etc.), though I'm uncomfortable with and find it ridiculous to color-code the highest stages, because that makes it seem like "child humanity" or something.

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to place very different models along the same developmental line is also stupid imo.

The existence of multiple theories integrated is why it's metatheoretical and not just theoretical. So that they're not describing the same line, but they are describing the same levels; and they have the same basic patterns. That's why they're comparable and integrable.

[Carl-Richard]

8 minutes ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

I meant the Wilber equivalent of SD (Red, Amber, Orange, Green, Teal, Turquoise, "Indigo", etc.), though I'm uncomfortable with and find it ridiculous to color-code the highest stages, because that makes it seem like "child humanity" or something.

The existence of multiple theories integrated is why it's metatheoretical and not just theoretical. So that they're not describing the same line, but they are describing the same levels; and they have the same basic patterns. That's why they're comparable and integrable.

I don't know what those stages of indigo and up even mean (other than being vaguely mystical), but I guess putting all of it into a new Tier (3) can do a lot of work for justifying such a move.

[AtheisticNonduality]

8 hours ago, JoeVolcano said:

@AtheisticNonduality Adulthood IS self-transcendence. Even every stage in SD transcends its prior stages. It's a progression of less and less selfhood, until a tipping point is reached.

That's your (false) interpretation of the model. It's actually about an expansion of self, including more worldviews, complexities, and capabilities under it. It has only to do with transcending and including lower selves into a higher self each transcendence. It's unrelated in the lower stages to mysticism. The fact there are people in the Yellow mega-thread that don't subscribe to mysticism and there have been Red and Blue ones that have accessed it proves that self-actualization and self-transcendence are severed. Don't try to distort the model with your own projections.

 

 

 

 

The crux here, is that there is a structure to the human mind, regardless of whether or not formless infinite awakened realms and truths have been accessed. The structure will remain: having an ideal structure is self-actualization, having an unideal one is its inverse. The formless realms will be accessed: accessing them is enlightenment, not accessing them is its inverse. There is no reason to bring up "ego" or "ego dissolution" semantic foolishness here because that's unrelated to the definitions of self-actualization (ideal structure) and self-transcendence (something formless outside the structure). Obviously both the structure and trans-structure become related, at the highest stages.

If you want to prove that self-actualization (ideal structure) paradoxically requires no-self, you're going to have to define "ego" and "war against the ego" and "ego death" in terms that specifically make sense in accord with ideal structure (which is something related to the mind and senses of identity, not transcendence of the mind) and transcendental realms.

[AtheisticNonduality]

@JoeVolcano This makes me want to read Jed McKenna out of morbid curiosity. The type of reduction of self and expanded realness you're talking about is like a generalized version of Ken Wilber's early model as The Spectrum of Consciousness from the seventies. It was dropped, because of the reasons I've pointed out already, though it is applicable in certain ways.

[Carl-Richard]

@AtheisticNonduality I know you're using a broader definition, but self-actualization in a purely Maslowian sense I would distinguish from SD development.

For example, I think Andrew Tate is a self-actualized person, but he has solidified himself at the lower aspects of Tier 1. That is who he is, unless he radically reinvents himself and somehow deconstructs decades of trauma and conditioning. 

You can hear it when he speaks. His default state is flow ("Being-cognition"), and he seems to embody the "Being-values". He has maximized his potential in this aspect. Not everybody is meant to have complex worldview. Maybe he will evolve into a Tier 2 person in the future (I highly doubt it), but he will do that as a self-actualized Tier 1.

[AtheisticNonduality]

25 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

That's alright, maybe one day your morbid curiosity will turn you away from books and toward reality.

How can a single person (yes, that's right, you are a person) be so delusional and self-flattering when their entire viewpoint is supposedly based on principles of nondelusional selflessness?

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But turning away from Ken Wilber and toward Jed McKenna is a great start.

That's a bit self-contradictory, since you have the worldview Wilber had in the seventies . . . before the model was improved, that is.

30 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

@AtheisticNonduality I know you're using a broader definition, but self-actualization in a purely Maslowian sense I would distinguish from SD development.

Same levels, different lines. But generally you could make it so they will fall together. The physiological needs are Beige, the safety needs are Red, the love/belongingness needs are Amber, self-esteem needs are Orange, Green is like an intermediary, self-actualization is Teal/Turquoise, self-transcendence is "Tier 3". I'm uncomfortable, though, with putting love/belongingness with Amber, since practically it is improved properly only in Green and upwards; and yet the holon of that kind still emerges at conventional rather than postconventional (yes, the Kohlberg model adds up too).

[Carl-Richard]

46 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

Yes, excellent example of someone digging themselves in.

That's self-actualization as distinct from human development.

It's one aspect of human development. He carved out a niche for himself and mastered it, just like Leo did with Actualized.org, or what a musician does with their craft etc. We all have our own niche, and self-actualization is about mastering that niche. The niche can be cognitively simple or not overtly "spiritual"; low SD or low spiritual development.

[Carl-Richard]

4 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

Same levels, different lines. But generally you could make it so they will fall together. The physiological needs are Beige, the safety needs are Red, the love/belongingness needs are Amber, self-esteem needs are Orange, Green is like an intermediary, self-actualization is Teal/Turquoise, self-transcendence is "Tier 3". I'm uncomfortable, though, with putting love/belongingness with Amber, since practically it is improved properly only in Green and upwards; and yet the holon of that kind still emerges at conventional rather than postconventional (yes, the Kohlberg model adds up too).

Btw, Kohlberg was heavily inspired by Piaget, and Piaget is a cognitive as it gets. The Neo-Piagetian models like Model of hierarchical complexity are super reductionistic (could be examples of the "cognitive backbone" of Western psychdev stage theory), but of course it loses some specificity and explanatory power. Maslow was interested in motivation, so cognition becomes less central to his model, but there is of course some overlap between developmental altitudes (motivational complexity ≈ cognitive complexity), hence Wilber's model (however, I don't think he overtly places Maslow in there?).

[AtheisticNonduality]

21 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Maslow was interested in motivation, so cognition becomes less central to his model, but there is of course some overlap between developmental altitudes (motivational complexity ≈ cognitive complexity), hence Wilber's model (however, I don't think he overtly places Maslow in there?).

He does not equate them both (motivation and cognition), but Maslow is placed there amongst the other models. Motivation is one line that goes through the same levels of complexity / vertical development, just like how the different types of cognition are different lines, so Kohlberg (the ethical line) will correlate in terms of the levels gone through with the lines of various multiple intelligences and personality and such but will remain its own consideration.

I mean you could have someone at Piagetian formal-operational that has Kohlberg's preconventional morals.

Edited August 6, 2022 by AtheisticNonduality

[Carl-Richard]

4 minutes ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

He does not equate them both (motivation and cognition), but Maslow is placed there amongst the other models. Motivation is one line that goes through the same levels of complexity / vertical development, just like how the different types of cognition are different lines, so Kohlberg (the ethical line) will correlate in terms of the levels gone through with the lines of various multiple intelligences and personality and such but will remain its own consideration.

I mean you could have someone at Piagetian formal-operational that has Kohlberg's preconventional morals.

I see. So different lines of the same developmental altitude probably correlate somewhat, but they're different things ?That goes back to my synergistic idea.

[Carl-Richard]

18 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

That said, Atheistic, don't worry about that supposed selflessness you mention, because you don't have a clue what it is.

Cringe.

I think close to half of the people on this forum has had non-dual mystical experiences. It's not uncommon. You can argue that "it's not the real thing", but equating that to not having a clue is facetious.

[Carl-Richard]

12 minutes ago, JoeVolcano said:

Once more for an encore, my whole point there is that entrenchment is not human development. If it were, he and his bugatti's would be punching through to tier 69 at maximum impulse, lol. Enjoy your caterpillar niche.

Cheers  ? 

You hold that concept to way too high standards. Puberty is human development.