Integral Meditation

Highlights

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

each stage of development involves a transcend-and-include of its predecessor, which simply means that each new stage of development includes its previous stage, but then adds something new, novel, and emergent—found nowhere in its previous stage—and this is what, indeed, makes it a “higher” stage: it has everything the earlier stage had, plus something new and extra. It’s “bigger,” “wider,” “higher.” Thus, in the evolutionary or developmental sequence “atoms to molecules to cells to organisms,” each of those stages goes beyond its predecessor by bringing something new and novel and emergent into existence—it “transcends” its predecessor, as molecules transcend or go beyond atoms. But each stage also fully enwraps, literally enfolds or “includes,” its predecessor—as molecules literally include atoms. The same transcend-and-include is operating with the 6-to-8 stages of human growth, development, and evolution that we are presently reviewing.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

in this ubiquitous process, something can go wrong with either of those two steps or substages. If something goes wrong with the “transcend” part—if, that is, the higher stage fails to cleanly and clearly move beyond the previous stage—then parts of the new stage will remain “stuck” or “fixated” at the previous stage, and thus the new stage will develop numerous addictions to those parts that it is fixated to. On the other hand, if something goes wrong with the “include” part—if the new stage doesn’t include or integrate the previous stage, but instead dissociates and denies and splits off parts of it, then it will develop an allergy to those dis-owned and unwanted aspects of itself. “Addictions and allergies” are the two universal problems built into each stage of evolution because of its inherent transcend-and-include nature.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

to start with something like this earliest stage, the desire for food—is to simply get in touch, right now, with the desire to eat. If you’re at all hungry, focus on that desire; if not, imagine it. There is a deep, deep yearning, a powerfully primitive drive, to satisfy that most basic of desires—to eat, to become full, to not be hungry. When this drive arises in you, if you haven’t completely “transcended and included” it—that is, if you still have some sort of attachment to this stage, so that you have not just an oral drive but an oral fixation—then when this drive arises, it will temporarily take you over; it will have you, you won’t have it. And that means it is remaining as a “hidden subject” in your awareness, in your identity. Some part of you is still identified with this stage.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

If this is so for you to any degree, then when this hunger drive (or any basic physiological drive—for water, warmth, shelter)—when this drive arises, then you won’t simply have or possess that drive, you will be that drive—it will be experienced as a part of your core-self feeling, as part of what you are. You will be hunger, looking to be satisfied. And at that specific point, nothing is more important; the world will become all food and you will be all mouth

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

When you were first at this stage, all of you was identified with it; you didn’t have a desire to eat, you were the desire to eat—the world indeed was all food, and you were all mouth (hence, the “oral stage”). To the extent that you are still identified with parts of this stage, you will have a food addiction. You might be overweight or even clinically obese, and this is a serious addictio

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

the ingredients in these “holarchies” are called “holons”—wholes that are parts of larger wholes. Thus, a whole atom is part of a whole molecule; a whole molecule is part of a whole cell; a whole cell is part of a whole organism, and so on

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

if you are overweight—and I know you’ve been told a hundred things that you are supposedly doing “wrong” if you are (and you’re likely quite sick of it, so forgive me)—but one of the items that is almost certainly a concern for you is that some part of your self-identity remains fixated at this early stage. This drive has remained as a real but hidden part of your very self-sense, your actual feeling of being yourself. It has remained a part of your subject, your self, and that is why seeing it as an object—using mindfulness on it as we are now starting to do—is to actually begin to let go of it, to “dis-identify” with it, to look at it instead of using it to look at and grasp the world with—to have it instead of being had by it.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

the next time hunger arises (whether you’re overweight or not), truly give it attention, give it mindfulness awareness. This is just like videotaping something: you’re a perfectly neutral camera, seeing everything just as it is without any judgment—you don’t want to criticize it, condemn it, or identify with it; simply be aware of it neutrally, and pervasively, from all angles. Where is this hunger desire located (head, mouth, heart, stomach, gut, hands, feet)? What color is it (just whatever comes to mind)? What shape is it (also, whatever comes to mind)? What does it smell like (whatever comes to mind)? Really feel the primitiveness and urgency, the driven-ness of this drive. Stay with that yearning urgency. Make that subjective drive an object of mindfulness, an object of awareness. Really look at it, long and steady. Feel it directly, with feeling-awareness, which can be seen as another term for “mindfulness.”

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

you might have not remained fixated at this stage, but gone to the other extreme, dis-identifying from it too much. Normally, you should eventually dis-identify with each stage, ceasing to identify exclusively with its needs and drives while still keeping it in awareness: you no longer are it, you are aware of it—you “transcend and include” it. But if that dis-identifying goes too far or is too extreme, you won’t just dis-identify; you will actually dis-own, dissociate from, or repress it. If this occurs at the oral stage, you will have, not a food addiction, but a food allergy. This might show up in anything from bulimia to anorexia or being chronically underweight. How can mindfulness help you in this case? It enables you to “transcend and include” the hunger drive

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

Remember the simple example of the evolutionary sequence: atoms to molecules to cells to organisms. Each of those stages “transcends” or goes beyond its predecessor by bringing new emergent qualities into being (each higher stage is, for example, “more whole”); but it also “includes” or actually enwraps and enfolds its predecessor (as cells literally include molecules, and molecules literally include atoms). Awareness itself has this transcend-and-include quality: it is aware of an object, and thus goes beyond it, but it also includes it, or actually “touches” it, much as a mirror directly touches all the images that are reflected in it.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

So if you have dis-owned or denied these hunger drives, then what you can do is gently and carefully, but directly, look for hunger impulses and then just become steadily aware of them—simply holding them in the space of your feeling-awareness. You will thus bring them back into the orbit of your “friendliness” as your own Mirror-Mind touches the reflection of hunger that it is directly aware of. You won’t end up identified with the hunger drive—the mirror doesn’t get stuck in identity with any object, because it freely lets all of its reflections come and go as they please; but while being reflected (while in awareness), these reflections are directly “one with” the mirror—the mirror directly “touches” all of its reflections

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

We’ll eventually see, as an actual experience, that this “one with” nature of awareness lies behind the capacity to feel “one with” the entire universe in a radical “unity consciousness.”

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

We start out, in the Archaic stage, with a self-identity that most fundamentally is driven by those needs and only those needs—and yet we will eventually end up, as Zen Master Dogen puts it, with “bodymind dropped!”—our narrow identity with just this isolated organism transcended and included in the ultimate state, the Supreme Identity—an identity with the All, with the entire universe.

Sound a little far out? Well, very soon we will be doing exercises that will give you a direct experience of exactly such a state, so please stay tuned

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

In the meantime, spend some time making these deep physiological drives, these bodily subjects, into objects of awareness, thus transcending-and-including them in your own being.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

Level 1—(Infrared) Archaic

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

We begin now with a brief guided tour of these 6-to-8 major stages or levels of development or Growing Up—our “hidden maps”—a general agreement about which we find in virtually all the various modern schools of developmental studies. These are stages/levels that emerged historically or evolutionarily, one at a time; and after a stage had emerged and taken on form, it remained in existence, to be experienced by every single human being who followed—and in the same order that they were originally laid down, an archaeological layering of sediment after sediment of human being and awareness.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

The infant at birth is basically without a separate-self sense; it can’t tell where its body stops and the environment starts. It is one with the mother and its surroundings in a state of pure fusion. This stage, level 1, is sometimes referred as the Archaic stage, the symbiotic stage, the fusion stage, or the basic sensorimotor and physiological stage, and is given the color infrared.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

At around 4 months on average, at what is often called the “hatching” subphase, the typical infant learns to distinguish its physical body from the physical environment. But it still can’t tell the difference between its emotional self and that of others—especially the mother. The child experiences itself and its mother as a type of “dual unity,” a large, fused self-sense that has no real boundary between its emotions and those around it, especially, again, the mother. For psychoanalysis, this is the “oral stage”; for Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the stage of “physiological needs”

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

Level 2—(Magenta) Magic Tribal

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

At somewhere around 18 months, in today’s world, the infant begins to make that fundamental distinction between self and other on an emotional and feeling level, and so it can genuinely begin to tell the difference between its own self and its surroundings. This stage is actually called “the psychological birth of the infant,” because not until around 18 months does the actual birth of the infant’s separate self occur

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

This separate self is initially driven by impulse and immediate gratification; it has a magical or fantasy mode of thinking; and it is focused on the immediate now moment. This stage, level 2, is often called “impulsive” or “magical” or “emotional-sexual” (because the basic emotions especially start developing here along with the separate self); it’s given the color magenta. It is called “magical” because, first, its thinking tends to be fantasy based, wherein every wish is believed to magically materialize. And second, since the self is only just beginning to separate itself from the environment, then self and environment keep getting a bit mixed up; that is, the self confuses itself with various exterior surroundings, and the exterior environment itself takes on human-like qualities

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

Ascribing human characteristics and motives to exterior objects is technically known as “animism”: a mountain volcano erupts because it’s mad at me, thunder strikes because it’s trying to kill me, flowers blossom because I’m in love, and so on.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

subject and object get confused because they’re not fully separated or differentiated, and hence each seems to magically influence the other in an anthropocentric, fantasy fashion. But this superstitious, fantasy, magical thinking is today the major stage of development in infants particularly from ages 1 to 3 or 4.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

Historically, this stage emerged somewhere around 200,000 or so years ago, and marked the first fully “human” mode of being and existence.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

The transcend-and-include nature of evolution ensured that, when the first human emerged, it already transcended and included every single major level of existence (and type of holon) that had been yet produced by evolution, going all the way back to the Big Bang. That is, from the start, humans contained—literally enfolded within their bodies—quarks, subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, and organisms—including the basic biochemistry pioneered by plants, the neural cord of fish and amphibians, the reptilian brain stem of reptiles, the limbic system of paleomammals (e.g., horses), the cortex of primates, and their own crowning triune brain and neocortex, the most complex holon in the entire Kosmos (with more neural synaptic connections than there are stars in the known universe). And it didn’t stop there. Humans themselves continued their own growth and evolution, producing new and novel stage after stage after stage (the stages of Growing Up), with each of them transcending-and-including their predecessor. And so the inevitable “increasing wholeness” of Kosmic evolution continued, now in a human vehicle.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

mild aspects of this stage remain in adults who display superstitious, magical thinking, such as beliefs found in Voodoo and Santería where, if you make an image of a person in the form of a doll, and stick a pin in that doll, it will actually damage the real person—a holdover of this stage’s magical thinking, in which all you have to do is wish something and it will magically come about. (Because self and environment, subject and object, thought and things, are still poorly differentiated, then to manipulate the thought or image of a thing is to directly affect that thing itself. Magic!)

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

Every 3-year-old thinks this way—and so they will imagine that if they hide their head under a pillow so that they can’t see anybody, then behold! magically, nobody can see them either—much to the amusement of adults

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

Even to this day, some adults are attracted to magical elements in their religion—they likely got involved with the religion in the first place because they are drawn to acts like magically walking on water, raising the dead, making the blind see, turning water into wine, and multiplying loaves and fishes.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

some present-day spiritual approaches, such as those described in The Secret and What the Bleep Do We Know? contain a heavy dose of this magic, which appeals, as we will see, to what’s called the egocentric or self-aggrandizing aspect of ourselves. This fantasy magic is a hidden map in much of the “law of attraction” and several other New Age notions.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

infantile word-magic is quite different from actual paranormal capacities, such as real ESP, precognition, or telekinesis, or the value of a strongly held intention in achieving one’s goals. Strictly controlled scientific experiments have demonstrated, beyond a reasonable doubt, that some of these capacities are indeed very real

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

If you have a fair number of these magical beliefs, the recommendation, of course, will be to recognize them, to recognize that hidden map in your life, see how much of your life these superstitious magical beliefs are governing, and then hold them up to direct awareness, bringing them under the sunlight of pure mindfulness and radiant presence, thus turning them into mere objects of awareness. See these beliefs as objects in your mindfulness field instead of using them as subjects, as hidden maps with which you see the world

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

you might very well have a fair amount of your awareness stuck at this early stage, this magical, fantasy, egocentric stage. If so, you will take up meditation to marvelously increase your own greatness, or magically bring you boons (getting the girl, the car, the new house, the promotion), or cause you to automatically lose weight and become irresistibly gorgeous, and miraculously give you all your own egoic desires just like that!, and basically put you first and foremost in all the world (yikes!).

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

In mindfulness sessions, as we’ll continue to see, you’ll want to focus intently on the feeling of, in this case, being incredibly special. See yourself as world famous: walking the red carpet at the Cannes Festival, with numerous media photographing you, critics all praising you, fans screaming out for you. Hold that feeling of pure fame—just unflinchingly feel it, see it, look at it, just as if you were videotaping it—not judging it, condemning it, or identifying with it, just meeting it with pure awareness. Make it an object instead of a subject or a self, thus clearing the slate for a new and higher level of self and awareness to emerge. Seeing the hidden map means you have converted it into an object of awareness, you’ve made it “un-hidden,” and so it stops governing your behavior, making room for higher maps that are more accurate and more adequate.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

hold any of these magical, superstitious beliefs directly in awareness; see them straightforwardly, neutrally, without criticizing, blaming, or identifying—pure videotaping. “Transcend and include” them: become aware of them, thus “transcending” them, making them an object instead of subject, forcing a dis-identification with them (i.e., seeing them as an object of awareness tears them away from being a subject of awareness, from being a self, from being an attachment, fixation, or addiction). Just how addicted to your “super-specialness” are you? Notice your beliefs in this regard on a daily basis and in all your relationships. Simply give it awareness

Integral Meditation

With experiential exercises, guided meditation instructions, and tools to identify the individual’s own greatest potential, this book points the way to realizing our Supreme Identity—and to finding the reason why each of us has come into being: to embody and express in the world our unique perspective of Spirit.

Introduction

there are at least two very different forms of religion or spirituality and what they are trying to accomplish. The first form, scholars often call narrative, the most common form of which is called “mythic-literal.” Here, religion is a series of mythic stories, tales, and narratives, generally intended to explain the relation of the universe and the human being to a Divine Being (and also a series of rules or “laws” on how the human Being should act in order be in “correct” relation with this Divine Being). This approach tends to take the mythic stories as being literally and absolutely true (hence, “mythic-literal”). It is often the basis of various fundamentalist religions. So a fundamentalist Christian, for example, believes that Moses really did part the Red Sea, God really did kill all human beings except Noah’s family with the Great Flood (and Noah really did manage to put two of every animal on board the Ark—you know, two bacteria, male and female, two viruses, male and female, and two each of over 180,000 species of insects—I hope he brought his insect repellent). If you believe the mythic narrative—which usually includes the claim that a representative of the absolute Divine Being is the one and only savior of all humankind—if you openly believe this, then you will end up spending all eternity in the presence of this Divine Being in a heavenly abode; whereas if you don’t believe it, and don’t accept the one and only true savior, then you burn in hell forever (or face endless horrific reincarnations). That’s one type of religion. It focuses on structures of consciousness, and often they are structures that are not very well developed, or that represent early, childhood stages of development with their early, childhood maps

Introduction

The other type of spirituality is not a belief system, but a psychotechnology of consciousness transformation. It’s interested in changing states of consciousness. That is, it uses various meditative and contemplative practices to fundamentally re-orient awareness to an opening of new and higher states of consciousness, including a direct sense of oneness with the entire universe

Introduction

it focuses on the earlier stages of Growing Up in the spiritual line

Introduction

it aims for a pure Waking Up

Introduction

Enlightenment, Liberation, or Awakening. Essentially, what one is awakening from is the ceaseless, chaotic, incoherent thoughts and ways of framing reality that govern most human activity, generating endless states of suffering; and what one is awakening to is a pure, transparent, open, empty, clear awareness, free of incoherent and broken thoughts and frameworks.

Introduction

this process of discovery is much more like a psychology than a religion. So if that’s what you mean by spiritual, then mindfulness is indeed spiritual, and was a purely spiritual practice from its very beginnings. It just so happens that it has a multitude of other, lesser, but still quite valuable effects, ranging from health benefits to psychological well-being to improved relationships.

Introduction

many modern Western practitioners shy away from even mentioning the spiritual aspect of mindfulness at all, fearful that it will be confused with the mythic-literal silliness of so much typical religion prevalent in the world’s cultures—that is, the first form of religion or spirituality we described, called narrative religion

Introduction

Ongoing research has demonstrated that human beings have at least two very different types of growth and development—and this means two very different types of spiritual engagements as well. And the funny thing is that, because one of these approaches has only recently been discovered, there has never been a path of growth or development (conventional or spiritual or any other form) that actually has included both of these incredibly important forms of growth. As we’ll see, we refer to these two major approaches as Growing Up and Waking Up.

Introduction

that means we have been producing individuals who might be quite “Grown Up” (or highly developed in any of their multiple intelligences), but they are not Awakened or not Enlightened (have not had a realization of what some traditions call the “Supreme Identity,” where individuals experience themselves as being literally one with all of reality, one with the entire universe, one with all beings.

Introduction

humanity did produce Awakened or Enlightened individuals—people who had followed a path of Waking Up—but they could still be relatively immature in many of their human capacities: they might be poorly developed psychosexually (and thus sexually take advantage of their students), or they might not be well developed morally despite their spiritual interests (many Nazis, for example, were well versed in yoga and meditation practices). Or they might be homophobic, sexist, racist, xenophobic, authoritarian, rigidly hierarchical, and so on—they may have been “one with the world,” but their capacities in that world remained relatively immature or even dysfunctional and pathological.

Introduction

the path of Growing Up wasn’t even discovered until around 100 years ago—we’ll see why in just a moment; the point is, it is not something that is terribly obvious and easy to see, and so it is very likely that, no matter how much you introspect or meditate or look within, you will not see any of the stages of Growing Up. They just aren’t available by simply looking within, and that is why, as we’ll see, you can look at every single major meditation system the world wide, and although many of them have stages of meditative development (which we will fully examine), not one of them anywhere has anything resembling the stages of Growing Up. Waking Up, yes; Growing Up, no.

Introduction

we have maps of this path of Growing Up that can help us directly grow, develop, and evolve through these stages to the very highest stages of maturity and fullness imaginable. And yet—here’s that odd part—virtually none of these maps or models of Growing Up have anything like Enlightenment, or Awakening, or the Supreme Identity. So these schools teach us how to Grow Up, but they do not teach us how to Wake Up

Introduction

with what’s called the “Integral approach”—that new leading-edge model just mentioned—both of these paths are combined for the first time, producing a method of growth and development that is truly profound and effective in virtually every conceivable way.

Introduction

Mindfulness is a form of bodymind training that has been demonstrated to dramatically reduce stress; increase feelings of calm, relation, and harmony; decrease feelings of anxiety and depression; reduce the discomfort of pain; lower blood pressure; increase learning capacity, IQ, and creativity; and awaken higher states of consciousness,

Introduction

It’s like a steroid for human activities in general, from the ordinary mundane to the enlightened spiritual.

Introduction

Basic mindfulness practice. And what is the practice, exactly? Well, essentially, all you do is sit in a comfortable position, relax the mind, and then bring attention to bear on the present moment, whatever is arising. Start by sitting on the floor, loosely crossing your legs or assuming the lotus posture standard in yoga practice; place your hands palms up, one on top of the other, and rest them in your lap, or put the hands palms down on the knees; or sit in a chair with feet on the floor, spine erect, and hands in one of those two positions. Then simply rest with attention focusing on the now moment, and with calm clarity, notice whatever is happening, both inwardly and outwardly. Usually, you will be instructed to pay attention to one particular item at a time—your breathing is by far the most common. We’ll be going over these instructions in more detail later, but for now, the idea here is to be aware of your breath as you breath in, then notice the pause, then pay attention to the breathing out, the pause, the following in-breath, and so on. If you lose track—if you find yourself thinking of the past or future, or your current life (something annoying at work last week, or an exciting event happening tomorrow, or difficulties in your present relationship), just gently drop those thoughts and return to following the breath. Do this for 10 to 40 minutes once or twice a day.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? In a sense, it is, quite simple. Until you try it. Then you’ll notice just how unhelpful your mind actually is in this task, and how essentially little control you actually have over your own thoughts

Introduction

You will find that you lose track of the breath constantly; wild thoughts and images will flood your awareness; sometimes powerful and unpleasant feelings will overwhelm you; at other times incredibly positive, even blissful, feelings will cascade through you. You will start to realize how little of your own mind, your own interiors, you have actually been aware of. It will start to dawn on you powerfully that if thoughts are what guide behavior, then these jumbled, erratic thoughts that are your standard condition right now are leading to jumbled, erratic, problematic behavior. Virtually every area of your life is being lived with much less success, coherence, quality, harmony, achievement, caring, and excellence than you could possess

Introduction

In the areas that you might have actually managed to have a great deal of success, if you look closely at them, it’s almost always the areas that you can indeed already manage to focus clearly, coherently, and freely—often in what are called flow states. These flow states of coherence allow you to do whatever you’re doing in the very best way that you could possibly do them (and hence, usually quite successfully)—whether at work, or in relationships, or raising kids, or simply relaxing. Well, mindfulness meditation is a way to make your entire life a flow state.

Introduction

Take the language that you were born into—say, English. Every child raised in an English-speaking environment will end up speaking that language more or less correctly—they combine subjects and verbs correctly, they use adjectives and adverbs correctly, they place words together correctly, and so on. In other words, they follow the rules of grammar quite correctly. But if you ask any of them to write down what those rules of grammar actually are, virtually nobody can do it. Everybody is accurately following those rules, but nobody is actually aware of them!

That’s an example of the types of items that Integral Theory points out in all sorts of areas of our lives. These are like the basic maps that we use to make sense of the territory we find ourselves in—at work, in relationships, creating art, raising kids, learning new courses, playing sports, almost anything—we make maps of those areas, and those maps guide how we view that territory, how we navigate it, but by and large we’re not aware that we have these maps. (And that goes for all of the stages of Growing Up as well—those stages are just like hidden maps.) And exactly like the rules of grammar, they are something we’re following but don’t know we’re following. And frankly, many of those maps are often just quite screwed up—they’re inaccurate, infantile, holdovers from childhood, or just plain wrong. But because we can’t see them—we can’t see these rules of grammar, we can’t see these hidden maps—so we never think to adjust those maps, to redraw them more accurately, to create a map that more correctly represents the various territories in which we live. And, just as if you try to drive from one city to another city using an incorrect map, you’re going to mess up that drive pretty badly, ending up nowhere near where you wanted to be. Doesn’t that sound a little bit too familiar? It does to me.

Introduction

Now, these maps cannot be discovered merely by introspecting, or examining our awareness. We can’t find the rules of grammar just by looking within. All we’ll see are words, images, and signs and symbols, but not the hidden rules they are following. For that, we have to objectively study numerous users of a particular language, see what they all have in common, and then deduce what the rules governing their speech actually are. The same is true of these hidden maps that guide so much of our lives. You just can’t see them by looking within. In fact, these maps—known technically as “structures of consciousness”—weren’t discovered by humans, as we noted earlier, until relatively recently. We’ve been on this planet upwards of a million years, and yet only 100 years ago did we discover these hidden maps (and that is why the stages of Growing Up are such a recent discovery)

Introduction

these maps are found in none of the world’s great meditative traditions, not one. So none of those traditions, as brilliant as they were in creating forms of meditation and contemplation such as mindfulness (leading to Waking Up), none used mindfulness to help uncover these hidden maps and replace them with better versions

Introduction

even highly advanced meditation masters can fall prey to seriously confused notions (from homophobia to authoritarianism to sexism to rigid hierarchicalism), still driven as they are by these unconscious, distorted, hidden maps.

Introduction

While with Waking Up, we move from less whole and less advanced states to the highest, most developed states imaginable, leading to a genuine transformative Awakening, Enlightenment, Great Liberation, Metamorphosis, Satori, or Supreme Identity, as it’s variously termed.

Introduction

In Growing Up, we move from less developed stages or maps of our world, to more adequate, more mature, more developed stages or maps, a true Growing Up

Introduction

with Growing Up, the only way to jettison the influence of the lower, less developed hidden maps is to first discover them, to become aware of them. And that is exactly, as we will see, what Integral Theory will help you do. And once you discover one of these hidden maps, and decide that it is, indeed, a bit outdated or shopworn or inappropriate for your age today, or if it’s just plain wrong, you need to, as it were, dig it up and replace it.

Introduction

the digging-up part is exactly where mindfulness can be so powerful. At this point, it becomes the same mindfulness as regular mindfulness—consistent and bare attention to a phenomenon arising in the present moment

Introduction

Consistently bringing awareness to these hidden maps will make them “un-hidden”—that is, these unconscious maps will become conscious, these subjective structures will become objective, and thus something you can consciously control

Introduction

We will, in clear and simple terms, explain this composite map as we go along, and using this overall map will help you spot the various hidden maps or frameworks that you are using right now in order to guide various aspects of your life. Then, based on the healthy version of these maps as disclosed by this Integral approach, we’ll help you spot the hidden map and focus on it with mindfulness, thus loosening its grip and allowing you to replace it with it more adequate, more whole, more inclusive, and healthier versions.

Introduction

Getting rid of the old, incoherent maps and replacing them with new, more accurate maps will have an immediate and profound impact on virtually every area of your life

Introduction

what developmental studies unmistakably show is that, at each level of our development, we actually see and feel and interpret the world in dramatically different ways.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

notice the next time you get caught up in a superstitious thought—a black cat crosses your path, you’re faced with walking under a ladder, you break a mirror, you spill salt—and notice how, if fixated or addicted to this stage, you’ll actually think those actions will suspend the laws of nature just to alter your own special history. Are you—are any of us—really that special? A black cat crossing your path is really and truly going to make the entire course of history focus on you in a negative and “bad-luck” fashion, altering history just because you have that magical power? Make that belief, that subject, an object, and cease identifying with it!

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

via feeling-awareness or Integral Mindfulness, “transcend and include” any magical superstitious thoughts you might have, with the “transcend” part (of direct objective awareness) breaking any fixation or addiction to this level, and the “include” part (of awareness touching the object it is aware of) breaking any dis-owning of or allergy to this level.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

A “magical allergy,” by the way, occurs when a magical or superstitious thought arises in your own mind or self, and you don’t just dis-identify with it (“I have this thought, but I am not this thought”), you go overboard and dis-own it, dissociate from it, deny it altogether (“This thought isn’t mine!”), thus “repressing” it to the banished basement of the unconscious, from which it is usually projected onto other people—so that suddenly, many people “out there” seem full of these silly magical notions; they start to show up everywhere

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

I know that somebody is having a lot of these silly thoughts, and since it can’t be me, it must somebody else—anybody else—and these people really start to annoy me, to irritate me, which is my own “shadow” or dis-owned impulse pushing against the boundary of my self, causing all sorts of unpleasant frictions and tensions. This “disowning” and projecting of an impulse-rendered shadow, or unconscious, is something that can and does happen at virtually every level of development, as we will see, and in most cases it ends up creating an “allergy” to this material, and we end up “shadow-boxing” our way through life (or, alternatively, it is fixated, creating an addiction and “shadow-hugging”). Mindfulness of the actual contents of our own being, which transcends and includes everything it sees, is one of the only, nearly guaranteed ways to redress these problems.

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Exaggerated power drives often show up in individuals as an “inner critic” or “inner controller,” which is always watching everything they do with a critical, negative, controlling drive—always making you feel inferior, lacking, a loser, a worthless good-for-nothing. One of the ways of contacting such a “subpersonality”

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is to engage it in “voice dialogue.”

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Simply take both roles in the dialogue, and start, perhaps, as your normal self asking the controller, “What do you want? Why are you so critical of me? Why are you always trying to control me?” And then play the role of the controller, and answer those questions. Possibly: “I’m here to watch you because you’re such a loser; you never do anything right; you’re pathetic; if I weren’t here you’d completely derail your entire life.” Self: “What is it exactly that you want?” Controller: “I want to control every aspect of your life.”

Virtually all people have some degree of this inner critic. In many cases, it is originally created by “introjecting,” the opposite of “projecting.”

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In projection, I take something that really belongs to me and I push it outside of myself, seeing it as existing in other people. With introjection, I take something—ideas, judgments, criticisms—from other people and identify with them myself, as if they were actually a part of me.

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These are foreign, false elements mistakenly taken into myself, or “introjected.”

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Often these original negative, internalized criticisms come from parents, occasionally from other family members or early teachers. But they retain their early, childish qualities of stubbornness, lack of care and compassion, narcissistic bloating, and general nastiness (they retain the qualities—and the age—of the stage/level at which they were first introjected—often magenta magic or red magic-mythic

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with mindfulness. Here, the only task is to be aware of this inner critic

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to look at it instead of through it; and in all ways to simply videotape it. Don’t worry about understanding it; just worry about seeing it.

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use voice dialogue to bring to the surface as much of this inner critic as you can; and then laser it with mindfulness

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all that is required is to make this hidden subject an object of feeling-awareness, and thus begin your fundamental dis-identification with this incredibly damaging internal subpersonality.

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absolutistic, or completely and utterly unquestionable beliefs, can be a tip-off that this stage is activated.

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Level 4—(Amber) Mythic Traditional

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Level 3—(Red) Magic-Mythic

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the self continues to grow

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it becomes more and more aware of its tenuous separate existence, and starts to worry about its own safety and security and self-protection. As recourse, it develops a strong set of power drives. This stage is often termed “self-protective,” “security,” “safety,” “power,” or “opportunistic” stage

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This stage, when it remains into adulthood in an unhealthy fashion, is often the source of criminal behavior and significant corruption. The person’s power drives, as their hidden map or unconscious grammar rules, control their behavior

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Whatever they want is what is right

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. It sees the world in terms of survival of the fittest;

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Individuals operating from this level are capable of some truly vicious acts.

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These first three major levels or stages, as we began to note, are all called “narcissistic” or “egocentric,” which means that the self is stuck in a 1st-person, “me/mine” perspective

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it can’t put itself in somebody else’s shoes and feel what they are feeling, it can’t take a perspective other than its own.

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They automatically think that whatever they are seeing, you must be seeing, too.

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their hidden map, their fundamental grammar, doesn’t even recognize the real existence of another person

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It’s not a choice they have; they simply cannot take the role of other, and so they don’t.

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you might have some degree of this egocentric power-driven hidden map still in you. If you think you do, then apply Integral Mindfulness

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There’s probably some area of life, however small, that reactivates this stage and leaves you in the grip of a self-centered drive for power and control. Recall some actual occasion where that happened; or simply focus, as directly as you can, on the feeling of pure, unbridled power over people, being able to control people, being totally in charge. You are in control! Imagine walking through a large group of people, and with your own pure, undiluted power, magically making them all bow down as you walk by—and imagine all of them being inferior, being so much less than your amazing, power-laden self is. Feel the sheer exuberance of forcing people to do exactly what you want, and what losers they all are for doing so. You can get anything you want—fame, fortune, all the women in the world or all the men dying to court you, cars, yachts, houses all over the world, simply because you reached out and took them. You’re truly invincible; you are totally safe, secure, protected—all because of your impenetrable power.

Then hold that feeling or image directly in awareness, and practice mindfulness with that as an object. What does it directly feel like, this desire for power, for sheer control? What does it look like, what color is it, where is it located in your body, what triggers it? Videotape it thoroughly, until you feel familiar with every corner of that feeling, that drive, that need. See that hidden subject as an object of awareness, and hold it that way steadily—that is, as an object you are looking at, and not a subject through which you see and feel the world. You are no longer identified with it; you have dropped it, let go of it, detached from it, transcended it. Thus, Integral Mindfulness.

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be vigilant for any of these self-glorifying power drives that might continue to arise in your awareness. These include, on the one hand, a power addiction, where there is a serious degree of fixation to, and hidden identification with, this stage, driving you to glorify power in all its forms—including exaggerated forms of otherwise healthy activities such as martial arts, weight-lifting, or business success, as well as being king of the social networks or princess of the peer group. And, on the other hand, there is the opposite extreme of power allergies, where one represses and projects one’s power, resulting in a dis-empowered, “weak-willed” momma’s boy or daddy’s girl, giving anyway one’s power to anybody and everybody, and then feeling that the entire world is trying to control you, force you, imprison you, have “power over” you—your own shadow power impulses come home to roost. In both cases, “transcend and include” power drives whenever they arise, by giving them direct, immediate, full-attention awareness, converting those subjects into objects, dis-identifying from them but including them in awareness

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first major form of religion, the narrative, is often fundamentalist mythic-literal.

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this fundamentalism can apply to any fervently, absolutistically held belief, which is believed to be absolutely and literally true with or without evidence—so this could apply to fundamentalist Christianity, or fundamentalist Marxism, or fundamentalist feminism, or fundamentalist science (so-called “scientism”)

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This level often sees truth as embodied in a single book, which is taken to be absolutely and ultimately true

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Similarly, governments with this structure often place power in a single all-powerful person or omnipotent dictator

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We all know individuals who are primarily at this conformist or absolutistic stage of development

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They believe in strict law and order, and what are often called “family values” or “God’s values”; they are nationalistic and extremely patriotic, worried about immigration and the dilution of family values and the work ethic;

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fundamentalist women, too, believe that they owe obedience to their husbands

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they believe that the United States was created by God as an exceptionalist nation, meant to lead and even control the rest of the world according to God’s plan

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Others at this stage are quieter, being good members of what used to be called the “silent majority,” believing in God, country, and family, and attempting to lead a sober, diligent life

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all believed to be absolutistically true, not open to questioning at all.

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you might have certain beliefs that you think are absolutely and unquestionably true, and you might even be willing to lay down your life for them. You might want to look at those;

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If you have some of this conforming stage in you—perhaps a desire to fit in, to not stand out or be different in any noticeable way, to be liked and thought well of—you likely will not see it as a stage, but simply as the way things are; and you will likely not want to change it. And if you hold fundamentalist religious beliefs, you almost certainly will not want to change them (any changes will likely result in eternal damnation). But all you’ll be asked to do in these mindfulness sessions is look directly at those beliefs—simply hold them in awareness, see them as an object, and then see what happens after that. If they are due to enduring and unchanging values, then they will remain in your awareness; if they are merely the result of fixation at a particular stage of development, that stage will tend to die down and be replaced by the next higher stage, and you will naturally find your values shifting to larger and more inclusive ones, right before your eyes

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If you have a fair amount of this stage of development as part of your hidden maps, governing many areas of your life, and you decide to take up meditation, you will likely—to the degree you’re coming from this stage—appreciate the structure, the fixed routine, the daily pattern of helping to bring your life into greater order and stability, and the steady, constant, fixed practice with a set of rules, unchanging in its nature and its ways. You will be very meticulous about not missing a session and about doing it exactly according to the rules, which for you would be best if they were presented in a very straightforward, no-nonsense way, with little left to individual discretion. You’ll be less interested in all the details of why it works, and more interested in just what you’re supposed to do and how to do it. If it really starts to have a profound impact on you, you might even start to think that this approach to spirituality is the one, true, and only real approach to spirituality, becoming a type of “fundamentalist mindfulness” believer, judging all religions that don’t have this type of practice as being inadequate or inferior, and certainly not capable of delivering real salvation or true awakening.

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many individuals at considerably higher stages of development, when they take up a practice or belief that has a profound and amazing impact on their lives, end up “regressing” to this absolutistic level, and start to become a real “true believer,”

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Mindfulness training is not immune to this effect; many of its teachers are “fundamentalist” mindfulness teachers, convinced that this way, and this way alone, has the ultimate answers to all things of ultimate concern

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The same thing happens to many scientists, who start out with a very rational, objective view of science, and then slowly turn science into their “religion”—often called “scientism”—and hence end up introducing all sorts of ideas that are actually myths (from the mythic-literal stage) into their otherwise rational belief systems, as their hidden maps regress to this level. In fact, a vast number of ideas that the typical scientist believes in absolutely are in fact myths, with no evidence supporting them at all; they are simply believed because they sound consistent with science, which is now absolute reality for them. This includes things like “The universe is without creativity or consciousness,” “Life is a strictly random process with no goal or direction,” and “All of reality is nothing but the arrangement of material atoms or sub-atomic particles”—none of which they have the slightest proof for

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They forget that there is no scientific proof for science itself; science is simply another, incredibly important, true but PARTIAL approach to reality, and needs to be approached that way.

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note any areas where you seem to be thinking in an absolutistic, fundamentalist, only-one-true-way fashion. Focus particularly on the feeling of being right, absolutely right. Imagine the last time you gleefully got an issue presciently right and you could say, “I told you so! I told you so!” Focus on that feeling of jubilantly being right and everybody knowing it. How important is that feeling to you? Do you think you’re always right? (As the joke has it, “The last time I was wrong was when I thought I’d made a mistake.”)

Then, second, simply become aware of that type of thinking, that type of attitude, that feeling—of being right—and hold it in your awareness mindfully. Look at it from every angle: How big is it? What color is it? Where do you hold it (in your head, your heart, your gut)? How do you feel when you are thinking this way? What’s the payoff for you? Don’t judge it or condemn it; just be mindful of it

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take neutral picture after neutral picture of this mental belief, this idea, this attitude, just as it is, as a videotape would—hold it in your awareness and see it clearly as an object, without judging it, condemning it, or identifying with it. Notice the things that trigger this hidden map into action—maybe a discussion about religion or politics, or sharing your ideas with your relationship partner, or teaching your child something you think important for them to understand, or reading a book that you disagree with.

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Correlatively, think of a time when you were pointed out as being wrong, especially if it was in a group—everybody looking at you, knowing you are wrong. Along with the feeling of being right, feel that feeling of being wrong directly and clearly; videotape it. Notice the “must-be-right” map swing into action—notice your thought reactions, the ideas that you start churning as you defend this notion to yourself or others, what words you often use, the emotions that go with this hidden map, this submerged value structure of wanting to be right and hating being wrong, these camouflaged grammar rules that govern your behavior. Simply, easily, quietly, notice these beliefs and hidden maps, making those hidden subjects into objects—that is, turning them from something you usually look at the world through, into something that you look directly at—not looking through, looking at. Now, to show how this is done, let’s take another characteristic of this level and apply Integral Mindfulness to that as well

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notice that all of the human groups that you might be aware of and that you are a member of—perhaps your family, your colleagues or co-workers, your fellow countrymen and women, your friends—all have a series of interior shared values, shared meanings, shared language, shared understandings, shared history, and so on. All of them, in other words, share a sense of “we,” a “we-ness,” and that is what holds them together from within (just as their system or network structure is what holds them together from without).

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You clearly feel different when you are around just these people—what is that feeling, that “we-ness”? If it’s hard to spot that particular “we-ness,” it’s because you’re much too closely identified with it subjectively; so it’s even more important to be able to see it as an object. Be aware of it, see what it looks like, what it feels like; what color is it (just notice whatever comes into your mind when you ask that), what shape is it, what does it smell like (again, just notice what comes up), where is it located (head, heart, gut, elsewhere)? Bring the laser of mindfulness to bear on that “we” feeling.

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imagine going to work, and notice how your sense of “we-ness” changes considerably as you enter the building where you and your co-workers are employed, and as you start thinking about the various staff members you are about to run into. Now, you might really like some of these co-workers, and really dislike others—if so, you will divide those into two different general groups, and feel a very different “we” with each of them—you will like and enjoy the “we” feeling of the positive employees, and dislike and feel uncomfortable in the “we” feeling of the negative employees. But notice in any case that these groups have both an outside—what they all look like from the exterior, in an interobjective outward view—and an inside—what they all feel like from within as an intersubjective “we” of which you are a member. The outside “its” or exteriors you can look at; the inside “we” you can’t so much see as you can feel or be inwardly aware of. So focus on that “we” feeling. Notice it is different from an “I” feeling: It’s something very different, it’s lots of “I’s” that have come together into a “we.” It’s also different from an “it” or simple object feeling—here, you’re not looking at an “it” as an outside or exterior; you’re feeling the group from within, a type of shared mutual awareness and mutual understanding. Pay attention to that “we” feeling. Focus on it very mindfully

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Think of a group or “we” that you have joined voluntarily, and notice what the reason was. It’s almost always clearly something that you believe in and feel strongly about. You’ll often go to considerable trouble to become a member: it might cost a significant membership fee; it might take calling in a lot of favors. In other words, it’s a prime candidate for any thoughts, feelings, or ideas that you hold strongly enough that you very well could slip into an absolutistic, fundamentalist attitude about them.

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you might want to join the local very selective country club, as a prime indicator that you have made it, you are a real success, and you want to belong to this club more than any other as proof that you have succeeded according to the values this club represents.

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you have, in effect, joined or become a member of an “absolutistic we.” If so, again, make this intense subject an object—hold those feelings, separately and then jointly (“absolutism” and “belongingness”), and fry them with the intense sunlight of a pure mindfulness, seeing them from almost every angle imaginable—what do they or it feel like, look like, smell like; what color, size, and shape are they, and so on. In all cases, make them something that you are looking at, not looking through; a subjective identity you have made into an object

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Robert Kegan, of the Harvard Graduate School of Education: “I know of no better way to describe development than that the subject of one stage becomes the object of the subject of the next stage.”

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the basic self-sense starts out identified with the particular stage. So at archaic stage 1, the self is identified with the simple sensorimotor or physiological dimension. That is its subject, its self. It can’t see this stage as an object; it sees the world through this stage as a subject. It can’t look at it, it’s looking through it. But as the next stage emerges, the magical-impulsive stage, the self lets go of its exclusive identity with the previous archaic stage, and switches its self, its subject, its identity, to this new stage, this magical-impulsive stage.

So now the self can see its previous stage as an object—the new self or new subject can see the old subject (the archaic stage) as an object. So the subject of the previous stage has become the object of the new subject of this stage. And now, the self or subject cannot see this stage, this magic-impulsive stage, because it’s identified with it, it’s a new hidden map; the self looks through it at the world, it can’t look at it

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every evolutionary sequence—atoms to molecules to cells to organisms, for example—every new level or stage “transcends and includes” its predecessors: molecules include atoms but also transcend or go beyond them, embracing them in the larger wholeness of the molecule; and cells include molecules but also transcend or go beyond them, enfolding them in an even larger wholeness of the cell; and organisms include cells but also go beyond them as well, enveloping them in the larger wholeness of the organism itself. Development is envelopment (as Plotinus maintained) and hence becomes more and more and more inclusive, more embracing, more integral.

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this is true for human evolution as well: it can start with a single human, whose identity—your identity—can then expand to include the larger whole of groups, and then expand again to include the even larger whole of all groups, all humans, and then expand (or transcend and include) even more to embrace, literally, the whole of all things. And all of that is possible because human identity is infinitely plastic: it can go from the smallest one-item identity imaginable (egocentric) to an All-identity (Kosmocentric); and each time, you feel yourself becoming almost literally bigger and bigger and bigger, including more and more and more items in your own awareness and your own self, until your self and the entire universe are one and the same feeling, and you have come home to your original and true nature.

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mindfulness can help to do what it was originally designed to do—namely, show the infinite wholeness of your own awareness

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Level 5—(Orange) Rational Modern

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a 3rd-person perspective, which is the capacity to take an objective, scientific, universal perspective; thus the switch in identity from a local ethnocentric identity to a universal or global worldcentric identity occurs—a switch from “us” to “all of us.”

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thought can operate not just on the concrete material world, but thought can now operate on thought itself. Thought can actually be aware of itself, and thus an introspective, conscientious, self-reflective, universal identity—a cosmopolitan identity—can become possible.

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Because this stage, level 5, is marked by a formal operational awareness—thought operating on thought—it is often referred to by names such as reason, rationality, formal operational, conscientious, achievement, excellence, and self-esteem (and is given the color orange). Self-esteem needs emerge at this level because a 3rd-person perspective means the individual can stand back from themselves, so to speak, and form an objective opinion about themselves—and they naturally want it to be as positive an opinion as possible, hence the self-esteem needs.

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level 5 also marks the emergence of a real individuality, since self-reflection emerges out of the conformist-collectivist role of the previous stage. The worldcentric individual emerges out of the ethnocentric conformist, and within the worldcentric background, the self wants its own high self-recognition, self-identity, self-esteem, and self-achievement. So this stage is also marked by the emergence of the drive toward excellence, accomplishment, merit, achievement, and progress.

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A 3rd-person perspective allows individuals to stand outside of the present moment and be aware of historical time, and thereby compare the present with the past and an imagined future—and thus wish to improve the present as much as possible in comparison, hence the drive toward excellence, achievement, merit, and progress

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with the striking emergence of a 3rd-person perspective, historical time itself emerged, and with it the whole notion of being able to improve things, not simply circle endlessly with the status quo, but instead dramatically work to improve conditions

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this stage, this evolutionary leap to a higher level of consciousness and culture, marked the Western Enlightenment, which the well-known historians Will and Ariel Durant called the Age of Reason and Revolution. Reason (which allows “as if” and “what if” thinking) allowed alternative realities to be conceived—alternatives to slavery (what if we abolished it?), to monarchy (what if we had representative democracy?), to patriarchy (what if women had equality?), to fundamentalist mythic religion (what if science offered more truth?)—and then revolutions brought them into existence

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stage is adequate, each higher stage is more adequate

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these hidden maps that are driving so much of our behavior, that right now the world is in a serious battle between these two particular stages—amber stage 4 (mythic fundamentalist and conformist, often called “traditional values”) and orange stage 5 (rational achiever and progress, often called “modern values”)

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How about if you’re more a stage-5, modern, rational achiever mentality? In that case, with high drives to achievement and excellence, you might take up mindfulness with an intent to make great improvements in some areas very important for you, real achievements in those areas, and noticeable progress in them. You might even become slightly competitive with others who are following a similar practice, wanting to beat them at being the best meditator in the class. Especially if you are doing this for business reasons (and many business people do practice mindfulness), you might imagine that you will gain many new skills that will let you kill the competition in your business, blasting them out of the water, and winning the market war of greater profits.

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it includes at least our basic steps of unearthing, noting, videotaping, and letting go.

Unearthing. We first unearth this hidden map, which previously we didn’t even realize we had, or that it was controlling so much of our behavior and our lives. Using the overall composite or Integral map, we “diagnose” our present psychological configuration—in this case, we look for the main basic stage of development that we are at, we look for our basic “altitude” in overall development—is it magenta, red, amber, orange … or perhaps one of the higher 3 or 4 stages we will get to very soon?

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Noting. And we do so by noting the general characteristics of each stage, and then compare ourselves, our beliefs, and our behaviors with those characteristics, deciding which stage or level most applies to us in the major areas of our life. And be aware: different areas of our life can elicit different stages; we might be one level at work—say, stage-5 achievement—and at a different level with our family, where we might revert to a tighter belongingness stage-4 attitude, identifying not globally but just with our family in these situations. And you’ll probably notice, as we look at even higher levels, areas where you light up those as well. But just notice your basic stage responses at work, in relationships, in your religious beliefs if any, and at play.

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Videotaping. Once you have identified your basic stage, your basic hidden map, then hold it up—think it or feel it or see it—and apply mindfulness.

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every stage will have some sort of grasping or desiring. In magenta, the desire is for immediate impulse satisfaction; in red, the desire is for power; in amber, the desire is for God’s love or belonging to an absolute community; and so on. But at this stage, orange, the fundamental focus is on grasping for excellence, for achievement itself, the very feeling of wanting something bigger and better and greater and more admired. Focus on that desire, that achieving, that grasping or reaching for something more and better—feel it as intensely as you can. See yourself achieving one of your goals, and in a way wildly beyond your greatest expectations. What does achieving that exultant status directly feel like? Let it drench your being and let yourself float in it fully, all the while bringing awareness to it.

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notice, as you are aware of any particular item or object, that you don’t have to do anything with it. You are not practicing awareness or mindfulness with the idea that something else is about to happen; you are practicing awareness just for the sake of awareness itself. Simply be aware of the object; merely hold the object in feeling-awareness and videotape it. That simple holding is the whole point; for that session itself, that is the entire aim or goal—simple present awareness, nothing more, nothing less.

Now, the effect of that practice, eventually, will be to loosen your identity with that hidden subject, allow consciousness to dis-identify with it, and thus create an opening or clearing in awareness for the next higher self and its maps to emerge.

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In short, make that hidden subjective map a conscious object of awareness. See it directly, instead of using it as something with which and through which to see your self, your world, and your life. Look at it, instead of through it. Make that subject an object. And as you do so, simply rest in the resulting awareness—an awareness that will be open, clear, relaxed, often silent and largely free of thinking. (Your awareness will be aware of thinking, and therefore itself free of thinking; but if thinking does arise, that’s fine; simply let it go and bring your mind back to the object of mindfulness, and rest there.

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you will start to sense a vast ocean of Freedom and Release, because you are becoming free of a limiting identity with this hidden map and its narrow limitations. This vast sense of Openness, Spaciousness, and Freedom is the dis-identifying and “transcending” and letting-go portion of Integral Mindfulness.

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this mindful awareness is actually putting you in touch with your Real Self, your True Self, the Observing Self, pure Witnessing awareness, and we’ll see exactly what that means.

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orange stage 5, after giving your awareness to various aspects of your achievement drive for a particular amount of time (which I’ll discuss in a moment), drop that, and switch attention to the pure Witnessing itself, to pure unbounded Awareness (and not any contents of Awareness itself), but just to your own present, authentic I AMness, and simply rest in that pure I AMness—unborn, undying, unlimited, unbounded. Just rest in vast, open, clear, empty, transparent Spaciousness, your pure Being, and luxuriate in that infinite Fullness—your true Condition. Do this for 5 minutes or so, then go back to mindfulness of the map for 5 minutes or so, then back to unbounded Awareness and pure I AMness (5 minutes), then map (5 minutes), and so on for as long as this session lasts. One of the aims of this exercise is to become more and more familiar with your pure Witnessing awareness, your pure infinite I AMness—and particularly start to clearly see the difference between this ultimate state (your True Self) and the limited maps that you have mistakenly identified with (your conventional, finite, separate-self). This will super-charge your dis-identification from your small self and increasingly open you to your True Self, your Original Face, your Unborn and Undying Being, just as it is. So by starting to alternate from awareness of your smal

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But I must emphasize: it is not how long you meditate, but the regularity of doing so, that is most important.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

do it every day. Don’t miss a day!—unless you have decided to meditate 6 days a week and then, like the Lord, rest on the seventh, which is just fine. But if you shorten your sessions to 10 minutes, and you’re still skipping or dreading sessions, drop to 3 or 4 minutes, literally. You can always find 3 or 4 minutes to sit quietly in the place you have put aside to sit regularly, and just relax in your present awareness for a few minutes. There’s no excuse imaginable that you can’t do a few minutes daily.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

as you do so, it will become a habit, and that habit of practicing is what is so crucial at these early stages. Establish that habit, and then slowly expand it until you start skipping or dreading, then back off. At some point you’ll find the ideal times for you.

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the ultimate state—of nondual or unity consciousness, where the Witness disappears into a oneness with everything witnessed, the Seer and seen become One Taste, and ultimate nondual reality—the Suchness or Thusness of this and every moment—becomes dramatically obvious

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

your own being right now fully contains every major developmental level that evolution has ever produced, going back not only to the earliest human stages (you contain archaic, magic, mythic, rational—and higher—layers); even at archaic, the human organism itself already fully contained the entire “Tree of Life,” going all the way back to the Big Bang. As noted earlier, the human organism fully contained (and still fully contains) quarks, and subatomic particles, and atoms, and molecules, and cells, and elements of all organisms—including the basic biochemistry of plants, the neural cord of fish and amphibians, the reptilian brain stem of reptiles, the limbic system of early mammals, the cortex of primates, and the neocortex of the capping human emergence. All of these are right now fully and completely contained in you, fully embraced and included in your very own being. You are not only the leading edge of evolution as it continues forward; you are an exclamation mark to everything evolution has ever produced up to today. You are the most significant holon in the entire Kosmos!

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

born at stage 1, at the archaic sensorimotor stage (where they stay for the first year or so). From there, they move to the magenta, stage-2, magic-impulsive level, usually lasting from around year 1 to 3 or 4 years (and which is the essence of the “terrible twos”). Then the next major stage, level 3, the red power-and-safety stage (PowerGods), begins to emerge, and that lasts until around ages 6 or 7, where the amber mythic conformist stage, level 4, begins to emerge, and lasts until adolescence (and drives the whole “peer pressure” phase, with its intense conformist and belongingness needs). During adolescence, the orange stage, level 5, can emerge, the age of “reason and revolution,” where all the adolescent rebellion and individualism jumps out. And historically, we saw, humans on the whole didn’t hit that stage until around 300 or 400 years ago

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Level 6—(Green) Pluralistic Postmodern

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where orange rational modernity introduced a 3rd-person perspective, this new stage—known variously as pluralistic, postmodern, relativistic, sensitive, individualistic, multicultural (and given the color green)—came with the emergence of a 4th-person perspective: the capacity to reflect on, and criticize, 3rd-person perspectives, including science, leading to a multitude of different or pluralistic views. (And “pluralism”—the belief in many different but equally important approaches to reality—can be taken to its limit, where it becomes “relativism”: the belief that there are only multiple approaches, with absolutely no universal or globally unified approaches, no “Big Pictures” that are true for everybody, just local, culturally constructed beliefs

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

postmodernism became especially identified with aggressive critiques of any “isms” or “Big Pictures” of any type—critiques of capitalism, of Marxism, of fundamentalism, racism, sexism, patriarchalism, ageism, speciesism, and so on—and this was the basis of everything from the civil rights movement to handicapped parking spaces to hate crime legislation

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

They believe that all people are absolutely equal—a view known as “egalitarianism”—and that no culture is superior to another culture. The majority of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are at this green stage of values as well.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

The standard NGO, with its postmodern relativistic values, believes that no culture is superior or better than another; and yet it goes into countries where it is working, and assumes that its own values are in some ways better than or superior to those of the culture it is helping—otherwise, why would it consider what it is doing as being “help,” if it didn’t have something more valuable to offer than what those receiving the “help” presently have?

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

one of the important discoveries of developmental research is that stages/levels of development can be accelerated but not skipped or bypassed

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

It is widely agreed that the Culture Wars are a battle between traditional religious values, modern scientific values, and postmodern multicultural values—exactly stages 4, 5, and 6. And as long as these three value sets are the major stages that Americans have access to, then these wars will continue unabated. The reason is that each of them is a hidden map—and you can’t change a person’s hidden maps with arguments or data or evidence or proofs, because what the map itself will accept as data or proof varies from map to map. Religious fundamentalists don’t accept scientific proofs (of evolution, for example); they accept God’s truth as revealed in the Bible. And scientists don’t accept religion’s truths, which they see as childish myths. And postmodernists accept neither, seeing both as being mere social constructions of equal unreality. The Culture Wars are one of the easiest ways to see the reality of these stages-levels of development and their incredibly powerful influence in all areas of life

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You have your truth, they have theirs, and that’s it. Likewise, all ranking, all hierarchies, are strictly taboo. What’s required are partnership societies, where all people—and especially all men and all women—are looked at equally. Even excellence and achievement—the hallmarks of the previous modern stage—are looked at suspiciously by green postmodernism, because that means you are making judgments about somebody being better or higher or more achieved than somebody else, and that is nothing but oppression.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

Meetings are considered a success, not if any conclusion is reached, but if everybody gets a chance to share their feelings;

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

the new approach is not based on abstract rationality or logic, but is based on feelings and comes straight from the heart, not the head; thinking is out, feeling is in. The heart is the basis of all real truth, and it must be “embodied”—anchored in feelings, not thoughts. All the previous approaches are “old paradigm,” and this new approach is “new paradigm.” The old paradigm is rational, analytic, divisive, Newtonian-Cartesian, egocentric, Earth-hating and Earth-denying, sexist, racist, colonialist, built on rampant commercialism and profit/greed; whereas the new paradigm is congruent with the “new” physics (meaning quantum physics, which is actually a century old now), is eco-centric instead of egocentric; is built on partnership, caring, and loving-kindness, is holistic and organic (not fragmented and mechanistic), is congruent with systems theory; is feminist, Gaia-focused, Earth-centered, and glocal-oriented (meaning global and local).

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the first thing you want to do, if you have a good deal of this stage in you, is pay particular attention to the ways that it contradicts itself.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

although this pluralism claims that there are no superior views, and nobody has a right to tell somebody else what is true or not true, it clearly believes that its view is true and everybody who disagrees with it is wrong; its view is superior in a world where nothing is supposed to be superior.

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So you might watch yourself for when you judge people for judging someone; or how you get down on people who engage in various sorts of ranking schemes; or feel uneasy around someone who feels that they have the truth and others don’t. You’ll see in these cases that you are doing exactly what you are condemning them for doing. You’re judging them for judging; you’re ranking them for ranking; you feel you have the truth, not them, when they claim they have the truth. You might say things like, “What’s true for you is true for you; I wouldn’t dream of imposing on you”—but you strongly disagree with people who feel differently than that belief: you would in fact like to impose your view on their view that imposes itself on others. In short, you want to treat all people equally, but you explicitly or implicitly loathe people who don’t share that view. So you yourself are doing exactly what you say shouldn’t be done. And the fact is, green says that it treats all people fairly and sees all people as equal—but it loathes all orange values

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

To begin with, then, watch the ways in which you judge when you judge people for making judgments. You will usually feel that you are free of nasty judgments, but all those other people are massively guilty of it—whereas that belief itself is a judgment, a ranking, a hierarchy. So begin your mindfulness sessions—after centering yourself in pure I AMness—by holding the very act of negative judgment in your awareness. Pick some particular example of your judging somebody negatively, and hold that situation—of your judging that person—firmly in mind. For example, what is it like when you judge somebody negatively for being a racist?

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

because the pluralistic stage is involved in many of the judgments we make—whether correctly or contradictorily—we want to be aware of judgments in any case: those are subjects we want to make objects.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

Start with negative judgments: judging somebody for being intolerant, racist, sexist, and so on. Pick one, and let’s proceed… .

So what exactly does negative judgment feel like? What does looking down on somebody look like? What does it smell like? What color is it? Where is it located (head, heart, gut, elsewhere)? What are the characteristics of this person that you especially judge negatively? What is it about those characteristics that trigger this hidden judgment in you? You don’t have to do anything about these judgments—just hold them in the space of feeling-awareness and see them clearly as objects. Remember to alternate sessions of mindfully videotaping judgment with sessions of resting in pure, present I AMness.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

According to green postmodernism, there aren’t any—all ranking judgments are bad. But again, that itself is a ranking judgment—it ranks nonranking as higher and better than ranking—and that itself is a major ranking. So once you see that ranking is unavoidable—and that is why you were doing so much of it, even when you claimed you weren’t—let’s look at what the basis of some good guidelines for ranking might be.

Now, this is tricky, because each level will have some quite different answers to this. So let’s even go with the major values of this level—the postmodern pluralistic, level 6—and see when ranking would actually be not only okay, but recommended, something to be encouraged, according to this level’s own values.

This level values equality above almost everything else. So let’s just notice that not all levels share this view. In fact, none of them do. Red power divides the world into predators and prey, and favors those things that help only itself, nobody else; absolutely zero equality here. Amber fundamentalism divides the world into the saved and the damned, saints and sinners, and values only those who accept the correct savior; all others are infidels, bound to burn eternally in hell; only true believers are equal. And orange divides the world into winners and losers, and values accomplishment, merit, and excellence above all others—none of this equality stuff. Only green values equality, and sees all people as being essential equal or egalitarian.

So let’s further notice this level is itself just that—a developmental level.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

Molecules don’t hate atoms, or oppress atoms, or dominate atoms—they include them, they embrace them; if anything, they love them.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

by using this Integral overview, you spot this stage-6 hidden map in yourself, then put it under the bright light of mindfulness and laser it to death with awareness. What you want to be aware of, to apply mindfulness to, is the simple attitude of judgment—it can be negative judgment or it can be positive judgment; the point is simply to videotape the very act, the very feeling, of judging, of thinking or feeling that this is better than that. Now, the point we just made is that in some cases, at least in the relative manifest world, sometimes one thing is better than another, and that’s fine. But what we want to do here, with this mindfulness session, is “transcend and include” all judgment—so that means, for the “transcend” part, we will want to be letting go of judgment itself altogether (and “include” it by simply being directly aware of it)—but no identifying with it, condemning it, being one with it, negating it, or condoning it—just videotaping it, just applying feeling-awareness to this extraordinary activity of judging

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

Where is the feeling of judgment located? What color is it, what shape is it, what does it look like, what does it smell like, what does it feel like? Get this judging attitude firmly in awareness, and then simply videotape it, fully, completely, carefully. The net effect of this will be to actually accomplish what pluralism simply claims to do: to let go of judging altogether.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

If your present judgments are somehow true and universal and genuinely good, they won’t go anywhere; you’ll become more aware of them, but you won’t change them fundamentally. If, however, there are higher judgments, higher types of judgments or better judgments or more loving and conscious judgments, available anywhere in your system (laid down in the entire human race by millions of years of evolution), then you will start to identify with those—they will become part of your new, higher, more inclusive, more whole, more conscious self and subject.

And guess what? This continues straight to God

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Level 7—(Turquoise) Integral

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

All of the previous levels—up to and including green postmodern pluralism—believe that their truth and values are the only truth and values in the world; that all the others are misguided, confused, infantile, or just plain wrong.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

every stage in development is crucial—they are all incredibly important and significant, and this new stage seemed to intuitively understand this.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

the first 6 levels (infrared archaic, magenta impulsive, red power, amber conformist, orange rational, and green pluralistic) were all called “1st tier,”

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

The 1st-tier levels are partial, narrow, excluding, separative, and driven by deficiencies; 2nd-tier levels are inclusive, embracing, comprehensive, integral, and driven by abundance—and this was the first time in history that any sort of level of consciousness like this had ever emerged to a significant degree.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

you see the company-as-a-whole as its greatest asset, and seek to help all employees (and all stakeholders) use work as a means of self-realization and self-fulfillment, not merely a way to make money.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

Thinking and feeling are actually, for the first time in development, brought together and tightly integrated at this stage, so that both the head and the heart become equally important (as the psychologist John Broughton’s research found, at this stage “mind and body are both experiences of an integrated self”

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

If you have a good deal of this stage in you, you will value wholeness above virtually all other qualities. So, in the mindfulness portion, simply focus awareness on this feeling or notion of wholeness. Where do you see this wholeness? In yourself, in your culture, in the world itself, in Gaia or the planetary ecosystem, in the solar system, the galaxy, the entire universe itself? How does it feel in all the various areas that you see as whole? Focus on the very feeling of wholeness itself, wherever it appears. Again, what does it look it, feel like, smell like; what size is it, what shape is it, what color is it; where is it located? Videotape the sensation, the idea, the feeling of wholeness from every angle imaginable. Really bring it into awareness as an object, prying it out of your subjective identity

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

You will always have access to being aware of wholeness—you will just no longer be exclusively identified with that feeling

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

(“Span” means the number of holons on a particular level; “depth” means the number of levels in a particular holon. Each stage in evolution produces greater depth, less span. Thus, molecules have more depth than atoms—for one thing, they include atoms, so of course they have more depth; but there are, and always will be, fewer molecules—less span—than atoms.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

the more fundamental a holon—the lower it is on a holarchy—then the more span it has and the less depth. The more significant a holon—the higher on a holarchy—then the less span and the more depth.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

Let this desire for wholeness come fully into awareness; look at it, feel it, see it, be aware of it. Allow this desire for wholeness—and the feeling of wholeness itself—to fill your awareness, flood your consciousness

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

Videotape wholeness front to back, side to side, top to bottom. And by making the present state of wholeness an object, you are simply creating an opening or clearing for yet-higher forms of wholeness to emerge and cascade through your being. By making present wholeness object, you are simply opening to yet-greater forms of wholeness lying in your future.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

For whatever reason, the universe that we know—at least as we know it now—is a universe in which each moment inherently transcends and includes its predecessor.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

if you touch and embrace an object, that object will affect you—and that’s what happens as each moment touches and embraces (prehends) the previous moment (which itself had touched and embraced its previous moment, and so on indefinitely). This is the “causative” or “determining” moment of the past on the present

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

each moment, in addition to prehending the previous moment, adds its own bit of novelty or newness or creativity. It not only includes the past, it transcends it

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

creative novelty is built into the very fabric of the universe—and that creative novelty is what ultimately drives evolution (this creative drive has been known as everything from “self-organization” to “Eros” to “Love” to “Spirit-in-action”). This is why evolution was already operating beginning with the Big Bang itself and moving forward

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

if you want to see evolution as “Spirit-in-action,” then you are aligning yourself with Spirit itself, you are aligning yourself with God’s will, you are acting as God is acting in this manifest universe moment to moment.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

science really has no idea exactly how “morphogenesis” (the creation of form or development itself) comes about

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

when there is an attempt to synthesize a new and long-chain protein for the first time, even if various laboratories around the world are working on it, it can take quite some time. But when one laboratory manages to do so, within a very short period all the other laboratories tend to also do the same thing, independently.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

what’s more astonishing, even though this protein could fold into literally thousands of ways—and there is absolutely nothing contained anywhere in the protein itself to indicate which way it should fold—once it has folded into a particular form, the proteins being synthesized anywhere else in the world will fold into the identical form or pattern. This “form” is being stored someplace that is very real, but it is nowhere in the protein itself. Where on earth is it?

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

the Mahayana Buddhist Lankavatara Sutra calls the “storehouse consciousness,” the repository of all past forms anywhere in the universe (somewhat like the “Akashic records” of theosophy

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

wherever that is, it is a very real, very actual, very influential place, and it keeps reaching down and guiding the form of developing holons everywhere in the universe. And as new holons emerge—due to transcend-and-include—those new forms are likewise stored in that remarkable Kosmic storage bin of form.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

when I said, “Welcome to your place in history,” I meant it literally. Welcome to your place in history! You will literally be part of the thoughts and actions of every human being born henceforth, from now until the end of the world.

1. Growing Up: The Hidden Maps of Development

every time you yearn for a tomorrow even slightly more unified and inclusive and embracing than today—every time, every single time, you do anything like any of those, you are yourself directly, immediately, and irrevocably building interior Integral objects that are instantly being stored in that real Kosmic storage bin, adding a few inches to the size of that tsunami racing in our direction now.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

Simply taking up, say, a path of meditation will not, in and of itself, cure major and pressing shadow issues. These have to be directly approached, apart from other practices, and dealt with in any number of various ways (and research continues to show that the “cure” rate of these various treatments is essentially similar in all of the major and widely used forms of therapy—around 60%

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

do not count on meditation by itself to handle your shadow issues.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

the major issue we are dealing with in this presentation—finding out all of the major areas of your own being and awareness, and making them conscious—applies to hidden shadow material as well, and the approaches that we are covering—including Growing Up, Waking Up, and soon, Showing Up—are areas that are not widely known or accepted in our culture, and thus much of this material we are presenting will be quite new to you

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

But shadow work is, as noted, widely available and widely accepted, and has been for at least a hundred years now.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

the general area of Cleaning Up is not well handled by Growing Up practices or Waking Up practices (nor Showing Up, either

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

Few people escape the tortures of being raised without some sort of shadow material, and that material is adroit at avoiding being an object of awareness—thus, it cannot be much helped by practices of Growing Up or Waking Up

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

One of the Showing Up issues that people are most interested in is relationships

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

“Quadrants” simply means the four fundamental dimensions or perspectives through which virtually anything can be viewed—and should be viewed if we want to make sure we are covering all the important bases with reference to any item we’re examining.

The point about these 4 fundamental perspectives is that each of them gives us very important, but very different, types of information and data. And yet very few approaches include all 4 of them

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

major schools in different disciplines all tend to focus on just one of these perspectives, leaving out the others or even denying their reality

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

Experts tend to agree that there are at least 4 major types of management theories prevalent today—known as Theory X, Theory Y, culture management, and systems theory.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

Theory X focuses on the individual worker and the individual product in an objective, scientific, exterior, analytic fashion. It focuses on individual reward and punishment—the so-called “carrot and stick” motivation—and it also gives attention to the individual product and quality-control measures. But the individual and its objective exteriors and behaviors are the major focus here. This is still a primary type of management in today’s business world.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

Theory Y, on the other hand, looks at the interiors of the individual worker—at what makes employees (and leaders) happy; how they can find meaning in their work; how their jobs can provide value and purpose in their lives; how the workplace can become a source of joyful engagement. Maslow’s needs hierarchy is often pointed to in this regard

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

individuals have different needs and motivations at different stages of growth and development, and individuals at different levels of needs will be motivated to work for very different reasons, and hence as employees they need to be managed in very different ways.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

Gallup conducted a worldwide survey, asking people what is most important for their happiness. The answer given most often was not money, not family or marriage, not fame—rather, it was “a good job”—work that is meaningful, purpose-driven, and valuable.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

studies consistently show that in the West, fewer than one-third of all employees are engaged in, or happy with, their jobs—that’s a horrible statistic

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

Satisfy the interior, intrinsic needs and drives of the individual employee, and you will have a successful (and happy!) company.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

Culture is, in a sense, the interior of a group: it’s the group’s shared values, meanings, purpose, ethics and morals, mutual understanding, shared habits and history and worldviews. It’s what holds a group together from the inside (just as its exterior systems and networks hold it together from the outside)

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

every business, as a particular group of individuals, has a specific culture, an interior set of values and meanings and rules and roles that hold the group together from within

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

the chairman of Gallup, Inc., stated, “What the whole world wants is a good job. This is one of the most important discoveries Gallup has ever made.”

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

Professor James Heskett of Harvard Business School confirms that a strong culture can help or hurt performance. Effective culture accounted for “up to half [Half!] of the difference in operating profit” between two organizations in the same business, according to his research.2 Another expert put it, “Guiding culture is the single most significant job of any leader. There is culture, and there’s everything else.” Peter Drucker, world-famous leadership guru, is said to have asserted: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”—in other words, guiding culture is more important than business strategy and planning itself! In short, culture management is managing the interiors of the group.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

systems theory examines the exteriors of the group—what the group looks like from the outside, in an objective stance

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

Systems theory maintains that every individual is set in networks and systems of mutually interdependent and interwoven processes

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

business management and leadership that are focused on systems theory emphasize managing the overall system of the company as a single unified web (which itself is part of a larger market web, which is part of a larger system of international, environmental, and planetary webs)—and not as a collection of separate and atomistic individuals and divisions and parts

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

systems theory does not deal with the major interior dimensions of individuals or groups: look in any textbook of systems theory, and you will find nothing on shared values, morals, art or aesthetics, purpose or meaning, and so on

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

Systems theory, in other words, deals with the exteriors of groups.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

which one of those four is correct? According to Integral Theory and Practice, all of them are

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

4 quadrants—I, we, it, and its—are sometimes reduced to 3 major quadrants, combining the two objective, exterior quadrants (it and its—the 2 Right-Hand quadrants) into a single objective “it” space—thus, I, we, and it.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

These 3 quadrants are the basis of the qualities known as the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. The Good is ethics: how “we” treat each other (the “we” space). The True is what is objectively true, individually or collectively (the objective “it” space). And the Beautiful is the Beauty that is in the “eye”—and the “I”—of the beholder (the “I” space)

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

those 3 or 4 quadrants each have a different view or perspective of things, they have different values and meanings, they have different types of truth

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

instead of saying things like, “You are incredibly judgmental whenever we work together,” you say instead, “I feel incredibly judged by you whenever we work together.” That is your own experience or reaction; you are not accusing the other person of judgmentalism as an absolute fact, or blaming them with an objective “it” statement; you are simply expressing your “I” experience, which you own as your feeling, and you communicate it to your partner instead of calling him or her names. Clearly, “I” is distinct from “it.” “In my experience you seem X” is entirely different from “You are X.”

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

People don’t realize how often they mistake their feeling reactions—and also their intellectual opinions—for absolute, objective truth.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

An argument almost always ensues when two people both treat their “I” opinions as facts (as “it” statements), and there is no way they can reach agreement if they keep insisting on the factual reality of their subjective views. If one is right, the other is wrong—and they both think they’re right. They’ve confused their “I” and “it” perspectives

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

focus on the feeling of preference—simply picture two objects—a vanilla shake and a chocolate shake will work fine, assuming you prefer one of them—and then apply mindfulness to the interior action you take when you look at both of them and then reach for your favorite. Preference involves a choice, and that choice involves your personal tastes. Be aware of all three—object, choice, and taste; see both objects in front of you (vanilla and chocolate shake); watch yourself ponder which to choose (replay in your mind what you do); then your preference arising—see yourself desiring whichever it is you like best; then the making of a choice and the reaching out for your favorite (and remember, you don’t have to do anything with those images—just see them, videotape them). As you do so, notice that the other option is still sitting there

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get a sense of your choice being a taste, a 1st-person preference, not a statement of a 3rd-person “it” fact or universal truth. The other option is still sitting there, and many other people would be choosing that one.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

confusing the desires of the personal “I” with facts or objective truths (objective “its”) opens us to endless conflicts as we try to force our simple preferences and tastes on the world as if they were not choices but absolute givens that any person would and should make. These problems particularly flare up and become obvious in relationships, where, in addition to a series of facts about each other, we both have a wealth of opinions, tastes, and preferences tossed into the mix

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

Remember to use “I” statements instead of “it” statements wherever that is the more accurate view of what you are doing (e.g., “I feel strongly judged by you right now” versus “You are strongly judging me”)

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

If you do so, innumerable arguments will simply cease, especially if your partner is reciprocating. You can then move from an irresolvable argument about “facts” (irresolvable because they aren’t really facts but tastes, and thus there is no source with which to check them, so that the argument, thus framed, can never be resolved)—and on to a discussion about compromising and jointly agreeing on how to combine different tastes into a resolution you can both accept. From “This is so!” versus “No, that is so!”—to “I prefer this” and “Well, I prefer that”—to “Well, perhaps we can both prefer to do it this way,” which is an active, mutually understanding way to deal with different “I” tastes in a particular “we” space

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

Most people feel their “I” as being located somewhere in the body (the head, the heart, or the gut), so that might be one way for you to recognize your “I” space

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

because of some odd combination of facts and preferences, you are attracted to this person (a fact that actually involves items from all 4 quadrants, from psychological factors in the “I” space to cultural factors in the “we” space to biological and hormonal factors in the “it” space).

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

one of the most important factors in making relationships work is whether each partner actually pays attention to the view that their partner is taking. In other words, the capacity to set aside what one’s own “I” is thinking, and to see what the world looks like from the partner’s point of view

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

one of the hidden things about a “you” is that, if they are a real you (a person you are speaking or genuinely relating to), they are part of a “we,” or else you would never be able to see, talk, or communicate with them at all—they would be a mere 3rd-person object, a rock

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

One of the most damning complaints you can hear in any romantic relationship is “My partner just doesn’t see me.”

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

This usually means they have first confused their “I” tastes with universal truths or “it” facts, and then, since that’s the only way things could possibly be to any right-thinking person, they force those “facts” (their own hidden tastes) on their partner without even thinking about it.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

One of the hard things about these levels, these hidden maps, is that because these maps are indeed hidden, we don’t see them, and we certainly don’t see them as maps. They are unconsciously taken to be the way things really are; they are unconsciously confused with the real territory itself.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

These hidden “I” preferences, these hidden maps, are seen as universally true “it” facts.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

if you want a healthy relationship, practicing mindfulness on your partner’s “I” space should become a fundamental practice for you

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

try to also be mindful of what they meant, of what their view of the discussed material was, of how they were seeing it, what they actually thought of it, how they felt about it. In other words, be directly mindful of the role of the other—be as mindful as you can of their own “I” space. Put yourself in their shoes, and then practice mindfulness on what you see.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

imagine the last time you had a serious discussion with them

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

the more you adequately take the role of other—and practice mindfulness on that viewpoint—the more you do this, then the more your partner feels seen; the more you realize that your “I” perspective is just your own preferences, tastes, and desires, and not everybody feels that way, they are not universal “it” facts, true for everybody; the more you can love others because of your differences, not in spite of them. And thus the healthier and healthier your “we” space will become, because your “I” space has made more and more room for the other “I” space in it.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

for a direct observation of the “we” space. First, get a general sense of your own “I” space and be mindful of that. Then shift to your partner’s “I” space—to a general sense of how you imagine they are feeling and some of the desires and preferences that might be arising in them right now. Look at the world through their “I” space for a few minutes, practicing mindfulness on whatever arises. Then back to your “I” space; and then, from your “I” space, put your attention on the specific feeling of “we” that you have with this person.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

what some philosophers call a “dominant monad.” That is, when my dog, for example, gets up and moves across the room, every atom, molecule, and cell in the dog gets up and moves right along with it. Half of them don’t go one way and half the other. This is not a democracy. No, they all get up and move right across the room with the dog’s “dominant monad.”

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

no collective—has anything like a dominant monad, no completely ruling perspective such that, at its command, every member in the group gets up and totally follows the dominant monad 100%.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

that means the group isn’t a big organism, a single super-entity, with all of its members being cells in this big organism. Individuals in a group are not the same as atoms in a molecule, or molecules in a cell, or cells in an organism—they are not parts of a bigger “I”; they are members of a collective “we.”

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

one of the major things that attracted you to each other—your shared values and tastes), a mutual attracti

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

you don’t love the other person per se, you love how you feel with this other person. You don’t directly love their “you” as much as you do this “we.”

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

be mindful of this “we.” Start with your own “I,” and do several minutes of mindfulness on this “I” (this might flip you into your “I-I” or Witness, but that’s fine). Then shift into an awareness of this “we.” Notice that you don’t directly control it, not the way you control your own body. This “we,” indeed, has a life of its own. Every time the two of you come together, the thicker this “we” becomes, getting richer and richer with history, shared events, shared concerns, shared solutions—and several ongoing conflicts as you both try and get your “I” spaces aligned. But be mindful of this “we”—what does it look like, feel like, where is it located, what size is it, what shape is it, what color is it? If you presently are having a major argument or conflict, imagine this “we” space if the argument goes your way; then imagine it if it goes their way. Importantly, notice how clearly you differentiate your own “I” space from this “we” space. Go back and forth—from feeling your “I” space to feeling the “we” space—and see what differences you can notice. That is, do you imagine that your “I” preferences and tastes are automatically the “we’s” preferences and tastes, so that your wants are automatically what the “we” wants as well?

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

You’ve already examined how your “I” experiences this “we.” And so far, virtually every time you have thought of this “we,” it has been how your “I” thinks of this “we.” What you call this “we,” in other words, is how your “I” experiences this “we.” But now you’re being asked to assume your partner’s “I” space. Imagine, as vividly and accurately as you can, some of the things that they are feeling, thinking, desiring—how they see the world. If you’ve never done this before, it’s going to be a real eye-opener for you

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

This can be a bit difficult, but with practice you should be able to eventually click very clearly with this perspective, this stance. (A lot of the initial difficulty is that so many people simply haven’t thought this way before, haven’t actually looked at the world through these different lenses and perspectives. They sort of vaguely knew that the other person’s various views were there, but never really looked into this, never really gave it any mindfulness

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

Now try a quick mindfulness run-through of all four stances:

Be mindful of your “I” space;

then your experience of the “we” space;

then the other person’s “I” space;

then the other person’s experience of the “we” space.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

So there are actually 4 “people” in this 2-person relationship! That is, the 4 major perspectives that actually come together whenever the 2 of you are together.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

if you are fairly certain that your partner is coming from a different level of development than you, then you need to directly, specifically, and deliberately take that into account.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

your partner will not be able to directly or accurately see the turquoise space—nor, therefore, your turquoise “I” or your turquoise “we”—but they will be experiencing how those spaces look through an orange lens. Because of the inherent difficulties in such a disconnect, you can well imagine that individuals at different levels have an almost impossible time making a relationship work.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

you can particularly use your understanding of the different major levels of development to attempt, whenever interacting with your partner, to fly at their altitude: in this case, to communicate in words that an orange level will more likely understand, and to interpret what an orange level says by understanding that they are indeed coming from that altitude

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

it could be done in a very compassionate and caring way, using your understanding to genuinely try to communicate more clearly and understand more fully just what each other is saying.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

Ultimately, understanding different levels of development should be not a way to judge or rank people (that is always a misuse of the Integral approach); rather, it’s a way to increase communication and mutual understanding, extending care and concern and love in ever more effective and authentic ways.

3. Showing Up: The Many Perspectives of Consciousness

you and your partner might be practicing the same spiritual path together. Sooner or later, almost any meditative or contemplative path will introduce a practice like mindfulness. The contemplative traditions are all about training awareness, and mindfulness is often a key component of that training.

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