# Alexander Love and Jeff Lieberman [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuRS5clnf2U) - 29:33: Alexander inverts the model - From another perspective, Question 3 is the most important; everything else comes from it - Evolution's engine -- the great gesture or great impulse - Taiji symbol as encoding of this - Receptive: Yin - Active: Yang - Reciprocal: The boundary between - Interpenetrative: The dots - Primordial movement - "What is their preferred relationship to process, or learning" - Interpenetrative: like two clouds passing through each other - a unitive movement - The beginning of each tier is like being a baby again - x.0 and x.5 are the emergence and maturation, respectively, of the xth person perspective - 1st-person: me in the concrete world - 2nd-person: me and you (I-Thou) - 3rd-person: me in the world of self-reflection, emerges from the complexity of iterated, generalized "me and you" - 4th-person: subtle me and you: can see self-construction as context-dependent - 5th-person: me as awareness, can see all contexts as constructed - 6th-person: all context construction is a unified interdependent unfolding Stages Matrix Roadmap (linked below): >At 2.5, one Interpenetrates with their **principles** upon reflection; >At 4.5 one sees the Interpenetration of **self with other** through their projections upon reflection; >At 6.5, the **fullness of all manifestation and the emptiness of all levels of awareness** Interpenetrates and is seen upon reflection. # [[2025-02-23]] one-day seminar with Terri O'Fallon, who developed the STAGES framework [2020 Integral Review paper](https://integral-review.org/issues/vol_16_no_1_ofallon_states_and_stages.pdf) [STAGES Matrix Roadmap](https://antoinette555.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/the_stages_matrix_roadmap.pdf) [Slide deck in Dropbox](https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/t359ph5p9p2l3vx65mf29/Intro-to-STAGES-Terri-OFallon.pdf?rlkey=m8mmu5y4ovqbyiph0coixlpd0&dl=0) [Dustin's slides in Dropbox](https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/org3h4rcosjkfz2awii0y/Rigdzin-Introduction-to-Stages-of-Growing-Up.pdf?rlkey=bzwj2lui0ua0rysnq0bv7znl4&dl=0) Growing up: stage development Waking up: state development Cleaning up: shadow recognition Showing up: conduct Integration, bypassing Primordial pairs of subject-object splits - individual-collective - interior-exterior - static-dynamic Each of [[Ken Wilber]]'s quadrants has a static-dynamic pulse... "God's rocking chair" difference from other models: maps out the structures rather than the meaning-making ## The matrix and the 3 questions  The point of all of this: "How are we with people as they move through these stages?" ## Concrete tier: developing an ordinary mind Our journey through the perspectives - **How were you shaped?** - How were we socially constructed? (Introjections we receive) - How do we socially construct others? (Projections we give) ## 1.0: impulsive concrete individual receptive the newborn, undifferentiated from the ground 1.0 -> 1.5: Receptive -> Active as one discovers agency, the self ## 1.5: egocentric concrete individual active me, mine Four kinds of power: emotional, cognitive, behavioral, social What is thinking? Visualizing, talking to the self, kinesthetic urges Don't touch my stuff, it's mine Active learning: the precursor to project management - autonomy - initiative - follow through - completion - celebration Having a hovering parent who does things for you instead of letting you fumble-learn through them can lead not only to lack of trust in one's ability to figure out new things, but also to a "passive narcissism" where you feel entitled to have someone else do the work for you Can't yet see yourself being seen by the other Monks' begging was also a concrete generosity practice for lay people. Also, prostrations. Practices for the 1.5 -> 2.0 shift have to work at the concrete level. [[Adaptive leadership]] means meeting the person with practice (and communication generally) that speaks to their level. ## 2.0: rule-oriented concrete collective reciprocal purpose is to belong, to have a friend the birth of pronouns: sometimes i'm Me and sometimes i'm You. it's the first time the labels don't stick belonging -> fairness -> measurement -> analysis concrete-operational development motivated by relationality tit-for-tat: i give you something, you give me something ## 2.5: conformist concrete collective interpenetrative purpose is interpenetration with the collective interpenetration is more than reciprocality, it's a kind of identity or unity: seeing the self in the other, or more poetically, discovering the other in the self. "I am you, you are me" not unifying absolute and relative, but two relative aspects formal-operational introjecting from the collective, then projecting: an autocratic "safe loop" accepted without question the past is the future - look into the past to project onto the future - imagine the future as something they're familiar with - the past is in front of them the X.0 stages don't have as much reflective capacity as their X.5 counterparts learning by doing, getting experience the witness also grows up Lunch break: Susan recommends the eight-stage map of [[Bill Plotkin]]'s book [*Nature and the Human Soul*](https://www.animas.org/books/nature-and-the-human-soul/), grounded in the natural world 2.5 -> 3.0: three-parameter change / tier change concrete -> subtle, collective -> individual, interpenetrative -> receptive reaching limits of interpenetration with the collective (tribal -> systematic) again Terri emphasizes "studying the structural, not just the meaning-making" ## Subtle tier concrete -> subtle: working with "objects" whose boundaries you can't precisely define in concrete terms ## 3.0: expert subtle individual receptive purpose is "who am I?" visualization becomes more abstract experimentation in all dimensions primordial pairs: subtle "me", experience grows ideas, passive vs. active 3.0 -> 3.5: discovery of the interior self (upshift of 1.0 -> 1.5) ## 3.5: achiever subtle individual active purpose is achieving my dream "I see me-my subtle self. I can initiate action now and see years out into the future." getting what you want, subtly. society: competition-consumerism can't yet see yourself being seen by the other--subtly. (mimetic desire?) subtle ownership: patent, copyright, brand meta: don't misuse this model to say "this or this is how I'm supposed to be"; it's a tool for broadening your perspective ways of looking at state, stage, conduct and there's so much that an assessment can't tell you people who are very intelligent, who can grasp many things about complex adaptive systems, yet are still lacking some understanding of reciprocity typology aside: some types may be fixed/non-emergent, and some types are ego-states, expressions of parts, which can grow up shadow aside: "the realization is coming through a structure that's not fully integrated" 3.5 -> 4.0: reached the goal and still lacking something. feeling tired from all the doing and starting to appreciate just being in a new way ## 4.0: pluralist subtle collective reciprocal reciprocity between interior parts ([[Internal Family Systems]]) exterior reciprocality: you can see something about me that I can't see about myself, and vice versa it's more accurate to speak of levels of capacity coming online vs. "the self" operating completely at a given level. that is, when you're "at" a given level, it's like the highest point of a structure, and all the levels below it are still operational. what is a subtle collective? sitting in a circle (Green meme) "aperspectival madness" Retreat Week / "what is this group for?" getting to a Yes together without starting with a shared goal ## 4.5: strategist subtle collective interpenetrative seeing that everyone is in a growing-up process, including myself people have the right to be at their own developmental level projection exercise: - what are some qualities I admire in someone else? capacity to be with difficult emotions without giving in to the urge to be reactive or blame them on others; her ready friendliness & warmth; her rabbit-holing on creative pursuits - what are some qualities in others that trigger me? flightiness / apparent inability to focus; obsession with lack; tendency to focus on self-defeating or self-disempowering narratives 4.5 -> 5.0: everything I perceive is inside of my awareness another three-parameter change: subtle -> metaware, collective -> individual, interpenetrative -> receptive ## MetAware tier ## 5.0: construct-aware metaware individual receptive upshift of 1.0 and 3.0's "who am I?" question emptiness of language and meaning refinement of the auditory-kinesthetic senses into awareness of presencing as a somatic vibratory quality the dawning of awareness that your reality is not just socially but individually constructed (perceptually, i.e. [[Five Aggregates]]) 5.0 -> 5.5: "I wonder if boundaries are empty" ## 5.5: transpersonal metaware individual active boundlessness aside: people who assess at a higher stage also assess across a broader range of stages: more capacity for complexity, more awareness of parts. relevant frame: "leading edge, trailing edge, center of gravity" the words "depression" and "anxiety" moved from signifying 3.0-3.5 to 2.0-2.5 as they became more mainstream striving doesn't lead to developing into a later level. healthy conduct, states, stages, & shadow work (the Four Ups) is what does. "instead of thinking about five years from now, can you make today really healthy?" multiple contingencies hall of mirrors do no harm boundless + timeless + changeless merge -> 6.0 individual -> collective, active -> reciprocal ## 6.0: universal metaware collective reciprocal sees wholes rather than parts upshift of 4.0's "I am a child of the universe" the collective here is all of reality sees the vastness of the relative ## 6.5: illumined metaware collective interpenetrative dharmakaya interpenetration of the relative and the absolute ## Unified tier 7.0 and beyond... ? Perhaps we're a middle species, not an end species What kind of a mind do we want to support the possibility of a species that goes beyond us? ## Primordial emotions Take the [[Four Immeasurables]] Notice that the labels imply boundaries What happens when you drop the boundaries?