Transformational Practice: How to Reach Higher Stages of Development

If we understand stage development, we understand the challenges that face us as a world; with so many people at so many different levels all thinking they are absolutely correct and everyone else is wrong, it’s really hard for people to even speak to each other. If you think I’m wrong, go home for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, sit at the average American table, and talk about religion or politics. You usually see a meltdown, because people are coming from different levels―there’s a lot of energy around that. Developmental stages explain the cultural wars going on now in the United States.

We all go through developmental stages. Let’s start with the very simple egocentric stage. What do we, as egocentric people, care about? Well, we care about number one, ourselves.

As we move up the developmental ladder, we come to the ethnocentric. What do we, as ethnocentric people at an ethnocentric level of moral development, care about? We care about our group, our family, our tribe, our religion, our chosen people, however we define that. We still care about ourselves, but this is included in our circle of concern for our people. Clearly, this is a higher level of moral development. We can do extremely selfless, amazing things at this level of development―but, the circle ends at our group. When we’re dealing with tribal cultures or religions where people think, “Well, we have the exclusive membership to the true way, and everybody else is heathen and deserves to be punished for not seeing it our way…,” then this creates major problems. We see this a lot, in the Middle East now, and throughout human history.

Beyond ethnocentric is worldcentric, which, just as it sounds, is when we begin to see that everybody has to be included in the picture. It has to be not just about us, as in “We won, great! Sorry about you guys―you lost.” It has to be win-win-win.

After worldcentric comes an even higher stage, kosmocentric. At this point, the circle of concern is almost infinite: the whole universe, all sentient beings, all species, all life, and everyone, past, present, and future.

At higher levels of development, at the post-postmodern or the Integral level, there is recognition of developmental evolution and that everybody starts at square one. One moves up as high as one can. Why is it important that people move as high as they can on the developmental ladder, to the worldcentric and kosmocentric levels? Well, because the planet has gotten so small; with technology, with the world hooked up via the internet, because anybody can fly anywhere in the world almost, and within a few hours. We’re all connected at the levels of ethical concern, moral development, and spiritual development, and we need answers to the ethnocentric, nationalistic, and egocentric problems that we create. “I got mine, sorry about you,” just doesn’t work very well in establishing a just and viable culture, civilization, and humanity for us to grow in.

Hopefully, as more of us get on the boat of transformational practice, using the brain entrainment technologies that we’re developing, we’ll reach a tipping point, where things really begin to shift for the better. In the study of developmental stages, one of the truisms is that when a new level is coming on line, evolving, and reaches about 10% of the population, things really begin to shift. The reason that the new developmental levels come on line is because the former ones are not adequate to meet current conditions, as when the environment changes and there’s more stress (stress being the mother of evolution). In a gentle way, this is what the Profound Meditation Program is doing for your brain. As you listen to it, it puts you into that zone of transformation; it’s like going to the gym and having a really strong workout. You push your muscles to break down a little bit but come back stronger than you were before. This is what goes on with the Profound Meditation Program as we use it over time: the brain begins to reorganize at ever higher levels of functioning. When this happens, it shifts the whole game.

photo credit: danny.hammontree via photopin cc

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Adapted from iAwake Technologies’ free, weekly teleconference call on August 22, 2012.

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