Hey guys, just upgraded my membership so thought I'd drop by.  Havn't used the forums in a while, but I've still been listening to the IN media every week.

I've been wondering about discussing heirarchy with people who for whatever reason don't like it, either because they can't get it, it offends them, they disagree with the reasoning or whatever it might be.  I've known for a while that I shouldn't press the issues, but I have a stubborn streak (shadow issue) that means I often continue to argue for it long after it's healthy.  I have come to the realisation  that I am a minority in developmentalism very slowly.  It is proving ainful, and difficult, to let go.  I'm hoping to use this as a practical lesson in relingquishing attatchment, as well as learning how to turn negetive situations into good, but that's all a lot easier to say than do!  I'd love to hear other peoples' insights and experiences with these issues.

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Gavin

Haunted by the familiarity of inner softness behind frozen eyes

How are you arguing for hierarchy?  Specifically what messages are you hoping to convey to people. 

Also consider, why do you want to convey these messages to people?  What is it that you would like them to get out of the idea of development?

Also, I think everyone naturally understands the idea of development, sitting up before you can crawl, and crawling before you can walk.  We all know that it takes time to learn things, but we've been brainwashed to think that we stop being able to learn sometime around college age.  Of course we know, at least deep down, that we do in fact continue to learn as long as we are alive.  And everthing we learn contributes to our growing ability to understand things, which is why we generally feel more wise the more we age, and tend to look back on our youth and see how silly some of our decisions sometimes were.  And that is development.  It looks different depending on where we are in life, but we can pretty much all see the stages of life that we've been through already.  The ones we have yet to master are, logically, going to be more of a mystery to us, and we may not even imagine that we could get any more wise than we already are - especially if we are at Red, Blue/Amber, Orange, or Green!

Oh, and welcome!  Glad to have another voice around here.

Peace, Love, and Bicycles,
Turtle

Dear Gavin:  I am pondering this.  Glad you are back.   Pattye

Why the need to turn negative situations into good?  From a practical standpoint, that's not even possible, and there's no need.  The question is why you think you can, and why there's a need in the first place.  Anything and everything you can come up with, just look at what it is you want to change and why, and where the need comes from (which of course is from within you), and you may find the need just goes away, as if it never existed in the first place.  Which, of course, it didn't.

randomturtle:

How are you arguing for hierarchy?  Specifically what messages are you hoping to convey to people.

Hi Turtle,

I replied to this thread already, but apparently forgot to submit it properly.  To answer your question (again), the conversations start with some point about spirituality.  I don't deliberately try to introduce holarchy, but that is so much a part of my thinking now that I can't help but include it somehow.  And often it rubs someone the wrong way.  I realised recently that I either have to deliberately strip all developmentalism from my discussions, which severely limits what I can talk about, or just stop talking altogether.  I guess I feel that I have lost some innocence with my friends.  Just a shame I suppose.  I wonder if this is a similar feeling that people have when friends or family involved in conservative religion reject their interest in transformative spirituality?  I find it quite painful... like I said, a loss of innocence, a breakdown of those "we" bonds.  Not that they have broken exactly, but they no longer feel as warm or close.

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Gavin

Haunted by the familiarity of inner softness behind frozen eyes

It does seem limiting sometimes, when you don't have others to collaborate with you on ideas about the things you find most important to your life.  I, too, get frustrated when I have an idea that I'd like to bounce off of someone else, but just get confused, or sometimes angry, responses back.   It sort of like being homesick when you're on a vacation.  You really just wish for a bit of belonging and familiarity, but it's not there.  Indeed, it is exactly as you say, a breakdown of the We bonds.

But perhaps you can think of rebuilding those bonds as a challenge!  But you have to take the lead in the conversation, since your friends don't have any idea what you want.  If you can find a specific direction you'd like to go - a goal - you might be able to spend your energy aiming towards something you want (for yourself or others, or both).

I've also found it helpful to try and relate my own ideas and questions to what others are thinking about and looking for.  It helps me focus my discussions on practical matters, and lets me feel like I'm making headway.  There really doesn't seem to be much of a point to me to try and explain my understanding of development unless they seem to want to hear about it.  People only want to learn things that are useful to them, and if I can't explain it in a way that makes development or quadrants sound applicable to their lives, then they aren't going to bother listening to me (or if they try to listen, to be polite, they will only get confused and frustrated, and wonder why I'm being so insensitive and wasting their time on unimportant babble :-)

And, as for meeting my own needs for intellectual investigation of things, I try quietly offering up my thoughts and questions wherever I think there may be people who are at a similar level of understanding (or higher), and see if anyone bites.  I do feel quite lonely much of the time, and I've had to find my emotional intimacy very seperately from my intellectual intimacy for a while now.  It's doable, but not ideal.

Peace, Love, and Bicycles,
Turtle

I think the best thing you can do with a 1st tier person (on an individual basis) is to evaluate that person and draw your own psychograph of that person.  Then, you work on his tiers, trying to heal their 1st tier levels, from magenta up through green, or their highest level.  2nd tier is quite a large pill to swallow.

If you insist on pushing people up into the super-duper world of 2nd tier and developmental psychology, you might try categorizing people as concrete-operational, formal-operational, and post formal-operational.  This probably won't be denied.  Let that sink into acceptability before discussing another element.  Break developmental phychology into small, specific elements (needs, compassion, etc) without showing the grand design.  As information seeps in, just make sure it settles in the right 1st tiers in a healthy way.  People have the right to be where they're at, and only they can choose to move up into super-duper land.

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myspace.com/zentaimusic
resting.awareness@juno.com