Egor Azanov wrote:
Nice.

Oops, I've mistakenly referred to the book Integral Theory in Action. I was meaning this one www.amazon.com/Postconventional-Personal...coding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

There you can find the methodology and data.

There is also www.amazon.com/Postautonomous-Ego-Develo...eywords=Cook-greuter

I have not read it, because it's on paper But probably I should make an exception.

An this dissertation is on my to-read list static.ning.com/holotropicbreathwork/research/Hewlett2003.pdf

Kenneth Folk wrote:
Kenneth,

I've taken some time to try to intuitively understand your vision of this model.

Given that, it seems that the components of your dynamic model of development would include:
1. The field of experience
2. Expanding (from bottom to top) interpretations of experience, i.e., meaning-making, or meta-experience, experience of experience, lenses. (vertical axis)
3. Degree of embeddedness or privileging of any specific experience or meta-experience. (horizontal axis)

I know you were thinking of two lines as Elizabeth showed in her excellent post, but this suggests to me two orthogonal axes (maybe more than two). The dynamic aspect of this model could be shown by the expanding shape of the rectangle described by the degree of development along each axis.

This is easily animated. What are the goals of such an animated model? In the past your (our) animations illustrated your teaching and how to get there (in a cartoonish fashion). What are you trying to illustrate with this animation? How does it relate to practice as you recommend. I'm happy to help, though I'm sure there are many more qualified.

Your thoughts?

Michael

AugustLeo wrote: A related metaphor might be: owning the penthouse vs. owning the building vs. owning the whole city block

Why do I think spiraling cycle of Enneagram will very useful for creating an actionable map.

People treat Wilber and others as elitist because they focus on linear development along several dimensions (say, vertical).

But in reality there are only horizontal steps along the Enneagram cycle which become vertical after the cycle completes.

If we switch the focus from jumping between stages to moving just a bit to the right, that should be perceived as (1) easier to accomplish (2) less threatening.

Tom Otvos wrote:
Truth be told, that's my point of view, too. I like playing around with models (and the GIMP!) as much as anyone. But I am re-reading I AM THAT after being introduced to it twenty-five years ago. "You give reality to concepts, while concepts are distortions of reality. Abandon all conceptualization and stay silent and attentive" (Dialog #35). "Go beyond your concepts and ideas; in the silence of desire and thought, the truth is found" (Dialog #62).

Yes, Derek. But who will do the laundry? And how?

You don't need thoughts/concepts/ideas to do laundry.

ETA: At least self-referential thoughts, which are 99%+ of our thoughts.

How do you choose whether to wear the same shirt you wore yesterday or to wash it?

Who chooses? There is no "me" choosing. There is no "me" necessary to choose. Choosing just happens. It's like how do "I" choose how many raisins to put in my cereal? "I" don't. The raisins just plop in there without any thought whatsoever.

Can you give us precise notes of what is arising and passing away during the actual process of choosing? What happens between the moments something becomes aware of the need to wear a shirt and putting the shirt on?

The "body" is just moving. The body moves to where shirts are, reaches out to a shirt, a feeling sometimes arises that a shirt is the "right" shirt, but there is no thought that it is the shirt. And the shirt is put on.

Sometimes, a thought may arise about an event in the "future" and then thoughts about "appropriate" clothing to wear. Then, the body moves. But, there is no "I" doing any of this.

Models are nice to talk about and fun to think about. They can be useful to give us a sense of "where" we are in terms of a process, explain the structure of something that otherwise might appear to be chaotic or indescribable. The caveat to be aware of, IMHO, is that models are conceptual. They are sometimes useful creations. They are not what they purport to describe. In the area of human development they are not easily validated except through anecdotes and stories. Validation relies on self-reporting, at least until we have better tools.

Models are also easy to buy into and accept as reality. Caveat emptor.

AugustLeo wrote:
I'm thinking of this map in the way I might think of an ordinary road map; it's an enormously oversimplified two-dimensional model that leaves out huge amounts of information. But it does the job it's intended to do... just as a road map can get you where you are going, this map can help people understand that there are at least two legitimate ways to be enlightened, and they can happen separately or together. So the fact that the graphic is so simple is one of its main advantages. We can quickly visualize our own development and imagine what might be next for us. We can also attempt to model other people's awakening and ask ourselves which of the many highly advanced practitoners, both living and dead, might be role models for us.

With that in mind, an interactive version of the blue and red line segments as illustrated by Elizabeth, could be ideal. We could label the red line segment with a 1 on the bottom and a 10 at the top. It would represent a continuum of development toward more advanced lenses. The blue line would have the numbers inverted: 1 is at the top and 10 at the bottom. This axis represents embeddedness, with 1 being as disembedded as possible and 10 completely embedded. In both cases, the top of the line segment is better, even though the numbers are inverted. There would be a text box to enter a number for each axis. The point where the line segments intersect represents the center of gravity or baseline state of the person being modeled.

Chris, research on development along multiple lines of intelligence was done by dozens of trained scientists according to the highest standards. Their findings are based on observations of tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of individuals among all cultures and are published in major peer-reviewed journals.

Deep patterns of the stages of development are found to be universally valid for every human, from hunter-gatherer societies all the way to most developed cities.

Please, read the most clear and concise paper by Cook-Greuter on the topic to understand what stages I am referring to here www.integralchurch.se/media/9levelsofincreasingembrace.pdf

You'll be able to easily relate different yeas of your own life to some of the stages.

These stages are very-very hard to see with introspective awareness because they usually operate at deep sub-conscious levels. That's why all major contemplative traditions have missed them and only observations over large samples of individuals were able to reveal them.

Jake, please, note the very big difference between (1) having a thought (2) identifying with a thought and (3) operating with a thought.

Having a thought means there is a thought in your conscious awareness. You are aware of a shirt. But what is a shirt? It is a thought, a concept projected in your awareness from a multiplicity of sub-conscious minds.

Identifying with a thought means you believe you are that thought you are having. I am my shirt, I am the person who wears such and such shirts and changes them once per day. It is very possible and much desirable to disidentify with as much of the conscious thoughts as possible. Such disidentification naturally leads to the greatly reduced number of conscious thoughts, because you break a positive feedback loop that creates them. The Buddha described this feedback loop as dependent origination.

Operating without a thought on the other hand is impossible. You see a shirt and have some feelings towards it (pleasant or unpleasant or neutral), and it is a thought composed of a great number of smaller concepts, including your personal history, society you are embedded in, color preferences etc. All these operate on a deep sub-conscious levels and very rarely if ever reach conscious awareness.

What I particularly like about systematic noting methods of contemplative development is that we are able to deconstruct such high-level thoughts as a shirt and directly see how they are created form many-many lower-level concepts and processes, including that which control attention, have aversion to the idea of having a self and filter sensory input.

Such discernment still won't reveal hidden structures (stages of development) in full detail (because they are so deep in the unconscious), but they help us immensely to understand the limitations of our current ways of meaning-making and grow into/invent new ones, more inclusive, more complex, with more perspectives.

Chris, Jake, I've taken a liberty and reposted some of our exchange in my blog as this is a public forum. If you object, I'll remove it.

Kenneth Folk wrote:
Kenneth - I'm really not sure how to go about building what you've described, nor am I sure that I even understand what it is you want. Maybe someone else more qualified would be willing to tackle this project with you. I' look forward to seeing the result.

Michael

ETA: Was gonna move this to another thread, since it seems we are hijacking the development thread, but wasn't quite sure where to put it, since I usually just stick to the Dharma Refugees portion of the site. Feel free to start a thread Egor if you want to continue the convo.

Egor Azanov wrote:
Very much disagree that operating without thought is impossible. However, i refer to emotional, self-referential narrative that is about the past and future and cause suffering. Thoughts for planning and problem-solving do not seem to be problematic, although Weber says that even they have decreased in number and importance for him. But, 99% of our thoughts are self-referential and are just not needed. Instead, if we inquire into who we are, we find that life just moves along without "us" needing to be there in any fashion whatsoever. Any notion of an individual "me" is just a concept, no matter how you define it, i.e., as a body, mind, soul, etc.

A lot of this work entails letting go of cultural conditioning and beliefs that are deep in the unconscious. That is a key part of ongoing practice IME. As new and new layers of thought are uncovered and then let go of, the total number of self-referential thoughts slowly decrease until finally there is no longer any notion of an individual self. MRI scans demonstrate that for those who have eliminated self-referential narrative almost entirely, such as Weber, the area of the brain that correlates with self-referential narrative is inactive. Thus arises the permanent experience of "now, now, now" and no self, a mind devoid of self-referential narrative that is not dependent on one's environment.

IMO, these are all just concepts. Who is there to make meaning? Who is the meaning for? Why do we need meaning? Whose perspective would it be? These notions all suggest an "I" at the core of this process, when in my experience this process is about eliminating the "I" in toto, not about "growing" or "meaning-making" or fashioning new "perspectives." __/\__

Yep, let's go here awakenetwork.org/forum/kfd-public/13528-what-is-a-shirt

I appreciate your enthusiasm for this line of inquiry, Egor. I'm not anti-model, I'm just realistic about how valid specific models are, and how far we can take them in explaining human development and behavior. There are many, many models, all claiming to be valid. And many are indeed valid within their defined parameters and if we accept the constructs that the models' creators ask us to accept. And there always competing models that purport to explain the same parts of human behavior and development, and whose creators also claim scientific validity. It's a fascinating area to think about, sometimes, but it's just not my cup of tea any more.

As to the act of posting my comments from here to your blog -- you do not have my permission to use my words here unless you ask me first. There are trust factors involved (asking before you use my comments is one of those) and ownership of my own words (and how they are used) that are important to me on several levels. Please remove my comments from your blog and ask my permission first if you want to use my comments in the future. I think this is a fair way to deal with the issue.

I'm sorry, please, forgive me. Comment removed.

Thank you, Egor. I appreciate your quick action.

The elephant is there. We are looking at it with better and better tools. Sometimes we get it more right than wrong, sometimes the other way. The map probably will never be equal to the territory. Still, I find having progressively deeper maps very useful in my personal life. They help me do both simple (laundry, ...) and complex (relationships, ...) things better.

This is also still hypothetical. The science of fMRI scanning is not that accurate or precise. When you talk to the scientists who use it, and the deep practitioners like Shinzen Young who participate in experimental design with them, you will find that the picture is not as clear and precise as is often presented in discussions like this and on various websites. fMRI results are sometimes used to "prove" that a specific concept or version of how the brain works is the truth. Care should be taken when we state "this is fact, this is real, this is the truth" when we talk about models and science, because both are dependent on concepts and subject to human interpretation. This was made very apparent at the BG2014 conference in Boulder, CO when Shinzen Young and Dr. David Vago spoke at length about how their Harvard based fMRI studies of experienced meditators were constructed and how their results were presented.

The rather imprecise resolution of fMRI scanning was discussed as well as the need to concoct stories to explain their fMRI scan results, simply because what fMRI scans measure cannot be proven, once and for all, to be the things we presume they measure. A practical example was brought up in that lengthy discussion involving how Dr. Vago and Shinzen Young were interpreting what a certain area of the brain, when scanned, was doing based on their experiments and yet that intepretation was countered by Dr. Daniel Ingram, who presented an entirely different hypothesis. Both hypotheses were reasonable, both could easily be interpreted as "true". All three men agreed that what they thought was going on in that area of the brain, and what fMRI scans of that area were showing "proof" of, was really quite hypothetical and not some kind of absolute proof of anything.

Caution all around, I say.

Edit: One example of the hypothetical, imprecise nature of fMRI studies and why caution when drawing conclusions is advisable:

Major signal changes measured in the amygdala region in a typical emotional task is not, in fact, located in the amygdala itself. Rather, these signal changes occur in the adjacent BVR that drains large regions of the medial temporal lobe and has confluences from other large veins in the amygdala region, and are therefore largely unrelated to neuronal activity in the amygdala itself.

blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/...l-in-vein/#more-6486

Chris Marti wrote:
Another example of the hypothetical, imprecise nature of fMRI studies:

Scanning Dead Salmon in fMRI Machine Highlights Risk of Red Herrings