I’m new to Integral Theory in the last few months, but I’ve been diving deep, and I’m absolutely riveted!
After listening to two of Ken’s 2-hour talks on the idea and hopping around to different videos, I got interested in learning more.
Here’s what I’ve looked into:
Don Beck’s audio book and his print version Spiral Dynamics. While he’s clearly an expert, I find his presentation extremely confusing. Since I’ve been sharing about Spiral Dynamics with my high school students, I can’t recommend his materials because they’re so poorly structured.
I also stumbled onto Leo Gura’s videos, but many of them didn’t sit right with me. His tone can sound quite judgmental of certain stages of consciousness.
I heard about Eben Pagan’s course on this subject, but I know nothing about it and can’t seem to find much information.
The channel Practical Integral gives a decent overview of the stages, but they are so dry and boring that my students are definitely going to nod off.
I’d love to hear other suggestions that would take a beginner who’s at an orange/green stage through these concepts so that they can really start to integrate them into their daily lives and into their passion projects.
Yes I agree , there’s something about some integral folk that seems to be overly rational and a little too clinically academic , which can make the theory it’s self seem academic and rational , which makes it hard to translate to people that are not so academic and rationally minded…maybe some creative person with more time and skills than myself could come up with a more visually accessible exciting fun way and medium to illustrate spiritual dynamics and the way this has played out throughout history conflicts and social change and popular events that could tie to the emergence of different stages…it really would make for a compelling movie
One way you could build engagement is with content from Terry Patten’s A New Republic of the Heart. He breaks down the current issues in the United States from an Integral point of view (including the stages) in a very accessible way. It’s also timely and relevant since he explains why we see things as they are in the U.S. The language is much more accessible than other Integral works, and it has a practical application from an activism point of view.
What I would recommend when dealing with Spiral Dynamics and the stages is the following, based on my own studies for the past 6-8 years now:
Come up with your own real-life examples of what certain behaviors look like for each stage on the spiral. Find well known historical and current figures who embody a specific stage.
De-jargon as best as you can. Both Wilber and Beck & Cowan are overly jargon-centric, and that tends to make things more inaccessible. The book Spiral Dynamics itself is bafflingly organized and written for a business-centric audience, so I would only ever present it to an undergrad or above audience. And even then, I personally would only put it before a grad-student level as even as an undergrad who studied critical theory (which is the kind of mindset you need to dive into SD), the vast majority of my peers had a very hard time understanding the sort of thinking one needs to adopt to move beyond Tier 1 thinking. It also doesn’t help that Wilber adopted his own color scheme that is counter to the intent of Beck & Cowan (and it’s something that I feel he needs to do a better job of fixing, as he isn’t very good at giving credit where credit is due for the knowledge he borrows from other authors).
Realize that your students are almost all going to be at Tier 1 thinking. Holding conflicting opposites in the spirit of non-dualism, which is a requirement to really understand and embody Tier 2 stages, will be a challenge for them, especially if their home life isn’t conducive to evolution in their consciousness. Something that can help to give “glimmers” of what Tier 2 is like is inviting them to consider times when they have had “flow” experiences in the vein of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. When we are having a flow experience, it’s because we have more access to Self energy (as defined by Internal Family Systems). The Self is naturally non-dual. IMHO, one does not really “get” Tier 2 until one has encountered the spiritual side of it.
It’s also important to convey that stages should be approached as “centers of gravity.” We all have within us each stage to varying degrees, as well as the potential for each stage. Our daily behaviors tend to center around a particular stage, though, and that’s our center of gravity. Different situations can bring out different stages (a heated conflict, for example, may bring out Red’s ego-defensiveness, even if we spend most of our time at a higher stage). Understanding our center of gravity can be helpful in understanding our automatic responses to situations, as well as the intentional choices we make.
Finally, Wilber’s interpretation of SD is lacking and overly simplistic IMHO, and I wouldn’t use it to teach if you want to ensure you aren’t missing critical info. For example, he doesn’t address the critical insights that Beck & Cowan illustrate in SD when they talk about how life conditions impact whether or not one is able to move to a new stage, or whether one may regress. This is vitally important because it’s where the actionable info resides–how can I tell what is going to make me regress or progress?
At the end of the day, having taught SD to my own adult students in a spiritual setting, most people don’t care about it unless it can be useful for them. Teens are going to be the same way. So, the question you might ask yourself, how can this knowledge be practically useful for my students? How does knowing how the stages work allow them to make more wise choices and do better in life?
If I were to really simplify the root of SD, which is Tier 1 vs. Tier 2 thinking, I would be asking my students what it means to move from an “us vs. them” mentality into a “we are all one” mentally, and why the latter is ultimately a requirement for humans to not just survive, but to thrive.
Humans have a natural tendency to stick to what they like and are good at and do more of it while we have a natural talent to ignore what we do not take to naturally and are not so good at.
This survival mechanism continues to reinforce itself until we dislike and see as inferior that which we are not good at. Then we may even actively start to hate it and attempt to gather others together to attack it.
What I see is Integral attracts a lot of “thinkers” and so the work tends to get unbalanced coverage of “Growing Up”.
“Cleaning Up” is often not even covered. In the book “Integral Practice” we are only really given “3-2-1” as something to do a few times a day.
This isnt enough to “clean up”. Ive had to take on sources outside of IT. Shadow work or parts therapy or jungian psychology or even psychological Tarot (as opposed to divination, which is bunk) are some ways to expand cleaning up. I think its also key to have a team on this because its the nature of our survival mechanism to hide our shadows from ourselves and attack those who present yhem. So this team needs to have a lot of trust in itself.
The other area IT and IP are lacking is “Waking Up”. There are cohorts within Integral that one might call the “Pluralist” faction and another one might call the “Literal Mythic” faction. They have kind of settled into a truce I guess and so we dont see much content on “waking up”. Everyone believes their flavor is the real flavor but without cleaning up, feelings get hurt and people get angry and its risky to openly discuss waking up.
There are several courses on here at IL though that work on what ive written but you have to sift through a lot
If you’re looking for a teaching resource that your students may respond a bit more to, you might check out this page I put together, which uses film clips and video games to illustrate some of the most important features of these stages. I hope it’s helpful!
If there are other resources I can help you find, let me know!