Have you ever wondered why an enlightened leader or guru can be very evolved spiritually yet their relationships, finances, or career are riddled with scandals and problems? Or why family members don’t get along? Or at some macro level why can’t world leaders have civilized discussions to work out problems instead of going to war?
Our self work and numerous repatternings may often still leave us searching for answers and a new way of being in the world.
In my quest to evolve a repatterning system I found the work of Ken Wilber and Integral Theory to be immensely helpful. Clients seem to sigh a breath of fresh air when they come to understand the developmental stages of transcendence and how it relates to their challenges – especially when they clear the resonance involved. It explains a lot – allowing you (as integralists would say…) to be bothered about more things but hurting a lot less.
The premise is this…
There are many internal maps we can access to clear our field of energy and spiral up on our journey of becoming our true self, living our potential and waking up each day anticipating something wonderful happening for us. The ancient maps of the chakra system of India or the Five Elements and Meridian maps of Acupuncture are thousands of years old and are often used in healing work such as repatterning. They provide us with information about our patterns and where and what we need to do for more coherence.
However, in recent decades the research of adult development and consciousness has revealed yet additional naturally occurring internal maps we can activate in order to grow our capacity for transcendence and happiness in life. These internal maps are known as levels accessed in a sequence from oldest to newest.
Transcending and including: We access these levels of thinking in an ordered sequence. They are built like a pyramid with each level providing a platform for the next level to evolve. Like Red Cross swimming lessons, we can’t skip levels but in the process of evolving, our understanding of the upper levels often precedes our personal activation of these levels. We can cognitively or mentally understand a higher level from our current activated one. However, we may have difficulty living from that place. On our journey of personal growth, our goal is to transcend our current level – taking the positive lessons of that level with us as we leave it behind and move into the next higher level.
Map of Integral Awareness…
Researchers from the Integral Theory community say that we transcend and include each level. When we have learned the lessons of our current level we may encounter experiences that begin the process of leaving it behind in order to activate the next level of conscious awareness.
Each level has been mapped back to its origin in the development of humanity with level 1 – called Archaic being the oldest at thousands of years old and Levels 7,8 and now 9 or 10 being the newest emerging only a few decades ago. How we think and process today is much different than just a generation ago. Each level comes with its own values, identity, perspectives and other characteristics.
Levels within Tiers – Levels one through six are referred to as Tier 1, and levels 7 and 8 are referred to as Tier 2. Research has also identified the recent emergence of what has been dubbed ‘supermind’ or Tier 3.
At Tier 1 each of the levels believes their perspectives and values are the correct ones and everyone else is wrong. By contrast people who have activated tier 2 within themselves are driven towards wholeness and consider each person to be at least partially right and holding a partial truth.
The value of learning about these maps is that it can help the activation process within us, support our inner growth and well-being and give us more perspective. We start tolerating the family discord with because of our inner ‘Aha!’ understanding. The more we access these maps within us, the more life begins to make sense, we are more compassionate, less judgmental, more generous and abundant. We come into harmony and resonance with and consequently experience what is ‘good, beautiful and true’(Ken Wilber) in our life.
While there are a number of researchers documenting these levels, my Life Repatterning system is adapted from the Integral Theory works of Ken Wilber and his supporting community. In my system we look at patterns of mindfulness that help us move through the levels. Using our present moment experiences we clear the left over patterns from unfinished levels of development that are holding us back.
We are then better able to transcend and include levels reaching for more options, more perspectives and ways of being that make us happy. For more information about how I incorporate integral understanding into repatterning visit my website… www.LightTravels.com . To learn more about integral theory visit the community website: www.IntegralLife.com
With light and love
Carolyn Winter
Holographic Coach
Repatterning Journal 