Psycho-Spiritual Development

First of all, I want to make clear that I do not automatically bring any
aspect of spiritual exploration into the therapy. For some people it does
not fit and I entirely respect that, there is always much work to do on
healing our psychology. For others, the spiritual (whatever we mean by
the word) can be an important aspect of their experience and so needs
to be included.

To realise our full potential we do need to “Grow up” and “Wake up”.
“Growing up” is about healing and developing our psychology and
body. “Waking up” is about opening and connecting to the “spiritual”
or “transpersonal” ground of our being that is always “waiting for us” in
the “here and now”.

I have never met anyone who has not been left with wounds from their
formative years and whilst there is obviously a scale here, I do think
that everyone can benefit from healing their wounds and developing
their self. Also though, the support and inspiration that comes from
deepening our connection to the “spiritual” dimension of life,
eventually becomes a necessity, if we are find our fullest freedom.

The word “spiritual” has too much “baggage” but other words have
their problems too. As I see it we can connect to the “spiritual” through
our heads, as in developing our consciousness, or our awareness of
Awareness. We can connect through our hearts by opening to Love and
compassion, and through our bodies to sensation and Energy. And of
course any combination of these, including hopefully, all three
together.
Our Psychology
As a simplified model, we contact, interact and relate to the world in
three basic ways, through our head or intellect, through our heart or
feelings and through our bodies or sensation. Elsewhere I have
articulated how trauma, in its widest sense, creates our woundedness
and consequent insecurity and how in doing so it interrupts the
connections between our head, heart and body. As well as hindering
the development of any these parts, insecurity also hinders the
development of whole self.

The core of our healing is, in my experience, always to do with the

heart. Trauma’s effect is centrally about the self being wounded in an
un-bearable way, it is our feelings that are overwhelmed. There are
certainly consequences for our thinking and our bodies that flow from
this, but they are secondary.

Healing often means working backwards through the sequence of

consequences of trauma. This then means that we need to first attend
to our thinking and our bodies, re-building our relationship with these
parts of ourselves before we can move onto dealing more directly with
the un-bearable feelings themselves. This is about repairing the
connections between our heart, head and body, as well as developing
the parts of ourselves that have been underdeveloped. This may be our
heart in terms of being able to feel and label and understand our
feelings. It may be our head in terms of developing our understanding
ourselves in a cognitive way, from clarifying our own philosophy. Also,
for most of us there is a need to tune into and become more sensitive
to our bodies.

Our trauma may well have been held out of awareness for a long time,
or it may be relatively recent, but we need the support of our whole
self to develop our awareness of it and build our ability to face it. It is
avoidance that makes us insecure, defensive and over-reactive. When
we have eventually faced the full depth of the hurt, fear or distress, our
insecurity naturally falls away.

In therapy there is the support of someone alongside us in this process,

which is an important ingredient in healing, because the nature of
trauma is that it happened when there not enough support and it left
us isolated and alienated. Having someone on “our side” able to
consistently support our heart to open, help make sense of our
experience as well as challenging our internalised self-judgement, is
deeply helpful.

We need to take responsibility for ourselves through increasing our

self-awareness so that we can face our ‘what is’, face the reality of our
woundedness, our lack of perfection. It is about knowing ourselves,
about becoming more and more conscious, rather remaining un-
conscious. It is about understanding the structure of ourselves, our
motivations and defences. This is hard work at times and it can take a
long time.

But, we also need to find self-compassion, which comes from facing

and being with the depth of our hurt and learning to care for our
wounded selves whilst letting go of self-judgement. This is where a
spiritual connection can be helpful to our psychological development. It
helps us to see that there is a larger, loving, and compassionate reality
out there, of which we are a part.

The other aspect of our development that bridges the psychological

and spiritual domains is this essential process of learning to “separate
myself from myself” (Gurdjieff), or “to make an object out of what I’m
subject to” (Kegan). We need to learn this in order for the many
processes of self-awareness and healing to able to take place. Therapy
only works through helping people to see, face and process what they
have previously been unable to bear. We grow and develop by
digesting / including what we were previously subject to. This is a
“include and transcend” (Wilber) process, we become aware of what is
in the way, work to deepen our awareness and understanding of it and
thereby face and digest and assimilate it, thereby transcending it.
Awareness of what we still remain subject to then naturally emerges
into our consciousness, to be made into the next ‘object’ of study.
Really this is classic “Gestalt Therapy” (1951) theory and has been
around for some seventy years.

This process depends upon this shift in consciousness, a shift from

being caught in identification, into a place where my “I” can be present
and able to observe what is going on. This shift is both prosaic and
profound. It is the un-bearable hurt, fear or distress in our trauma that
forced us into identification, of which there many types, but clearly the
deeper the trauma the stronger the identification, the more defensive
and fixed the ego is. We are all victims to some extent and in some way,
no upbringing can be perfect. It is true that many clients begin therapy
with the words “I had a happy childhood”!

Rumi was so right with his “You cannot aim for Love, all you can do is
work to remove the obstacles to love within you.” As we clear the
obstacles we naturally move closer and closer to Love, Freedom,
Consciousness, Energy, God or whatever you wish to call it.

Our essential nature is always trying to help us heal, be it in our body,

our heart to heal and open, our head to understand, or our spirit’s
desire to return home to its source. Our psychological “symptoms” (and
many physical ones too), are simply the expressions of this ‘wish’ of the
self for attention and healing.

Our Spirituality
To me the extraordinary thing about our spirituality is just the fact that
sometimes we can have moments of connecting to it, despite all the
obstacles we have in the way. It always feels like a gift, like grace. It is
as though we are blessed by the sun bursting through our clouded
selves at times. It is like this because of the staggering fact, as Wilber
and many other “teachers” have made clear, that we are all already
enlightened, but it is covered up by the layers of ‘ego’ that flows from
our un-processed trauma and general un-consciousness.

As with our psychology, our spirituality has three basic ‘flavours’.

 Through our head, or put another way, through our consciousness

/ awareness, spirituality is about the movement into being
present to myself, “I” aware of ‘I’ experiencing ‘what is’. And the
most powerful version of this spiritual ‘what is’ is about
connecting to the transpersonal Wholeness that exists in the
depth of our ‘here and now’. That I am a part of the miracle of
existence, all is only as it can be right now, and the evolution of
Consciousness itself is at the core of it all.
 Through the heart, spirituality is about somehow our heart
opening to a connection with Love. To being loved and therefore
able to love. It feels like a connection to God, to the profoundly
beneficent Goodness of Life. It is felt as deeply supportive and
affirming. It seems to me that Love is always there when we open
to the depth of this present moment.
  Through the body we can open and connect to Life’s energy. Here
there can be a profound sense of being ‘at one’ with the energy of
the Universe, vibrating deeply in tune with aliveness itself.

These three forms of connection obviously touch and influence each

other, they can all give a profound shift in our consciousness into an
awareness of “I” present to my experience. This process of “making an
object out of what I am subject to” can itself be seen as working
through our head, heart or body. If I have a puzzle to solve with my
head then making the question clear and conscious is the first step, if I
am clouded in my heart then making that cloud an object that I can
study helps me attend to it, if there is a problem with my body, facing it
and giving it my attention makes it something I can deal with. Every
time we achieve this process of “making an object out of what we are
subject to” and processing and integrating it, it is a mini
“enlightenment”, we are freer than we were. Many people in relating
their big “enlightenment” experiences talk about a sudden and
profound shift in their relationship with themselves, identification with
their small ‘self’ is dropped and the “I” becomes clear and free in its
connection to an expanded Consciousness or greater Love or pure
Energy.

All three forms also give balm to our heart’s insecurities which then
recede into un-importance. Spiritual connection immediately supports
our hearts to open and relax and our sense of separateness or
alienation diminishes. As Helen Greaves (1969) put it, there is
“Relaxation unto God” or a profound “letting go” into a deep opening,
into the profound support of knowing that we a part of the Goodness
of life, part of Consciousness, of Love, of Energy/Light, of God, of that
which is the central theme of the Universe. This experience can build a
deep trust. This is because connecting to the spiritual can deepen our
knowledge of this underlying reality which we intuitively recognise as
being more important and meaningful than all our personal concerns
and identifications. Spiritual opening can only be a ‘here and now’
experience, and one that transcends the personal with its power and
intensity of meaning. This connection then, is opening to a very special
aspect of the ‘here and now’, with very particular qualities, including
timelessness and ultimate meaning.

Each of these three forms of spirituality can also move us towards

embodiment, i.e. towards the sense that our body is the container for
our experience. Connecting to our bodies sensation always brings us
back into a deeper connect with the ‘here and now’, grounds us deeper
into what is real and visceral.

The power, that comes from insecurity being temporarily undone

through spiritual connection, is often taken by our ego’s compensatory
needs. It is brought down into the level of selfish unconscious need
where it is used for aggrandisement or arrogance or ‘specialness’ so as
to patch over the wounds of insecurity. This is part of what is called
“spiritual bypassing”, the process by which we can avoid facing our
underdevelopment through using the power that comes from spiritual
connections. Again, this “underdevelopment” can be in our heart, head
or body. This leads to any of the three forms of spirituality becoming
quite ghettoised experiences with the result that the perspective
becomes distorted, prejudiced and unbalanced, as in “this is the only
true way”.

The techniques designed to help us open to the spiritual, be it

meditation, ritual, prayer or ceremony can also work through either of
these three emphases of head, heart and body alone, or in a
combination of two, or of all three.
As an over-generalisation, in Abrahamic spirituality the connection is
felt to be more through the heart to “God” or to the “Love of God”. For
Eastern spirituality it seems to be more about the head and
consciousness, with arriving at Emptiness or Nirvana or the un-
describable ‘no-thing-ness’ of the Tao. The East also opened the path to
spiritual development by using the body, through Yoga or Tai Chi or
Martial Arts etc. (One exception to this is the Sufi’s whirling dervishes).

So, the spiritual can help with psychological healing, and many of the
processes needed for psychological healing are the same as those
needed for our spiritual development, so provide excellent practice.
Psychological healing is essential for our spiritual development, it
releases us, so that we can find that “relaxation unto God”. We cannot
let go of our ego until we have healed it! And, as any student of
spiritual paths knows, we cannot connect to God, find enlightenment,
etc., by ‘trying to do it’. But what is clear to me is that Psychology can
give us a practical way of “removing our obstacles”. I trust I have made
the case for the necessity of integrating both approaches.

References
Helen Greaves (1969) – Testimony of Light
Robert Keagan (1994) – In Over our Heads
G I Gurdjieff (1973) – Views from Real World

Extract from John Welwood’s book “Towards a Psychology of

Awakening” (pages 196-199) In the traditional cultures of Asia, it was a
viable option for a yogi to live purely as the impersonal universal, to
pursue spiritual development without having much of a personal life or
transforming the structures of that life. These older cultures provided a
religious context that honoured and supported spiritual retreat and
placed little or no emphasis on the development of the individual.2 As a
result, spiritual attainment could often remain divorced from worldly
life and personal development. In Asia, yogis and sadhus could live an
otherworldly life, have little personal contact with people, or engage in
highly eccentric behaviour and still be supported and venerated by the
community at large. Many Westerners have tried to take up this model,
pursuing impersonal realization while neglecting their personal life, but
have found in the end that this was like wearing a suit of clothes that
didn’t quite fit. Such attempts at premature transcendence—taking
refuge in the impersonal absolute as a way to avoid dealing with one’s
personal psychology, one’s personal issues, feelings, or calling — leads
to inner denial. And this can create monstrous shadow elements that
have devastating consequences, as we have seen in many American
spiritual communities in recent years. For whatever reasons, for better
or for worse, it has become problematic in our culture to pursue
spiritual development that is not fully integrated into the fabric of one’s
personal experience and interpersonal relationships. Here is where
psychological work might serve as an ally to spiritual practice—by
helping to shine the light of awareness into all the hidden nooks and
crannies of our conditioned personality, so that it becomes more
porous, more permeable to the larger being that is its ground. Of
course, what I am describing here is a special kind of psychological self-
inquiry, which requires a larger framework, understanding, and aim
than conventional psychotherapy. I am hesitant to call this
psychotherapy at all, for the word therapy has connotations of
pathology and cure that place it in a medical, rather than a
transformative, context. Moreover, conventional therapy often involves
only talk, failing to recognize ways in which the body holds defensive
patterns and also manifests the energies of awakening. Truly
transformative psychological work must also help us unlock the body’s
contractions and gain access to its larger energies. (Jim’s note here -
Gestalt Psychotherapy is not about medicalised symptom relief it is
about exploring the meaning that comes from awareness of all aspects
of our experience, head, heart and body. Working to realise how our
body holds our defences in tension is an essential part of this approach)
Of course, spiritual work has a much larger aim than psychological
work: liberation from narrow identification with the self-structure
altogether and awakening into the expansive reality of primordial
being. And it does seem possible to glimpse and perhaps even fully
realize this kind of awakening, whether or not one is happy, healthy,
psychologically integrated, individuated, or interpersonally sensitive
and attuned. Yet after centuries of divorce between the spiritual and
the worldly life, the increasingly desperate situation of a planet that
human beings are rapidly destroying cries out for a new kind of psycho-
spiritual integration, which has only rarely existed before: namely, an
integration between liberation—the capacity to step beyond the
individual psyche into the larger, nonpersonal space of pure awareness
—and personal transformation—the capacity to bring that larger
awareness to bear on all one’s conditioned psychological structures, so
that they become fully metabolized, freeing the energy and intelligence
frozen inside them, thereby fuelling the development of a fuller, richer
human presence that could fulfil the still unrealized potential of life on
this earth. For most of my career I have explored what the Eastern
contemplative traditions have to offer Western psychology—an inquiry
that has been extremely fruitful. I have only the greatest respect and
gratitude for the spiritual teachings I have received and for the Asian
teachers who have so generously shared them with me. Yet in recent
years I have become equally interested in a different set of questions.
How might Western psychological understandings and methods serve a
sacred purpose, by furthering our capacity to embody our larger
awakenings in a more personally integrated way? Is our individuality a
hindrance on the path of awakening, as some spiritual teachings would
claim, or can true individuation (as opposed to compulsive
individualism) serve as a bridge between the spiritual path and ordinary
life? The Challenge of Psycho-spiritual Integration The question of how
psychological self-inquiry could serve spiritual development forces us to
consider the complex issue of the relation-ship between the
psychological and the spiritual altogether. Confusions about this are
rampant. Conventional therapists often look askance at spiritual
practice, just as many spiritual teachers often disapprove of
psychotherapy. At the extremes, each camp tends to see the other as
avoiding and denying the real issues. For the most part, psychological
and spiritual work address different levels of human existence.
Psychological inquiry addresses relative truth, personal meaning—the
human realm, which is characterized by interpersonal relations and the
issues arising out of them. At its best, it also reveals and helps
deconstruct the conditioned structures, forms, and identifications in
which our consciousness becomes trapped. Spiritual practice, especially
of the mystical bent, looks beyond our conditioned structures,
identifications, and ordinary human concerns toward the trans-human -
the direct realization of the ultimate. It sees what is timeless,
unconditioned, and absolutely true, beyond all form, revealing the vast
open-endedness, or emptiness, at the root and core of human
existence. Yet must these two approaches to human suffering work in
different directions? Or could they be compatible, even powerful allies?
If the domain of psychological work is form, the domain of spiritual
work is emptiness—that unspeakable reality which lies beyond all
contingent forms. Yet just as form and emptiness cannot be truly
separated, so these two types of inner work cannot be kept entirely
separate, but have important areas of overlap. Psychological work can
lead to spiritual insight and depth, while spiritual work, in its movement
toward embodiment, transformation, and service, calls on us to come
to grips with the conditioned personality patterns that block
integration. (I’ve used bold here for emphasise) The question of
whether and how psychological work might further spiritual
development calls for a new type of inquiry that leads back and forth
across the boundary of absolute and relative truth, taking us beyond
orthodoxy and tradition into uncharted territory. If, instead of leaping
to facile or definitive conclusions, we start by honouring the question
itself in a spirit of open inquiry, it takes us right to the heart of the issue
of how spirituality in general, and Eastern transplants such as Western
Buddhism in particular, need to develop if they are truly to take hold in,
and transform, the modern world.

A revision of Wilber’s “Integral Map” – amending the approach to

“States” – Jim Robinson - Jan 2018 This revision of Wilber’s “Integral”
theory is my attempt to improve his map of human development,
specifically, that part of the map that deals with the “states of being”
that are possible for us. I hope that I can bring greater clarity and
simplicity to this aspect, through being more consistent with the logic
inherent in his theory, as well developing the connections between his
“lines of development” and “state/stage” development. I hope this
gives an improved understanding of the relationship between “states”
and “stages”. For those already familiar with Wilber’s ideas I hope this
new perspective on “states”, and how they fit within the overall model,
makes sense and contributes something useful. For those not so
familiar with his map, I hope that my understanding of the levels of
state development resonates in some way with your experience and
gives you some sense of where you are on your journey. As many have
said, “the map is not the territory” but I do think maps can be helpful,
and obviously the better the map the more helpful it is. It can help us
orientate ourselves, to see where we have come from and where we
are headed and in doing so, support us to focus our efforts more clearly
on what is most usefully attended to now. This lessens the risk of
getting lost in the wider picture, of trying to attend to aspects of our
development that we are not yet in the best place to address. To start
with I need to first give some background to Wilber’s “Integral map”
which is made up of five variables - Stages, States, Quadrants, Lines,
Types. Everyone can be seen and understood via the picture that
emerges through all these five lenses combined. Due to space
constraints I do not reflect on “Types” in this piece. I do like the holistic
nature of his model, and the way so much of it is based on
phenomenology and research. He has collated many studies to support
the view that there are clearly recognisable “stages” to human
developmental. These “stages” work through “developmental lines”,
which are simply the different aspects of human nature. For simplicities
sake I will take as the essential ones, the intellectual, emotional and
physical aspects of ourselves. These “lines” when combined, can give
an overall stage of self-development. The” stages” that any “line”
develops through are strictly sequential, so our development has a
structure to it, not just through childhood into adulthood, but
throughout the whole of our lives. Our development is towards the
possibility of reaching our extraordinary potential. The next aspect of
his map I need to present in order to lay the ground for this ‘revision’, is
his division of the world into “Quadrants”. (See any number of his
books for a detailed explanation, I am using “Integral Spirituality”
2006). The Quadrants are based on a combination of two polarities, the
individual / plural, and interior subjective experience / external
objective scientific ‘facts. This gives “I” and “We” and “Its and “Its” and
this gives the total field context for any thing, event, idea or experience.
So, taking any experience, there is the personal perspective, the
cultural and relational context, all the material aspects of it, and lastly
the systemic web that it exists in. Everything exists within a field that
has these four aspects to it. This field exists in this present moment but
also within the context of the past and future. Additionally, each of 2
these four basic “views” has itself an “inner” and “outer” perspective to
it, which give what Wilber calls eight “primordial perspectives”.
(Diagram below) This piece is concerned with the first quadrant (upper
left), the personal or “I” perspective. The interior of this is our felt
personal experience, it is our phenomenology, including the “state” we
are in, from which we experience life. He calls this “View 1”. The
exterior perspective or “View 2” then is the outside view, the
developmental structure of sequential “stages” that we go through.
The qualities of our felt experience are defined partly by our “state” of
being, and whilst this obviously varies from moment to moment, it is
also partly defined by the developmental “stage” we are at. From
Wilber’s (2006) diagrams pages 36-37

We cannot feel a “stage” directly, like fish are not aware of water. But
we can recognise where we have been, have some understanding of
where we are and what is next, but these are deductions and intuitions,
rather than a direct felt experience. “Stages” then are our “external”
understanding of, our internal experience (View 2 above). View 2 is also
what we use to identify and look at whatever “state” we are in. The
directly experience itself is a View 1 perspective. Because states are
fluid, we are always moving between from moment to moment. Stages
however, evolve sequentially over time. So, where we are at any one
time is defined by our current stage/state situation. Our ability to
temporarily experience “higher” states provides us with glimpses of
what living in more conscious/loving/embodied ways of being might be
like. 3 Descriptions of the “stages” of development (and how the “lines”
of our head, heart and body, or self as a whole, develop through these
stages in “three Tiers”) “1 st Tier” Stages – • Archaic / Symbiotic /
Family • Magic / Impulsive / Tribal • Mythic / Conformist / Religious •
Rational / Conscientious / Scientific or Modern • Pluralistic /
Individualistic / Postmodern These are the stages we go through during
a ‘normal healthy’ development into young adulthood, approximately
to mid to late twenties. It is trauma (in its widest sense) that causes us,
or parts of us, to become stuck at any stage along the way, leading to
blocked or uneven development. The point to emphasise here, is that
in all these “1 st Tier” stages there is an identification with the
perspective of that stage, each thinks they are “right” and the others
are “wrong”. The ego is largely identified with it, and the self has not
yet learned to be really self-reflective. This is something that can slowly
develop through these 1st Tier stages, but it is not until the movement
into 2nd Tier that it becomes essential. “2nd Tier” – “Integral stages”
(States 2 to 3) • Global and System Aware / Able to hold multiple
perspectives • Autonomous / Fully “Quadrant” aware / Truth or
Construct Aware It is here that we need to learn to “separating myself
from myself” (Gurdjieff), to learnt to insert a sense of “I” into the
awareness of experience, learn to “make an object out of what I am
subject to” (Kegan). When we can do this, it brings into consciousness
the fact that I am experiencing whatever I am experiencing. It facilitates
self-reflection, being able to look, face, question, explore and take
responsibility for, the nature of my experience, my conditioning and my
environment. It is this that makes deep self-knowledge and
understanding possible. Here people can increasingly hold multiple
perspectives, see other’s points of view, understand and see that Truth
does exists in an objective way and that life is a developmental journey
towards it, through “transcending and including” (Wilber) the ego. The
heart of this stage is about moving towards being able to increasingly
take responsibility for our ‘problems’, (i.e. those aspects of ourselves
that keep us away from living in the here and now). Here then we can
identify a problem, detach from it sufficiently to then investigate and
explore, face and integrate it. Here we can increasingly value our
problems because they provide us with the doorways to our healing,
development and freedom. What we once regarded as “awful”, or “the
enemy”, either within us or outside us, becomes our essential ally in
this journey of healing our heart and expanding our self-understanding.
As I understand this, it is this, it is what Jesus’s teachings of “Love thine
enemy” and “Accept your suffering”, are all about. It is this process of
conscious development in terms of reconciling ourselves so that we can
live increasingly connected to the here and now, that comes to
characterise this stage/state of development. Here we express our
authenticity by actively taking more and more self-responsibility,
responsibility for our bodies, our hearts, our intellect as well as our
spirituality. Mary O’Malley’s book “What’s in the Way is the Way”
delightfully describes this process. 4 “3 rd Tier” (from “The Religion of
Tomorrow” – 2017) (States 4 and 5) • Para-mind • Meta-mind • Over-
mind • Super-mind These are the terms Wilber uses for the stages of
increasing freedom from the ego, where Consciousness, Love and
Energy are increasingly embodied, the awareness of wholeness lived
and not just understood and conceptualised as in Tier 2. Each is a step
towards living more and more deeply in the ‘here and now’. My
experience of these stages is only from having had glimpses of some of
them from time to time. He acknowledges that in this third tier of
development the difference between stage and state development
becomes increasingly meaningless. It seems that these stages are about
living with increasingly less ego, less attachment to good or bad, to
happiness or unhappiness. The analogy that comes to me is, that the
‘here and now’ is rather like the sun, it is so bright, that without being
fully reconciled and open and clear, we are forced to turn away. As we
become increasingly free, or ‘transparent’, we can increasingly live in its
brilliance. “Lines” of development and blocks to our development One
point I want to make clear here, is that using a “stage” lens, anyone’s
overall “state of being” will be partly defined by the different stages of
each of their “lines”. For example, an adult with a strong intellect and
undeveloped heart will live in a different world from someone with a
developed heart but an undeveloped head, etc. If one “line” remains
significantly undeveloped in relation to the others, it acts as an anchor
against further development and means that the person cannot fully
embody more advanced stages. It is useful however in understanding
this model to also simply view the self as a whole journeying through
these stages. Trauma of some sort is the norm for the vast majority of
people it seems. It is an essential aspect of trauma that in order to keep
the unbearable feelings repressed the self splits the connections
between our head, heart, body. These parts become isolated bunkers
with restricted connections, which means their ability to relate, or
inform, or work with each other is limited. This is part of the self’s
survival strategy and the effect is to keep us away from the here and
now and the pain that was too much to bear. This means that we often
live in fantasy, in fear and wanting. This keeps at bay the risk of re-
contacting the trauma, but it leaves us living in constant conflict, part of
us wanting to avoid and defend, and part responding to our deep and
instinctive need for health and reconciliation. It is the process of
connecting our parts (“lines”) together that helps us to increasingly heal
and live closer to the here and now. It gives us greater presence
through which we experience life as more satisfying, enjoyable and
meaningful. The hallmark of all these moments of integration, be it the
pleasure of doing anything creative or rewarding, of making real
contact with anything or anyone, is that there is a greater connection to
the ‘here and now’. Connecting our head, heart and body together
connects us with the here and now and this works the other way
around as well, coming into the here and now helps us to feel our
bodies and know what is in our heart and clarify our thinking. I see this
all the time with my therapy clients, being supported to reconnect split
off parts enables old held trauma to emerges back into consciousness,
where it can to be attended to, understood and healed. 5 As we
develop the connections within us, we become more alive, conscious,
aware and open. This is the continuum of our developmental
awakening towards realising our full potential, our freedom, our
‘enlightenment’. Whatever means we use to support the deep
instinctive drive we all have towards realising our destiny, be it
studying, meditating, prayer, spiritual exercise, therapy, ritual, art, the
body, music, nature, etc., they are all about developing our ability to
open to, and connect to, the dazzling, all-encompassing, stunningly
holistic, full of profound potential, spaceless and timeless Now. As
Wilber and many others have said, what is so staggering is that we are
all already enlightened, we just do not know it, we cannot see it for all
the ‘stuff’ we have in the way. States are both fluid and developmental
We all experience many different “states” in our daily life, there are the
different forms of sleep, we are different in the morning, when we are
hungry, or tired, or interested, or caught in reacting in some way or
another. We can be open or closed, active or shut down, energised or
tired, in a whole variety of ways, depending on an infinite number of
internal and external forces. Stages, whilst being about our maturity
over time, obviously play a significant role in how we are at any
moment. We are different being hungry as a baby to how we are as an
adult, although there might well be strong similarities! As I am now,
having worked hard to grow up over decades, is different from how I
was thirty years ago. The states that I inhabit day to day are different.
Some, at moments are frustratingly similar, but I’m aware that my
“centre of gravity” in terms of states has shifted, as has the stage that I
am at. But my point here is that states, whilst always remaining fluid,
do evolve with the stages of our development, each is just different
perspectives on the same phenomena. Maturity is about time, i.e. we
need enough experience of life to have the possibility to both “grow
up” and “wak up”. This is about the development of our heart, head,
body “lines”, as above, but the other essential part of maturity is the
degree of integration between these parts of ourselves. It is this
integration which plays such a significant role in shaping the “state” of
our being. “States” then also have a development trajectory, which, as I
understand this, corresponds to how Wilber groups the stages into
three “Tiers” as above. As Wilber explains, many “state” development
models around the world use three, four or five levels. The reason for
there being fewer “states” than the eleven or twelve “stages” of
development, is I think, simply because they fluctuate more, they are
more fluid and it is more difficult to discern the steps, which means we
need to use a broader brush. The model I am prosing for “state”
development is based on Wilber’s five levels. The first level is states
associated with 1st Tier stages. Next is what I am calling the “in-
between state” to describes the often-long transition from the upper
reaches of “Tier 1” stages into getting established into the “Tier 2”
“Integral” stages, which are the third “state”. I can see that it makes
sense to me to divide “Tier 3” into two state levels, as per Wilber (ROT).
In general, I find Wilber’s elucidation of these different “states” much
less satisfactory than that of his “stages”. I agree though with the
principal that there are developmental steps to our “states” of being.
These steps are also sequential, but they also remain fluid in that we
can always have temporary experiences of many different states. But
any persons “centre of gravity” will be around the particular state/stage
that they live at. 6 Both “stage” and “state” development are ultimately
about our journey towards living ever more deeply connected to the
‘here and now’ with its potential for Love, Consciousness and embodied
Presence. The particular “stage of development” and “state of
consciousness” of a person defines where they are along this
continuum towards the most enlightened beingness currently possible.
As Wilber emphasises this possibility is constantly evolving as
consciousness evolves. Problems with Wilber’s version of states and
their development. In my view Wilber does not stick to his own map
logically enough when looking at “states”. In places he assumes that the
development of states only comes about from years of meditation or
spiritual training. At other places he arguesthat states and stages are
more deeply connected. At one-point Wilber calls the relationship
between states and stages the “64 thousand-dollar question” (2006
p.82) and answers it by referring back to the “I” part of the Quadrant
idea. He re-affirms that stages are the outside understanding (“View 2”)
of our inside subjective experience, or “state” (“View 1”). He affirms
then that “stages” are the outer form of the inner experience of
“states”, and visaversa, but goes onto argue that “stage” and “state”
development do not relate to each other by giving the example of how
a person can develop through “stages” “till the cows come home” and
not experience enlightenment. I cannot see how this makes sense,
because the higher, especially “3 rd Tier “stages” of development, are
all about enlightened “states”. To be fair he does acknowledge this
elsewhere when talking about “3 rd Tier” development, describing how
the, “3rd Tier is marked by being essentially a specific union of states
and structures (i.e. “stages”) (my brackets). All structures are always
arising in a particular state (that is every experience is a
“structure/state” experience), but at “3rd Tier”, the particular state
becomes an intrinsic part of the structure itself.” (2017 p.211) He is
saying that development does not bring “enlightenment”, which is true
if the stages of development are only along the cognitive “line”, but this
then becomes an example of the consequences of un-even “line”
development (usually caused by trauma) rather than about the
relationship between stages and states. The converse that Wilber gives
is more reasonable. You can meditate and have any number of
“enlightenments” and not be aware of anything about “stages”. This is
because to see stages we need a cognitive outer “View 2”
understanding of them. This just goes to show how the cognitive aspect
of our development is less essential for “enlightenment”. But again, this
is about uneven development in such an “enlightenment”. We all have
a strong inbuild need for holism and our head has a deep need to make
sense, so given half a chance (relative freedom from trauma) we do
want to understand the patterns and meaning in our experience. So, to
me this example is of someone’s intellectual development lagging
behind. Holism, though, must surely be the aim, head, heart and body
all taken responsibility for, and their development attended to. Then
both state and stage development can happen without distortions. If a
particular “line” remains undeveloped it will constantly interrupt,
interfere with and resist the self’s overall movement to the next “stage
of development” with its corresponding “state of being”. Until what has
been preventing that line’s growth, is attended to, unblocked and
released, overall growth will be impeded. It is when the heart “line”
gets neglected that most problems arise, then someone can lose their
connection to compassion and Love. We repeatedly see the
consequences of this with those “gurus” who do seem to find a
lopsided 7 uneven “enlightenment” and even become very powerful,
but then get into trouble and disgrace themselves with destructive
behaviour. To summarise here, my argument is that “state”
development occurs as the result of much more than just meditation,
and that the relationship between “stages” and “states” goes all the
way down and up, their mutuality is not just in the 3 rd tier stages.
Developmental sequence of States In both the books quoted here
Wilber talks about “gross-waking states”, “subtle” and “causal”
“Witness” and “Non-Dual”. The “subtle” state he relates to dream sleep
and the “causal” to deep sleep, but I find these last two difficult to
relate to. These two descriptions seem to come from the Buddhist and
Hindu traditions, and I confess to not relating to them, they do not
make sense to me. The others I think I understand. So, I hope my
slightly revised model of “states” will give a clearer picture, perhaps a
more “Western” perspective on this. It is one that more closely relates
“states” to the development of “stages” which is what makes sense to
me. Wilber’s levels of State development My suggested names for the
Levels of State development Gross-waking (ordinary waking) Un-aware
(Not self-reflective) Subtle-dream (vivid dreams, basic meditative
states) In-Between Causal- formless (Deep sleep – emptiness in
meditation) Integral / Authentic Witness (unbroken silent attention,
capacity to lucid dream) Ego partially Transcended Nondual Awareness
(Beyond any ego) Ego fully Transcended (Wilber 2006 p.74) My
description of state development So, yes, “states” are fluid and vary
enormously, but I do think that the general state of someone also
reflects the “stage” of their development. Again, this is made up of all
their developmental “lines”. It makes sense to me that there are step
changes in our state of being, we are different when we arrive at a new
“Tier” of development. There are steps in the progression of our
development where the quality of someone’s being goes through a
significant change. Mostly people then in the “First Tier” stages can be
seen as in the first “state”, they are not yet able to be deeply self-
reflective. There can still be plenty of moments of relative waking up
and connecting to the here and now, but they are temporary
experiences without an integrated understanding of its meaning.
Teenagers especially can have intense experiences of “being”, but it is
generally not until the later stages of ”Tier 1” that people can start to
embed self-reflection and so start the move into the second state
which I am calling the “in between state”. This is the long period
transitioning “Tier 1” to “Tier 2” where we live between “Yes” and
“No”, where we struggle to really take responsibility for ourselves,
where we struggle to let go of our attachment to being a victim in one
form or another. 8 The third state becomes established in “Tier 2”,
which Wilber calls the “Integral Stage”, this is also called the “Authentic
stage”. Here the ego is healed, we no longer need to pretend to be
something we are not, we are no longer so defensive. This necessarily
includes some equalisation of the head, heart and body developmental
“lines”. We cannot after all start to let go of what we have not
completed, owned and made conscious. The States 4 & 5 in “Tier 3”,
are about increasingly letting go of the ego. Moving permanently to a
new state, i.e. one that is a significantly more deeply connected to the
here and now, is not at all easy. Wilber and others talk about how such
transitions have the quality of going through some “dark night of the
soul” process and this does correspond to my experience. The
movement to starting to wake and take responsibility for ourselves
often comes as the result of a very difficult patch, something like a deep
relationship crisis, a breakdown or burnout, being plagued by anxiety or
depression, something that has been sufficiently painful for the person
to want to find a way out. The next transition from the “in between” to
“Authentic” state is tough as well because it means facing the core or
the depth of our held trauma. I imagine that there is some difficulty to
making the transitions to the 3 rd Tier fourth and fifth state levels,
maybe around “letting go”? Next, I will describe each stage in a little
more detail and then try to assess my own journey in relationship to
this scheme, by way of an example. The first level (Tier 1 stages) is what
many developmental traditions speaks of as a state of being “asleep”.
Here, we live in a way that is entirely ruled by unconscious reactivity. A
place where most of us live defensively with the consequences of our
un-reconciled trauma in its widest sense. This place of un-awareness is
usually around living with insecurity and being a victim in one way or
another. It is often a place of giving all one’s attention to the outside
material world, and or, of trying to ignore anxiety/ depression, living
under the influence of “not good enoughness” or arrogance and
specialness, stuck on the narcissistic see-saw between the two. In this
place we live with little awareness of what is really driving us to be the
way we are. It was not until I started therapy in my early thirties that I
really could see the insecurity behind being the way I was. The next
level (the “in between”) is about the development of self-reflection,
self-awareness and taking responsibility for how we are. It is about
living through the years of self-exploration, of developing self-
awareness, self-understanding and the struggle to take more and more
responsibility for ourselves. It is about moving out of “blaming” (self,
other, or the world), which is simply the projection of our un-faced
onion layers of insecurity. This can take decades to work through. It
takes much work attending to our wounded hearts, to our
understanding and to our body, to slowly resolve those long-held
insecurities. Here we live “between two stools”, with the struggle of
moving out of habitual defensive ways of being, with the pull of un-
reconciled trauma always tending to pull us ‘down’ again into our
unconscious reactivity. It is about making the struggle between ‘Yes’
and ‘No’ within us more conscious so that we can start to have the
ability to choose what we want, i.e. to choose ‘Yes’ to Life. There is an
essential human paradox here, to choose ‘No’ or death is not really a
choice, it is to get lost in believing the nightmare that emanates from
our un-healed trauma. So, choosing “Yes” to Life is the only real choice
we have, yet we still have to make that choice deep down in our souls.
Becoming established in the third “authentic state” happens when the
depth of our insecurity has been largely faced and we can increasingly
live in a freer, more choiceful relationship to our lives. Our being is then
different. We have largely understood, and taken responsibility for
ourselves, so that we can live more flexibly and spontaneously, closer
to the ‘here and now’. We 9 are no longer so caught in the patterns of
reactive living that characterised our previous living. We can largely be
“authentically” ourselves. Working through this third state is about
attending to the remaining unevenness of our development between
our feelings, thoughts, sensation and spirit. If a part remains
undeveloped if becomes a barrier to further development. The risk is
that we build on sand because any remaining splits between our head,
heart, body and spirit can, as ever, lead to our getting lost in
projections, in hypocrisy and however else we avoid the truth of who,
what, how we are. Integrating these basic aspects of ourselves means
we can live increasingly connected to an embodied presence which can
only fully emerge when all parts are integrated. The fullness of this
state comes from living increasingly informed by understanding,
openness, sensation and meaning, being able to accept whatever life
throws at us with relative equanimity. My sense is that the barrier
preventing me from living in the “here and now” is getting thinner.
Living as our “authentic selves” is to be largely free of “shoulds” and
“oughts” along with being free from identifying with, or denying, our
underlying insecurity. Living fully in the fourth state is beyond my
experience. However, as with many other people, I have experienced
moments of touching higher states through “peak experiences”. Wilber
talks, as Gurdjieff did, about how each state is made up of a different
energy or substance. They both see every emotion, thought, sensation,
even spirit, as having its material / energetic correlation and see states
as being made up of finer and finer matter or energy as they develop.
This “matter” constitutes the ‘body’ and quality of the ‘being’ of any
particular state/stage. Experiences of higher states can happen within
special conditions such as meditation and during retreats. In such
conditions as a retreat this finer energy is able to accumulate, because
it is not being wasted in habitual distractions, also love and presence
are being supported and amplified within the group. This can facilitate
a shift into a state which is significantly more open and deeply
connected to the miracle of the ‘here and now’. This “higher energy” or
presence having been accumulated, can lead to experiencing
temporarily something of what living in the ‘higher’ states is like. As I
understand it, this fourth level is about living consistently with such
energy. This seems to be about living with a presence that is informed
by a more direct connection to the Goodness of Life, to God, to Love, to
Truth, to Consciousness, to Energy, or whatever names we choose.
Thisseems to be about living with a connection to something, (whether
this “something” is seen as originating internally or externally I don’t
think matters) that is coming from beyond the ego / personality level of
ourselves. Trust is more deeply established, and we can move into
living less self-centredly, move into being of service to others and the
universe. Having previously managed to fully embody the ego in state
three, the process of starting to let it go, happens here. In assessing
myself in these terms I can see that the fifteen years that I spent in my
twenties and early thirties trying to develop and tune into my presence,
were partly about “spiritual bypassing” to avoid my emotional wounds.
I needed another twenty five years or so of attending to my insecurity (I
had a lot to sort out!) as well as developing my thinking, in order to find
my way through state two (“in-between”) and establish myself in the
“Integral” or “authentic” state. I am now starting to sense the pull of
the possibility of moving into the fourth “state”. The hints I have of how
to move into this level are around questioning my need to control
myself and my world. It is obviously about healing the remains of my
insecurity and letting go of wanting more than I have. Is it about more
deeply opening my heart, perhaps through more or deeper meditation?
Attending with greater fullness to the here and now, staying closer to
the 1
awareness of Awareness? Maybe it is about finally getting off the
narcissistic ‘see-saw’ with its attachment to life, or myself, as being
‘good’ or ‘bad’? Reaching this forth level seems to me to be rather like
my experience of meditation. On a good day, it takes me fifteen to
twenty minutes to reach a place of deeper peace and opened
consciousness, my body is changed and my breathing more deeply
relaxed. To get there I have to go through a period of chaos and
resistance where I need to keep coming back to attending to ‘letting
go’, otherwise I drift into daydreaming. But if I persevere, my state
changes. Thisfeels like where I am in my life just now, holding my
intention onto this ‘here and now’ process of ‘letting go’ into being,
because this is what I want. I sense and hope that by doing so I will
break through into being changed, into embodying this fourth state of
being. I have experienced several “false dawns” over the years, of
thinking that I was at some level when I was not. Reality would then
crash through my self-delusion. What is different now? I would say a
stronger consistency in my being, I’m more able to hold my insecurity
without being so identified with it. I feel more solid and grounded and
ready. But time will tell, and it will be what it will be. My understanding
comes from my conscious development over many years now, as well
as the experience of helping many people for some part of their
journey. This has given me the “height” to see where I have come from
as well as a glimpse of the journey ahead. I have left behind the
depression and alienation that dogged a large part of my life. There are
still aspects of my underlying insecurity around, but there is also an
increasing openness and freedom I am very grateful for. This gives me
trust that I am growing into the “Goodness, Beauty and Truth” of the
here and now. As indeed I trust we all are. The last step to the ultimate
fifth state is, it seems, one of letting go of all attachments and fear. To
finally let go of our ego and rest in pure Being and Love, in the peace of
the Tao, the place of pure Non-Dual Witness. I hope that I can find this
before I die, even if only shortly before, because it feels to me that then
I will be reconciled, and done, and happy to go.

References
Gurdjieff G I (1973) - Views from the Real World
Keegan R. (1994) - In Over Our Heads
Wilber K. (2006) - Integral Spirituality
Wilber K. (2017) - The Religion of Tomorrow