Turquoise Working Groups

 

Turquoise Working Groups

 

·       TURQUOISE we-spaces of a “working group” can have a profound felt-sense (to participants and observers) of calmness and serenity, but there can also be passion, urgency, and extraordinarily efficient operating toward a purpose (because in a way, the individual minds are “melded” into one, so differences and divisions when they show up are synergistic, not hindrances.)

 

·       TURQUOISE loves to spontaneously discover projects and people to work with in ways that include the systemic integrations found in YELLOW projects and go beyond to include “invisible realms” of phenomena that are perceived and influenced to produce results. (PURPLE “magic” is the roots of this, but in TURQUOISE there is far more knowledge of how the social and natural world works, as complex systems, and more consistently benevolent intent in the use of invisible forces.)

·       Even more profoundly than in GREEN, TURQUOISE is drawn to accomplishing practical, productive work in teams.[1] 

The characteristics of an individual who can work in teams composed of people predominantly in the TURQUOISE worldview might include these: 

• Automatically senses and works directly with group energies and energy flows
• Uses “invisible realm” actions/intentions/flow to accomplish ordinary outcomes such as purpose-setting, marketing outcomes, project management, etc. This is far beyond affirmations and visualizations.
• Is grounded with a balanced life, values physical life, health, and relationships
• Has a work/life attitude of creativity, playfulness, and joy, not hesitant to experiment and make mistakes
• Is a good “team player," with profound commitment to "working on the relationship" of the team itself, in high-consciousness ways

o   Is emotionally/socially mature, including not flaky or flighty, can keep agreements made (or inform others of changes in plans,) no sharp edges, no subtle hypocrisy, etc.

o   Can talk about use of energy techniques, has an intellectual framework for their work. 

Even though this ability to put things into words develops through the time spent maturing through TURQUOISE, by late TURQUOISE it is balanced by three realizations. 

§  First, that "there are mysteries in play behind the scenes" (quote from an editorial in Mysterious Ways magazine) that can simply not be understood in words, or by the mind, and sometimes can't even be sensed. The territory is that vast. So the person is content to only partially "know" what they are doing, or what's happening, or what the results are. 

§  Second, this means they understand that it is not their personal will, their personal manipulation of subtle energies, which is creating most of what happens and the results. 

§  Third, by late TURQUOISE there is a clear grasp of the contextual nature of word meanings, so whatever words they might use to describe what they are doing, their framework is always just an incomplete map. However (because they have matured through YELLOW and gained this skill already) they still can communicate something meaningful to almost anyone they choose to communicate about their work with.

• Always open, always learning
• Always engaged in emotional and spiritual growth
• Consciously in service to planetary or larger evolution
• Has significant skills and capacities from earlier stages, especially from BLUE, ORANGE, and YELLOW that keep energy work grounded
• Has significant flight-time logged in participating in higher we-space groups

o   Able to function on multiple levels and layers of reality/consciousness simultaneously, so the work is grounded and focused plus the detail work is grounded in vast spaciousness of cosmic evolution.  

·       Some individuals and groups mostly in BLUE work in “teams” composed of humans and angelic (or “demonic”) Beings. Some groups and individuals in GREEN teams also work with various invisible Beings as participants in the team, such as (echoed up from PURPLE) Nature spirits of various kinds, totem animals, or angelic or other “spirit-beings.”

A TURQUOISE team is likely to be found consciously relating to all of those as team participants, plus, possibly, ancestors, ascended masters, upper-dimensional (spirit-realm) extra-terrestrials, archetypes, morphic fields, and more. In TURQUOISE these relationships and interactions involve conscious practices of invocation and communication. In CORAL the integration of all those with the people—in their lives and work—is habitual, automatic, seamless.

 

If all this appeals to you, get in touch with me to explore possibilities!

 

by Rev. Alia Aurami, Ph.D., Head Minister, Amplifying Divine Light in All Church

"Amplifying Divine Light in All" is a completely independent church fostering empowerment of people to co-create loving, thriving God-realized lives, and wellbeing for everyone, on a clean, peaceful Earth.

Our main religious purpose and mission is to amplify the Divine Light in everyone. When you read this article, you will agree or disagree with its various points, and then you will know more about what is true for you. Knowing more of your own Truth amplifies your Divine Light. Thus providing/presenting this article is one way for us to accomplish our purpose and mission. 

This article and our providing/presenting it are therefore a central and essential part of our exercise and practice of our religion. 

None of the contents herein are claimed as absolute truth. They represent one possible perspective which might prove useful for you. All results from using anything written in this blog are solely your own responsibility, which you assume by reading.

All rights reserved under the Common Law. This means please respect our creatorship.

 

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[1] Many people long for community. The “cool color” worldviews especially include this longing. In TURQUOISE the longing is even more poignant because there are so few others who have matured into this stage; a person might go years without meeting anyone. 

Exploring Ego, Power-over, Impulse Control, Social Control - Through the Spiral

 Exploring Ego, Power-over, Impulse Control, Social Control - Through the Spiral

 

Here are some explorations and ruminations about the way these change up the Spiral in First Tier. It's all speculation. Use my thoughts to catalyze your own thoughts on these matters, for whatever benefit that could bring to your life!

 

BEIGE

 Alpha male in BEIGE does not get ego gratification from his power-over. He is not doing it to cover psychological insecurity. He is not doing it for the joy of lording it over others. He is not actually CHOOSING to do it. He simply got to his position by being who he is, which is stronger and smarter in physical fights than others. 

The alpha female gets her position by being the chosen mate of the alpha male. She too is just being who she is. Both are simply living and expressing the impulses that arise in their consciousness, much like human infants.

Others in the tribe seem to internally inhibit some of their impulses for fear of getting smacked, damaged, hurt, or exiled/shunned. But neither those actions toward them, nor their fear, are in any way psychological or personalized. There is not that much consciousness of individual identity. 

PURPLE

In PURPLE, social control is via tradition and fear. The fear is not of actions of others, it is of the actions of the spirits that are believed to cause all human experiences, even causing all that happens. Priests and shamans remind people, but do not exert personal power and control and don't get personal gratification from their influence. There is again not that much individual identity. Each is acting according to the role in the tribe that life put them in to. 

There are still alpha males and alpha females, and fringe bachelors, etc., but these are backgrounded to the magical, religious, ways of relating and interacting based on "larger forces" that everyone regards as "real" or "the way it is" (but without the conscious thought implied by using those words.)

Impulse control, to whatever extent it is necessary (because "indoctrination" of children is quite thorough; rarely does an individual consciousness rise out of the cultural mindset,) comes from fear of bringing harm to the group.

RED

 In Red, social control is now a mixture of sheer physical force to cause bodily harm, and the power of the religious clergy, the interpreters and messengers of the will of the gods or God, and there does appear to be some personal gratification from the exertion of such power-over, for both the physical-force lords, tyrants, dictators, royalty, aristocracy, etc., and the religious "leaders."

To whatever extent there is a personal psychology that includes long-standing insecurity, low self-esteem, desire for revenge on imposed force early in life, etc., then gaining social power-over (on any scale) can be used to compensate. Scheming to gain power and status becomes possible, probably for the first time in the spiral, in the maturation of the worldviews.

Power-over is exerted by the religious authorities partly because they have the power to physically harm people and partly because they can use the religion to intimidate people and get the people to control themselves.

Impulse control comes from the mixture of fear of physical harm and the fear of bringing harm to the group.

In Red, the physical power-over of BEIGE is combined with the more consciousness-based power-over related to religious beliefs, so societies have pharoahs and other types of monarchs who wield their physical power-over "authorized" by the gods. Their commands, their dictates, carry both levels of power-over.

 

BLUE

In BLUE, social control shifts from predominantly the method of physical force backed up by consciousness-related control via religious beliefs, to predominantly consciousness-related control. Relgiious beliefs tend to get encoded in "the law" which operates by threat or action of physical harm (fines, jail, death) but basically people take on the beliefs and control their own impulses from inside, without direct fear of force. 

In other words, society has shifted from an external kind of impulse-controlling to a more internal thought-policing. People regard their own thoughts as good or bad, and repress or suppress thoughts as well as controlling their action impulses.

This results in less physical violence, a more "peaceful" society from the external point of view, but the internal violence goes way up.

 And the previous methods of social control, of impulse control, are still present and operating, just more in the background.

 The possibilities for exerting power-over are greatly expanded, as there can be personal gratification from one's power to enforce the law, in the criminal justice system, thus compensating for insecurity, or seeking revenge, in ways described above for RED.

 

ORANGE

  In ORANGE the possibilities and opportunities available in the course of ordinary living to anyone for exerting power-over for personal gratification are again greatly expanded. 

Those opportunities result from the further shift away from power-over based on strength used for physical harm, away from inherited power-over such as monarchs and aristocracy, and away from power-over based on internal thought-policing based on beliefs adopted from ideological, religious, or other consciousness-based authorities.

Impulse control continues to shift toward internal policing, as many people gain more actual personal control over their survival and well-being, and learn to be aware of the increasingly subtle threats to those: one's boss can fire one, but other jobs are probably available, so the threat is definite, but not definitive.

Power-over is thus exerted in myriad ways, and the ability to use that for personal psychological reasons, becomes almost universally available and universally used. Almost everyone has power-over someone, and is subject to power-over by many.

The psychological strain on individuals, of keeping track of and seeking to mitigate all the potential threats, and of dealing with whatever inner conflicts arise from exerting power-over, probably underlies a great deal of the epidemic "stress" of "modern life."

 

GREEN

All the above is still going on. There seems to be a sort of reversion to PURPLE in this sense: being included in a group is super-important, so internal impulse control amps up a notch further than even in ORANGE. 

Unlike in PURPLE, however, the fear here is of being extruded from the good emotions and good relationships of one's groups, from the "belonging" experienced by the "self" that has matured through all the previous stages.

Unlike the undifferentiated self-other in PURPLE, self and other are excruciatingly differentiated now, but also excruciatingly undifferentiated in that personal identity is very much dependent on one's identity in one or more groups.

 Thus individual internally-generated impulse-control is far more complex, far more related to emotional/personal relationships than ever before--and still involves everything matured through up to this point. More cause for stress!

Power-over includes all the previous and even more possibilities, by manipulating people emotionally subconsciously. For example, advertising manipulation has many more avenues by which to grab people.

The desire to "fit" in, combined with being subject to economic power-over that operates ever more universally and subtly, opens the door for many of the tyrannies and dictatorships operating in various countries that are basically accepted by the people themselves, "voluntarily."

 

SO WHAT?

I wish I could conclude with words of wisdom based on new insights from the above that would help in maintaining both one's social cohesion and one's personal sovereignty. 

Those haven't emerged yet. Surely they would emerge by carrying this inquiry along the maturational spiral, to see "what's next,"  from YELLOW and later.

Stay tuned here, AND add your own wisdom or speculations, via a comment!!

 

by Rev. Alia Aurami, Ph.D., Head Minister, Amplifying Divine Light in All Church

"Amplifying Divine Light in All" is a completely independent church fostering empowerment of people to co-create loving, thriving God-realized lives, and wellbeing for everyone, on a clean, peaceful Earth.

Our main religious purpose and mission is to amplify the Divine Light in everyone. When you read this article, you will agree or disagree with its various points, and then you will know more about what is true for you. Knowing more of your own Truth amplifies your Divine Light. Thus providing/presenting this article is one way for us to accomplish our purpose and mission. 

This article and our providing/presenting it are therefore a central and essential part of our exercise and practice of our religion. 

None of the contents herein are claimed as absolute truth. They represent one possible perspective which might prove useful for you.

All rights reserved under the Common Law. This means please respect our creatorship.

What Makes a Community?

What Makes a Community?

While this post isn't specifically about exploring Second and Third Tier, it contains a wealth of information useful for satisfying the longing for "community" that is so widespread among everyone--and that is especially poignant for those on the fringes of societal mainstream, like most readers here.

Some of the information is old, as I have copied this from a private blog in an online forum that I did back when, but I offer it in the spirit of helpfulness, and would love to hear how you use it. 

For some reflections more specifically on Second and Third Tier "community" you might check out these other blogposts:

A Spectrum of Online Community Interactions

Exploring Group Shadows of Teal Groups/Organizations
How Second Tier Functioning Might Show Up in Group Processes
or any others with the tag "we-space" or "groups"

Original exploration around the concept of community:

Are we really a community, or are we just a collection of people who choose to be in the same section of cyberspace? How can we know whether we are a community or a collection? And does it make any difference?? Well, if it makes a difference to you, please read here and add your perspectives and preferences.

The people riding a bus are not a community. The people viewing a movie in a theatre are not a community. The cast of a play might or might not be a community. A family might or might not be a community. 

The people living in the same town are called "a community" but are they always? The people in a church might or might not be a community. The people within a business might or might not be a community, usually not. A sports team might or might not be a community. A social club or common-interest group (which perhaps we are the closest to) might or might not be a community. 

An organization gathered "for a cause" might or might not be a community. Sometimes a collection, like people on the same cruise ship, can become what might be called a "community" in an emergency they face together.

Reasons for thinking about definitions of community: What would be benefits of this exploration be, for our community??

I think it would be very worthwhile for us together to look at some definitions of "community", because the more we know about who we are, the easier it might be to come up with our Vision, Mission, Purpose, and Values which are the foundation for our co-created structure and processes.

Another reason for arriving at a common shared definition of our community-ness is so new people can sense whether they belong here, and can have realistic expectations for what their experiences here might be, so they don't end up disappointed because we aren't the "kind of community" they were expecting us to be. 

Obviously, with so many diverse meanings to the term (see below) there is plenty of room for clashing expectations of who we are. Some commonality would promote harmony here.

Different kinds of community, and what makes a community?

Everything below is from Wikipedia. I have bolded the ideas or phrases which I personally feel are most relevant to the kind of community we are or could become, and it's easy to get lost in so many options described, but I believe it's worth reading them so we understand the CONTEXT in which our Community might exist. We can know more about the kind of community we have chosen to be, out of the many options available to us.

Here's Wikipedia's summary of the concept of "community" (and longer discussion) at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community  [links have been stripped in the copying and pasting process and footnote numbers have been removed as distracting in this post.]

In biological terms, a community is a group of interacting species sharing a populated environment. In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks, and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.

Why Green is not just a minor transition phase between Orange and Teal

Why Green is not just a minor transition phase between Orange and Yellow/Teal*

I hear some folks interested in Teal organizations who are suggesting the view that Green is not a true stage of development but merely a transition phase. That view wouldn't be tenable after reading the original Spiral Dynamics book, in my opinion, but short of such a reading, here's my own attempt to respond, out of my own distress.

I've been distressed hearing that view because I feel it is dangerous: it will cause failure and suffering for those who attempt to live by it.** I'd like to try to articulate why I feel that way. I haven't the bandwidth now to go hunting for examples, but they are visible in the pages of Enlivening Edge Magazine. Perhaps you, a reader, can make a comment below with one.

Green is not only a full stage, it is the necessary foundation of the Teal stage. Green is the capstone of the First Tier, and the only basis from which one can move fully and healthily  into Second Tier's first stage, which is Yellow/Teal. It is the only healthy springboard into Second-Tier consciousness.

I think to view Green as a mere phase is to not fully "get" the huge difference between 1st and 2nd Tier, and the role of Green in making that difference possible. Green is where the heart comes online in human development, put most simply. It is a radical expansion of the capability of a wide circle of concern. It is, we could say, a huge move in widening individual ego's scope of concern, awareness, and care. 

Without that foundation, one cannot truly move into the scope of care and concern and awareness required for the leap into Teal/Second Tier, which involves building on that concern with wider systems-awareness, but with a quantum leap beyond any previous stage leap.

That's why Graves called it a Tier leap, not a stage development, between Green and Teal. Green still has the right-wrong, either-or mentality, despite how inclusive its values are. Green is, for example, very intolerant of intolerance. Teal and 2nd Tier is where inconsistencies like that disappear, for the first time in human development. Teal is the first FULL universality of care and concern. Because others are fully real in their wholeness, Teal develops a "both-and" synergistic approach to life.

Exploring "Promises" Through the Spiral of Development

Exploring "Promises" 

Through the Spiral of Development

(Here, Teal = Yellow.)

Here's a riff to continue a conversation I'm having with friends!

On page 34 of his book Civic Engagement and the Restoration of Community:Changing the Nature of the Conversation, outlining the A Small Group process, Peter Block says

“Promises that matter are made to peers, not those made to those who have power over us (parents, bosses, leaders). The future is created through the exchange of promises at the local level with whom we have to live out the intentions of the change.

It is to these people that we give our commitments, and it is they who decide if our offer is enough – for the person and for the institution. Peers have the right to declare that the promise made is not enough to serve the interests of the whole. As in each act of refusal, this is the beginning of a longer conversation.”

He also says:

"Commitment is a promise made with no expectation of return. It is the willingness to make a promise independent of either approval or reciprocity from other people.

The distinction is between a promise made for its own sake and a barter agreement. Barter is an exchange of agreements that are contingent on the actions of another. I will do this if you will do that.

This means that we hold an "out" for ourselves dependent on whether other people fulfill their part of the bargain. This reciprocity works as an element of commerce. It falls short of the level of commitment that creates a new future.

The declaration of a promise is the form that commitment takes and is the action that initiates change. The word promise brings a sacred element into the conversation and this is what generates power and new energy."

Promises in First Tier Worldviews:

In my view, this is healthy Green-consciousness, coming out from healthy Orange. The value of keeping one's word starts with the Red emphasis on loyalty, sworn oaths of allegiance. It moves in Blue as dedication/loyalty to the authority and the "cause," to the "contract" created by a higher authority that is "take it or leave it," being an unquestioning part of the "us."

Particularly Orange emphasizes making and keeping agreements with equals, as "contracts between individuals" are the basis for many relationships within Orange. The system of Orange-consciousness in society depends on people keeping their word, doing what they said they would do, being honest, etc. That's basic to healthy Orange; as Block said it, reciprocity works as an element of commerce.

In my view, the wording used by Block takes it into Green by talking about creating the future (the implication is, TOGETHER,) and "peers with whom we have to live out the intentions...."  

The phrase "the interests of the whole" probably shades into Yellow/Teal, but IMO just dipping the toe in. In fact, it might even be a Blue "shadow," if the interests of the whole are viewed as opposed to the interests of the individual! Yellow/Teal knows how to harmonize those interests.

What is the social function of promises?

Exploring Group Shadows of Teal Groups/Organizations

Exploring Group Shadows of 

Teal Groups/Organizations

Here is a checklist of some Teal-group shadows I have observed over the years. A group shadow is a pattern of group interactions (involving some or all the group members) which can be observed to be detrimental to the well-being of the group and to its actions/results/expression of its Evolutionary Purpose. 

These are patterns I've seen and experienced in groups nominally or even predominantly operating in Teal/Yellow consciousness. At the end below, I talk briefly about how this list might be USED by a group.


The list is not in any particular order.

"EGO" MEANS "INVALID"
1. Someone comes up with a tension and others assume or discern it is individual, "from ego," or "defensive," instead of actually looking to see whether it is indeed a systemic/group matter/tension. It could be valid and useful for the group to consider EVEN IF the individual is coming from ego-shadow. Both-and, not either-or. By "shooting the messenger" down (into silenced invalidation) without reflecting, potential collective intelligence is lost.

LEFTOVER HABITS AROUND POWER AND DECISIONS

2. Individuals in a self-management environment are often still tethered to old habits of consciousness/behavior, and, for example, seek consensus before acting (Green) or seek permission before acting (Orange.) This becomes a group shadow if others, due to their own individual shadows, don't realize this and call attention to it. 

One effect detrimental to the group is that things don't get done even though they might have been good for the group. Also, the self-inhibiting breeds resentment in those who won't act without consensus or permission; that contaminates the relational space and reduces their enthusiasm for contributing to the thriving of the whole group.

Beyond Teal Organizations - What might a Turquoise organization be like - Part 2

Beyond Teal Organizations  -

What might a Turquoise organization be like - Part 2

Same topic as Part 1 of this exploration, different day, different angles.

I begin this exploration by saying that my descriptions are based on my actual experience as a participant in one organization and a number of groups operating from the Turquoise stage of consciousness -- experience over the last 5 years. I have also read about and heard about many other such groups, and a couple of organizations. So this description is not simply abstract theoretical conjecture.

Anyone exploring "Teal" stage of organizational consciousness probably has their own speculations, possibly based on enough experience within predominantly Teal organizations to both sense the limits of that stage, and the wonderful new characteristics emerging here and there, now and then. 

So this little bare beginning to meant as a conversation-starter, a catalyst, an invitation to sense into your own notion about what a Turquoise organizational consciousness might be like, and share that, so that we move along thereby to strengthen the Morphic Field/creative template of that which is available to humanity, hastening the day it appears in more of our experiences! 

I'm also interested in gathering stories about the "limits" experienced in organizations predominantly at Teal consciousness which prompt the evolution toward Turquoise functioning.

The "reality" in which the organization operates shifts, from people-actions-objects-relationships to fields of subtle creative energy which are the same as aliveness/consciousness and in which people, actions, relationships, and objects are expressions of the Purposes of Morphic Fields of conscious creative subtle energy. Those purposes are not fully knowable by the humans.

The organization metaphor is now Morphic Field.

The three breakthroughs might be:

1. Wholeness of individuals uplevels to Embeddedness/Connectivity/Oneness/Shared consciousness/Wholeness of the organization and its context-environment and the world/Kosmos.

2. Evolutionary Purpose uplevels to Transpersonal/Cosmic Purpose

3. Self-Management uplevels to Flow/Shared Consciousness

"The emergent future" becomes the touchstone for what people choose to sense and what guides actions, but actions are not "decided on," they flow as natural impulses and inclinations.

Coordination of actions and decisions for Purpose is done not in conscious awareness but in "super-conscious" or in the shared morphic field of awareness. This results in constant usual synchronicities and "miracles."

Beyond Teal Organizations - What might a Turquoise organization be like - Part 1

Beyond Teal Organizations -

What might a Turquoise organization be like - Part 1

The context for this exploration is the massive global movement energized by the publishing of Frederic Laloux's book Reinventing Organizations, in which, using Ken Wilber's developmental framework terminology, he traces stages of development of organizational consciousness through Teal/Yellow/Integral, characterizing the positive breakthroughs of each stage compared to the previous one.

Now "going Teal" is all the rage, and it might be time to take an exploratory peek ahead. What is the "next stage" after "the next stage?" What might a Turquoise organization be like? What might be the "Turquoise breakthroughs?" And what limits on Teal would prompt those?

Let's explore these questions. This is a helicopter trip around the tip of an iceberg. So much more could be said. But it's a question which is going to begin to arise as more and more organizations move toward Teal as their "next-stage consciousness." What's the "next stage" after Teal? 

Laloux's "breakthroughs" of each stage of organizational consciousness were discerned empirically, by his observing organizations and forming generalizations. There are really few Turquoise organizations, but I know of two, and am part of one, and have observed any number of Turquoise groups, so my descriptions are formed empirically from generalizing also. The descriptions might be sharper, probably are even "missing the point" in some ways. But I offer them as a springboard for those who think they might be moving beyond Teal somehow, and want a bit of a map to the new territory. (This video is Ken Wilber's delightful description of the functions and limitations of (verbal) maps of new territories of consciousness.)

My fervent hope would be for some map-makers to engage with one another to chart THIS territory as well. Some excellent maps already exist in the many articles and books emerging on "Higher We-spaces" from within the Integral community; those can easily be transferred to guiding us within new organizational territories. I'm just making a tiny beginning of doing that.

If the overall metaphor for a Teal organization is "a living system," then the overall metaphor for a Turquoise organization might be "a web/morphic field of consciousness."

We-space: Felt Experiences in 2nd and 3rd Tier WS

 We-space: Felt Experiences 

in 2nd and 3rd Tier WS

I don't know about you, but for me, conceptual exploration at some point has to give air time to the juicier first-person reports and descriptions. The descriptions here are supplementary to, but with some overlap, to the much longer and more detailed first-person experiences I put in my first blogpost on the subject of we-spaces, in June of 2012. http://exploringsecondandthirdtier.blogspot.com/2012/06/exploring-phenomenonexperience-of.html

For the sake of convenience, I've organized the following descriptions sorta within the Integral AQAL framework, using at least Q-quadrants and L-"levels" (which I now prefer always to call "stages"), but using the Spiral Dynamics stage labels which I much prefer to the ever-changing Integral labels for stages.

PLEASE note: I have also, along with other authors in various places, been exploring descriptions of stages of the we-spaces themselves (see many of the blogposts listed on the right of this page.) For the purposes of THIS post, I'm blurring those distinctions into some vague conglomeration of 2nd and 3rd Tier. It is unlikely of course, that some of the latter experiences described below, will be had in we-spaces which themselves are below those 2T-3T stages.) 

Quadrants

We-space occurs in all four quadrants of individual experience: 

UL - the subjective experiences in physical body sensations, mental experiences, feelings/emotions, on concrete, subtle, subtle-energetic, and causal levels of awareness and stages of awareness-growth; 

UR - the behaviors of the practice we find ourselves engaging in while in a we-space, and in carrying out the various "injunctions;" 

LL - the cultural meanings and values we share with others in such higher We-spaces, and especially the experience of the paradoxical new "dominant monad" which can speak as an "I"; 

LR - the systemic, objective, larger-scale factors that are derived from and also influence felt experiences and can both create and reflect, our motivations. These include for example the technological, digital, electronic media of communication a we-space uses and sometimes even creates for its own use. These also include the space-time parameters of our we-space, such as whether we meet in big groups or small groups in person, etc.

As for others, the planetary-scale driving felt-experienced passion for fostering an evolution for a humanity in crisis is for many of us not primarily a results/benefits-driven interest, but is profoundly an expression of the evolutionary impulse moving through/as us on the level of our own life-purpose, identity, passion, and self-actualization through and as, practicing this capacity. 

The descriptions below are organized more by stages than by quadrants, but I believe all quadrants are explicit or implicit there. 

Developmental state-stages and structure-stages

Our felt experiences reflect and derive from all the developmental stages each of us has access to, and also reflect stages and particular purposes of a WS itself. (Stages of WS have been explored in previous blogs (here for 1st Tier, here for 2nd Tier, and here for 3rd Tier. I have made what I consider some useful distinctions among purposes: Exploration, Experimentation, and Employment. )

Our deeply felt irresistible and constant draw​ to participate often in a variety of higher-conscious we-spaces is an evolutionary call. We know that not just from our cognitive understanding of the role and potential of collective consciousness in humanity's conscious evolution. We identify that the call as evolutionary also because our full humanity is also irresistibly drawn: motivating feelings/experiences are generated from every developmental stage of consciousness we have access within us to, in their transmuted version as us now.

Many people report these same full-developmental-spectrum felt experiences as the texture, the fabric, perhaps even the picture woven into the tapestry of Zone 1 and Zone 3 experience of higher We-spaces. Here's a very partial list, and nothing here seems unique to me; I hear others reporting each of these, at various times in various places.

For our Beige, there is the oft-reported palpable "safety, trust, warmth, comfortableness" as well as a naturalness of Oneness of inner and outer -- being "out there" beyond space and time yet grounded in our body, having it become one of our sensors of the larger We. My breathing slows and deepens; the experience is like group meditation except we are speaking spontaneously. Along with extraordinary aliveness and exhilaration, even ecstasy, is a paradoxical

Yellow to Turquoise, Individual to Collective, Parts to Whole?

​ 

 Yellow to Turquoise, Individual to Collective, Parts to Whole?

Hey, an insight which might prove heuristic for me and for you -- about the swings between individual-focus and group-focus as worldviews develop along the spiral.

I was contemplating a difference between Yellow and Turquoise. Yellow is focused on the health, wellbeing, getting-along, working-together, systemic harmonization, of EACH, EVERY, and ANY person or group of persons no matter where they are on the spiral. Yellow is coming from that perspective, and developing actual capacities to foster and achieve such purposes.

Turquoise, we might say, then focuses on the health, wellbeing, getting along, working together of ALL persons and/or groups. The shift is from Every to All. This is often listed as one instance of the swing along the spiral between "warm" colors which are characterized as more "individual-concerned" and cool colors which are more "group/collective-concerned."​ The word "whole" is often used with respect to Turquoise: focus on the whole planet, the whole of humanity, taking a holistic perspective.

However, I don't remember hearing anyone characterize the "warm" phases as focused on "parts of next whole." It is noted in Integral Theory that each "collective" gets larger in some ways (smaller in other ways) along the spiral, thus each "collective" transcends and includes the previous wholes which are now parts. Well, it seems to me that is what a new "emergent holon" is.

The insight which blossomed in my awareness this morning with respect to Yellow and Turquoise is that Yellow is developing its capacity to deal well with many parts. "Curating" them, if you will, to use a term I got from Marilyn Hamilton, author, consultant and movement-leader of Integral City (.com.)

With enough skill at fostering good working connections among the previous worldviews, among individuals and groups holding them, there is in the Yellow consciousness developing into Turquoise perhaps what we could call a "coalescing" of these into a new emergent Whole of subtle Energies of the planet which is then the focus of attention/work and the arena of development of new capacities at a new scale. Or we might language it as that there is a "zooming out" and seeing the individuals as an energetic Whole when viewed from "further out" (whatever that might mean; don't try to pin me down on it here!) in consciousness.

They turn out to be able to be seen as parts only in retrospect, of course; only when the new Whole is perceived, are the objects of attention, having capacities developed to deal with them, seen to be related in that way. At the time of the warm worldview, they are merely various objects of attention.

I just said "I don't remember hearing anyone characterize the 'warm' phases as focused on 'parts of the next whole.'" It could very well be that indeed Ken Wilber said this, or it was explicit or implicit in Terri O'Fallon's StAGES training I took last June. It has happened before in my life, that I read something, and then months or years later, it pops up as "new." So I might have encountered the seed idea, or in its plant or bud form, or even the blossom itself, previously. I'm open to discovering that.

For now, however, it seems quite logical to regard movement along the Spiral of development of consciousness as not only having the theme of individual or collective, but to further characterize the theme as parts or wholes. So perhaps we could say the times of the "warm" worldviews are times of developing capacities around managing certain parts of life, of experience, of the world, and then part of the natural movement into the next "cool" time is when so much familiarity with and skill with those particular parts, catalyzes a natural coalescing or zooming out, and the pieces of the puzzle are no longer pieces, they are part of a picture which is now seen, now grokked, even if quite implicitly.

The next steps in this exploration would be to try to characterize the "parts" involved in the warm worldviews, and their emergent Whole in the next cool worldview, all the way from Beige to Teal (first in First Tier, last in Third Tier.) That is a task for another day. I suspect it would not be a lengthy task. I'd look first to characterizations of the "scope of caring" of each worldview, for clues.

Whaddaya think? It makes logical sense, right?

And no need to get hung up that a worldview is not a holon; the term "holon" is used imprecisely when heuristic in many contexts these days, I notice, so I am comfortable with playing with it as a framework here. Maybe just "that which transcends and includes previous elements" would serve, but a single word is easier to use in discourse.

Do comment below!

by Rev. Alia Aurami, Ph.D., Head Minister, 
Amplifying Divine Light in All Church

"Amplifying Divine Light in All" is a completely independent church fostering empowerment of people to co-create loving, thriving God-realized lives, and wellbeing for everyone, on a clean, peaceful Earth.

Our main religious purpose and mission is to amplify the Divine Light in everyone. When you read this blogpost, you will agree or disagree with its various points, and find new insights, and then you will know more about what is true for you. Knowing more of your own Truth amplifies your Divine Light. Thus providing/presenting this blogpost is one way for us to accomplish our purpose and mission. 

This blogpost and our providing/presenting it are therefore a central and essential part of our exercise and practice of our religion. 

None of the contents herein are claimed as absolute truth. They represent one possible perspective which might prove useful for you, and they encourage you to explore your own spiritual truths.

All rights reserved under the Common Law. This means please respect our creatorship.

We-space-Collective Intelligence Groups Vary in Purpose

​ We-space (Collective Intelligence) Groups 

Vary in Purpose

(Apologies for the wonky paragraph spacing. Blogger simply does not obey paragraphing commands!)

As I look around the landscape of the groups I know involved in higher-consciousness we-space practices, I notice a distinction which could be unfolded as differences in purpose. In this blogpost, I'll begin to explore these, and I hope you join in​ with your experiences and observations!

The four purposes are:

1. Creating/experiencing/exploring

2. Experimenting/refining

3. Using, working with/as

4. Living in/as

I'm sure these are large baskets which could be further differentiated!

In my mind, these four purposes form a spectrum. A group could move through them, in order. Experiencing lays a foundation for experimenting, and experimenting lays a foundation for living as a collective consciousness group.

However, very importantly IMO, each purpose is an end in itself, and a group need not move beyond its current purpose. The members might be quite content to continue with the current purpose, and will, IMO, gain important insights and information which, if shared with others, will make any important contribution to the evolution of humanity's capacity to engage in/use/live as, shared higher-consciousness (by whatever designation we use for that, other terms are possible) -- which ideally will be brought to bear on our shared challenges as a species.

Also, it appears to me that some groups move around among these purposes at various times; the purposes are far from being mutually exclusive.

Examples of each kind of purpose:

1. Creating/Experiencing/Exploring

One example is: Andrew Carter MacDonald's "High Meadow" monthly conference call groups, http://www.soulworkcommons.org/ spun off from George Por's Mindful Together group on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/groups/mindfultogether/ 

The only stated purpose to the groups is to create and experience "the field of shared consciousness." Participants report on what they feel or think in that field, express themselves from the field, and explore to the extent of gaining experience of what being in that field is like. However, there is little interest in trying out new injunctions to see what difference they make, which to me is the hallmark of the 2nd purpose.

Another example might be the Integral Living Room http://www.integrallivingroom.com

series of events. Perhaps the most relevant exploration of the ILR within these distinctions is this one:

http://exploringsecondandthirdtier.blogspot.com/2014/01/reflections-on-integral-living-room_9543.html

My experience in the first ILR, and impressions of the others, is that one primary purpose is allow people to perhaps get their first taste of a collective awareness, and to find out what that's like, and to develop an interest in further learning about it. The event is sort of like "Here's what relating at/in Second Tier is like; let's begin to learn how to live this way more and more often in our lives." And part of that Second Tier relating, is moments or minutes, of a real, coherent field of shared higher-consciousness.

However, the Integral Living Room event designers also (IMO) definitely have an experimental attitude toward various higher we-space injunctions, so their purpose blends into the second one I've distinguished: experimenting and refining.

2. Experimenting/refining

The experimenters/refiners are familiar enough with the experience, and are curious how to "tweak" the field in various ways. They engage in trial and error. They try different instructions, different invocations, different guidelines. They might try varying who is leader, or who is members. They might experiment with varying lengths of time, or varying platforms.

Besides their enjoyment of the experiencing, they are scientists, checking out what variables are important, what changes in what variables have what effects -- not for any ultimate purpose (such as usefulness for particular work) but simply for the joy of discovery, of refinement, of greater richness of knowledge and understanding of this phenomenon.

Often, though, experiments are aimed at such purposes as assessing how to make a group "field" more robust to incoherent inputs (people who don't fit, technological disruptions,  challenging emotions that arise, etc.) Or how to get a group going faster, or with less sophisticated participants, or how to make a group function well in cyberspace, or across asynchronous communications. These are all, IMO, "hot research topics."

I don't currently know of any groups which are devoted solely or primarily to this purpose, but I suspect many of the groups facilitated by Andrew Cohen and his students in previous years, were primarily with this purpose. (Reference Appendix Two of 11 Days at the Edge, by Michael Wombacher)
http://www.amazon.com/Days-Edge-Spiritual-Evolutionary-Enlightenment-ebook/dp/B003YL4KXU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418885891&sr=8-1&keywords=wombacher+11

3. Using, working with/as

An example of this is the Gaia's Human Hive Integrators (aka Core Team) for the Integral City enterprise http://www.integralcity.com. A shared field is cultivated (and experimented with) for the purpose of making decisions about which projects to engage in, what next steps might be, etc. The method used to create a shared field has been Systemic Constellation Work (as being developed/adapted for work in organizations by Diana Claire Douglas http://www.inspiritworks.com/Pages/default.aspx -- but the group's intention is to operate AS a shared field, even outside of the official delimited times of a constellation.

I am sure there are many examples of this purpose in business and sports. Just for an anecdote, I heard a report on the radio here in Seattle that in the National Football League 2014 National Champs, our own Seattle Seahawks, coaches were working with the players to "think less and trust more" in making decisions of what to do in the moment on the field, and it was clear that "trust more" involved the premise of a shared consciousness. The example was basically, throwing a ball just knowing that a receiver was positioned right for catching it, rather than spending time looking over the turf and seeing where people were and consciously deciding when and where to throw the ball. Act on impulse, and trust, were the injunctions, and the assumption was, in my words, "our shared field of awareness knows what will work best for our purpose of scoring. We must learn to tap into it and then trust it to prompt and guide our behavioral decisions."

I am sure more and more business groups are operating this. I hope you'll share some examples.

Thomas Hubl's various groups all over the world, http://www.thomashuebl.com/en/?lang=en

 which have slightly varying purposes depending on who leads them, seem to me to be examples of those who "use" this way of relating, primarily for the purpose of individual and/or collective "shadow work," for clearing (in his languaging framework) energy blocks. Ultimately, this is intended to pave the way for what I am calling the 4th purpose, living naturally and easily in a shared higher consciousness, and (therefore automatically) using it to meet humanity's challenges.

4. Living as/in/from a shared field of higher consciousness. 

This is for people who have practiced so long, and so well, that they simply embody this kind of shared consciousness. Sort of, living in our natural state of relating. (I explored that definition in this blogpost: http://exploringsecondandthirdtier.blogspot.com/2013/12/we-space-simplicity-beyond-complexity.html)

They have experienced, experimented with, used, this way of being and relating, and it's even beyond "automatic practice." It is simply who they are. (Probably, in my terms, operating as a group in the Third Tier We-space. http://exploringsecondandthirdtier.blogspot.com/2013/11/third-tier-we-spaces-coral-and-teal.html)

The only folks I know whose explicit purpose is this one, are with Patricia Albere's Collective Evolutionary Collective/Mutual Awakening work. http://evolutionarycollective.com/courses/mutual-awakening-ebook-download/
While she facilitates groups with the first purpose listed above, she is also working longterm and indepth with a much smaller group or groups, to cultivate an actual community, ongoingly and constantly operating this way even while separate in space and time.

General Thoughts about these distinctions:

One usefulness of these distinctions is to not assume that every group involved in shared-consciousness explorations has all the purposes, and to not expect any group to have them all, or more than one. And to know which you are about to investigate or get involved with, so your expectations are in line with your probable experiences.

Are the injunctions/guidelines used to establish "the field" in each kind of group different? Almost certainly, but I don't presently have much to say about which is which, or how they differ. Can you say something on that?

What is the relationship of this developmental spectrum of groups to the "stages" of we-spaces I've explored elsewhere (links to several blogposts listed below) and which Andrew Venezia explored in his Masters' Thesis on We-space groups. http://newwaysofhumanbeing.com/2013/10/13/finally-my-thesisfinal-project/

What do you think? Are these distinctions useful? What challenges do they pose to you, and/or what refinements could you offer? Or what additional questions arise for you from this exploration?

Some explorations of stages of we-spaces:

http://exploringsecondandthirdtier.blogspot.com/2013/12/definitions-and-spectrum-of-we-space.html

http://exploringsecondandthirdtier.blogspot.com/2013/11/second-tier-we-space-yellowteal-vs.html

http://exploringsecondandthirdtier.blogspot.com/2013/11/third-tier-we-spaces-coral-and-teal.html

http://exploringsecondandthirdtier.blogspot.com/2013/11/we-space-states-vs-we-space-stages.html

http://exploringsecondandthirdtier.blogspot.com/2013/11/we-spaces-parameters-of-description.html

http://exploringsecondandthirdtier.blogspot.com/2014/05/frameworks-for-viewing-developmental.html

by Rev. Alia Aurami, Ph.D., Head Minister, 
Amplifying Divine Light in All Church

"Amplifying Divine Light in All" is a completely independent church fostering empowerment of people to co-create loving, thriving God-realized lives, and wellbeing for everyone, on a clean, peaceful Earth.

Our main religious purpose and mission is to amplify the Divine Light in everyone. When you read this blogpost, you will agree or disagree with its various points, and find new insights, and then you will know more about what is true for you. Knowing more of your own Truth amplifies your Divine Light. Thus providing/presenting this blogpost is one way for us to accomplish our purpose and mission. 

This blogpost and our providing/presenting it are therefore a central and essential part of our exercise and practice of our religion. 

None of the contents herein are claimed as absolute truth. They represent one possible perspective which might prove useful for you, and they encourage you to explore your own spiritual truths.

All rights reserved under the Common Law. This means please respect our creatorship.