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[Music] the nine stages of ego development part one this is a two-part series maybe there might need to be a third part but i hope to do it into a two-part series on cognitive development how the human mind evolves and grows so there's a certain sequence in which this happens which we will be describing in much detail in part one we're going to cover the pre-conventional and conventional categories or stages of development and then in part two we're going to be covering the post-conventional and the trans-human stages of development really you need to stick around for part two because part two is the most important one this one this episode is just the setup it's just the foundation because it would be weird to start with part two because what we really need to talk about are the post-conventional and the transhuman stages that's what's most relevant to your development but still you will also find much value in part one so stick around in fact i should underscore that this is a foundational episode these two episodes are going to be foundational this is going to be like the uh the structure or a certain model that we're going to be using in all future work that we do on this channel so make sure you watch this one and take it seriously this can transform your life this is basically a road map for the rest of your life for how your mind is going to develop it's extremely significant so don't overlook this this is basically me sharing with you another developmental psychological model so there's a field of psychology called developmental psychology which specifically creates models and studies how various aspects of the human psyche evolve and develop over time i've already shared a very elaborate model called spiral dynamics that most of you should be familiar with if you're not that's okay you don't need to be this is a standalone model here that i'll be presenting and it's it's from the work of a researcher by the name of susan cook greuter so i want to give her a lot of credit here in fact most of this episode probably 90 percent of the content in this series is going to be me just quoting her research paper to you and the paper in particular here is called nine levels of increasing embrace and ego development subtitle a full spectrum theory of vertical growth and meaning making that's a mouthful it doesn't tell you very much uh don't worry though you'll get it all as we keep exploring these different stages i highly recommend that you go download this free research paper it's not overly technical like some research papers are it's quite easy to read it's very illuminating it's life transforming it's rather long for a research paper it's 90 pages long but i recommend that you print this out don't just have it on computer print it out sit there with a highlighter and a pen underline it as you're reading you will find golden nuggets and hundreds of golden nuggets the way she articulates these stages is incredible it's really a work of genius this paper needs to be publicized and taught in all classrooms but of course it's not nobody knows about it so that's one of my functions here with actualize.org is to bring you this amazing content that i find i'll have a link down below or you can go click and uh find this pdf so even if you watch this i still highly recommend that you go download it and read it to make sure that you extract every last golden nugget that is there because i can't possibly do it justice even in these multi-hour long videos that i shoot this will be one of the most important papers that you ever read in your life all right so let's get into the basics of what she calls ego development theory edt ego development theory this is an empirical scientific model grounded in sentence completion tests so the way that this model was developed by susan cook greuter is of course she was also aware of other models within development of psychology and she was sort of following in the footsteps of other great researchers uh of course if you've watched my spiral dynamics series then you're aware of claire graves whose work was also based on a sort of sentence completion tests or various kinds of interviews that he did with with the with people and she did the sort of the same thing so what she does basically is create uh like a a sample of different sorts of sentence completions she gives this out to various people in different countries and then collects the data and then goes through the data and categorizes it and sees what are the commonality commonalities between different people and different answers that they give can we make sense of what's really going on there is a certain a certain order in which people answer these questions how do they grow over time and so forth so the first period of data collection for this particular model was done between 1980 and 1998 but then there was a second phase happening in the 2000s as well and maybe a third phase i don't know um but you can see you know that's like a a solid 20-year chunk of of data collection if not more so there's there's nine levels of ego development here it's important to stress that this is a model every scientific model has its limits it's not going to be absolutely accurate it's giving you a sort of abstract idealized picture of what's going on of course in practice the mind is so complex there's so many variables happening in there that you can't possibly model all this perfectly but still you'll be amazed at how accurate this model can be for pegging yourself your family members and other people that you know so what does this model actually model it models how self-identity evolves over time and by self-identity of course that's just another term for ego and by ego what we really mean is the very center of your entire life so if we ask you what is the center of your life your entire life what does it revolve around it revolves around what you you that big fat ego sitting over there listening to me making sense of the world the owner of your life that's the ego that's your sense of identity now most people they take this identity for granted and they just assume well yeah of course yeah there's me that's my ego i was born i'm gonna die and that's just how it is but that's not just how it is and furthermore there are levels of maturity and development to this ego so one of the common mistakes that is made within spiritual circles and spiritual teachings is that even when they do acknowledge the ego and its problematic aspects a lot of times it's it's too simplistic in the other direction so the pendulum swings away from ego to non-ego and so then we kind of get caught up on this rat race of trying to eliminate the ego kill the ego transcend the ego and ego is bad and all of its functions are bad and uh you know it doesn't even exist it's illusory why even talk about the ego because it's just a fiction that's how it's portrayed sometimes in spiritual circles and so you might think well what's the point of even studying it because it's all just [ __ ] it's all just illusion uh well not quite there are levels of maturity to an ego and in fact what most people need is not ego transcendence we'll get there that's going to be some of the later stages of this model we'll get to ego transcendence but that's uh you know that's a very advanced thing for maybe one percent or two percent of the human population for the rest mostly what they're in need of in search of is just ego development and ego maturity and so that's what most of this model will be explaining you see there's a it's not just a binary of you have an ego or you don't have an ego it's a question of more of like what what kind of ego do you have how sophisticated is it how nuanced is it how reactive is it how dense is it so you could kind of measure the ego in terms of its density in terms of its sophistication and so forth and so this model is explaining the various levels of sophistication of the human mind and psyche as it tries to understand reality because that's a big function of what your ego is doing your ego is not just you sitting back and experiencing life enjoying itself your ego is the thing which is bringing together and making sense of this field of phenomenon and experience that you are encountering all the events and people and things all the different beliefs and ideas that you're learning over your lifetime what is making sense of that into some sort of cohesive narrative that's the ego and how it makes sense of that this varies quite a lot a lot more than people recognize which is why this model is so powerful and so helpful is that it shows you the different ways in which the ego can understand reality so sometimes as i've talked about with the model of spiral dynamics and with ken wilbur's models integral theory uh we talk about different developmental lines we talk about the cognitive line we talk about developing your relationships how how mature are you in your relationships maybe in your sexuality maybe in your uh in your language how you're using your language maybe in your emotions there's a moral developmental line so various kinds of lines this model here is is primarily concerned with cognitive and mental development although it does also touch upon certain other lines because usually when you're developing yourself along one of these lines the other ones come along for the journey although not perfectly so you can be more evolved on certain lines than on others so just keep that in mind but mostly we're talking about mental and cognitive development here so one of the core things that's being modeled here is the mind's ability to take perspective at greater and greater levels it's an increased sophistication and capacity in perspective taking the higher you go the more developed you are the higher your perspectives can be the more inclusive they can be and the lower you are the narrower your perspectives are it's also modeling how the mind relates to reality how the mind interprets reality these are all factors that many people never even think about as they go about living their life that you can relate to reality in different ways you can interpret in different ways very different ways that lead to an entirely different way of living life and so if you want to really transform your experience of life what needs to happen is that you need to transform how your mind relates to reality thinks about reality interprets reality makes sense and meaning out of reality so here's the first quote that i'll give you from susan cook greuter each level of stage represents a distinct qualitatively different uniquely defined and increasingly complex view of self and reality a new reality for the subject a new way of identifying as a self and a new understanding and relationship of the world end quote uh so what does it mean to go up a level on this model it means the following quote the whole previous meaning system is transformed and restructured into a new and more expansive and inclusive self-theory and theory of the world end quote so one of the most important functions of the ego is meaning making and we'll be referring to this notion over and over again throughout these two episodes meaning making how do you make meaning out of the world because inherently the world has no meaning it's the ego's job to create that meaning and as it does so it can do it in a in a wide variety of ways leading to all sorts of different outcomes and different ways of relating to reality so the ego is constantly engaged in this battle of sense making and there's not just one way to do it interpretations can become increasingly more sophisticated so it's not merely that you can have one set of beliefs or a different set of beliefs so here we're not concerned with the content of the mind you might say something like oh yeah of course christians look at the world one way and muslims look at the world a different way because they read different holy books and you know they believe in different teachers or different teachings and principles and so forth but that's not really what we're interested in here we're not that all of that i would call content rather what we're interested in more of is structure the structure of how your mind thinks of the world in a certain sense the structure of how a christian and a fundamentalist muslim look at the world is very similar even though their content can be contradictory or different the structure is still the same the structure is still ideological fundamentalist and so forth you see if you want to understand that distinction between content and structure in more detail see my episode an advanced very important episode that i shot called content versus structure where i go into a lot of detail explaining that distinction very powerful episode so here we're looking at the structures of the mind not the content of the mind we don't care about any particular belief we care about what the mind is doing how self-aware is the mind of its own mechanisms so to speak we also see the ego as a storyteller and the ego as an integrator of all aspects of experience because your experience of life is not this disjointed collection of events and things it seems and it feels like one cohesive stream of consciousness so the ego is is what's responsible for holding that together here's another quote from susan cook reuter on this topic she says quote our own strongly held values have to be renegotiated when we enter a new view of reality in the extreme we can say that with each transformation we are actually entering a new reality with its own rules laws and language for this reason the relationship to almost any concept can be shown to differ along the developmental path a person's understanding of power feedback time love integrity and truth for instance all of these things change with increasing development all right so that's the setup now let's talk about these stages so here are the stages there are nine of them and they have various labels and we're going to break them down into into three categories basically the pre-conventional the conventional and the post-conventional then if you want you can add a fourth category at the end called the transhuman or the transcendent category although sometimes i will lump that transcendent in with the post conventional so the pre-conventional includes three stages one is called symbiotic the next is called impulsive and the next is called opportunistic now the pre-conventional stages within the u.s is about five percent of the population adult population now keep in mind as i'm giving you some of these percentages i'm taking these directly from susan cook reuters research and the percentages of course vary depending on which country you sample the united states is a relatively advanced developed country so of course you should expect more percentages towards the higher stages if you're coming from a country like india china africa somewhere in africa or in south america in these places of course you're going to have much larger percentages of the lower stages so just keep that in mind and in fact you have to be very careful with how you sample this stuff because there can be sampling biases you know like if you're going to go sample college kids in america yeah you're going to get an elevated overly elevated picture of the stages because just there's a bias you know there's a sampling bias just in the fact that you're a college student already you have to jump through many hurdles to get there you're going to already have to be at a relatively high stage just to be admitted into college whereas if you go and you sample people in in some ghetto or in the hood somewhere some impoverished region of america yeah you're going to get a lot more of the pre-conventional stages then the the second category is the conventional stages this is the bulk of what most people are in the world and in in most developed countries and even in in many underdeveloped countries a lot of people fall into the conventional category here we have the conformist the expert and the achiever so the conventional category comprises about 75 to 80 percent of the adult u.s population and this is what most people take as sort of the baseline they assume that because this is how they were raised this was probably the kind of environment they went to for school for church for university if they went to university or at their job or their family and friends and colleagues that they surround themselves with they just sort of assume that conventional thinking the conventional stage of development or category of stages of development that this is basically sort of what defines the parameters of of the human mind of what is considered normal of what is considered possible most people don't think that anything beyond the conventional stages is even possible so it's rare to even encounter the possibility of post-conventional stages which we'll be talking about in part two okay so this kind of creates a sort of a false sense of reality you can really get stuck in the conventional area because when 80 percent of adults around you are like this you don't know any better and anyone who's below you you're going to think they're crazy or stupid and anyone who's above you it's going to be so rare that you're going to think that they're kind of woo or far out there and you're probably not going to interact with them very much because you're just hanging around in a different circle with with friends who are at the conventional level but then you can get into the post-conventional which comprises about 15 to 20 percent of the us adult population and here we have the pluralist stage followed by the autonomous slash strategist stage followed by the construct aware slash ego aware slash magician stage now some of these stages have multiple names and labels so just kind of bear with that i know it can be a little bit confusing sometimes and then finally we have the transcendent category which has the unitive stage this is very rare even in the u.s it's less than one percent of the adult population the unit of stage is about half a percent in susan cook greuter's assessments and i would probably put it as maybe even rarer than that if you really go out there and take a full sample of the entire adult population and you don't specifically take college students or people living in in major urban areas and so forth so now we're going to be talking about what each of these stages are that's the bulk of of our work here is to explain all these because these are just labels don't mean anything to you unless we explain them in detail now i want to warn you you're going to start to want to match up these stages with those of spiral dynamics if you've already studied that model which most of you probably have if you haven't heard of spiral dynamics at all yet that's great uh you'll take this in with fresh eyes so to speak and fresh ears but those of you who know spiral dynamics i encourage you here now to be a little bit more sophisticated in your thinking and not just to simplistically try to match colors from spiral dynamics with these different labels here because even though you're going to see a lot of similarity i want you to kind of get in the frame of mind of being able to look at the world through different models and different lenses at different times so you can put on your spiral dynamics lenses and look at the world that way then you can take those off and you can put on a different set of lenses and you will see different things that's one of the things that a most more advanced mind can do is that it can do that whereas a less developed mind only looks at the world through one set of glasses one set of lenses and it can't take them off to put on and try on another one right so be careful conflating spiral dynamics with this model here they should stand on their own and then later after you're done studying this model then you can start to make comparisons and and so forth but at this point i would resist um i would resist making direct comparisons until you take all this in with fresh eyes for the next hour or two as you're watching these episodes in this series just forget that you ever learned about spiral dynamics take this all in freshly and i guarantee you that you will learn additional things this will enrichen your understanding of spiral dynamics all right so let's get into these stages stage one is called symbiotic this stage there's not much to say about it it's extremely primitive this is basically what is found in infants who are just you know under a few years old this is a stage in which the ego hasn't even developed yet because when you start out life you don't start off life as an ego you start out life as just this undifferentiated massive phenomenon and it has to be made sense of and that process takes a few years to start to get going language has to come online you have to start to think you have to start to recognize distinctions and draw literally invent distinctions between self other and world so at the symbiotic stage there's a very primitive sense of self other and world a baby basically doesn't know the difference between itself the world and others it takes months and years for it to develop those capacities and abilities uh sometimes people just think that oh well a baby is born a baby has a son self no it doesn't another problem here is that some spiritual people will make the mistake of thinking like oh well a baby is enlightened a baby is born enlightened no it isn't a baby is not born with any sense of self a baby doesn't know that it's god a baby is not in some you know super state of high consciousness uh a baby is basically like an animal it's it hasn't even differentiated its sense of self yet out from the world so this can make it appear as though it's enlightened but it's not really enlightened yeah sure it's it's very present it's in the moment it doesn't have a very deep sense of history and time and it's not very you know the mind isn't loaded with a bunch of baggage and beliefs and stuff that's good in that sense it's a little bit closer to enlightenment we might say because enlightenment kind of takes you to a state of going beyond the mind but you shouldn't confuse uh this symbiotic stage with the unitive stage which is going to be the final stage of this whole model so they're vastly vastly different so at this symbiotic stage the mind and the the individual is completely dependent on parents and culture it can't survive without them it's absorbing and rapidly learning from the culture it's not able to evaluate what it's learning from the culture or what the parents are teaching it so if the parents are teaching it some kind of nonsense it'll just completely accept it as the truth it doesn't have any kind of discernment ability and so here indoctrination starts happening immediately as the baby is born and it starts to learn it goes to kindergarten and so forth it starts to interact with parents it's quickly adopting the mental categories of its culture and its parents and whoever it's hanging around with and it's not questioning any of those it's just struggling to learn language struggling to make sense of the world struggling to make sense of of conceptual distinctions between self other and world and it's a struggle to define oneself and individuate oneself from one's environment so that's all we'll say about the symbiotic stage it's uh it's not really something that's prevalent in adults this is this is not even in kids really we're talking about babies here the second stage is the impulsive stage this is uh this is more about where toddlers are found maybe kids that are between five and ten years old something like that this is a sensory motor stage where the kid is running around and trying to make sense of the world through uh sensation and movement by grabbing things feeling things playing with things interacting with the environment and trying to make sense of how stuff works this is the stage at which you have your earliest memories probably of being born and being alive you have a sense of rudimentary sense of self of being human you have a rudimentary sense of time you're just beginning to make sense of time and you have a very crude sense of of history but that this is all coming online very quickly and of course you're absorbing so much from your culture again without critically analyzing any of it so you have to be careful that whatever you absorb from your culture at this stage it's going to form the foundation or the operating system of your mind for the rest of your life here the mind thinks in crude dichotomies things are good or bad clean or dirty people are nice or mean simple stuff like that the mind here doesn't have many ways to deal with setback it's still totally dependent on others for its survival you're governed by trying to fulfill basic needs learning how to follow basic basic rules of the human world uh there's little recourse other than crying screaming and withdrawing it's easy for the mind at this stage to get overwhelmed and to feel abandoned and so at this point the mind is still extremely fragile um if this toddler is in a difficult situation where there's screaming and fighting and suffering and abuse this mind this psyche will get very screwed up it will develop severe dysfunctions because it doesn't have any kind of sophisticated way of dealing or coping with these sorts of adult problems we might say so at this point you know this is why kids and toddlers are treated like kids and toddlers we don't tell them all the truths of reality you know war and and rape and murder and terrorism you know we don't talk about these things to toddlers for this reason because they don't have the capacity to really understand and make sense of these things and it would be too shocking and uh probably traumatizing uh for such a mind to you know come to grapple with such things so this is um this is again a stage that mostly you find toddlers in kids not adults other people at this stage are seen as objects to gratify one's needs not as people who have their own needs so of course toddlers and kids they tend to be very very selfish in the sense that they're they're not considerate of the agendas of other people they're only acting out their own agenda the self here is still not fully differentiated out there's a constant and vague sense of threat and insecurity which is why you know the child runs to mommy or daddy when something scares him or something freaks her out there can be adults at this stage but if they are here they probably have severe mental handicaps or deficiencies maybe genetic disorders or injuries head injuries that they suffered in their life so basically adults at this stage need the guidance of guardians and adult supervision in order to survive because they can't they won't be able to make it on their own and that's it for that stage next we have the opportunist now this is the first stage where you find a significant number of adults especially in less developed parts of the world the opportunist here the mind makes use of magical thinking to make sense of the world at this stage individuals are quite what we might call uncivilized arguments and logic are useless here because the mind isn't capable of those things the mind is very impulsive the mind is very instinctual it's still uh very animal-like and very very self-centered in the sense that it doesn't take into account the needs and suffering of others that's something that only comes online in later stages of development the mind here is not capable of insight into itself or others in any psychological sense so not only does it not make sense of others psyches it doesn't make sense of its own psyche it just acts out without self-reflection at all there is an awareness now of how to manipulate others to get one's basic physical needs met and basic crude emotional needs uh there's an awareness of one's own size and strength which can be used for intimidation if one feels strong enough to intimidate others to get what one wants or if you size up others and you see that they're bigger than you stronger than you and more intimidating than you then you're aware of that you can you can see that and then you will you know you will adopt various kinds of defenses and other strategies to to avoid getting overrun by those people life is seen here as a zero-sum game if i win you lose if if i lose you win people at this opportunist stage are people of action not thought or planning so a lot of times they will act in ways that we as from a higher elevation from a higher stage would consider as irresponsible or irrational or impulsive and we might wonder like how could you do something so stupid but to them they don't think very far into the future they're just thinking about right now thinking about the next hour the next day and they're not thinking about weeks and months into the future what the consequences of their action are so there's not a lot of planning in their life they're just kind of like flying by the seeds of their pants and oftentimes this gets them into a lot of trouble because they can for example get involved with hard drugs without thinking about the consequences of what that will do and how that will you know destroy their brain chemistry or how that will ruin their career or job opportunities or how that might get them in jail or whatever there's a sense of self as having two sides uh a real inner self which is me and then there's a false sense or front that i put out there for others to shield myself and to be able to manipulate others so this kind of duality is created and so there can be manipulation and lying and dishonesty on that on the fake front for the sake of getting what the real inner self wants but of course this leads to problematic consequences down the road because now there's this kind of split in the psyche between the the mask one wears and then one's real true self at this stage rules are recognized social rules but are mostly followed only for immediate advantage or to avoid punishment at this stage one is socially invested in the concrete visible world of things that one can own so it's kind of like can i own it can i feel it can i display it otherwise it doesn't have much value to me at this stage self-respect is equivalent to my ability to control others so if i can control and manipulate others then i can respect myself and if i can't then i don't respect myself i feel like i'm inadequate at this stage others are always to blame never oneself because i can't see how my own mind is creating many of the problems that i'm causing at this stage one is prone to anger when frustrated and the anger tends to be loud and projected outward so at this stage there's not a lot of suppressing of emotions the emotions are kind of worn on the person's sleeve and that they can lash out and uh in this way they don't really fit in sometimes with society with polite society and they can be seen as sort of barbaric or uncivilized because they're just acting out they haven't learned how to control themselves and how to calm themselves down and how to conform to the expectations of of polite society so to speak that happens at the next stage at this stage actions are only bad if one is caught or punished there's a shamelessness and a lack of guilt at this stage because one is just acting out one's impulses and like an animal an animal doesn't have much shame or guilt like when a dog craps on the carpet it doesn't really have a sense that it did something wrong because it hasn't gone through a sort of a civilizing process that uh that humans need to go through and so hasn't yet this stage so this stage shows little remorse when it is caught and if it is caught it tends to blame others for its own shortcomings and it does this as a way to protect itself because if i have to take responsibility for my own impulses and behaviors this is a burden in a sense you can see for the vine this is a burden it's much easier just to take a crap wherever you want spit wherever you want say whatever you want emote however you want without following any rules you see that's sort of an easy way to live most animals live this way it's a little bit harder to now take responsibility for those actions sort of take consideration of other people's needs and feelings and to start to see you know what the problem might be of uh you know taking a [ __ ] in the middle of your classroom uh and you might be surprised that well how could someone need to develop their mind in order to understand that isn't that obvious that taking a [ __ ] in the middle of the classroom is is bad and the answer is no that's not obvious that's obvious to you because you've already grown through these stages and you take them for granted but it's not obvious for many people in fact i've heard anecdotal stories of how in china they have this problem i think i heard this from joe rogan so i don't know how credible this is but in china supposedly they have this problem where you know over the last 50 or 60 or 70 years china has gone through a rapid development where a lot of people who were just like millions of people tens of millions of people were living in poverty just as basic uneducated illiterate farmers and now you know through rapid industrialization they've lifted millions out of poverty some of them have become uh you know reasonably successful and wealthy but in a sense they're not they're not fully civilized in a sense because they have this problem in china where uh they will have people just take a [ __ ] in the middle of a shopping mall promenade they have like apparently videos of this where rare than going to the toilet there's a toilet right there you know most malls have toilets and restroom signs but some of these chinese are so uncivilized and so impulsive probably because they're at this stage of development that they don't really respond to that so the idea of actually following the the you know the toilet signs to go and go through the hassle of actually going to the toilet rather than just taking a [ __ ] right where i am right now because i want to to them that's an inconvenience they would rather just take a [ __ ] and so apparently they do so just goes to show you that this stuff is not just theory you you find examples of it in real life it helps to explain how that is possible see when you know when most people see an example like that they can't make sense of it because they don't have these models to understand the lower stages and then also they can't explain the higher stages as well when they see higher stage individuals so at this stage the individual tends to create a lot of hurt feelings in others of course because they don't really care they're too selfish to care or to even understand what they're doing they don't see the collateral damage they cause relationships at this stage tend to be very volatile uh very immature very childish and they easily blow up and you can get into a relationship the relationship could be very passionate it could last for a month or two or for a year and it and then it just blows up and it continues to blow up and blow up no matter which relationships you get into because there's a fundamental lack of responsibility taking for one's own emotions and behaviors in this relationship the other one is always to blame and so you get these uh kind of dysfunctional abusive highly codependent toxic relationships at this stage especially if both people are at this level or oftentimes what happens is that the woman for example could be one level above but the guy she's dating or marrying is one level below at this opportunist stage and then she can't make sense of why this guy's abusing her and being an [ __ ] and doing this criminal activity and so forth you know she's trying to to reason with him and because she's at a one stage above and she's beyond this but he isn't uh but but she's she's too attracted to him and she's too in love with him and she cares about him too much uh and you know that's what creates sort of a classic abusive relationship that many women fall into at this stage there's little reflection on one's own emotions one is acting out emotions rather than introspecting about them or labeling them so one can be angry but not even really be aware of one's anger for example at this stage things are unpredictable unreasonable manipulative and exploitative those are the kind of tendencies of these people success can be achieved from this stage in business so it's not uh it's not like this kind of person cannot be successful in the world this person can be successful especially though when business is about opportunism and you love unilateral power when opportunism opportunism and unilateral power is rewarded that's where these people can really excel and do quite well for themselves and oftentimes the business here will be shady business illegal business scamming con artistry theft ponzi schemes this this kind of business it's not like a very conscious way of doing business it's business as exploitation to get what i want if i can fleece my customers what's the problem i'm going to get more money and then i can use that money to go buy drugs or have more sex or whatever buy a boat that sort of thinking showing weakness at this stage is seen as dangerous so there can be sort of a posturing going on to avoid showing weakness there can be a sense as follows that the more others know about me the more they can take advantage of me so one is sort of trying to hide one's true self from others so that it doesn't get taken advantage of morality at this stage is oftentimes non-existent it just doesn't compute for the mind because for morality to come online that that's further stages that are able to take the perspectives of other people which this stage cannot do there's a lot of black and white thinking here the problem solving style of this stage you know if you come to this person with your problems the person will just say something like that's your problem not my problem problem solved because there's only a problem if it's a problem for me if there's a problem for you that's your problem not my so there's not a lot of empathy going on here these people are not going to saw help you really to solve your problems they only care about themselves the defense mechanisms at this stage are blaming lots of blaming distortions to minimize one's own anxiety fantasy acting out projection and twisting the truth around to basically suit one's own self maybe you know some of these types of people who just they don't have a concept of truth to them the truth is just whatever is going to help them to survive that is what's common here there's a preoccupation with domination gaining control and advantage and deceptive maneuvers these people tend to be self-protective bull-headed have tunnel vision and are constantly blowing up and blaming others for their own blow-ups there's a showing of prejudice these people polarize arguments rather than trying to find common ground and they try to exploit others weaknesses because they don't see a problem with that from their point of view the language style of these sorts of opportunist people is often to use physical words simple straightforward language for non-physical concepts so they're not able to really do a lot of complex sophisticated abstract thinking they try to deal with the world at a material gross level negative emotions are expressed loudly and unabashedly and basically this mind is concerned with its own little concrete world which now takes us out of the pre-conventional into the conventional category so those were the three pre-conventional stages now we're getting into the conventional and here the first stage is called the conformist or the diplomat and here what's going on is the ego mind is moving beyond the previous opportunist stage and it's discovering a new we space the space of us as a group as a community now i am part of a community and now it's not just about my own needs being met but also about fitting in and playing by the rules so here the ego wants to play by the rules and so it goes all the way swings his pendulum all the way towards group centered thinking and the groups here are only of two types it's very simple it's very crude there's an in-group and there's an out group us and them there's my family my tribe my team my group my nation my party my company and then there's everybody else who's different and who's wrong and who's stupid and who's evil everything fits into these two simple categories there's a confused boundary between self and the in group so if i'm for example a muslim fundamentalist muslim at this conformist stage i'm completely bought into islam and there's not much of a distinction made between myself my own identity and islam as a belief system or as a philosophy that distinction isn't made so when someone criticizes islam or the prophet muhammad or whatever i take that very personally because that feels like an attack on me you're attacking my tribe you're attacking my team you're attacking my religion you're attacking me because there is no distinction between like well i'm an individual and i happen to subscribe to the philosophy of islam which is a philosophy and there can be different kinds different interpretations of it no i am islam my version of islam is the only version of islam that's how the mind thinks at this conformist stage being part of a group offers protection and a share of its power but the price to pay is for this inclusion is loyalty and obedience so at this stage uh there's a lot of loyalty and obedience going on there is a deep fear of ostracism and being shunned because it's important to fit into the group without which survival could be severely hampered you might remember going through this stage as a child when you were in elementary school i remember i did in the sense that i really cared a lot about fitting in about being perceived as normal about not being shunned being part of the cool kids that sort of stuff so many children and teens all up through high school and maybe even college they go through this stage when they start to you know hang out in groups it becomes important what your friends think of you everything gets filtered through your friends you're not thinking independently you're not trying to be a unique individual you're trying to you know do what your friends are doing and then what your friends are doing are probably what other people are doing in the media or the music you listen to you know whatever the rappers are doing whatever's cool on tv whatever is hip in the culture it's it's a very conformist stage and one's identity becomes about that what kind of music do you listen do you listen to the cool music or the lame music do you watch the cool movies or the lame movies are you a dork or are you one of the cool kids and this is this sort of thing and then your survival becomes all about that and if you if you fail to integrate this stage properly then you're going to feel like a loner you're going to feel left out you're not going to be able to socialize very well this stage accepts norms without introspection or questioning this stage is very sheep-like so when people talk about sheeple this is what they mean this conformance stage this is the sheeple stage there is a relishing in group dependency the world is divided into simple external absolute categories of people and things uh people are either perceived as your allies or your enemies in this sort of binary sense there's not a lot of gray it's very black and white thinking still here at this stage these people feel honored to be part of a group with high status and so there's a lot of energy put into gaining more and more status becoming cooler rising up the ladder up the hierarchy it's a very hierarchical system there's a sense of being part of the special chosen few the in-group which is of course superior to everybody else from the perspective of this group this gives the ego a sense of love and acceptance and approval so now the ego's love is not just coming from its mother and its father it's coming from its peer group as well in fact this becomes an overriding more important source of love and then that's why there can be sort of a rebellion against the parents and so forth there's a sense that our group's truth is the only truth and the ultimate truth and everybody else is doomed or evil and the reason that there is this sense is because you have to understand that at this level of cognitive development the mind is unable to take the perspectives of other groups there's not a sense of like well there are christians who have one perspective on the world there are muslims who have another perspective on the world then there are atheists who have a third perspective on the world there are agnostics who have a fourth perspective on the world and all of them have their pros and cons like no there is yes there's all those other groups at this stage you can see those other groups but you only look at the world from your own perspective you can't truly see what it means to be a muslim if you're a christian or what it means to be a christian if you're a muslim at this stage you're completely locked into the paradigm of whatever you were indoctrinated with by your group and your culture and your society so there's no ability to step outside of your group's perspective and because of this how does one explain the existence of all these other groups who have very different perspectives different beliefs different value systems and different behaviors you explain it as them being evil and them being wrong so for example if a fundamentalist christian travels to india and tries to study the different hindu traditions and religions and culture they're not going to get very far because they're always going to be looking at them from within their christian framework they're not going to be able to step outside of christianity and look at various hindu deities and traditions and practices in its own right on its own terms there's no sense of relativity here at this stage it's very absolutistic and so when a christian or a westerner you know goes to india and looks at these hindus they will see them as uncivilized as barbaric as being you know into witchcraft and sorcery and hedonism and worshiping false idols and this sort of stuff because that's what it looks like from within the christian paradigm now of course christianity is not only limited to this stage christianity can be much more advanced much more sophisticated but we're just talking about fundamentalist religion here basically any fundamentalist religion falls into this stage and the kind of spirituality that happens at this stage is very material so these fundamentalists even though it might seem like they're spiritual in a certain sense they're not very spiritual because their spirituality is highly material when they think about heaven or hell they're thinking about physical material places that one goes to heaven is filled with mountains of gold and uh sexy virgins and fast cars and god is a is going to be sitting there he's an actual man sitting on a gold throne with diamonds wearing a crown holding a scepter with a big beard and he and he you know he looks exactly the way that i imagine he does he's a human he will talk to me and you know tell me that i've been good and that i followed his rules that's the kind of sense then hell hell is a literal place that you go to the devil satan is actually real he's got horns he's colored red he's got a pointy tail and literally in hell uh you will be you know burned with fire and all sorts of stuff like that it's material there's no sense of possibility for this kind of mind that maybe heaven when jesus was talking about heaven he wasn't talking about a physical place you go to maybe jesus was using that as a metaphor for a internal state of mind no no this doesn't compute at this stage nor does hell compute as an internal state of mind maybe what hell is is your egoic style of existence again that doesn't compute at this stage because everything is taken literally rather than metaphorically this is why this stage easily confuses many advanced spiritual teachings and it sort of brings them down to a very crude gross material level and here spirituality can even involve ideas like earning lots of money so some christians and these these prosperity gospel preachers you know they will they will talk about how earning lots of money is really god's sign that you are the chosen one that's how they justify their their chasing of money at this stage the mind cannot understand that other groups hold absolute beliefs as well and if you have a bunch of different groups all holding absolute beliefs how do you know that your group has the right one what are the chances the chances are pretty low if you think about it just probabilistically this doesn't compute for the mind yet the mind at this stage cannot distinguish between belief and reality belief is taken as reality there's no distinction between belief and experience either there's no sense of recognition that beliefs can be wrong the idea that you can fervently believe something but that then it is wrong just that notion doesn't really compute at this stage if i believe it how can it be wrong that's how the mind thinks here the mind at this stage tries to uphold tradition and avoid rocking the boat in order to fit in feedback here is experienced as an attack as critique of wrongdoing so these kinds of minds are not good at taking feedback sort of constructive criticism they will take it personally as them not fitting in well enough the mind here does not have a strong personal opinion to express about things because it's so preoccupied with fitting in it doesn't evaluate things independently it doesn't really have its own independent moral system or a set of principles by which it operates in the world it just moves with the herd and its notion of what is right and good is whatever the herd is doing there is no independence sense of right and wrong the mind at this stage is not ready to stand up against the group so if my group is doing something heinous or something what we would consider immoral like if i'm part of a military unit and the military unit now starts to you know commit war crimes i'm not going to be able to stand up at this stage and challenge them and say hey guys what are you doing you're you're coming you're killing civilians you're shooting at civilians this is wrong we shouldn't do this this this doesn't happen at this stage that requires a higher level of cognitive development so at this stage i will actually join in with the group and i will participate with them in the war crimes and i will justify it as good because anything our group does by definition is good because we have the absolute best superior perspective on the world and if we're killing civilians that means those civilians deserve it the mind will justify in whatever way is necessary it will do any kind of mental gymnastics to justify this kind of action this is what leads to a lot of atrocities genocide uh you know religious violence uh bigotry racism and so forth uh you know if all of my neighbors own slaves they'll all own slaves too and it'll be good and normal because hey if if god didn't want us to own slaves then we wouldn't own them right like if god i mean we're the chosen people and if we're good christians and we're we're all slave owners then that means owning slaves must be exactly what god wants there's no sense of like sitting down and thinking through like wait a minute maybe the things i've been told about what god wants maybe that's not really what god wants the mind doesn't work like that at this stage it's too conformist at this stage the mind likes to take on preset roles in the group so many organizations at this stage like churches the military traditional hierarchical organizations or the government uh they have fixed predefined roles i enter this role i do what is required of me there there's not a lot of creative thinking going on there's not a lot of independent evaluating or analysis i'm just gonna do what needs to be done and it's it's a very sort of simplistic way to do work so you know if i'm gonna go sign up for a church maybe i'm gonna get into missionary work i'm gonna become a missionary i'm gonna go do exactly what the you know the instructions tell me on how to be a missionary i'm not going to innovate i'm not going to deviate that's why a lot of these sorts of conformist people they gravitate towards the military towards traditional roles like this they also like traditional family roles so they like the idea of i'm the provider husband or i'm the caretaker wife and i'm raising the children while my husband is out there providing for the children and those are our roles we know our roles it's very clear we're not going to blur those boundaries in any ways i'm a man she's a woman this kind of thinking and this is why these sorts of people have difficulty dealing with blurring of boundaries between roles whether these are social roles or cultural roles roles at work gender roles this sort of stuff they want these to be rigid and absolute morality at this stage is black and white every decision every idea every person every action fits into either good or bad there's no gray you're either on god's side or you're not you're either working for the good guys or you're you're an evil devil action here is carried out with absolute conviction because the mind's world view is so certain it's almost like you can you can imagine the mind as either being a fluid like a big bag of water like a water balloon big water balloon you know jiggles around or you can imagine the mind as a concrete solid block like if we take that water balloon and we stick it in the refrigerator freeze it it's just a solid block it doesn't move uh that's how the the mind is at this stage it's very very stubborn it's very very closed-minded and because of this there are certain advantages one of those advantages that you don't have to doubt yourself very much you're so convinced that you're on the good side and that anything you do is good and that you can do no wrong that of course you can go out there you can you can you can do some crazy things some far out things that won't be possible at higher stages because you're so convinced that you're right of course this can lead to disastrous consequences because there's a lack of self-reflection and self-doubt self-skepticism there's no sense at this stage that the mind can be tricking itself there's a strong sense of guilt and shame at this stage because those are the primary tools by which the mind conforms it feels guilty and shameful when it doesn't follow along with the herd that's what keeps it in line there's actually a pride in conformity here so like in the military they take pride in how well they're able to conform and follow the instructions to the letter and the military will try to instill that in you you know through boot camp and so forth here the mind is confused and threatened by different perspectives diversity complexity paradox and multiculturalism because the mind is so rigid and so fixed in its worldview it has a difficult time dealing with anything that contradicts that worldview so different perspectives different races different ethnicities different genders different sexual orientations transgender people homosexual people different cultures different cuisines different backgrounds different ways of thinking paradox all of this is very threatening to the mind because as soon as the mind starts to take seriously other perspectives and diversity and multiculturalism all of a sudden this creates a a big sense of responsibility see with every stage you're taking on more and more responsibility for how your mind is creating and constructing reality at this stage there's no sense that the mind is constructing reality at this stage reality is this solid firm thing the problem though is that reality is constantly evolving changing and morphing society is evolving culture is evolving all religions evolve language is evolving science is evolving human understanding is evolving the human body and organism is also evolving uh technology new technologies is coming online every every year and every decade so in a constantly evolving world like this how does someone with a very rigid mindset how do they survive well there's only two options basically one option is to open oneself up to this evolution and to accept different perspectives and different cultures and so forth and then to try to grapple and deal with all that but the problem is that that that takes a lot of responsibility and emotional labor because now all of a sudden i have to question whether my you know my christian beliefs whether they're all true or not as soon as i even let a little a little shred of doubt maybe the bible wasn't written by god maybe the bible was written by humans who were fallible and who misinterpreted some of the things jesus said maybe the bible was written by people who didn't even know jesus you know as soon as i start to entertain these ideas this is this becomes so threatening because my whole sense of reality and sense of self was grounded on conforming to this belief system that i held as absolutely true and now you're telling me that it could all be nonsense this is extremely threatening it can be very painful and so a lot of times what the mind does is rather than opening up it doubles down and closes up it denies all these other perspectives it denies the validity of diversity and complexity and multiculturalism and it it instead demonizes these things and so it just says well clearly all of that is evil all of that is sinfulness and that's a very convenient way of not having to research and to look into all those things you know evolution well that's the work of the devil and but what about islam well that's also the work of the devil and what about hinduism that's also the word what about the buddha yeah he was the devil too that that's very convenient because then you have to study any of that stuff studying that stuff and trying to integrate it into your worldview is very challenging if you're a fundamentalist christian and don't think that this applies only to christians i'm just using christianity here as as one example but you see this with fundamentalist hinduism you see this with fundamentalist islam you see this even with fundamentalist buddhists they fall into this trap sexuality tends to be suppressed and denied out of fear and shame at this stage sexuality is treated like a sort of an animalistic instinct that needs to be controlled and because of this a lot of times there develops a sort of a sexual shadow uh because these sexual impulses you know they're very strong they're not going to go away in general you have all sorts of animal impulses but you haven't fully learned how to control them so at this stage you're just kind of suppressing them and you're denying that they even exist and you're sort of uh you're not really in touch with your feelings and your emotions very well and so this can uh manifest itself in all sorts of toxic and dysfunctional ways where rather than just being open about your sexuality and being comfortable with it you're denying it and suppressing it but of course you can't fully contain it so it'll pop up somewhere else this is where you see you know uh sexual abuse in the church and a lot of these pastors and so forth they actually even though they speak about how evil homosexuality is they themselves end up being homosexuals of course in the closet in secret um and then eventually it spills out into the public and it turns into a scandal so this sort of stuff or they have sorts of weird sexual perversions and and deviances which are only strengthened by the fact that they're suppressing and denying because on the surface you're trying to be the good moral boy or girl they don't want to come off as a [ __ ] or as being sexually promiscuous or as being homosexual or as you know not being clearly in one category of man or or woman and so that they struggle with that there's a lot of internal hidden guilt and shame underneath the sort of smile that they put on for everybody else in order to fit in socially one must fit in and be liked at this stage therefore you must be nice pleasant and accommodating you must be neat you must present an outward appearance of cleanliness and orderliness even though on the inside you can be a total mess these people value being nice and helpful to others that's how they fit in at least within their in-group as far as their out group goes they can be very vicious and because they don't even consider those people to be human they're sub-human questioning truth at this stage can be seen as treason or sin so if you take a fundamentalist muslim and you just sit down try to have a conversation with him and try to you know open his mind to the possibility that you know maybe maybe islam isn't the ultimate maybe there are other philosophies that are better do you want to consider and explore some of those other philosophies a fundamentalist muslim can't do that in his mind that's treason that's sin if he was to do that that would be like listening to the devil and of course he will perceive you as a devil for trying to lure him away from his one true ultimate islam people at this stage tend to be very judgmental because they need to be in order to protect themselves from having to explore other diverse perspectives this is the mind's way of shutting out all the evidence that is contrary to his worldview and at this stage the worldview is so limited that it can't deal with all of the global complexity that exists today in the 21st century so these people struggle very much to live in the 21st century because they have to deny a lot of stuff they have to deny evolution they have to deny changes in the climate they have to deny the fact that sexual identity is a fluid thing they have to deny that different cultures have have different strengths and weaknesses and that western culture may not be the best there may be other cultures that are superior for example if you take a christian and you try to explain to him in a fundamental christian you try to explain to him some of the benefits and strengths of of hinduism you know hinduism has a rich deep spiritual tradition that's older than christianity and it has some amazing saints and yogis there and if you try to tell this christian that you know hey you know jesus was great but you know there exist amazing yogis and saints in india you can go find these saints who were as amazing and special as jesus this can't compute in a fundamentalist christian's mind see because uh that's not what his holy book says and his holy book contains the absolute truth and if he was to open his possibility to the fact that maybe hinduism actually does certain things better maybe hindu spirituality is more advanced than western spirituality this would be this would be an existential crisis for this person because he was raised to believe since he was five years old that the the hindus are heathens and that the christians are the the ultimate faith sometimes conformity at this stage happens in a non-conformist way which should be a little bit twisted and tricky so sometimes you're going to conform to the traditional mainstream groups like christians muslims buddhists hindus whatever other times though and you see this a lot of times like in high school is that kids will conform in a non-conformist way like they will become goths or they will become punks or they will become like these emo kids or whatever where they they conform to some kind of subculture they turn that into a dogma you know they start getting all the same tattoos the same piercings dressing all the same believing the same stuff having the same gripes and criticisms of society and whatever reading the same existentialist philosophy you know nihilism or whatever and they think that in this way they think that they're being rebellious or non-conformist when actually the structure there the content might be non-conformist but the structure of the mind is very conformist and then of course they will probably grow out of that as they get older so so watch out for that you know conformity doesn't mean that you only conform to the mainstream content sometimes you will conform to some sort of niche content but you're still very conformist about it like you can join a cult which believes some crazy things you know you can join a cult which believes that aliens from mars are coming to save us uh from you know from destruction from nuclear annihilation whatever you can believe that you could think that well but i'm not being conformist because i'm believing in aliens and i'm believing in you know things that are contrary to christian mainstream uh beliefs in my culture but actually you're part of a cult so yeah you're very very conformist in fact that could even be worse because at least mainstream conformity has been sort of mollified to a point where you know mainstream christianity it's not completely [ __ ] crazy uh because it was in the past but we've sort of we've toned it down the mainstream christianity is sort of it's nice it's it's not too violent and so forth but then when you get into some some crazy esoteric sect of christianity or of islam that's when things get crazy that's when you know it can get very violent or um abusive in various sorts of ways and that's actually what fundament that's what like wahhabism is with islam you know mainstream islam is it's pretty tame it's not too violent or or crazy but then when you get into some of these radical strains of it that's that's when it can get very dangerous that's where a lot of the sort of terrorists come from it's not mainstream islam so that's a distinction that of course many people fail to make at this stage anger at this stage is suppressed for the sake of conformity so a lot of times a conformist can be seething with anger on the inside but they will hide it in public which again can bubble up and explode in very dangerous ways at certain times the main defense mechanisms at this stage are projection and demonization sense of self denied by others relationships have a needy quality to them at this stage there's a sort of sense of like i will conform for you and then that means you have to conform for me and if you fail to conform for me then i get angry and upset with you and so that creates sort of a codependency there uh at this stage there is an interest in the concrete and visible aspects of reality this stage thinks and feels in cliches but takes them as not cliches this is an interesting point you might have noticed this where you you you see this with conservatives a lot on tv they will start talking in cliches or if you start to debate for example a fundamentalist person they will start to issue talking points to you and you can tell very clearly if you're at an advanced stage you can tell that they're just parroting talking points that they absorbed from somebody who told them these talking points and that they never actually sat down and thought through these talking points themselves they're just parroting them they don't know what they really mean they don't know what they're talking about but they're using these cliches and talking points as though they're not cliches as though they're original thinking so they're parroting stuff but they don't even know that they're a parent or a robot that they've been culturally programmed with this stuff and they're just they're basically just transferring this mind virus from one conformist person to another it can be quite amusing and baffling but at this stage the mind isn't able to self-reflect enough to see these cliches great value is put upon appearance status symbols material possessions reputation and prestige this stage cares deeply about others opinions of them the main anxiety of this stage is not to belong it's being rejected by the group it's a loss of self as defined relative to others so here the self the ego is very much defined by its relationship to its in group at this stage emerging problems tend to be denied relabeled and whitewashed um and you see this a lot with with climate change for example there's a lot of denial about it it's a serious emerging problem but but conformist people like i said before their minds are so rigid that they're poor at dealing and adapting to evolutionary changes and since reality is evolving all the time we're constantly being forced to deal with new survival challenges and so this can be a severe disadvantage for a conformist person because the conformance person is just used to you know fitting a certain predefined role and just doing things the way that our ancestors have traditionally done them now that can be very effective as long as the environment and culture in which we're doing things is the same but if things are changing for example our ancestors never had to deal with climate change so of course today's conformists they have a hard time wrapping their mind around climate change because it's not part of their tradition because of course it's a new emerging dynamic and there's always new stuff emerging there's new technologies and of course these conformist people oftentimes have a very difficult time dealing with new technology and so they can come off sort of like cavemen uh because you know they will be against birth control that's a technology they will be against uh what um against pornography that's a new technology they will be against media like for example certain you know puritanical sects of christianity like the shakers and quakers and uh and mennonites and so forth you know they live this very simple kind of lifestyle where they don't even drive cars they don't use computers again because they want to live in a very traditional way and they think that that's going to work but it's not you can't survive in the world just by maintaining your old traditions and being a quaker because like the world is going to take you take you over there's competition you need to be always adapting to you know to new challenges so of course that doesn't mean technology is always a positive there's always positives and negatives with technology but you see to deal with those positives and negatives both this requires a sort of mental flexibility and taking on that challenge as a responsibility so again the mind can either take that challenge on or it can deny that challenge and say no i have nothing to do with that thing at all i'm not going to even allow that into my field of vision a lot of conformist people will will choose to behave that way about certain aspects of society or technology or the media or whatever that's why conservatives are often against stuff like genetic engineering stem cells they used to be against those cloning now of course that doesn't mean that there's not problems there are serious problems with cloning and genetic engineering but usually it's the conservatives who tend to yell and [ __ ] and moan about these things because their mind simply doesn't know how to grapple with these new challenges and of course there are very serious challenges that come with these new technologies how do we make sure they're not abused how do we adapt our moral system to take into account the new possibilities that are opened up by new technologies but see when you have a rigid absolutist moral system which is basically grounded in the technologies of 2000 years ago how does a modern day christian who's a fundamentalist and believes in the ten commandments how's he or she gonna deal with cloning and stem cells and genetic engineering and birth control these things which didn't exist back then they want to try to drag a you know a philosophy and a moral system from 2 000 years ago into the present and try to use that to make sense of of current reality and it is it doesn't work because we've we've evolved so much but their worldview doesn't even acknowledge this evolution it's not even as bad as they think you know they think that all well evolution just applies to animals no it's much worse than that the problem is much deeper than evolution applies to to culture to religion to language to society to everything even christianity itself has evolved so much over the last 2000 years that the christianity of today has nothing to do with the christianity of 2000 years ago but of course there's no way they can admit that that's way too threatening to admit that christianity evolves at this stage asking a superior what to do is the most natural way to deal with difficulties so people who are in jobs at the conformist stage they're not outside the box thinkers they're not going to be out there creating crazy new innovations finding new ways of doing things they're just going to be doing things the old way so if your business requires a lot of innovation these people they're not going to fit well with your business conformance people try to avoid conflict because they don't want to upset the group at least conflict within their in-group they're fine with conflict between their in-group and everybody else the out group these people are drawn to organizations with clearly defined identity and hierarchy these people want clear instructions orders and a role to fill conformist people love to tell others what to do and exactly how to do it in a black and white way so you might relate to this example probably your parents many of your parents will be from the conformist stage and so your parents might love to give you advice about how to live your life and they will tell you exactly how you should live your life what kind of clothes you should buy what kind of car you should drive what kind of job you should get how you should comb your hair what kind of music you should listen to like they have you know they have very strong opinions about this and they are absolute and confident so confident in uh in their advice for you that there's no possibility of these people guiding you and being open to the fact that you're an individual with your own set of values your own worldview your own preferences and that maybe the way that your mom wants you to comb your hair is not how you want to comb your hair and the kind of music your mom listens to is not the kind of music you want to listen to and you know when your parents go to church maybe you don't agree with going to church you have a different you know style or whatever maybe for you spirituality it's not about going to church if it's about meditation or smoking pot but of course your mom and your dad are not going to be open to that because for them there's just a black and white way of doing things their way they can't see beyond their own preferences they think at this stage the mind thinks that the mind's preferences are what everybody's preferences are and ought to be and if they aren't this way that means because you're evil not because you have a different value system which is equally valid just different and that there are different ways of living in the world different styles of living different ways of surviving you know different generations have different needs no they're just evil and wrong this is why your mom gives you the kind of advice she does and she keeps you know she you keep telling her no mom i want to live my life my way the way i want to live it what you're telling me might work for you but it doesn't work for me that doesn't compute in her mind see everything is evaluated according to one's own preferences the vocabulary at this stage for feelings is very simple and undifferentiated these people don't have a rich awareness of the different subtleties and different emotions that can be felt because a lot of times they're suppressing their emotions they're also suppressing their own needs and wants the ego has certain unique needs and wants but these need to be suppressed to fit in for the good of the tribe for the good of the group at this stage the mind must use discipline to fit in and to deny unacceptable emotions and animal urges in order to be good and therefore to be accepted and praised by the in-group and so a lot of the reward for the mind is the approval it gets from it's in group and at this stage the mind values gaining rank and status within one's in group all right so we've covered that in a lot of detail let's move on to the next stage the expert stage this is still within the conventional stages the expert is able to step back and look at oneself as an object from a distance there's beginnings of self-reflection but they are rudimentary it's rudimentary self-reflection mostly the mind is still focused outwards now there's a want to be different from others to be unique so at this stage the mind works hard to differentiate itself from the family and to express its newly found personhood it feels good being noticed as unique uh at this stage there's a want to be respected for one's knowledge and one's abilities there's an emphasis on agency and individualism there's a focus on finding one's own voice the mind now is capable of dealing with abstract objects and concepts and it starts to assert itself and its unique needs and wants the old conformist sense of self is now seen as fake and inauthentic and uh not so important as it once was there is a vision now of how one would like to change to be more successful success personal success takes precedence over conformity to the group or the pleasure that one gets for conforming now the pleasure is about being unique and taking ownership of that uniqueness uh there tends to be a compulsive perfectionistic tendency here to outdo oneself to be the best and the ego gets a lot of pride and sense of fulfillment and meaning from knowing that it's the best the best in sports the best in business the best father the best mother the best um whatever this stage perceives negative feedback as a personal rebuke so it's still defensive and not really able to take constructive criticism here inadequacies of others are seen as what makes life difficult so if only others weren't so inadequate then life would be great but my life is difficult because everybody else is being stupid and not stepping up and being successful this stage enjoys criticizing others as a way to establish one's own sense of superiority and power so you know these people you see these people on youtube all the time these youtubers whose entire lives is about the joy of criticizing others ranting about the other side whether it's liberals or conservatives that they're ranting against or they're ranting against religious people or they're enhanced atheists whatever they're ranting against or they're ranting in spiritual hippies they just make a whole identity out of ranting about them and just bashing them and just this sort of intellectual superiority at this stage the mind starts to question authority and group dogma so a lot of times the mind starts to feel like it's so smart because hey you know everybody else is a sheep and i'm not a sheep i'm this unique individual and look at how smart i am i'm questioning authority of course in reality uh the mind here is just tricking itself on a higher level and it's still being a sheep and it's still not really truly questioning authority very deeply it's only questioning the most flagrant and idiotic forms of authority there's still many ways in which authority is not fully questioned and understood at this stage the one's own way of doing things is seen as the right way and as the best way the superior way the mind here is identified with cutting edge knowledge and expertise it loves to acquire knowledge knowledge and expertise is what makes one special and better than all of those sheep who just believe in religious fundamentalist myths knowledge and expertise that's the truth it's not myth the mind here becomes overly focused on details versus the big picture it's focused on doing the task right rather than doing the right task it's still not very good about thinking about is this task really important in the big picture what is this really going to do for mankind that's still not something this level of development is good at thinking about but it is good at doing tasks well and doing them efficiently so there's difficulty prioritizing and applying wisdom to one's decisions this stage tends to reject old conformist and family beliefs in favor of professional peer groups degrees authorities and reference books and science here authority is given to science and science now becomes the new religion except it's not seen as a religion it's seen as the opposite of religion it's seen as the true way for how to understand reality there's religion and myth which is all [ __ ] and there's science which everybody knows is true and if you don't understand that science is true and that religion and myth is [ __ ] then you're an idiot that's how a person at this stage thinks and then there's a there's a superiority complex that comes with that it's like oh i'm so smart because i can see that myth and religion and fundamentalism is stupid well you're not as smart as you think you are there's a lot of arrogance at this stage this sage tend to think tends to feel righteous and superior it tends to feel like it it knows everything now it tends to feel like it can explain the whole world because it's shed the mythology of religion and it's like oh yeah the religion was so stupid and i've transcended that i've moved beyond it and now i'm at the top it's this kind of sense of course that's nowhere near true you're only at the top in your own mind um there can be a sort of um a faking in your mind there's like a fantasy built up of how great you are of how you're the best you're at the top you're the you have the most expertise the most wisdom the most knowledge when in fact you don't but your mind is faking it because your ego needs that so much to feel like it's truly the best within this profession or within its worldview or within the group or whatever there's an interesting relationship with the group your group is still needed at this point but one stands out at the periphery of the group threatening to leave the group without ever mustering the courage to leave so you're still kind of reliant on the validation of others but at the same time you're not completely hinging your whole identity on it so you're kind of stuck in the middle there the self feels like it has life all figured out at this stage and that it knows all the answers it feels disappointed in oneself for not performing better because there's a sense of that you have to be this performer and you have to be successful there's still a strong sense of shoulds and odds at this stage of how you should behave what's correct what's incorrect this stage doesn't easily collaborate with others because it wants to be the sole contributor and it wants to get all the glory for itself this stage tends to be very argumentative and opinionated with intellect weaponized and the intellect becomes aggressive there's a severe criticism of how others think and there's a severe superiority and the superiority complex is very easily activated by the by the stupidity of others uh this sort of ego lives in a world where things are sure and clear it doesn't recogni uh realize that one's perspective is one of many valid perspectives it knows the truth and it knows that the best that its approach is the best approach it loves to create efficiencies and perfected processes it gets a lot of satisfaction out of being efficient with work with business with its morning routine and with its diet and with its exercise and all this sorts of stuff this is the sort of stage at which people start to tap into a little bit of self-help and self-improvement they might start weight they might start trying to become better at their job trying to become the best at their work starting to read books to help them to do that but also often at this stage the person is overworked because they're trying so hard to be the best and to be so efficient at this stage the mind has a hard time delegating tasks because it's perfectionistic it'll often delegate a task but then take the task back because the task wasn't done to its overly perfectionistic anal standards smarter aciry is very common smartassery is common at this stage the ego at this stage loves to have the last word something could be told to the ego then the ego will say yes yes yes i understood all that but let me have the last word and tell you why i'm ultimately right there can be a hostile sense of humor here ridiculing others as sport becomes popular the defense mechanism at this stage is hyper rationalism everything is intellectualized rationalized and explained away anything that doesn't fit one's rational world view is just dismissed as myth and religion and nonsense without realizing that rationality itself is just one epistemic modality and that it has severe limits and that there can be things that are true and very important and profound but which cannot be rationalized or explained with logic or with traditional materialistic science all of that stuff is seen as woo hippie [ __ ] this is this is this is the stage from which a lot of people love to judge and to sort of demonize deepak chopra people who quote deepak chopra as like the bad guy these are the ultra rationalists a lot of people at this expert stage they tend to be technocrats bureaucrats highly educated specialists they relish being movers and initiators of course a lot of business types and executive types have to come from these stages a lot of pickup people come from these stages um where you're trying to take ownership over your sexuality and over your dating life here of course sexuality starts to sort of open up now sexuality is not so repressed as it used to be and so here the pendulum can swing in the opposite direction where before you were this choir boy who didn't want to have sex until marriage and now you swing the pendulum in the other way where now you become this sort of douchebag pick up artist where you want to have sex with hundreds of women um just for the sake of having sex with them and then you don't even want to have relationships with them just sex and all you care about is how many women you have sex with and how hot they are and you rank every woman on a scale of 1 to 10 and so forth so the pendulum swings like that [Music] at this stage the ego feels entitled to impose its sense of its its views on others there's a pragmatic leadership style that's unencumbered by existential questions or complexities or externalities and collateral damage like if we can get something done let's just do it earn some money that means it's good we don't have to think about the repercussions on the environment or should we even do this is this spiritually right is this moral is this conscious none of that matters at this stage the c the superego is is very strong at this stage but it's unavailable for introspection the superego is that part of your mind which tells you what is right and what is wrong and what you should be doing this stage is concerned with fulfilling adult responsibilities and duties it's very adept at finding new and different solutions better ideas and more perfect procedures and ways of doing things there's a sense and attitude at this stage of if i can do it you can do it too you know just like pick yourself up by your bootstraps work harder sleep less and just get it done just do it stop being lazy stop creating excuses just go out there and do it and this is seen to be sort of like the solution to all of mankind's problems um this stage often blames the structure tools or incompetence of others for things that are not working in the world or within its own sphere no one can tell an expert anything they don't already know the main anxiety at this stage is losing one's sense of specialness the expert shows a strong front by not admitting ignorance or vulnerability so not knowing is seen as a very bad thing there's no openness to not knowing everything must be known and if there's something i don't know and i admit it that means something's wrong with me i'm being weak language is starting to become more nuanced at this stage of development there's a minor use of qualifications and conditionals now so when someone is speaking they're qualifying their statements they're not saying that this is absolutely true they're saying if this then that or they're saying this is probably true it's probabilistic there's 99 chance that god doesn't exist stuff like that so there's there's a little bit of openness there's a there's maybe a one percent openness that maybe god could exist but 99 chance that he doesn't that's how an expert tends to think and there tends to be a now an early interest in causality the question of why something is happening starts to become a little bit important but not really just a little bit the expert starts to wonder why why is this happening why am i here why does life exist this a little bit of this kind of thinking starts to come online just a little bit which brings us to the last conventional stage which is the achiever so after expert comes achiever achievers a little bit more developed the achiever wants to discover oneself by exploring past experiences and thinking about one's ideal self the achiever has a five to ten years forwards and backwards time frame envisioning where you're going to be in five years where you were five years ago uh the achiever realizes that you can continue to grow in mind and heart as an adult so here this sort of attitude that i talk about of lifelong learning comes online at the achiever stage the achiever is excited by self-knowledge and self-improvement so this is really where self-help becomes popular this is probably the stage at which you will discover serious self-help uh many of you probably got on board with actualize.org at this stage if you were following me from the very beginning before i was even talking about any kind of spiritual topics and this is this is where people get into tony robbins and that type of success-oriented self-help and also basic psychology now you're interested in psychology more you're interested in your own emotions and how your own mind works a little bit more than previous stages which didn't really care this is also why when you try to introduce self-help or actualize that org to your parents or your friends who are at the lower conventional stages they don't get it or they don't care or they don't understand the significance of the discovery because you're probably at the achiever stage which is towards the high end of the conventional stages and they are at the lower end of the conventional stages like the conformist or the expert where they don't yet see the value of psychological understanding of psychoanalysis of of self reading self-help books and so forth see and so you won't be able to get through to them until they rise to this achiever stage there is now an increasing independence and self-authorship you're really starting to take ownership of your unique qualities and actualizing yourself you're beginning to appreciate conceptual complexity you can see alternatives in problem solving there's not just one right way to solve a problem there are a multitude of ways to choose from the the achiever can see that the way a problem is framed is the problem itself so it's a little bit of a more meta style of problem solving the achiever can now notice contradiction and inconsistencies both within himself and his belief systems the achiever is planful and capable of orienting towards new goals the achiever is still convinced very much in the scientific method and doesn't question it very much the achiever is looking for rational laws that explain human behavior and how the universe works much of science is done from this achiever stage it's sort of traditional material of science the kind of stuff that you see in universities a lot um the achiever worked towards the betterment of humanity now more and more so this is going to be happening as we move up the stages the achiever is convinced that one's solutions his solutions will be the best for all of mankind there's not yet a sense that different people from different perspectives need different solutions this doesn't compute yet at this level the achiever is better at working in a collaborative environment they are less lone wolves the achiever recognizes that making new distinctions is important for expanding one's mind the achiever can create complex theories and models but even though they're able to do that their models and theories tend to stay at the intellectual level and it doesn't really end up transforming their internal consciousness very much so they can have all sorts of lofty theories about mankind in the mind and the world and evolution and so forth but the way they actually live their life isn't touched by that as it will be in higher levels the achiever actively asks to find out what makes others tick the achiever now cares what makes others tick whereas lower stages did not care the achiever explores causes of oneselfs and others behaviors so now we're getting more psychological the achiever is starting to notice how much psychology is shaping life and one's ability to be successful and to achieve and so the achiever now starts to care about one's own psychology and the psychology of others it becomes sort of a curiosity the achiever trusts in the potential to improve oneself through effort learning and feedback which is sort of a prerequisite for self-help the achiever can take feedback now unlike the earlier stages uh without his identity being threatened so constructive criticism becomes possible now and the achiever can now even take misguided criticism and see it as useful find utility in it at this stage people tend to be interested in taking personality tests courses retreats and workshops so you'll find a lot of these achiever types at these sorts of retreats and workshops if you attend them there's a concern now with reasons causes goals consequences and effective use of one's time now the mind is able to understand itself backwards and forwards through time so now you're thinking about your childhood and your early adolescence and adulthood and you're you're kind of connecting dots and saying like oh yeah today i have certain preferences and biases because that's how i was raised that's the culture i came from you connect all those dots from the past to the present sort of a psychoanalytic perspective there's a motivation to classify and understand other human beings the achiever is interested in knowing the root causes and reasons for unwanted behavior so they're less defensive and more open to really taking responsibility for their behavior and introspecting and really trying to get to the bottom of why this unwanted behavior keep happening in my life the achiever starts to realize that self-deception is a thing and the importance of distinguishing appearance from reality feeling and what is being said versus what is being left unsaid so even though the achiever does start to realize a little bit of self-deception uh the achiever still has almost no idea of how profound self-deception is and how deeply the mind is able to trick itself in constructing reality just basic self-deception is starting to be realized the achiever for example many achievers will start to talk about things like cognitive biases confirmation bias sampling bias etc but even when they talk about these cognitive biases they really have no depth of understanding of of how deep the mind's biases run and so in a sense talking about cognitive biases itself just becomes one more further extra layer of self-deception which prevents the mind from understanding how deep the self-deception really goes because when people start talking about self-deception or self-bi or i mean cognitive biases they're talking about on such a superficial level and a lot of times they're they're externalizing it like oh well yeah i can see the self-deception in others i can see how others are engaging in these various cognitive biases but i can't quite see the depth of it within myself i can't see how rationality itself is a cognitive bias science itself is a cognitive bias there's a willingness of achievers now to explore feelings that don't fit their current understanding of themselves so you're starting to connect more with feelings that were suppressed and denied but still very much achievers are living in their heads rather than in their bodies achievers are less likely to ignore deny and project onto others although they will still do so to some extent achievers are becoming familiar with their own biases and defenses but again just mildly so at this stage one can consciously use negative energy in productive ways at this stage there's an exaggerated sense of responsibility for actualizing one's potential you start to take self-actualization seriously there's guilt for not being more successful or more developed at this stage the achiever doesn't yet see oneself as interdep as an interdependent part of multiple overarching systems it still sort of stands as an individual apart from different systems social systems and so on the environment and so on there's a desire to live according to one's chosen values rather than the values of society or family now the achiever questions the shoulds of society and of one's profession so here you can start to become a little more creative and an outside the box thinker with your profession and not just do things the way that they've been traditionally done now you can actually innovate a bit more there's guilt for having made wrong choices and regret for missed opportunities you might look back into your life and you might sort of kick yourself and say damn i wish i discovered self-help 20 years ago what that would have done for me but of course 20 years ago even if you discovered it you would have just thrown it away because you were at a stage probably lower than achiever where you wouldn't have been able to see its importance only now you can see its importance severe self-criticism is a common fault of this stage the achiever doesn't yet understand that not everyone is at their level of development they don't see differences in development they expect everyone to be achievers which of course is silly and leads to all sorts of absurdities and problems and misunderstandings the achiever is more appreciative of diversity of people and perspective than the prior stages interpersonal relationships now become more intense and more important for the achiever they're not just selfishly using people to gratify themselves now they're actually more interested in actually forming some deeper relationships others can now be valued for who they are rather than how they serve oneself the achi the achiever chooses how to proceed based on one's own critical examination of what works and what is important the achiever no longer derives meaning exclusively from one's narrow professional expertise there's a sort of a broadening sense of one's self-image and importance and one's function in the world it's not just my little narrow profession but something more than that it's about growing myself it's about actualizing myself the achiever values knowledge and wisdom from thought leaders so now the achiever starts watching ted talks incessantly valuing all this profound knowledge that these ted talks seem to provide although ted talks are actually a very crude form of knowledge and wisdom but it can seem very profound if you've just discovered them the achiever can belong to multiple diverse groups with different identities and agendas at the same time without being internally mentally torn apart they can sort of hold multiple groups in their mind whereas like the conformist couldn't do that the achiever is driven to improve the world so a lot of times entrepreneurs and silicon valley types will be these achiever types there's a feeling of urgency now as time is ticking and there's so much left to do there's so many ways in which the world can be improved there's so many cool technologies that can be built and developed and yet not enough time to do it all this is why the achievers often times overworked and overstressed the achiever can get preoccupied with getting things done with responsibility conscientiousness and expediency issues of legacy and contribution to society start to become an important factor in one's self-image at this stage achievers may create complex theories of psychology or philosophy but mostly they're still at the level of theories and they're not they're still not very holistic theories there's a drive to achieve uh that can lead to over exhaustion and burnout uh it can be hard for achievers to slow down and to appreciate the present moment because they're so future oriented and because of that work-life balance issues become very common if you've seen sort of motivational speakers and business coaches on youtube talking about how you need to be working you know 12 hours a day 14 hours a day and so forth this this is what creates work-life balance problems and burnout at this stage not trying to figure things out is no longer an option achievers tend to be obsessed with scientific rationality and analysis their mode of understanding the world is analyzing everything to death intellectual skepticism is exhibited towards things that are not yet proven in a material demonstrable official way so everything needs to be scientific everything needs to be logical and mathematically formulable quantifiable achievers are very big on quantification of things if it can't be quantified it isn't real there's a belief that the laws of the universe can be figured out and proven if we just try hard enough so even if even if we haven't proven everything yet eventually we can we just need to keep doing more science do it faster and it will prove more and then eventually we'll understand everything that's the idea here the achiever feels in control of life generally speaking this can feel very empowering but also it comes with a downside in that if you ever start to lose control this can be a major threat to your identity much energy goes towards reaching one's goals at this stage while remaining independent there's a strong push towards independence there's a fear of losing independence and autonomy achievers have a sense of responsibility towards others even while pursuing their own agenda so they're pursuing business a little bit more consciously than prior stages there is now a consciousness of the importance of communication and an appreciation for the mutual expression of different feelings and ideas achievers are interested in analyzing and questioning their own thoughts feelings and behaviors they are open to continuous learning and self-improvement unlike earlier stages common defense mechanisms here are intellectualization rationalization and suppression of the shadow achievers often suffer from depression due to guilt for not living up to their ideals so every stage has its own versions of depression it gets depressed in different ways and so this one here at this stage has a lot to do with underachieving obviously enough there is a fear of loss of control and autonomy there's a fear of getting sucked back into conformity or subsumed into someone else's scheme there's a fear of loss of progress achievers have a greater ability to listen to others experiences without projecting their own interpretations onto them achievers are able to encourage others to discover their own solutions more so than prior stages achievers accept facts and the material world as real so very much materialism reigns here at this stage there's a blindness to the way that beliefs shape reality there's a blindness to how materialism itself is a construction of the mind science is taken for granted as true here scientific assumptions are rarely questioned knowledge measurement and prediction are taken for granted and beliefs at this stage the achiever believes that most problems can be solved with technology so that concludes the achiever portion and that really concludes part one now at this point we've covered the pre-conventional and all the conventional stages but wait don't go yet we're not done i want to make some general remarks about this ego development model and then we'll talk about part two a little bit too so what you need to understand about this model is that people's responses don't all fit into one category you're not just going to be an achiever or just a conformist or just an opportunist people's responses tend to fall into three adjacent levels all right so if i was reading these different points to you and you were resonating with a little bit of the conformist and some of the expert and then a lot of the achiever that's not wrong that's exactly right you have a center of gravity of where you fall and then your center of gravity is what is consistently accessible to you under ordinary circumstances so depending on how stressed you are you're going to slide further down this scale to the lower stages and then if your life is going great and everything is working out for you you're probably going to be peaking into one stage higher beyond your center of gravity and experiencing what that feels like but then you're probably going to fall back down to your sort of baseline where you are when your life isn't too great and it isn't too bad sort of in the middle that's your that's your baseline that's your center of gravity so just keep that in mind uh it's okay if if you resonate with multiple of these also you should probably notice that throughout your life you've resonated with one of the earlier stages more so and now you've kind of outgrown it and moved up to higher stages also you should distinguish between horizontal development and vertical development so this model is all about vertical development vertical development means changing the structure of your reality and sense of self which is more significant than horizontal development horizontal development is expansion at the same plane within the same structure sort of like sifting through more content within the same ego structure and the same mental models of reality for example you can get better and better at your career as an achiever you can keep getting better and better learning more reading more books of the same basic sort learning more science building up your materialist world view um questioning religion more and more but that still keeps you within that achiever range or maybe you're a conformist you know fundamentalist christian and you can keep you know being a better christian you can rise through the christian organizations gain rank and status become a priest or a preacher or whatever or a missionary and you can learn more about the bible and you can become more moral and you can grow you can eat healthier and you can you can be a better father and a better mother but all still within that fundamentalist christian paradigm so this is what we call horizontal movement whereas vertical movement would be realizing that oh that entire christian paradigm that was all construction of my mind and now i'm moving beyond that that would be vertical so vertical is more difficult than horizontal most people who do self-help do it in the horizontal direction because it's more safe for the ego and most self-help material is designed just to do horizontal growth not vertical growth because vertical growth is more scary it requires more more depth it requires more time more effort it requires a a longer vision because it takes more time usually to move up one vertical stage takes five years of solid consistent work and most people aren't even doing any self-improvement work at all so they're not even growing horizontally most people your parents probably aren't even growing horizontally but still plenty of people grow horizontally as well very few people grow vertically especially beyond the conventional stages see it's easy to grow vertically to the achiever stage to the last conventional stage because that's sort of like what our culture in a developed society in america in canada in western europe uh in scandinavia in japan maybe like you know in these countries the achiever stage is seen as sort of the pinnacle of what it means to be a highly functioning adult this is what many business leaders and educators and scientists and politicians strive to be this is what many celebrities are and strive to be this is a lot of what our culture is about our education system is about trying to basically make you an achiever even most self-help books and courses are about how to turn you into an achiever and then nothing beyond that is really conveyed or even marketed to you our entire marketing system does not go above post-conventional basically and so it's very easy to rise up to the achiever stage and then get stuck there permanently because how would you ever find out about anything beyond that so that's why part two is going to be so important to open your mind to those new higher possibilities also what i should point out about this model is that the levels alternate in a snaking sort of motion you can think of a swinging pendulum between differentiation and integration of the ego self so what this means is that when you start off in that unit not unity but that symbiotic stage your sense of self is so undifferentiated that there's no difference between self and world and other but then there's a differentiation that happens and you start to see yourself more as an individual separate from your parents separate from your uh from the external world or environment you become an individual but then as you do that you sort of become a loner to individualized and then you realize that wait a minute that's too painful it doesn't work because i'm part of a society part of a community part of a group now you start to reintegrate with society and now you become more of a conformist you start to you know go to church and um conform with your friends and play nice at work and so on and so you integrate but then if there you know the next stage the uh after the conformance you know the the expert it shifts backwards towards differentiation now you realize that oh i was too conformist i was being too much of a sheeple and now i'm gonna you know i'm gonna i'm gonna develop myself and i'm going to be more unique i'm going to try to play up my uniqueness i'm going to get more value for my own uniqueness so there's that differentiation then of course it reintegrates back and forth and this keeps happening but it's not just a ball that bounces back and forth there's also movement so it bounces back and forth but it also goes up in fact that's why we call it a spiral because it it circles around but it it it moves upwards as well and you should also just i think it's helpful to really see the significance of each stage by just reaffirming to yourself that basically each stage has its own bubble its own separate reality a person stuck in one of these stages they really are living in a different reality because the way there's no such thing as reality in an absolute sense so to speak what there is is there's different perspectives upon reality but most people don't realize that so they just conflate their perspective with reality itself uh you don't realize what i just said is true until you get to the post-conventional stages which we haven't even talked about yet um which is why there can be this sort of sense that some people are so crazy like conservatives seem crazy to liberals and conversely liberals seem crazy to conservatives it's almost as though they're living in different realities that's because they are that's because there's a liberal reality and there's a conservative reality there's a christian reality there's a muslim reality there's a buddhist reality there's a hindu reality there's a male reality there's a female reality there's an achiever reality an expert reality conformist reality all these different realities but none of this is recognized at the conventional and pre-conventional stages and you can see how problematic and dangerous that is because everyone just assumes that there's only one reality their reality they're confusing their perspective with reality itself lastly let me just say why this model is so valuable and important if you can't see it already let me make it explicit for you first of all this model is so important because it shows you what healthy human development and maturity looks like these stages follow in a certain simple sequence this is how you will develop and evolve you're not some special unique snowflake such that you are above this model this is a road map this is a road map for your own growth and development also the reason this roadmap is so valuable i mean you can literally use this to grow yourself and in fact i'll show you how to do that in future episodes um if you haven't figured out yourself yet this model shows you the traps all the traps that you make that people make where they get stuck for years and decades you can avoid those traps if you just take this model seriously and you look one stage ahead you can see the traps that's invaluable and lastly the reason this model is so important is that it helps you to understand others without demonizing or judging them whether others are lower than you or higher than you on this model doesn't matter this model will help you to understand where others are coming from it'll help you to appreciate that and that itself will give you the perspective that you need in order to grow remember what growth ultimately is here for the mind is just higher and higher perspective taking see so just by exposing yourself to more perspectives to deeper and broader perspectives that in and of itself is going to grow you and help you to avoid many of these traps all right that's it for part one next time we'll talk about part two the most exciting part the post conventional and the transhuman the transcendent stages so make sure that you stick around with me for that i'm done here please click that like button for me don't forget that helps the video to get more views helps me with the channel get more subscribers i need that because you know this is this is rare advanced stuff it's hard to market this stuff it's hard to get a lot of people to view this material because it's complex it's long it takes a lot of explanation it's not very sexy in many ways so please click that like button and come check out actualize.org that's my website you will find my blog where i post material all the time exclusive stuff videos links that i share resources that i find it supplements uh what i do here on youtube uh stuff that i can't share through youtube i share on my blog so don't uh don't miss that also check out my life purpose course if you're an achiever type the life purpose course will will suit you very well uh check out my book list which will help you to to find new sources of information new perspectives just blow your whole mind open with amazing books that i have on there and uh a lot of the books that i share there are very rare that you're not you're never going to hear from anybody else i don't just share the common books that everybody knows about i share rare books that few people know about the the most powerful books that i've used in educating my own self uh that book list has been foundational for my own growth and development over the last 10 years or so so don't take that for granted as a resource it will change your whole life if you start reading those books in fact i expect you to if you're watching my videos and you're not reading those books you're not gonna you're not even gonna get half or a quarter of what i'm really talking about it's just it's not gonna work you need to you need to read and as you're reading you got to contemplate this stuff for yourself watching my videos is not going to be enough and come check out the forum where you can interact and share and talk about this stuff we have a lot of interesting conversations and share a lot of examples on the forum and clear up a lot of confusion and finally you can support me if you like my work you can donate five bucks on patreon.com actualized all right that's it i'll see you in part two