a koan for Humanity - Chapter FOUR

Chapter FOUR

The limitations of mind and it´s concepts

What is it that “explains & motivates” the world at Beige, Purple, Red, Amber/Blue and so on?

Let´s call these explanations & motivations concepts.

At Beige “the concept” it to survive, driven by instinct.

At Purple its something like “the tribe is right, let´s stick together and we are safe”.

At Red the concept is “I am mighty & righty and I just do what I like”.

At Amber / Blue the concept goes along “there is one true originator and we have received the message bout the originator, so we are the chosen ones – and thus we have the obligations to enforce it upon all humans to make sure there is some order”.

At Orange the concept turns to “it” itself. Objectify it. “It” is right if it is measured and can be re- measured with the same result. And more of “it” is even better. Let´s go for “more”, whatsoever, howsoever.

At Green the concepts turn to we, the Humanity. “We´re all equals, or at least should be. Those who still didn't get it .. well, couldn't we push them into equality? (sorry, of course it´s “coach and invite”).“

Then there is a break.

At least according to theory. That, btw is also a concept. Something new emerges. It´s been given the colors Yellow / Teal depending on if you have a background in Spiral Dynamics (yellow) or Integral theory (teal). That´s why also Amber / Blue above comes with two colors.

Conceptually, Yellow / Teal integrates all the previous. All the previous are grouped together and given the name 1st tier. After Yellow / Teal comes Turquoise, and together they are called 2nd Tier.

Turquoise and further Indigo / Coral (beginning of 3rd tier) are assumptions made on Yellow / Teal. Turquoise and Indigo / Coral are integral concepts - about the future of human consciousness itself. Made by a lower or “past model”. Looking at Turquoise and Indigo / Coral from Yellow / Teal is like looking at Yellow / Teal from i.e. Orange – it´s bound to be full or reduction and misunderstandings.

Maybe if we exchange the words “Turquoise, Indigo / Coral” with “next unknown stages”, it get´s clearer that at Yellow / Teal we actually don't know Turquoise and higher, we just only assume. We postulate.

This assumption includes an evolutionary progression that is sometimes pictured linear, sometimes to also hint at the cyclic aspects, in the form of a spiral. But whatsoever, the assumption is that human consciousness should keep on evolving in somewhat similar manners as it did the last 50.000 years (or so).

One big problem is that any idea, any model, any map, any concept (or whatever you like to call that which is born as a mental construct), is that these words and images work as some kind of filters to our minds. We start to measure and compare ourselves and that which actually happens to these mental concepts – and we quite often rather let the concepts win and reality loose.

Basically we've already put up mental fences to Turquoise and Indigo / Coral. On top of it, we think we need to climb these fences. But what if i.e. Indigo / Coral is Disrupt – a full and total disrupt.

A major game changer? Did it ever occur to you that maybe Turquoise and Indigo / Coral rather wants to define themselves?

Turquoise and Indigo / Coral explanations about the world might be radically different to what we've learned and assume to know, looking from the integral yellow / teal perspective. Do you realize that at Indigo / Coral the integral theory and spiral dynamics might be quite outdated? (Oups, what did I just say? Will I now be .. thrown out of the club?)

The mental concepts as such are of course not the core of this problem. The limitations or fences are though created when we think and assume that we already know it all, when we are blind to our momentary paradigm but still assume that we out of our present paradigm can tell the most likely future, including that of the evolution of human consciousness.

(remember the months and the average temperature in the last chapter?)

The mind and the mental working of it as such are great and in themselves not a problem. The thinking mind, the mental working of the minds of today though have some limitations. When we start to believe that these limits are the limitations to reality itself, then we soon have problems. We can even scientifically prove this “limited world experience” is the true world. Anything outside of it is somehow suspect and maybe esoteric bullshit, pure fantasy or whatever description to not need to take it serious.

In such situations a friend of mine writes science fiction when her academic research gets too funky for the “real” scientific community.

In the end it boils down to something that in logic has a fancy name (that I cant find right now.) It goes like this: “this thing is pink and since it´s pink, we have just proven it´s a pink thing.”

It´s a bit more complicated when the pink thing is mind itself. But since mind itself can not truly imagine anything larger than mind, scientific research (created by mind) can only come up with stuff where-through mind measures mind´s own ideas about what mind can imagine to experience. From that “scientific” perspective, anything outside mind´s own realm is too strange to be taken serious.

The limited mind proves that there is nothing outside of it´s own limitations. With slight sarcasm I say “bravo”.

Next chapter will thus look into our present world situation and "man made problems".