Likewise with the other intelligences. Emotional development to stage 1 means that you have developed the capacity for emotions centering on “me,” especially the emotions and drives of hunger, survival, and self-protection. If you continue to grow emotionally from stage 1 to stage 2—or from egocentric to ethnocentric—you will expand from “me” to “u... See more

Generally, in the Integral Model, we work with around 8 to 10 stages or levels of consciousness development. We have found, after years of field work, that more stages than that are too cumbersome, and less than that, too vague. One stage conception we often use is that of Spiral Dynamics Integral, founded by Don Beck based on the research of Clare... See more

The major implication of an all-quadrant, all-level approach to spirituality is that physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual levels of being should be simultaneously exercised in self, culture, and nature (i.e., in the I, we, and it domains).

We can think of these lines of development as multiple intelligences that have evolved in response to life’s core questions:

• What am I aware of? (Determined by the cognitive line of development.)


• What do I need? (The needs line.)


• Who am I? (Self- identity.)


• What is important to me? (Values.)


• How do I feel about this? (Emotional intelligence.)


• What is th

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At the 7th chakra, however, notice that the masculine and feminine serpents both disappear into their ground or source. Masculine and feminine meet and unite at the crown—they literally become one. And that is what Gilligan found with her stage-4 moral development: the two voices in each person become integrated, so that there is a paradoxical unio... See more

However, with repeated practice of contacting higher states, your own stages of development will tend to unfold in a much faster and easier way. There is, in fact, considerable experimental evidence demonstrating exactly that. The more you are plunged into authentic higher states of consciousness—such as meditative states—then the faster you will g... See more

Thus, moral development tends to move from “ me ” ( egocentric ) to “ us ” ( ethnocentric ) to “ all of us ” ( worldcentric )—a good example of the unfolding stages of consciousness.

As we saw, there are over a dozen different multiple intelligences or developmental lines. Some of the more important include:

• the cognitive line (or awareness of what is)


• the moral line (awareness of what should be)


• emotional or affective line (the spectrum of emotions)


• the interpersonal line (how I socially relate to others)


• the needs line (such as Ma

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But this does mean that we need to be aware of our strengths (or the intelligences with which we can shine) as well as our weaknesses (where we do poorly or even pathologically). And this brings us to another of our 5 essential elements: our multiples intelligences or developmental lines. So far we have looked at states and stages; what are lines o... See more