I think we even have different subpersonalities, as well as developmental streams, that inhabit different stations/stages. I'm tending to agree with you guys that it gets harder and harder to say someone even has a "center of gravity" in one stage or another. How can we know all their subs, lines, states, etc enough to say they are at one stage?

Peace,
Bill

That's a good point - I think the subpersonalites may be where we get "stuck" even though the center of gravity - or the main participatory mode - may go forward two or three "stages" or stations.

Hey, thanks for the link to the posts on stations. I added one today on turquoise and indigo. I think the problem you've pointed at with stages is very real, and would certainly agree that it's tough to say with any validity whether a PERSON is at a given stage. A few observations:

(a) I think KW does makes the very same points, even though they tend to get lost in the shuffle. Despite all the rigorous detail of the integral notation appendix in Integral Spirituality, there's also this pervasive theme that actually tagging accurately an object's Kosmic Koordinates is THE big problem that needs to be addressed.

(b) I've found a helpful workaround to issue (a) is to try to be conscientious about only tagging with a label an objective piece of work or cultural artifact. Multiculturalism as a philosophy is green. Fundamentalism as a philosophy is amber. And so forth, as you say in your post. Of course, if you're talking about Theorist X who poured his heart and soul into a book called DIE, RELIGION DIE! and you say his BOOK is "pathological orange," all he's going to hear is that HE is orange. So you've lost him right there, because he's not going to listen to anything else you have to say. If a writer's willing to live with that (say, if your audience is teal/turquoise and don't care what Theorist X thinks) then I say call the spade a spade.

(c) I'm trying out the concept of "stations" (which as you know is lingo introduced by KW himself in his discussion of states in Integral Spirituality) to see if it makes the whole theoretical mess go away in practice. By using an admittedly vague but useful generalization (the "station,") you can avoid distinguishing between states, stages, and types in a wide variety of circumstances. Then you can add the perspective of states, stages, and types as a "perspective" on the station as the context warrants. I see no reason why this shouldn't work, though I'll have a better idea of its success after actually using this nomenclature for a while and seeing how it feels.

(d) btw, I've been using the "stations" nomenclature in my own life for a short while now, and finding that while it's impossible for me to say definitively that I'm AT a given station it's also not so useful to say that I am at all of them at once. Bill's point about issues being at subpersonalities is appropriate here, as it's often the stations that I'm "stuck at" that create a disharmonious self-image. "Can't keep hitting snooze on the alarm clock. Gotta work up from infrared station again this morning!" What seems to be working so far is to focus my attention on one or two stations to describe where I'm at and what concerns are up for me, plus one other station to mark my target for integration. It's hard for me to keep more than 2-3 stations in awareness at any given time, even if theoretically I can allow for an unlimited number of perspectives on stations.

Hey Joe,

I've added a link to the violet/ultraviolet post to this.

I do like the stations idea - mainly because, it is easy to visualize "visiting" different stations in the day. It is less of a "stationary" metaphor. And yet this can gel with development, as, say, you can't visit the ultraviolet station, until you have been through other stations of life. But at the same time you CAN - and sometimes do - go back and visit other stations.

Even though most of your time and operational perspective is spent at two or three "higher" stations, it's just as good to think you have a wider range.

At some point, and you may have an idea of this, it would be good to separate and distinguish between what a person's perspective is, and what is happening operationally with that person. As with Haggard, people lie to themselves and others about where they are really "at". And this happens in the integral/spiritual community as well. (Certainly I'm an example of this). How many times do we speak so eloquently of various beautiful states, then turn around and have a fight with a member of our family, begin gossiping about such and such?