Spiral Dynamics: A Developmental Psychology Model

I stumbled upon this model in 2016 and since then I worked at deepening my understanding of it and my God, it changed my life, it made me understand why people behave how they behave and stop projecting my own level of development onto them. This is Alex from Ensomato, open your mind and follow me into the world of Spiral Dynamics.

Introduction

I will be redirecting people to this material quite often because I really like using this model to explain what is happening in society. I will present a model that has the chance to change the way you perceive the world, it will shed light on everything related to human societies. Even if it will seem trivial at first, it is not at all, this model has been created and improved by several researchers over several years, and tons of work has been pumped into Spiral Dynamics to reach the form it has today. Spiral Dynamics explains how the human psyche develops in a predictable way following the stages that will be presented in a minute. I don’t own the rights to it, it’s protected by a trademark, and I’m just trying to present it in a way that everyone can understand. It is called Spiral Dynamics because the evolution of the human psyche is in the form of a spiral, as it ascends to a higher level, it oscillates from one extreme to another.

I did also read the Spiral Dynamics book written by Don Beck and Chris Cowan, but honestly, it was very technical and heavy. I don’t think many people would have had the patience to read it, so I think this article will be easier to digest than the book. It’s easy to understand the basic idea, but hard to delve into all the nuances, and then even harder to put it into practice. Practice kills us yes…

Why is this model worth learning?

Wouldn’t it be cool to understand how the human psyche works and how it evolves? Wouldn’t it be cool to really find out who are the most developed people in society? Wouldn’t it be cool to know where you are? Wouldn’t it be cool to understand people better in order to have a healthy relationship with each other? If you manage to understand and apply this model correctly, without exaggerating, after a few years you will come to understand things that 99% of the world’s population does not understand. You will feel less anxious and more confident. Think about being in a maze, that is the life of an average person, how much better would you feel if you’d know where the exit is?

However, I need to make sure you understand and apply it correctly, so I’ll start with a few warnings.

1. Don’t take this model as just an ideology or a religion. If you are not here to learn how to develop and become happier, to be true to yourself, and to fix your flaws, then this model will only confuse you. If you will use it to belittle others instead of growing yourself then this model will be useless for you.

2. Follow till the end! If you don’t follow through, you’ll miss the details that can make all the difference in the world.

3. For over 7 years I have contemplated and used this model in various social situations, and many times I noticed new things that I was not aware of before. It is much more complex than it seems at first glance.

4. Don’t dehumanize people using this model, try to see a human, not just the developmental stage they are at!

5. No stage is good or bad, just necessary!

The model contains several stages that one passes through as he/she/they develops, just as a child passes through each grade by atending school. The model assigns colors to the stages for simplicity.

The stages are: Beige, Purple, Red, Blue, Orange, Green, Yellow, and Turquoise

Even though a person must go through each stage to be fully developed, there are rare cases where some people show traits from two stages that are not proximal, giving the impression that they have skipped a stage. Very important! In Western countries, you will rarely meet people who show the characteristics of a single stage. When I say that a person is at stage X, I mean that, in general, they exhibit behaviors typical of that stage, but a good percentage of their psyche shows characteristics from other stages as well. They can manifest behaviors and opinions of different stages depending on the context and social situation they’re in. For example: they can exhibit stage Blue characteristics when at church, stage Red ones when playing football with friends, and stage Orange ones when shopping. It is often to find people who do not integrate certain stages which makes them feel incomplete, act foolishly, behave immaturely, and not finding their real selves. It takes lots of work to become a fully integrated and mature stage Green person for example, most stage Green people did not fully integrate the stages from below. That’s why you might object to some of my examples of Green. 

The material is structured in 4 main parts:  introduction, presentation of stages, maturity and integration, and afterword. I am trying to keep this presentation succinct and as least nerdy as possible. I get you my fellow non-nerdy readers that it might be a bit boring, but we need to get a bit nerdy about  society if we want to understand and improve it. If your feminist activism is not having the impact you wanted, bear with me here.

Let’s dive into it my friends! I will present every stage with my own words, I’ll throw some scattered beliefs, values, and worldviews for every stage and of course I’ll explain how to ascend to the next stage.

Tier 1

Stage Beige

This stage is not very important because it does not say much, it is represented by newly born children or people with severe mental disabilities. Basically a person totally dependent on someone else concerned only with pure survival, purely instinctive.

Beliefs, values, and worldviews:

Automatic, reflexive, centers around satisfaction of basic needs, driven by deep brain programs, instincts and genetics, little awareness of self as a distinct being (undifferentiated), minimal impact on or control over environment

Examples: babies, mentally ill people, senile elders.

Stage Purple

Currently approx. 1% of the world’s population is still in the Purple stage.

If we look at how people began to organize themselves before large societies formed, we will see only tribes of a few tens or hundreds of members led by a tribal chief. Homo sapiens as we recognize it, never lived solitary but always in a tribe of at least a few members to survive with. Individuals who are part of or have behavior specific to these tribes represent the Purple stage. The technological knowledge and mind complexity do not permit them to grow bigger than a few hundred individuals.

The Purple stage is very collectivistic, I don’t really think that the word “I” is used too often in the tribe. When they say something about them, they say that WE the tribe are so and so. Almost everything is done together with other members of the tribe, the hunting, the gathering of plants, the building of huts, and the rituals and dances done for the spirits of the tribesmen who, they believe, will protect them from danger.

Beliefs, values, and worldviews:

Obey desires of the mystical spirit beings, show allegiance to elders, customs and clan; preserve sacred places, objects and rituals; bond together to endure hardships and find safety, live in an enchanted, magical village, seek harmony with nature’s power, tribalism, magical thinking, sourcery, witchcraft, the world is magical, animistic, ritualistic, loyalty to the chief of the tribe, ancestors, and elders of the tribe; the world is made of good and evil, blood relations, living with others, contribution, group activities, traditional remedies, clan wars, dance, traditional costumes, jewelry, animistic stories, reciprocity, psychedelic drugs, sacred words and spells, unwritten laws, protection of the tribe from other tribes, individual sacrifice.

Stage Purple is found in its pure form in the tribes of the Amazon forest, in Papua New Guinea, or in other areas untouched by civilization. In our societies, an example would be the traditionalist gypsie ethnic tribes, they have purple characteristics. The Purple stage seems very friendly to the researchers who go to meet them, they seem friendly to the environment, and their rituals and traditions are impressive. But unfortunately they also have bad sides. They are illiterate, they end up at war with the neighboring tribes even for hundreds of years, for some trivial misunderstandings or disputes; they are friendly to the environment because they do not have the destructive technologies that we have in society. Hippies tend to romanticize them too much.

An individual begins to move from the purple stage to the next when he or she develops: personal ambition, the need to escape from dependence on the tribe, to escape from traditions, customs, and rituals; when he (mainly a guy) becomes the leader of the tribe, dominates and rules them like a mob boss, inspiring them to become the same, as later to expand and dominate the neighboring tribes as well.

Stage Red

As of 2022, approximately 20% of the adult population falls into this stage, but they hold only 5% of the power.

Here you will find people who sound familiar. We continue the climb on the spiral, the pendulum swinging from the extreme of collectivism to the extreme of individualism. The Red stage sees the world as a jungle where he or she has to survive, a world made up of prey and predator, a world where you only survive if you’re tough and physically strong.

The Red stage bullies even friends or family, it is impulsive, and does what their instincts tell them to do. It is mostly expressed in men because women are physically weaker and mentally more sensitive to the suffering of others. This stage has an excess of masculinity making it appear toxic. If he is excited, he is able to rape, if he is angry, he is able to kill. The Red stage does not think long term, he wants to satisfy its needs here and now. However, do not fall into the trap of calling this stage evil or satanic. This is just a way of how people survive in hostile environments where there are no police, courts of justice, or people who have compassion and understanding for others. In civilized societies, people can manifest Red behavior because of severe childhood trauma. A person can be much higher on the spiral but still respond in a “Red way”. It can be just a normal response to an insane environment. At the societal level, the Red stage occurs when the members of a tribe become ambitious, leave collectivism aside, and decide to conquer all the tribes in the area, creating an empire or city-state. Empires, but also some extremely violent dictatorships (like North Korea) are at the Red stage.

Empires continue to expand rapidly, enslaving any tribe in their path, slaves being the main engine of their economy, think how the Athenians conquered and enslaved all the tribes around therefore creating the Red stage city state of Athens, the same thing with the Roman empire but at a much larger scale. Around a third of Rome’s population were slaves.

Values, beliefs and behaviors:

In a world of haves and have-nots, it’s good to be a have; avoidance of shame, defend your reputation, be respected, gratify impulses immediately, fight remorselessly and without guilt to break constraints, don’t worry about consequences that may not come, strength, brute force, heroism, boldness, dominance, defeating enemies, enjoying being strong and respected, warrior mentality, fearlessness, love for competition, ambition, confidence, valuing respect, assertiveness, pragmatism, pride, ostentatiousness, bragging, charismatic character, vulgar, narcissistic, materialistic, opportunistic, wanting to be bigger than life, intimidation, manipulation, exploitation, using sex as a tool for power and vanity, sadistic sex, power contests like slapping/arm-wrestling, breaking rules, finding loopholes, highly corrupt, domestic violence, zero introspection: all problems are external; women are weak and deserve to be dominated and protected from the enemies, weak men deserve nothing, slaves are just breathing objects.

Now you might think: what about women? We all have to go through this stage. Very good remark, it is usual that women do not integrate this stage because it feels very unnatural and alienating for them. It is just too cruel and direct, too much lack of heart and empathy, they get a strong visceral response when they hear about this stage. Not integrating this stage and jumping straight for the next one can have a negative impact to their lives, it makes them easy to be exploited by others and behave passive-aggressively because of all the abuse, trauma, and discrimination they experience. The solution is to embrace this stage and learn to be actively aggressive against the abuser. If your man is beating you, an active-aggressive action would be to tell him:” if you do this again I will leave you” and if he hits you again you actually leave him forever.

Examples where stage Red has a serious influence:

Iraq, Syria, Liberia, Somalia, North Korea, Myanmar, Haiti, Columbia, Mexico, parts of Africa, parts of the Middle East, Russian government, hackers, warlords, Italian mafia, pirates, serial killers, drug addicts, prostitutes, gangs, violent prisoners, prison culture, freedom fighters, Roman empire, religions of antiquity with Gods who promote and support the Red meme, criminals, rapists, con artists, thieves, terrorists, juvenile delinquents, bullies, gladiator combat, gangster rap, gangster culture, gettos, the old testament, stoning, torture, animal cruelty, MMA, Yakuza, Tony Soprano, Al Capone, Andrew Tate, Connor MCgregor, ISIS, Donald Trump, Saddam Hussein, Hitler, Putin, Stalin, Lenin, Mao Zedong, KKK, 9/11, Alquaeda, Achilles.

When does a person surpass the Red stage?

That moment when he realizes that the way he lives is very chaotic, dangerous, unstable, and very harmful to his loved ones. When he realizes that he needs to have more order and discipline in life, that he needs to follow a set of ideas or a religion that will help him become more loving, kind, disciplined, and respectful to others. When he or she for that matter, develops certain ethical and moral principles, develops compassion for others, accepts their feminine side of mind, when he or she feels that being part of a community feels good, safe, and fun. When a child comes into their life, it would be impossible to raise it in a chaotic and violent environment.

Stage Blue

In the 1990s, approximately 40% of the world population exhibited a blue psychology.

Notably, the philosopher Ken Wilber suggests this percentage could be as high as 60% in some of his works. Even nowadays, the predominant meme in the world is Blue. Blue started to emerge in Europe in the Middle Ages, people started to identify with the pan-national story of Christianity. This story told people that they should treat others as they themselves want to be treated, Red started to lose steam as more compassion was spread around through this story. This stage is the stage of order and discipline. Once it emerges in an individual’s psyche, he or she becomes more understanding and loving towards their fellow people, more disciplined and hardworking. All this discipline is given by a high authority to whom she becomes loyal, this authority may be a God or a Dictator to whom she is loyal unto death. Such an individual is loyal to his comrades with whom he forms a tight collective, the pendulum goes again towards collectivism and now ethnocentrism, centered around the country of origin.

At the societal level, Blue occurs when a large grouping of clans develops a common identity, creating a country, or a civilization. The Blue stage loves his country and the authority to which he is loyal, but detests neighboring countries and the authorities in them; the us versus them mentality. If the Purple stage identifies with the tribe to which she belongs, the Blue stage identifies with the country in which she lives, something new is born in her, patriotism. The Purple stage declares allegiance to the chief of the tribe, the Blue stage declares allegiance to the country’s dictator or religion. Blue focuses less outwards and more inwards, instead of trying to attack and enslave the neighboring tribes or countries, instead of finding slaves to do their hard work, they develop discipline and pride in doing the chores by themselves and enrich their country in a more “humane” manner. You already realize that such people are everywhere, in fact, most elderly people have a predominance of the Blue stage in their psyche, most likely your parents too, they also have some values of the Orange stage however.

Values, beliefs and behaviors:

Pre-modernism, Doctrine, ideology, find meaning and purpose in living, sacrifice self for the country, bring order and stability to all things, control impulsivity using guilt, enforce principles of righteous living, divine plan assigns people to their places, dictatorship, autocracy, the ideology of the country holds the absolute truth, good and evil are absolute, our civilization is the best and the rest are our enemies, we work hard together, discipline, justice, tradition, communism, socialism, money are evil, rule of law, re-education camps, women must be subordinate to men, patriarchy, morality is absolute and unquestionable, traditional family values, modesty, supression of sexuality, against sex education, children must be punished and beaten to learn how to behave; I made you, I kill you; virginity until marriage, for marriage but against gay-marriage, anti-abortion, homophobia, anti-contraceptives, religion, prayer, guilt, ceremonies and rituals, churches and temples, giving up the pleasures of this life for the life of beyond, God is not a metaphor but an old man in heaven, other races are inferior, other religions are false, if you don’t follow what your religion says you will end up in hell, sinners deserve punishment & no compassion, you agree with us or you are against us, forceful discipline, black and white thinking, absolute truth cannot be questioned, respect for elders, dress & hair regulations, loyalty, enforcing borders, good manners, decency, etiquette, canonical texts cannot be questioned.

Examples of Blue:

Bible, Quran, Torah, Gita, Buddha’s teachings,Christian families, Republican party in USA, Zen Buddhism, communist China, old generation in Poland, Romania, and Ukraine; Egyptian government, Iran, Israel, baptists, mormons, rural USA, Ben Shapiro, Hector, a good chunk of Sweden Democrats party.

When is a person over the Blue stage?

At that moment when he is fed up with the oppression of the dictatorial regime when he wants freedom, he wants to have the right to an opinion, he wants to be able to travel, he wants to feel valuable as an individual, to feel free, accumulate wealth and material possessions, no more he wants to believe in superstitions, tradition and religion, he sees the hypocrisy of his peers.

Stage Orange

This stage represents a significant portion of the adult population in the west. Approximately 40% of adults fall into this stage, and they hold about 30% of the power in today’s society. This is the main modus operandi of the western societies. If you want to see what the orange values and identities are, you only have to open Instagram or take a walk in the mall, but I will also list them here:

Values, beliefs and behaviors:

Modernism, strive for autonomy and independence, seek out “the good life” and material abundance, progress through searching out the best solutions, enhance living for many through science and technology, move fast and break things, play to win and enjoy competition, learning through tried-and-true experience, trial and error, capitalism, democracy, individualism, free speech, materialism, consumerism, science in power, rationalism, atheism, hedonism, personal success, manipulation, competition, entrepreneurship, technology, nudity, vulgarity, obscenity, as much sex as possible, objectification of the life partner, trophy girlfriends, sugardaddys, make-up, tattoos, extravagant clothes, good physical appearance, fitness gym, skateboarding, bmx, money brings happiness; no excuses: we work hard for money; the state must leave us alone to go about our business, bribing the state or lobbying, lowering taxes, endless growth in the detriment of the poor and the environment, the end justifies the means, socialism destroys society, financial prosperity, taking care of the shareholders instead of the clients, passive income, elitism, labor exploitation, personal development, motivational quotes, skepticism, arrogance, pop music.

I hope that these values have given you an idea of who these people are. If you grew up in the age of the internet and conformed to what your friends and colleagues do and think, here is where you are. From here up it will be an increasingly lonely road, with some luck you will find some Green people. Again, this stage is not bad, it is necessary. If you think about how people were in the communist era or how people live in the Middle East, you realize that it is much better than Blue in some sense. The Orange stage has good sides: they are open to accepting divergent opinions, they accept those of other nationalities and religions, they know how to survive in the capitalist world, they are open to growth, open to personal development, they accept criticism and let others express themselves.

Unfortunately, it has many bad sides: the relationships are a transaction; the man provides money and material comfort, and in return, the woman provides sex, social status, and companionship. They strip the world of mystery, everything is mechanical and made of atoms produced by the big bang, the government’s power is reduced to a minimum and it can no longer protect its citizens from the cut-throat capitalism, the environment is being destroyed by the irresponsible way they do business, the cities are polluted car-centric nightmares, cars are a status symbol, not just a transport tool. People in these sick societies start developing mental illnesses, depression, and drug addictions due to stress and loneliness. I stop here so as not to make anyone suicidal.

Examples of Orange:

The United States government, not Trump though, he is more Red than Orange; France, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, car-centric cities like Houston, Toronto or Bucharest, Instagram stars, pop stars, action movies, Coca-cola, Onlyfans, Mcdonald’s, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, Apple, Wall-Street, big pharma, the tobacco industry and the people who work in such industries, TV shows, liberal media like CNN, Wolf of the Wall Street, birth control, sex education, all-you-can-eat buffet, pornography, Playboy, Hustler magazine, night clubs, pick-up artists, the red pill movement, incels, fancy restaurants, luxury items, SUVs, Tesla, yachts, private jets, Iphone, professional sports, most gym people, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Justin Bieber, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Elon Musk, Tony Robbins, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, Leonardo Di-Caprio, Ulf Kristersson, Jimmie Åkesson, Swedish Moderate Party.

When does Orange get greener?

Orange people start developing green values, beliefs, and behaviors when the cut-throat capitalistic madness makes them so sick that it becomes a life-and-death situation when relationships feel shallow and unfulfilling when they realize that money cannot fill the void they have in their hearts, when they realize that authenticity, spending time with real friends, helping others and taking care of the environment makes them way happier than the crap they were pursuing before.When they have a spiritual break-through. When they realize that their materialistic perspective is limited and everything is relative.

Stage Green

Approximately 10% of people reached stage Green and they hold around 15% of the power, they mostly live in north-western Europe and North America.

We reached the hippy stage, social media makes fun of this stage (i.e. those of the Orange stage), they ridicule these kinds of people as being communists, neo-Marxists, hippies with trees in their arms, scared of competition, snowflakes, soy-boys, irrationals, anti-capitalists, socialists, feminists, gays, and so on.

You notice how the ego blames exactly the path it should take. You might protest instantly that some people who identify with these values do not deserve to be put so high on the spiral because they were just programmed with these beliefs by their leftist parents and affluent environment, and do not deserve credit for it. You are right, I will talk about maturity and embodiment at the end.

Stage Green wants to take care of all beings on the planet, it has relative and nuanced thinking. It cares about the environment, about the poor people, about the disenfranchised population, and about animals. The Green stage values community and collectivism, it rejects superficiality, and loves everything except those who intentionally harm other beings.

Values, beliefs and behaviors:

Post-modernism, Explore the inner beings of self and others, promote a sense of community and unity, share society’s resources among all, flatten hierarchies, liberate humans from greed and dogma, reach decisions through consensus, refresh spirituality and bring harmony, cosmopolitanism, emotional thinking, relativism, community, femininity, feminism, equality, equity, pacifism, ecology, social-democracy, the good of everyone before profit, mercy, children have to be raised with love and compassion, travel, multiculturalism, globalism, LGBT+ rights, gender is a social construction, regulations and laws that stop the excesses of capitalism, taxing and stopping pollution, welfare state – strong state that takes care of all citizens, welcoming and helping refugees, ecology, nature, deep and authentic relationships, sex education in schools, abortion rights, commute by bicycle and public transport, electric cars, green energy, denuclearization, disarmament, veganism, hippy culture, psychedelic drugs, meditation, spiritual gurus, ideological spirituality, yoga, camping and hiking.

Examples of Green:

Switzerland, Germany, The Netherlands, Scandinavian countries, Iceland, Canada, European Union, cities in Germanic countries where pedestrians, bicycles and public transport are regarded as more important than car traffic like Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Gothenburg; hippie communities and events like The Burning Man, spiritual circles; socialist-democracy and people who advocate for it: Angela Merkel, Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Magdalena Anderson, Swedish Social-Democrats, Left and Environment parties, Green Peace.

Another thing here, be honest with yourself! Where are you located exactly? More Orange or more Green? Ask yourself why you feel attacked by Green?! Most likely due to years of social conditioning received from parents, friends, and the internet. Be careful, great intellectuals make the mistake of creating a shadow from this stage and disempowering it. For example the YouTube God Jordan Peterson who dislikes this stage with passion.

Of course, the Green stage can also have negative sides or excesses: sometimes it can raise taxes too much, make companies move their businesses to other countries, have tribal behavior especially on the internet, they can be too ideological with some clauses that they support, they can gather together and cancel the whole careers of some people just because they don’t fit in the world they picture, they can let too many stage Red criminals into their countries who will start shooting each other and enrage the stage Orange and Blue voters. Their children may become unruly because nobody says no to them, they can also grow up with an unclear gender identity.

There is a chance that they won’t find their true masculine or feminine selves because nobody taught them about this. This can cause problems in relationships, it can take away the man-woman polarity and make the relationship feel like living with a roommate. I am not saying that the inferior stages know better about this stuff, they don’t have a clue either, just that they were assigned a predefined role by their peers, others told them who they are. Dare to learn about masculinity and femininity and find who you really are! (check out my book about this topic).

What is a man? What makes a man attractive to a woman? You see how important well done philosophy is? So as you don’t just pendle around from one extreme to the other like a leaf in the wind in an “aperspectival madness” as Ken WIlber use to say. You were programmed by your peers and family with Green values in the same way people were programmed in the Roman empire with Red values.

If you feel that you are starting to identify with some of the green values, great. Deepen these values for years, learn about third-world countries and how hard it is to live there, volunteer, travel, and hang out with groups of people like that. You can find stage Green people in first-world countries, in climbing, skiing, and hiking communities, in hippie communities, and especially new-age spiritual communities like Vipassana retreats. Beware of wasting your time with spirituality if you don’t understand it well yet. The following stage will help you understand things for real, not just believing somebody else keeping yourself stuck in silly groupthink. You see, this is why many people hate Green. Because many of them do not integrate their logical male side and only go by their feelings repeating the ideas they heard somewhere else without putting real intellectual effort to create an idea from scratch.

When does an individual start moving to the next stage? When he has an intuition that calls him to educate himself even more, especially about philosophy, contemplation, the human mind, human behavior, relativity, spirituality, and the methods by which the mind plays tricks on us. When he had enough of silly groupthink and people who only parrot other people’s ideas because they are scared to think by themselves. The next stage is about taking a journey to find the absolute truth.

Tier 2

Stage Yellow

Now are we talking baby. The next stage is a huge leap forward because it is part of a new category. If the previous stages were part of Tier 1, these two stages are part of Tier 2. The difference between the two categories is that Tier 1 stages are unaware that they are in a stage, they do not see the stages above them, and consider those below them to be uneducated barbarians. Tier 2 stages become aware of the existence of the spiral, do not consider themselves to be at the highest level, and understand why other individuals are at the lower stages. They do not adopt an ideology but question all ideologies. This is why Tier 2 individuals do not get angry when seeing a stage Red performing it’s atrocities in comparison to a stage Green individual who would get completely emotional about it. Yellow realizes that you have to let go of your emotional reactions in order to understand a situation, otherwise you’ll only accept the victim’s point of view. Yellow tries to understand all perspectives. Try to understand Hitler’s perspective for example, now that requires wisdom and maturity.

Individuals who reach the Yellow stage are driven to find out the truth, they are not satisfied with the robotic lives of those around them, they don’t care about proving wrong some conservatives through arguments and debates, they are motivated to dig until they deconstruct the essence of reality. They are open-minded, read and learn a lot. They become aware of their ego which is constantly trying to stop their search. Philosophy is their new science, they realize that conventional science is very limited. Their thinking is very nuanced, they see the world in many shades of gray, and understand the perspective of each person without judging it. Their mind thinks systemically. They see the limitation of relativity and post-modernism, not everything is equally relative to everything else. Relative to keeping your woman melted in love by your presence, there is a more “right” way to be a man. In fact, in order to properly understand Spiral Dynamics, you have to reach Tier 2.

Values, beliefs and behaviors:

Beyond post-modernism, construct-awareness, Spiral-Dynamics wizard, masculine-feminine energy blend, lone wolf, nuance and complexity in thinking, open-mindedness, continuous education, life-long learning, letting go of ideology, meta-thinking, nonlinearity, logical-intuitive thinking, disrupting paradigms, adaptability, non-manipulation, 3D thinking, very hard to upset, uninterested in debates, social engineering, embracing paradoxes, holistic analysis, meritocracy, quantum mechanics, meta-physics.

Examples of Yellow people: Ken Wilber, Abraham Maslow, Noam Chomsky, Yuval Noah Harari, Albert Einstein.

Be careful with categorizing people as Yellow, I never met a solid Yellow in person, they are very very rare. Just because you have some favorite scientists and they are logical thinkers, that doesn’t mean they are Yellow. Yellow questions the validity of scientific studies, he/she is a serious independent philosopher who does his/her own philosophy, not just parroting what other philosophers said.

When does such an individual move to the next level? When they discover that the teachings of the mystics from the past are some of the most advanced teachings and their spiritual practices start to give results. When they realize that the world is much more mysterious than it seems, when they have an experience of spiritual enlightenment.

Stage Turquoise

What I am going to present now will sound unreal, the mother of all conspiracy theories, you will rather believe that the earth is flat. Please do not consider me crazy. Individuals who reach this level are less than 0.5% of the population. They are the most intelligent, hardcore, disciplined, and open-minded people on earth, and they finally got to know first-hand what is the essence of reality. The mystical experiences of turquoise people that they’ve got through their spiritual practices such as meditation, yoga, and psychedelic trips, made it easy for them to understand that the actual world is not material, it is not even real, it is all a hallucination. That “you” that you call “yourself”, does not actually exist. There is also no duality between subject and object, this concept is called non-duality. The moment when the ego dies and the individual realizes that he or she is actually the whole universe, not just a human body, is the moment when the individual experiences spiritual enlightenment or Nirvana. This actually means that you are alone in the universe, there is nobody here but you. This is the Absolute Truth, until now we were talking about relative truths. Be careful with what I said now, this can be dangerous information, do not believe it, better experience it first-hand!

Values, beliefs and behaviors: Universe-centric, no-mind,  first-hand spirituality, meditation retreats, satsang, teaching through metaphors, walking the talk, bliss, wisdom, holism.

Examples of Turquoise Stage: Osho, Ramana Maharshi, Mahatma Gandhi, Eckhart Tolle, Ishira, Daniel Ingram, Rupert Spira, Byron Katie, Adyashanti, Leo Gura.

And this was the last stage you will hear about in this material. How was it? Cool? Scary? I experienced these teachings as very relieving, now I finally have a map that can guide me when I feel lost. But I also keep in mind that the map is not the territory and it has to be used wisely. I’d like to end this material with some nuances and insights followed by a conclusion.

Maturity and Integration

I really need to add the nuance of integration and maturity in our map. You might meet people who do not fit very well in any of these stages and are a bit everywhere. That is because their parents and environment indoctrinated them with values that they were and still aren’t able to fully integrate in their lives, something kept them back from developing emotionally and spiritually. The reason for that can be a traumatic childhood or in the other extreme, hippie, emotionally overprotective new-age parents who did more bad than good by not letting the children experience hardships. This is how you get adults who parrot stage Green values and policies but they themselves are not able to walk their talk. Just because they hold some hippie ideas in their minds all the time, does not make them stage Green in my opinion. Blocking the roads because you want to save the environment and not letting people reach their jobs in time is an example of not getting the whole picture. You won’t change their minds by aggressively affecting their survival, they will get angry and call you crazy instead. Telling to some stage Blue/Orange people that they should embrace multiculturalism or they should care more about the climate, is like telling a dog that it should talk. It does not compute for them yet, be patient and understand them! A more systemic approach is needed, protesting against expansion of fossil fuel giants, deforestation etc. in a peaceful manner, not moralizing the average Joes.

The young students who create the identity of leftist social justice warriors are no different than the teenagers who used to create the identity of punkers or rockers, it is mainly stage Blue trying to act like stage Green. People follow trends, it is out of fashion to be a punker these days, much cooler is to be a vegan leftist feminist. In fact people who are at a lower stage of development but they have solidly integrated it and the stages from below, will have much better and happier lives than those who were indoctrinated into advanced values whom they cannot integrate. A religious family will maybe be happier than a lonely independent leftist videogamer dude or a cat lady Karen.

Even if they are right about the causes they sustain, they make the situation worse, because their vibe is wrong, they call names and criticize. And people vote based on vibe not based on policies. If you are a young activist and really love what you do, great. But keep this in mind, do not insult and moralize people who do not agree with you! Don’t be amazed when you see the alt-right rising like a skyscraper, they had enough of this nonsense. It is very important to solve your trauma and have the courage to self-reflect, otherwise, this model will just be more gas for your immaturity and ego. Before saving the world, save yourself. You will also hear people who claim they experienced stage Turquoise non-duality but their behavior is everything else but spiritual and mature. Every idiot can trip with LSD or mushrooms and experience non-duality or go to a Vipassana retreat and then act all spiritual, that does not make him stage Turquoise, those spiritual states will just confuse them and slow down their development. 

The ego will try to find shortcuts everywhere, of course it will choose a 10 day Vipassana retreat instead of 10 years of trial and error, observation, serious action, education and contemplation work. Humble down your spiritual ego and embrace your rational side not just the intuitive side. Do the retreat if you feel so but don’t act all cocky and superior because you “figured out” what is going on. You didn’t figure out shit! The spiritual forums are full of people like these. Stage Turquoise means you’ve integrated your masculine side also, that you have tons of knowledge and know how to interconnect it using complex logic beyond ideology. Otherwise you’re a stage Green trying to ape Turquoise.

Don’t rush and focus on the basics, I will pretty much assure you that there is no chance of you reaching a solid Tier 2 before 30 years old. It is true that you can reach a high level of waking up without also growing up, due to some special genetics or tons and tons of ideological meditation practice (stage Blue zen buddhist monks). But in order to happily live in today’s society it is critical to also grow up. Spiral Dynamics measures your growing up level, check Ken Wilber’s “waking up” model in order to better understand how growing up interplays with waking up.

Most people need to work on basic stuff like creating the habit of making their bed, cleaning their room, washing the dishes, learning how to have healthy relationships, finding a life purpose, getting a job to which they love going to, fixing their finances, moving away from their parents house, eating healthy, doing regular exercise, having a basic general education, finding who the hell they are. Only after this can we speak of understanding the traps and defense mechanisms of the ego and how to think in an advanced way.

Be mindful of Maslow’s pyramid of needs, it combines very well with this model. Words are cheap, if a guy tries to convince me with his spiritual ideas or political activism, I’ll ask him to show me his room, his friends, his dresser, his kitchen sink, his job. You tell me about how they should restructure the judicial system or the urban infrastructure but you can’t even wash the dishes so as your spouse doesn’t criticize you 100th time? You can’t even get rid of bad habits and cook for yourself so as you can eat proper food every day but you are a political expert. They should do a lot but what should you do? Now I see people that keep a much more organized room than I do but they are dummies, the keywords here are “balance”,”self-reflection” and “responsibility”. You can use your cleanliness habits for enforcing your ego. Integrating a lower stage means to pick up the good qualities and let go of the bad ones. For example you will integrate Blue when you’ll have the discipline to keep a clean house but you drop the groupthink, dogmas and closed-mindedness that Blue people use to have.

I will finish with this last concept of “burning your karma”. If you have an itch for a long time, you need to scratch it. You really want to earn lots of money and buy a sportscar but now you learn about Spiral Dynamics and decide to force yourself to resist the temptation. If you really feel that you want to earn lots of money right now or have lots of sex, do it! Get that out of your system so you learn your lesson and experience first-hand that it is just an itch that had to be scratched. Of course, it will be wise to earn money ethically, to have protected sex with girls that are not drunk, and to rent a sportscar for a few weeks before buying one for that might be enough to burn your karma. I have an old friend who was criticizing religion for years and now he is a religious nut-head.

Afterword

I’d like to congratulate you for reaching the end of this shit long material and I hope it had a positive impact. Don’t  forget that I am a coach and there is a chance I can help if you feel stuck. Follow me on social media so you get notified when a new article comes out and leave a comment below with your constructive criticism. Feel free to email me if your have any questions, send this to your friends, and have a happy life!  

References:

Beck, D. E., & Cowan, C. C. (2005). Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change. John Wiley & Sons.