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IEC23 – Terri O’Fallon Keynote – The Evolution of Planetary Awakening

This is part of a series of blogs reflecting on the program of Integral Europe Conference 2023,  whose theme was Planetary Awakening 2.0. This blog introduces a Keynote  from the conference – curated in an Action Research Format – summarizing What the speaker said, So What could we take as the meaning? and Now What are options for action.

What did Terri O’Fallon say about – The Evolution of Planetary Awakening

The STAGES model is built on an Integral frame.

From the Integral frame Terri started to look at the model in smaller pieces. She noticed Concrete Quadrants and Ken Wilber asked her to look at [epistemological] Zones.

With this direction she noticed that [in addition to 1st and 2nd]  there were 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th person perspectives.

As she continued this search what evolved was an “engine of development”.

This became the STAGES Matrix.

[Our research shows that] the Subtle stages begin to open to a Planetary Awakening.

Planetary is 4.0 [on the Matrix) – inside the subtle, collective, reciprocal structure.

  • Awakening is a whole body RECOGNITION of the web of life.
  • Evolutionary is diagonal growth like a balloon expanding.
  • Involutionary is intergenerational social construction of content

What is diagonal about the planet being alive?

Parents who have planetary perspective raise socially constructing children.

Terri offers Content Practices to Involute:

  1. Encourage Positive and challenging emotions
  2. Ask: What do you mean?
  3. Be Aware: of your own Projections

A focus on Positive emotions causes more awareness to come up.

If focus is on negative emotions awareness gets smaller.

A label can be an empty [development] structure…just focus on feeling in the exercise.

This allows individual construction.

Meaning arises when you feel triggered – if you notice a person is triggered, ask the person: “What do you mean by that?”

We put our own definitions in … We make things up.

At 5.0 Who triggers you will be expressing the exact quality that bugs me in me about my own assumptions.

OTH Who do you adore? The quality I love is in me too (e.g. gentle clarity subtle spirituality)

How can we be practical?

[Terri tells story of her brother and the God Bless Joe Biden sign that was torn down. Her brother responded with a compassionate letter to the editor inviting compassion to the role of President and offering blessings to the perpetrator(s) of the sign damage – thus demonstrating a Metaware stage of development that can transcend and include even those who disagree and do not [yet] share one’s perspective. This is a practical application of advanced stages of adult development.]

So what could this mean?

Terri’s STAGES matrix offers three generative questions to help notice one’s own and others’ perspectives:

  1. Is the object of awareness Concrete, Subtle or MetAware?
  2. Is the experience individual or collective?
  3. Is the experience Receptive, Active, Reciprocal or Interpenetrative?

This refinement of adult development expands the evolutionary insights embedded in the Integral City Maps. It unpacks all the levels of development in Map 1. It offers insights into the differing perspectives embedded in the holarchies of  Map 2. It gives language to the Micro-Meso-Macro levels of development in Map 3. It explains the capacity for developing organizational structures in Map 4. It refines to 12 levels the involutionary and evolutionary emergence of spirituality in Map 5.

The STAGES model provides a roadmap for developing one’s own capacity and a scaffold for designing and/or holding the development of others – whether that be as parent, teacher, leader – or any of the 4 Voices of the Integral City.

STAGES can be practically combined with the Spiral Dynamics integral framing of Graves’ double (or triple) helix of life conditions – to understand the contexts which enable and/or trigger development.

Now what can we do?

Here are 3 possible actions/responses we can take to experience The Evolution of Planetary Awakening:

  1. Take a self-assessment using the STAGES model to understand the perspective(s) by which you experience the world.
  2. When looking at others and their responses to any issue (like climate change, or emergency resilience) try to be receptive and sensitive to their stage of development. Use the 3 guiding questions in the STAGES Matrix model to determine targets, individual/collective and learning sequence that will be influencing their experience of the world.
  3. Become aware of “centres of gravity” of development in groups (referencing the STAGES matrix) to understand what strategies of communication and action might be most effective (for example in designing Climate Action – see Gail Hochachka’s research in this regard).

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About the Author:

HI I am the Founder of Integral City Meshworks Inc. and Chief Blogger. Working with cities and eco-regions, I ‘meshwork’ or weave people, purpose, priorities, profits, programs and processes to align contexts, grow capacity and develop strategies for sustainability and resilience in the Integral City. You can read more details about me here http://integralcity.com/about/about-the-founder/

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