Inquiry

I have always found the study of ego and moral development intriguing because stages help me understand those around me who irritate and confound me, as well as those who finesse circumstances far better than I have yet. I started studying Kohlberg in college 100 yrs. ago while a religious studies major and became hooked on the idea of transforming my moral development....(I am aware at this point in my life that I can't do this by desire!)  I think then that I had a sense of moral superiority because I knew what the right answers were to attain a post-conventional level of development. At the same time I watched others over the years who knew nothing of the theories and who by the nature of their own development acted in a post-conventional manner.  The mystery around this keeps me engaged, because not even the theroists have figured out why someone is at one level or another.....just that we have become fairly good at describing the levels we observe.  Its usefulness (study of stages) in my opinion is in having compassion and empathy for those in our environment who grate on our nerves, for those who need special care, and for those who make a significant contribution but who also exact our patience.  As a psychotherapist my work is enhanced by reminding myself about treatment approaches that best serve individuals at specific stages of ego development.  The mystery of why some people become stuck in ego development and why others proceed after their twenties to tip into higher levels of development is a topic I'd like to hear more about.  I know that Ken Wilber talks about how having increased amounts of "state" changes over time can enhance the likelihood of stage development as well as how meditation and increasing consciousness levels can also enhance that happening.  Thanks to Susan for her great contribution to our understanding of self and other.

I took Susanne's SCT a few years ago, "in the midst of a dark wood where the straight way was lost", and told her she must have made a mistake in the scoring. One of the reasons I felt like I was just going crazy was that moving through people was like moving kinesthetically through a tangled web of all the traps within traps that we keep ourselves and each other in, between people, within groups, organizations, and then in the fabric of our societies, then beneath that, in our very existences, and in the interlocking patterns stretched in these vast ways backwards and forwards in time, leaving me in the midst of a divorce on one level of experience, and with a sort of existential despair at another mingled with beautiful suffering (though baffling), and an inability to communicate any of that with the way language itself kept changing meanings on me. Understanding the stages of development, then, made me feel much more okay in my own skin and not batshit. :)

Towards others, there's a greater capacity for compassion, particularly when I'm connected to the underlying "Oneness" - as Neruda says in speaking of a lover, "where I does not exist nor you".

Communicating with others feels simultaneously more and less challenging. I think I'm more capable of adapting in ways that let myself be understood, but I'm also aware of how frequently I feel like a fish out of water and tap into a sense of aloneness - whee, the fun of delusions! (The times I've also felt most alone have been curiously connective - loneliness being one of the most common forms in the experiences of human suffering.)

And what motivates me to learn more - I wrote this in a blog post recently.... It's a quote from a book by Bill Torbert and his associates, including Susanne Cook-Greuter, whose work I admire tremendously. (She's also really the first person who I felt really seen by and I will always love her for that.)  THIS motivates me, the element of transformation as expressed in the book "Action Inquiry --  "Who among us would voluntarily take on the continual suffering of witnessing the gaps among intentions, espoused values, actual practices, and outcomes in ourselves, in others, in organizations, and in larger social processes? Who struggles to transform such suffering, not into imprisoning neuroses or social victories at others' cost, but, rather into emancipating consciousness that graces each meeting afresh?"