What is the relationship between horizontal translation and vertical transformation?

Hi Robert - I find these interesting questions passing through me as well from time to time.

As to "I've heard Ken say that they are relatively independent but also that if the false self is left to move up through the stages, that can cause problems", have you listened yet to the seekers guide to self-deception? He speaks a bit more about this.

I think that one of the reasons why so many of us have not come to fully (or even close to fully) act as, feel as, speak as, and be true is how thoroughly complex is each person's idiosyncratic unfoldment. If we follow the model that Ken articulates in the above linked talk, we can imagine the greater than 3D labyrinthine complexity that has become our convoluted selves - probably most of us, eh. There are so many, many, many life circumstances of many sorts into which one is born, so many environmental contextual changes as individuals in families and cultures interact and change, typical fulcra and critical periods of development, apparently many types of defenses and strategies acting in simple current situations and then later associations of past reactive situations. We might mention a significant genetic variability and variability in epigenetic/genetic expression. There is complex local and now ridiculously complexifying globally-evolving culture, with high speed technology influencing us in many ways on the loose.

To horizontally translate is a huge task, which apparently means integrating of body, mind, and spirit - especially the embodying part.

The heuristically helpful metaphors of conveyor belts, ascending paths, and spiral staircases offer a felt-sense of the journey and maybe the impulse (eros, life force, evolution), and thereby seem to orient and stabilize us, but don't come close to expressing the actual, on the ground, in the tissue, among the vibe complexity of seemingly known factoids and unknown kosmic dynamics.

When we notice that there are actions that seem to fit and seem coherent and then we notice that sometimes we act very differently, inconsistently, maybe highly irrationally, and sometimes almost incomprehensibly, we need to explain it. Given a scientific rationality as a mental tool, the tidy linear seeming model needs to accommodate the anomalies, the obviously only crude linearity of development. As I riff and speculate on this, Robert, one way that we are explaining this is by introducing the model of multiple sub-personalities and multiple selves, some authentic, some false. In our lives, around a fulcral point along a line (emotional, interpersonal, self lines etc), crap happens and new mental/behavioral patterns of managing the micro-shocks of fitting into the world happen in us. And we bounce or tumble or stagger or meander or stroll (if we are lucky) through the greater than 3D experience called humanity. As our "eyes" open and life happens, the strolling may cease as an accidental fulcral situation emerges. And we are supposed to integrate all this in a coherent, rich and creamy way. What therapist can handle the more complex of us, who among us can afford it, who trusts, who and what is worthy of trust? Maybe we can blunder through ourselves with some models, maps, pointings, and relatively wise words online? Maybe we can enter, in some way, without complete resignation, depression, and other quirky bendings and strategies, the life-death cycle, hang on, and hope or have faith in the rest?

Good questions, Robert - dang you.

I notice I'm starting to lose my coherence in this riff so I'll end here. Hope that helps - smile.