Perspective Shift:
- Stages are not static, but situational. We aren’t “at” a particular stage, but instead use our stage capacities as adaptive responses to context. You may speak from Green at work, slip into Amber with your parents, and touch Teal during solitude. Stages are less about who you are and more about how you’re relating in this moment.
- Shadow emerges when stages are repressed, bypassed, or disowned. Every unloved part of your development becomes a pocket of shadow. If your 2.0 Red stage was never welcomed, you may still crave belonging in rigid ways. If your 3.5 Orange stage was shamed, you may sabotage achievement. Wholeness means reparenting every wave inside you, not just ascending beyond them.
- Language is a developmental fingerprint. Our syntax, metaphors, and perspectives reveal the deep structure of our meaning-making. A single paragraph may express three stages. Our words are not just communication — they’re choreography. Stages unfold themselves through how we speak, often without us realizing it.
- The higher the stage, the more subtle the shadow. Orange (3.5) awakens to cognitive bias — the distortions in individual thought. Green (4.0) sees cultural embedment — how systems shape perception. Teal (4.5) uncovers projection and framing — how we superimpose our own lens and call it reality. The higher the stage, the subtler the distortion… and the more convincing it becomes.
- Every issue can be enacted from every stage — but it’s not the same conversation. Whether the topic is gender, race, climate, free speech, or education, each developmental stage engages it from a different worldview, priority, and sense of meaning. Amber 2.5 sees rules to follow. Orange 3.5 sees principles to argue. Green 4.0 sees power to deconstruct. Teal 4.5 sees systems to redesign. Turquoise 5.0 sees awareness itself shaping it all. But from the outside, it can all sound like the same debate. This is why culture wars become impossible echo chambers — without a robust developmental map, we’re not just talking past each other, we’re not even seeing the same reality.
In this rich and nuanced dialogue, Keith Martin Smith and Alexander Love explore Terry O’Fallon’s Stages model as a powerful lens for understanding how humans grow, make meaning, and relate across vastly different realities. Together, they reveal how developmental precision — not content or ideology — holds the key to deeper empathy, cultural healing, and truly integrative practice.
What if the most important thing about a person isn’t what they believe, but how they make meaning?
What if most of our communication failures stem from a simple error: assuming everyone makes meaning the same way we do?
In this conversation, Keith Martin-Smith and Alexander Love dive deep into Terry O’Fallon’s revolutionary Stages model, a developmental framework that cuts through the noise of content to reveal the underlying structure of how consciousness evolves. Unlike the rigid hierarchies that plague most developmental theories, this approach treats growth as an unbroken fabric of becoming—twelve developmental waves flowing across three distinct tiers of reality perception.
Alexander explores Terri’s three-question methodology, which can help pinpoint someone’s developmental range in real-time.
First: What world can they actually see? Someone operating from concrete thinking literally cannot perceive the systemic forces that are obvious to someone with subtle awareness.
Second: Are they exploring individual identity or collective belonging? This reveals whether they’re in the first two stages of any tier (developing the individual) or the second two stages (developing the collective).
Third: What’s their learning preference—receptive, active, reciprocal, or interpenetrative? This final question narrows twelve possibilities down to one.
The conversation illuminates how this precision serves empathy rather than evaluation. When we recognize that a child adopting progressive values through rule-based thinking will enforce inclusivity with the same rigid authoritarianism they learned at home, we stop expecting postmodern sophistication from concrete cognition. When we understand that someone at 4.0 (green) can see systemic oppression but is still “had by” the system they’re critiquing, we can appreciate both their insights and their limitations without condescension.
Alexander’s exploration of shadow and projection dynamics reveals another layer: how 4.0 can spot others’ projections but remains blind to their own, while 4.5 begins the difficult work of recognizing their own shadow upon reflection. This isn’t just developmental theory—it’s practical wisdom for navigating the projection-heavy landscape of contemporary culture.
Perhaps most importantly, they demonstrate how development unfolds not as a linear climb but as a fluid dance between multiple stages within any given conversation. A healthy person at any level naturally draws from earlier developmental waves when appropriate—using first-person perspective to open a door, concrete thinking to follow traffic rules, systemic awareness to understand cultural patterns. The goal isn’t to transcend our humanity but to discover its full spectrum.
Their discussion of real-world examples — from diversity and inclusion debates to parenting challenges — shows how the same content can emerge from radically different developmental structures, and why meeting people where they are developmentally creates the conditions for genuine growth rather than defensive reactivity.
This isn’t another framework for ranking consciousness. It’s a tool for recognizing the magnificent complexity of human meaning-making, and for learning to love people into wholeness rather than arguing them into agreement. When we stop trying to convince others to see through our developmental lens and start learning to see through theirs, something remarkable becomes possible: genuine understanding across the beautiful diversity of human consciousness.
Key Questions
Here are some questions you can contemplate while listening to this discussion. We suggest you take some time to use these as journaling prompts.
- Am I speaking to meet people where they are, or where I think they should be? Pay attention to your conversations this week. When you find yourself frustrated that someone “just doesn’t get it,” ask whether you’re trying to communicate across developmental differences without adjusting your approach.
- Where in my life am I still “had” by systems I can see? Even when we can recognize systemic forces—cultural conditioning, family patterns, organizational dynamics—we often remain unconsciously embedded in them. What systems can you analyze intellectually but still find yourself reacting from rather than responding to?
- Where am I projecting complexity and calling it insight? Have I ever used nuance, inclusivity, or systems thinking to mask a deeper shadow? What part of me might be hiding behind my most developed ideas?
- What conversations in my life feel stuck — and what new listening might unstick them? Where do I keep arguing across a meaning-making gap? What if the solution wasn’t to persuade, but to perceive more clearly where the other person is coming from?
- How is my own development serving something larger than my personal growth? Consider how your willingness to grow, question, and integrate different perspectives contributes to the collective evolution of consciousness. What responsibility comes with developmental awareness?
- What conversations in my life feel stuck — and what new listening might unstick them? Where do I keep arguing across a meaning-making gap? What if the solution wasn’t to persuade — but to perceive more clearly where the other person is coming from?
About Integral Edge
Welcome to a world on the edge.
AI is rewriting the rules. Politics are more polarized than ever, with the far right and left in an endless clash. The metacrisis looms, late-stage capitalism is unraveling, DEI is evolving, and strongmen are rising once more.
But that’s just the beginning.
This podcast takes an integral look at the forces shaping our reality—from cutting-edge neuroscience and biohacking to cryptocurrency, global economics, and the ancient wisdom of awakening, mindfulness, and embodiment.
Keith Martin-Smith brings a deep, multi-perspective lens to the chaos, cutting through the noise to find what actually matters.
This isn’t just another commentary on the world. It’s a guide to seeing—and living—beyond the divide.
New episodes of Integral Edge every second and fourth Wednesday of the month at 10 AM PT. See our events calendar to join the live discussion!
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About Keith Martin-Smith
Keith Martin-Smith is an award-winning author, writing coach, and Zen priest. He is passionate about human connection, creativity, and evolution. His books include "The Mysterious Divination of Tea Leaves", "A Heart Blown Open", and "The Heart of Zen". His most recent book is his first novel, "Only Everything", a novel that explores the promise and the pain of following an artist's path.
About Alexander Love
Alexander M. Love, M.Ac., PCC, is an internationally renowned facilitator, developmental coach, and acupuncturist. He is the creator of the Lumina Process, a coaching modality that parts work, eastern wisdom, and polarity work into a model of practice which evokes deep-seated transformation. Alexander is senior faculty at the Newfield Network and facilitates Newfield’s US coach training, their advanced training in Chile, and has created several on-demand courses. Alexander is a leading voice in defining the coaching field in this era. He emphasizes wholeness and is a leader in supporting humanity to access and live from our brilliant human potential.