About churches, universities, and spiral dynamics
Sometimes in middle school, our class was forced to go to church and attend mass.
To be cool in school meant to agree that church is something boring. So I kept it to myself that I secretly loved going there.
I loved the atmosphere. The moldy smell of the massive ancient walls, the mystical shine of candles, the hypnotic melodies of the songs, and the graceful light that broke through the colorful church windows.
In middle school, the idea of a man sitting up in the clouds that wants people to believe in him was ridiculous. For me believing in God was like believing in Santa Claus. However, I loved the idea of being religious. Life must feel so simple and secure knowing that there is an all-powerful being watching out for you.
After high school, I exchanged the halls of the church for the lecture rooms of universities. Instead of songs, I listened to debates, instead of sage it smelled like coffee and the priest turned into a professor. I was here because what was preached here did make more sense to me than the stories of religion.
But still, I was not satisfied, with the tales of objective truth being only found in the scientific method.
So I turned to everyone’s favorite guru the internet.
Still attending my classes at university I deepened my self-study in my areas of interest. The field that fascinated me the most was developmental psychology. Learning about this field felt like I stumbled upon the holy grail of understanding human beings.
Most people understand that kids go through developmental milestones. For example, children go from magical thinking to rational thinking to abstract thinking as they grow older.
However, it is widely assumed that once adulthood is reached human beings don’t develop in drastic ways like kids.
This is a misconception. Adults from the age of 25 change psychologically in very drastic ways. The leading edge of development research consists of countless capable researchers who came to that conclusion. The biggest gift those brilliant minds gifted to humanity is the models they created. Models like Maslow Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Don Becks and Christopher Cohan’s spiral dynamics, and later Susan-Cook Greuter’s 9 Levels of Ego-Development provide maps to how humans develop.
This is the model of spiral dynamics simplified.
It describes the stages of psychological maturity that humans develop through. This model is cross-culturally tested meaning these stages are independent of the culture an individual grows up in.
Before discovering these developmental models I believed that I already had the truth. I believed that truth is whatever we prove objectively with science. I still believe that to some degree but now I understand that my ideas about truth came from the stage of psychological development I was in. In that case, it was orange.
Before developmental models, I could not make sense of people believing in something crazy like religion. Now I know that’s because they are in stage blue. I could also not understand how people can be ‘spiritual’. People that believe in zodiac signs, talk about their feelings, and believe in some higher energy seemed like superstition. Now I know those are green people and this was a higher stage of psychological maturity than the one I was in at that time. The most amazing thing however was that I realized there is some goal to my life. If I continue to learn, stay open-minded, and grow I will arrive at higher stages of understanding.
Knowing that human beings are radically different in their stage of development I could also make more sense of my fascination with the church.
More than 10 years later after my middle school days, I rediscovered my wonder for religious mythology. After receiving my diploma from my University I did a pilgrimage through Spain. On the way, I came across an abundance of churches. One of my favorite things was to escape the burning Spanish sun by taking refuge in one of the countless churches along the way. One of the most beautiful ones was the cathedral in Burgos upon entering I was greeted with this.
I wondered what all these people were on the altar. The main ones are obviously Jesus and God but who are the rest? Many people and I included that grow up in the modern world see these figures as part of a big fantasy. Jesus, Moses, Noah, The Apostles, and the saints and sages of history are just human made-up fiction.
However, developmental models like spiral dynamics enable a more holistic theory. It might be that Humans, like Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, or John the Baptist are people that reached high levels of psychological, moral, and emotional development.
Humans are painting pictures, building statues, and lighting candles to honor the achievements of people that reached those higher stages.
Stage yellow in the spiral dynamics model is only realized by under 1 % of humans worldwide. Furthermore, experts in developmental psychology assume that many ‘holy’ humans of history reached even higher stages like turquoise and beyond. Additionally, these saints and sages were growing to these high levels despite much harsher survival conditions than we found today. Many of them paid with their lives because their ideas and teachings were not too advanced for the status quo.
Sounds like a whacky theory to you?
If you look at the documented history of some holy figures of Christianity you can trackback their development.
A well-known saint of Christian mythology is Francesco de Assisi:
He was declared holy for living a ‘goldy’ life without material possession. He founded the order of the Franziskaner monks in Germany.
What many don’t know is that Fransceco grew up in wealth and material abundance. He was spending his early twenties wearing fancy clothes, eating the best food, and traveling the country. One day he met a beggar and felt compassion for him. He gave him all the money he had. From then he led a humble life and dedicated his life to god. He traveled the country and gathered followers that later became the order of the Franziskaner. The rest of his short life Francesco spend, preaching and teaching his philosophy.
The history of the Buddha
Buddha grew up in a rich household. He had everything his heart could desire, power, status, woman, the finest clothes, and food. Driven by curiosity the young buddha decided to live in his sheltered home and saw the suffering of the world. He encountered beggars, sick homeless people, and death. Because of that, he decided to live without any material possession After his enlightenment, he spends the rest of his life leading students and teaching his insight.
We observe a similar pattern and Jesus and most other holy men.
I don’t propose that one has to grow up rich or live without material possessions to develop psychologically.
However, the psychological models correlate roughly with this story, material(orange) to relational sensitive (green) to effective action (yellow) to mystical, spiritual (turquoise). It is obvious that the developmental models are not perfect in explaining all the nuances and complexities of how humans grow. However, they paint broad brushstrokes of recognizing the patterns of human development.
It is downright spooky to look back at the history of many wise people humanity brought forward and see a similar trend. Muhammad, Gandhi, and Meister Eckhart to name a few more.
The point I am making is neither scientific, religious, spiritual nor rational. Rather, It is all these aspects united. In developmental theory, we try to understand the world by taking on all perspectives and combining them into a big picture of what’s going on.
It is silly to throw all the wisdom that is in religion out of the window just because we have science. At the same time, it is naive to believe in the stories and myths of the religion without applying scientific rigor to it. Moreover, it is foolish to look at other religious cultures and traditions and believe that the one you were born into is superior. Lastly, without understanding that humanity, cultures religion, and science are constantly evolving as proposed in developmental theory. We can not integrate all these perspectives into a coherent worldview.
In conclusion, new scientific models suggest that every human being is slowly developing higher awareness and psychological maturity.
Everyone, you included is on his way to becoming a saint.
Best, Max
