25. CONSCIOUSNESS — Part One

In my book, Dialogue: A Way to Live (check out: dialogue4us.com), I devoted a chapter to consciousness because consciousness is an important means to transformational dialogue. In addition, I am discovering that consciousness is an important clue to understanding our path to be the creations we are ordained to be. Therefore, this week I will focus on consciousness, and in this post, I will draw on the chapter from my book.

These three-pound brains in our heads appear to contain billions of neurons with trillions of synaptic connections. These electrochemical connections flash across our brain networks and form patterns that lead to our consciousness. This system property of the brain requires huge amounts of circuitry. This circuitry relates to a brain size, which is found especially in humans.

Princeton University professor and author Michael Graziano in The Spaces Between Us: A Story of Neuroscience, Evolution, and Human Nature writes about a theory that traces the evolution of our consciousness.

The Attention Schema Theory (AST) suggests that our brains evolved with mechanisms to overcome information overflow by processing select signals at the expense of others. According to the AST, our consciousness is the result of that evolution.

States Graziano, “Neurons act like candidates in an election, each one shouting and trying to suppress its fellows. … This process is called selective signal enhancement, and without it, a nervous system can do almost nothing.” Graziano identifies the textum in our brains as a centralized controller of our senses.

The textum directs our senses to what is deemed important, and the cortex part of our brains shifts our covert attention to what is near via a thought or memory. According to the AST, the origin of consciousness is the covert attention from one item to another. A further adaptation enabled us to model the attention states of others as consciousness itself evolved to our ability to attribute consciousness to others.

Neuroscientist Jeanette Norden in a Teaching Company lecture, “Understanding the Brain,” said that consciousness involves awareness, attention, and self-reference. She recommended the work of developmental psychologist Robert Kegan. Kegan’s research of 40 years at Harvard University focused on the evolution of consciousness.

Kegan finds that there are five orders of consciousness. We are born in the 1st Order of consciousness, in which as infants our impulses equip us for survival, and our perceptions and responses are guided by our emotions. In the 2nd Order, which happens between the ages of six and ten, we are motivated by our needs and desires.

In our adolescence, we enter the 3rd Order, in which the people and ideas with which we identify shape us. We have a point of view, needs, and preferences. We see ourselves with a role in society.

The 1st and 2nd Orders tend to be egocentric (me); the 3rd Order is ethnocentric (us); and as we enter the 4th and 5th Orders, an expansive (all of us) worldview opens up. These stages take years and decades to evolve. Each Order folds around those that occurred before it. As we move from one Order to the next, the features of the preceding Orders remain with us.

In the 4th Order, we have our own system of values apart from those we have inherited and by which we have been conditioned. When we shift to the 5th Order, we open our capacity to reconnect the previous Orders, build relationships among them, and launch a transformative level of consciousness.

This level includes the option not only to embrace constructive features, but also to oppose them. The higher the levels of consciousness we achieve, the better equipped we are to navigate the complex territory of the tension between the two options. At the 5th Order, we move from detached observations of others to a connectedness in which the differences among us enable us to become more than we were.

Have you experienced a relationship in which you felt open and very close to someone who seemed to feel the same about you, and as a result of that relationship, you felt your life changed for the better? If so, maybe you experienced a 5th level of consciousness.

Kegan and his researchers acknowledge that only a small percentage of the population reach this 5th Order. However, there are ways to raise our levels of consciousness.

• We can curb the tendency to make instant judgments.
• We can be more patient to get beyond what is disagreeable.
• We can be more receptive to change.

Assuming that the 5th Order’s constructive approach, as described above, is potentially available to all adults and thus development is possible for all adults, then one could conclude that as increasing numbers of people engage in that level of consciousness, a better society in which to live will be created.

Q: Where do you think you are in Kegan’s five orders?