Deep Psychology

Today I discuss whether babies are enlightened, compassionate, self-expressive and altruistic, and whether they're the ultimate model for the human growth process. I hope you find this both amusing and informative.

Cook-Greuter's 9 Stages of Ego Development:

https://deep-psychology.com/the-9-stages-of-ego-development/

Spiritual enlightenment is the damnedest thing: it's both better than you think and not at all what it's made out to be, it's shrouded in mystery, and there's a huge paradox at the heart of it.

FYI I honestly didn't know Jed McKenna had a book by this name before I made the episode. You may wish to read it!

An unorthodox view of learning and mastery: nothing is inherently difficult to learn. Huh? I explain all.

Be a Prolific Learner: https://deep-psychology.com/category/be-a-prolific-learner/

Here I share a simple experiment you can use to glimpse your true self. This is a direct pointer to your real essence.

It cuts through all your habitual identification and shows you the secret at the heart of all mystical teachings.

I want you to realise that you filter other people through your own self bias, meaning that your view of them is highly skewed and limited.

Overcoming this self bias is the first step towards healthy relationships and deep self-awareness.

There is so much confusion around the Christian cross and what it means.

In this episode, I discuss why it is really a pointer to your true self, your inner christ.

I am not a Christian, but I have deep respect for and affinity with the symbolism and pointers of Christianity.

We are ALL overthinkers, I guarantee it, so how do we work with our overthinking?

In mediation, we train ourselves to dissolve our addiction to overthinking, and we destroy its power over us.

We realise we are something much deeper, more fundamental and more peaceful than our thinking mind.

I discovered during a short stay at a local monastery that being a monastic isn't all it seems, and that it's not necessary.

In fact, being a layperson means you have endless fuel for your spiritual growth.

My Online Mindfulness course: https://deep-psychology.com/beginners-mindfulness-meditation-info/

1-1 Coaching: https://deep-psychology.com/online-mindfulness-coach/

I've found that many people believing being spiritual equates to being soft, sensitive and warm all the time.

This is a big mistake, and we can't confuse timeless spiritual wisdom with these personality traits.

Get 1-1 Online Mindfulness Coaching: https://deep-psychology.com/online-mindfulness-coach/

How to remain present, centred and happy when your to-do list is full.

This is a subtle but powerful technique that will change how you relate to busy-ness.

I find Ken Wilber’s theory on the shadow to be refreshing, modern and complete.

It far eclipses Freud’s theory, which focuses on childhood dysfunctions and tries to reduce all later dysfunction to it.

It’s also more complete than Jung’s theory, in my opinion.

It offers a complex, nuanced, yet intuitive explanation of how shadow forms throughout our lives and what we can do about it.

Accompanying article: https://deep-psychology.com/ken-wilber-shadow/

Integral Theory Condensed Ebook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CW17J29C

Today I’m sharing my view on how meditation can inform psychotherapy and take it to the next level.

This isn’t only important if you are a therapist of any kind, or a patient, but also if you’re just a growing human being.

We’ll also delve into the insight that is fundamental to any effort at personal transformation.

Today I discuss how I beat boredom forever.

We discuss the problem of boredom and how it’s getting worse.

We’ll talk about how it’s a vicious cycle that can lead you to dark places.

We’ll look at why we feel bored.

And I’ll tell you the methods I’ve used to beat boredom for good.

These can help you dramatically improve the quality of your life.

You’ll start to savour and even crave moments of low stimulation, and feel the release that comes when you go into them.

Let's talk about the Zone of Genius.

In my previous episode we spoke about the Zone of Excellence and the upsides and downsides to it. This is when we feel unfulfilled, unappreciated and uninspired in our work.

We concluded there is an greater level of work we can attain: the Zone of Genius.

Know that this is a potentially life-changing move. It can dramatically impact your work, creativity, finances and fulfilment.

Don't take it too seriously, nor too lightly. Both will block your progress.

Here's the Sasaki Roshi quote: "All your problems go back to your belief that you have a self. There is no thing called a self."

Today, we’re going to discuss the Zone of Excellence.

If you feel unfulfilled in your life, unappreciated at work, not fulfilling your potential, it may be because you’re stuck in your Zone of Excellence. You haven’t yet discovered or developed your Zone of Genius.

We’re going to help you uncover whether you’re languishing in this zone.

If you realise that you are, get excited, because we’re going to explore what comes after the ZoE and help you move into it/

Today I want to share how taking acid has changed me.

Psychedelic drugs aren’t just about seeing stuff or having a good time. If you use them with the right intention and in the right setting, they are powerful and transformative.

I share my deepest psychedelic experiences and how they've transformed my life.

Disclaimer: The information here is strictly educational. I’m not responsible or liable for any damage you cause yourself while using psychedelics. These substances can potentially be very dangerous and even lethal. If you use them, please do so carefully and responsibly.

Most people know, at least as an idea, that meditation is transformative. We’ve all heard snippets of scientific studies, most people have tried it at some point, you might have a friend who is a meditator.

But what’s not talked about are the downsides, and the students in my local classes have been bringing this particular downside up quite often. It inspired me to do an episode on it.

This isn’t just a downside. It’s not all doom and gloom! It’s actually a great strength and a sign you’re making progress. But I want you to be aware of it so you can anticipate it as your meditation journey progresses.

You only experience a finite part of objective reality, of all positive input you could receive, of all possible human experiences,

AND

your unique psychology is so powerful that it puts a particular slant or filter on everything you experience.

This in short is why we all live in our own world.

The ruthless autodidact is the person who can autonomously learn any subject or skill.

They are masters at navigating the challenging path to mastery and busting through all the mental and practical obstacles.

Trusting in persistence and the power of repetition, they lock their focus on a goal and never rest until it is achieved.

They primarily look inside for their inspiration and love learning for its intrinsic rewards.

Though they take guidance from masters and teachers, they don’t get stuck in worship, idealising or perpetual studenthood.

In researching the anima and animus, I discovered that it has caused much controversy when it comes to gender and identity. Some people have even started to doubt the validity of Jung’s theory.

Today I want to share my perspective on this controversial issue, and give an extended definition of the anima and animus to try to bypass this issue, see it from a bigger perspective, and make it a truly inclusive conversation.

I love Jung’s concept of anima and animus because it shows us our psyche is much more complex than we think, particularly when it comes to our gender and biological sex.

Let’s look at Jung’s concept of anima and animus before turning to a more nuanced definition that bypasses the problems of gender inclusivity or lack thereof.

By doing so, you’ll get a more nuanced understanding of your own psyche. We’ll finish by discussing how this nuanced definition can inform our shadow work, which I’ve been speaking about a lot recently.

Let’s talk about Tibetan Dream Yoga, one of the fundamental practices of Tibetan Buddhism, and the main techniques involved.

I’ve called this advanced lucid dreaming because if you master the techniques of Tibetan Dream Yoga you’ll be a confident lucid dreamer, capable of doing whatever you want in your dreams.

In Tibetan Buddhism the goal isn’t per se to become an awesome lucid dreamer, but I think it’s a great way to link this series on dreams, looked at from psychological view, with spirituality.

Source article: https://www.dreamyoga.com/tibetan-dream-yoga/

We’re going to talk about how to lucid dream. How do you have your first moments of lucidity? How do you stabilise them? What do you do in lucid dreams? What can you do?

Lucid dreaming is not that difficult. You just need to be consistent with the training. Don’t overcomplicate it or look for 100 resources. You have a few techniques that are tried and tested, so put them to use, and once you have your first lucid moment, you’ll know they work. 

Lucid dreaming is a skill you train, and we’re going to talk about the training you need.

99% of people, 99% of the time, dream every night and have no idea that they’re dreaming. We believe our dreams as they are happening. We think they're real.

Let’s talk about lucid dreaming, what it means, what you can do in lucid dreams, and how to use them to understand yourself.

This is another installment in my little series on dreams, so make sure to check out the previous episodes so you’re up to date.

Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/DeepPsychology

Unfortunately, we’ve been brainwashed into thinking that dreams are nothing but random neural firings, and most people never develop the capacity to decode them and exploit them to understand their own hidden inner pain and their own unrealised potential.

Our dreams are a portal into the deepest layers of our psychology and identity. No exaggeration: they enable you to map out your subconscious mind.

Support me on Patreon

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/DeepPsychology

Dreams are not random. They’re not a result of random neural firings. They don’t happen to you. They’re created by you and are a reflection of your hidden, subconscious, unexpressed desires and emotions and personality traits.

Of course, most of the time we’re not consciously creating our dreams, but when you pay more attention, and learn to start lucid dreaming, you’ll realise just why and how you are the creator of them.

Overall we have a poor appreciation of dreams and how they can help us understand our psychology and grow as people. So this is the first episode in a mini series on dreams which I hope will address this issue.

The idea that we must silence our thoughts in meditation is the biggest myth that exists.

And it’s not just a myth: it prevents you from serious engagement with meditation, it has you reinforcing all your old mental habits, and it’s extremely demotivating and discouraging. You will not progress with meditation if you believe this.

If you believe this, you’re not going to become proficient at meditation or yield all the wonderful benefits of it.

Let’s debunk this myth a little and look at a powerful technique for working productively with our thoughts.

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/DeepPsychology

Deep Psychology on Patreon

Let’s talk about how to deal with envious people.

I’ve been the target of envy for most of the life. Yet until I informed myself about this emotion, I had always been puzzled by the seemingly unprovoked hostility that friends and family showed towards me.

Now, I’m able to recognise envy, deflect it before it uncontrollably inflames, and take preventative action.

Know that you’re in the driver’s seat. Though it may not seem so, you have the power to control the situation, so long as you don’t do anything silly. It’s the envious person who is out of control.

Let’s talk about the signs of envy, particularly in those most likely to feel it: friends, family and peers.

It’s trickier to detect than most emotions. It’s not direct. There are indirect signs that a person feels envious towards you, both in the moment and as a broader trend.

Your ability able to decode the signs of envy might save you years of suffering, futile attempts to repair broken relationships, and the mental suffering brought by turning over confusing situations in your head.

Free Article with Extra Info: https://deep-psychology.com/signs-of-envy/

It’s my humble opinion that in meditation, as in any other pursuit, progress is guaranteed so long as you have the right method and are persistent with it.

Unfortunately, many people who come to me to learn meditation report not making progress with it, even people who’ve been meditating for a long time.

So let’s look at the most important points for progressing with your meditation practice.

I wanted to clear up the topic of personality masking vs social masking vs autistic masking vs common masking because it seems there’s a lot of confusion out there about this.

The main take away from this episode is that we all mask. We mask in a relatively innocent social way (I call this social masking) and in a more permanent way (personality masking). It doesn’t matter if you’re autistic or not, though autistic masking is a special category.

Today we’re going to talk about how to reintegrate your repressed anger.

In the last episode we spoke about what repressed anger is and how to spot it. Go check out that episode, then come back here to learn how to reintegrate it.

I’ve tried four methods and each of them has proved useful and helped me taste the joy and fullness that comes from reintegrating this emotion.

What are the top 3 symptoms of repressed anger?

Knowing these will help you uncover your own repressed anger and begin to heal it.

Anger is one of the most commonly suppressed emotions. It's not socially acceptable to express it, and from an early age we're taught to suppress it.

This has nefarious effects on your wellbeing and behaviour, and can even lead to depression.

Article with two extra symptoms

If you dislike your life and feel that there is a well of untapped potential in you, a life calling might be just what you need.

As I said in my last episode, having an overarching vision then making money from it is one of the keys to being fulfilled.

This isn’t an airy-fairy, idealistic talk about how life would be wonderful if we could all live our passions. It’s not an escape so that you can fantasise about your perfect life yet never do anything to create it.

In the next 20 minutes you’re going to learn a practical, big-picture roadmap and guide to finding your life calling and living it. I want you to eventually make this your full-time career. That is what finding and living your life calling means to me.

My article on life calling: https://deep-psychology.com/life-calling/

I share my five keys to being happy – the five components of my life that make me feel alive and that my life is worth living.

If you feel bored, unfulfilled or lacking verve, you might like to cultivate one or more of these areas.

Two Bonus Keys: https://deep-psychology.com/purposeful-life/

Today I’m going to talk about the deepest spiritual experience I ever had, which was the first time I took acid, and which forever destroyed my scientific dogmas about God.

I’m going to share my insights into what God really is, from a non-biblical, non-dogmatic, mystical, embodied, directly apprehended perspective.

Today I share the story of my 2nd acid trip, how it helped me unearth and reintegrate an enormous personal shadow, and the insights I gained into our repressed side.

If you’re not sure what the shadow is, I talk about it in my latest article called the symptoms of repressed anger.

And let me tell you, REALLY seeing the shadow turned my inside out, for the better, and I can never go back to my previous ignorance.

Yes, the title is right: I’m committing to doing a meditation streak, doing not 10, not 30, not 60, not 100, but 1000 consecutive days of meditation.

When I shared this with my meditation students, I think they thought I was a bit crazy.

And it does seem a bit crazy. I’ve never met anyone who has done such a long daily streak. I’m sure there are many people, but I’ve never met anyone who’s done anything like this.

So let me explain why, along with how I made it into a fundraising campaign.

Let’s talk about manifesting, debunk the BS behind it, and talk about how to really make your dreams come true.

I kinda cringe when I hear people talking about manifesting. When they do, I get the impression they’re either trying to sell me something, or have never really achieved anything in their life.

BUT behind the strange, woo-woo, pseudoscientific explanations, there is a very real, observable, reliable, repeatable track to success, to being a results maker. This is the gem that the manifestation people are desperately trying to explain with QM.

And once we’ve talked about the current manifestation movement, we’ll look at exactly how you become a results maker in detail.

Today, we talk about personality masks.

Often our most salient character traits are a facade erected to conceal who we really are behind it.

Learn to accurately judge and interpret people, stop taking things personally, create emotional distance, and get ultra-useful intel on yourself and others.

Let’s talk about the spiritual ego and how to dismantle it.

Rather than viewing the spiritual ego as a single kind of personality, I see it as a phenomenon that shows up as different characters, as subpersonalities, as mini-egos that hijack Truth to serve their own ends, thus distorting pure spiritual wisdom.

I’ve come across six types in my time, and here are my quirky names for them: the Theoriser, the Mean Monk, the Hippy, the Introspective, the Hermit, and the Prophet.

Disclaimer: All of my conclusions are merely works in progress. That said, I’ve been around enough to meet these various characters both in myself and in others.

Today we talk about six ways that modern society screws you up, and my six solutions to these issues.

On the surface these might seem quite simple, but in combination they aspects are deadly and slowly rot away our ability to be happy and lead fulfilling lives.

These tentacles reach down into all aspects of our psychology, our habits, and our view of what life is all about.

We have an extraordinary amount of luxury available to us, luxury that our parents and grandparents’ generation couldn’t imagine.

And it’s all available very quickly and for very little money.

You might think this makes you happy, but it actually slowly ruins your life.

You’re being manipulated and exploited by media and marketeers, and it’s making you miserable.

Learn how stimulation and comfort are ruining your life, and how to reprogramme yourself to free yourself from their grip.

This is a small part of my next episode, which is coming on Friday. Subscribe to be the first to see it.

Today we talk about spiritual abuse: how to see the warning signs in teachers, why it happens, and how to lead a healthy spiritual life.

This is based on my personal experiences as a teacher, meeting other teachers, and my 10-year meditation journey.

I explore persistence, failure and success, with no script. I open up and share the challenges I've faced this week, month and year so far. I hope you take away some lessons on success, failure and persistence.

Let’s discuss and practice choiceless awareness, a particular meditation state in which we give up control of our attention. This is also a meditation practice in its own right, and we’ll look at a couple of varieties of it.

Skip to 11:30 for the guided meditation!

I often see choiceless awareness talked about as a philosophy or doctrine. But to me it’s much more immediate than that. It’s a first-person meditative state. You don’t have to believe that it exists: you just need to experience it for yourself.

That said, this work is best suited to people with some experience with meditation, particularly mindfulness or vipassana-style practices. This is a delicate, nuanced art. If you’re a beginner, feel free to check out my free guided meditations on the channel.

Accompanying article with extra tips and second meditation: https://deep-psychology.com/choiceless-awareness/

Let’s talk about walking meditation, how to practice it, why we practice it, and the obstacles involved.

If you do meditation for some time, you’ll naturally begin to bring it into everyday life, and walking meditation is a powerful way to systematise this process.

In my local classes I teach it from day one to accompany our sitting work. My students discover that it’s possible to meditate whenever, wherever.

Practice it enough, and you’ll realise you can enter meditative awareness whenever you want. This is life-changing.

Accompanying article:https://deep-psychology.com/moving-meditation/

Free guided meditations: https://deep-psychology.com/category/meditation/guided-meditations/

Learn more techniques: https://deep-psychology.com/category/meditation/learn-meditation/

Limiting beliefs are disempowering views you have about yourself. You tend to strongly hold on to them, and they persistently prevent you from changing.

Holding one is like being hypnotised by yourself, by your own mind. They trip you up, paralyse you, stop you in your tracks, and you don't even realise it.

Today we talk about the 5 most common limiting beliefs and how they’re destroying your life. You’ll learn these limiting beliefs, why they’re so sneaky and pernicious, and what you can do about them.

Okay, I don’t really know if they’re destroying your life. You’ll have to analyse your situation for yourself.

But if you’ve never learned about limiting beliefs before, I can guarantee they’re having some kind of negative effect on your life and preventing you from making positive changes.

Welcome to this 5-minute sleep meditation, guided by Ross Edwards BSc DipBSoM.

I suggest you do this lying down with a pillow under your head, keeping the body symmetrical.

My accompanying post (link below) includes this free audio along with tips on how to get the most from it.

This is perfect for both beginner meditators, who can get a taste of mindfulness meditation, and for experienced meditators, who can use it to supplement their existing habit.

In this 5-minute sleep meditation, we intentionally relax the body then bring attention to the feelings of relaxation that result from it.

In this way, we begin to enter a sleep-ready state while also cultivating the essential skills of meditation.

Sleep meditation: Tips and next steps

I've been practicing meditation consistently for nearly a decade and now teach dozens of meditators every week.

What I've found is that beginners tend to come into meditation with all sorts of misconceptions.

These misconceptions are unhelpful and even damaging. They jeopardise our efforts to establish a regular practice and start seeing its power.

So here are my three best meditation tips for beginners. With these you'll avoid the typical traps and plant the seeds for a mature meditation practice from day one.

EXTRA MEDITATION TIPS FOR BEGINNERS: https://deep-psychology.com/advice-beginner-meditators/

MIND is my bespoke 10-week online mindfulness coaching programme that empowers you to bring mindfulness into your day-to-day and have it transform how you face life’s challenges, overcome your blocks, and gain greater authenticity and fulfilment.

I'm Ross Edwards BSc DipBSoM, founder, teacher and coach.

In my 10-week online coaching programme, you not only learn essential mindfulness techniques – you learn how to adapt them to your own needs for maximum personal growth. You start incorporating them into your daily life as soon as possible, meaning you get maximum leverage from your practice.

You craft your own coaching goals, get personalised guided meditations to help you reach them, and work with me to strategically improve your life using mindfulness as the main tool. You simply don’t get this level of attention in standard meditation classes or on the popular apps.

In this episode, we dive deeper into my programme and why it’s powerful.

Free guided meditation: https://deep-psychology.com/online-mindfulness-coach/

Book your free 30-minute taster: https://bit.ly/calendlyrossedwards

Jean Gebser's work on the structures of consciousness illuminates the deep emergent structures of human psychology and how they play out in culture, society, religion, science and systems of meaning across human history, back to time immemorial.

This is psychoactive philosophy. We're not analysing these structures of consciousness as separate entities far removed from them.

We're steeped in these structures of consciousness.

In fact, our psychology morphs and evolves through these structures as we grow and develop – in both an individual and collective sense. And their vestiges can be seen strewn across both our inner world, our objective world, and our planet.

Here are Jean Gebser's Five Structures of Consciousness, which he calls mutations:

1) Archaic

2) Magic

3) Mythic

4) Rational

5) Integral

Integral is being born right before our eyes. Can we step up and embody this aperspectival, multi-viewed, flowing, flexible consciousness and take the world beyond the limited Rational perspective that has dominated for the last few hundred years?

To be spiritual yet worldly and inclusive, rational yet integrative, and healthily selfless and selfish. This is our challenge as modern humans.

Ken Wilber’s Four Quadrants sound nice in the abstract, but how do we apply them in practice?

Let's discuss some of the on-the-ground applications of this theory, with a focus on our wellbeing, values, desires, and our developmental journey.

By doing so we see the power of Ken Wilber's Four Quadrants and can begin applying them to find greater balance in our lives.

Keep in mind one principle for this: four-quadrant balance is a requirement for healthy functioning.

We tend to emphasise some perspectives over others.

When we do this, we’re blind, we’re biased. We’re not seeing the full picture, the fullness and complexity of life, and we create weak explanations and weak solutions.

What if we could go beyond all this dichotomising and reductionism to a complete picture of reality? Enter The Four Quadrants.

In his Integral Theory, Ken Wilber proposes his Four Quadrants as the four fundamental perspectives on life, human beings, and the cosmos. And they play a huge role in this comprehensive perspective.

These four fundamental perspectives are visible in all human disciplines, in all phenomena.

To get an accurate picture of politics, health, science or any other real-life phenomena, we ought to look at them from these four perspectives, at least.

Let’s talk about the Pygmalion Effect and the self-fulfilling prophecy.

The beauty of these concepts is that they reveal the power of thought, belief and emotion. We’re creators, and our primary medium is our imagination.

And though we tend to abuse this power and create like drunkards, it’s possible to retrain ourselves to get our mind working in our favour.

We look at common examples of this effect, like in the learning process, contemplate why it’s true, and discuss the keys to getting it to work for you.

Often we see personal development as a sea of people disagreeing and giving advice that seems to be completely disconnected or even contradictory.

But it doesn't have to be that way! I show you that all of personal development is really arranged in a series of layers that address different levels of our wellbeing.

These are not so much stepping stones as repeating themes, each of which builds on the last. At any given time, we tend to focus our efforts to improve ourselves and our lives on one of these levels.

Today we’ll look at four such levels and how to use this framework to help you self-transform.

The 8 stages of human development in career. What are they? And how do we embody the highest ones, transforming ourselves and our career lives to the benefit of all?

– What Are The Stages of Human Development?

Levels of complexity, a series of operating systems, each including the prior one but improving on it in crucial ways.

– What Do They Mean For Our Career?

The higher the levels we embody in our career, the more selfless we are, and the greater the impact our work has on the world.

– What Can We Do To Advance?

Integrate earlier levels, encourage later ones to take root, scrutinise career and ask how we can make it more expansive and loving.

The 8 Stages of Development in Career:

Basic Survival; Power & Dominance; Deference; Achievement; Sensitivity; Integral; Benevolence

Let’s talk about a powerful concept that I’ve discovered after years of working hard on my personal growth and mastering different subjects, from maths to languages to meditation to writing.

This is my Law of Proportional Reward, and it applies to all areas of personal growth, whether it’s career, relationships, finances, spirituality, or indeed learning.

It even explains our levels of fulfilment and zest for life. We tend to think that a comfortable, easy life is what we want. This law turns that idea on its head.

I’ve had this concept built into my psychology for a long time, but only recently have I realised that it drives many of my positive personal growth habits and explains my negative ones.

If you want to experience positive gains in any area of life, you simply need to know – nay, live and breathe – my Law of Proportional Reward.

Want to be a prolific learner? Join the GU Members Area to access premium online personal development courses, including Master How to Learn.

If you’re struggling to get things done in life, you spend money on a whim, binge eat, binge drink and are always looking for that next high, check out this video.

You cannot flourish in life without self-control.

Here I share the secrets of SELF-CONTROL and the crucial role it plays in your self-transformation. I'm going to help you overcome those dog-like desires for good.

In this video you'll learn:

– what self-control is:

– what self-control is not! (hint: it is not Puritanism)

– the scientific basis for it

– the pernicious effects a lack of it has on your life (scary)

– 5 strategies for developing crazy-high levels of self-control.

I’ve experienced self-control as a snowball effect. The more bad habits I eliminate and the more I delay gratification, the easier it is for me to do so.

Learn about the sneaky snares of Spiral Dynamics that blindside most people. Yes, believe it or not, Spiral Dynamics can TRAP you and make you slide backwards in your self-transformation journey.

I want to show you the traps you may be falling into as you learn and apply Spiral Dynamics. Learn very practical solutions for these pernicious problems so that learning this framework helps you rather than hinders you.

00:00 Introduction

01:16 Trap 1: Judging Others

06:32 Solution to Trap 1

08:46 Trap 2: Seeing Levels As Disjoint

12:40 Trap 3: Bypassing Earlier Levels

15:45 Trap 4: Oversimplifying People & World

20:57 Trap 5: Thinking You're Higher Than You Are

26:40 Wrap-up

Learn more about the early levels:

The wonderful thing about Integral Consciousness (stages Teal and Turquoise in Integral Theory) is that we realise we are continually evolving individuals in a continually evolving world.

As such, we can consciously participate in our own growth. We make conscious the unconscious process of stage development as it unfolds decade to decade, year to year, week to week, and moment to moment.

From this perspective, Integral Consciousness is not an end, but a means, a practice. And the four practices we look at today will assist you in your own consciousness project. Over time, these practices for embodying Integral Theory will positively alter your modus operandi.

Practice 1: See The Necessity of All Stages

Practice 2: See The Spectrum of Stages in Yourself

Practice 3: Zoom Out on Life

Practice 4: Love Thy Neighbour

Every society unwittingly programmes newborns with ideas, beliefs, values and norms, to the extent that we can get an idea of a person’s personality just based on their nationality.

What ideas are we programmed with as 21st-century westerners living in modern society? What are the most limiting ideas we have?

How does this jeopardise our self-transformation efforts?

In this video we'll explore all these questions, and you learn 5 sustainable, long-term strategies for undoing all your unhealthy programming.

Live a more authentic life based on your real choices and desires, not those you absorb from your society.

Have you ever heard the terms “natural ability” or “God-given talent”? Have you ever been told you're inherently incapable and should give up trying? Have you ever told this to yourself?

The talent obsession abounds in education, media and our mind. Not only is it hogwash, it seriously jeopardises our learning.

The idea that ability for a certain sport or pursuit is inbuilt and determines our chances of success is one of the biggest holes in the conventional wisdom on learning.

But it’s not only that. If you believe this is true, you will never be able to get good. It’s an extraordinarily disempowering belief.

Let's bust the talent myth and start creating the mentality we need to get great.

Let's learn about magical thinking, carefully tease it apart from deep psychological insight, and discuss how to healthily integrate it.

Know that we all pass through a Magical period in our early childhood, the Magic stage of development, and come out the other end at age 4 or 5.

From then, all the way through adult life, our relationship to magical thinking can go one of two ways: we become completely allergic to it and be unable to consciously integrate any of it, or we remain addicted to it.

In spiritual communities and personal-development circles, I often see an addiction to magic and a basic inability to really understand what magical thinking is and why it's fundamentally flawed in very mundane ways.

Our goal as growing people is to skillfully integrate magical thinking into our psyche, and that's our goal in this episode.

The result? Re-enchantment of our world, a connection to mystery and wonder, and a new psychological empowerment. Enjoy.

A crucial part of learning how to learn is becoming acutely aware of the obstacles that block our path to excellence.

Here we look at three dysfunctional characters – the Dabbler, the Hack, and the Obsessive. These are the three learner profiles you want to avoid. Together they’ll give you a spookily accurate assessment of how you prevent yourself reaching true competence and expertise.

And in my article "Learning How To Learn + Skill Up: The Four Learner Types", we expand on these three learner types and look at the gold-standard learner: The Master. This character avoids all the learning pitfalls and ultimately prevails.

You can use the exemplary archetype as a template for improvement in any area of your life, from your relationships, hobbies and career, to your overall approach to life.

The connection between mindfulness meditation and life purpose might not be apparent, but when it comes to aligning our career with our authentic passions and desires, we need the tools of mindfulness both to get started and see us through the process.

I teamed up with Grace for a chat on Instagram Live.

Grace and I discussed our career journeys, how to become more aware of what’s going on in our emotions and thoughts, and how to use this knowledge to find a career we love.

Connect with Grace on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/grace.being/

I've had some pretty traumatic moments as a member of various spiritual communities, and it's inspired me to share my experiences and expose the dark side of spiritual communities.

I hope to shine a light on these issues so that we can clean up spiritual communities. Budding meditators or yogis can spot these toxic aspects in advance, the perpetrators can realise what they've done wrong and grow as a result, and all of us can reflect on what spirituality actually is and why communities function as they do.

Often we talk about Spiral Dynamics from an external point of view, as though observing it in the world and those around us. But here I want to turn the tables – how are our personal lives actually impacted by living at Spiral Dynamics Stage Yellow?

I reached out to experts in the field and Spiral Dynamics enthusiasts to tell me their stories, and they shared some excellent insights with me.

In this video, we’re going to unpack Spiral Dynamics Stage Yellow – from the inside.

Today we’re going to look at the good and the bad of Spiral Dynamics Stage Green in our personal lives.

This is a super practical video packed with insights from my own life, my engagement with the Spiral Dynamics community, and my observations of the successes and failures of friends at this stage.

My intention is to help you skillfully embody Stage Green – incorporating the healthy and constructive and sidestepping the unhealthy and destructive.

"All of this is God."

In this episode I speak with my partner and best friend, Inés Isern, about spirituality, God, spiritual awakening, and her amazing sacred gardens.

And yes, we talk candidly about our experiences of spirituality, how it has developed, and how it currently impacts our life.

Inés tells us what inspires her to create her unique spaces and how she makes the spiritual manifest in her work.

Let’s look have a comprehensive look at James Fowler’s 7 Stages of Faith Development, which describe how we satisfy our basic need for meaning in ever more elaborate ways as we grow and mature.

Learning what James Fowler about the stages of faith discovered can seriously alter how you view yourself, others and human culture.

One of James Fowler’s greatest contributions was to show us that faith is not necessarily religious. In the broadest sense, it is the guiding set of ideas, values and beliefs that drives our lives.

James Fowler was also adamant that faith is a process, one which unfolds through seven potential stages.

If you want to master skills and reach high levels in your pursuits, you'd do very well to apply the 10,000-hour rule ASAP.

What is the 10,000-hour rule? How can we use it to master skills and get really damn good? And what are some the common pitfalls involved with this way of looking at excellence?

We cover all these questions in this episode.

It's time to debunk these four damaging meditation myths once and for all.

These aren't just cute little cultural myths that have no real impact on meditators – they will stop you dead in your tracks as you attempt to build a daily meditation practice.

In fact, they will prevent you reaching deep territory with this practice, leaving you stuck and frustrated, believing that you simply aren't up to it.

Let's bust these four meditation myths.

A crucial part of learning how to learn is becoming acutely aware of the obstacles that block our path to excellence.

Here we look at the Beginner's Hump – the early period in the learning journey when we feel clumsy and incompetent. Our new pursuit seems impossible, and we wonder how we'll ever get there.

Know that this is temporary. You will get through it, and we'll look at some tried-and-tested strategies for navigating this challenging period.

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This episode comes from Module 3 of my popular course Master How to Learn.

In this video, we’re going to look at practical habits for maintaining a healthy mind and cover incredible insights into how the mind works. In watching this, you’re becoming a student of your own mind!

These cover some of the best tips you’ll find out there from the best teachers. AND I have a tonne of case studies. I reached to folks on social media and they shared their wonderful stories of their own transformation. I’ll be sharing their stories with you!

You might think this episode is a little long, but we're taught almost none of this. There’s a lot to cover, and it usually takes a bout of suffering before we discover this stuff. Prevent that ahead of time and start living more fully right away.

If you're a newbie meditator, this breathing meditation is a great practice.

That said, this technique works wherever you are in the journey, and it has endless depth for advanced meditators.

Before you do the meditation:

– Setup: It's best you find a quiet spot so you can hear the instructions and fully focus on the exercise.

– Mouth Position: keep the mouth relaxed, with the lips gently touching. Release all tension in your lips.

– Posture: sit or kneel in a position that you can hold for 20 minutes and that enables you to keep your back straight.

Learn more:

What is the ego? Is it real or illusory? If it is illusory, how does it perpetuate itself?

We'll explore these questions and more as I take you on a whirlwind tour of your ego's biggest self-deception mechanisms. These make you inauthentic, obnoxious and forever unfulfilled.

We also cover very practical solutions you can begin to implement right now to free yourself from the ego's seductive grip, along with big-picture insights into why the ego exists and how we can functionally live it out.

Spiral Dynamics is a simple but powerful theory describing how human beings evolve through eight major stages, both historically, individually, and collectively.

Learning this theory has permanently changed how I view and treat myself, others, and the world at large.

What really is Spiral Dynamics? What levels of human development does it propose? How do we skillfully apply it to our lives?

We look at the eight stages of Spiral Dynamics, how they appear in the real world, and how to integrate them skillfully into our lives.

Read full article on Spiral Dynamics

My library of free Spiral Dynamics content

This is an introduction to the AQAL framework from Ken Wilber's Integral Theory in the context of self-transformation. We cover the four quadrants, lines, levels, states and types, along with how my work fits into this model.

This is the most holistic model of reality and human psychology I know of. Learn the pillars of Wilber's AQAL framework from Integral Theory and how you can use it to boost your self-improvement efforts.

Intro to AQAL Model

The Four Quadrants

Let’s talk about the subjective benefits of vipassana meditation.

What I mean is the kind of benefits we can see in our lives, rather than the neurological benefits, although they are really two sides of the same coin.

I’ve also met dozens of people who say that meditation has transformed their lives. And there is mounting gold-standard scientific evidence that confirms their reports.

After ten years of practicing vipassana and other kinds, I too have experienced dramatic shifts through committed meditation practice, and I share them in this episode.

Read more about the benefits of meditation

My mindfulness meditation classes in Chichester, West Sussex

Could the conservative side of you be preventing you from taking action? Do you believe that growth is possible or that you’re bound to be a certain way forever? In this article, we’ll unpack a crucial concept for self-mastery: that of the growth mindset and fixed mindset.

These two mentalities are archetypes guiding how we view ourselves and our abilities. Knowledge of them will help you identify when you’re shooting yourself in the foot and enable you to make empowering changes.