Run two tracks: state training and stage work
Pair regular state practice with deliberate work on how you make meaning, because O’Fallon proposes the first is necessary but not sufficient for the second.
Pourquoi ça marche
O’Fallon’s first tenet is that a state is necessary but not sufficient to move from one stage to the next; her third is that the new state’s view has to be turned onto a specific confusion before it stabilizes into a stage. Read practically, calm or awareness from practice is raw material, and stage change asks for that capacity to be aimed at the places you habitually see narrowly. Running both tracks on purpose keeps one from being mistaken for the other.
Comment faire
- Track one: keep a regular state practice — meditation, prayer, time in nature — without asking it to fix everything.
- Track two: once a week, name one situation where you saw things narrowly, such as a conflict where only one side seemed reasonable.
- Bring the capacity your practice builds, such as noticing your own reaction, to that exact situation the next time it comes up.
- Afterwards, write what you could see this time that you could not see before, and what you still could not.
Données probantes
The "necessary but not sufficient" tenet and the step of turning a state’s view onto a confusion come from O’Fallon (2020), who presents them as a preliminary theory supported by longitudinal, word-frequency and qualitative studies in the STAGES database. She describes the research as triangulation that does not verify the theory. The two-track routine is an application, not a tested program. (mechanistic)
No controlled study has tested whether combining state practice with deliberate stage work speeds development. Treat it as a reasonable design, not an established method.
Sources
Erreur fréquente
Letting the calm from practice substitute for the harder work. Feeling peaceful about a conflict is not the same as seeing the other side of it.
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Plus de pratiques pour States vs Stages of Consciousness: Wilber, Combs and O’Fallon
- Ask of any shift: is this a state or a stage?
Test a change you have noticed in yourself against the difference between something that comes and goes and something that holds on an ordinary day.
- Notice the story you told about the experience
Separate what you actually experienced from the meaning you gave it, because the meaning comes from the stage you interpreted it through.
- Compare how different people describe the same kind of state
Read or listen to several descriptions of a similar experience and notice how the vocabulary changes with the person’s way of seeing.
- Train the state regularly and look for the trait
Practice consistently, and judge it by what changes between sessions rather than by how good the sessions feel.
- Integrate an experience by tracking the weeks after it
Choose one ordinary situation and watch how you behave in it for several weeks after a strong experience or a period of practice.
- Don’t use states as proof of development
Keep the depth of anyone’s experiences — including your own — separate from judgments about how mature they are.
Concepts associés
- Terri O’Fallon’s STAGES Model, Made Practical
Twelve stages built from three repeating questions, and how to work with the one you are in
- Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory (AQAL), Made Practical
Five elements for catching what your view of a situation leaves out, held as a map rather than a truth
- La conscience non duelle, en pratique
La pleine conscience sans effort et la reconnaissance de la présence ouverte et consciente
- La théorie sujet-objet de Kegan, en pratique
Passer d'être mené par ses présupposés à pouvoir les examiner
- La méditation d'observation ouverte, rendue pratique
Conscience sans choix, présence ouverte, et la science de l'attention réceptive
- Expériences sommitales et accomplissement de soi
Les moments de plénitude de Maslow — et comment les rendre plus fréquents