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.

Pourquoi ça marche

The central claim of the Wilber–Combs matrix, as O’Fallon (2020) summarizes it, is that any state can arise at any stage, but it will be interpreted through the lens of the stage in which it arises. The same open, boundless moment can be told as proof that your group’s faith is true, as a personal achievement, as a sign that everyone is connected, or as a shift in perspective. Writing the raw experience and the story apart makes visible how much of the meaning you supplied.

Comment faire

1. Pick one experience that mattered to you — a meditative opening, a moment in nature, a flow state, a sudden insight.
2. In one column, write only what you noticed: sensations, what happened to your sense of time, space, or self, what you saw or heard.
3. In a second column, write what you concluded it meant and what you told other people about it.
4. For each line in the second column, ask: did the experience itself say this, or did I?
5. Ask how someone with very different beliefs would describe the first column.

Données probantes

O’Fallon (2020) describes the Wilber–Combs matrix as placing states horizontally and stages vertically, so that the great states are available at all stages and are interpreted through the developmental level at which they arise. She attributes separate versions of the model to Wilber (2006) and Combs (2002). The two-column exercise is an application of that idea, not a tested intervention. (mechanistic)

The matrix is an orienting theory, not an empirical finding, and the boundary between "what I experienced" and "what I made of it" is never perfectly clean.

Sources

• O’Fallon, T. (2020). States and STAGES: Waking up Developmentally. Integral Review, 16(1).
• Wilber, K. (2006). Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World. Integral Books.
• Combs, A. (2002). The Radiance of Being: Understanding the Grand Integral Vision; Living the Integral Life (Rev. ed.). Paragon House.

Erreur fréquente

Deciding the experience was "only" interpretation and therefore meaningless. The point is to hold the experience and the story separately, not to throw either one away.