Shine a new capacity on the old confusion

Use whatever you can newly do — reflect on your thinking, notice context — to look straight at the confusion instead of around it.

Pourquoi ça marche

O’Fallon’s third tenet is that a confusion resolves when the "view capacity" of a newly available state is turned toward it. A capacity like metacognition (thinking about your own thinking) first shows up intermittently; aiming it at the specific confusion is what stabilizes it into a lasting way of seeing. The practice deliberately pairs the capacity with the confusion instead of using the capacity on easier material.

Comment faire

1. Name the capacity that has started to show up for you — for example, noticing your own thinking as it happens, or seeing the context around a disagreement.
2. Name the confusion you identified earlier.
3. The next time the confusion fires, pause and apply the capacity directly: "What am I thinking right now about this goal, and is it the goal or my picture of it?"
4. Write two lines afterward: what you saw, and what you still could not see.

Données probantes

This is the third of four tenets O’Fallon (2020) proposes for how passing states and lasting stages drive each other. The paper presents it as preliminary theory supported by qualitative and longitudinal observation in the STAGES database, not as a tested intervention. (mechanistic)

No controlled study tests whether deliberately pairing a capacity with a confusion speeds development. The mechanism is the model’s proposal.

Sources

• O’Fallon, T. (2020). States and STAGES: Waking up Developmentally. Integral Review, 16(1).

Erreur fréquente

Using the new capacity everywhere except on the confusion. Reflecting brilliantly on other people’s patterns is the most common way to avoid your own.