Notice when a way of seeing has run its course
List the explanations that used to work and now give less, and look for the questions they have stopped answering.
Why it works
Gidley, summarising Gebser, says exhaustion of a consciousness structure shows itself as an emptying of values, with efficient qualitative values giving way to deficient quantitative ones (Gidley 2007, p. 67). Gebser also writes that becoming aware of the exhausted residues of past or passing forms of understanding makes the signs of the coming new easier to recognise (scan p. 3). In this practice you look for those residues in your own explanations: one you keep repeating with less conviction marks where the next question is forming. This is Gebser’s historical account; no study has tested it in individuals.
How to do it
- Write down three explanations you rely on for how work or relationships function.
- For each, note the last time it clearly explained something that happened, and what it has failed to explain since.
- Mark the one you repeat most often while feeling least sure of it.
- Write one question that this explanation cannot answer, and keep it for a week without forcing an answer.
Evidence
Gidley’s summary of exhaustion as an emptying of values (p. 67), and Gebser’s passage on the exhausted residues of earlier forms (scan p. 3). Using these to read one’s own explanations is this page’s practical reading. (anecdotal)
Gidley notes the vocabulary of deficiency is somewhat problematic (pp. 67–68). A low mood or a hard season is not an exhausted explanation; the practice only applies to explanations that keep being repeated after they stop doing their work.
Sources
- Gidley, J. (2007). The evolution of consciousness as a planetary imperative: An integration of integral views. Integral Review, 5, 4–226.
- Gebser, J. (1985). The Ever-Present Origin (N. Barstad & A. Mickunas, Trans.). Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.
Common mistake
Treating any discomfort or boredom as proof that a structure is ending. Only an explanation that keeps being repeated after it has stopped doing its work is the kind of residue this practice looks for.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Jean Gebser’s Structures of Consciousness
- Tell a strength from its deficient form
Take one capacity you rely on most and check whether it still serves you or has hardened into the only way you will act.
- Name the older ways of knowing you still carry
Find the ritual, loyalty or belief-in-cause-and-effect that still shapes a reaction, and say what it holds together before you judge it.
- Let an older view inform the newer one
When a new insight seems to dismiss a gut feeling or a tradition, ask what the older view protects before deciding which one wins.
- Notice clock time against lived time
Pick one activity and compare how long it took on the clock with how long it felt, to see how much of your day is only measured.
- Hold your view without needing it to be the only one
State a view you care about, then write what it sees clearly and what it cannot see, without giving the view up.
- Bring a belief back to its origin in the present
Trace a belief you hold to where it first formed, then hold that origin as present rather than as a finished memory.
Related concepts
- 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
- States vs Stages of Consciousness: Wilber, Combs and O’Fallon
Why a powerful experience and a lasting change are different things, and how each one grows
- Spiral Dynamics, Made Practical
Understanding how value systems develop and how to navigate across them
- 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
- Integral Methodological Pluralism: The Eight Zones of Inquiry
Eight angles on one question, how to sweep a problem through them, and where the framework is contested
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