Tell a passing state from a lasting stage
After a powerful experience, separate what you glimpsed in a state from how you actually make sense of things day to day.
Why it works
Integral theory distinguishes states, which are temporary (moods, flow, a meditative opening, a peak experience), from stages, which are relatively stable ways of making meaning. In Integral Spirituality Wilber argues that people interpret even profound states through the stage they are at. Keeping the two apart prevents a common error: treating a striking experience as proof that you have permanently changed, or dismissing it because ordinary life has not.
How to do it
- Recall a recent experience that felt unusually clear, expansive or peaceful.
- Write what you saw or felt during it, as plainly as you can.
- Write how you handled a hard conversation or setback in the week after it.
- Compare the two. Note which parts of the experience show up in ordinary behaviour, and which have not yet.
- Choose one small, repeated situation in which to practise bringing the first into the second.
Evidence
Esbjörn-Hargens’s overview describes states as temporary (seconds to months) and distinguishes trained "state-stages" from the "structure-stages" of psychological development. Wilber develops the distinction in Integral Spirituality (2006), where states and stages are mapped on separate axes (often called the Wilber–Combs lattice), and in his 2003 outline of integral psychology. The distinction is theoretical; it has not been tested as a practice. (mechanistic)
Wilber’s account of how states and stages relate changed over his career, and commentators disagree about it. Use the distinction as a question to ask, not a settled fact about consciousness.
Sources
- Esbjörn-Hargens, S. (2010). An Overview of Integral Theory: An All-Inclusive Framework for the Twenty-First Century. In S. Esbjörn-Hargens (Ed.), Integral Theory in Action: Applied, Theoretical, and Constructive Perspectives on the AQAL Model. SUNY Press. (First circulated as Integral Institute Resource Paper No. 1, 2009.)
- Wilber, K. (2006). Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World. Integral Books.
- Wilber, K. (2003). Waves, streams, states, and self: An outline of an integral psychology. The Humanistic Psychologist, 31(2–3), 22–49.
Common mistake
Concluding that a powerful experience "didn’t count" because life still feels ordinary. States are real; the point is that turning them into a lasting way of seeing usually takes repetition.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory (AQAL), Made Practical
- Run a five-element check-in on one real situation
Take a situation you are stuck on and ask one question for each AQAL element to find the piece you have been leaving out.
- Check whether you are flattening an inside into an outside
Notice when you explain something felt or shared only by its measurable correlates — or the reverse — and put the missing side back.
- Ask how you know it: first, second or third person
Sort what you believe about a situation by how you came to know it — your own experience, talking with others, or outside observation.
- Find what each side gets right before deciding
When two views clash, write down the part of each that is true before arguing for either one.
- Sketch where your development is uneven
Draw a rough bar chart of your capacities — thinking, feeling, relating, moral judgment, body — to see where you are strong and where you lag.
- Separate a difference in style from a difference in maturity
When someone does things differently, ask whether it is a type — a stable style — before treating it as less developed.
- Read the critics and hold the model lightly
Before you rely on AQAL, read a serious critique of it, so the map stays a tool rather than a belief.
Related concepts
- Spiral Dynamics, Made Practical
Understanding how value systems develop and how to navigate across them
- Kegan’s Subject-Object Theory, Made Practical
Moving from being run by your assumptions to being able to examine 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
- Shadow Work
Meeting the parts of yourself you have been ignoring
- The Enneagram
Using type as a lens, not a label
- The Big Five Personality Model
What the best-validated personality science actually tells you about yourself
Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0: cite or embed this practice · more practices graded Plausible mechanism