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.
Why it works
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.
How to do it
- Pick one experience that mattered to you — a meditative opening, a moment in nature, a flow state, a sudden insight.
- In one column, write only what you noticed: sensations, what happened to your sense of time, space, or self, what you saw or heard.
- In a second column, write what you concluded it meant and what you told other people about it.
- For each line in the second column, ask: did the experience itself say this, or did I?
- Ask how someone with very different beliefs would describe the first column.
Evidence
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.
Common mistake
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.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Related concepts
- 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
- Non-Dual Awareness, Made Practical
Effortless mindfulness and the recognition of open, aware presence
- Kegan’s Subject-Object Theory, Made Practical
Moving from being run by your assumptions to being able to examine them
- Open Monitoring Meditation, Made Practical
Choiceless awareness, open presence, and the science of receptive attention
- Peak Experiences and Self-Actualization
Maslow’s moments of aliveness — and how to make them more frequent
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