Very interesting! I was working on a somewhat similar philosophy that I use in my life that I just called 'Conscious Living' which treated the vessel i.e. mind & body. It revolves around the idea that your consciousness is your most valuable asset, and your vessel is the sacred temple that houses it.
I am constantly asking my self when making decisions “How does this choice affect my vessel optimization, consciousness expansion, and longevity?"
Everything I do in my life revolves around the idea that every choice becomes an act of stewardship- honoring the vessel that enables my consciousness to operate at its highest capacity for as long as possible.
I feel like the system of life that you presented supports this kind of philosophy. I'm excited to read more about it!
I really wanted call this cringe, but it actually resonates on many levels, really distils the predicament that so many young people are in nowadays... whilst also showing a way out.
Garry, if I interpret your response to Joseph correctly, all I can say is very often, the Things, Ideas, or Processes initially looking Crazy very often turn out to be an Irrefutable Eternal Truth! Joseph might have been caught in that paradox.
Ah, a student of Leo Guru's spiral dynamics gone on to create his own model. Very interesting.
I use the Kriya Yoga system of clearing the five energy bodies (physical, etheric, emotional, mental, spiritual) and 12 chakras simultaneously. Similar effect, different model.
You can work on all levels slowly, together, for holistic balance. You're only as strong as your weakest point, after all, and it shows up during time of stress.
The dividing of self actualization into thirds, quarters, and twelves is more important than the actual labels and models themselves. Because regardless of how you cut it up or where you start, you can triangulate effectively from there (depending on individual skill/awareness).
I refer to Human 3.0 as Homo Galacticus. A new human free from lower chakra survival (time-space-limitation) concerns.
It might be worth using more general language on the spiritual path as the terms used are heavily loaded. Rather than Religion, Atheist, Mysticism it could be Unconsidered, Cage Stage, Transcendent.
There are Atheists who are that way without thinking. They just accepted from their family, culture, teachers. (It's the official doctrine of China for example).
Regardless of the path, the second stage tends to have...hostile tendencies that need to be "caged". A former atheist now dunks on non-religious people. A former Christian now dunks on Christians. They have dropped the belief but are still enslaved to it ironically by their own animosity.
The final stage is an integration of sorts. They hold their belief and aren't upset by others believing differently and can even listen to other beliefs to see if there is something to learn.
This is really well thought out, thank you for posting.
Question: I feel the dissonance but whenever I try to go on the quest and build my skills and experience I’m never “obsessed”. I find myself halfheartedly applying myself instead of fully committing.
The desire to build skills and knowledge must be married/connected with "meaning" - the spirit quadrant. Thats what energises your being NESS in the world. If getting healthy was with say for example connected with getting pregnant then you would easily motivate yourself to get healthy because you had deep desire for motherhood (meaning) . Acquisition of skills and knowledge happen easily when you are working in your own business because its connected with a deep desire and goals to build your business etc.
Tvisha, I think what Garry is saying (please correct me if I am wrong, Garry!) is you probably have not yet found out what really "Turns You On" in Life. Or if you have, you've not found The Path to it or in it that really and truly excites you. Frankly, for some people, uncovering all that is the hardest part. For some people, it is buried deep inside under a bunch of different barriers or misdirections. But once you do, everything, though not always simple and/or easy, becomes much more energized & motivating toward progress. So maybe right now, you need to become "obsessed" with digging deep into yourself and discovering what that is, or what you can "create out of nothing."
Love the NPC – Player – Creator arc you laid out. I myself, I've been sick of refusing the calls and being the NPC in my own life for a while.
The real challenge now: how do we get people to not just consume: read a blog or watch a video; but to actually step outside, explore, play, build, mess up, fail, and grow? To activate people not just mentally, but also make them move physically. For them to get sick of being the NPC in their story too.
Ive seen flash mobs of people dancing to a song in a street. Ive seen protest marches etc. People are getting out and doing things. Do you mean how to get everyone in an entrepreneurial mindset building businesses? Or to get people in soical activism?
Hi Gary, thanks for the reply! Well, for instance, I work at an airport where many ppl are complaining about all the things they wanted to do in life, but never did. Like learn to play an instrument, learn a different language, travel the world, etc. They keep telling themselves 'maybe someday', but then that day never comes. I know what it's like to build up a lot of those maybe somedays (the refusal of the call in terms of hero's journey), and the 'negative energy' it builds up. So I myself turned that around and nowadays say 'F YES!!!' a lot. It 'hurts' me to see these ppl stay stuck in unfulfilling lives, so I made a game out of that: The Mission Game. It's a deck of cards with activities for ppl to actually do, to give their life a new twist. Actually the flashmob dance is in there as one of the missions, and the protest more or less as well. So yeah: many people doing plenty amazing things in life, but also still many ppl living on autopilot / NPC mode.
Luke, you might find the work of Ken Wilber interesting. He is considered by many to be the Leading Transhumanist Philosopher in psychology & spirituality today. (By "transhumanist," I do NOT mean the more recent interpretation of that word, which to me is actually anti-human.) Wilber 1.0 started at 23 years old with the writing of *The Spectrum Of Consciousness* in 1973 [published in 1977] and then *No Boundary* soon after. It was all considered to be ground-breaking work.)
The AQAL framework Dan is building on here is from Wilber 3.0 and his more complete Integral Theory. I use Wilber, Alfred Korzybski, Krishnamurti / Joel Kramer (the Yoga Guy), Ayn Rand as among the main influences on my philosophical foundations.
this is incredible. You are putting into words the journey I'm on. I feel completely aligned with every word your newsletters have been giving. Its exciting to have this journey reflected back to you in a comprehensive manner. Cant wait to keep downloading this.
Hey Natalia! I think Dan is referring to the best 1% of people in the world. He's saying the collective best. Logically, if people are different, there must be people who are better than others. So if you organize every person into a list, there will be a group of people who are at the top 1%. This is a map to become one of those people. Hope this helps :)
hey Luke, i can't tell if you wrote this tongue in cheek (if yes I applaud you haha) but in case it was sincere... what do you mean by a person being better than another? (I'm genuinely curious). However you choose to do this, it is ultimately arbitrary - someone else may use different rules entirely to rank people. That means there is absolutely nothing universal about the concept of "better" - it is just a property of the mental model that you as an individual use to interpret the world. At levels 3+ this is fully recognised and integrated into one's way of being in the world (at least in the integral theory models that Dan's model is based upon) so I found it quite amusing that Dan used the concept of "becoming top 1%" to motivate people towards Human 3.0. Perhaps he is being brilliantly ironic
This was sincere. Better depends on the attribute. There is logically someone who is the best cook in the world. It is up to you to decide what you think the best is. I agree, he probably is.
But one glaring hole I think is occurring in your model is the downplaying of the interpersonal quadrant.
Conflating it with spirituality and ecology is narrowing the potentiality of the intersubjective space.
As we are fast-tracking into a teal level collective now, we are going to see both an increase in hyper-independence and also a massive and overwhelming increase in complexity.
Beige 2.0, right.
Surviving in a overwhelming world.
Bot now rather than biology providing the that overwhelm, it's technology.
What comes next... Turquoise.
Magenta 2.0
Tribe 2.0
The only solution to the complexity of the world will be to band together with other humans in a more tightly interdependent way than ever before.
This will be the next layer of thriving, and requires increasing focus on the potentiality of the intersubjective space..
It's interesting that personal development is such a huge industry now.
But interpersonal development is hardly regarded at all... I mean relationships aren't even a category on pretty much every platform.
That's crazy considering how central they are to human existence.
Have you ever explored Circling? Authentic Relating? T-Group? Or any other intersubjective practices?
There is much jedi-level possibility there as you can imagine exists in your own body or mind.
Careful not to downgrade the interpersonal and lump it in with the spiritual.... it's a wildly different category and has an entirely different set of rules, practices and skillsets necessary to develop.
Anyways I have the Integral model embedded underneath my relational work (yes I talk about this in my own work)... but don't explicitly talk about it as much as I'd like (yet).
Damien, I did not get that impression from Dan's Human 3.0 Chart. For the Lower Left Quadrant, he stated: "Your Relationship to your environment, community, culture, family, friends, colleagues, and reality. Meaning & Connection." That seems pretty inclusive to me. He might not have fleshed it out much in his article about the chart, but he packed a lot in there, and if he covered everything in depth, it would have been REALLY long.
And, while I agree More Complete Cooperation between Free Individuals is getting far more complicated and necessary these days, too many humans are far too prone to suppress their individual self-identity for the sake of a collective. Yet we cannot risk a return to collectiv-ISM because that works against true, healthy, productive, Collective Wisdom & Action. There are far too many highly charismatic people out there (very often narcissists, sociopaths, or psychopaths) who search for a parade somewhere, then they run around to the front of the parade and pretend they started it, then try to become the Leader with Followers. What we need is more Wise Individuals who understand the Value of Collective Consideration & Action without being sucked into Collectiv-IST Thinking.
By the way, I say one of the characteristics of collectiv-ISM is that individuals who do not agree or cooperate with the collective will be sacrificed in some way, isolating or punishing, and in some cases by outright killing, those who significantly disagree with and rebel against the collective.
In my view, today in general, we still have FAR too much collectiv-IST thinking (often leading to passivity or extreme reactivity such as described as "Shadow-driven behavior" by Carl Jung in his earlier years), and not enough true individualist thinking & action. But by individualist, I do NOT mean "isolationist."
I love your work Dan, and respect your acknowledgement of Ken Wilbur. I look forward to participating and hopefully contributing. How does this significantly differ from Wilbur's work? One suggestion perhaps, is to provide actionable steps for those struggling with the basics of the economic dimensions? Thanks for all you do!
Pretty much all my current suffering can be distilled to this passage:
“Individuals can also regress to a lower level during a temporary period of stress or when a problem outside their current level comes into their life. This explains why you may look back to a time where "things felt better" and you yearn to bring that sensation back to the present.”
Congratulations on this guide/model. It’s powerful. I believe you live it yourself; otherwise, you couldn’t have become who you are.
What struck me is how much real life gets in the way of growth. In my interviews, people often discuss being knocked down, doubting themselves, and still finding a way forward.
Reading this made me think of them, because the stages you describe are what I hear people go through in their own messy, human way... don´t we all at some point?
Paul Chek's Spirit Gym would help you develop this model to whole new level.
Sounds right up my alley, will check it out, thank you sir🙏
Ohhh, shit. Dan's gonna go down the Paul Chek rabbit hole 🙌
He is the GOAT and I've often wondered if you've heard of him... He has been a big part of my journey in the last decade.
Love this whole thing. Can’t wait to see what you unpack next
Very interesting! I was working on a somewhat similar philosophy that I use in my life that I just called 'Conscious Living' which treated the vessel i.e. mind & body. It revolves around the idea that your consciousness is your most valuable asset, and your vessel is the sacred temple that houses it.
I am constantly asking my self when making decisions “How does this choice affect my vessel optimization, consciousness expansion, and longevity?"
Everything I do in my life revolves around the idea that every choice becomes an act of stewardship- honoring the vessel that enables my consciousness to operate at its highest capacity for as long as possible.
I feel like the system of life that you presented supports this kind of philosophy. I'm excited to read more about it!
I really wanted call this cringe, but it actually resonates on many levels, really distils the predicament that so many young people are in nowadays... whilst also showing a way out.
You can identify your stage of development with his model from your initial desire to call it cringe??
Garry, if I interpret your response to Joseph correctly, all I can say is very often, the Things, Ideas, or Processes initially looking Crazy very often turn out to be an Irrefutable Eternal Truth! Joseph might have been caught in that paradox.
This is fascinating and I’m going to save it so I can dissect it piece by piece. Thank you for this interesting piece
This is what I do with Dan Koe’s articles I spend time analysing it because there is so much in it. You can’t just read once and be done.
Ah, a student of Leo Guru's spiral dynamics gone on to create his own model. Very interesting.
I use the Kriya Yoga system of clearing the five energy bodies (physical, etheric, emotional, mental, spiritual) and 12 chakras simultaneously. Similar effect, different model.
You can work on all levels slowly, together, for holistic balance. You're only as strong as your weakest point, after all, and it shows up during time of stress.
The dividing of self actualization into thirds, quarters, and twelves is more important than the actual labels and models themselves. Because regardless of how you cut it up or where you start, you can triangulate effectively from there (depending on individual skill/awareness).
I refer to Human 3.0 as Homo Galacticus. A new human free from lower chakra survival (time-space-limitation) concerns.
It might be worth using more general language on the spiritual path as the terms used are heavily loaded. Rather than Religion, Atheist, Mysticism it could be Unconsidered, Cage Stage, Transcendent.
There are Atheists who are that way without thinking. They just accepted from their family, culture, teachers. (It's the official doctrine of China for example).
Regardless of the path, the second stage tends to have...hostile tendencies that need to be "caged". A former atheist now dunks on non-religious people. A former Christian now dunks on Christians. They have dropped the belief but are still enslaved to it ironically by their own animosity.
The final stage is an integration of sorts. They hold their belief and aren't upset by others believing differently and can even listen to other beliefs to see if there is something to learn.
Just a thought.
Agree
This is really well thought out, thank you for posting.
Question: I feel the dissonance but whenever I try to go on the quest and build my skills and experience I’m never “obsessed”. I find myself halfheartedly applying myself instead of fully committing.
How should I address and work on that issue?
The desire to build skills and knowledge must be married/connected with "meaning" - the spirit quadrant. Thats what energises your being NESS in the world. If getting healthy was with say for example connected with getting pregnant then you would easily motivate yourself to get healthy because you had deep desire for motherhood (meaning) . Acquisition of skills and knowledge happen easily when you are working in your own business because its connected with a deep desire and goals to build your business etc.
Tvisha, I think what Garry is saying (please correct me if I am wrong, Garry!) is you probably have not yet found out what really "Turns You On" in Life. Or if you have, you've not found The Path to it or in it that really and truly excites you. Frankly, for some people, uncovering all that is the hardest part. For some people, it is buried deep inside under a bunch of different barriers or misdirections. But once you do, everything, though not always simple and/or easy, becomes much more energized & motivating toward progress. So maybe right now, you need to become "obsessed" with digging deep into yourself and discovering what that is, or what you can "create out of nothing."
Love the NPC – Player – Creator arc you laid out. I myself, I've been sick of refusing the calls and being the NPC in my own life for a while.
The real challenge now: how do we get people to not just consume: read a blog or watch a video; but to actually step outside, explore, play, build, mess up, fail, and grow? To activate people not just mentally, but also make them move physically. For them to get sick of being the NPC in their story too.
Ive seen flash mobs of people dancing to a song in a street. Ive seen protest marches etc. People are getting out and doing things. Do you mean how to get everyone in an entrepreneurial mindset building businesses? Or to get people in soical activism?
Hi Gary, thanks for the reply! Well, for instance, I work at an airport where many ppl are complaining about all the things they wanted to do in life, but never did. Like learn to play an instrument, learn a different language, travel the world, etc. They keep telling themselves 'maybe someday', but then that day never comes. I know what it's like to build up a lot of those maybe somedays (the refusal of the call in terms of hero's journey), and the 'negative energy' it builds up. So I myself turned that around and nowadays say 'F YES!!!' a lot. It 'hurts' me to see these ppl stay stuck in unfulfilling lives, so I made a game out of that: The Mission Game. It's a deck of cards with activities for ppl to actually do, to give their life a new twist. Actually the flashmob dance is in there as one of the missions, and the protest more or less as well. So yeah: many people doing plenty amazing things in life, but also still many ppl living on autopilot / NPC mode.
This is awesome. Never heard of a model like this, but it seems to be the most accurate self improvement model I've seen.
Luke, you might find the work of Ken Wilber interesting. He is considered by many to be the Leading Transhumanist Philosopher in psychology & spirituality today. (By "transhumanist," I do NOT mean the more recent interpretation of that word, which to me is actually anti-human.) Wilber 1.0 started at 23 years old with the writing of *The Spectrum Of Consciousness* in 1973 [published in 1977] and then *No Boundary* soon after. It was all considered to be ground-breaking work.)
The AQAL framework Dan is building on here is from Wilber 3.0 and his more complete Integral Theory. I use Wilber, Alfred Korzybski, Krishnamurti / Joel Kramer (the Yoga Guy), Ayn Rand as among the main influences on my philosophical foundations.
Thank you for the recommendation! I'll check out those sources for sure.
this is incredible. You are putting into words the journey I'm on. I feel completely aligned with every word your newsletters have been giving. Its exciting to have this journey reflected back to you in a comprehensive manner. Cant wait to keep downloading this.
And what do you mean by the “top 1%”? ;)
Hey Natalia! I think Dan is referring to the best 1% of people in the world. He's saying the collective best. Logically, if people are different, there must be people who are better than others. So if you organize every person into a list, there will be a group of people who are at the top 1%. This is a map to become one of those people. Hope this helps :)
hey Luke, i can't tell if you wrote this tongue in cheek (if yes I applaud you haha) but in case it was sincere... what do you mean by a person being better than another? (I'm genuinely curious). However you choose to do this, it is ultimately arbitrary - someone else may use different rules entirely to rank people. That means there is absolutely nothing universal about the concept of "better" - it is just a property of the mental model that you as an individual use to interpret the world. At levels 3+ this is fully recognised and integrated into one's way of being in the world (at least in the integral theory models that Dan's model is based upon) so I found it quite amusing that Dan used the concept of "becoming top 1%" to motivate people towards Human 3.0. Perhaps he is being brilliantly ironic
This was sincere. Better depends on the attribute. There is logically someone who is the best cook in the world. It is up to you to decide what you think the best is. I agree, he probably is.
I love playing with AQAL...
But one glaring hole I think is occurring in your model is the downplaying of the interpersonal quadrant.
Conflating it with spirituality and ecology is narrowing the potentiality of the intersubjective space.
As we are fast-tracking into a teal level collective now, we are going to see both an increase in hyper-independence and also a massive and overwhelming increase in complexity.
Beige 2.0, right.
Surviving in a overwhelming world.
Bot now rather than biology providing the that overwhelm, it's technology.
What comes next... Turquoise.
Magenta 2.0
Tribe 2.0
The only solution to the complexity of the world will be to band together with other humans in a more tightly interdependent way than ever before.
This will be the next layer of thriving, and requires increasing focus on the potentiality of the intersubjective space..
It's interesting that personal development is such a huge industry now.
But interpersonal development is hardly regarded at all... I mean relationships aren't even a category on pretty much every platform.
That's crazy considering how central they are to human existence.
Have you ever explored Circling? Authentic Relating? T-Group? Or any other intersubjective practices?
There is much jedi-level possibility there as you can imagine exists in your own body or mind.
Careful not to downgrade the interpersonal and lump it in with the spiritual.... it's a wildly different category and has an entirely different set of rules, practices and skillsets necessary to develop.
Anyways I have the Integral model embedded underneath my relational work (yes I talk about this in my own work)... but don't explicitly talk about it as much as I'd like (yet).
Damien, I did not get that impression from Dan's Human 3.0 Chart. For the Lower Left Quadrant, he stated: "Your Relationship to your environment, community, culture, family, friends, colleagues, and reality. Meaning & Connection." That seems pretty inclusive to me. He might not have fleshed it out much in his article about the chart, but he packed a lot in there, and if he covered everything in depth, it would have been REALLY long.
And, while I agree More Complete Cooperation between Free Individuals is getting far more complicated and necessary these days, too many humans are far too prone to suppress their individual self-identity for the sake of a collective. Yet we cannot risk a return to collectiv-ISM because that works against true, healthy, productive, Collective Wisdom & Action. There are far too many highly charismatic people out there (very often narcissists, sociopaths, or psychopaths) who search for a parade somewhere, then they run around to the front of the parade and pretend they started it, then try to become the Leader with Followers. What we need is more Wise Individuals who understand the Value of Collective Consideration & Action without being sucked into Collectiv-IST Thinking.
By the way, I say one of the characteristics of collectiv-ISM is that individuals who do not agree or cooperate with the collective will be sacrificed in some way, isolating or punishing, and in some cases by outright killing, those who significantly disagree with and rebel against the collective.
In my view, today in general, we still have FAR too much collectiv-IST thinking (often leading to passivity or extreme reactivity such as described as "Shadow-driven behavior" by Carl Jung in his earlier years), and not enough true individualist thinking & action. But by individualist, I do NOT mean "isolationist."
I love your work Dan, and respect your acknowledgement of Ken Wilbur. I look forward to participating and hopefully contributing. How does this significantly differ from Wilbur's work? One suggestion perhaps, is to provide actionable steps for those struggling with the basics of the economic dimensions? Thanks for all you do!
Pretty much all my current suffering can be distilled to this passage:
“Individuals can also regress to a lower level during a temporary period of stress or when a problem outside their current level comes into their life. This explains why you may look back to a time where "things felt better" and you yearn to bring that sensation back to the present.”
Thanks!
Congratulations on this guide/model. It’s powerful. I believe you live it yourself; otherwise, you couldn’t have become who you are.
What struck me is how much real life gets in the way of growth. In my interviews, people often discuss being knocked down, doubting themselves, and still finding a way forward.
Reading this made me think of them, because the stages you describe are what I hear people go through in their own messy, human way... don´t we all at some point?