| Color | Nickname | Social construct | Cause worth dying for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yellow | SecondAwakening | Integral Theory, personal growth movement, medicine movement | A life worth living |
At some point we need to turn back to ourselves to find the Truth of things. We have absorbed the lessons of Green, and yet we are not at peace with ourselves. Green by itself won’t get us to the healing we need. Green by itself won’t heal the world. People insist on going their own selfish ways no matter how patiently we explain to them how crazy and evil they are. Then we try a little louder and slower, like you might to someone who does not speak English well. You. are. crazy. And. Evil! Huh. How can they not understand that?!? Why don’t they understand how crazy and evil they are?!? Maybe we are missing something? Perhaps there is a deeper stage to go here? Maybe just maybe there is something more workable than dividing the world up into good and evil? But to convince you of that I need for you to go very deeply into yourself. Kind of like an odyssey of the soul. It can be a bit scary and painful, but there is also wonder and joy. It feels like Odysseus tied to his ship’s mast finally surrendering, cutting his ropes, and jumping off to join the Sirens. Giving up this life so that he can know what worlds come after.
And after we come up for air we are awakening all over again. We are right back to Beige staring in awe at the moon. It is exactly the same and yet different because this time we have the lived experience of so many previous generations. At Green we might dabble with Native American traditions, but it is at this Yellow stage where we truly get how much we can learn from these ancient cultures. And we find an incredible longing to go back to that way of life. But we can’t go back. We scuttled our ships on the beach and the only way now is forward. Or die. The first step is to find our own strength and truth. It has to start here. Stop, breathe, spend time in nature and really look at ourselves. And what we find is that we are vast beyond imagining. There are so many ways to be human. And we welcome all of ourselves. Not just the bright pretty parts but the scary dangerous parts as well. Not just the perfect (and yes we welcome our own perfection!) but also the broken and hurting parts as well. All of us. The mother/father, shaman/hunter, empress/slave, monk/holy-woman, scientist/worker, activist/follower, seeker. All of me. All of you. All of us.
Up to now I could point to well known, big historical shifts. You can argue that I am vastly over simplifying history (because in fact I am), but you can not really argue that there have not been powerful, historical shifts in human consciousness. This stage, though, is just getting started and therefore I don’t have a lot of history to point at. There are more people waking up to this stage than you would suspect and yet I don’t think we have properly fully entered this stage. Who is at this stage? Probably you. The simple fact that you have read this far means you are at least are willing to look beyond the limitations of Green. Welcome!
Something different happens at this stage than all the other stages. Spiral Dynamics calls this Yellow stage the start of a whole new tier; the second tier. Unlike the first tier stages, second tier stages recognize that all the stages have their place within us. Each stage has its own time and place. Up to this point emerging stages tended to hate the stages before them. But at second tier we stop the hating simply because it serves no purpose. Categorizing people as crazy and evil is mostly a waste of time — we are too busy trying to get stuff done. Yellow stage wizards learn to work effectively with people at all the different stages.
An example of a Yellow wizard is Rick Doblin, founder of MAPS. He has skillfully managed to steer both MDMA therapy and mushroom therapy through rigorous FDA trials. MDMA therapy has already been granted “breakthrough” status and it is only a matter of time before both are fully approved medical treatments. People kind of take this for granted, but they forget the fanatical war on drugs mentality he has had to patiently contend with. And that he got a very conservative administration to sign off on all of this.
Ken Wilber calls this second tier the Integral stage. He points out that we no longer live in a separated world. The wisdom of all the traditions is available, and we should recognize that they all have valuable lessons. When we reach this tier we have a special responsibility to the world. We see a little clearer and further than others on certain matters. We start to see that all the stages have their own inherent logic and use, but also that all of the stages have dangerous blindspots that have to be managed and navigated. It is an act of moral cowardice to not accept this responsibility. Global warming is real, and if not addressed could end up triggering a chain of events where billions die. Democracies quite often are overthrown by authoritarians and then there is great suffering and death. Some courses of action are better than others. To choose to not act is itself an act.
Then there is what I call the tick-tock part of Spiral Dynamics. The focus at each stage flips back and forth between the individual (tick) and the group (tock). But each each stage is “higher” than the last so we are spiraling between these two poles.
Beige woke us up as individuals - tick.
Purple gathered us together as tribe – tock.
Red struck out towards individual Godhood – tick.
Blue brought us back to a community honoring Truth – tock.
Orange released us to find our rational truth – tick.
Green brought us back to protecting us all – tock.
Yellow, echoing Beige, steps deeply into individual discovery all over again (tick).
But it doesn’t end here. The next stage will bring us back together once more – tock.