Day 1
Unconditional Love:
• Experience the unconditional love, oneness, acceptance, and surrender that we can feel in the present moment with everything that arises in our awareness, including other human beings.
This first step of our exploration will provide you with an experience of the spiritual dimension out of which all love relationships in the manifest world emerge.
The four dimensions of being and relating:
• Learn how our interior awareness, physical body, cultural conditioning, and social environment (a.k.a. The Four Quadrants) are all essential dimensions of our humanness.
• Explore in individual, dyadic, and group work how these four dimensions tetra-arise and correlate with each other.
• See how these four dimensions impact all our relationships by looking at each of them from a first-person subjective “me”, second-person intersubjective “you/we”, third-person objective “it” and forth-person inter-objective “its” perspective.
This will allow you to examine your own relationships and those of others through these four lenses, to start or deepen an Integral Life Practice that will be interwoven throughout this training, and to support the healthy development in each of these four dimensions as the foundation for any healthy love relationship.
The good, true, beautiful and functional:
• Examine the deep philosophical questions of “the good”, “the true”, “the beautiful” and the “functional” from a relational perspective as values, of “must have”, “would like”, “can tolerate”, and “can’t stand” in a love relationship.
• Contemplate how an ongoing focus on the good and the beautiful in love relationships (and hence evolution) leads to higher truths.
Singles will be able to better identify and choose compatible partners—beyond physical attraction and “chemistry”, while couples will find ongoing ways to expand and re-invent their relationships.
Transcend and include/exclude:
Learn about and experience the eight stages of consciousness development through autobiography, asking questions and interpreting answers, making observations, and role playing in all four quadrants.
Gain a deeper knowledge of how we grow through identification, differentiation and integration in a process of transcending and including.
Understand what is transcended and what is included in the healthy growth through the eight stages of consciousness development.
Learn how failure to transcending limited views and including healthy capacities leads to uneven development that shows up as shadows, projections and other pathologies in love relationships.
Recognize the differences of first and second-tier consciousness, and why most people self-evaluate (cognitively understand) two stages higher than they embody/live.
Deepen your understanding of developmental stages by learning how females in first-tier consciousness tend to develop by transcending and including limited views and basic capacities, while first-tier males tend to grow by transcending and excluding them.
Realize how individuals regress to lower states of consciousness under stress and practice how to support them in returning to their highest stage.
Use the compatibility matrix to identify attraction, relationship patterns, and challenges between couples at the same and different levels of consciousness, including the pre-trans fallacy.
These insights will allow you to understand why first-tier–and even highly evolved males and females in second-tier–experience relationship conflicts or stagnation, and to realize the benefits and importance of ongoing learning, healing and growing for love relationships to thrive.
Confusing magical with mystical experiences:
Have a big “AHA” moment when you realize the devastating effects of the pre/trans fallacy in relationships, and the confusion that the pre/trans fallacy can create for singles and couples.
Use these cutting-edge insights into adult development to identify notorious trouble spots between couples at different stages of growth, and learn to support couples at similar levels to realize their deepest healing and growth potentials through better translation at their level of development and transformation to the next higher stage.
What you say makes no sense:
Learn about and practice the unique communication styles and strategies that individuals use at each level of development to express themselves, get their needs met, and to resolve conflicts.
Understand how everyone is “right” from their own perspective and that there are different qualities in the validity claims that people make.
See why “communication” between individuals at different levels of consciousness usually creates irreconcilable misunderstandings instead of harmony and intimacy.
Role-play to witness and experience how these communication differences play out in real life.
Determine which interests and passions (or developmental lines) need to be compatible or complimentary in kind and degree for relationships to thrive.
Understand the difference between needs and neediness, and what is healthy and legitimate versus sabotaging and unreasonable.
These insights and experiences will allow you to identify from which level of consciousness individuals are speaking from, to communicate more effectively and emphatically with your partner and clients by using language at their level, and to resolve conflicts by “translating” language between couples at different levels consciousness.
Suggested Reading Material:
- Beck, Don Edward and Cowan, Christopher. 2006. Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change. Blackwell.
- Carol Gilligan. 1982. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Harvard University Press.
- Gray, John. 1992. Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: The Classic Guide to Understanding the Opposite Sex. Harper Collins. (Or another John Gray book.)
- Fromm, Erich. 1956. The Art of Loving. Harper Perennial:
- Welwood, John. 1990. Journey of the Heart: The Path of Conscious Love. Harper Perennial
- Wilber, Ken. 2000. Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy. Shambhala.
- Forman, Mark. 2010. A Guide to Integral Psychotherapy: Complexity, Integration, and Spirituality in Practice. State University of New York Press.
- Wade, Jenny. 1996. Changes of Mind: A Holonomic Theory of the Evolution of Consciousness. State University of New York Press
- Strauss, Neil. 2005. The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists. William Morrow.
- Fein, Ellen and Schneider, Sherrie. 1995. The Rules: Time-tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right. Warner Books.
- Gottman, John and Silver, Nan. 1999. The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Orion.
- Kingma, Daphne Rose. 1998. The Future of Love: The Power of the Soul in Intimate Relationships. Main Street Books.
- Masters, Robert Augustus. 2012. Transformation through Intimacy or Revised Edition: The Journey toward Awakened Monogamy. North Atlantic Books.