Self-Test: Stages of Consciousness
Read the article "Find Your Stage of Consciousness" in our January/February 2008 issue, accessible in our Archives section.
Begin the Self-Test:
The pioneering psychologist Abraham Maslow used the phrase "resistance to rubricization" to describe how most people approach this kind of assessment. Many of us don't like to be categorized in any framework and can come up with plenty of reasons for not doing it, and for feeling bad about our answers even in advance of getting the score. Relax. This is a teaching tool to help you learn about the stages. This test is also a work in progress. We would be grateful to hear your thoughts and reactions.
Each group of questions begins with a short series of open-ended questions to allow you to be transported mentally into a space associated with that stage. Then answer the next four questions. Each stage in Tier 1 has both healthy and unhealthy aspects. The first two questions cover the healthy aspect of the stage. The third and fourth questions cover the unhealthy aspects. If a question doesn't make sense to you, give it a low score. Use a pencil so you can go back and change your answers if it seems appropriate.
Use the zero-to-six scale as follows:
0 = no, virtually never
1 = seldom
2 = sometimes
3 = equally yes and no
4 = fairly often
5 = frequently
6 = yes, virtually always
MAGIC
Where in your life do you experience the numinous, the magical, and the positive inspiration of connection with something bigger? Do you respond to ceremonies, symbols, special rites? Do you routinely immerse yourself in those situations? Are you sometimes deeply touched by moments in nature? Do you set up and seek out such experiences? Are these experiences more or less frequent as you age?
1. How strong is your connection to the numinous (ceremonies, symbols, nature, art, family celebrations, rites of
passage)?
2. How intuitive are you (read a roomful of strangers, read an unfamiliar situation based on gut feeling rather than
analysis)?
3. How superstitious are you (cross your fingers, say a silent prayer before a golf shot or an exam)?
4. To what extent do you tend to put your primary identity ahead of the world (white, black, Jew, Arab, Irishman, liberal, conservative, businessman, environmentalist, straight, gay, Christian, atheist . . . whatever it is for you)?
POWER
Do people experience you as a powerful presence, a force to be reckoned with, or are you more retiring and quiet? When it's appropriate, can you take a stand, even make a big stink? Do you? What are some examples? Do you overdo it? Do you find yourself breaking the rules just for fun? Are you a party animal, or do you shy away from that kind of wildness?
1. How frequently are you the one to take command, to jump in and lead the team?
2. Do you sometimes make a stand, raise a big stink, truly attempt to steer the group your way? To what extent?
3. How often does your anger run away with you?
4. When in conversation, how often
does it come back to being about you?
LAW AND ORDER
Is your bank account balanced, is your workbench neatly organized, are you usually on time for get-togethers? Was your childhood home neat? Did you know what was expected of you? Did you have regular chores and expectations? Do you generally abide by the rules? Do patriotic songs make you tear up? When faced with an unfamiliar situation, do you tend to ask for guidance from others or a book?
1. To what extent are you orderly, disciplined, and rule-abiding?
2. Do you read and refer to the holy books of an organized religion, and do those books provide firm guidance for your life? To what extent would people describe you as traditional?
3. Do you feel that our president and the government in general are worthy of respect and should be followed, even if many people say they're wrong?
4. Do you feel that your religion is truly connected to a higher power, and that this connection sometimes overrides other considerations?
AUTONOMY
Try to remember early experiences of thinking for yourself, running counter to your family's or your church's prevailing patterns of thinking. What was that like? What were the specifics? If you did, it may have been around the time of high school. Did your group of friends shift somewhat as you began to break away? Were you strongly rebellious and cantankerous? What thoughts carried you into new territories and deeper waters? How did that feel? Were you quietly reflective, or did your thoughts move you to emotional and energetic rebellion? Did you become more independent and self-reliant? Or maybe your family just generally encouraged independent thought.
1. To what extent do you truly think independently, rationally, and autonomously? Be careful here: it's easy for wishful thinking to inflate your view, or for low self-esteem to downgrade it.
2. Do you have a strong ego based on your own perceptions and thinking? Do people experience you as strong-minded and solid, almost willful?
3. Do you sometimes say things that are true, but perhaps inappropriate, that might alienate people you are close to? Maybe you're not trying to be a jerk, but might it seem like that to someone
watching?
4. You see people who are true believers in a religion or a cause, and you might think them a little infantile, but you envy their enthusiasm. Is that like you?
GREEN
Think of moments when you realized that there is more to life than rationality. Sometimes these moments can feel like a death, or as though you are going crazy; then you realize that a door is opening onto a bigger vista. Consider the development of your own inner life, your abiding sense of your own awareness. Does that sound familiar, or is it just so much hocus-pocus? How do you feel about the abuse of hierarchy in the church, the government, and within corporations; does all that bother you? Have you joined organizations to save the environment or help those who truly can't help themselves? Are you a good listener, sincerely interested in other people's stories, and do they know that? Do you warmly and actively accept people who are different from you?
1. Have you cultivated an interior life using meditation, prayer, or some kind of regular discipline that stills the mind?
2. To what extent are you sincerely inclusive of real difference in people? Gays and straights, rich and poor, black, white, brown, religious, secular, atheist, everybody . . . truly included in your world. ¬
3. Do you sometimes find yourself unable to make a decision because there are so many points of view and so many people's opinions to take into consideration?
4. Do you sometimes find yourself in an emotional reaction to hierarchy?
INTEGRAL
As you look around at your friends and associates, do you sometimes have this conflicting feeling: you truly appreciate the range of values that they hold and realize that we do need all of them, but you simultaneously feel out of place? Are you deeply motivated to make a constructive contribution to the world, and if it's anonymous that's just fine with you (though strategically it might be wise to have your name on it)? Do you feel less anxious, fearful, and stressed than most people around you? Have you pursued an interior practice for awhile, and felt some forward movement in your life? As you look back over the last decade or so, do you sense that your attitude toward hierarchy is changing, that you once were uncomfortable with hierarchy but now realize that there is a naturalness to it, that it's built into the system, and while there's destructive, dominating hierarchy, there's also a beautiful, life-oriented hierarchy that we can build on? Are possessions more burdensome than before?
1. If you've been on the liberal side of the political spectrum, can you honestly, enthusiastically, support an authentic conservative value structure as well as your own?
2. To what extent do you feel that there is a hierarchy that is wholesome and beneficial, despite the abuse of hierarchy?
3. As you look around your circle of friends and associates, does it seem that you are less fearful, less stressed, less anxious than others? Do you feel more solid, more quiet, more at home in your own skin? More attuned to the simple joy of being alive and aware in every moment, and less distracted by the ups and downs of daily life?
4. Is the interior practice you may have built for yourself more and more important and satisfying in your life? Does it seem to lead toward a more outward, generous, inclusive attitude, and that possessions (even non-physical ones such as fame and excitement) just seem sometimes to get in the way?
SCORING
Add together the scores from the following questions:
Stage Questions 1+2 Questions 3+4
MAGIC Healthy_____ Unhealthy_____ Total_____
POWER Healthy_____ Unhealthy_____ Total_____
LAW AND ORDER Healthy_____ Unhealthy_____ Total_____
AUTONOMY Healthy_____ Unhealthy_____ Total_____
GREEN Healthy_____ Unhealthy_____ Total_____
INTEGRAL Healthy (1+2+3+4) Total_____
On the graph below, draw a vertical bar to the correct height for each of your totals, then draw a divider to separate healthy and unhealthy for the first five stages.
TALL BARS AND SHORT BARS
Most likely a single bar sticks up prominently that represents the value system where your psychic energy most naturally flows. You are comfortable there; it feels like home. If there are two adjacent tall bars, it's possible that you are going through a transition. Or it may just be the imprecision of this assessment.Short bars to the left of the tall one(s) represent earlier value structures that you have transcended. You don't identify with that value structure most of the time. But there are many times when you draw from the storehouse of knowledge associated with those earlier value structures. The degree to which that succeeds depends both on how well you mastered that value structure when you were there, and how well you've truly included it in your life as opposed to repressing it into your shadow side.
Short bars to the right of the tall one represent value structures that you have not yet embraced. As you filled out the assessment, the questions associated with these stages probably felt a little strange. It is appropriate to have value structures that you've not yet embraced, and may never embrace. The world needs good people at every stage, and being there is all about learning what that stage has to teach you. So, take heart and be where you are!
Read the article "Find Your Stage of Consciousness" in our January/February 2008 issue, accessible in our Archives section.
