My educational training is rooted in organizational leadership and management with a focus in integral theory mainly focused in Ken Wilber’s work. This is where I was introduced to Don Beck’s work in spiral dynamics. My 1st impressions of the spiral was that it came with a strong White male lens. A lens that didn’t embody the magic and the mystical and therefore thought the indigenous lens was rooted in fear instead of surrender and community.
As I worked more with he spiral and started to use it as a tool to understand levels of consciousness I started to wonder what if it was missing something? What if the growth and development that the spiral held as being individual, and then collective was only possible when rooted in this White male lens. What might the Black feminine lens have to offer?
The answer for me to that last question is rooted in belonging. We all hold a basic need to belong. It drives everything that we do. But what if we knew that we couldn’t not belong because we are all birthed from the collective. We literally are born attached to another person. What if we knew that consciousness starts before birth? So one day while I was playing around (yes, I’m geeky and this is how I play) I added another meme at the bottom of the spiral that I call the Black meme. I decided that if we really understood that we were birthed from the collective and someday we all return to the collective it would change everything. We would know that we could not not belong.
This is where it get’s fun, because when I did this and started to group the memes in twos I
was able to align them with the chakras. Black and Beige align with the Root Chakra and hold our basic needs collectively and individually. Purple and Red align with the Sacral Chakra and holds our honoring of relationships collectively and individually. Blue and Orange align with the Solar Plexus Chakra and hold our sense of power collectively and individually. Now here’s where it gets interesting, Green and Yellow align with the Heart Chakra and hold our love collectively and individually. Beck says that this movement from green to yellow takes us from 1st tier level of consciousness to 2nd tier level of consciousness . I think this is the movement from adolescence adult to initiated adult. Initiation happens in the heart chakra.
Caroline Myss says, “If you think of the heart chakra as and hourglass with the bottom part rooted in the earth and the upper part rooted in the heavens then the center (the smallest point) is the place of initiation.” After all initiation asks that we move from being earth centered and led in our decision making to being spirit centered and led in our decision making. It’s not that we ignore our earthly need they just no longer run the show.
I believe that human consciousness is developing and growing up the chakras.
Quanita