Jean Houston seems to have been a very welcome teacher for the Level II days. I am probably alone in my reservations about her teachings, but then I have always been a cynic. I admire the breadth of her knowledge and her ability to think on her feet in profound ways. However, I think she mistakenly elevates a lot of prepersonal Purple vMeme stuff to transpersonal Turquoise vMeme status. Having made the pre/trans fallacy so often in my life, I am hypersensitive to it when it comes up. Jean seems to make this mistake a lot and then dismisses any questioning of her position. I don't know if this is hubris or false certainty, but it's disconcerting. She's too brilliant to haphazardly make category errors.
I found Don Beck to be amazingly down-to-earth and humble. It's refreshing to meet a master teacher who is not full of himself. Don doesn't take himself too seriously, even when he is very serious about Spiral Dynamics. Any Texan who can repeatedly dis his own state is fine by me.
I have to admit I came into this week afraid I wouldn't learn anything I hadn't already absorbed from the book. I am glad to have been so terribly wrong. More than anything else, I have a new appreciation for how each of the vMemes comes into existence to correct an imbalance -- and how crucial each vMeme is to the whole Spiral. I am also grateful to Don for being so clear that we are not about "growing" people. We can best serve the Spiral by working to create life conditions that will effectively bring forth new vMemes in people who are ready for transformation.
1 comment:
I remember back when I was a kid, my mom had purchased the book "The Possible Human".
It was a pretty good book, as I recall...
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