Who I am, what I do and how I see the world are significantly informed by a profound body work known as Spiral Dynamics integral.
I have organized some introductory information about SDi underneath the “My Map” page on this blog. The world of Spiral Dynamics is beginning to require some credentialing.
Why?
Because it’s gaining momentum and more and more people are attracted to the framework, insights and sense making that results from understanding it. AND it is a very complex model with a simple color coding illustration. I often say that learning Spiral Dynamics is like learning math. Both are complexity model about solving problems with intelligence. The first step to learning math is learn the numbers. Likewise the first step to learning Spiral Dynamics is learning the colors. Yet the elegance of mathematics is found in the dynamics of the numbers and the elegance of the Spiral is in the dynamics of the color codes levels, not just in the levels themselves.
A lot of what you’ll find from folks who have just learned the colors sounds more like typing categories, caste systems or a race to the top. The elegance is found in the overall intelligence of the Spiral.
So, I offer a few of my credentials.
- I have designed my learning of Spiral Dynamic in terms of ePraxis (the art of combining theory and practice to learn). SD informs us that levels of existence emerge in us as an elegant design for life to thrive in the conditions it exists in. And the way I’ve chosen to participate in my own personal emergence is to learn the theory, intentionally engage the conditions I live to continually apply the theory, which deepens my understanding of the theory because my thinking literally changes.
- I first learned about Spiral Dynamics in the Spring of 2000. In 2002 I took my first Spiral Dynamics level 1 course. Since then I have taken SD Level 1 five times, SD level 2 over nine times. I have a personal friendship and mentorship with Don Beck. I often help Dr. Beck teach the Level 1 course in the US. Henry House, Elaine Jaynes and Clive Prout and I designed and piloted a Level 2 course to exercise our vmemes. I produced and narrated a Dvd called Beautiful Noise and republished Dr. Beck’s The Crucible: Forging South Africa’s Future. I am the primary contact for the Washington DC node of the Center for Human Emergence. I am a mentor for the Online PeopleSCAN assessment, a peek into your personal and company vmeme stack; and I work with selected individuals in the Spiral Dynamics constellation one on one to fast track learning through applied knowledge.
- I use Spiral Dynamics to help me navigate my own mind, to help me be a parent, to work toward deeper levels of integration with partners of all kinds. I am currently applying SD in business organizations as a Workforce Consultant and, in scanning my local county to understand the function, fit and form of Living Locally.
- I am big proponent of the idea we can recover, regenerate and renew (R,R and R) our vmeme development, building (as Mike Jay says) density within each level. Spiral Dynamics points to the core intelligence codes that make our cultures work. I have spent the last 5 years working to tap into those codes, understand and relate to them. Access to these codes is a huge advantage in today’s complex world.
