Strategy

*Adapted from the book Spiral Dynamics by Don Beck and Chris Cowan 1996

The problems YELLOW recognizes in LC 7 cannot be resolved by isolated individuals, no matter how much they know or learn. This transition integrates feeling with knowing and organizes senses and capacities.

LC8Helix 1 Conditions= A single living entity 

LC8Helix 2 Coping= Seeks the order Beneath Earth’s chaos

• A form of spirituality resurges here, but there is not an identifiable someone in active, deliberate control. Instead, a unifying force and set of guiding principles sets the course of the universe and gives the appearance of consciousness.
• In TURQUOISE , one learns not only through observation and participation but through the experience of simply being. The person trusts intuition and instinct (reactivated at a new level from the earlier V MEMEs), allowing the mind to process with both the conscious and unconscious selves as coparticipants.
• More than YELLOW , this second step understands the fullness of the Spiral and uses its layers proactively and holistically
• TURQUOISE views a world of interlinked causes and effects, interacting fields of energy, and levels of bonding and communicating most of us have yet to uncover. The V MEME liberates a sense of living systems that mesh and blend, flowing in concert with each other. This is another order-seeking system, but the first one that searches for the macro view. ‘Seeing-everything-at-once’ before doing anything specific dominates the thinking process. Collective imperatives and mutual interdependencies reign supreme.
• YELLOW connects the dots while TURQUOISE fleshes in the ‘art’ of all of the colors and hues, and the picture comes alive. In terms of Spiral Dynamics, the YELLOW system gets its hands dirty dealing with the chaos. The TURQUOISE collective system steps back and creates the next form of order.
• The person does not need to quantify and categorize events as much as experience being. They learn by becoming more fully there, not just studying about or feeling cozy with anything.
• Without doubt, TURQUOISE will show us how to use diversity in new ways since it is the first time people fathom the complexity of the Spiral in terms of the good of the super-group, Homo sapiens.
• TURQUOISE defines a world community more broadly. In part, a Gaia view emerges, one that centers on life itself –all forms of life (not just humans). Every person, every creature, every species belongs. The planet itself is seen as a single ecosystem. Individuals are not separated; neither are national boundaries, ethnic peculiarities, nor elitist privileges allowed to divide people destructively.
• One acts in conjunction with systems by observing and actively contributing systemic thinking. There is constant attention to more expansive implications and the unavoidability of connections among actions and actors. The shift from yellow/TURQUOISE into more centralized TURQUOISE seems to be from ‘learning about…’ and ‘touching base with …’ to becoming one merged into the many. This Communal/Collective functioning both heightens sensory awareness and increases people’s alertness to multiple dimensions of time and space
• TURQUOISE life consists of fractals, replications of the micro right through the macro. This is also the theology of TURQUOISE . The laws of nature that apply throughout the universe supplant the doctrinaire laws of BLUE or the interpersonal emotive links of GREEN . While TURQUOISE readily admits incomplete knowledge, it also has resurging faith that a grand unification is possible and that everything somehow connects to everything else.
• HOLON: TURQUOISE discovers a new version of spirituality In PURPLE one seeks to placate the animistic spirits, the entities that bring good fortune and bad. One hopes to join these spirits in a ‘happy hunting ground.’ In BLUE , spirituality is defined in terms of specific beliefs and truths, a code of conduct, and a contest with the forces of evil which will be settled in the end-time. In GREEN , the liberating power is ultimately within one’s self, best explored with others in this humanistic context. The metaphysical realm is an adjunct to becoming more whole. At TURQUOISE one stands in awe of the cosmic order, the creative forces that exist from the Big Bang to the smallest molecule. Elsewhere on the Spiral it takes the form of PURPLE ’s ‘mother and father’ figures,’ RED ’s wielder of ‘thunder-bolts-from-on-high,’ BLUE ’s fair and just Scorekeeper, ORANGE ’S master builder, GREEN ’s unity principle, and YELLOW ’s source of chaos. TURQUOISE life experiences show that one can never know or understand all things. With this acceptance comes wonder, awe, reverence, humility, unity, and a refreshed value for simplicity. In this view, reality can be experienced, but never known. People functioning in this range avoid relationships where others try to dominate, but can provide direction when required in ways that are not personally domineering. It is easy for TURQUOISE to step away and contemplate, then re-enter refreshed with a new perspective. The person constantly monitors both self and situation as a participant-observer. The ego that drives the Subsistence layers is virtually nonexistent. ‘Life is the most important thing there is; but my life is unimportant.’(the older I get, the more I believe, but the less beliefs I have.)
• TURQUOISE thinking allows community leaders to ‘see’ levels of interaction –both on the surface and below –they have never detected before. They can look at many dynamic forces before working on any single part of the community.
• While YELLOW adds more so-called ‘left brain’ logic into the Spiral Dynamics equation, TURQUOISE contributes a well-informed, cerebral and highly complex ‘right-brain’ processing mode to the mixture. Together, these constitue only the beginnings of the Second Tier and a commencement of a series of exciting new “MEMEs for generations to come.

Turquoise- An Holistic “Us”

• Blending, harmonizing, strong collective
• Focus on the good of all living entities
• Expanded use of human brain/mind tools
• Self is part of a larger, conscious whole
• Global Networking seen as routine
• Acts for minimalist living, so less is more

Turquoise Communication

• Multidimensional chunks of insight
• Use multi-tiered consciousness to to access
• Renewed spirituality & sacrifice to the whole
• Ecological Interdependency & interconnections
• Macro ( global) solutions to macro problems
• Community beyond nationality or partisanship
• High tech & high touch for experiential

Turquoise Hot Buttons:

• Experience of being above self interests and even group pressures
• To find unity and ideas and goals of whole-Earth impact
• Responsible to overall good
• Complex-Multidimensional thinking
• Survival of life on the planet 
• Interactive Holism 
• Interdependence of living systems 
• Appreciation of the spiritual side of things

Turquoise Cold Buttons:

• Hide reality
• Short term goals at the expense of living systems in the long term
• Enforcing narrow views about ethnicities, ideologies and political conflict
• Deny spirituality 
• Make self serving excuses
• Leave residues 
• Seek advantages through deception
• Appear mundane
• Take a narrow view
• Put up with destructive forces
• Take the easy course
• Be too earth bound 

An integral vision to a “Becoming Community” is to have all 34 strengths holistically aligned, to experience all 9 enneagram types communicating and contributing and to have all spiral levels being the healthiest version of their way of seeing and being in the world that we might create real solutions to the challenges we face and a fuller richer appreciation for our shared humanity. This kind of synergism is intrinsic to the interconnectedness of a 2nd Tier self-sacrificial community" Imagine the problems of existence that could be solved...

We are in the process of creating a community for people with yellow glasses who are seeing beyond the chaos and the noise, but in light of-this field of vision, there is a sense of isolation like they no longer have a place to belong, grow and contribute giving birth to the turquoise lens.

Understanding the Pendulum

Self-Expressive Warm Color Systems

“Gaining Control of the External World”

Survive (Beige)

Dominate (Red)

Engineer (Orange)

Understand (Yellow)

Self-Sacrifice Cool Color Systems

“Understanding the Inner World (Peace of Mind)”

Group (Purple)

Truth (Blue)

Among the Expanding Community (Green)

Humankind (Turquoise) 

"Jesus painted a portrait on the cross of intimacy with God who is the source of life, the source of love and the ground of being. Acted out upon the cross was a human life moving beyond the biological drive to survive, revealing a oneness with that which is transcendent. Resurrection comes when we are freed to give our lives away, freed to love beyond the boundaries of our fears, freed not only to be ourselves, but to empower all others to be themselves in the full, rich variety of our multifaceted humanity. Here prejudice dies. Here wholeness is tasted. Here resurrection becomes real." 

                           -John Shelby Spong