01.22.08
Still More Terminology….
I just listened to an online conversation between Neale Donald Walsch and Ken Wilber (on IntegralNaked. Org - you have to join to listen) and I was reminded of some other terminolgy that may make the concept of these stages more clear.
Ken Wilber uses the terms Egocentric to refer to people in the group I am calling the Lawless. They are obviously centered around their own ego and they see the world only in terms of how it can serve them.
Then for the Faithful group, he uses the word Ethnocentric. Of course, this means these people are centered on their particular group - wanting the best for it, working to make it better - but they do it to the exclusion of others outside their own group. These are the people who would claim only believers of their own religion are saved. They really don’t have perspective that people outside their own group have any importance.
Then the next step is called Worldcentric and I think it corresponds roughly with what I am calling the Rational group. In terms of religious belief, these people can take a larger perspective, feeling that their is not only one way of believing and seeing that the religious stance of some other people could be correct, even if they disagree with one’s own. Also, these people are more able to realize that all people have importance, not just the ones in their own group.
And then the Mystics I feel correspond roughly to what Ken Wilber is calling Cosmocentric. This has to do with people who feel in some way that all of creation is interconnected. They feel that we all are part of the same whole: harms one, harms all and what benefits one, benefits all.
So I just wanted to present these terms in case it would help anyone “get” the concept of the growth stages. It is just another way of looking at the same idea though when Ken Wilber speaks he is not referring simply to religious belief, but development on all levels.