An Introduction to “Ego Development Theory” by Susanne Cook-Greuter (EDT Summary)

This is a summary of Ego Development Theory (EDT) — work completed by Susanne Cook-Greuter over the last several decades.

Premium Members can also access: 🔒My Ego Development Theory Self-Assessment

Along with the summary on this page, I’ve also created a public Google spreadsheet that outlines the progression of 30+ attributes and characteristics across the stages:

Quick Housekeeping:

• All quotes are from the original author.
• I’ve added bold to quotes for emphasis and skimmability.
• You can find the source material in these PDFs:
  • Ego Development: A Full-Spectrum Theory Of Vertical Growth And Meaning Making (ResearchGate)
  • The Construct-Aware Stage of Ego Development and its Relationship to the Fool Archetype (Integral Review)

Summary Contents: Click a link to jump to a section below

Introduction:

• Short Summary
• What is Ego?
• What is Human Development?
• Language & Symbols

Overview of Ego Development Theory (EDT):

• Meaning Making
• Doing, Being, & Thinking
• Unfolding & Evolving Sequence
• Transcend & Include
• The Stages

CONVENTIONAL STAGES:

• Stage 3: Group-Centric / Conformist / Diplomat
• Stage 3/4: Skill-Centric / Self-Conscious / Expert
• Stage 4: Self-Determining / Conscientious / Achiever

POSTCONVENTIONAL STAGES:

• Stage 4/5: Self-Questioning / Individualist / Pluralist
• Stage 5: Self-Actualizing / Autonomous / Strategist
• Stage 5/6: Construct-Aware / Ego-Aware / Magician / Alchemist

TRANSCENDENT STAGE(S):

• Stage 6: Unitive

An Introduction to “Ego Development Theory” by Susanne Cook-Greuter (EDT Summary)

Introduction

Short Summary:

“Metaphorically speaking, EDT provides us with one possible account of how individuals navigate the straits of human existence by using navigational lore, common sense, increasingly complex maps, algorithms, and intuition.”

• “Susanne R. Cook-Greuter is an independent scholar who is recognized for her ground-breaking work in ego development theory and the function of language in meaning making. She has a doctorate in human development and psychology from Harvard.”
• “EDT has come a long way since Jane Loevinger’s original (1970) and sparse stage descriptions compared to our current understanding of the full trajectory of development, and the mechanisms, and patterns of vertical growth in the personal realm.”
• “I have outlined one possible path from the unconscious, undifferentiated symbiosis of the newborn to the conscious experience of embeddedness in the universe of mature adults.”
• “I have tried to chronicle the development of the self from prerational to metarational and from preverbal ignorance (= not knowing) to beginning postsymbolic wisdom and witnessing.”
• “I identified nine different self-stories, nine different ways of defining what is real and important in the Western world. These ways develop sequentially and represent increasing levels of individuation and integration.”

If you’re looking for a video introduction, I highly recommend this one:

What is Ego?

“It is ego’s function to ceaselessly interpret experience and to try to make coherent sense of it. If you prefer the hard sciences, you can think of ego as the central processing unit. If liberal arts are more your style, ego as the story teller names it well.”

• “Ego represents the striving of human beings to understand themselves and the world they live in. It is the tireless organizer, interpreter, and synthesizer of experience. Its task is to turn experience into a coherent narrative about the world. How does it do that? It does so by telling a culturally influenced story about who we are, why we are here and for what purpose.”
• “Ego underlies the universal drive to explain everything and make us feel safe, important, and to belong.”
• “Ego labors mightily to create and maintain meaning and vigorously defends against dissonant information and its deep, unspeakable sense of helplessness.”
• “The more one strives for greater insight and seeks detachment from ego, the more attached one is to whatever one is seeking.“
• “Ego tries to usurp even the loftiest spiritual notions to feel good about itself. Trungpa Rinpoche famously diagnosed this tendency as spiritual materialism.”

What is Human Development?

“Human development in general can be looked at as a progression of different ways of making sense of reality or in a sequence of stages of meaning making.”

• “Overall, human development as I describe it, moves from the newborn’s unconscious union with mother to a conscious union with everyone and everything.”
• “Development from birth to adulthood shows an overall trend of increasing differentiation towards an independent, well-defined, individual self-identity or self-authorship.”
• “There is wide consensus that human beings are born undifferentiated and symbiotically merged with their initial caregivers. Good adjustment in adulthood depends on the successful solution to the problems of these earliest periods in life including developing a separate self-identity as well as adequate psychosexual, intellectual, emotional, social and moral development.”
• “To summarize, mature integration as a human being entails an increasing capacity to notice ego’s workings. At the same time, we can lighten-up and experience the simple and childlike joy of being alive. We can delight in the senses and our inner world – moment to moment as well as appreciate the lives and struggles of humanity.”

Language & Symbols:

“Languages divide lived experience into separate objects with distinct boundaries and evaluative attributes. We are so totally immersed in a sea of language that we hardly notice the way it lures us into a false sense of knowledge and how it molds us into very particular notions of what is real and important.”

• “As we grow up we construct meaning by learning the vocabulary, memes, grammar and the scripts available to us from our languages and cultures.”
• “The idea of a separate self in Western cultures is just one result of this phenomenon. It is ironic that all of us have to communicate via symbols. Ironic also that concepts such as ‘purpose’ and ‘soul’ as well as ‘ego’ are symbolic abstractions that do not exist outside of language and our agreed upon definitions. Yet we treat them almost always as if they were palpable, real things.”
• “Perhaps most important of all, immersed as we are in language, humans automatically participate in the delusion that symbol-mediated knowing is true understanding.”
• “EDT insists that individuals only develop in dynamic interactions between self, language, culture and external givens and conditions.”
• “EDT was built on and relies on the observation that the meaning making capacity of individuals is reflected in their language and the ever more subtle distinctions they are able to make over time.”
• “Socialization, it turns out, is relentless and ongoing from the day we enter the world. It begins with the earliest inculcation of what are considered desirable thoughts, feelings, values, and behavior and what is not. It continues through schooling and is reinforced at every moment via the media, commerce, and, most subtly, by the very nature of one’s native language and communication patterns.”
• “To become cognizant of the pitfalls of the language habit as well as its tremendous gift to humanity, is a unique feature of the the most advanced ego stages.”

Overview of Ego Development Theory (EDT)

Meaning Making:

“EDT is a theory about meaning making. Making sense of experience seems to be one of the fundamental drives in human nature. This need for meaning is irrepressible and ongoing.”

• “Ego development theory alone postulates that it is ego’s task to construct meaning and to form a coherent narrative about existence to counter uncertainty.”
• “EDT describes a psycho-logical system with three major interrelated components or dimensions of meaning making:
  • The operative component looks at what adults see as the purpose of life, what needs they act upon, and what ends they are moving towards.
  • The affective component deals with emotions and the experience of being in this world.
  • The cognitive component addresses the question of how a person thinks and reasons about him or herself and the world. It is important to understand that each stage emerges from a synthesis of doing, being and thinking.”

Doing, Being, & Thinking:

Unfolding & Evolving Sequence: 

“Development theory describes the unfolding of human potential towards deeper understanding, wisdom and effectiveness in the world.”

• “Growth occurs in a logical sequence of stages or expanding world views from birth to adulthood. The movement is often likened to an ever widening spiral.”
• “Overall, world views evolve from simple to complex, from static to dynamic, and from egocentric to socio-centric to world-centric.”
• “It is best understood as a framework that portrays the growth of individuals as moving into ever greater awareness and integration about both the inner and the outer world. Although EDT focuses on the development of individual awareness, it fully recognizes that there is no individual interior development outside a cultural and linguistic surround, nor is individual growth possible without the external context (historical, geographic, infrastructure, etc.) as it supports and constrains what is possible in the interior.”

Transcend & Include:

“Each later stage includes and transcends the previous ones. That is, the earlier perspectives remain part of our current experience and knowledge.”

• “Later stages are reached only by journeying through the earlier stages. Once a stage has been traversed, it remains a part of the individual’s response repertoire, even when more complex, later stages are adopted as primary lenses to look at experience.”
• “EDT is a theory of the consolidation at various levels of identity formation (translation, horizontal expansion) as well as of potential transformation from one view of reality to a broader, more inclusive one. It describes a sequence of how people’s mental models of reality evolve over time. Each new level contains the previous ones as subsets.”
• “This is best illustrated with a set of Russian dolls, each nestled within another, larger one. Thus, each new level is both a new whole with its own coherence, and — at the same time — also a part of a larger, more complex system.”

The Stages:

“EDT currently maps 9 levels of increasing embrace. Each level or stage represents a distinct, qualitatively different, uniquely defined, and increasingly complex view of self and reality.” 

• “People’s stage of development influences what they notice and can become aware of, and therefore, what they can describe, articulate, cultivate, influence, and change.”
• “EDT tells us something about how a person interprets whatever they are conscious of and can take as object, including different lines of development.”
• “A person’s understanding of power, feedback, time, love, integrity and truth, for instance, changes with increasing development.“
• “In the extreme, we can say that with each transformation we are actually entering a new reality with its own rules, laws, and language.”
• “Knowing what order of perspective a person can take, helps to anticipate what a they can see and process regarding both their internal and external reality.“
• “Each stage is a whole structural unity in itself as well as a part of a larger, more complex and integrated way of looking and acting in the world. Each stage has its own stage-specific achievements and triumphs over earlier stages as well as its specific limitations and vulnerabilities.“
• “Stage 3, 4, 5, and 6, that is the single number stages, represent stages of integration. People at these levels are embedded in a specific holding environment. They move from identifying with others who are externally alike to oneself at Stage 3, to the like-minded at Stage 4, to the like-principled at Stage 5, and to the like-spirited at the Unitive Stage 6.”

CONVENTIONAL STAGES (75-80% of population)

“The Conformist, Self-conscious and Conscientious stages, stages 3, 3/4, and 4 respectively, cover the ego stages of most people after about the age of 12. We have found that roughly 80% of adults populate these three stages with most people in the adult working world moving from the Expert to the Achiever stage.”

Stage 3: Group-Centric / Conformist / Diplomat (expanded second person perspective)

“This is a stage of integration into a new social container. At the Diplomat or Conformist stage, people make sense of the world in a new way. They now have developed enough skills to get around in the world, accomplish the daily tasks of life and, in general, manage ordinary, concrete things and situations. They now actively want to play by the rules.”

View detailed stage breakdown in Google Sheet →

• “The Conformist stage 3 describes persons with a frame of mind naturally developed in latency and early adolescence.”
• “It is the first stage that can be considered as socialized, that is, to know about basic interpersonal skills such as sharing, and protecting one another.”
• “One can now trade magical, egocentric thinking for group-centric thinking and the security of being a member of the group.”
• “Their self-identity is defined by their relationship to a group.“
• “Most importantly, people at this stage see others as important people in their own right. They want to be like those in their environment whom they admire.“
• “Conformists tend to accept norms without inspection or questioning.”
• “For the Conformist, you are either ally and friend and approve of us and what we do, or you are the enemy.” 
• “In general, Stage 3 people try to uphold tradition and to avoid rocking the boat.”
• “Diplomats expect guidance from above or from those who lead them. They are not yet ready to take a stand to express themselves.” 
• “Acquiring material assets and status symbols is important as these symbolize status and prove one’s worth.”

Stage 3/4: Skill-Centric / Self-Conscious / Expert (third person perspective)

“This is a stage of differentiation. A conceptual watershed is crossed when one can take the third person perspective.”

View detailed stage breakdown in Google Sheet →

• “At the Self-conscious stage 3/4 the focus changes to individual differences away from fitting in and being like those in the original reference group.”
• “This stage has a distinctly different clinical feel than earlier stages. Individuals begin to have access to some self-understanding.” 
• “The Self-conscious stage 3/4 characterizes people who are now able to step back and look at themselves as objects from some distance for the first time. This allows them to begin to notice patterns and to start to reflect upon their own and others’ behavior. This capacity to reflect on oneself, however, is as yet rudimentary as most of an Expert’s energy is externally focused.”
• “Finding your own voice and becoming your separate self identity as an adult is the most widely supported and rewarded movement especially in the modern West with its emphasis on agency and individualism. The transformation from being a part of a group identity to finding one’s separate identity and finding one’s voice is in many ways the task of healthy adolescent development.”

Stage 4: Self-Determining / Conscientious / Achiever (expanded third person perspective)

“The Conscientious stage is a stage of integration and re-embedding oneself in a larger cultural context, but now on ideological affinities and self-chosen criteria. It is the target stage for much of Western culture.”

View detailed stage breakdown in Google Sheet →

• “This is the first stage where people grasp that they can continue to grow in mind and heart as adults.“
• “The critical new dimension of the Achiever perspective involves a full awareness of linear time along with the need for broader relational social context. The third person perspective allows individuals to look backwards and forwards in life.“
• “Conscientious folks deliberately want to find out who they are and what they would like to become by consciously exploring past experiences and choices and thinking about the ideal future self.”
• “Bob Kegan coined the felicitous term ‘self-authoring’ for this level.”
• “Our educational systems are geared towards producing adults with the mental capacity and emotional self-reliance of the Achiever stage, that is, rationally competent and independent adults.”
• “Our institutions of education, jurisprudence and much of business are based on the premise of independent adults pursuing their self-chosen interests within the given contours of the social environment.”
• “Along with expertise, an independent, entrepreneurial, and self-reliant mindset is the financially most well-rewarded stage in the US and much of the West.”
• “The major limitation of the conventional mindset is its acceptance of facts and the external world as real and its blindness to the acquired nature of their beliefs. They accept the grand myth of conventional science that all problems can be solved with the appropriate technological inventions, if not yet, certainly in the future.”

POSTCONVENTIONAL STAGES (15-20% of population)

“The transition from conventional to postconventional meaning-making also signifies an overall, large-scale shift from increasing differentiation and the creation of an independent self-identity towards increasing integration and deconstruction of the separation developed in the first half of the growth trajectory.”

• “The second half of the trajectory … represents a step-wise deconstruction of the sharp and artificially created boundaries towards an ever deeper identification with all that exists.”
• “The second half can also be likened to an ongoing individuation towards a more holistic, full-bodied, and integrated self that is fully aware of its interdependence with other systems and one that can take a perspective on its fundamental non-separateness.”
• “This movement can be usefully described in having two layers: A) The General Systems Stages (from stage 4/5 to 5); B) The Postautonomous Stages (from Stage 5/6 to 6)“

Stage 4/5: Self-Questioning / Individualist / Pluralist (fourth person perspective)

“The 4th person perspective represents the next differentiation stage in the sequence of the stage by stage differentiation-integration pattern. It is considered a major watershed in EDT as it signifies the move from conventional to postconventional meaning making.”

View detailed stage breakdown in Google Sheet →

• “The transition to the first postconventional stage is a watershed in so far as it is the first time that the vertical move and the questioning of previously unexamined ideas is no longer supported by society and its chief conventional representatives.”
• “The 4th person perspective allows individuals to stand outside the system they grew up in and observe themselves and their cultural surround from a new altitude … One can look at the familiar (status quo) through a new lens and query many of its tacit assumptions, values, and beliefs.”
• “The 4th person perspective allows individuals to focus on epistemology, that is, to examine how they came to believe what they believe and feel and how one knows and proves things.”
• “We cannot help but filter our observations through our personal and subjective lenses. Simultaneously, once we also allow for the validity of others’ personal views and perspectives, we can no longer disregard the enormous diversity of people and their beliefs, values and preferences. They are all seem equally valid and worthy of consideration.“
• “At this stage of differentiation, individuals realize that all groups and societies see it as their mandate to mold the minds and hearts of their members. What’s novel is that they can now perceive how much their values and worldviews have been influenced by the environments into which they were born, in which they were raised, and in which they currently operate … We have far less control over being ‘molded’ than we previously understood.“
• “Stage 4/5 persons become interested in watching themselves trying to make sense of themselves. This constitutes an important change in thought mode. Individualists-Pluralists abandon purely rational analysis in favor of a more holistic, organismic approach in which feelings, body sensations and context are taken into account.”
• “When one fully realizes that most prior meaning making was socially and culturally conditioned, scientific certainty and the judgmental frame of mind break down.”
• “A big discovery for this stage is the relativity of points of view.“
• “As Stage 4/5 individuals explore their feelings and motivations, they can also begin to become aware of how easily we can fool ourselves.”

The Individualist expression of stage 4/5:

“Rather than trying to analyze everything, Individualists want to enjoy their own subjective experience. What can be trusted is one’s personal experience, sensations, thoughts and feelings in the here and now. Thus, there is a major shift from the Conscientious person’s preference for ‘doing’ to focusing on ‘being and feeling.’”

• “Their attention turns from outcomes and deliverables to an interest in the processes, the relationships and the complex, non-linear influences among variables.”
• “Individualists are often concerned with making a unique and personal contribution to the world independent of any socially approved roles or tasks.”
• “They often withdraw from external affairs and company life, or from ordinary daily routines. Instead, they turn inward in search of their unique gifts or answers to their own burning questions.”
• “The more one explores, the more confused one may get. When the overriding feeling becomes ‘everything is relative,’ and ‘there is nothing to hold on to,’ cynicism and nihilism can become a way to defend against the feeling of being adrift on a vast unknown sea unmoored and rudderless.”

The Pluralist expression of stage 4/5:

“Pluralists, on the other hand, tend to focus on the multiplicity of voices and contexts. Aware of their own views as interpretations, they do not want to impose these on others. They seek instead to respect and understand all positions.”

• “Above all, an awareness of human diversity and multiple perspectives is the powerful and progressive contribution that this stage has brought to human affairs.”
• “The over-focus on fairness and voice, can lead to ‘decision paralysis’ as no one dares to take a lead role, assert a position, or make an executive decision for fear to be seen as unilateral, uncooperative, or oppressive. Indeed, it is one of the more problematic attributes of many proponents of radical pluralism that they judge all hierarchies as oppressive.”

Stage 5: Self-Actualizing / Autonomous / Strategist (expanded fourth person perspective)

“The Autonomous stage represents an enlarged fourth person perspective which places the individual’s experience into the context of multiple worldviews and within people’s whole lifetime. Cognitively Autonomous persons have a general systems view of reality, that is, they can comprehend multiple interconnected systems of relationships and processes both internally and externally as these are experienced as connected.”

View detailed stage breakdown in Google Sheet →

• “The expanded 4th person perspective is now truly world-centric. While earlier stages may express world-centric values and goals, Strategists embrace the tenets of a global worldview and can embody them. They have internalized systems thinking. They not only see the interconnected aspects of the external world, but also that of their own meaning making. With the expanded time frame and wider social networks, Autonomous persons can perceive systemic patterns or long-term trends and are often valued for that ‘strategic’ capacity and vision.”
• “The Autonomous stage is the first level that fully recognizes the need and value for the existence of all stages both in terms of diversity in society as well as in terms of one’s own development. At least, in the ideal.”
• “They are capable of ‘owning’ and integrating many disparate parts of themselves.“
• “Loevinger called this stage ‘autonomous’ because individuals can now make meaning autonomously, independent of conventional ideas. While one cannot change reality, one has the freedom to interpret it to serve one’s own preferences and to make choices about life and who one wants to be.”
• “Autonomous persons consciously commit to create a meaningful life for themselves and for others in the world through self-determination and self-actualization. They realize that the way they tell their life stories changes with additional experiences and insights.”
• “Strategist possess a relatively strong, autonomous self sense that is both differentiated and well integrated.”
• “With their expanded awareness, Strategist use even more channels of information to make their moves. They are often conscious of energy dynamics (physical and otherwise), and notice underlying patterns that only emerge over longer period of time.”
• “They also have a deeper appreciation than any prior stage of how challenging it is to be a mature, responsible adult and how rare their own capacities are compared with most other people they are in contact with.”
• “Strategist are often motivated and infused with a grand purpose and a vision of what could be. Unlike Pluralists and Individualists, however, their enthusiasm is based on high ideals as well as on a more realistic view of what it takes to change old patterns in self, in organizations, and in society.”
• “Strategists want to hone themselves therefore as instruments of change. They realize that they need to be the most they can in order to be of most service to others.”
• “Wanting to help others evolve is one of the strongest motivators for Autonomous persons.“
• “When this need to have others ‘become the most they can be’ encounters resistance, Autonomous persons may feel impatient with others’ pace of development and frustrated with their ‘unwillingness’ to grow despite their efforts and support. This need to have others transform is one of the central flaws of this stage along with an attachment to knowing and being coherent.“
• “Many Autonomous persons see life as an open-ended journey.”
• “It is at the Strategist stage, that individuals begin to see paradox and ambiguity as an inevitable dimension of living and to increasingly tolerate these. Autonomous persons become aware and fluent in using polarity thinking in order to examine issues and tensions.”
• “Based on this capacity to integrate and take a metasystematic view of different parts of experience, they tend to be quite certain of themselves and their cognitive and emotional capacity for synthesis and integration.”
• “Strategists sometimes present themselves as exemplars of humanity giving off a whiff of superiority.”
• “The Autonomous Stage 5 expands cognition to metasystematic operations as people at this stage are now able to integrate different frameworks of the self into a coherent new theory of who they are, that is, into a complex, coherent self-identity.”

Stage 5/6: Construct-Aware / Ego-Aware / Magician / Alchemist (fifth person perspective and beyond)

“The Construct-aware and the Ego-aware Stage 5/6 is the final observed differentiation in the sequence of overall differentiation or separation from a previous worldview on the path to an ever greater integration or union.”

View detailed stage breakdown in Google Sheet →

• “As a stage of differentiation, the 5th person perspective again questions everything that seemed to hold true and be certain up to this point. Indeed, an all-pervasive uncertainty is one of the characteristics of this stage.”
• “It is precisely in the tension between polar opposites that the most active engagement with life is experienced.”
• “This includes comparing and integrating multiple systems and paradigms. It also includes realizing our human need for map making and trying to organize experience and knowledge into ever more complex matrices and metatheories.”
• “For some adults the search for an integrated, enduring self-identity is superseded by a more immediate, fluid and process-oriented self-view. It seems that the systems view of reality can give way to a more flexible, continuously deconstructing, non-reified notion of self in a rare transformation beyond it.”
• “I originally named the 5th person perspective as the Construct-aware stage because becoming aware of the constructed nature of reality it is one of the most salient characteristics of this stage distinguishing it from prior stages.”
• “We have found it useful to distinguish between two forms of embodying this stage: A) the Construct-aware and B) the Ego-aware.”

A) The Construct-Aware expression of stage 5/6:

“The Construct-aware stage represents folks who are aware that meaning is constructed, invented, generated rather than inherent in things, events and concepts. At the same time, Construct–aware people try with great ingenuity and dedication to create super theories or multidimensional maps or tapestries of reality. They attempt to integrate whatever other theories they are aware of into an ever more complex and comprehensive theory of everything. Thus some Construct-aware individuals spend a lifetime creating such theories in order to provide the meta-perspectives or supermaps they feel are going to help themselves and others to better understand the complexity of human affairs.”

• “Still others with the 5th person perspective begin to fathom the cognitive dimension of meaning making itself. They start to wonder about the meaningfulness of more and more complex thought structures and integrations such as can be imagined with a fifth or nth person perspective. Playing the complex numeric abstractions and formulas game is one way the ego can increase its sense of control and meaning. It also seems to please some individuals to demonstrate their capacity for mental gymnastics. Making the most of this talent and sharing it is a perfectly valuable contribution to the knowledge quest.“
• “But for those more interested in the quest for meaning, the simple question arises in the face of hypermentalism ‘so what?’ How does ever more cognitive complexity serve our daily living and our understanding of the human condition? Some Construct-aware individuals therefore may also begin to realize the absurdity or automatic limits of human map making in the discursive, representational domain.”
• “Becoming conscious of the futility of describing reality by ever more complex maps and approximations can lead individuals to suffer greatly as they experience the limits, but have no way to transcend them with the same rational means that have brought them to grasping this state of affairs. An altogether different relationship to knowing is necessary.”

B) The Ego-Aware expression of stage 5/6:

“To summarize, Postautonomous meaning seekers are capable of perceiving the structure of their own thinking and feeling habits, comparing them to that of others and discovering the fundamental limitations of all rational thought and the limits of language. Usually they come across as very bright, but often impatient with their own cleverness as they see it as just that. They are intrigued by the human need for meaning making and its ubiquitous expression across time and the known world. They understand for the first time the underlying process of how such meaning is constructed through the invention-construction of ever more complex theories. These are based on the segmentation and reification of the underlying flux of phenomena. Thus they are often preoccupied with the limits of discursive meaning making and with learning how to live with the existential paradox of being a mortal yearning for significance and immortality.”

• “In contrast to the Construct-aware insights, Ego-aware individuals tend to be people who have become aware of the pattern of development that encompasses an ever broader realm of experience, action, feelings and thought. Above all they may viscerally get the absurdity of trying to understand reality with the mind and via representational means alone. The 5th person perspective enables them to analyze both their own becoming and the evolving theories about their own becoming as well as to begin to notice the fundamental need for orienting frameworks or stories that are at the heart of all human meaning making across the globe regardless of culture.”
• “They realize that the ‘ego’ has functioned both as a central processing unit for all incoming stimuli (ego as process) and as a central point of reference for self-identity formation (ego as representation).”
• “When the ego becomes transparent to itself, it may well desire ego transcendence, but the very attachment to detachment creates the paradoxical situation of exacerbating the attachment. The more one tries to move beyond with greater effort, the more one gets stuck. Noticing and experiencing such existential dilemmas is common at this stage.“
• “Final knowledge about the self or anything else is seen as illusive and unattainable through effort and reason because all conscious thought, all cognition is recognized as constructed and, therefore, split off from the underlying, cohesive, non-dual territory.”
• “By turning further inward, Ego-aware persons start to see through their own attempts at meaning making. They become aware of the profound splits and paradoxes inherent in discursive thought.”
• “The interconnected nature of concepts only becomes obvious at the postconventional stages and then with increasing sharpness and clarity. Concepts make sense only in conjunction with their surround and their polar opposite. Good and evil, life and death, beauty and ugliness are now recognized as two sides of the same coin. They mutually necessitate and define each other. While polarities as used in polarity dynamics can be understood as pairs of interdependent values at earlier levels, here, a deeper understanding of the discursive conceptualizations and abstractions is sinking in, namely how these are created in the first place.”
• “Some Ego-aware individuals can become aware how the constant and automatic judging habit of what is good and what is not creates much of the unhappiness and striving for betterment so prevalent in ordinary waking consciousness.”
• “In general, Ego-aware individuals have a dynamic and multi-faceted understanding of human nature and the complexities of human interaction. They want to face their own profound need for theories and explanations. They hope to unearth the limits of the rational mind, and to unlearn their automatic, conditioned responses based on memory, acquired distinctions of what is good and bad through continuous, everyday cultural reinforcement.”
• “Ego-aware individuals start to pay attention to their own emotional and rational processing patterns. To watch oneself trying to make sense is intriguing and absorbing and can become all-consuming. Living at the edge of meaning and meaninglessness can be exhilarating at times and frustrating at others. Whether individuals at this level focus more on the liberating aspects of their awareness or more on the disillusionment and sense of loss that come with this mindset probably depends on many factors: among them personality type, the company of understanding others, and general life circumstances.”
• “One must learn to live in the tension of the paradox that as a human being one must embrace one’s need for meaning while, simultaneously, understanding the futility of such an endeavor.“
• “At the Ego-aware stage not just cultural conditioning is seen through, but the predicament of living in language.”
• “In general, Ego-aware individuals try to remain aware of the pseudo-reality created by words. They realize that the pursuit of objective self-identification and rational, objective explanations of the universe are futile—artifacts of our need to make permanent and substantive that which is in flux, immaterial, and impermanent.”
• “As the process of self-awareness deepens and reasoning becomes further differentiated for individuals at the 5th person perspective, access to intuition, bodily states, feelings, dreams, archetypal and other transpersonal material increases. More than that, these sources of knowledge can become as important as rational deliberation for making sense of experience and for finding meaning in life.”
• “Most importantly, the more regular practice of turning inward and observing one’s own mental processes also often leads to the spontaneous experience of a direct mode of being in which knower and known momentarily merge, and the personal self-sense disappears.”
• “Ego-aware individuals report more often than people at earlier stages that they are watching or witnessing the parades of thoughts and feelings come and go without trying to direct them. Thus, they experience moments of freedom from the ego’s constant efforts at control and self-affirmation. Yet, at this stage, such experiences are short-lived. As soon as one evaluates and judges them, the magic is broken.”
• “Sometimes Ego-aware folks express a sense of envy at the simplicity of earlier periods because their own world is experienced as so complex. However, given their ego maturity, most are capable of arriving at a dynamic and hopeful balance within these fundamental conflicts: They fulfill their perceived or chosen destiny independently and courageously in full realization of their basic despair and aloneness.”
• “Ego-aware individuals represent the first stage that looks at all experience fully in terms of ongoing fluctuations. In terms of theory, one builds edifices of knowledge and dismantles them as soon as they are erected. In terms of the heart, one may feel any emotion and then question its very validity and appropriateness as soon as it is felt or expressed.”
• “When people with a postautonomous perspective choose to work in the public, they often rely on their fine-tuned interpersonal skills and insight into others’ complex and dynamic personalities. As leaders, they tend to build their own novel organizations or work alone doing what they perceive to be their best contribution to humanity.”
• “Unlike earlier levels, they are less concerned with success and rewards for their efforts. Sowing seeds that may take a long time to germinate if at all, is part of what one does because one can do no other.“
• “The 5th person frame of mind with its deep questioning of meaning making is open to not-knowing that no previous stage can fathom. It provides a constant level of awe and wonder about being a human being and the mystery of consciousness development. In light of this, a good indicator that someone is able to look at himself and others’ from this altitude is a profound humility about the limits of knowing.”

TRANSCENDENT STAGE(S) (<1% of population)

Stage 6: Unitive (cosmic, ego-transcendent or witnessing perspective)

“To summarize, Unitive adults are more likely to have a balanced, integrated sense of both their belongingness and separateness as individuals because they feel part of the ongoing evolution of the universe in all its aspects and cycles of creation, destruction, and recreation.”

View detailed stage breakdown in Google Sheet →

Awareness & Understanding:

• “At the next level of integration, the Unitive perspective, reality is understood as the undifferentiated phenomenological continuum or chaos, the creative ground, ‘das All,’ or whatever other terms human beings have created to express this awareness of an underlying unity.”
• “Reality is now regularly experienced as the undifferentiated phenomenological continuum or the creative ground of unified consciousness. Every object, word, thought, feeling and sensation, every theory is understood as a human construct: separating out, creating boundaries where there are none. The quest for meaning and connection is an essential aspect of the human condition. Giving names to experience and making distinctions is necessary for human growth, study, interaction and communication, but at the source there is nothing to distinguish.”
• “They can take multiple points of view and shift focus effortlessly among many states of awareness.”
• “The Truth is imminent in the universe and can be apprehended in this ready, open-process stance, but it cannot be grasped by rational means and by making an effort. Unitive individuals therefore seem to transcend narrow ego-boundaries. They have open boundaries and are attuned to rather than preoccupied with whatever enters awareness.”

Witnessing:

• “It seems that the Unitive stage presents an entirely new way of perceiving human existence and experience of consciousness. The term witnessing (rather than observing) can be used here to describe the capacity of people at this stage to metabolize experience without the conscious, willed focus and preoccupations of other adult stages.”
• “Individuals at this level are now able to witness the whole song and dance of prior ways of understanding and meaning making with compassion and equanimity. They understand the need of the personal ego to ensure a sense of permanence and substantiality while at the same time recognizing the illusion of this desire for permanence. The previous way of viewing reality solely from the self’s perspective and through the medium of language is transformed.“
• “The new paradigm has a universal or cosmic perspective as an organizing principle and as a steady place from which meaning is derived. It is non-centered in the ego although the ego is available as a perspective when useful. Unlike state experiences that gave people glimpses of mystical or unitive experiences, now these are steadily available in the witnessing stance.”
• “Unitive persons have a completely internalized transpersonal or interindividual morality. Inner conflicts and conflicting external demands simply are part of being and need not be resolved or denied, only witnessed.”

Paradox Integration:

• “The two sides of the Pascalian paradox are integrated: feelings of belongingness and feelings of one’s separateness and uniqueness are experienced without undue tension. They are simply changing perceptions of the unending possibilities of being.”
• “Consciousness or rational awareness is no longer perceived as a shackle, but as just another phenomenon that assumes foreground or background status depending on one’s momentary attention. Persons at the Unitive stage can see a world in a grain of sand, that is, they can perceive the concrete, limited, and temporal aspects of an entity simultaneously with its eternal and symbolic meaning.”
• “They feel embedded in nature – birth, growth and death, joy and pain – are seen as natural occurrences – patterns of change in the flux of time.”

Ongoing Humanity:

• “Unitive individuals experience themselves and others as part of ongoing humanity, embedded in the creative ground, fulfilling the destiny of evolution.”
• “At this level of integration, adults can look at themselves and at other beings in terms of the passing of ages, of near and far in geographical, social, cultural, historical, intellectual and developmental dimensions.”
• “It is important to realize that from a unitive point of view, later stages are not better than earlier ones because all are necessary parts of interconnected reality and the overall evolutionary process.”
• “Unitive perceivers can shift focus without effort and behold the whole simultaneously with its constituting variables. They operate within an expanded time frame which includes all of earth’s history and its future as a part of this moment. Life is seen as a form of temporary and sometimes voluntary separation (Bodhisattva vow) from the creative ground to which it will always return and of which it is a unique manifestation.”
• “Unitive adults have an integrated sense of a unique identity as participants in the evolution of the cosmos. They are in tune with their precious ‘life’s work’ as a simultaneous expression of their unique selves and as part of one’s shared humanity. They also care about the fundamental dilemma of the human condition. They work for justice, fairness, and benevolence towards all.”

Relation with Others:

• “Because of this unitive ability they can cherish the humanness in the seemingly most undifferentiated beings and feel at one with them. They respect the essence in others and therefore do not need them to be different than they are.”
• “Stage 6 individuals feel interconnected with others as all sentient beings struggle to survive and make sense of their existence. Persons at the Unitive stage feel tolerance, compassion and an affiliation with all manifestations of life. The simplest flatworm is in some way as close to the truth as the most sophisticated thinker.”
• “Though adults at the Unitive stage are aware of themselves as separate and unique embodiments, they also identify with all other living beings. The separation of self from others is experienced as an illusion, an invention to safeguard the ego’s need for permanence and self-importance and to defend against the fear of its death.”
• “Unitive individuals seems to have intense, non-demanding relationships with people regardless of their development, age, gender, or any other identifications. Because they see the dignity in all manifestations of life, others feel worthy and whole in their presence.”
• “Being down-to-earth (simplicity on the other side of complexity) can be one of the most salient differences between postconventional ego stages and transpersonal ways of meaning making.”
• “On the other hand, individuals at this most mature ego stage may be perceived as ‘aloof,’ as not enough engaged in the goals, pursuits, concerns of common humanity especially from the perspective of individuals at the Self-conscious and Conscientious stages 3/4 and 4. Even early postconventional people may be suspicious of this kind of ‘togetherness or groundedness.’ What is not evident to these critics is that Unitive adults often act as catalysts in shaping others’ lives. In being what they are without excuses, they challenge others’ perspectives, and demonstrate a way of being human that is different from the evaluative, conventional ideas about what it means to be an adult. They manifest a deeper security about being than is possible with a rationally generated self-identity.”

Acceptance & Openness:

• “Unitive thinkers also accept themselves ‘as is’ in a non-controlling way. No matter how great their achievements may be, they are aware that these are only a drop in the pool of ongoing human endeavors.”
• “They are no longer driven by desires to be one way or another, to achieve one state or another. Instead they can let go of the unattainable and rest in the experience of being.”
• “They are concerned with global justice, spontaneity, existence & creativity but create no undue tension around goal achievement. Rather than being passive, the non-attached, impersonal stance allows for greater and more direct and powerful action where action is needed. Non-attachment to outcomes is an essential and liberating aspect of witnessing and acting out of non-defensive, spontaneous insight.”
• “From moment to moment only the present is real. Radical openness releases individuals to be in tune with goodness, truth and beauty and to relish them wherever they are present which is everywhere. They have visionary experiences, that is, they comprehend things in a holistic, analog way in addition to apprehending them through the filter of the personal ego.”
• “Though taking responsibility for meaning making, they don’t perceive themselves to be the sole and lone masters of their souls as envisioned by Autonomous individuals and to some degree Construct-aware people. Ways of being are infinite. Clues for the variety of possibilities of being are offered by the study of human history, by our current experience of human diversity and likely with new forms of being human evolving in the future, in nature, and in alternative, non-waking states of consciousness. Life can appear as fulfilling a cosmic purpose and therefore it is essentially simple. Doing or thinking are just modes of existing, but not intrinsically more valuable than feeling, being or non-being. The last is probably the most difficult idea to grasp by most people who have not developed beyond the personal realm. As a Buddhist percept warns: Understanding is the ultimate illusion.”

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