Cause–effect → symbols → archetypes → unity of time
Level 1 — Concrete Observation Anchored in Reality
- Form: Practical noticing of patterns in personal experience.
- Example: Realizing, “Every time I skip breakfast, I get a headache by noon.”
- Grounding: Daily cause–and–effect patterns tied directly to the body or routine.
Level 2 — Personal Pattern Recognition
- Form: Seeing repeating trends within one’s own life.
- Example: “When I get restless in a job after two years, it usually means I need a new challenge.”
- Grounding: Self-knowledge through lived cycles.
Level 3 — External Pattern Recognition
- Form: Detecting rhythms in people, environments, or society.
- Example: “This company always expands right before the market crashes; I bet they’ll face another downturn soon.”
- Grounding: Broader reality beyond the self, but still empirical.
Level 4 — Temporal Projection
- Form: Connecting past, present, and future into a single trajectory.
- Example: “AI isn’t just a tech trend — the way electricity reshaped industry shows we’re at the beginning of a decades-long transformation.”
- Grounding: Seeing history as an arrow pointing forward.
Level 5 — Symbolic Compression
- Form: Reducing a complex set of experiences into one mental image or metaphor.
- Example: “This whole relationship feels like a tree that grew too fast on weak roots.”
- Grounding: Inner symbols representing outer complexity.
Level 6 — Archetypal Mapping
- Form: Recognizing mythic or universal patterns that underlie many stories or lives.
- Example: “This political leader embodies the archetype of the ‘Trickster’ — their role is to destabilize the old order, not to create stability.”
- Grounding: Collective symbols across cultures.
Level 7 — Systems Synthesis
- Form: Uniting disparate domains (science, art, psychology, politics) under one conceptual framework.
- Example: “The economy functions like a living ecosystem — resources flow like nutrients, companies evolve like species.”
- Grounding: Abstract analogies that collapse boundaries between fields.
Level 8 — Metaphysical Abstraction
- Form: Pure symbolic intuition beyond categories, pointing toward timeless truths.
- Example: “All forms of growth — biological, cultural, technological — follow the same hidden spiral, an expression of consciousness unfolding.”
- Grounding: Insight that borders on mysticism, philosophy, or metaphysics.
Level 9 — Non-Dual Unity (Highest Abstraction)
- Form: The “all is one” vision — ultimate abstraction where distinctions collapse.
- Example: “Time, self, and world are illusions of perspective; reality is one unfolding whole.”
- Grounding: No longer practical or empirical, but an experiential sense of unity.
In short:
- Low levels (1–3): grounded in reality, practical patterns.
- Middle levels (4–6): time, metaphor, archetype.
- High levels (7–9): systems, metaphysics, unity.
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