Soul's Code

What is Spiral Dynamics? When to apply your own knowledge to everyday life

BY MICK QUINN AND DEBORA PRIETO (Read the first part of this two-part series) — The easiest way to understand the essential nature of Spiral Dynamics (SD) is to picture a ladder that twists into a never-ending spiral, the top end of which is constantly evolving.

The first six levels of consciousness comprise the “First Tier,” the top from which a revolutionary shift in consciousness occurs that allows for the emergence of the Second Tier. The vMemes (v – for values) that comprise these first two tiers are given a color, making the discussion of SD much easier.

Alternative healing and advanced science continue to converge — and leap-frog ahead of conventional wisdom

BY DAVID RICKEY and RICK LEED — As we evolve, both scientific researchers and esoteric healers have advanced new therapies to treat our bodies and our minds but when we first hear of some of them we make a snap judgement that this sounds too wacky to be legit. We use words like voodoo medicine or magical thinking.

Think back to examples like quinine and willow bark — the former a tribal medicine used by Peruvian Indians, the latter an ‘old wives’ remedy. In the modern age, the first was prescribed by doctors as a treatment for malaria and the second in derivative form as aspirin.

Foods we once thought were healthy alternatives are now off the menu — starting with your daily (whole-grain) bread.

We’ve joked about it at dinner parties. We’ve read all the same articles, talked to our doctors, and reached the same realization: You can’t eat anything anymore. Soul’s Code canvassed its community of experts about the latest research into conscious dining:

1. Soy, it sucks

The world’s most famous cosmetic surgeon, Dr. Robert Rey, is ultra body-conscious both inside and out. And Rey, a.k.a. Dr. 90210, is highly conscious about what he puts into his own body. Dr. Rey is the author of a 2.0 version of the Paleo diet.

A more reliable personality scale than Myers-Briggs for mapping your emotions and relationships has its origins in Islamic mysticism

MARGARET  COCHRAN — The Enneagram grew out of the teachings of the great Sufi mystic, G. I. Gurdjieff, whose memoir of early 20th-Century pilgrimages, Meetings with Remarkable Men, became a landmark movie in spiritual cinema. But today we care more about the Enneagram than the movie because it is an amazing tool for developing self-awareness.

The Enneagram helps us to realize what motivates us, and how to better understand the sometimes confusing behavior of our friends, family and co-workers — and possibly the most confusing person of all, yourself!

Can our brains evolve fast enough to solve the problems that the un-evolved mind has created

BY DAVID RICKEY —Einstein said that the level of consciousness that created a particular problem cannot solve the said problem.

A hot new book by sociobiologist Rebecca Costa, The Watchman’s Rattle: Thinking our way out of extinction, illustrates Einstein’s point by documenting how our rate of social and technical change is out-stripping evolution.

Look at the economy: we have developed complex computer programs that can trade stocks in milliseconds. We have developed virtual ways of making money, and created a subculture of the super-rich.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Drawing on “Emotional Intelligence” author Daniel Goleman and a recent Oprah guest, Google launches a School of Personal Growth

PAUL KAIHLA — Apple isn’t the only Silicon Valley anchor-tenant that knows how to execute a stealth launch. For Google, though, this one wasn’t about products — and it seems that the world’s largest search engine and online ad agency prefers to keep this news quiet, even post-launch. Last summer with zero fanfare, Google joined the human potential movement. The vehicle: Google University, which is in a building one street down from the main Googleplex in Mountain View.

One of the institution’s four departments: The School of Personal Growth.

Lessons learned from L.A., Johannesburg, Sao Paolo and other metros where road rage is a danger to your body — and soul

BY RICK LEED — When stuck in your car in painful, frustrating, unimaginable traffic, already late for an appointment, who hasn’t felt like a Looney Tunes cartoon character, with steam coming out of their ears, fists pounding the steering wheel, and eyes turning red and bulging out of their head?

Road rage is usually directed at someone else who has done something heinous — or at the least, rude, like cut you off, changed lanes unexpectedly, or flipped you the finger.  But the inward-focused rage and fury that has no specific personal target is so often worse, creating more stress, more anger, more intense negative energy:  ‘Why the hell isn’t this traffic moving?’

People on a spiritual path who aren’t into Botox still care about beauty. Soul’s Code samples new non-invasive technologies

Those who seek an inner-sense of knowing want to cleanse their tissue with yoga, organic foods and fasts — not inject it with a paralytic, neuro-toxin derived from botulism (one microgram of the stuff Botox is made from is lethal to humans). But many still want to look good, naked and otherwise.

Entrepreneurs are targeting this cross-over audience with launches of alternative skin technologies. These products haven’t hit the mainstream but are making the rounds at alternative health conferences; Soul’s Code checked out a few at the Conscious Life Expo — an annual mega-show at LAX that attracts tens of thousands of visitors:

SkinDream TITANIUM looks like a hand-held shower nozzle, and uses low-frequency sound waves (ultra-sound) to stimulate your skin — and “restore your natural beauty”Soul’s Code guinea pig: Was told that after a 10-minute glazing with the nozzle that the redness would be replaced with radiance; there was no visible change.

In the an issue of the New Yorker magazine, Malcolm Gladwell uses Microsoft heavyweight Nathan Myhrvold as a case study for coincident scientific discovery — and I say, a collective consciousness

DAVID RICKEY — The ego exists only to function in relationship to the whole system, and the ego functions best when it is consciously aware of itself as part of a larger system.

Inspiration derives from the word, spirit. But it is the latest breakthroughs in science, not necessarily spirituality, that give us the clearest prism for viewing the way inspiration is actually created. Malcolm Gladwell’s profile of Nathan Myhrvold in The New Yorker — In the Air: Who says big ideas are rare?— describes a number of instances where two or more people develop almost identical ideas or inventions pretty much simultaneously.

Soul’s Code exclusive: One of today’s leading spiritual teachers shares her prescription for feeling great

A companion piece to Pamela Wilson’s first column for Soul’s Code, Age of Sorrow, Age of Wakefulness, this meditation invites you into restorative rest and gratitude for every granule of your being. Invite someone close to you to close their eyes, and try reading these words to them sotto voce.

BY PAMELA WILSON — Sit quietly and look inside, feel the sensations in your chest.