Question:
In your perspective, dear Fernando, what do you think is necessary to transcend stage 2 of the levels of positive disintegration suggested by Polish psychiatrist Kazimierz Dabrowski? Because there are many of us who simply give up and choose to return to level 1.
Response ENArmonya:
Thank you for the interesting question. In perfect synchronicity since I recently spoke about it in a talk. I will surely publish a video on the subject.
Now, as Polish psychiatrist Dabrowski explained, when level 2 is reached, Positive Disintegration itself appears: one sees that something is not right in society and the interior begins to feel depressed, stressed, disoriented, even suffering ailments (skin rashes, allergies...). But one does not know how to change it. That is why most people cannot stand it and prefer to sink back into conventions, especially with medication or any accepted social pattern: mechanical work, family chores, etc. Although others remain at level 2, but with suicidal and psychotic tendencies, and even silence their voices with drugs, alcohol and other addictions.
Leaving level 2 towards level 3 requires seeing what the real alternative is, what higher values the personality should manifest. However, at level 3 contradictory behaviors begin to be perceived. Just as the apostle Paul said: “For the good I do not do, but the evil I do not want, that I do (Romans 7:19).”
This is what Gurdjieff called the stage of self-observation, which leads to friction between the Real Self and the chaotic behaviors of false characters. It is a very long and painful process that requires adequate Teaching and guidance. It is not something that can be achieved by oneself alone. Collective work is necessary. Hence Master Yeshu said: one new admonition I give you: love one another as I loved you (John 13:34-35)
He loved humanity in the context of The Work in the Tree of Life, not by praising a Lord with empty words. Facts, not superficial acts, is what we are required, to be the Light of the Kosmos.
Now, in order to transcend this unstable stage, special attention should be paid to what Dabrowski called Hyperexcitabilities/Hypersensitivities (roughly translated from Polish). He noticed that people with a great capacity for evolution have these hypersensitive traits, either motor, sensory, imaginative, intellectual or emotional. And where these are not regulated, there can be a display of disorders mistaken for severe autism, chronic allergies and other supposedly incurable ailments.
Yet psychiatrist Dabrowski, rather than seeing them as a disease, saw them as an indication of a higher evolutionary potential to develop a personality which can transform a sick society. He stated most institutions, including medical and political institutions, are ran by psychopaths.
This is why the evolutionary seeker should stand on his/her own, not succumbing, and yet developing his hidden capacities.
Gurdjieff put this more bluntly, saying one must become a sly seeker, reconciling mind, heart and body. It is often said in Fourth Way advanced teachings that when a person senses a certain nervous energy in the body, suffering from it, this means one is close to a greater stage of evolution.
Only when one begins to transform one´s own energy, overcom¡ng neurotic tendencies, physical, emotional and mental mechanicity, does one begin to develop the best version of oneself, and thus reach phase 4 of Positive Desintegration, which can be equated to Stage 4 in the Enneagram of Development, as explained by P.D.Ouspensky in Search for the Miraculous, which gathers Gurdjieff´s views.
In Dabrowski´s positive desintegration view there can still be regressions to phase 3, despite being able to overcome certain fears and depressions through a behavior more focused on higher values. There can even be a sharp fall to phase 2 or phase 1, which usually does not bring good consequences. A person can die after abandoning intense inner Work or falling asleep too much after having begun to awaken. That is why it was said:
he who has put his hand to the plow and looks back is not worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven (Luke 9:62)
Only upon reaching phase 5 does the Disintegration of false selves disappear and the Authentic, Coherent, Secure, Full, Self-Aware Personality remains.
It is surprising to see how these ideas fit with those of the Tree of life as well as the Fourth Way, explained by Gurdjieff and Ouspensky after him. Actually Dabrowski studied Ouspensky, and he was surely inspired even by the stages of the Enneagram, since point 5 is where the Unified Personality Self is reached. Just as in the Sefirotic Tree the fifth spehere, counting from Malkut, is Tifereth, the Beauty of ArmonÃa in Self-Recognition as part of a Divine Family.
That is where the solar/mental development of the Astral Body to deepen the growth of the Soul.
Needless to say, even Dabrowski accepted the Astral Body as possibility. I'll leave it there.
These views explained so many phenomena in my own life that I´m grateful for finding these two approaches, specially Fourth Way Teachings, since an early age. After 30 years in the Work I´ve noticed many facts, which to me are undeniable and have kept me sane and alive in this madhouse called human society and tortured planet earth.
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[1] Summary On Positive Desintegration:
https://tragicgift.com/dabrowski-five-levels/
