The Ascension Process Model
Development of Being
The Ascension Process is the method we use at BioVibrational to develop you into your higher being. Designed to take you from the problematic identification with your ego to identification seated in transcendent beingness, it is the long journey of self-actualization and self-realization, as both are required to gain mastery over your ego. When you achieve mastery over your ego, it no longer is in charge of your life. Suffering and problems can more naturally drop away, or at least the serious effects they have over your well-being can. Understanding the basic structures that support the process is an important prerequisite as we take you on this journey.
Borrowing from the great Ken Wilber, there are five dimensions that we can use to better organize how ego mastery is accomplished through the Ascension Process:
Growing Up: This is the journey of horizontal and vertical development (more on this below), which is about ‘growing up’ or developing your ego. Ego development is the scientifically established path to enlightenment based on Jane Loevinger and Susan Cook-Greuter’s work in psychology. We accomplish this through coaching on Enneagram (ego structure), resolving polarities (ego attachments), and Spiral Terrain development (ego development).
Waking Up: The practice of self-observation mindfulness is the most important tool to develop in order to accomplish the above. We use various meditation techniques and practices to strengthen your focus on key aspects of the ego-mind and energetic body to seed a variety of awakening experiences. Awakening is simply becoming aware of the Absolute Truth that lies beyond thought and belief and can only be accessed through practiced mental stillness and profound focus.
Cleaning Up: This is the process of dissolving samskaras (blockages), healing emotional wounds, and other shadow work to clean up your energy body. As we know through the works of Bessel Van Der Kolk and Peter Levine, the body keeps the score of your life’s traumatic experiences and as long as they remain unprocessed and unresolved, you cannot stabilize ego mastery. We use EFT, Chakra Processing, and immediacy coaching techniques to accomplish this.
Showing Up: This is about showing up for yourself and in service to life. It’s about taking responsibility for your growth and carving out a self-initiated path so you can find your authentic expression of this work. It means committing to the path of practice outside of the formal coaching sessions, making ‘homework’ and self-generated contemplative and meditative practice as much of a priority as the formal coaching calls.
Opening Up: Committing to vulnerability and authenticity regarding your experience is essential. We can only cure what we can confront and we can only confront what we are willing to open to. Keeping a radically open mind and a gently opening heart will take you far in this journey of ascending into your higher being.
A journey from self-actualization to self-realization or “transcendence” in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
Horizontal Development
The Journey of Self-actualization is Horizontal
My studies of self-actualizing people have found them simultaneously to be able to hold the abstract without giving up concreteness and the ability to be concrete without giving up abstractness” - Abraham Maslow
Horizontal growth is created by journeying through the map of obstacles comprising the complete territory of challenges you incarnated on earth to confront. We can call these the lessons of Earth School, as described in Seat of the Soul. These obstacles are generated by your having a human ego.
One helpful way to answer the question, “why do I have a ‘challenge-making’ ego?” is to see it as a servant to a higher self that wants to grow and develop. That it’s an intentional conspiracy of sorts, created at higher levels of consciousness than your ego-mind can perceive, binding you to experience a certain set of limitations on what would otherwise be limitless Infinite Consciousness. Having an ego creates a sense of a separate, surviving self, making possible a perspective that skews reality into ‘challenges’ that you can triumph over. Horizontal development is the process of becoming aware of what these challenges are, developing the skills required to overcome them, and making the effort of taking them on, with the outcome of maximizing your human potential.
The entire fields of Personal Development and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy fall under the category of horizontal growth, for example, as self-actualization work is all about the relationship you have with your thoughts and emotions—changing beliefs, processing the past-created energy of old wounds, creating more healthy perceptions of reality, and improving your relationships with yourself and others, etc.
Challenging yourself with new concepts and releasing attachments to needing the world to benefit you by being one way and not the other, leads to accelerated growth in the major categories one can focus on in their horizontal development. The key to making progress as you traverse the map of your ego is this simple teaching: awareness over time is curative. If you can simply observe your ego-mind and emotions in their patterns of creating projections and reactions, over time you will wear down the power these patterns have over your life. The problems you face today will melt away with increasing degrees of embracing awareness. This is why having a powerful mindfulness practice is key, as you cannot observe the ego-mind and its machinations if you are identified with it. So the horizontal growth work you’ll be focusing on with your guide will primarily be helping you become aware of problematic beliefs, personality traits, polarities, and perspectives while growing your capacity for self-love and acceptance.
The goal of the Journey of Self-actualization is what we term Total Embrace. The four elements are:
Becoming aware of (mindful discovery)
Accepting (non-judgmental regard)
Loving (fully embracing with joy), and
Releasing (non-attachment and giving up defenses)
…all that you are.
In order to get to Total Embrace, one has to explore each area or ‘land’ comprising human potential, applying the Total Embrace process to what is found. The different lands that make up your map of horizontal development include:
Cognitive
Values
Emotional/intrapersonal/shadow
Moral
Career & livelihood
Health & nutrition
Interpersonal relationships
Metaphysical/spiritual
Education
Political
Psychosexual
Kinesthetic/physical
Environmental
Creativity
Energetic - includes: chakras/kundalini
Mindfulness
Self-esteem/worth - self relationship
Intimacy
Overcoming as many obstacles in each of the lands of development leads to growth in self-knowledge and necessary re-contextualizations on your worldview, which are important in answering critical ‘why’ questions. The more lands you choose to explore, the more you will increase your capacity for holding diverse perspectives and will accelerate actualizing your human potential.
The Enneagram of Personality is the primary lens we use to gather valuable insights about the nature of your ego structure that fundamentally influences your ability to effectively confront the challenges presented in each area/land of focus. Using Chakra Process Work we resolve the gap between your subconscious emotional world and your conscious experience by releasing outdated survival scripts and their connected energies stored in the body.
Utilizing these and other tools, horizontal development rehabilitates the ego, releasing it from carrying its baggage of negative conditions. What you become aware of through this work and overcome in the horizontal realm gets ported into the vertical development realm, and vice versa. The two realms operate simultaneously and operate on one another throughout the Ascension Process.
Vertical Development
The Journey of Transcendence is Vertical
“Transcendence refers to the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating, as ends rather than means, to oneself, to significant others, to human beings in general, to other species, to nature, and to the cosmos.” - Abraham Maslow
You can think of vertical growth like the expanded perception you would get if you were ascending into the atmosphere in a hot air balloon. As you gain elevation, you gain access to multiple perspectives as you can see how communities are organized, how groups of humans interact, and how everything is interconnected. More than that, you are no longer as affected by the dramas unfolding in the world so far below. You are no longer just a character playing out roles for society—you have realized yourself as free to be so much more.
The Journey of Transcendence is the process of Self-realization. Self-realization is the process of liberation from the survival scripts you’ve been playing throughout your lifetime. The ways you had to survive the forces of different people and situations growing up have created a network of survival scripts—beliefs and behaviors that have become a part of how you react to the world today. These scripts were not consciously chosen by you, but have become automatic ways of being and doing that you have identified as your ‘self’. Transcending those scripts is essential to get from surviving to thriving.
Self-realization is the crux of spiritual development and leads to the eventual relaxing of the ego so fully that you no longer identify with it as your ‘self.’ This becomes the experience of being liberated from much of the suffering and problems that can only exist when you have confused the character you’re playing—who is neurotic about survival and meaning making—with the deeper You.
You are Infinite Consciousness itself, who is living through your human life experience, and the process of re-identification with your Higher Self is what Self-realization means. Using the vehicles of transcendent experience gets you there.
Transcendence includes finding the pause button for your incessantly chattering ego-mind and entering into the present moment—the Now. It’s entering a world that is beyond what thoughts and concepts can conceive of, thus requires developing mindfulness practices that go against automaticity and into the liberating reality of direct awareness and conscious choice. You transcend the limitations of ego-identification, which is the ultimate mastery of your ego, and lead yourself to alignment with your higher-self. In the state of identification with your higher-self, you live awakened to the existing abundance of joy, bliss, happiness, and love that you’ve been seeking without satisfaction from the world out there. The truth is, you’ve always possessed this contentment, but the machinations of your ego-mind have been playing a slight-of-hand trick to distract you from the Truth of reality in every moment.
This is the path that eventually leads to enlightenment, which is fully obtainable to varying degrees by anyone who is willing to take on the epic Hero’s Journey of Vertical Development.
The ‘stages’ of your progress are tracked using the BioVibrational system of Spiral Terrain Development, and integrates three separate, independently created systems that offer demonstrable proof that enlightenment is simply the byproduct of transcending (climbing) the spiral of vertical development. These systems are Spiral Dynamics (psychosocial values), Ten Terrains of Consciousness (spiritual), and Ego Development (psychodevelopmental). Your Ten Terrains test results will show you where you are at on the arc of vertical development and whether or not you are currently ‘mastering’ a terrain or ‘transitioning’ to the next stage. Be sure to tell your guide this detail.
As you can see in this diagram, only the most elite vertical development ninja makes it to the ‘transcendent’ stage, at an estimated less than 1% of the population. However, don’t let that discourage you because even at “post-conventional” stages, one can experience degrees of enlightenment that will transform your entire life.
If you would like to learn more about the vertical stages of Spiral Terrain Dynamics, click the button at the bottom of this article to access the more in-depth introduction to this model and each of its stages.
Some technologies and practices that accelerate vertical growth, and which your guide will be working with you on, are:
Understanding the complete Spiral Terrain Dynamics system
Awakenings
Opening the heart chakra
Visualizations & imagination
Contemplation
Mindful suffering
Mindfulness and vipassana
Meditation
Psychedelics
Kundalini & Kria Yoga
Facing and relinquishing fears
Acceptance, surrender, and non-judgement
Vulnerability and intimacy exercises
Sacred sexuality
Embracing the feminine
Brainwave entrainment
Self-hypnosis
Allowing yourself to cry it out
Elevating your perspective when ‘badness’ happens
Practicing being love
Self-inquiry
Generating courage and open mindedness
Climbing the spiral toward enlightenment entails using the practices and technologies above to overcome the ego obstacles inherent in each terrain and mastering the mission of the terrain you’re currently in. As you ascend, you integrate (embody) and include each previous terrain completed. You never lose the lessons and perspectives found in previous terrains, you only add more expanded perspectives of inclusion and ever expanding interconnectivity of metaphysical models and systems. Until, that is, you reach the higher stages where you eventually transcend the need to depend on any model or system. You realize you are one with everything (non-dual realization) and feel complete having accomplished a great deal of the Total Embrace of all of existence.
It’s through the combination of achieving higher levels of self-actualization and self-realization that you climb ever higher in your moment-to-moment experiences of higher vibrational consciousness represented through the Hawkins Levels of Consciousness.
In order to understand both Spiral Terrain Development (vertical) and Horizontal Development in more depth, please click on the buttons below.