🌶️ Context Appropriateness

As I started writing this week's email, a friend texted me the following question. Although it's specifically regarding Integral Theory, I believe you can distill the general concepts for exploring relateful compassion by replacing "levels" (or any color reference) with "my assumptions about others":

Q: How do you cultivate compassion/openness vs judgment when you use Integral framework as a lens for navigating relationships and the world in general?

Second: Remember that any given level is more appropriate in certain contexts than others. A good example of this is our babies—we don’t think of our 11 month old as an insufficient 18 month old. We love the basic developmental stuff they do, like exploring balance, object permanence, babbling. Teaching them how to balance a checkbook before they know how to walk doesn’t make sense, and wouldn’t help them navigate the world. Or consider how we like to dance to classic beats—a dance party for weird time signatures and complex meter would not be as fun for most as "four on the floor".

With love, Jordan