Discovering The Beauty Beyond Our Human Surface

About Deep Developmental Listening - A Harvard Method, enriched.

Expert of MORE LIFE – relearning what we already know – Part II – 7/20
Written by Teresa Zimmermann on August 23^rd 2023¹

…this a bit about my work. To make it go down easy, I have, as always, sprinkled my writing with music. Not always, though mostly, to my taste, but if the lyrics are brilliant, well, then they’re brilliant! Enjoy…

The Heartbeats Of Human Growth

In the vast tapestry of human experience, how often do we truly listen, not just to words, but to the pulsing undercurrents of emotion and evolution beneath? Exploring "Deep Developmental Listening" offers an enthralling dive into this very inquiry. Seamlessly melding insights from Harvard's elite corridors with cutting-edge neuroscience and years of action research, this narrative redefines how we understand, perceive, and value human growth. This journey isn't just about hearing, but deeply engaging with the heartbeats of human growth.

More Than Just Hearing

Deep Developmental Listening is a term coined by Prof. erem. Robert Kegan (Developmental Psychology, Harvard University). It describes the process of picking up on the underlying structure of human language, particularly the framework how we humans make meaning of our individual perspective in that, what we call reality.

It's more than just hearing; it's a profound attunement to the undercurrents of human evolution. So let’s use a metaphor which has been commonly used before, to describe this gorgeous process: Picture yourself at a concert, lost in the ebb and flow of a moving piano piece. While most are swept up in its beauty, a seasoned music teacher discerns the nuanced pauses between notes and the evolution of melodies. Similarly, deep developmental listening transcends mere words. With this technique we don't just listen; we deeply engage with the growth, motives, and underlying feelings of the speaker. As relevant in psychology as it is in daily life, this method offers a window into the orchestra of personal growth and evolution. As we dive into various approaches to understanding human development, Deep Developmental Listening sets the tone, reminding us of the beauty that lies beneath the surface.

Mit all deinen Farben (with all your colors)
Und deinen Narben (and your scars)
Hinter den Mauern (behind your walls)
Ja ich seh' dich (yes, I see you)

Wie Schön Du Bist by Sarah Connor, Songwriters: Peter Plate / Daniel Faust / Sarah Connor / Ulf Sommer; lyrics © Sony/atv Music Publishing Allegro (germany) I, Miss Cee Publishing Gmbh

If we are curious enough to explore these fundamental concepts of sense making, we are often stumbling upon “stages of development” and its models, which describe the unfolding scope of human behavior. Each stage is clearly indicated by so called “language markers” - we simply talk differently in the various stages. We understand to observe the differences of someone taking an “I” perspective vs a “we” perspective” or speaking about oneself from an observational point of view vs speaking from “within” an experience. And if we’re really eager, we might take up studying Deep Developmental Listening and making ourselves familiar with the myriad indicators, that help us decipher the nuances of each stage.

In due course of my research on our human embodiment of individual meaning (what we call “my truth”) I have furthered this method, to not only understand language structure, but to actually decode the individual identifications of a person. Identifications are deeply ingrained beliefs and perceptions, often inherited from influential figures in our lives, shaping how we view ourselves and the world. From a psychological perspective, identifications can indicate all three:

·      Our socio-emotional home base, making up our underlying beliefs and stances, wich are grounding us in social and cultural norms.

·      Our less evolved, “younger” patterns, so called “tethers”, limiting beliefs which are binding us to outdated self-concepts.

·      Our peaks, prophesizing our future potential every time we experience higher states of consciousness - like moments of deep love, bliss, peace, gratefulness, etc.

The dance between embracing and challenging these identifications is at the heart of the “growing up” process – the path we all walk to become wiser (or less foolish, to quote one of my favorite pursuers of the growth path, Peter N. Limberg).

Unraveling Identifications: A Psychological Lens

Within an action research process of 5 years, I have deciphered these core identifications of our human growth journey along the aforementioned stages. As there are several models of socio-emotional or ego development, any of them can be taken as a reference point. I prefer to align with Robert Kegan’s model² for the established stages 2-5, as it clearly distinguishes socio-emotional maturity from cognitive maturity, and I quite frankly dig that. Gives us no chance to sugarcoat our impulse reactions and therefore, we get perfect conditions to really do some proper cleaning up. If we are so inclined. For more advanced stages of consciousness, I lean towards both Jane Loevinger’s framework (and the ladies following in her tradition, who have since advanced it: Susanne Cook-Greuter and Terri O’Fallon) and Ken Wilber’s model – even if their numbers are much more generous than mine and their test methods do not rise to the finesse of deep developmental listening (but on the plus side they’re scalable! Now let’s wait for AI to kick in! And this is a proper SPOILER….). The most evolved identifications currently go beyond the work of colleagues, at least beyond what has been published. In regard to trauma identifications and their origins, my work has come up with related findings to internationally recognized psychotherapist Kim Barta³, who is quite far out there and my dear friend, Computer Scientist (hence, AI scoring pioneer) of University of Massachusetts Tom Murray⁴.

The most important (and possibly controversial) distinction from other developmental models, which use Deep Developmental Listening, is that each junction between a stage and a pattern – these mark the identifications I call Qualia – is assigned to a particular set of emotions. This infers that our subconscious set of feelings is depending on our socio-emotional maturity. And of course, the full range of humanly sensible emotions are most of the time accessible to us – our stage and their identifications simply depict, which emotions we tend to return to subconsciously. Like the frequency of our constant background music. And yes, many of them seem suppressed, as we’d rather not feel for example constantly sad, the emotion aligned with a young perspective of the pattern of creation – when we are identified with a strong need for freedom (as we’ve recently lost it and are subconsciously grieving that). So, we add some numbness to it, some discipline to focus on the positive, maybe some bravado and some honour. On this (for young adults quite typical) mix we sprinkle our fun and love and ambition etc. Can get quite explosive! But when we come home after a full day of work and some drinks we turn to Netflix to either numb out the base layer of melancholy or to watch stories which provide sufficient catharsis.

And sometimes, it hurts too much to look
Like Moses said, the burning bush
I tried to turn away, but I could see.

I got so high that I saw Jesus by Noah & Miley Cyrus, Songwriters: Noah Cyrus / Peter Harding; lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.

Now, where’s the controversy?

Incorporating the underlying emotions as reason for our behavior allows us to view our peak experiences, when we reach higher consciousness states like love, bliss, deep peace, wonder, vision etc. as an outlook into more mature stages. And it indicates, that fostering peak experiences leads to growing up. In the intricate ballet of the brain, the adage "what fires together wires together" captures a fundamental principle of neuroscience. It posits that when neurons activate at the same time, their connections strengthen, forging more robust neural pathways. This synaptic dance underscores how experiences, particularly repeated ones, sculpt our brain's architecture, embedding memories and shaping behaviors.

What are we gonna do?
We've opened the door, now it's all coming through
Tell me you see it too
We opened our eyes and it's changing the view
How big, how blue, how beautiful.

How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful by Florence And The Machine, Songwriters: Florence Leontine Mary Welch / Isabella Janet Florentina Summers; lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

To add to the Growing Up tradition of developmental psychology the perspective of neuroscience is unusual. It simply results of many years of Growing Up practice.  When we clean up our limiting beliefs, we usually don’t focus on activating our potential far beyond our socio-emotional home base within the same process of 1-3 hours. But if we lift our trauma patterns not only to the typical Stage 4 space of autonomy, sovereignty, mastery or possibly to Stage 5’s deep contentment⁵ and wholeness we create much stronger somatic markers within our system, which make us glimpse our full human potential⁶. Somatic markers, as identified within the realm of neuroscience, serve as the body's emotional bookmarks. They signal the value or potential risk of certain decisions, based on past experiences, creating a guide for our future choices. This interplay between felt sense, emotion and awareness underscores the profound link between body, mind, and decision-making. And – as this is a fully automated, subconscious process – it can be deciphered via Deep Developmental Listening, resulting in a scientific score of our level of socio-emotional maturity.

Precise Scaffolding of Human Subconscious Growth

Returning to Deep Developmental Listening, this process of Wiring is the first of four unique characteristics, that prompted me to expand Kegan’s Interview method to get more diversity out of the result. So here goes all four distinguishing features of The Core in relation to the method of Deep Developmental Listening:

1. WIRING

Fostering of higher states

As mentioned above, this is the capacity and skill to score (= measure) peak experiences, which empowers us to validate and connect these peaks and fosters the actual process of establishing high states as something more common. To do that at the very mature levels of unitive and source consciousness is unique.

2. SCAFFOLDING

Transparency of Growing Up

Presencing our behavioural patterns helps rewire our socio-emotional home base (describing the maturity of our impulse reactions), our tethers (trauma) and our peak experiences (emotional & subtle potential) – it helps us to be aware and honor what develops within us and gives us a scaffolding for our ongoing growing up.

3. PRECISION

Actionable Precision

Precision and acuity of action comes from more than 1 behavioural pattern but 5 connected, distinct patterns. Not even combining all existing linear models would offer such exactness. Locating our purely subconscious motivation on the map of the five unfolding patterns allows us to proactively and acutely meet our developmental process.

4. GRACE

Effectively addressing trauma

The ability to lift tethers by identifying and untying its actual roots and carefully spiralling up a pattern allows a swift and effective integration of trauma with a soft landing. Scoring with Deep Developmental Listening along The Core enables the application of therapeutical methods such as essential embodiment, a cluster of tools, which are empowering us to first own a pattern and recognize its value and then evolving it to a more graceful space.

And I know it makes you nervous

But I promise you its worth it

To show them everything you kept inside

Don’t hide.

Come Out And Play by Billie Eilish; Songwriters: Finneas Baird O'Connell / Billie Eilish O'Connell; lyrics © Universal Music Corp., Last Frontier, Drup

Keeping It Close To The Street

When I first started to score with Bob Kegan’s method, I was highly challenged by having to focus on the language markers he is using to scientifically measure the stage. I tended to “feel” the person’s home base, rather than rationally score it. I could sense the underlying meaning people made of the situations they shared and ended up preferring to go with my gut. I spent most of the interview then questioning my subtle scoring (aligned with Jennifer Garvey-Berger’s⁷ “How could I be wrong?” process). I still work like this. After many years of officially interviewing folks and thousands of “wild scorings” fully “seeing” a person becomes second nature. In the official interviews I like to ask for many different live situations, cross referencing a business context with for example one of health or romance or spirituality. I quickly understood, that only if the person felt truly heard and seen, deeply understood, they were available to fully embrace their scoring result and use it as a point to elevate from, instead of deflecting, feeling judged or taking the result as an unswayable fact, yielding to the fate of their verdict. Scoring a person while presencing them turns out to be an incredibly valuable bonus to the accuracy we get.

Schrödinger’s Scoring

I’ve often been pondering the quantum question of the observer effect and have not yet come up with a satisfying answer as how to NOT influence the result as the witness. My only mercy is that consciousness is, what consciousness does. Thus, I consciously track my biases, and tend to make people as comfortable as possible, so they stop editing themselves, which helps me to get a swifter view into their impulse reactions. Empowering folks to cherish their present realisation and their growth process is such a privileged occupation, I might as well make it a mutually enjoyable experience.

What else is true?

In summary, during my deep dive into the human psyche, I‘m allowed to venture beyond the confines of everyday conversation to unlock the hidden wonders of our intrinsic connection. Deep Developmental Listening isn't just a method—it's a bridge between the enigma of the mind and the mysteries of the heart and our subtle being. What beliefs shape our essence? How do our transformative moments pave the paths of our futures? It’s a journey through this intricate choreography of human motivation, emotion and action, helping us to sketch the silhouette of our boundless potential. If you’re as intrigued as I am, go ahead and reach out, let’s find out what else is true: teresa@whatelseistrue.com

1. partly with the assistance of ChatGPT 4.0

2. Robert Kegan’s Framework

3. https://www.kimbarta.org/about

4. https://www.perspegrity.com/papers.html

5. Again, this aligns with Robert Kegan’s Framework

6. Positive side effect: if we lift the pattern to its Qualia of Stage 6 or beyond, it eventually lands soundly in the space around our home base – as all doubt, that this new emotion might not be a brilliant idea has ceased.

7. Jennifer Garvey Berger: Changing on the Job