How Psychedelic Integration fits the Four Stages of Learning

The four stages of learning have a mysterious origin. Across the internet it is credited to a variety of people, including (apparently erroneously) Maslow himself. Because of this discrepancy, I feel just fine pasting in Wikipedia’s description of the four stages (in brown). I added the chicken emojis myself.

The four stages are:

🥚Unconscious incompetence

The individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit. They may deny the usefulness of the skill. The individual must recognize their own incompetence, and the value of the new skill, before moving on to the next stage. The length of time an individual spends in this stage depends on the strength of the stimulus to learn.

🐣Conscious incompetence

Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, they recognize the deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit. The making of mistakes can be integral to the learning process at this stage.

🐥Conscious competence

The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires concentration. It may be broken down into steps, and there is heavy conscious involvement in executing the new skill.

🐔Unconscious competence

The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it has become "second nature" and can be performed easily. As a result, the skill can be performed while executing another task. The individual may be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.
<end paste from Wikipedia>

In The Gap and the Gain, Benjamin Hardy compares the four stages to potty training his children.

🥚Unconscious Incompetence: a baby happy and mindlessly using a diaper.

🐣Conscious Incompetence: a toddler becomes aware of the discomfort of the soiled diaper and cognizant that other kids are not in diapers – there is a skill to learn.

🐥Conscious Competence: toddler starts practicing using pullups and big kid panties with lots of prompting from parents and celebration of success, but also plenty of accidents.

🐔Unconscious competence: an older child who is fully potty trained – the skill is implemented successfully without any conscious effort.

When using psychedelics for personal growth, often the psychedelic experience takes us from 🥚Unconscious Incompetence (Stage 1) to 🐣Conscious Incompetence (Stage 2). In the psychedelic experience we suddenly see what we didn’t know – a way of being that solves a problem we didn’t even know we had. I experience wonder or connection or complete ease of being, ways of being I forgot or never knew existed. I go from not knowing how bored or isolated or constricted I am day-to-day to being made aware of it because I experience its opposite, the healed version of it. Or we may be shown solutions to problems we knew we had, but the solutions were completely mysterious to us. I may know that I am anxious or ill, but I am completely unaware the true cause and so incapable of healing its root source. I have been focused on getting “there” – to healing or some perceived better place – without really understanding what needs to change within me to get there. This is like a potty-training child who throws a fit about wanting “big kid panties” like their sibling, but hasn’t yet had the realization that the skill to earn the panties is within them to develop.

The challenge is, as adults we often believe that the Aha! moment is all that is needed for change. Once I SEE the solution, I want it to then simply BE my reality going forward. In a psychedelic journey I may experience a profound healing, and when I return to normal daily consciousness I think “I am now healed – everything is changed because I saw the solution!”

The truth is, we still need to go through the third🐥 and fourth🐔 stages of learning. It takes time to practice the new skillset, have patience with yourself when you make an oopsie, and accountability for continuing to work at it. A parent is not willing to change a child’s diapers forever, but must go through a phase of effort and accidents to get to the other side. Are you willing to parent yourself through an important maturation or growth process? How will you start implementing wonder or connection or ease of being in your daily life? How will you deal with the messy learning phase?

This is the work of psychedelic integration coaching:

1) Bring awareness to the Aha! moments you experienced during your journey.

2) Get clarity on what mindsets, behaviors, and skillsets will support you to live in the solution you now see.

3) Practice implementing them with support and accountability (This correlates to Stage 3🐥 of the learning model).

4) Reflect and celebrate when you’ve reached Stage 4🐔, Unconscious Competence, the ability to live out the new skills and new vibration without effort, just as part of who you are.

This last item is important . How often do you stop and congratulate yourself for being potty trained? Maybe that would be a bit too extreme, as you likely learned that decades ago. But, what skills or mindsets were a struggle for you a few years or months ago, that now come easily? It’s vitally important, especially as growth-oriented people, to also look back over our shoulders and notice the growth we’ve done. Once we achieve 🐔Unconscious Competence, it’s too easy to forget that we put in good effort to get there. Looking backwards and celebrating past growth builds our confidence to know that we can indeed get through the messy stages and become so competent we forget we ever were anything less.

Mentorship and community support you in this journey in several ways.

First, the more we are exposed to the teachings of those who have already become conscious of the learning, the more likely we are to also become conscious of it. If no one ever shows a toddler that diapers are optional, they may not ever have reason to believe they can get away from the stinky sticky mess they live with.

Second, it is so helpful to have skillsets broken down for us into ways we can practice and learn. Being given platitudes of how you “should be more healthy” or “could be less anxious” is basically useless without clear support for how to learn the process yourself. No one gets potty trained just by being told about toilets.

Third, support, accountability, and celebration happen best in relation with other people. It’s powerful to have your successes mirrored back to you!