Level 3 Triangles: From Co-commitment to Co-creation
Moving into Level 3 being and functioning is usually made easier by accomplishing several tasks. These include (1) having completed substantial recovery work in Stages One and Two (as described on pages 43 and 112), (2) engaging in daily spiritual practice long term, and (3) having developed a significant and consistent degree of humilit y.
Stabilizing and healing any active Stage One disorder or illness are basic to being able to heal, over time, from the effects of trauma. We described this process briefly in Chapter 4 (page 42), and have discussed it in more detail in My Recovery: A Personal Plan for Healing. Unless these two large and crucial tasks are accomplished, it is usually difficult, if not impossible, to move consistently into Level 3 being and relating. Looking back at the map of the mind in Chapter 4, without substantial healing in Stages One and Two work, we will likely continue to live from our false self. Completing this work allows us to live from and as our True Self most of the time. It is our True Self that experientially knows self, others and God. If we haven’t completed our work, our false self will lead us to believe that we are in Level 3 when in fact we are spinning our thoughts into a head trip that may inflate our ego/false self.
Susan (introduced in Chapter 6) recently heard that Jack, the old friend who had ignored her, was marrying the woman he had dated for a few years. Susan and her husband were not invited to the wedding—only family was invited. Susan explained in group therapy, “I started doing my old “them against me;” I’m right and they’re wrong. This woman is just like all the other women in my life who hurt me. I watched a cascade of hurts wash over me. Then I remembered I have choices now. So I invited in my Higher Self to help. Instead of the duality of them against me—I suddenly felt compassion for myself, which felt a lot better than the anger museum I had carried. I realized how sad my history is when it comes to women, starting with my mother, and the compassion turned into my inner parent soothing and taking care of me. Jack’s on his own journey now. I need to take care of myself!”
Susan added that practicing meditation and praying each day, although hard in the beginning, helped her to bridge her connection to a Power greater than herself.
Daily meditation, prayer, spiritual readings or the like are important. Doing these greases the wheels of our personal and spiritual awareness, and maintains and nourishes us as we strengthen our humility.
When I move from the Level 1 triangle to Level 2, I observe myself in my relationship to God. I can see clearly how I relate to myself and others. I move from a more constricted, limited view to one of exploration and possibility. I begin to see my life as a moving and dynamic process. We open ourselves by surrendering our preconceived ideas of how things are and allow ourselves not to know.
Cultivating the strength to “not know” allows others to be themselves around us. It allows for different interpretations of the same event. It allows us to reframe our own point of view. We learn to balance our life in the vision that pulls us toward our True Self and into the teaching of the Level 3 triangle. Life becomes our meditation practice and our Higher Self becomes visible in our daily activity. We’ll discuss this practice further in Chapter 9.
Having and using our increasing humility is a key to moving to higher functioning. Without it personal growth is usually impossible. Our humility will help us to work in an easier way with our feelings. Instead of telling ourselves stories about why we feel a particular way, we can accept the ability to be still with our feelings and let them move through us. A sense of movement and/or a bittersweet tone will accompany our holding painful feelings. Stories at Level 3 get in the way of feeling. A large part of recovery is about learning to tolerate and hold painful feelings while we work through them and finally let them go. Feeling our painful emotions allows us to move through them with compassion for self and others. From the first moment we attempt to leave a Level 1 triangle we will benefit from taking with us the skill to tolerate emotional pain. This skill is a major part of the foundation for recovery and for developing our humility.37
In Level 1, the roles in the triangle were persecutor, victim, and rescuer. In Level 2 these expanded to motivator, empowered self, and nurturer. All of these have characteristics of being nouns, roles, and they reflect polarity. But the language of the Level 3 triangle takes on a more dynamic quality, often using action-oriented words. In Level 3 these roles-in-action become creativity, energy/movement/vibration, and love and expansion, as we show in Table 8.1 and Figure 8.1.
Table 8.1 Roles in Levels 1, 2 and 3 Triangles
Level 1 |
Level 2 |
Level 3 |
Victim |
Empowered self |
Creativity |
Persecutor |
Motivator |
Energy, movement, vibration |
Rescuer |
Nurturer |
Love and expansion |
Figure 8.1 Visual of Roles in Levels 1, 2 and 3 Triangles Creativity
The primary characteristics of Level 1 thinking and being are fear based, all-or-none and thus limited. Expanding to Level 2, our primary characteristics are choice making, empathy and realizing acceptance through conflict. In Level 3, Co-creation, we live from and as our True Self now expanded to our Higher Self. Our primary characteristics at this level are expanded to vision, compassion for self and others, and Co-creation with God. We can begin to clarify Level 3 functioning with the following history.
Ed’s daughter Bonnie moved from the eastern seaboard to Colorado. She saw her father and stepmother, Marsha, yearly when she went east to visit.
At age thirty Bonnie called and told them her live-in relationship had ended and she had just found out she was pregnant. Ed and Marsha invited her to come and live with them while she had the baby, and they would then help her raise it. Bonnie returned, and together they celebrated the birth of the child, a boy named Christopher.
Marsha and Ed provided day care while Bonnie worked to support herself and her baby. On Chris’s first birthday, Bonnie told Marsha and Ed that she was saving her money to return to Colorado. For the next year and a half they were in a triangle—Bonnie, Marsha and Ed, and Colorado (places or things can sometimes be part of a triangle). When Bonnie talked about moving, Marsha and Ed retreated into themselves and found comfort only in prayer.
Finally the day came when the moving van left and Bonnie and Chris kissed Ed and Marsha good-bye. Everyone cried. For the next several weeks Marsha and Ed actively grieved. They felt their hearts had been torn apart and at this painful time all they could do was pray. They prayed for their child and grandchild’s safety and eventual happiness, for help in the pain they were cycling through, and for God’s will. Their pain and their prayers took them deeper into humility. They realized they would go through it all over again—even the painful separation—because they knew they had helped give their grandson a good start. Now they had to have faith in Bonnie and faith in their relationship with God.
In Colorado, Bonnie met Drew who has a son, Paul, a year older than Chris. They fell in love and married. Bonnie and Chris are now living in the Rocky Mountains with Drew and they have had two more children.
Recently Ed and Marsha received an e-mail from Bonnie that ended with this paragraph:
Last night I showed Drew the slide show I made when I left Atlanta. He loved it. Lots of memories came back. I’m so happy we all got to share in Chris’s birth. How did you know to invite me? My life will always be special because of it. So, looking back, I see it as an experience where I was given a choice, then chose the right path, all the while determined to return to my heart’s home with my new child. During this time I was able to develop and strengthen my relationship with my father (and stepmom). I learned to balance wise choices with determination. Then I returned to my home and learned how to do it alone. Having been taught that it was okay to ask for help, I learned how to find this help in Boulder and anywhere else I looked.”
Marsha and Ed stayed in Level 3 through prayer and letting go of their Level 1 need to control Bonnie by trying to keep the two of them from moving. Through their pain of letting her go they prayed and co-created love and expansion for their child. It turned out to be a win-win situation for everybody.
When we enter and experience living in Level 2, we also open the door to a third level, accessing what some spiritual teachers have called “the third eye” chakra—a higher perception of life and a more soulful relationship with ourselves. In the story above, Marsha and Ed found a closer relationship with each other and God, in addition to a closer relationship with Bonnie and Chris. They moved into Level 3 through prayer, awareness, grieving and letting go. This moved them into a new way of being that they couldn’t have predicted. It opened them even more to using the attitude and skill of humility.
To move into the third level, we need to develop our relationship with a higher part of ourselves, our Higher Self, as we show in the map of the mind in Chapter 4 (page 39). We also experience a nurturing relationship with God. Our relationship to our Higher Power changes as we develop and grow, both personally and collectively. We are no longer alone in our abilities to be creative. Now, we lovingly ask for help in our action of co-creation. We also see the Mystery beginning to reveal itself in what we have come to call synchronicities. Meaningful coincidences, synchronicities happen all the time, although we may not notice them among the otherwise ordinary occurrences in our day-today lives. Level 3 brings us to a new conscious awareness that shows us more of these synchronicities and gives us an appreciation that our lives are being woven from a higher meaning. Some have called them “cosmic postcards.”
At this level there is one part of our attention always on God— focused on the “We” instead of the “I.” Because of this aspect of “Divine Attention” we call it the Co-creative Level. We are co-creating with our Higher Power. We recognize this partnership. We experience a continuous flow of energy that helps us to create a life of peace and plenty.
Here the roles of the triangle again change. The motivator role of the second triangle become qualities of movement, energy, vibration. It is important to remember that the roles, as they evolve upward, move from nouns to action-oriented words; from roles toward qualities—divine qualities (see Table 8.2). These are the energies of the masculine: dynamic, action oriented and capable of manifestation. This newfound energy and action includes the power inherent in our inspirations, the force of a vision, of being driven by a creative project. The proverbial muse moves us—literally!
The nurturer role of the second triangle continues toward an alignment with love and expansion. This new feeling is an emotional holding, a deep compassion, and an ability to give and receive unconditional love—a divine feminine quality. This is the capacity to love those whose beliefs are contrary to ours. To love those that disagree with our most personally held perspectives. And to validate and embrace differences as divine.
The empowered self of the second triangle is now transformed into a co-creative energy and action. To be co-creative with God implies that we rejoice in the opportunities that conflicts hold for our now inspired choice making. Therefore, instead of avoiding conflicts, we learn to embrace and relish them as creative outlets. At this level of development, it is as if God and we become partners. We sense the flow and perfection of God in our life, we act in ways that creatively manifest our now expanded intent, and we love unconditionally while we do it. Dualism, right/wrong thinking and polarities no longer dominate our experience and reality. Some have called this state of being “Enlightenment,” which we discuss in the next sidebar.
Table 8.2 Level 3 Triangle—The Action/Energy of Co-creation
Level 2 Triangle (Nouns, Roles) |
Level 3 Triangle (Oriented Toward Action) |
Empowered Self |
Creativity |
Motivator |
Energy, movement, vibration |
Nurturer |
Love and expansion; emotional holding |
Our spiritual journey is an evolutionary spiral, as shown in Figure 8.2. Each loop of the spiral represents a lesson or growth cycle. And each lesson will usually be followed by another one and designed by us and our Higher Power to move us farther along our spiritual journey.
Figure 8.2 Recovery and Growth Through Experiencing, Telling Our Story and Observing It All
(from Whitfield 1987)
In the next chapter we address what we believe is the most unknown and difficult Level of the Four to experience. Yet, attaining it may be the ultimate goal of many spiritual seekers.