Growth is a spiralTime travels both in a circle and in a line. Similarly, our experiences both reiterate what we have learned, and build on the old to form new fields of experience. Life unfolds in a spiral, constantly revisiting old themes with new altitudes. So I take it for granted that some of my most "out-there" experiences will show eerie similarities with experiences I've already had.
Doors and mazesThe problem with doors is that they tend to hide mazes. You can say "People need free speech and independence" and that's all well and good; the doorway is clear to see, and it's clear that the Truth, the Utopia, is behind that door. But then you open it, you step through, and you find yourself lost in a world with more dimensions than it had before, and the complexity overwhelms and divides you. Moses and his people learned independence and freedom in the desert, but they also learned hunger and strife - and many noted in anger that these things they would not need to worry about if they were still enslaved. When the door is closed, you can see clearly only the best of the potential hidden behind it; when you open it, you expose yourself to the complicated realities of that dimension of life. The potentials are there; but they aren't immediately accessible.
Green cracks open the doors to a whole new world of vision-logic and some strands of Green see its utopic goals just in sight. "World peace is right here - can't you see it? We just have to reach out and grasp it!" But Green doesn't see the complex new barriers to those goals. Or rather, some other strands of Green focus just on those barriers and fall into a deep, warranted despair. Once the Green thinker has managed to step back from these new hopes and new concerns and see them in perspective, she has reached Teal cognition in this regard.
Pain and growthPain can metabolize into growth. If you have to experience pain, you might as well get to work thinking the pain through, processing it, finding the meaning behind it. However you don't need pain to get growth; you just need instability, uncertainty. Your worldview needs to be incomplete, unsatisfactory somehow, to make you sit down and try to work out the confusion.
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