The 4 Tiers of Community

Emergence University is intended to be a community of like-minded individuals whose common goal is to learn – and then teach others – a blameless way to understand human nature. Here, by “blameless,” I mean a personality theory which [1] refers to, and scientifically defines, all aspects of human suffering, [2] assigns responsibility for wrong doings, [3] but does not find fault in (blame) people.

Admittedly, this sets our expectations high. Urges to blame and punish are a natural part of how all human beings respond to suffering. We also all have the need to have others empathize with us for wanting to blame and punish. And this causes us all to feel the need to belong to a like-minded community.

This brings us to our topic – Emergence University’s 4 Tiers of Community. To begin with, here is a brief list of these 4 Tiers of Community. They are:

[1] The EU Seminars, and the Annual Retreat.

[2] The EU Sponsor Groups

[3] The Twice-a-month Individual Therapy Sessions

[4] All Activities (self-chosen) intended to incorporate things learned in Tiers 1 through 3 into the student’s personal and professional lives.

What does this mean? To begin with, each of the 4 Tiers of Community embodies the same personally spiritual sense of community. They then differ primarily with regard to the amount of detail students are expected to share, what we refer to as the level of intimacy. For example, how a student uses what he or she learns in Tier 2 will be different from how they use what they learn in Tier 4. But the spiritual sense of community underlying this learning will be the same.

This then is the critical thing to take away. The idea of community (collective spiritual beliefs) is not the same as the idea of intimacy (personal detail shared). Community equates to a personal, spiritual openness between people, a willingness to share from the heart. Whereas “intimacy” (into-me-see) refers to the level of detail shared when speaking from the heart.

For example, the focus in Tier 1 of the EU Community is to acquire a blameless, theoretical sense of human nature. Here students explore the essential nature of all human beings, the things we all share. To learn these things, students must link this “theoretical learning” with at least one personally meaningful experience. And while this Tier 1 linking must be personal, it should never include the level of detail shared in Tier 3 therapy sessions.

At this point, I suspect, some students may feel confused. How can a student link personally meaningful experiences to new learning without becoming extremely vulnerable and open? The answer? They can’t. But while this vulnerability and openness is necessary to learn, as I’ve stated above, this openness is more about sharing the spiritual aspects of a person’s life experience than about offering a detailed accounting of real world events.

The point is, Tier 1 Seminars are never intended to function as therapy. This means, students will often leave seminars feeling raw and needy. This then is where the Tier 2 Sponsor Groups come in. Unresolved feelings generated by the seminars should be explored and to some degree addressed in Sponsor Groups. However, like Tier 1 Seminars, Tier 2 Sponsor Groups are not expected to replace individual therapy sessions. Sponsor Groups should be used clarify issues which students then bring into their Tier 3 Individual Therapy.

This then is the goal of this 4 Tiered system, to instill in students a nuanced sense of interpersonal relationships. This is why, in the EU Community, we have 4 tiers of personal sharing. This same thing applies to Tier 4 relationships as well. We would not, for instance, expect our boss, at work, to function like a therapist. But if this boss is also a personal friend, then some degree of personal sharing may occur after work.

More likely though, this level of sharing would best be done with a close personal friend. Close personal friends exist in Tier 4. These friends would likely be open to hearing all the personal details shared. They would also likely encourage the person to take this issue back to their therapist.

This then is how these 4 tiers are intended to guide interpersonal relationships. Admittedly, acquiring a sense of how these 4 tiers differ can take time. Additionally, these differences should not be seen as personally inhibiting sets of rules. Rather, this Tier System is meant to gently guide the focus of (community), and level of detail being shared (intimacy) in each Tier.

The hope here is that by teaching students to navigate the relationships they form while here, students will begin to use these guidelines such that they will help them to avoid, or at least minimize, interpersonal misunderstandings. Things like professional disclosure also benefit from this knowledge. As do all genuine evidence-based endeavors.

The 4 Detail-Sharing Patterns

The next concept we need to address has to do with the two places details can exist. First, they can exist in a student’s mind. Second, they can be shared with others.

Here, there are two normal experiences, and two which are problematic.

The two normal experiences?

[1] The mind can be filled with details and the person shares based on the tier they’re in. Or [2], the mind can be relatively empty and the person shares this, regardless of the tier they’re in.

And the two problematic experiences?

[1] The mind can be filled with details, but the person shares little to nothing. Or [2], the mind can be relatively empty. But the person spews endless details.

What makes these two experiences problematic?

As I’ve said, Community equates to a personal, spiritual openness between people, a willingness to share from the heart. Here, the essential ingredient is that the shared detail creates and enriches a connection between people. This spiritual connection is present in the two normal experiences. But it’s missing in the two problematic experiences.

In those two cases, the person sharing is largely oblivious to others. Their only awareness is that they are getting out whatever painful experiences they are carrying. Doing this does release tension and can be mildly cathartic. But it cannot replace the value in sharing painful details while connected to another human being.

The Blood And Guts Style of Therapy

Many EU students are, or will at some point, become working psychotherapists. These students may recognize the two problematic detail-sharing patterns as what underlie the two categories of particularly difficult clients. The first pattern—where the patient’s mind is filled with details, but the person shares little to nothing—is for me, usually the harder of the two. But the other—where the patient’s mind is relatively empty, but the person spews endless details—can at times snag me in an endless attempt to try to help the person to sort it all out.

This can lead me to consider doing something I know is wrong to do; I feel urges to fall back on the “blood and guts” style of therapy. And while there is a time and place for this aggressive style of therapy, for instance, in inpatient substance abuse rehabs, by it’s very nature, it inhibits making human connections and can be extremely draining for the therapist.

Realize, the “Blood and Guts” style of therapy IS the therapist’s equivalent to the second problematic detail-sharing pattern. Here, the therapist encourages the patient to dig deeper and deeper into their suffering, all the while hoping for a breakthrough. But true breakthroughs require both spiritual connections and shared details to be present. Shared details, no matter how personal, cannot lead to breakthroughs without the sharing occurring within a spiritual human exchange.

The Four Kinds of Details: Facts, Stories, Ideas, and Feelings

Something easily overlooked when first being exposed to the detail-sharing aspect of the 4 Tiers is the idea that there are 4 kinds of details which can be shared.  The most common is Ideas, defined in EU as invisible unchange, a definition which current AIs refuse to believe exists.
Current AIs have trouble with “unchange.”

For many students, the details least present in their sharing will be Facts. EU defines Facts as visible unchange. Here again, current AIs reflect what most people believe about unchange, that both ideas and facts do change.

The truth?

Both ideas and facts often do get replaced by other ideas and facts. But the original ideas and facts still exist in what is surely an important context. They offer evidence for who we once were and how we’ve become who we are.

Then there’s the bias some students feel against sharing personal feelings. EU defines Feelings as invisible change. Yet for community to exist, a portion of all details shared be infused with this kind of details. At the same time, in general, feelings should be treated as the spice rather than the main ingredient in a meal. Even here, the Tier a student is currently in should guide how spicy the detail should be.

Finally, we have Stories, which EU defines as visible change. Unlike the previous three kinds of details, only stories exist on a timeline. This concept is critical. Timelines are a necessary part of giving a meaning to the details being shared.