When I came to Cornell University as a Freshman, I had a mission: I won't just pursue grades—I'll study hard, learn deeply, and become a critical thinker.

Only later, would I realize I was aspiring to Arc 9 of my theory of knowing. And it worked!

Terribly...

The first few months I made friends with a group of computer scientists and engineers. As they got into the habit of studying for exams the night before, handing homework in 5 seconds before the deadline, and using AI to "assist" in assignments, I found myself falling into the same traps. It wasn't only them. Walking around campus, I heard students brag about how they slept for -4 hours the night before, how difficult their 83 credit course load was, and how the last time they'd eaten a vegetable their mom force fed them.

All of campus was steeped in a toxic productivity fog. Blessedly, from time to time I'd find a clean bubble with more aspirational students. But the cycle continued. Excitement beginning of the semester. Overwhelm. Cramming. Forget everything a few weeks or months later. Repeat.

As the years went on, I realized there were three fundamental challenges I was facing with learning in college:

• Learning is too extrinsically motivated
• Learning is seen too much as knowledge transfer
• We're not learning some things we should

Trying to navigate these challenges, I dived deep into spirituality, meta-learning, and gamification. Over the last 6 years, I've taught my insights to 100s of students in person, and an online audience of 10,000+. I've created 600+ YouTube videos, blogs, podcasts, and four video courses. I've learned about human motivation from the worlds #1 gamification company, The Octalysis Group, who have impacted over 1 Billion user experiences, worked with 150+ companies, and have over 3,000 scholarly citations on our motivational framework.

All this has culminated in my Crown Jewel: Spiral Knowing.

Yes, yes, I know it looks like a pyramid. Look art designers don't grow on trees you know? It will be made into a Spiral, uh, soon. Anyways, what is Spiral Knowing?

Spiral Knowing integrates many of the most insightful learning, teaching, knowing, and motivational theories to create a radical new meta-map for understanding how we can deepen our knowledge in college.

Knowledge in college. I'm sorry if I say that a lot this article—it's catchy. Through mastering all 9 Arcs of Spiral Knowing you can:

• Study and learn more effectively, in less time, for both school and personal passions
• Look like a genius in front of your peers
• Build critical thinking skills
• Improve your teaching
• Get better grades

Of course, meta-learning—the science of learning how to learn—is an incredibly complex field and I still haven't uncovered the secret to zapping insights into the brains of my readers. So out of the three main ways you can improve your learning, we're going to focus on one: Deepening your Spiral Knowing or what in the meta-learning field is called, deep processing.

Deep processing is all about, get this, deepening the connectedness and depth of how you learn. Unfortunately, most students are studying very shallowly and therefore learning very shallowly. They're grounded in Arcs 1-3 of Spiral Knowing. By improving your deep processing, we can drastically improve the quality of your learning & studying.

How?

We'll start by laying a foundation for Spiral Knowing by:

• Defining each of the 9 Arcs of knowing and why they're important
• Exploring learning questions and techniques for deepening your knowledge in each of them

Then, we'll get super concrete with a 3 step process to deepening your Spiral Knowing in any context. That includes:

• Step 1: Assessing Your Spiral Knowing Breakdown
• Step 2: Planning How To Deepen Your Spiral Knowing 1-2 Arcs
• Step 3: Testing & Iterating

Above everything else, Spiral Knowing will completely transform the fundamental way you relate to knowledge. Spiral Knowing becomes most profound when you see it not just as a theory of knowledge, but as a theory of becoming, a theory of how individuals, groups, and societies grow themselves as their relationship to knowledge grows.

But that realization only truly comes at Arc 9 of Spiral Knowing and with all three levels. I believe you can make it there! But lets start by laying a foundation and then applying it to your college learning and studying.

Spiral Knowing Level 1: Personal Knowing

Spiral Knowing is made up of three levels, each growing in complexity, nuance, and power for enhancing your learning and studying.

Level 1, Personal Knowing, is all about understanding Spiral Knowing on an individual level.

Despite being arrayed in a hierarchy, deeper Arcs of knowing are at the bottom of the spiral rather than the top. I like being quirky like that.

Similar to how a mountains foundation supports its peak, deeper Arcs support shallower ones. This doesn't mean shallower Arcs are "better" or "worse" than deeper ones for learning and studying. It simply means they aren't as deep.

The Spiral is further split into three Bands.

Bands represent different ways of knowing:

• Propositional Band: Knowing about things through remembering or understanding. This Band is structured by Practical Knowing, founded in Participatory Knowing, and expressed in statements.
• Practical Band: Knowing how to apply, analyze, or evaluate something whether kinesthetic or mental as well as ones relative discernment of things. This Band is expressed by Propositional Knowing and founded in Participatory Knowing.
• Participatory Band: Knowing how to be in not only one context but your relationship with existence in general through creating, teaching, reflecting, and experiencing. This Band is structured by Practical Knowing and expressed in Propositional Knowing but founded in itself.

As we will explore, one of the main problems students have regarding learning, is they are too focused on the Propositional Band, and the shallower parts of the Practical Band.

Bands are differentiated by Tier.

Tiers represent deeper levels of relating to a Band depending on the grounding of individuals, groups, and societies in Spiral Knowing.

• Tier 1: How this Band is known when the individual, group, or society is grounded in Band 1.
• Tier 2: How this Band is known when the individual group or society is grounded in Band 2.
• Tier 3: How this Band is known when the individual, group, or society is grounded in Band 3.

Since most students are in Tier 1 and maybe 2, they don't appreciate the value in the deeper parts of the Practical Band and especially the value in the Participatory Band.

Finally, the Spiral is split into 9 different Arcs.

Arcs represent different ways of learning, studying, and knowing inside of Bands:

• Remember: Recalling or recognizing information.
• Understand: Comprehending what information means.
• Apply: Not just remembering or understanding something, but using it.
• Analyze: Breaking down concepts into parts, comparing, and organizing.
• Evaluate: Judging value, strength, or validity of a position as well as supporting it.
• Create:
  • Practical Creating: Generating new things to improve interaction with the world as it is.
  • Achievement Creating: Generating new things to achieve for oneself and/or to appease others.
  • Aspirational Creating: Generating new things to exemplify, reimagine, or transform one’s relationship with reality.
• Teach:
  • Practical Teaching: Teach what you know primarily for a practical purpose.
  • Aspirational Teaching: Help someone venture deeper into Spiral Knowing.
• Reflect:
  • Practical Reflecting: Reflecting primarily for practical reasons like feeling better.
  • Aspirational Reflecting: Reflecting to explore nature of ones knowing and venture deeper into Spiral Knowing.
• Experience: Pure conscious awareness of ones knowing.

In the Arcs above, most students focus on the first 1-3 even if they consciously know the deeper arcs are more important. Let's see how we can change that.

With a basic of Spiral Knowing, here are some practical nuances. These will help you deepen your understanding before applying it to your own learning and studying.

The Process Of Knowing Is Not Hierarchical

Bloom’s Taxonomy makes knowing look like a staircase—rigid steps marching upward like a factory conveyor belt.

Real learning behaves nothing like that.

It's not like we remember once and then say, "Welp, looks like I'm good, never gotta remember again!" Learning loops, curls, doubles back on itself. It’s more like walking a forest spiral path where every few steps the trail bends and reveals some old detail from a new angle. You don’t “reach” understanding like a summit; you orbit it, each pass carving the groove a little deeper.

Often, it’s better to start with a project, question, or experience—and let understanding and memorization follow. It leads to deeper knowing. Firstly, because knowing is founded in participation, not propositions. Secondly, because it facilitates deeper processing. And thirdly, because it often mirrors the manner we will actually apply our learning.

Higher Arcs Are Founded In Lower Arcs

Think of the Arcs like the roots and branches of a single living tree. Explaining your understanding in words might look like the dazzling canopy, but it’s fed by roots sunk deep into earlier Arcs. When you descend into those deeper layers—Evaluation, Creation, Reflection—it’s like descending into richer soil. Everything above grows stronger. Even the questions at shallower layers start tasting different, the way water tastes different after flowing over richer minerals—hence the differentiation between Knowing Tiers.

That’s why some learning questions in shallower Arcs are quiet profound but only unlocked when you venture into the deeper Arcs. This doesn’t mean you need to crystalize shallower Arcs before venturing deeper, but embodying those Arcs well will require it.

Spiral Knowing Is Dimensional Across An Individual, Group, And Societies Life

A person’s Spiral can look like a deep ocean trench in one Band and a shallow puddle in another. A Chemical Engineer may stand at the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the practical Band—pressure-tested in torque and stress—but skim the surface of propositional knowing in music theory.

Groups and societies work the same way: flashes of brilliance like lightning across a night sky, followed by long stretches of fog. Without groundedness, those lightning strikes illuminate nothing.

That being said, an individual, group, and society, generally ground in a certain Arc and Band across all dimensions.

Groundedness means the structure of their knowing tends to be in that Arc, as well as one level deeper and shallower in most contexts. Through continually structuring their learning and studying deeper and deeper, they can slowly move their groundedness down the Arcs.

Structure Differs From Content

Content refers to the Propositional expression of knowing. A student can have a lot of Propositional content that represents a analytical, evaluative degree of knowing for physics, but this doesn’t mean they are grounded in those Arcs of knowing. They need structure for that.

To actually be in an Arc, you must relate to that Arc by truly asking those Arcs questions yourself. So to be in the evaluative Arc, you must actually ask evaluative questions of physics, not just copy other evaluations of physics. I know, if only it were that easy.

One of the biggest mistakes students make, is they assume if they copy the study techniques of genius students, they will magically improve their learning and grades. But here's the thing: the study technique matters much much less than the structure you have towards the study technique.

Content is the paint on the canvas; structure is the hand that holds the brush. A student can copy the same study technique as a genius student, but without the deeper structure, it’s like tracing the Mona Lisa with Ketchup caked fingers. The lines may match, but the art piece is well, not sublime.

For example, a genius student can make a shallow studying technique like re-reading and summarizing notes incredibly deep, if they structure their learning in a deeper Spiral Knowing Arc. Similarly, a student can turn a deeper studying technique, like doing practice problems, into shallow learning if they structure it by trying for one minute, giving up, looking at the answer, and asking how well they feel they understand it.

This doesn't mean techniques don't matter. Different techniques can generally push shallower or deeper Spiral Knowing. But as you read the rest of this article, understand the structure of your studying and learning is what you should focus the most on.

The Best Teachers Are Those A Couple Arcs Deeper Than You In Knowing

The best teachers aren’t sages atop some unreachable mountain. They’re a few switchbacks ahead on the same winding trail.

Generally, the ideal teacher is one to two Arcs deeper in groundedness for the topic because this balances profundity with understanding. Imagine a sage telling a homeless person they just need to "stop attaching." Same logic.

Why Is The Spiral Colored?

Cause I like colors...

I'm just kidding. The different colors of Spiral Knowing integrate with another profound theory called Spiral Dynamics. Spiral Dynamics describes how individuals, groups, and societies develop through seven Arcs in response to changing life conditions, and how those changes influence values, behavior, beliefs, and solutions to challenges.

Spiral Dynamics represents these Arcs by different colors:

• Purple
• Red
• Blue
• Orange
• Green
• Yellow
• Turquoise

You're never going to believe this but those are the same colors Spiral Knowing is made of. It's almost like I purposefully mapped out the Arcs of Spiral Knowing to correspond with Spiral Dynamics. Anyways, the connection of Spiral Knowing to Spiral Dynamics only takes place in Level 3: Meta-Cultural Knowing. That's too deep for what we're exploring here.

So for now, let's dive into the specifics of each Band and Arc of Spiral Knowing. This is where we get really concrete.

• What is each Band and Arc and why are they important?

What learning questions and techniques can you use to deepen your Spiral Knowing in them?

Practical Mindsets & Methods For Deepening Your Spiral Knowing In Each Band & Arc

Band 1: Propositional Knowing

Definition: Knowing about things. This Band is structured by Practical Knowing, founded in Participatory Knowing, and expressed in statements.

Examples:

• World War 2 occurred from 1939 to 1945
• Step 1 of the Krebs Cycle includes...
• Construal in Social Psych means...

Why is it important?

Propositional Knowing serves as the semantic expression of our Practical and Participatory Knowing. Communication is possible yay! It’s simultaneously a structure (but not foundation) and expression of deeper levels of knowing.

And yet, when we focus too much on Propositional Knowing, we have the ability to express our learnings, without the ability to deepen them. We mistake our propositions as the mountain instead of just the mountain's peak.

Remember

Definition: Recalling or recognizing information.

Examples:

• Recalling the wavelength of blue light falls between 400 and 500 nanometers
• Recognizing different parts of a college campus
• Remembering Socrates is a man

Remembering verbs:

• Recognizing
• Recalling

Why is it important?

This form of Propositional Knowing is essential to basic functioning. Imagine if you couldn't remember where the dining hall was? Or how to do basic arithmetic? Or the name of that one student who smiles and says hi to you on the sidewalk and you tell them you know them and then they realize you don’t and it’s really awkward… Anyways.

However, when remembering becomes the norm through rote memorization, understanding dies like my love for marijauna after taking psychedelics. Thankfully most of college has gone past rote memorization as the main form of knowing, but it remains a big Arc for students cramming for tests the night before the due date.

Learning Questions:

• How can I space out my repetitions to remember this better?
• How can I memorize this in the context and state I will need to remember it?
• Can I create this into a mnemonic?
• What could make this more emotional?
• How can I use memory palaces to remember this?
• How can I free recall or cued recall rather than recognize to build deeper memory?
• What form of recall is best here: written, spoken, drawn, or acted out?
• What 20% of things do I need to know for 80% of the outcome?
• What memory trigger can I associate this with (smell, setting, sound)?
• How can I turn this into a moment I will remember forever?
• How can I group this information to reduce my memory load?
• Is this worth remembering long-term—or can I just look it up?
• How can I make this into a story to remember it better?
• How can I build a second brain to help scaffold and enhance my memory?
• How can I use the external memory to offload things I don’t need to remember?

Application Methods:

• Flashcards
• Memory palaces
• Mnemonics
• Images
• Free recall
• Cued Recall
• Summarization
• Storytelling
• Sensory anchoring

Peer quizzing

Understand

Definition: Comprehending what information means.

Examples:

• Describing how a piece of art uses a specific visual technique
• Summarizing the different types of quarks
• Explaining photosynthesis

Understanding verbs:

• Questioning
• Discussing
• Summarize

Why is it important?

Understanding is essential for moving deeper in the Spiral. If you don't comprehend something, it's much more difficult to apply, analyze, or goodness forbid create.

But if we only prioritize understanding and don’t move to the Practical Band, we can become Cookie Cutter Students. We get the material yes, but we don't innovate. Even our understanding is abstracted because we've never stress tested it in the real world.

Learning Questions:

• How might I explain this one concept to a child?
• What examples are there of this thing?
• How can I organize this to make sense of it?
• What is the broader context of this idea?
• What are common misconceptions about this?
• How would my past self have understood this differently?
• How would I explain this to a beginner vs. an expert?
• How would someone in another field interpret this idea?
• What is the broader context of this idea?
• What’s the core idea here, stripped of jargon?
• What analogy can I create to understand this better?
• What confuses me most about this?
• How does this connect to something I already know?

Application Methods:

• Explain in your own words
• Help someone else comprehend
• Find examples
• Build an analogy or metaphor
• Create a summary

Image/diagram labelling

Band 2: Practical Knowing

Definition: Knowing how to apply, analyze, or evaluate something whether kinesthetic or mental as well as ones relative discernment of things. This Band is expressed by Propositional Knowing and founded in Participatory Knowing. This knowing is often tacit, meaning it can be hard to explain verbally, but it is evident in action:

Examples:

• Engaging in effective group work
• Comparing different organelles in a cell
• Defending The Communist Manifesto

Why is it important?

Practical Knowing bridges the gap between understanding and being—transforming the knowledge we hold (propositional) into the actions, analysis, and evaluation through which we embody and refine who we are (participatory). It's called Practical Knowing because right now, at least in the U.S., the most value is put in this band of knowing. It's this band which will most clearly (but not truly) improve your career prospects.

And that's exactly the problem. When Practical Knowing is too prioritized we become, well, too practical. We mistake Practical Knowing as the mountain's foundation rather than just its middle section. Our relationship with ourselves, others, and the world dies because we become entranced with the practicality of our knowing rather than our relationship too it. Especially at the deeper levels, we can believe we have a very critical thinking mindset because of our evaluations, and yet we haven't done the deeper level reflection and experiencing to understand the bias and deception underlying them.

Apply

Definition: Not just remembering or understanding something, but using it.

Examples:

• Assembling IKEA furniture using a diagram
• Writing a persuasive email to your Professor
• Solving a new math problem

Applying verbs:

• Demonstrating
• Implementing
• Solving
• Using

Why is it important?

This is the deepest level the vast majority of students get to in their Spiral Knowing. Applying ensures our abstract theories are stress tested in the real world. It also helps us find holes in remembering or understanding which makes our studying more targeted and effective.

But when we prioritize applying too much we don't draw connections to knowledge outside what we're applying. Our knowledge becomes siloed and cookie cutter.

Learning Questions:

• How can I apply this as directly in the context I want to use it in?
• What constraints can I give myself to make my application easier?
• How can I scaffold this application to stay in my goldilocks zone?
• How can I interleave different aspects of this together to ensure my application isn’t rigid?
• How can I add some variability to this to ensure I continue learning?
• How can I make this progressively harder to continue improving?
• How can I chunk this application to avoid overload?
• What tools, heuristics, or templates can support my application?
• What distractions or multitasking tendencies do I need to manage?
• What can I externalize (write down, diagram, track) to free up brainpower while applying this?
• What step-by-step process can I follow to apply this consistently?
• What would mastery in this look like and how far off am I?
• How can I gamify my own application to stay motivated?
• What immediate feedback will show me if I’m applying this well?

Application Methods:

• See, do, feedback
• Progressive overload loops
• Rapid prototyping sprints
• Variable repetition
• Problem solving

Testing

Analyze

Definition: Breaking down concepts into parts, comparing, and organizing.

Examples:

• Comparing themes in two books
• Breaking down differences between solids, liquids, and gasses
• Asking how a single law lecture fits into the whole course

Analyzing verbs:

• Organizing
• Comparing
• Discerning
• Breaking down
• Building up
• Questioning
• Discussing

Why is it important?

Analyzing helps us see how the parts fit into the whole not just for one class, but for all knowledge in general. Ultimately, all knowledge is connected, and the greatest geniuses of history were almost always cross disciplinary.

Already, we're getting to Arcs of knowing that much of college and students don't structure their knowing in. Notice how rare it is for your classes or possibly even you to draw connects between material and other classes.

And yet, when we analyze too much, we don't evaluate the value of any of what we analyze. We become stuck in endless comparing and relativism.

Learning Questions:

• How does this connect to something outside of this thing?
• What are the parts and holes this thing is made up of?
• How is the whole different from the sum of its parts?
• How does this thing compare to this thing?
• How can I align terms to discern these things from each other?
• In what ways are these things similar and different?
• How can I organize this to make sense to me or someone else?
• What patterns keep repeating here, and what might they reveal?
• How would this be different in another culture or context?
• What’s essential vs. optional here?
• What are the key differences that make a difference?
• If I removed this part, what changes?
• What implicit categories am I using here?

Application Methods:

• Mind mapping
• Dump, lump, jump
• Ven diagramming
• Making up own groups
• Structure diagrams
• Matrix mapping
• Opposite dialectic
• Reframe and recluster
• Temporal/causal flow charts

Zoom in and out analysis

Evaluate

Definition: Judging value, strength, or validity of a position as well as supporting it.

Examples:

• Judging the logic of someone's argument in debate
• Critiquing a philosophical argument for intro to philosophy
• Critiquing Spiral Knowing

Evaluating verbs:

• Judging
• Prioritizing
• Valuing
• Critiquing
• Arguing
• Supporting

Why is it important?

Evaluate helps us actually judge and support the propositions we hold and the application and analysis we have done. This is where true innovation begins to happen. We don't just take what we're told, we question it.

But when we evaluate without moving to the Participatory Band, we risk becoming evangelists. Sure we can judge and support, but we don't reflect enough on our biases, deceptions, and emotional/thinking tendencies to truly evaluate from a selfless, unsocialized, foundation. We overvalue logic and undervalue the emotions which make us prioritize certain criteria and logic over others.

Learning Questions:

• Which of these is MOST true/valuable/useful given our context and constraints?
• What assumptions are people making about this thing?
• What criteria can we value this against?
• How logically sound is this?
• How valid is this?
• What’s the priority of these things?
• What’s the quality of this thing?
• What are people not seeing here?
• What frameworks, mental models, and theories can I leverage to evaluate the world?
• How can I align terms with this person to have a proper evaluation?
• How does this work in practice?
• What’s the most generous interpretation of this view?
• How does this respect our goal, data, and stakeholders?
• What would make this wrong?
• Is this relevant?
• Why is this important?

Application Methods:

• Draw out or visually map an argument’s claim, evidence, warrant, and impact
• Create a table ranking options by some valuation
• Switch side debates: take a position, argue it, and then switch
• Assign someone to be the devils advocate for a meeting or situation

Build your own rubric for evaluating something you care about

Band 3: Participatory Knowing

Definition: Knowing how to be in not only one context but your relationship with existence in general. This Band is structured by Practical Knowing and expressed in Propositional Knowing but founded in itself. Verbs in this Band are characterized by how they change your very participation with knowing and relation to self and other.

Examples:

• Designing a Spiral Knowing solution to a learning problem
• Teaching someone who is in a vastly different area of expertise as you
• Journaling about how your major makes one relate to the world differently
• Becoming a Mechanical Engineer

Why is it important?

Participatory Knowing is the root system beneath the other knowings—shaping what and how you embody Practical Knowing in application, analysis, and evaluation, as well as how you express your knowing in Propositional statements.

It also illuminates how knowing is inherently relational, not existing in the mind or outside reality but in the relationship between. The deepest learnings are always integrated back into who you are.

And yet, when we ground too deep into Participatory Knowing we can become airy fairy, losing touch with practicality. We focus too much on the mountains support, but forget most students are still looking at its middle and especially the peak. The art is in balancing all parts of the mountain (the bands) with each other.

Create

Definition:

• Practical Creating: Generating new things to improve interaction with the world as it is
• Achievement Creating: Generating new things to achieve or appease others
• Aspirational Creating: Generating new things to exemplify, reimagine, or transform one’s relationship with reality

Examples:

• Creating an essay for Law
• Developing a new scientific experiment
• Writing a poem for your friend

Creating verbs:

• Designing
• Developing
• Assembling
• Writing
• Synthesizing
• Prototyping

Why is it important?

Practical creating helps solve real world challenges. Achievement creating, well, helps others like you and you feel good about yourself. And Aspirational creating transforms your very relationship with reality. If you're really good at creating you can even do all three at once, creating something that is practical, an accomplishment, and helps you grow as well. I wonder what I'm doing with this article?

But when you don't go deeper to teaching, your creations can be devoid of use because you don't know how to get people to learn to use them, if you want them to that is.

Learning Questions:

• Practical Creating:
  • What can I create that will solve some of my or others problems?
  • How can I make something once that helps me or others again and again?
  • What skill or strength of mine can I turn into a useable resource?
  • What would my self two years ago wish they had?
• Achievement Creating:
  • What would others like if I created?
  • What can I make that will garner me success or acolades?
• Aspirational Creating:
  • What can I create that will help me and others raise their knowledge, love, and consciousness?
  • How can I become through creating?
  • How can I merge two or more strange things to make something new?
  • What experiences or contexts can I put myself in to boost my creativity?
  • What constraints can I give myself to hone my creativity?
  • How can I improve my information diet to enhance my creativity?
  • How can I create something I don’t yet fully understand?
  • How can I fail fast in my creations to iterate more?
  • Where can I publicly create to get feedback and hone my teaching skills?
  • How can I balance convergence and divergence in my creating?
  • How can I collaborate with others to boost my creativity?
  • How can I switch between starlight, discolight, and spotlight focusing to enhance creativity?

Application Methods:

• Dump, lump, jump
• Craft by constraint
• Make it ugly first
• Mesh three different domains into one
• Free-create

Make up your own language for things

Teach

Definition:

• Practical Teaching: Teach what you know primarily for a Practical purpose
• Aspirational Teaching: Help someone venture deeper into Spiral Knowing

Examples:

• Guiding students to learn how to think like a scientist
• Evoking an insight in someone
• Mentoring a student

Teaching verbs:

• Teaching
• Mentoring
• Coaching
• Guiding
• Illuminating
• Evoking
• Empowering
• Awakening
• Inviting
• Molding

Why is it important?

Teaching is where Spiral Knowing becomes meta. To be a truly excellent teacher you must understand the Spiral Knowing of someone else and adapt to their unique challenges, interests, skills, goals, values, and aspirations. This isn't just important for teachers, but students as well. It's beautiful to grow our own Spiral Knowing, but it's celestial to grow someone else's.

If you prioritize teaching too much, however, and don't move to reflecting, you will never understand your own self-biases, deceptions, and emotional/thinking patterns enough to teach others well.

Learning Questions:

• How can I attune to the persons language, level of knowing, interests, and goals?
• How can I explain this to a child?
• What is this person missing that’s clouding their knowing?
• How can I help them come to the insight themselves?
• How is my own self-deception or lack of knowing making it harder to teach?
• Are they ready for what I want to teach them?
• How can I encourage them to venture deeper into Spiral Knowing themselves?
• What part of myself is being reflected through this student’s struggle?
• Am I teaching toward their development, or toward my validation?
• How can I balance challenge and safety so they feel both stretched and supported?
• How do I know when to speak and when silence will teach more?
• How can I help them discover their own questions before giving them mine?

Application Methods:

• Define the student’s unique language, interest, level of knowing, and goals and adapt to them
• Rephrase their ideas back to them until they see their own thought more clearly.
• Narrate your thinking process aloud so they see how knowing unfolds, not just what it concludes.
• Explicitly identify which Arc you’re in (Apply, Evaluate, Inquire…) and help them navigate between Arcs.
• Create assignments or reflections that begin in one Band (e.g., Practical) and invite ascent or descent into another (e.g., Participatory).
• Replace correction with curiosity—ask questions that guide them to self-evaluate before you do.
• Use narratives or case studies that embody the spiral path rather than explain it.
• Regularly attune to the emotional and motivational energy of the learner; adapt tempo or approach accordingly.

Intentionally pause after key moments to let insight ripen.

Reflect

Definition:

• Practical Reflecting: Reflecting primarily for Practical reasons like feeling better
• Aspirational Reflecting: Reflecting to explore nature of ones knowing and venture deeper into Spiral Knowing

Examples:

• Questioning the very knowing structure of society
• Journaling about an emotional reaction
• Contemplating one’s values

Reflecting verbs:

• Surfacing self-deception
• Contemplating
• Going Meta
• Questioning
• Wondering
• Meditating
• Journaling
• Reflecting
• Observing
• Dialoguing

Why is it important?

Reflect is where you truly start to become a deeply independent college thinker. Beforehand, we took college knowledge at face value. Even when we evaluated or created, we didn't do so from a knowledge of the way we were deceiving ourselves.

Reflect is where we build awareness of our socialization, self-deceptions, emotional/thinking patterns, and more. And with awareness, comes the power to change.

Reflect is also about building our meta-learning awareness, becoming aware of our Spiral Knowing habits, when they are hurting us, and when they are aiding us while we are studying. Then, we gain the ability to switch between Spiral Knowing Arcs depending on the situation.

But when we prioritize reflect too much, we don't open ourself up to the wisdom and presence of the primordial layer of all learning, teaching, and knowing: Experience.

Learning Questions:

• What do I know?
• How do I know it?
• How do I discern Truth from falsehood?
• How am I deceiving myself?
• How can I go meta here?
• What are my values?
• What do I fear?
• How would I perceive this if I was looking through this frame instead?
• How is my socialization affecting the way I see things?
• How are my dualisms shaping Non-Dual reality?
• What am I attached to here?
• What are my characteristic emotional tendencies, thought patterns, and behaviors?
• How can I balance reason and emotion?
• How can I think more holistically?
• What mental models can I adopt which will help me see the world in a deeper way?
• What stories am I telling myself?
• How is my current knowing getting in the way of new knowing?

Application Methods:

• Contemplating with a journal
• Narrative journaling
• Keep a commonplace book
• Start daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly review and reflection
• Create an Ecology of Practices for overcoming self-deception
• Internal family systems parts work
• Coaching
• Therapy
• Conversing about reflection with a friend

Do a value defining exercise

Experience

Definition: Pure conscious awareness of ones knowing.

Examples:

• Directly experiencing reality without relative truth of any sort
• Attuning to a new culture outside college setting
• Becoming a biologist

Experiencing verbs:

• Perceiving affordances
• Direct experience
• Presencing
• Relating
• Witnessing
• Undergoing
• Becoming
• Identifying
• Blending
• Intuiting
• Attuning
• Immersing
• Resonating
• Dissolving

Why is it important?

Experience is everything. Everything. There is nothing you are conscious of that is not consciousness. When we ground in this level of knowing, we open ourselves up to profound levels of love, wisdom, and knowledge.

The problem is we are so often clouded by our relativistic judgments of the world, that we can't reach this Arc of knowing. Only during finite states of experience, like gazing at a gorgeous sunset, or receiving an intuition on our life purpose, do we glimpse its power for some brief moments.

Learning Questions:

• How can I directly experience this without relative truth?
• How can I be present in what is?
• How can I flow with experience, not against it?
• What does my intuition say?
• What’s my body telling me?
• How can I attune to this situation?
• What am I becoming?
• What’s my relationship to this situation?
• How can I root in my Self?
• What sensations arise if I pause here?
• How am I giving birth to myself?
• What can I let go of?

Application Methods:

• Take a silent 3-day solo hike or forest retreat
• Do an entire day of sense meditation (focus only on body sensations)
• Use cold plunges or intense breathwork to directly enter bodily awareness
• Attend a religious service or ceremony of a tradition you’ve never known
• Move to a new city/country and re-build your identity from Participatory principles
• Go camping
• Learn through body: improv dance, yoga blindfolded, contact improvisation, breathwork
• Letting go, satisfaction, death meditation
• Read into body to uncover intuition

Congratulations! You've made it through the essentials of Spiral Knowing Level 1. Now we can move on to practically how to deepen your Spiral Knowing with three examples and the three step deepening process.

Three Examples Of How Spiral Knowing Can Supercharge Your Learning & Studying

You're probably hungry for some concrete examples of what it looks like to go deeper into Spiral Knowing in your college classes specifically. I encourage you to apply Spiral Knowing in your personal life as well, but I did title this article as such, so let's deliver on that promise.

A Note On STEM Versus Humanities In Spiral Knowing

What I say next will be controversial for STEM students but I encourage you to contemplate the truth for yourself. In general, STEM disciplines tend to push shallower Spiral Knowing compared to humanities...

This is not because STEM students can't dive into the deepest Spiral Knowing Arcs—the best ones do. It's because STEM as a knowledge system is more clearly practical than humanities in what modern society currently values. The fruits of Practical Knowing in STEM are particularly apparent, concrete, and clear. In contrast, humanities by the nature of its human focus tends to push more into the Participatory Band which makes it seem less Practical in modern society.

Why do I say this?

It's important to note because STEM students in general must learn to value the Participatory Band more, as it founds the Practical. Don't worry, reflecting isn't going to turn you into a poetry major. And humanities students must learn to value the Practical Band more, as its what society values right now. I’m looking at you, student who writes three essays on Nietzsche but can’t unclog a sink.

When you read the examples that come next, whether as a STEM or humanities student, notice the resistance that comes up depending on the Arc mentioned. Lean into it. Why is it there?

Deeper Spiral Knowing In Learning Psychology Heuristics

Let’s say you’re learning about heuristics in psychology—which, I definitely did not choose because I was a Psych Major. Heuristics are the mental shortcuts your brain uses to make decisions faster. They’re little survival tricks that help you act quickly in an uncertain world—like guessing how safe a neighborhood is based on how it “feels,” or deciding which restaurant looks trustworthy based on its logo.

For instance, the availability heuristic makes you judge how likely something is by how easily it comes to mind. If you’ve just watched a shark movie, the ocean suddenly feels deadly. You overestimate rare but vivid dangers—like bear attacks—and underestimate everyday ones—like texting while driving. Still, sometimes your gut nails it: you do grab that jacket before class because you feel it’ll be cold, and you’re right.

Here’s what deeper and deeper Spiral Knowing could look like when studying heuristics in psychology:

• Remember: Memorize examples like the availability, representativeness, and affect heuristics. You can recall definitions on a test: “Availability heuristic—judging probability based on ease of recall.”
• Understand: You grasp why the availability heuristic works. You realize it’s not random—it’s your brain economizing attention. You can explain how emotional vividness tricks the mind, like why people fear plane crashes more than heart disease.
• Apply: You solve short answer problems asking what heuristics are being used in certain situations and how.
• Analyze: You start comparing, connecting, and grouping heuristics not just in relation to your psych class as a whole, but to other disciplines. You notice the overlap between representativeness and stereotyping, or between the affect heuristic and advertising. You connect psychology to economics (“behavioral economics”), realizing companies exploit these shortcuts to sell you things.
• Evaluate: You begin judging the usefulness of heuristics and how they show up in society. You ask: “Are these shortcuts actually bad—or do they make us human?” You assess when intuition beats data and when it misleads. You question if rationality should always be the goal, or if sometimes emotion is intelligence.
• Create: You design something new—a short essay or video analyzing how heuristics shape social media algorithms, political propaganda, or even your university’s grading culture. You weave examples, metaphors, and critique into an argument that helps others see the invisible strings shaping thought.
• Teach: You help your friends see their own heuristics in action. Maybe you joke, “You’re falling for the availability heuristic again—just because everyone’s talking about midterms doesn’t mean everyone’s failing.” You spark curiosity and make psychology feel alive and personal.
• Reflect: You turn the lens inward. You notice your own most common heuristics—maybe you overvalue eloquent speakers (representativeness) or let your mood color your judgment (affect). You journal: “When does intuition serve me, and when does it deceive me?”

Experience: You feel heuristics in real time. You watch thoughts arise like bubbles and dissolve before you act. A fear pops up—you see it, name it, release it. You no longer just know about heuristics. You embody the meta-awareness of how your mind makes meaning.

Deeper Spiral Knowing In Mechanical Engineering

Let’s say you’re studying how things turn—like doors swinging open, wrenches loosening bolts, or even your arm lifting a bag of groceries. In Mechanical Engineering, this idea is called torque—the twisting force that makes something rotate around a point. Torque depends on how hard you push, where you push, and the angle you push at.

Now let’s see what deeper and deeper learning looks like through the Spiral Knowing Arcs.

• Remember: You memorize the formula for torque (force × distance × angle). You know that pushing farther from the hinge makes it easier to open a door, and that clockwise is “negative,” counterclockwise is “positive.”
• Understand: You grasp why that’s true. You realize the farther your hand is from the hinge, the more leverage you have—like how a longer wrench makes it easier to loosen a bolt. You can explain why a tiny push in the right spot can beat a huge push in the wrong spot.
• Apply: You actually use this understanding. You draw diagrams showing where forces act on an object—like arrows pointing to where you push and where it pivots. You solve basic problems, like figuring out how much force is needed to lift one side of a seesaw.
• Analyze: You start comparing and connecting. You see how the concept of Torque fits into the larger knowledge base of Mechanical Engineering and you notice that the same principle shows up everywhere—doors, wrenches, bikes, seesaws. You explore how angle, distance, and force interact. You start spotting patterns: “Ah, when I push straight down, it’s weaker than when I push at a right angle.”
• Evaluate: You begin judging and improving designs. You can look at two ways of opening a heavy gate and decide which is more efficient. You can explain why one method wastes effort, while another channels it beautifully.
• Create: You design something new—maybe a tool that helps an elderly person open jars more easily, or a lever system that multiplies force for people with less hand strength. You come up with your own practice questions which you give to friends to learn more about Torque. You’re no longer just solving problems—you’re inventing solutions.
• Teach: You help someone else understand torque. But instead of dumping formulas, you hand them a door handle and say, “Try pushing near the hinge… now far from it. Feel the difference?” You guide them to discover the principle for themselves.
• Reflect: You notice your Spiral Knowing habits when it comes to Mechanical Engineering. Maybe you realize you tend to start calculating before really understanding the situation. Maybe you resort to the same simplistic thinking process for solving problems (like Torque) because you're always strapped for time. You reflect on how the friends you do homework with, and your class as a whole, is shaping your knowledge of Torque and Mechanical Engineering as a whole.

Experience: You embody torque. You open a heavy door, pedal a bike uphill, or lift a grocery bag—and you feel leverage in your muscles. You realize that torque isn’t just a number; it’s the relationship between effort and movement that’s everywhere in life. You attune so heavily to learning Mechanical Engineering you can rapidly tell what Arc you're embodying while studying, if its aiding or hurting you, and switch between Arcs.

Deeper Spiral Knowing In Learning Creative Writing

Let’s say you’re studying symbolism in a creative writing class—the way objects, actions, or images carry meanings beyond themselves. A candle might represent hope, a storm might reflect inner chaos, a locked door might hide not just secrets, but parts of the self we refuse to face.

At first, symbolism seems like an academic trick—something you “add” to stories to sound deep. But as your knowing deepens, you realize symbols aren’t decorations. They’re the soul’s shorthand—the way emotion, experience, and idea fuse into relationship with you.

Here’s what deepening through the Arcs of Spiral Knowing looks like for symbolism in creative writing:

• Remember: Memorize the definition: “A symbol is an object, action, or image that represents something beyond itself.” Recall classic examples—that annoying green light in The Great Gatsby, the conch shell in Lord of the Flies, the mockingbird in To Kill a Mockingbird.
• Understand: You grasp why symbolism works. You see the way it creates meaning in one thing by associating it with another. You can explain how a single rose can mean love, death, and time, all at once.
• Apply: You begin using symbolism intentionally. Maybe you choose a recurring image—rain falling during moments of self-discovery, or mirrors breaking during moments of denial. You experiment with weaving meaning into your own stories, not through telling, but through showing.
• Analyze: You compare and dissect symbols across novels. You ask, “Why does one author use fire as freedom while another uses it as destruction?” You map patterns: how certain symbols evolve across a narrative, or how cultures shape symbolic meaning. You start seeing layers in everything you read.
• Evaluate: You judge how effectively symbols communicate meaning. You ask: “Does this symbol feel earned or forced?” You critique your own work: “Is this symbol really evocative and novel or does it feel banal?”
• Create: You invent your own symbol. Maybe you craft a recurring object—a cracked compass representing a character’s broken sense of direction—or an invented ritual that symbolizes loss.
• Teach: You help others see how symbols breathe life into writing. Instead of defining symbolism, you guide a peer through their own discovery: “What emotion does this object carry for you?” You help them use symbols as bridges to deeper relation with reality.
• Reflect: You turn inward. You ask: “What symbols naturally appear in my writing—and why?” You realize the recurring river isn’t just aesthetic—it mirrors your own desire for flow and renewal. You explore how your personal symbols reveal your psyche, history, and worldview.
• Experience: You live inside the symbol. You walk in the rain and suddenly feel what it means to your story’s character. You see your own relationship with reality lived through symbols—your calendar app, notes for classes, and the birthday poem you wrote your friend.

These three examples give you clarity on how Spiral Knowing can be concretely applied to learning & studying. Now we're ready for the question you've all been waiting for: How do you apply it for your own learning & studying?

Three Steps To Applying Spiral Knowing To Deepen Your Learning & Studying

• Step 1: Assess Your Spiral Knowing Breakdown
• Step 2: Create A Plan For Deepening Your Spiral Knowing
• Step 3: Test & iterate!

Let's dive into each of those three steps so you can become a Spiral Knowing Wizard!

Step 1: Assessing Your Spiral Knowing Breakdown

Through changing the length of each Arc relative to each other, you can show how much you prioritize a certain Arc over another. Here's an example of a breakdown you don't want to be in below, but is unfortunately all too common.

Here's what that looks like on a large scale:

And there's many many more student learning personas than the above. It's beautiful. Just imagine how many there can be when you remember Spiral Knowing is dimensional and contextual to the specific area of someone’s life.

That being said, people tend to be grounded in a certain Arc for life in general as well as for a specific context. They gravitate one Arc lower and one Arc deeper than the Arc they’re grounded in.

Being grounded in an Arc doesn’t mean it’s where you spend most of your time. Generally, groundedness is a combination of (by order of importance):

• Way you relate to the world
• Time spent
• Behavior
• Valuing of a certain Arc
• Comfort zone
• Cognitive style
• Motivation

For example, this is my general Spiral Knowing breakdown using the above metrics:

My logic:

• Way you relate to the world: I relate most to the world through teaching and reflection, but want to relate more through experience.
• Time spent: I spend the vast majority of my time in the Participatory Band creating YT scripts & articles to teach others, contemplating reality, and meditating. Even when I'm in the Practical or Propositional Bands, I'm relating to them grounded in the Participatory.
• Behavior: Same as above. In conversation I will ask people reflect questions all the time lol.
• Valuing of a certain Arc: I definitely value experience the most but I have yet to relate to the world primarily through that Arc.
• Comfort zone: I'm very comfortable with teaching and reflecting after over six years of doing it, but experience is still something I'm not as comfortable with, even after 10+ psychedelic trips.
• Cognitive style: I'm naturally very reflective and intellectual. I used not to be very emotionally intelligent or sensitive but those days are long gone.
• Motivation: I'm extremely motivated by the Participatory Band.

Hopefully my Spiral Knowing breakdown logic gives you some insight into how to assess your own. So do it!

Step 2: Create A Plan To Deepen Your Spiral Knowing

My suggestion is to return to the individual Arc explorations earlier in this article, and take some of the learning questions and application methods for the Arcs 1-2 below where you are grounded in.

Here's an example plan for deepening my Spiral Knowing of Gamification Designer for my work at The Octalysis Group. Leveraging step 1, this is my Spiral Knowing breakdown as a Gamification Designer:

My goal is to deepen into the Create and Teach Arcs. Here's what my plan looks like:

Deepening Creation

Plan:

• Create mastery principles, rubrics, and questions for improvement, in each of the eight core skills of a Gamification Designer
• Create entirely new Game Design techniques based on my own experience gaming
• Create videos and articles connecting what I've learned as a Game Designer to Conscious College—things like motivation, and gamifying your life to become the ultimate game
• Connect Spiral Knowing even deeper to The Octalysis Framework

Learning Questions:

• How can I make something once that helps me or others again and again?
• What skill or strength of mine can I turn into a useable resource?
• What would others like if I created?
• What experiences or contexts can I put myself in to boost my creativity?
• Where can I publicly create to get feedback and hone my teaching skills?
• How can I collaborate with others to boost my creativity?

Application methods:

• Ugly First: Make it ugly first
• Meshing: Mesh three different domains into one

Deepening Teaching

Plan:

• Host learning meetings for Octalysis where I take them through Spiral Knowing and how we can deepen our Octalysis knowledge using it
• Teach Octalysis concepts to my friends, family, and clients
• Create The Octalysis podcast with my colleague Rob to teach product leaders about Octalysis

Learning Questions:

• How can I attune to the persons language, level of knowing, interests, and goals?
• What is this person missing that’s clouding their knowing?
• How can I help them come to the insight themselves?
• How is my own self-deception or lack of knowing making it harder to teach?
• Are they ready for what I want to teach them?

Application Methods:

• Molding: Define the student’s unique language, interest, level of knowing, and goals and adapt to them
• Model metacognition: Narrate your thinking process aloud so they see how knowing unfolds, not just what it concludes.
• Use spiral mapping: Explicitly identify which Arc you’re in (Apply, Evaluate, Inquire…) and help them navigate between Arcs.

Storyweave: Use narratives or case studies that embody the spiral path rather than explain it.

Step 3: Test & Iterate!

You've got your plan?! Splentastically celestial. The third and last step is to test and iterate.

That means carrying through with the plan, and changing as new challenges, solutions, and ideas come up.

For example, when I started doing the above plan, I realized I didn't know enough about some of the Gamification Design skills to create mastery principles on them. So I asked my colleagues for their best examples of those skills in action, and went through them with an evaluative lens to extract mastery principles. Do the same for your plan.

Conclusion: The Infinite Spiral

As you begin venturing into Spiral Knowing, you might focus first on its practicality. And how beautiful that practicality is! It refines your studying until it becomes less a frantic sprint and more a deliberate ceremony. It sharpens your critical thinking. It strengthens your learning. Your grades rise like the tide.

But if you stay with the Spiral long enough, something stranger happens.

The techniques become less interesting than the transformation—knowledge stops being something you acquire and starts becoming something you become.

You start noticing the smaller, quieter miracles: How reflecting on your own heuristics feels like polishing a fogged window to see reality more clearly. How torque, once a formula, becomes the way your hand gently understands every door. How symbols in writing stop being devices and start becoming the lanterns leading you deeper into your own psyche.

The deeper you go, the more you begin to sense the Spiral not as a tool, but as a mirror—showing you the shape of your becoming. You notice that the same pattern of deepening knowledge is the pattern through which:

• Relationships grow
• Societies develop
• Identities survive
• Creativity awakens
• Consciousness learns to recognize itself

And then, one day—perhaps while sitting in the library at 10:37 a.m., the heat of your cappuccino emanating in your hand, you glimpse it:

The Spiral is infinite.

Even before you learned its name, you were already living inside it. As a child playing games on your tablet. As a student memorizing facts. As a spiritual being flowing through a universe forever learning itself through you.

Every belief you hold, every thought you think, every resistance and every revelation—they’re all just different Arcs of the same Spiral, curling through your awareness like cosmic milk.

Even now, as you read these words, you're surviving your knowing moment by moment by imagining a self—a small constellation of memories, beliefs, fears, dreams, and desires you call “you.” And everyone else is doing the same. Every classroom, every community, every culture, even the universe itself is held together by this quiet, ongoing act of re-knowing.

If that idea fascinates you, terrifies you, awakens you, or all three, then you’re ready for what comes next.

Spiral Knowing doesn’t end here. This is just Level 1.

If you want to go deeper into:

• Level 1: Spiritual Nuances
• Level 2: How Cultures Transform Their Knowing
• Level 3: How Societies Evolve Once They Become Aware Of The Spiral Itself

…then I invite you to the full series.

For now, trust this: Learning is not something you do. It is something you are. And the Spiral is the path your being takes as it grows.