Removing the Blocks to Development and Awakening:

with Santiago Santai Jiménez  

Three 2 Hour Live Online Sessions

Saturdays | 11 AM MT

November 22 + 29, December 6

Part of a New Tradition

We are living in a rare moment in history. For the first time, the ancient wisdom of the East and the modern developmental insights of the West are meeting in a living dialogue. This course is created in the spirit of that convergence—honoring the timeless traditions of awakening while applying the developmental clarity of the STAGES model.

ging traditions.

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What’s the course about?

As we walk the path of being human, we develop fundamental capacities that allow us to function and thrive. But when these dimensions of our development freeze or reify, they transform into blockages that prevent us from accessing deeper developmental and spiritual insights.

This three-week journey is designed to shine awareness on how these blocks form—so we can identify, include, and ultimately transcend them, clearing the path to growth and awakening.

The Blocks We'll Explore: 

Certainty 

• Concrete Tier – Certainty here gives us safety. As children we learn names, roles, and rules that allow us to navigate the world. Certainty anchors belonging.
• Subtle Tier – Certainty shifts into personal worldviews, beliefs, and ideals. We define who we are by what we stand for. Yet clinging too tightly to these convictions can keep us from deeper integration.
• MetAware Tier – We discover that certainty itself is a construct. The very grip of “knowing” blocks us from perceiving wider truths. Releasing certainty becomes a doorway to open-ended awareness.

The Thinking Mind

• Concrete Tier – The thinking mind begins by naming objects, drawing boundaries, and forming concepts. This opens the door to human culture and language.
• Subtle Tier – Thought becomes more abstract, nuanced, and capable of reasoning about systems, identities, and values. At its peak, it refines into dazzling complexity.
• MetAware Tier – Thought reveals its limits. We see how concepts veil reality, and how maps are not the territory. Beyond the veil of thought, the direct immediacy of awakened awareness returns.

Seeking 

• Concrete Tier – Seeking begins in simple wants: food, comfort, toys, friends, belonging. These are essential for survival and early growth.
• Subtle Tier – Wants mature into subtler pursuits: success, knowledge, community, spiritual insight. Seeking propels learning and exploration, but gradually reveals its own restlessness.
• MetAware Tier – The very act of seeking becomes the obstacle. By dropping the search for “something else,” what we have always been—timeless, boundless awareness—is revealed.

Who’s the course for? 

• Anyone curious about how development and awakening interweave.
• Those who want to turn abstract developmental theory into lived, embodied experience.
• Practitioners (coaches, therapists, teachers, leaders, spiritual directors) seeking new tools to support others.
• Both newcomers to the STAGES model and seasoned explorers who want to meet it in a fresh, experiential way.

What might you leave with?

Through this course, you may 

• Release the grip of certainty – Discover how letting go of fixed ways of knowing opens you to deeper truths, freeing you from developmental plateaus and spiritual stagnation.  
• See through the limits of the thinking mind – Recognize both the brilliance and the veil of thought, and re-discover the direct clarity of awareness that thought alone can never capture.
• Drop the restless seeking – Notice how the impulse to search—though essential at earlier stages—eventually becomes the very block to awakening. Experience the shift into a profound sense of arrival. 
• Integrate the tiers of growth – Understand how each block appears in the Concrete, Subtle, and MetAware Tiers, and how moving through them unlocks new developmental possibilities.
• Embodied practices for daily life – Engage with guided practices and a workbook that help you notice these blocks in real time, and begin to transform them into openings for growth.