Wake up, Grow up, Clean up, Show up

Ken Wilber’s “Wake Up, Grow Up, Clean Up, Show Up” Meets Gestalt Therapy

You might have heard of Ken Wilber’s model for transformation: Wake Up, Grow Up, Clean Up, Show Up. It’s a simple yet profound guide for deep personal growth. But what if we look at this through the lens of Gestalt Therapy, a therapeutic approach that focuses on awareness, presence, and authentic engagement with life?

Let’s dive into how these concepts intersect in a way that will enrich both your self-awareness and your personal growth journey.

The Four Steps in Wilber’s Model

1. Wake Up
   Wilber’s “Wake Up” is about spiritual awakening and becoming aware of deeper realities. It’s the realization that our usual perception of self is limited, and through practices like meditation or mindfulness, we can “wake up” to higher states of consciousness.

2. Grow Up
   This step is about maturing emotionally and psychologically—progressing through stages of development. Wilber emphasizes that it’s not enough to just have spiritual experiences; we also need to evolve through adult developmental stages and integrate these realizations into our daily lives.

3. Clean Up
   “Clean Up” refers to facing and integrating our shadow—the parts of ourselves we deny, suppress, or avoid. This can include unhealed trauma, unresolved emotions, and unconscious beliefs. By cleaning up these internal blockages, we free ourselves from patterns that hold us back.

4. Show Up
   Finally, “Show Up” is about bringing your fully integrated, awakened self into the world. It’s not just about personal growth for your own sake—it’s about actively participating in life and being of service in relationships, work, and community.

How It Connects with Gestalt Therapy

Now, let’s see how Gestalt Therapy resonates with each of these steps. Gestalt Therapy is grounded in awareness, responsibility, and authentic contact with ourselves and the world. It teaches us to embrace the “here and now” and to actively engage with the flow of our experience.

1. Wake Up = Awareness & “Here and Now”

In Gestalt Therapy, “waking up” is about cultivating awareness of what’s happening in the present moment. This echoes Wilber’s idea of spiritual awakening. In Gestalt, being aware of your sensations, emotions, and thoughts as they arise—without judgment—allows you to see the truth of your experience.

The “here and now” is the core of both Gestalt Therapy and Wilber’s “Wake Up.” Both approaches help you see beyond habitual reactions and tap into a deeper awareness of how you’re feeling and relating to the world. Waking up means not just intellectually understanding, but experiencing your life as it unfolds in real-time.

2. Grow Up = Being “Response-able”

Wilber’s “Grow Up” focuses on emotional and psychological maturation. In Gestalt Therapy, this step aligns with becoming response-able—taking responsibility for your own feelings, choices, and actions. This means recognizing that while you cannot control everything in life, you can control how you respond to it.

To grow up is to step into ownership of your life. Rather than blaming external circumstances or getting stuck in old patterns, you take responsibility for how you engage with the present. This concept of response-ability in Gestalt is directly tied to personal growth and emotional maturity, much like Wilber’s call for developing through higher stages of consciousness.

3. Clean Up = Resolving “Unfinished Business”

Wilber’s “Clean Up” is about dealing with the shadow self—unhealed wounds and hidden emotional baggage. In Gestalt Therapy, this is known as addressing unfinished business. Unfinished business refers to unresolved conflicts, suppressed emotions, or past experiences that continue to intrude on your present life.

Gestalt techniques, like role-playing or the empty chair, allow you to confront these hidden parts of yourself and work through them in real-time. Cleaning up unfinished business means reclaiming those parts of yourself that have been disowned or neglected. Just like in Wilber’s model, this step is necessary for you to move forward in a healthy, integrated way.

4. Show Up = Contact, the Contact Boundary, and the Contact Cycle

Wilber’s “Show Up” is all about engaging with life—bringing your full, integrated self into your relationships, work, and community. In Gestalt Therapy, this is about contact—the moment when you fully engage with something or someone at the contact boundary, where you meet the world.

The contact cycle describes the natural flow of how we make contact with our environment—moving from awareness to full engagement, and then retreating to integrate what we’ve experienced. To show up in life means being fully present in this cycle, allowing yourself to truly connect with others and the world around you.

In Gestalt, healthy contact is crucial for meaningful relationships and self-actualization. Similarly, Wilber’s “Show Up” encourages you to bring the fruits of your personal and spiritual work into the world, allowing you to fully participate in life.

Key Takeaways:

1. Wake Up = Awareness & “Here and Now”: Both Wilber and Gestalt stress the importance of waking up to the present moment. In Gestalt, this means cultivating deep awareness of your experience in the here and now.

2. Grow Up = Being Response-able: Emotional maturity, or growing up, in both models means taking responsibility for your emotions, actions, and responses, allowing for personal evolution and authentic engagement with life.

3. Clean Up = Unfinished Business: Whether you call it shadow work or unfinished business, both approaches stress the need to clean up emotional baggage and unresolved issues in order to live more freely.

4. Show Up = Contact & the Contact Cycle: Showing up means fully engaging with the world. In Gestalt, this happens at the contact boundary, where you meet others and the environment in meaningful, present-centered ways.

Authors to Explore:

If you’re intrigued by this integration of spiritual growth and psychological development, dive into the works of Ken Wilber, such as Integral Spirituality and A Brief History of Everything. For Gestalt Therapy, the foundational text is Fritz Perls' Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality, while Dan Bloom and Phil Brownell offer a modern take with Gestalt Therapy: Advances in Theory and Practice.

By weaving together Wilber’s integral vision with the practical, grounded tools of Gestalt Therapy, you can wake up, grow up, clean up, and show up in ways that foster real, transformative change in your life.

How are you working to "wake up" and "show up" in your own life?