Disidentifying from the ego is one more step of liberation on the human journey. But with disidentification comes separation, and people operating at this stage often develop a keen sense of how far we have let separation fragment our lives and how much it has cost us. We have let our busy egos trump the quiet voice of our soul; many cultures often celebrate the mind and neglect the body; value the masculine above the feminine; and many of us have lost community and our innate connection with nature.

With this stage comes a deep yearning for wholeness - bringing together the ego and the deeper parts of the self; integrating mind, body, and soul; cultivating both the feminine and masculine parts within; being whole in relation to others; and repairing our broken relationship with life and nature. Often the shift to Teal comes with an opening to a transcendent spiritual realm and a profound sense that at some level, we are all connected and part of one big whole. After many successive steps of disidentification, as we learn to be fully independent and true to ourselves, it dawns on us that, paradoxically, we are profoundly part of everything.

This longing for wholeness is at odds with the separation that most existing workplaces foster, albeit unconsciously - overemphasizing the ego and the rational while negating the spiritual and emotional; separating people based on the departments they work in, their rank, background, or level of performance; separating the professional from the personal; separating the organization from its competitors and the ecosystem it is embedded in.

Vocabulary we use is often revealing: in organizations, we often speak about "work-life balance" a notion that shows how little life is left in work when we have separated ourselves from so much that truly matters. For people transitioning to Teal, these separations in the workplace often become so painful that they choose to leave organizational life for some form of self-employment, a more accommodating context to find wholeness with themselves and with others.^[13]