THE FIVE-STAGE CAPACITY DIMENSION
Bandwidth
Every archetype exists on one spectrum — how much capacity you have available right now, from all of it spent holding yourself together, to enough overflowing that you can freely extend outward to others. That spectrum is your Bandwidth.
The mechanism: contraction and expansion
When you're threatened, you contract. When you're safe enough, you expand. That single physical, felt fact is what Bandwidth measures — and it's what three different lenses (fear and courage, ego-protection and dissolution, the psychology of motivation) were each describing from a different angle.
Contraction doesn't delete anything — it narrows your access. Under threat you can still only reach the defensive parts of yourself; the freer, more generous ones are still there, but can't get airtime. Expansion doesn't add anything new either — it widens access to what was always present but crowded out.
"Right now, do you have the bandwidth to actually take someone else in — or is all your capacity going toward holding yourself together?"
Everyone has been in a contracted, defensive moment and an expansive, generous one. Bandwidth is simply which one you're in — and it moves.
The five stages, dark to bright
Devolved
Descended
Base
Ascended
Transcendent
DevolvedMaximally contracted. All energy spent on defense; the archetype's gift captured by ego.
DescendedBent by fear. Grasping, defended, reactive.
BaseThe unexamined middle — neither deliberately defended nor deliberately open, running on habit.
AscendedThe gift mastered and matured, mostly free of fear.
TranscendentMaximally expansive. Capacity overflowing, freely extended outward to others and the whole.
Twelve voices, one center
One picture of the whole idea. Each of the twelve archetypes runs along its own axis as its five Bandwidth stages: a dim point out in the dark at the rim (that's Devolved), each step inward brighter than the last, up to Transcendent nearest the center. The middle dot on each axis, ringed in white, is Base — the mandala you already know. Every axis is capped by the single white dot at the center: the integrated self, where no one voice is driving. Closer to the center means more Bandwidth; further out, more devolved and isolated.
One dimension, two views: brightness is capacity
Bandwidth is the same thing your mandala already shows you as light. In the geometry of the system — the cone — hue is your archetype and brightness is your stage: Devolved sits at the dark, narrow base; Transcendent at the bright, wide apex. The swatches above are that brightness axis. Capacity rising and light rising are one movement seen two ways.
WHAT FILLS THE TANK
Core Human Needs
Bandwidth is a gauge — it reads how much capacity you have, not why. The why is your Core Human Needs: the six that, met, give you room to expand, and starved, pull you into contraction. Your Core Human Needs are the fuel; your Bandwidth is the gauge reading how much that fuel gives you right now.
Six + One
Autonomy
Acting from genuine, self-possessed choice rather than compulsion or fear.
Competence / Mastery
Meeting real challenge with real, tested capability — building it, not faking it.
Relatedness / Belonging
Being genuinely known and connected, not merely surrounded.
Self-Esteem
A steady, unborrowed sense of your own worth.
Trust
Enough safety in yourself, others, and the world to lower your guard.
Purpose / Meaning
A sense that what you do matters beyond the moment.
Plus One — Volition
The six needs are necessary, but not sufficient — soil, not seed. What actually moves you is volition: the conscious choice to act even when a need isn't fully met. Needs make it easier to choose. Only choosing moves you.
One dashboard, four dials
Core Human Needs are the fuel tank. Bandwidth is the gauge reading. Your Archetype is the engine the fuel powers. Your Temperament is the handling — a separate dimension entirely. Different archetypes tend to run on a different "home" need, which is part of why the same low tank shows up so differently from one person to the next.
A note on borrowed capacity. Leaning on others when you're depleted — asking for help, more time, a friend to lean on — is healthy and human. The question isn't whether you borrow, but whether the borrowing is a temporary bridge back to building your own capacity, or a permanent substitute for ever developing it. Only the second is worth watching for — because it can look identical to real capacity on the surface while staying brittle underneath.
Drawn from Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan) and Elena Aguilar's Core Human Needs synthesis, itself drawing on the work of Gabor Maté.