I agree entirely, maybe I wasn't clear enough... personally I think I'm too imbalanced towards JUST thinking... I fully accept it's all part of 'evolving'.
I also don't adhere to any religious ideology...I only mentioned the Noble Eightfold Path because, honestly, your conceptualization of evolving above fits in very well Bikkhu Bodhi's conceptualization of the 'structure' of human consciousness and the evolution through higher states... up to the 'base of infinite space' and all that... - link to PDF - http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/noble8path6.pdf
It's quite an 'intellectual' account of Buddhist philosophy.
NB also this is very much 'non-ideological Buddhism - the kind that says 'listen/ read in a spirit of skepticism, and if you don't like something, reject it and if you don't like anything, go your own way (in peace, of course'!)
Anyway, TBH these days I'm leaning much more towards finding my own peace of mind in just trying to be nice to people and through living a non-harming lifestyle...