Saturday 27 June 2009

Redefining Spirituality-------------------------------- Whilst Honouring Tradition

Is just me or are you realizing that spirituality is being redefined and rightly so.

If you take on the integral model of developmental levels regardless to what version you prefer, how can you retain the same definition of any tradition?

Semantics and the Timeless tradition.

What is timeless? The pure empty Consciousness that is ineffable.

As soon as we express the transcendental reality we will find only partial agreement, all language colours that which is empty with a personal flavour.

A tradition gives you grounding in something enduring and theoretically at least can accommodate all levels of the integral developmental model.

For me the tradition that speaks to my soul is shamanism.

Yes it evokes my magical child, yes it has an edge, yes it is a conduit for the unexplainable and real magical manifestations, yes it reveres the beauty and awe of nature, yes it accommodates ethics, yes it is cool and is good for my ego expression, yes it allows for some neo shamanic plurality and indulgence and yes it allows for paradox and evolution and yes I find it accommodates technology and futurism.

Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism seem to have space for those who re-express the fundamentals of their faith, in fact all traditions are never that static they have always changed to some degree and all are susceptible to politics and historical revision. Even science is being integrated by many religious individuals, as is commerce.

The birth of interfaith religion signals an acceleration in the change of religious structure and necessarily so I would say.

What’s new about spiritual consciousness, is there anything new?


My position is that yes indeed immanence is awakening, an immanent consciousness that has not been seen before in history.
God is in everything, we do not need to escape to the higher realms, and God is beyond creation but also in everything that is creation.

For me this leads to a recognition that the reverence of spirituality, the love of God, the love of creation is growing and evolving.

How Can We Sell Second Tier?


How can we push people along through Green into Yellow?


We can not.

When I first read Spiral Dynamics and Ken Wilber’s books I admit to falling into the trap of seeing the Yellow Pluto Enchantment Level as some kind of exciting and blissful arrival.

The point is that the arrival at second tier is not really about excitement or bliss, it’s existential but not in a nihilistic way.
The certainty expressed by Ken regarding what is good for other people is not second tier, we can be confident about what is good for us, but not what’s good for others.
The momentous leap—as Dr Graves puts it— comes with a certain humility that is in no way idealized, it’s not a desire to get over, get rid or deny the ego either.

We retain that awareness of relativity. Relativity is not a dirty word, what we do now realize though that the terrain is not as flat as we experienced in Green, but not as hierarchical in a spiritual way as we experience in blue or as progressively evolutionary as we think of it in Orange.
When I say ‘ín’I mean as in when we were emotionally centred in that levels, we still live on these levels and they are still essential parts of ourself.

The momentous leap is a desire to enjoy life with more autonomy by both engaging with the world yet also dancing in and out of detachment or entrapment in any fixed ideals or pronouncements. The terrain is moving, growing, adapting, revisioning, temporarily stabilizing then shifting again.
The humility comes from recognizing we are merely human, we have all of the levels of human reality within us and as part of our external reality. The awareness of the paradoxical nature of human beings, human progress, spirituality and materialism are implicit. This true centring in paradox gives us a subconscious membership with all humans, the whole species, it’s not a blissed out love for humanity but it comes with an acceptance of all people to some extent because we now recognize the basic traits exist as part of us. The nature of the relativity though is that we see that not all things are equal.

The message of the integral perspective is that yes Green and its spirituality is indeed better than orange and its materialism which indeed is better than blue and its moral certainty, yet each step forward comes with a loss, we might even say a small yearning to return to that innocence of previous eras, but that is not indulged too far because progress we must or rather progress we have.

In this statement so far you can see that I am expressing the constant adjustment and qualification of any statement we might make about the second tier. The thinking is now non linear and abstract to accommodate the far bigger picture we have. However this is not really a confused state but one that has the integrity of the truth of the human paradox. The holarchy reveals that all humans in their totality create reality by necessity; this is encoded into evolution and is democratic. The democracy though is not an absolute relative space as not all energy is equal; therefore not all consciousness is imputed equally into the collective sphere.

The leap to second tier does indeed promise an a huge step forward in benevolence and abundance for thee human species, but we have to enjoy the opportunity to go on the journey of unfettered material expansion or the euphoric adventure of searching for authenticity if we honestly desire it. We can force ourselves or others to give up the opportunities to experience what needs and has to be experienced.

Monday 2 March 2009

What is Integral?

This piece is in production, not yet edited, but I am interested to see how it is perceived please feel free to give me your feedback. Its looking at the difficult issues in the Integral Movement.
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I have read most of Ken Wilber’s books, his work is very useful, brilliant in places but surprisingly more narrow than it first appears, the problem being that the movement that has grown up around his work seems to consider it fairly comprehensive. I would contend that he invalidates too many things too easily.
In many ways this is a homage to Ken Wilber and his influence. Having enjoyed and appreciated his insights I take the same basic position he does in regards to the Holarchy, the awareness that life emerges through developmental levels and that each level is a holon both a part of something bigger and complete unto itself. My initiation into the reality of developmental levels though comes from astrological research and energy field exploration through a fusion of shamanism and Chi Gong. See footnote

Because of his success, his influence and the strong counter reactions he evokes I have felt it important to highlight what is missing from his work. I have find that the polarity of opinions he evokes is asking for some refinements that are very important and pertinent to what is occurring in the world today.

I also read Enlighten Next, my favourite magazine at present, it opens debate on so many issues that I am interested in. I would have to add though, that this magazine still suffers from a hive mind to some extent, both Ken Wilber and Andrew Cohen seem hung up on the issue of the narcissism of post modernism, to such an extent that I believe they are limited by being reactionary and polarizing against something rather than integrating on a higher level. Don Beck and Ken Wilber champion the idea of the Mean Green Meme, largely based on Kens book ‘Boomeritis’, he highlights the shadow of the Green Meme and to that extent it was a fairly ground breaking book. The shadow is one thing, but what about the light?, …what is Green Meme is bringing to the world?
I do not see evidence that this is understood adequately by Ken Wilber, Andrew Cohen or Don Beck.

However I want to reiterate that I enjoy the work of all the aforementioned and am not attempting to negate their contributions in moving consciousness along, I am saying we need to consider a great many other people to getting close to creating an integrated view of what is emerging today in human consciousness. I would suggest the work of Michael Cremo, Graham Hancock and a multitude of others involved in historical revisionism have to be considered. To this we need to understand the extraordinary anomalies of reality. The work of Harvard Psychiatrist Dr John Mack, being just one example of someone who has done a thorough investigation into a taboo and ‘illegitimate’ subject, his carefully considered conclusions opens the veil that normally separates objective and subjective reality.

The following outrageous subjects which are most appropriated by the ‘New Age’; UFOs, Alien abduction, Astrology, Yetis, Atlantis, Crop Circles, 2012 are negated as extremely hilarious pure fantasy… fairy tales and therefore not relevant to integral maps this is a clumsy approach that can not be warranted by anyone who has made a prolonged study of these areas. Real things are happening that do not fit exactly into one linear reductive explanation.

The tales of anomalous reality seem absurd admittedly, the terrain is extremely strange. It seems reasonable to suggest that life has an element that can be called the trickster, a wild and that the creator has a bizarre sense of humour, to this end we only have to look at sex and spirit and the struggles of gurus and spiritual teachers in this area to deal with sexual desire within the framework they teach. Someone somewhere will always being having a laugh and acting outlandishly in the name of truth.

I contend that there are so many valid explorers of consciousness who all have a piece to add the integral picture that the need to stay open and enquiring is the only intelligent response. The amazing bickering in the field really shows us that we have a long way to go before seeing a clear picture. One of the most flippant and futile arguments or strategies I see, is to diminish people by calling them new age. Firstly who is and isn’t new age depends upon ones position, secondly are we not in the midst of a new age? The one thing that all paradigms seem to agree on is that we are living in the midst of change. Most people deny being new age anyway. If we look at the ‘Law of Attraction-create your own reality’ meme for example we see an enormous diversity of expressions some of which might be considered gross others more intelligent, more intricate. The point is, without an intense period of study and focus upon a subject one can not be sure of how much validity it has.

It is impossible for one person to cover that much ground, so as brilliant as Ken Wilber is in many areas, he can not possibly know it all, that too me seems a reasonable and obvious statement. The integral movement centred on Ken and associates seems to be ingrained with one script?



My position with new age subject matter is that the spiritual hypermarket tag extends well into organized religion, the integral movement and philosophy, it’s a phenomenon of consciousness that can not be ignored. Something fundamental to our perception is changing. Taking the suggestion that typical new age subjects are flooded with extravagant, loose, sentimental and indulgent consciousness I might agree, but what I have found is that just because a subject or an individuals work has huge areas of exaggeration in it does not mean that it has no reality, validity or truth to it. Miracles happen because of faith. Ultimately reality is not sensible. The universe is not limited by our rationale or our science. Ultimate Truth is ineffable so any thing we might say has to be with some lightness, detachment and humour. This is not to say that there is only relative truth. Some perceptions are more appropriate to each situation, meaning there is some hierarchy to truth, but to get a definition of that truth will involve a negotiation that suggests to me at least that truth or reality on each level, each holon is ultimately by agreement.

One of the things I love about the Magazine and Ken Wilber’s sites is the design, this is no small issue, the imagery conveys a lot and really inspires the imagination to envision a larger reality. The nature of reality is not merely an integration of science and spirituality it includes art in all forms amongst other things. Art is not so easily quantifiable which again opens the door between subject and object. To this we must recognize the inherently magically aspect of reality, the door between objective, material and subjective, imaginary realities is how the immanent mystery awakens.

Sri Aurobindo who is accorded the position of initiating integral philosophy talks of involution and evolution. I am particularly inspired by that because I came to that same conclusion before exposure to his ideas. Evolution is the emergence of consciousness upwards towards the transcendental realms. Involution is the descension of consciousness, “the seduction of the soul into the body” or the awakening of the immanent mystery in the heart of everyday reality.

One essential piece of work to be included in the integral debate is the late Dr Clare Graves book ‘The Never Ending Quest’, this book was compiled by Chris Cowan and Natasha Todorivic of the other branch of Spiral Dynamics. Although Dr Graves does not come from a place of recognizing consciousness from my point of view, his clarity to the mechanics of developmental reality cuts through a lot of Ken Wilber’s limiting bias towards Green Meme.

If Dr Graves is right and a second tier of reality is emerging that mirrors the first tier on a higher turn of the spiral, then Coral Meme has to be a higher expression of Red Meme and this is what the astrological and cultural evidence suggests according to my research. Reality on this level is game being played, winners define reality. Ken Wilbers presumes the second tier just goes vertical and transcendental I see no empirical evidence for that. This is a huge point to big to elaborate upon here, suffice to say once the complexity of consciousness has reached the level of integration on a planetary level then the next negotiation of reality is trans human, beyond Earth, beyond nature as we know it. Please refer to the basic and introductory Enchantments of Life table here…http://realityactivists.blogspot.com/

The next major point of Dr Graves, which I have found to be true for myself, my clients, friends and others I have observed is that we shift our centre of gravity incrementally from one level to another. This means that if the dominant power, (not exclusive control) is Orange Meme then the next power shift is towards Green. Although the biggest shift in power for the mass of the global population (think India, China, South America) is into Orange the nexus of power must surley be toward Green. To reiterate the power structure is divided but if we look at the main conditioners of the collective the worlds media, it is not unreasonable to suggest that Orange still holds power.


The third point of Dr Graves Work and indeed reiterated and emphazed by Chris Cowan ND Natasha Todorovic is that all the levels are inherent within us, so we are all to some degree Blue, Orange, Green etc. This then makes a mockery of the name calling that is rampant on the web in the integral debate.

The integral mind set of Wilber, Beck, Cohen seems to be politically biased and through the intonation of Integral Politics is very US centric and does not examine the issues of 9-11, Iraq or Afghanistan with any critical depth. Without suggesting I know the absolute answers to these issues I feel confident is suggesting that the perceptions offered by these guys are compliant with, at the very least an inadvertently dubious agenda. I say that because they do proclaim to be doing Integral Politics but they do not engage with the enormous debate that has been occurring in the world to what exactly was the Bush administration up to. The big hurdle for the evolution of consciousness for humanity is not the shadow of Green Meme it is the shadow of Orange Meme and to a lesser extent Blue Meme. All evaluations I have seen of the world today seem to agree that it is Orange Meme that holds the power not Green Meme.
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I suggest that Politics is anchored with Television and Media in general at the interface between Blue Meme and Orange Meme. Politics is the context for the mass of all humanity, which are largely Blue and Blue/Orange. The power of lobbyists and other more direct intervention means that Big Business interests have been dominating the political agenda to quite a large degree.

I feel that to talk in terms of mainstream politics is to limit the context for the emergence of new consciousness, by focusing the debate in the political arena one affirms the power of the establishment which by necessity will always be lagging behind the emergent new consciousness.

The next step forward for humanity is a global consciousness; the shadow danger of a global totalitarian government is evident…however it is unlikely that agenda will be properly augmented.

The future of social structure for our species is that of the decentralized nature of Yellow Pluto enchantment means that power is rotating and dependent on the ability suitable and needed in the moment. The present large scale structures in our society of the multi nationals and Governments are largely structured in a way that makes their operations cumbersome and non responsive to the evolutionary force.

Integration is a never ending process that moves through stages or holons. Each holon of reality is never complete or finished fully, there is always a crack that lets the light in and opens up to a more expansive holon the next level of reality. Although each holon transcends the previous one it does not necessary mean that it is fully conscious of the lower ones.

For example individuals and the bulk of society emotionally centred in‘Orange Meme’ ,Orange vMeme, E-R or in my terminology Orange Uranus Enchantment are generally not conscious of the natural instincts of the body (Beige) or, the inner child (Purple). Health is largely a pharmaceutical concern for example. The next holon Green Neptune Enchantment seeks to become conscious of that which has been passed over and some of those centred in that level looks back to include natural healing, body instinct, shamanism and the inner child.

Now as I said “some of those centred in that level”, this is an important point, the higher the holon the more decentralized the knowledge base becomes. In Yellow Pluto Enchantment expertise becomes more niche as we have to concede to working with others to get things done.

In conclusion the point of this piece is to expand the perception on how life is developing and unashamedly to put forward my own Enchantments of Life Model as a contribution to this debate. As part of my model I am indebted to may many explorers and investigators who I always promote, including such fringe luminaries as Philip K Dick.

I am suggesting that if we are going to use the word integral we can not limit it to politics, science and transcendental spirituality. The importance of the counter culture is especially important as the next evolutionary movement being attempted by the species is a shift in regards to power is towards Green Neptune Enchantment.



Footnote

My own experience with the energy field suggests a more complex development in regards to the chakras than Ken does which is the basic Blue meme linear hierarchy.
We do not just shift consciousness from one chakra to the next, there are two primary chakras involved with each developmental level. This will be discussed in a later work.