hokai's hybrid blogging: references and brief comments on entertaining, educating, and enlightening stuff on the web. evolving view, integral studies, esoteric buddhism, transformative practices, social change, cultural shifts etc.
Labels: buddhism, integral, meditation
Check out the website."I chose the URL and identity of this website, "Integral Heart," in part to emphasize the healthy communion that is a natural expression of healthy Integral agency.
Structures of awareness always have special strengths and weaknesses. Since Integral consciousness has evolved so recently, there's no research yet that clearly identifies its tendencies towards limitations and pathologies. But most structures differentiate themselves from the previous one via a somewhat exaggerated reaction."
Labels: integral, spirituality
Why has the scientific worldview dismissed this trans-personal dimension? For most intellectuals around the world, the secular scientific paradigm has triumphed.
It's understandable. Historically, if you look at these broad stages, the magical era tended to be 50,000 years ago, the mythic era emerged around 5,000 B.C., and the rational era -- secular humanism -- emerged in the Renaissance and Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was an attempt to liberate myth and base truth claims on evidence, not just dogma. But when science threw out the church, they threw out the baby with the bath water.
You can't prove a higher stage to someone who's not at it. If you go to somebody at the mythic stage and try to prove to them something from the rational, scientific stage, it won't work. You go to a fundamentalist who doesn't believe in evolution, who believes the earth was created in six days, and you say, "What about the fossil record"? "Oh yes, the fossil record; God created that on the fifth day." You can't use any of the evidence from a higher stage and prove it to a lower stage. So someone who's at the rational stage has a very hard time seeing these trans-rational, trans-personal stages. The rational scientist looks at all the pre-rational stuff as nonsense -- fairies and ghosts and goblins -- and lumps it together with the trans-rational stuff and says, "That's non-rational. I don't want anything to do with it."
So where does God fit into this picture? Do you believe in God?
God is a perfect example of how these two types of religion treat ultimate reality. You asked, "Do you believe in God?" In exoteric religion, it's a matter of belief. Do you believe in the kind of God who rewards and punishes and will sit with you in some eternal heaven? But in the esoteric form of religion, God is a direct experience. Most contemplatives would call it "godhead." It's so different from the mythic conceptions of God -- the old man in the sky with a gray beard. The word "God" is much more misleading than it is accurate. So there's a whole series of terms that are used instead by the esoteric traditions -- super consciousness, Big Mind, Big Self. This ultimate reality is a direct union that is felt or recognized in a state of enlightenment or liberation. It's what the Sufis call the "supreme identity," the identity of the interior soul with the ultimate ground of being in a direct experiential state.
It does raise the question of whether God -- or ultimate reality -- has some independent existence, or whether this is just a mental state that our minds can conjure up.
That's right. One way we try to find out is by doing cross-cultural studies of individuals who've had the experience of the supreme identity and see if it shows similar characteristics. The most similar characteristic is it doesn't have characteristics. It's radically undefinable, radically free, radically empty. This formless ground of being is found in virtually all esoteric religions around the world. For the final test, take scientists with a Ph.D. who are studying brain patterns and put them in a contemplative state of the supreme identity and ask them whether they think that state is real or just a brain state. Nine out of 10 will say they think it's real. They think this experience discloses a reality that's independent of the human organism.
Do you see this ultimate reality as some sort of being or intelligence out there?
Well, if you look cross-culturally, what you'll find is that spirit or godhead can be looked at either through first-person, second-person or third-person perspectives. The third-person perspective is to see spirit as a grand "it." In other words, a vast web of life. Gaia in this third-person is the sum total of everything that exists. A second-person way of looking sees spirit as a "thou," as an actual intelligence that is present and is something you can, in a sense, have a conversation with, keeping in mind the ultimately unknowable nature of godhead. Many of the contemplative traditions go further and say you can approach spirit as a first person. So that spirit is "I." Or that would be Big Self.
Read the whole thing (link to print version).
If, as is suggested by the Integral Postmetaphysical approach, we abandon the idea of a single, pre-given world order for one and all and accept that everything in the phenomenal world that we can point to is, first and foremost, a perspective (or perspective-occasion, as Wilber sometimes puts it), what happens to the notions of truth and falsity? Must notions of "truth" and "reality" be thrown out? Clearly not -- not in a system such as AQAL which attempts to honor and integrate as many (relative) truths as possible. But we will need to let go of any residual attachment we may have to the naive metaphysical realism that under girds popular understanding.
From the perspective of scientific theories as operators, we can say that something is "objective" if certain relationships among phenomena can be observed universally, or across a stable range of circumstances, by active human subjects. As Kant showed us, this invariant relational patterning of phenomena says nothing about "intrinsic properties" of things-in-themselves. Because we cannot extract ourselves from the overall situation to adopt a view from nowhere, we can at best study the form given to phenomena by our cognitive apparatus. But as developmental psychology and relativistic/quantum science have shown us, our cognitive apparatus is neither static in its organization nor endowed (as Kant had originally argued) with a priori forms which are valid at all levels of phenomenal reality. The phenomenal world enacted by human beings is, in some important respects, enacted differently by human beings at different times and in different developmental or even cultural contexts, with no apparent perspective available that we can hope to appeal to as final or decisive.
Does this leave us stranded in a flatland, radical relativist swamp?
Labels: integral
"Integral Europe aims to bring together people from all over Europe, interested and inspired by the work of such teachers and theorists as Ken Wilber, Don Beck, Andrew Cohen, Susanne Cook-Greuter, Jean Gebser, Fred Kofman, and David Deida. We are seeking to create a space where all manner of integrally inspired groups, individuals and organisations can connect and contribute to the growing integral community in Europe.We already have a large network of people and groups around Europe that we're in communication with, and who are supportive of this initiative, as well as established integral organisations in the US, including Integral Institute. If we haven't been in touch with you, we'd love to connect, and find out what you're up to so please get in contact with us.
If your interested in integral, we'd love for you to be involved, so please sign up for our newsletter and we'll keep you updated on the progress of the project, and how you can help!"
Labels: integral
"At this point in the conference I was so depressed I thought of committing sepuku. We should assemble a credo on integral bioethics. Many of the problems that these scientists are trying to rectify derive from a sole reliance on artifact development (i.e., technology) to solve previous problems, a reiterative process that doesn't solve itself. Our technology development since the Enlightenment has far outstripped our ethical development. Most of the presenters at TED and the TED staff are continuing to look in the wrong places for comprehensive solutions to the questions they are posing, which is why the answers are partial, not integral, and in the most dangerous sense of the world: more purely right-hand empirical development will not change the game, only perpetuate it."Read on.
When we interpret any given worldspace (or artifact of that worldspace) as "reality as it is," we fall prey to the myth of the given.
The myth of the given is the failure to recognize and acknowledge the Kosmic addresses of perceiver and perceived, which are constitutive factors in the enactment of any particular worldspace (and the objects "therein").
The claim that there are "simple facts" which exist independently of worldviews and contextualizing perspectives, while an understandable attempt to provide firm grounding, is ironically a claim which is not adequately grounded because it fails to disclose (and does not consider relevant) the Kosmic address from which the claim is being made.
Simply put, the assertion that there are universally valid, perspective-free, interpretation-free foundational elements of reality is pure metaphysics.
My most recent dream has been to create an urban center that, in shorthand to myself, I've been calling the Integral Gym. I have attended retreats in amazing rural settings, and I've imagined most of my "dream centers" in such locations, but some time ago I realized I would really appreciate having a local space dedicated to meditation, group inquiry, body work, and so on, that I could visit weekly or monthly, instead of once a year at best. Not finding anything that matched what I was longing for, I began to think about what my ideal urban retreat center would be like.See what's on his mind.
Labels: integral
In many ways, Buddhism appears to be flourishing in the West, in the five decades since it was introduced here on a large scale. Masters of the East have come, shared practices, and established institutions; masters of the West have recognized the tradition's brilliance. But to what extent has it really taken root, beyond the fashionability of Tibetan wall hangings and "Zen" aesthetics?LINK to audio (for members only).
ISC Teachers Ken Wilber and Patrick Sweeney consider this to be very much a "glass half full" proposition. To understand whether something you have planted has taken root, you need to examine the soil; in this case, the soil is the postmodern backdrop of Europe and North America, into which the tradition has been introduced. In many ways, Buddhism has been a natural fit, with its espousal of values like compassion and its perceived cure for the postmodern malaise.
From an Integral altitude, we can see both the good news and bad news of the situation that Buddhism in the West finds itself in. Having blossomed in a largely postmodern context in both Europe and North America, Western Buddhism has inherited many of the qualities of its green, relativistic backdrop, including the inherent limitations. In this week’s featured audio, Diego Sobol (a.k.a. Hokai) of Croatia poses this problem to Patrick Sweeney and Ken Wilber.
To begin with, Patrick reminds us, this samsaric realm is without end. The process of translating Buddhism in the West is beyond its infancy, but has reached somewhat of an adolescent plateau. From this plateau, one can become complacent, using Buddhist practice to avoid personal issues, and perhaps to reclaim aspects of power or control that one is insecure about.
Ken adds that the notion of structure-stages and states-stages is very helpful here. Few contemplative teachers—let alone their students—are aware of the vertical dimension of growth through structure-stages. As always, state experiences are interpreted from the stage that one is at; in this case, extraordinary experiences of awakening are interpreted from a green altitude, from which one is unable to see their own embeddedness. From this altitude, certain limitations become apparent. Non-conceptuality—and by extension, anti-intellectualism—is subtly identified with Emptiness, in defiance of a remarkable intellectual tradition. Absolutistic thinking is confused with absolute truth. And any challenge to the green altitude is taken as a challenge to Buddha nature itself.
The great teachers, in Patrick’s experience, all had a common denominator: they were unwilling to let themselves become permanent objects of awareness. In every case, they placed the onus of interpreting his experiences squarely on him. They insisted that he take responsibility for his own growth, and just when he would begin to get comfortable, they would pull the rug from underneath his feet. As the Buddha himself said on his deathbed, “be lights unto yourselves, that you may discover that which I’ve realized.” There are no guarantees on the spiritual path; in Western, green-oriented Buddhism, this is difficult to accept.
Patrick’s suggested way to move forward: a truly Integral Buddhism. But in its absence, the tradition has taken on several flavors in the West. In one form, “Boomeritis Buddhism,” a tradition known for its selflessness is adopted with utter narcissism. In another, a scientific materialistic view prevails, reducing profound states of consciousness to the brainwaves they exhibit.
When initially posed with the question of Buddhism in the West—and its green underpinnings—Patrick hilariously responds, “I myself am the question.” Few people have experienced this problem as directly and as consciously as Patrick. The stakes are enormous: as Patrick points out, understanding the context and its potential traps can take decades off of a student’s journey…
... Harris declares 'the end of faith' only to celebrate the beginning of a new age of spirituality. That such a prominent rationalist is prepared to reclaim spiritualism in the name of science matters. When spiritualism, or mysticism, claims the status of rational knowledge or science, it ends up transforming what is essentially an ecstatic emotional experience into a knowledge claim about the nature of reality. These issues are not just theoretical. In countries like India, where spiritualism enjoys the blessings of the highest religious authorities, metaphysical beliefs that follow from mystical experiences exert a great deal of social influence. While India has a fairly large and advanced scientific workforce, science has not succeeded in displacing the authority of metaphysical truths from the cultural sphere...I don't think she understands correctly or precisely what Harris is or isn't endorsing, but that's another question - I still find her article useful to demonstrate how these matters are too complex for a rationalist, humanist, or even relativist platform. So much so, that on such platform you have to end up discarding something very, very essential to the grand human enterprise. Harris has done his best not to discard interiority, and not to discard deeper states of awareness, but he has failed to recognize higher structures, i.e. higher horizons that reconcile and integrate faith and reason in a marriage where everyone has to give up a little to gain so much more. Ken Wilber writes in his foreword to "The Marriage of Sense and Soul" (italics mine):
...Harris believes that spiritual experiences are knowledge experiences which can "uncover genuine facts about the world". He buys into the basic idea that what mystics 'see' in their minds actually has an ontological referent in the world outside their minds...
"... Fools rush in where angels fear to tread; therefore, the integration of science and religion is the theme of this book. If you are an orthodox religious believer, I would only ask that you relax into the argument and see where it takes you; I do not think you will be dismayed. The primary prerequisite I have placed on this discussion is that both science and religion must find the argument acceptable in their own terms. For this marriage to be genuine, it must have the free consent of both spouses. If you are an orthodox scientist, I would only suggest that, as you have a thousand times in the past when you were working on a problem, let curiosity and wonder bubble up, but in this case don't focus it on a specific solution. Simply let wonder fill your being until it takes you out of yourself and into the staggering mystery that is the existence of the world, a mystery that facts alone can never begin to fill. If Spirit does exist, it will lie in that direction, the direction of wonder, a direction that intersects the very heart of science itself. And you will find, in this adventure, that the scientific method will never be left behind in the search for an ultimate ground."Well, amen.
"...Rationalists of the World, were you BORN with that World view? Was there ever a time in your life when you were three, or four, or five, when you encountered and interpreted the world differently than you do now? Have you developed at all, or did you pop out of your mother completely possessed of the skeptical capacity to inquire and confirm through direct experience? Of course you developed. You were a pre-rational little bugger long before you became a rational bugger.Stuart Davis in "Open Letter To Rational Pundits".
Knowing this, are we interested in how other people who are not yet at a Rational world view might develop? Would we like to help them, or do we wanna play to the band forever?
Because the sun will expand and consume the Earth before we convert pre-rational views with rational blather. They can't hear us. No one hears it except those who are already at that altitude, or World view. Well, perhaps a few catch it, the ones ready to enter into it (for reasons that have nothing to do with the rational rhetoric). We had better figure out how to see depth, experience altitudes of awareness, and embrace development, or those lower stations will render us undone.
Rationalists, ask yourself, since you developed through Archaic, Magic, Mythic (all pre-rational World views) up to your Rational World view, is it POSSIBLE there are other World views which are yet deeper, higher, more inclusive than the one you now inhabit?"
Labels: integral
"...even though I am not directly associated with the Integral Institute, I do continue to identify myself as Wilber's alley and supporter. And this is because, like most of you, I believe that the integral worldview represents our civilization's best hope for progress. Thus I contend that as integralists it is our cultural duty to try to build cohesion within the integral movement and to exhibit a sense of ownership and commitment to this emerging new worldview. This integral perspective is bigger than any one person's philosophy, and so I hope that the opinions and scholarship on this website will continue to evolve in a way that demonstrates this truth..."Steve McIntosh in a note to the readers of Integralworld.net. See the full text here.
Labels: integral
"...Kazlev's main point is that each of many different theorists has their own definition of "integral". This point is indisputable. Therefore he offers definitions for five distinct entities: Wilberism, Integral Movement, Larger Integral movement sensu stricto, Integral Movement sensu lato, and Integral Yoga. He also provides a graphical "genealogy" of Integral groups. Whether these distinctions are helpful or unhelpful, I suggest, depends on how stupid you think people are or how grandiose is your rhetoric. Wilberism, according to Kazlev, includes only those who "follow [Wilber] in a religious or uncritical way" (presumably these are the dumbest sheep of the herd). The Larger Integral Movement emerged in 2003-2005, says Kazlev, and (as if size is everything) it is certainly more grandiose than the narrow IM. However, it's not clear why this group should not be included within the IM sensu stricto or if it should be considered a splinter movement and therefore a very small movement indeed (consisting perhaps of a handful of disgruntled but vocal critics). Kazlev presumes to grant these critics such importance as to make their approach the Larger than the Smaller IM, but it's not the very Largest. The Largest Integral Movement (or Integral Movement sensu lato) includes the above groups plus those who practice Integral Yoga or other paths as an Integralist. Since Kazlev is a member of this group which happens also to be the largest, broadest, and most inclusive of them all, one suspects that these definitions are rather self-serving. They may or may not be helpful, but they definitely privilege those folks who consider themselves Integralist but who walk a path as far from Ken Wilber as possible. This map therefore seems to smack of the venting of a personal grudge rather than a neutral and objective look at the territory."
Labels: integral
"... Jurgen Habermas has attempted to rescue the prospect of rationality as a meaningful human capability - lately devastated as a subject-oriented illusion of modernity - in a postmodern world by defining the playing fields in which rationality can survive: first, by presupposing a level playing field where objective truth is the possibility for consensus between willing subjects engaged in rational argument and who are not under the influence of any biasing power-structures, and second, an open playing field where subjective truthfulness and intersubjective rightness can co-determine social norms and all actors have open and equal access to the discourse. In effect, he is suggesting that in communicative acts there lies the inherent possibility of rational outcomes due to interacting validity claims from all "big 3" quadrants (I, We, and It) among multiple non-coerced, freely participating subjects. By combining a theory of epistemology (knowing) with a theory of ethics (right action) Habermas tries to outline a meta-system by which right action may be properly discerned above and beyond the postmodern chasm of pure relativism."Good stuff by Robb Smith in "Causal Awareness as a True Pre-Condition to Habermas's Ideal Speech Act". Read on at his blog.
Labels: integral
On point one: Let me state clearly that in my view most mythic religion is not ridiculous poison. For many it is a noble and virtuous path of making sense of the world, living with decency, and striving to do what's best as humble servants of a loving God. The mythic religion of the poor, the uneducated, the backwards and underprivileged of society is not to be romanticized but neither should it be demonized as ridiculous. It's far too respectable a station of life for that, and if saying so draws the ire of the oh-so-respectable New Atheists, so be it. On point two: it's important to stress that post-mythic Christianity has progressed to decidedly orange and green and beyond levels.Thank you, Joe, excellent points! Read the whole thing.
The Catholic theologian Karl Rahner famously said "the Christian of tomorrow will be a mystic, or not a Christian at all." Few people have impacted Christianity in this regard as has Fr. Thomas Keating. A Cistercian monk from St. Benedict's Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, Fr. Thomas has spent a lifetime in deep Christian practice, and in sharing the fruits of this contemplation with countless others. We were enormously blessed to host a dialogue with Fr. Thomas and Ken Wilber in April of 2006, and we're delighted to share with you some of those beautiful moments. In this video, Ken presents some of the foundational concepts of Integral spirituality.Link to video at KW's blog.
Labels: integral, spirituality, wilber
Labels: climate change, global warming, integral
In amber recovery, abstinence and dependence on a Higher Power and a Higher Collective Order is the remedy. In orange recovery, building healthy ego strength in the service of rational decision-making to unmask the irrationality of addictive thoughts and behaviors is the prescription. ... Green recovery is tricky because it tends to reinforce magenta/red and often has trouble distinguishing between healthy and unhealthy versions; overall, green is capable of affirming healthy relative choices but not very good at identifying and rejecting unhealthy relative choices because there are no absolutes, fixed rules, or overarching principles. Unhealthy green is absolutely relativistic and therefore lost, dazed, and confused. Healthy green recognizes relative but meaningful choices, and therefore is able to benefit from programs that help them to affirm healthier personal and interpersonal choices. For example, mythopoetic ideas can be helpful to addicts at the green station. Green is capable of recognizing the Addict as a mythic archetype, as well as the Lover and the Frozen One or Numb One. Unhealthy green cannot tell the difference between the Lover and the Addict. Healthy green can. As green begins to transform into teal and turquoise, the distinctions between healthy and unhealthy begin to appear as hierarchical value judgments (though never simply "just the way things are" as in the amber and orange versions). ... Turquoise recovery is straightforward to define in theory. Its approach is to recognize valid partial perspectives on recovery that are appropriate to various stages and stations of life. Thus, turquoise recommends amber programs to folks in an amber station, orange programs for orange, green for green, etc. Turquoise also rejects the absolutistic claims of various recovery programs, and insofar as any program makes totalizing demands in its attempt to "win converts", then turquoise would not accept those demands without qualification. The turquoise mind is also capable of blending valid partial approaches from different stages of development into creative syntheses that are best for persons at almost any stage of recovery. ... There are reasons, however, that there aren't more recovery programs or counselors advocating Integral recovery. First, the vast majority of individuals aren't there yet, and encouraging synthetic approaches to recovery when those approaches may be working at cross-purposes is a very risky endeavor. Second, recovery is by its very nature an enterprise that requires social support, reinforcement, and mentoring. I believe strongly that recovery is not something for lone, isolated individuals. It requires engagement with others who are wrestling with similar concerns and can benefit enormously from the wisdom of peers, mentors, sponsors, and counselors. ... Thus, there is a very real sense in which the only recovery programs worth recommending are those with substantial levels of social support.
"... the traditional Great Chain tends to confuse the levels of Being and the types of self-sense associated with each level. For example, mind is a level of the Great Chain, but the ego is the self generated when consciousness identifies with that level (i.e., identifies with mind). The subtle is a level of the Great Chain, the soul is the self generated when consciousness identifies with the subtle. The causal/spirit is a level in the Great Chain, the True Self is the "self" associated with that level, and so on. So the sequence of levels in the Great Chain should be body, mind, subtle, and causal/spirit, with the correlative self stages of bodyego, ego, soul, and Self--to use the very simplified version. Although I often use the traditional terminology (body, mind, soul, spirit), I always have in mind the difference between the actual levels (body, mind, subtle, causal) and the self at those levels (bodyego, ego, soul, Self).
Here is where some of these distinctions start to pay off (and the usefulness of the move from wilber-2 to wilber-3 becomes more obvious). The traditions generally maintain that men and women have two major personality systems, as it were: the frontal and the deeper psychic. The traditional Great Chain theorists (and wilber-2) would simply say that the frontal is the self associated with the body and mind, and the deeper psychic is associated with the soul, which would indeed be a type of ladder arrangement. But the frontal and the deeper psychic seem much more flexible than that; they seem to be, not different levels, but separate lines, of development, so that their development occurs alongside of, not on top of, each other. We can graph this as shown in figure 7 (for which I have reverted to a more accurate 6 levels)." (KW)
"As the ego orients consciousness to the gross, and the soul orients consciousness to the subtle, the Self orients consciousness to the causal." (KW)And then, to continue,
"While all of them have their root dispositions in specific realms or waves of the Great Nest, they also have their own lines or streams of development, so they often overlap each other, as indicated in the figure. And this is what I think so many meditation teachers and transpersonal therapists see in themselves and their clients, namely, that ego and soul and Spirit can in many ways coexist and develop together, because they are relatively separate streams flowing through the waves in the Great Nest of Being. And there can be, on occasion, rather uneven development in between these streams." (KW)Well, the Great Nest is here to stay as Involution, and soon enough we will visualize 3D integral mandala, a synthesis of several necessary distinctions made so far to conceptualize the complexity of the ULQ: involution plus levels-and-lines plus structures-and-states as two crucial sets of stages. Plus, of course, the Shadow, and voila: prospect of upper-left quadrant, zone#1/zone#2 combined.
Labels: buddhism, integral, spirituality, wilber
Labels: buddhism, integral, religion, spirituality, wilber
Labels: buddhism, integral, religion, society, spirituality, wilber
Labels: buddhism, integral, myth, religion, spirituality