Transformative power of development: Feedback 3/3

[Previous installments: 1/3 and 2/3.] The third section of Julian Walker's article is called "Telling the difference". Again, my emphasis given here are not present in the original article. Here we go:

So the antidote here is to:
a) develop more resources, especially post-narcissistic self-love and support and cognitive development that includes critical thinking
b) do the necessary healing and self-awareness work to process through enough of the traumatic (shadow) material and
c) take up a serious set of practices that help one to develop transrational awareness. Of course this takes years and is very difficult work - but the honest truth is that this is the way with genuine stagewise development.You can't just read about it in a book.

The rational arrest (as oppposed to the prerational regression) tends to perform the same mistake in reverse: where the regressive type has mistaken magic and myth for interior depth of transrational, the rationally arrested type has categorized anything non-rational as belonging to the magic and mythic category - and in so doing cuts off the possibility of genuine interior development of depth, embodied aliveness, emotional connection, intuitive/rational synthesis, and the power and beauty of experiences on the other side of egoic-identification, experiences that are made possible through meditative practice and energetic initiation.

The difficulty here is that the rationally arrested individual doesn't want to have a spiritual life - unlike the prerational regressive, who is longing for one but has taken a wrong turn! However, for arguments sake - the antidote here might be an equal investment in both:
a) healing (shadow) work and
b) inquiry-based practice (which is still deeply rational in it's foundation), but along with (instead of what is probably already well-developed critical thinking )
c) work that deepens the relationship to the body and emotional life.

Solutions given here are just fine, only Julian clearly focuses on doing, without considering how much such processes may depend, sometimes decidedly, on other influences and resonances, namely - cultural codes and beliefs one internalizes from various sources plus the impact of significant mundane and sacred relationships. I'm sure Julian's quite aware of these factors, and I think including them here in a blurb would make his distinctions and suggestions more meaningful. Apart from that, I think that shadow-inquiry-embodiment provides an excellent general basis. Of course, much depends on the methods employed to make these principles operational and effective.

So the BIG question is: how do we tell the difference between prerational and transrational ideas, experiences, beliefs, worldviews etc? What is transcended, what is included? This is nowhere as important as in the realm of developing a contemporary, grounded, integrated, adult spirituality. In fact it is in many ways the crucible of the next stage of our growth as a species.

One simple answer comes directly from Integral Theory originator Ken Wilber in his very recent Salon.com interview: ""The mystical state is often beyond words. It is trans-rational because you have access to rationality but it's temporarily suspended. A 6-month-old infant, for instance, is in a pre-rational state, whereas the mystic is in a trans-rational state. Unfortunately, "pre" and "trans" get confused. So some theorists say the infant is in a mystical state."

"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 nonrational. I don't want anything to do with it."

Now the funny thing is, even regressive types deeply interested in Wilber's work will see a quote like this and either gloss right over it or make some kind of gesture toward disagreeing with it and suggesting that he was having a bad day or not thinking clearly...

When initially reading that statement by Ken Wilber, I scratched my head just a little bit, and thought, there's a tricky simplification by Wilber's own standards. Surely, we need simplified ideas about these things to help hoi polloi make significant distinctions which are completely absent from education and public discourse. The notion that, for example, there is prerational spirituality, rational spirituality, and transrational spirituality is a very basic one, and the same may be applied to many different types of experience and human development in general. What Wilber is saying, effectively, is that only an adult person with critical faculties can reach into transrational proper. Now, this was based on multi-valued logic before Wilber recognized the crucial difference between stages in frontal psychological development, proceeding as transitional and enduring structures on one side, and shifts in witnessed states that characterize mystical experience and longterm meditative training. These two were previously pushed unto the same axis, and thus even Wilber himself participated in the pre/trans confusion for some time after coining the term "pre-trans fallacy" (PTF). As clarified initially with the Wilber-Combs lattice - where structures of consciousness from archaic to magic to mythic to rational to pluralistic to integral and beyond are given the vertical axis, and forms of mysticism from nature to deity to formless to nondual are given the horizontal axis - people have spiritual experiences of various depths at virtually all levels of structural development. So, even in that rather simple lattice, one can posit two dozen combinations, of which one half is rational and beyond, that is transrational. This makes PTF useful though insufficient. The main thrust of WCL is that not only can we differentiate between four inclusive types of spirituality, but each of these may be experienced and then interpreted at different levels of thinking about and engaging the manifest world. Pertinent to Julian's consideration, prerational interpretations of actual and/or potential experience disempower the individual not just by producing a very shallow account of "what happens" but also through directly fueling spiritual narrow-mindedness and narcissism. Now, individuals and groups may espouse a rational, pluralistic, and even integral view of reality, and yet fail to avoid making prerational judgements on very important issues concerning translation, transformation and spiritual awakening.

What I would add to this is that more often than not prerational worldviews, beliefs, ideas etc are ungrounded. They will include (instead of transcend):
* fantastical beliefs
* unscientific views of reality
* confusions between inner and outer reality and their relationships (category/quadrant errors), and very often
* various kinds of metaphysical denial structures around suffering, trauma, injustice, and the randomness of the world at large.

Generally there is a narcissistic tone - one of specialness, being at the center of the universe, being chosen, having angels, spirit guides and special intentional powers etc.. On the other hand the transrational worldview is in no way at odds with reasonable perceptions and interpretations of reality - it just takes them deeper, develops them further.

Here I beg to differ, since this leaves room for considerable doubt. I mean, "reasonable perceptions and interpretations of reality" is simply too vague. Or, even worse, Julian perhaps suggests that we can remain "reasonable" while adjusting ourselves to reality. Being "in no way at odds wiith reasonable" is hardly a working definition of transrational. Even if you move up the WCL and then suddenly turn right at "rational". Reality has absolutely no problem with reasonable or unreasonable, although the distinction remains quite clear. What appears as reasonable, however, should be questioned for the sake of those that hold it dear. There is a "reasonable" at every point in WCL, and there's pathology at every point, as well. It seems I can hear what Julian is saying, sort of, and I agree with that. But I don't resonate with "rational" and "reasonable" being used without delineation of the specific meaning employed and qualification regarding their quirks. In short, rational will take you as far as it goes, the problem is it doesn't go very far. And I'm afraid that by using it as a primary point of reference we cannot really address the problems that are behind this whole mess of narcissism and wishcraft in the current view of development and transformation.

There is a choice-less awareness of the reality of suffering and injustice - without the ironically linear attempt to make spiritual sense of these things via metaphysics. The transrational worldview is deeply compassionate and insightful, discerning and realistic. It encapsulates reality as it is and sees the sacred awe-inspiring nature of life without denying any of it's horror or meaninglessness. Transrational awareness is able to very deeply inquire into the more intuitive creative language of poetic metaphor, mythic symbol and archetypal experience without literalizing any of it or committing category/quadrant errors that turn those intrapsychic revelations into propositional statements about objective reality.

There is also, even more so, an awareness of the illusory nature fo the whole display, starting with dissolving the self-contraction of myself standing back from this whole suffering and injustice, relaxing into it while also relaxing the hold on it and what it means. Being realistic? Like being "reasonable"? Yes, but only because and only when that's how things work. Not because that's what the transrational view "is". Namely, a certain level of sophistication in manifesting ultimate clarity is necessary because at any given time in history there is a standard of civilized, dignified thought - today that standard is rational or higher, and moving. Also, whatever is good from any existing structure is ideally retained, included and embraced to serve that purpose.

Sane harmony as well as a kind of integrated differentiation between inner and outer reality is amplified, deepened and celebrated in it's stark and beautiful is-ness. Though some of the interior meaning that magic and myth were unconsciously fumbling toward may be included in it's deeper unfoldment in transrational awareness, none of the literalism, narcissism, magical thinking or pseudo science lasts a nano-second in the crystal clear, diamond-like perception of reality as it is.

To be consistent, nothing lasts a nano-second in the perception of reality as it is. There are pre-trans fallacy, category error, quadrant absolutism, level/line fallacy etc. But there's also the problem of two-truths conflation in various forms. "Isness" and "diamond-like" pertain to the ultimate, and the ultimate - being as it is - gives birth to many different expressions, while we're free to prefer any of them, thus making ourselves an identity amidst all other expressions. The ultimate, however, also known as "reality", never really becomes any one of its expressions, never really enters time so to speak, though it never exists elsewhere, or elsewhen. The ultimate is indeed the isness, as revealed in diamond-like perception, of anything observed, whether magical, mythic, or rational, or beyond - this isness is stark, and beautiful, in each and every one of those. Most everyone who have discovered this clarity in the past have had no idea there will be a rational, scientifically re-defined world in their near future. And the best among them could see and understand "everything" there was to understand. Yet, now we need a new platform to continue their legacy. We need a new way of bringing in both development and awakening, each informed by the other. Yes, this new way cannot allow itself to confuse pre- with post- anything, because it must maintain a deep evolutionary logic concerning everything in the manifest domain. Also, this new way must be effective in persuading the world that cultures and views also evolve, and that sacred cows are never what they seem. Transformation can be pursued by those who find themselves so inclined, and should be made into a universal right, but will nonetheless remain a tricky, non-linear, and difficult process, one that has just become quite a bit more complex than it used to be. Isn't that fun?

There are many points in addition to these, that need to be considered in more detail, like individual development and spiritual practice NOT being a private affair in a rational-and-beyond space, like development plus/vs awakening NOT being separate issues in an integral space, like these distinctions being characteristics of an emergent culture and therefore in dire need of differentiation from cognate and/or similar ideas already in use etc. What I have said in this feedback hopefully reflects my basic position of agreement and sympathy with Julian's take on the power of development. I'm looking forward to take this mutually enriching discussion further. Godspeed!

Transformative power of development: Feedback 2/3

After indulging in a somewhat exaggerated critique of the introductory section, I can now move on into the part which feels very much like something I would enjoy writing, on a good day at least. So, let's move to the second part of Julian Walker's article on transformation. This section is called „Interior Depth“.

The mystery of the inner world becomes available in a way that was simply not possible when we were unwittingly projecting it outward. The magic of the outer world becomes available in a way that was not possible when we were seeing it as a narcissistic extension of ourselves. The sacredness of the real world becomes more apparent in a way that was not possible when we were seeking a different world, a magical world, an otherworldly god, a fantasy dimension of all-good, all-powerful perfection in which to disappear.

This is true, and extremely important. Our critical faculties and the capacity to employ rational in a systematic inquiry is crucial in this step. The naive „I create my reality“ syndrome so prevalent in today's spiritual scene isn't a product of authentic magical thought, in any of its potent expressions, Eastern or Western, but of rampant narcissism made possible by an almost systemic collapse of 20th century intellectual and ethical frameworks holding our reality from falling apart, followed by an erosion of our academic and public-discourse standards. Religious institutions were proven unreliable, and commodification plus bastardization of spirituality was a natural consequence. At the same time, however, an unprecedented situation emerged in that previously esoteric techniques and arcane knowledge have become available to virtually everyone everywhere, and soon could be claimed by anyone anywhere. Specifically, spiritual paths have been presented for the last 40 years in a context of market-inspired offerings, where surfing on the smorgasbord of multiple options everyone is given to choose something that expresses their unique selves, which in the vast majority of cases means expressing their not-so-unique egos (*the eclectic result makes a faithful psychospiritual profile, a portrait and caricature at once, depending from the vantage point). Checks and balances are absent, so anything goes. Teachings have become mere techniques. Arduous initiation has become 1-day workshop at best. Purification of awareness has become a 10-minute guided meditation. But the problem is not in mere quantity. Relaxing the edge has gone too far to completely annihilate the critical faculties of a deeply desacralized eclectic mindset. No rapport, no challenge, no confrontation: "renowned teachers" have become "bestselling authors", somewhat like mail-order brides.

But in order to discover a more genuine sacredness, without „seeking a different world“, a robust existential rationality must be coupled a genuine search for truth beyond one's contractions. Indeed, if spiritual culture becomes/remains just a vestige, a cross-dressing for an inflated affection of magical vulnerability, there's no hope something as „sacredness“ will ever be available. Instead, it will be avoided. In such case, la-la-land of wishcraft remains a promising option. And therapy, of course.

There is no going back. Suffering is real. Injustice has no pleasing metaphysical explanation. Death will happen. And yet life is magnificent, mysterious, complex, beautiful in equal measure to its tragedy, meaninglessness, and cruelty.

Beautiful! No... Going... Back! Key phrase: injustice has no pleasing metaphysical explanation. But most of even serious practitioners remain deaf to this crucial insight, quoting dharma-phrases to defend from what they won't acknowledge. Disenchantment is the key to real magic. Thank you, Julian. What follows is rather straightforward and brilliant in its simplicity.

In fact, it is in the very contrast between evil and nobility, callousness and sensitivity, mediocrity and brilliance, oppression and freedom, that the exquisite fragility and power of the human spirit reveals itself.

Striving. Growing. Being humbled by reality in its harshness. Having no choice but to bow before truth. Fighting for what is good. Being blown open by Beauty.

The interior origin of art, myth, dreams and meaning becomes apparent in all of its splendor and chaos. The activity of a mind that seeks to represent, express, understand, symbolize the dynamics and forces we intuit at play, underlying, inter-weaving the reality we perceive.

We are ready for the leap to the next stage, but only in so far as we have really completed this intense transition and begin to engage the practices that will make transrational meaningful.

Unlike the revolutionary overhaul that occurred from prerational to rational, transrational will not negate rational, rather it will build and expand upon it's solid foundation - it's accurate purchase on inner and outer reality via a deepening relationship to contemplative practice, mind-body integration, intuitive intelligence and even more rigorous dedication to truth, beauty and goodness.

I tend to be less optimistic about rational, in and of itself, serving as "solid foundation" for transrational or even postrational, since they expose inherent limitations and shadows of a rational platform - as to solid foundation, I would opt for a reflective, evolutionary impulse of soulful authenticity - still, perhaps I can go along with this formulation. Specifically, if we really want to grow, not just individually, but also create an authentic spiritual culture as we go, we must move away from morbid vestiges of magical thinking. At this point in our culture, and probably equally in the East, it's much more important to develop a mature existential culture, than relaxing our angst through meditation, or devotion to an idealized tradition/guru/channeled wisdom/whatever. Depending on a variety of motivational factors, meditative techniques can be used for better or worse, like any other artifact - even to truncate development. In fact, meditation mustn't be treated as spiritual viagra. Growing as humans and patiently ripening the growing discomfort of clarity in confronting our dilemma is the real wishfulfilling jewel at this point. The great bliss is the flip side of the way things are now. Meanwhile, catering to the lowest common denominator in the spiritual showbiz, the vulgarity of many offerings is rather appalling.

But this is a difficult passageway - not attempted by many. There are two powerful pulls - one is to remain in the rational realm of what has simple location, what can be expressed in an equation - the other is to want to regress to childhood magic and myth. Both serve a similar purpose - but with different variations.

Remaining in narrow rationalism is often a defensive reaction against having to acknowledge feelings, vulnerability and the non-rational power of creativity, intuition, embodied, experience, love, intimacy, soul-rockin' sex - in short, experience that the ego cannot pretend control over...

This rejects the classic mundane maneuver, shallow and hollow as it is.

Regressing into the previous fascination with literalized magic and myth is often a defense both against personal suffering but also against facing the reality of collective suffering and injustice and taking responsibility for living in the real world on its own terms.

This refutes the actual manifesto of pop-spirituality.

Both strategies are based in a fear of or inability to enter the next stage of growth - i think about this in terms of two variables: trauma and resources. If one has sufficient resources (love, self-esteem, intelligence, education, support etc..) and has either a) a small amount of trauma, or b) has done a lot of interior work to heal and resolve trauma - we are better prepared to move into the genuinely transrational stages of development.

The simple equation here is that the more disadvantageous the trauma/resource ratio is and the greater the concomitant gulf between critical thinking and spiritual longing, the more likely one will be to misperceive a regression to childhood magic and myth as the next stage of development beyond rational.

Good stuff here. A lot of substance. And next, to my favorite, the third section.

> next installment here

Transformative power of development: Feedback 1/3

This is an unusually long post... If you're a regular reader here, then you know I appreciate Julian Walker's engagement in formulating a sober 21st century spirituality, which is realistic and inspiring, inquiry-based and psychologically astute. Julian Walker and I write with a different purpose, on a different continent, coming from diverse backgrounds, immersing our minds into distinct arenas of individual and cultural transformation, and having disparate feelings on zaadz/gaia.com, yet we share an interest in genuine integral and post-metaphysical spirituality, and often we see eye to eye on important issues.

Here follow some of my thoughts on Julian's recent article "The Transformative Power of Development: A Three-Part Distinction", which you can read at his blog, followed by the ensuing discussion (Julian is great with initiating discussions, and you get pulled in before you know what happened). I will quote the whole text, then emphasize in italic the passages I find significant, and then critically reflect on their implications, which will not exhaust or perhaps even remain faithful to their intended meaning. This is a response based on reading the article at the level of its language. Julian may have used "reason" and "rationality" as a designation-only for a general critique of widespread nonsense in popular "spiritual" discourse, but I don't accept such abstraction as conducive to solution, so I'll simply reply to the obvious. Julian's article is divided in three sections: Growth, Interior depth, and Telling the difference. So, Growth first.

Something happens. It happens to all humans. We grow. Our minds literally become more adequate to reality. Each step forward in development is both a deepening and a clarifying of our relationship to both inner and outer reality. Cause and effect becomes clear. The inner and outer worlds get better differentiated. As such, many perceptions - in fact an entire worldview, get left behind, negated, transcended - call it what you will - the way we formulate, interpret and interact with reality completely transforms.

So far, so good. Though, everything I left unitalicized belongs, in my opinion, to the „horizontal“ enlightenment, that is spiritual awakening in strict sense. But let's move on.

This is good. Growth is good. Its what happens.

Growth in itself is, as confirmed in the third sentence, something that simply happens, so saying it's "good" is unnecessary and tenuous at best. Growth can go wrong, which doesn't make it bad either. There's potential, of course, which when unfulfilled tends to cause problems. But growth, unlike change, is not a constant. And, in humans especially, not all growth is a given. Therefore, not all growth "happens", including both growth in wordlviews and spiritual growth.

Its why we know that: There is no Santa Claus. Your mom can't see through walls. Jesus was not born of a virgin. There is not an evil spirit under your bed. Grandma didn't die because you wished she would in a moment of petulant frustration.

"We know that" refers to a specific "we", and a specific "knowing". What is mirrored in following statements is a rational perspective on relative truth, specifically applied to dismiss magical and mythical relative truths, by which such rational gets passively defined. But, beyond rational, a different "we" would insist on formulating the developmental dynamics of facts, not just of knowledge, and so the postrational perspective on relative truth will specify the altitude at which pronouncements are made, and make clear whether that altitude is enacted and voiced a priori or a posteriori, whether as an adequate stage-level-station of discourse and meaning making or a caricature of a regressive slide.

Otherwise, to someone saying "There is no Santa Claus", we could reply in the same vein, "What are you talking about? What Santa Claus?" That is, the object of negation cannot be totally nonexistent. It must exist in some way in order for the refutation of its existence to make any sense at all. Therefore, we must be careful to define the existence we are refuting, and the resulting existence we are establishing. And the way to do that is in developmental terms, allowing a sequence of qualified existences.

The shift from prerational to rational is an absolute revolution. New software comes on-line. Cause and effect becomes apparent and the place-holder of magical causation becomes less plausible. The narcissism of placing oneself at the center of the universe and reading personal magical significance into random events and special communication from god to your tribe gets relinquished.

The shift from prerational to rational was a revolution 300 years ago. Now it's just a transition, part of conventional, and kids today don't get much excited about it, mostly because its unrealistic promise, typical for every revolution, has worn off. In real life circumstances, those of enmeshed philo- and ontogenetic unfoldment, worldviews and paradigms tend to establish themselves and persist in dual structures (one leg in the previous structure, one in the next, which allows some vertical flexibility, and provides for creative inner tension), so that we often have magico-mythic, mytho-rationalist, and rational-relativist positions. But yes, the shift from any level to any new level is a huge move, unexplainable only in terms of anything previously existing. However, it's not and has never been an "absolute revolution". Rational (universalist) remains blind to all things that lay ahead of it, and applies to the magico-mythic (absolutist) components the same narrow judgement, only from a relatively more elevated vantage point. While the absolutist claims, "You are wrong, and you're going to hell for it", the universalist retorts "Actually, you're wrong on both counts." The obsession with proving others wrong remains strong in the rational view, and only begins to be recognized, albeit in confused or partial manner without any effective remedy, by the relativist. So, in an important way, placing oneself at the center of the universe is really done by the rationalist for the first time - at magical and mythical structures, the self is not completely separate from the universe and the meaning of it to be placing itself anywhere; it is being placed in the continuum of meaning as a node, not at the center as a regressed narcisistic ego. Specifically, while I'm aware that this isn't a treatise on complex developmental patterns, nonetheless I'm convinced that transitional structures known as magical and mythical, as well as historical phases - at different times in different places - when these were adequate stations of life and vantage points for individual and social meaning making, should be given due respect and distinguished from sordid regressions, whether partial or wholesale, after higher structures have been established, as well as from troublesome fixations which amount to mere developmental pathology. I believe this has been done insufficiently, so that these distinctions are often collapsed, resulting in refutations of something that is a necessary precedent. This, then, is similar to what some extreme relativists have been doing with those structures that preceed the advent of contemporary relativism, and are therefore to a significant degree a necessary precondition for it. At the same time, rational as an available structure and potential should be distinguished from rationalism in any of its calcified expressions and formulations, conditioned during the initial breaking-away from the mythic order by means of desacralization. For example, Wilber does this by speaking of the dignity and disaster of modernity, offering to heal the disaster while redeeming the dignity. He applies the same dual wisdom to premodernity and postmodernity. I believe we should replicate this general approach. In short, we should demonstrate the cruelty of magical and mythical realities in their socio-economic aspect, as well as their narrowness in their interpretation of human interior. But we should never confuse or even compare magical pockets in 21st century adults with actual primitive thinking. The later is much more benign, the previous much more destructive. Just as the magical worldview and its developmental equivalent transitional structures need not impress us as anti-rational, but instead be clarified as simply pre-rational, even so the various rational and relativist claims, oblivious as they are of their non-superior status in the unfolding of paradigms and eventually meta-paradigms, become clarified as pre-integral, and yet not anti-integral.

What's more the magic of the real becomes more available. Looking through the lens of the natural sciences, reality gets more deeply revealed in it's powerful, mysterious wonder!

"Magic of the real" is discovered through initial spiritual awakening, and structural shifts are insufficient to produce one. Furthermore, "looking through the lens of the natural sciences" warrants exactly nothing, without the I that is doing the looking being inclined to discover an intuited powerful, mysterious wonder. Never before have pictures of this immense universe and sights and sounds of this beautiful wilderness been available to everyone everywhere: yet never has the sense of mystery and awe been more absent on all levels of society. Looking through the lenses is not enough! Understanding who sees what is crucial. A non-reductionist interpretation of what is seen is certainly necessary to make sense of what is "discovered", by complementing it with what remains even more obviously hidden to those lenses, namely - the mysterious wonder itself! - that remains a primarily interior affair.

Using reason we begin to interact with the internal world and the love of truth - philosophy. Using our newly developed, beautiful ability to self-reflect, we begin to interact with that other aspect of inner life - psychological awareness. The moral dimension of our being deepens too as we begin to be able to have more empathy for others and see the reality of suffering and injustice through the less self-centered and tribally identified and now more humanistic and world-centric lenses.

Reason has been used in defense of the mythic truths for centuries prior to European enlightenment, and much before in Indian thought. Indeed, most philosophers worth their salt have practiced their philosophy to reconcile reason and that which, for whatever reason, defies reason. In doing so, they have jointly established an elevated vantage point that takes reason itself for an object of inquiry to discover both its virtues and limitations, known sometimes as vision-logic or mandalic reason. But the problem of a recurrent magical thinking and rampant narcissism awaits at the level beyond mere rationality, when the reconcilitation of reason and that which defies it is carried out in absence of depth, as if to make everything equal and thus cease all claims to superiority - the relativist revolution - which has already proven impossible, or at least intolerable. Rationality is insufficiently reflective of its own role in developmental dynamics, since complex developmental dynamics go quite beyond orderly natural laws.

From rational orange-altitude vantage point, magic and mythic are less moral, and more self-centered, yet also less self-aware (therefore less responsible). It is a dialectical fact that the most self-aware structure available in "1st tier" exclusivist range of structures, namely the green-altitude, relativist, pluralist etc. is also potentially the most narcissistic when it resonates with poorly integrated magic impulses, producing a spiritual culture where "ego" - itself a product of previous rationality - gets hated and loved simultaneously in widespread bewilderment and confusion. The semantic mess created in the last 50 years, a period of simultaneous expansion and collapse of horizons, won't allow any easy solutions, or straight answers to these issues.

Notice that in this whole thing no mention is made of how these structures of magical, mythical, rational, relativist and further tend to light up - or collapse sometimes - with stages of spiritual awakening. Also, Julian uses a simple scale of prerational, rational, and transrational, which these days is only useful for explaining the pre-trans fallacy. No use of relativist and existential comparative signifiers too add depth and granularity. No mention of rationality's inability to handle anything truly paradoxical or downright immediate. The second and third part of the text develop the initial argument to point toward a "transrational" integration, and yet arguing for strengthened rationality not just as a capacity, but as an enduring framework. So I'm not sure what to make of it.

I intend to continue this critical reflection with the remaining two parts of the article: Interior depth, and Telling the difference.

UPDATE:
Interior Depth: Feedback 2/3
Telling the difference: Feedback 3/3

New Age and Skepticism

Julian Walker brings an article by Karla McLaren entitled "Bridging the Chasm between Two Cultures". Excerpt:

I'm not just a member of the New Age community - I've also been a purveyor of the very things the skeptical community is so concerned about. I've been involved in metaphysics and the New Age for over thirty years, I've written four books and recorded five audio learning sets in the genre, and I was considered one of the leaders in the field.

I'm not in the field any longer, but it's hard to truly disappear when so many of my books and tapes are already out there. It's also hard to disappear when I don't really know what to say to the people in my culture. The cultural rift is so extreme that anything I say will prove that I have gone to the other side, the wrong side - the side of the enemy. In actual fact, however, I have just seen enough to know that the skeptics and the critical thinkers have some extremely pertinent and meaningful things to say. I've now studied enough skeptical and scientific information about paranormal abilities and events to question many of the precepts upon which my work was based. More important, I've seen enough to understand firsthand the real costs of the New Age.

I've also learned to understand the differences and similarities in the New Age and skeptical cultures, so that I no longer react in a stereotypically offended fashion when I or the people I know and love are referred to as frauds, shams, or dupes. I understand now that these terms are not meant disparagingly, for the most part. I understand now that these terms often mask a great deal of care and concern for people in the New Age culture. It's sometimes hard to unearth that concern - it often requires an almost anthropological capacity to understand the cultural differences between us - but the concern is there.

Until I understood that concern, I couldn't find myself in the skeptical lexicon. I couldn't identify myself with the uncaring hucksters, the wildly miseducated snake-oil peddlers, the self-righteous psychics, the big-haired evangelists, or the megalomaniacal eastern fakirs. I couldn't identify my work or myself with the scam-based work or the unstable personalities so roundly trashed by the skeptical culture, because I was never in the field to scam anyone - and neither were any of my friends or colleagues. I worked in the field because I have a deep and abiding concern for people, and an honest wish to be helpful in my own culture. Access to clearheaded and carefully presented skeptical material would have helped me (and others like me) at every step of the way - but I couldn't access any of that information because I simply couldn't identify with it. Until now.

Read the whole piece at Julian's Gaia blog.

A Call to Depth

Julian Walker writes in "Call to Depth: Part One":

I am enamored of depth, for the sake of depth. Complexity, nuance and substance are beautiful, soulful in and of themselves. Depth also unfolds more meaning. Greater meaning as a layered tapestry not only of relativist perceptions and perspectives but also of a patterning that tends (if followed faithfully) toward more essential truths. Truths that are truer by virtue of their depth and clarity, by virtue of their underlying and immutable nature. Truths that are often obscured by the first few layers on the surface - and by the appearance of depth in some of those mistakenly constructed (yet often initially convincing) layers of surface analysis or belief. One such mistaken construction is the self-contradictory assertion that there are in fact no immutable underlying truths - or that any attempt to identify or express these leads inevitably to fascism.

This mistake negates:

* the great wisdom traditions and philosophical academies and their insights
* the progress of science in all its forms
* the process of development (toward greater degrees of complexity, depth and accuracy) that exists everywhere in nature
* the evolutionary drive itself

Read the whole post.

Zizek scores on Tibet

Quite a few valid points made by the "orthodox Lacanian Stalinist" Slavoj Zizek in Le Monde Diplomatique. Several excerpts follow:

...Before 1950 Tibet was no Shangri-la, but a country of harsh feudalism, poverty (life expectancy was barely 30), corruption and civil wars (the last, between two monastic factions, was in 1948 when the Red Army was already knocking at the door). Fearing social unrest and disintegration, the ruling elite prohibited any development of industry, so all metal had to be imported from India. This did not prevent the elite from sending their children to British schools in India and transferring financial assets to British banks there.

...The Cultural Revolution which ravaged the Tibetan monasteries in the 1960s was not imported by the Chinese. Fewer than a hundred of the Red Guards came to Tibet with the revolution, and the young mobs burning the monasteries were almost exclusively Tibetan.

...A main reason why so many in the West have taken part in the protests against China is ideological: Tibetan Buddhism, deftly spun by the Dalai Lama, is a major point of reference of the New Age hedonist spirituality which is becoming the predominant form of ideology today. Our fascination with Tibet makes it into a mythic place upon which we project our dreams. When people mourn the loss of the authentic Tibetan way of life, they don’t care about real Tibetans: they want Tibetans to be authentically spiritual on behalf of us so we can continue with our crazy consumerism.

Read the whole article.

Ken Wilber at Salon.com

An interview with Ken Wilber at Salon.com entitled "You are the river". Done by Steve Paulson, here's an excerpt:

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).

Simple truths

Julian Walker shares some pithy observations in a series of "Simply put" posts. Here's a quote from Simply put #3:

Look under the belief that we have chosen everything in life and you will find a deep fear of not being in control.

None of us has control over the circumstances of our birth.

Children do not choose to be born into poverty, dysfunction, socio-political unrest or trauma.

Nor do we choose our intelligence, gifts or other genetic traits.

Denying this is a form of hubris, that while attempting to feel empowered actually diminishes our power.

As painful as it is to acknowledge, there really are victims in the world.

Accepting this pain allows for a grounded compassion toward the human condition.

~
See also Simply put #1 and Simply put #2. Concise, though not sententious. The ensuing discussions tend to obfuscate the posts themselves, unfortunately.

In vogue?

QUOTE: The fashion show opened with a Buddhist prayer set to a hip-hop beat at the centuries-old Tsukiji Honganji temple, where nearly 40 monks and nuns from eight major Buddhist sects showed off elaborate robes in an effort to win back believers.

Five monks from each school walked on the runway, then chanted prayers and wrapped up in a grand finale with confetti resembling lotus petals.

"We wanted to show the young people that Buddhism is cool, and temples are not a place just for funerals," said Koji Matsubara, a chief monk at Tsukiji.



No comment, right? Link

Kitsch, Paranoia, Nihilism

Julian Walker posts the second part of his "Power of Worldviews" entitled "Spiritual Kitsch, Paranoid Process and Relativist Nihilism". Here's an excerpt:

"...In it's healthy form, Postmodern spirituality deconstructs the cultural baggage and prerational superstions of Magic and Mythic and expands Rational natural-world, sensual spirituality into a deeper valuing of both the inner world of the psyche and the universal truths and states of consciousness made available through the still valid perrenial practices at the heart of those traditions.

Instead we have what I call spiritual kitsch - a kind of lowest commmon denominator combining of angels, aliens, karma, positive thinking, narcissistic fantasies about manifestation and how the universe works, extra-dimensional spirit guides, astrology, psychics and everything happening for some cosmic reason - all supported by an imaginary new science that is really just a self-referential reflection of the marketing material that keeps this segment of the economy chugging along at ever greater profits.

This spiritual kistch is of course reflected throughout popular culture as a kind of dumbing down of the arts and the elevation of self-help platitudes to the status of philosophy and psychology."

See the whole piece, it's worth reading.

Zizek sins on Buddhism

It's Zizek-time at Progressive Buddhism with Joe posting "Zizek's Western Buddhism". I have briefly commented awhile ago on Zizek's treatment of "Western Buddhism" in his article "From Western Marxism to Western Buddhism" (!) and then it seemed to me that "while some of Western Buddhism indeed deserves a bashing as quasi-Western pseudo-Buddhism, it being an insidious newage flirtation with general Buddhist signifiers, and a shallow understanding and application of Buddhist spiritual methods, there is surely an authentic Buddhist mysticism for the 21st century being questioned and formulated here in the West by at least some. Slavoj Zizek, a rather famous postmodern philosopher and cultural critic, should be aware of the difference between legitimacy and authenticity, and eager to apply this basic distinction to his otherwise worthy critique, thus avoiding several seriously damaging fallacies." I still find that statement apt, though now it's rather clear that Slavoj Zizek, instead of recognizing a qualified overlap, flatly confuses the signifiers "New Age" and "Western Buddhism". Quite a mess.

Joe's discussion spans from Zizek's "Revenge of Global Finance" to Nietzsche to early Buddhist sources to Deleuze and Schopenhauer etc. Many good arguments, no need to reiterate here. I will just reinforce some points in my own position on Zizek's flamboyant bagatellizations. Truth be said, in the Revenge article Zizek does pronounce more of New Age, when he says,

"...The ultimate postmodern irony is today’s strange exchange between the West and the East. At the very moment when, at the level of “economic infrastructure,” Western technology and capitalism are triumphing worldwide, at the level of “ideological superstructure,” the Judeo-Christian legacy is threatened in the West itself by the onslaught of New Age “Asiatic” thought. Such Eastern wisdom, from “Western Buddhism” to Taoism, is establishing itself as the hegemonic ideology of global capitalism. But while Western Buddhism presents itself as the remedy against the stress of capitalism’s dynamics—by allowing us to uncouple and retain some inner peace—it actually functions as the perfect ideological supplement."

This identical passage is used, in a typical cut'n'paste manner characteristic of serial authors, in the Marxism to Buddhism article as the opening thesis. While Marxism and Buddhism focuses more on the fetish of exotic other, the Revenge article attempts to speak of flatland without really giving credit to it (and without ever making a very basic distinction between interiority, subjectivity, perception, and perspective; for these, see KW's "Excerpt D"). For example, Zizek offers the following:

"... why complain that financial speculations with futures markets are “divorced from objective reality,” when the basic premise of Buddhist ontology is that there is no “objective reality”? (...) No wonder Buddhism can function as the perfect ideological supplement to virtual capitalism: It allows us to participate in it with an inner distance, keeping our fingers crossed, and our hands clean, as it were. It is against such a temptation that we should remain faithful to the Christian legacy of separation, of elevating some principles above others."

Is that so? Well, Zizek is elaborating from Oey's "Sandcastles: Buddhism and Global Finance", where economist Arnoud Boot, sociologist Saskia Sassen, and the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Dzongzar Khyentse Rinpoche comments are compared and contrasted. As we know, or should know, Buddhism offers at least three different perspectives: absolute, relative, and the path. It's unfortunate that comments made from one of these perspectives regularly end up being interpreted as given from some other perspective or even on an entirely different basis. Buddhism never taught "there is no self" (or "there is no Self" or any other spelling), but a path where separate self is recognized as a dependently arisen notional entity. Thus, a self, as well as anything and anyone else dependently arisen, does not exist independently. That's all, and that's the path-perspective, pointing to the need to cultivate view and practice based on such truth. In relative sense, self is quite real and effective. It neither exists (not being "substantially existent"), nor does it not exist (not being a mere nothingness). It's absolute mode of being is beyond designation or conceptualization, though it may be expressed in special ways.

Zizek sins on these points (missing the mark the size of Pacific Ocean) and "comes short of the glory of God", while ascribing to Buddhism a lack of hierarchy of principles, as if the faults of Western New Age are to be ascribed to Eastern spiritual teachings, and not to the modern Western (and global) omission in providing a cogent spiritual basis with which to enter the 21st century. Such omission will not be adequately supplemented by recourse to the "legacy of separation" (it's actually funny to see someone like Zizek advocating faithfulness to a Christian legacy).

To round this up with a quote from the Progressive post,

"It is not that Zizek is lying to us, that this kind of person he sees doesn’t exist. Rather, it is that Zizek is wholly mistaken in accepting the self-identification of this person, of their guiding principles at any rate, as Buddhist. This pseudo-Buddhist is faced with the same Che vois? as the Zen monk by his teacher, but in the name of the very same principles that guide the monk to act the pseudo-Buddhist withdraws."

Quite so.

Reflections of a contemporary yogi

Julian Walker writes:

...My young man insistence that everything could be cured by meditation or yoga or just dropping the ego was being slowly replaced by not only a full spectrum model that acknowledged that different practices and therapies were appropriate to different issues, but that there was also a series of developmental stages that had to be traversed by every human being AND that all of this could be situated on a four quadrant map of reality that made extraordinary sense. I understood now (for example) that some kinds of meditation would make trauma survivors dissociate from their felt experience even further rather than actually providing an opportunity to heal and integrate. Also, spiritual experiences were available to all - regardless of their stage of development, but that those experiences would be interpreted in predictable ways depending on that stage of development and the cultural context within which it was occurring. Wow. I understood that the Upper Right empirical perspective on depression was of great importance and that some people really did benefit from medication - that there needn't be a war between Prozac and practice, between medication and meditation...

Read the whole article.

Enemies of Reason: Part Two

I've posted recently about Part One of Dawkins' new documentary "Enemies of Reason". See that one first in the post. Here comes Part Two, and from Dawkins himself: "In this program I want to look how health has become a battleground between reason and superstition." Time 48 minutes Enjoy!

Zizek on Western Buddhism

Slavoj Zizek has a generous critique of Western Buddhism. Quote:

... "Western Buddhism" thus fits perfectly the fetishist mode of ideology in our allegedly "post-ideological" era, as opposed to its traditional symptomal mode in which the ideological lie which structures our perception of reality is threatened by symptoms qua "returns of the repressed," cracks in the fabric of the ideological lie. The fetish is effectively a kind of symptom in reverse. That is to say, the symptom is the exception which disturbs the surface of the false appearance, the point at which the repressed Other Scene erupts, while the fetish is the embodiment of the Lie which enables us to sustain the unbearable truth. Let us take the case of the death of a beloved person. In the case of a symptom, I "repress" this death and try not to think about it, but the repressed trauma returns in the symptom. In the case of a fetish, on the contrary, I "rationally" fully accept this death, and yet I cling to the fetish, to some feature that embodies for me the disavowal of this death. In this sense, a fetish can play a very constructive role in allowing us to cope with the harsh reality. Fetishists are not dreamers lost in their private worlds. They are thorough "realists" capable of accepting the way things effectively are, given that they have their fetish to which they can cling in order to cancel the full impact of reality. In Nevil Shute's melodramatic World War II novel Requiem for a WREN, the heroine survives her lover's death without any visible traumas. She goes on with her life and is even able to talk rationally about her lover's death because she still has the dog that was the lover's favored pet. When, some time after, the dog is accidentally run over by a truck, she collapses and her entire world disintegrates. ...

Here's another thinker who can join the ranks with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and other skeptics who seem intent on forcing themselves on a notion (whether "religion" or "faith" or, in this case, "Western Buddhism") and incapable of distinguishing at least two major, significantly distinct meanings of it. While some of Western Buddhism indeed deserves a bashing as quasi-Western pseudo-Buddhism, it being an insidious newage flirtation with general Buddhist signifiers, and a shallow understanding and application of Buddhist spiritual methods, there is surely an authentic Buddhist mysticism for the 21st century being questioned and formulated here in the West by at least some. Slavoj Zizek, a rather famous postmodern philosopher and cultural critic, should be aware of the difference between legitimacy and authenticity, and eager to apply this basic distinction to his otherwise worthy critique, thus avoiding several seriously damaging fallacies. For a way out of such mess, read chapter "Legitimacy, Authenticity, and Authority in the New Religions" in Ken Wilber's "Eye to Eye", or see the online essay "A Spirituality that Transforms".

Read the whole article by Slavoj Zizek.

Dawkins makes new foes

The unreasonably reasonable Richard Dawkins moves on. First, if you have seen Dawkins' last series "The Root of All Evil", where the subject was religion, then you're familiar with his basic approach. He pretends being interested and then uses a rather narrow argument to disprove something that, more or less, disproves itself, but he fails to grasp the deeper features of the phenomenon.

This now, is the first part of "The Enemies of Reason"! The general logic remains intact, though the enemy is now more accurately defined, namely superstition, or as Dawkins may prefer - nonsense. It even starts with an ingroup chanting of daimoku (i.e. Namu Myoho Renge Kyo), which I would agree is a great example of nonsense, and in most cases superstition. But then, I have a divided take on Dawkins and an uncommon take on mantra. Time 48 minutes. Enjoy!

Psychologization of esoterica

Taken from a comment in a larger discussion link here

My understanding of all this is unavoidably influenced by my practice and study, which is Buddhist. As I did in the original post, I will avoid dharma-lingo, however the distinction of categories, apart from those terms borrowed from integral/kw, will again be informed by such practice and study. I'm pretty sure the same analysis can be made using other doctrinal underpinnings.

Just a scrap:

• psychologizing esoteric stuff means, obviously, translating into existing psychological terminology (note: primarily it's the psychology of the ego) something that goes beyond the scope of such psychology;

• but especially I refer to translating some very authentic esoteric principles or practices or truths etc. into the language and scope of the newage lore and pop-psychology;

• first and foremost, to make things clearer, let us recall the notions of four natural states (gross awareness, subtle awareness, very subtle awareness, foundational awareness), and the three depths of frontal personality, deeper psyche and witness.

• the frontal personality works it's way through conventional stages of development, and at each of these stages the four natural states will be accesible at all times, though usually gross awareness will prevail in waking states, subtle awareness will prevail in dreaming, and very subtle awareness will prevail in dreamless sleep while foundational awareness is incomparable as to prevailance, it being just the facts of limpidity, unimpeded feelingness (some would say bliss) and fundamental non-conceptuality (i.e. isness); in deep sleep (and other similar states), the gross and subtle appearances are non-arising, so the very subtle appearance comes ot the fore; in dreaming (and other similar states) only the gross appearance is non-arising, which allows the subtle appearances to veil the very subtle ones; just like that, in waking the gross appearances are in full display, veiling usually the subtle and the very subtle to a large extent; the foundational awareness, however, is never hidden by appearances;

• also the three depths will exist in continuity, as (1) that which looks outward, (2) that which looks inward, and (3) that which is simply aware; i.e. the three depths may change their basic denotation if and when deeper development takes place;

• let's have a natural allegory for illustration: there's the wave, the ocean, and the wetness; wave is like frontal personality, ocean like deeper psyche, and wetness is like witness. (note the very important “like”, which is the entrance into the allegory; you may always use that door to get out, and reenter; several following sentences are within the allegory)

• a wave is local, simple and focal/directional; the ocean is spacious, complex and multifocal/omnidirectional; wetness is simultaneously local and spacious, simple and complex, and also obivous and paradoxical;

• so we have three structures here, deeply inter-related, none existent quite on it's own, always mutually non-exclusive, however quite distinct. Now, attributing wetness to the ocean and attributing oceanity to wave is not a mistake in itself, and that's first thing newage does, known also as a descending movement. However, the shuffle trick newage does then, is to suddenly recognize this descending movement as the nondual. Because, the wave is wet, isn't it? So wetness is to be treated as local, simple and focal/directional. and this local, simple and focal wetness is the source of the oceanic reality (that oceanic reality indeed resonating in every drop of the wave, as the wetness allows unboundedness). The wave may indeed feel the ocean within itself (the minuscule portion of the ocean delimited by one wave's constantly changing form). And the wave may very well and to some exten correctly feel itself as wetness. And here I part ways from newage, and from personal spiritualities, and especially from psycho-spiritual theories, all of them being wave-born, wave-like and wave-bound.

• without bringing oneself to the level of foundational awareness, which is sheer cognizance, clarity and understanding, it is quite impossible to discern the wave from the ocean, or the ocean from the wetness, and to recognize all that in a teardrop. Instead, one develops a caricature of clarity, by misunderstanding esoteric concepts (that are properly transmitted in context of gradual practice and realization) and making them available in slightly broken english to people with zero mind-training, and then garnishing it all with “love”, “forgiveness”, and “self-empowerment”.

• so far I have used allegory, but this actually translates into many particular psychological lies, illusions and delusions, originated and perpetuated by the newage & pop-psychology (though some of their critics are not necessarily immune, ).

• in short, it's attributing the life of witness and the deeper psyche to the frontal personality, because of never understanding what That in the famous “you are That” meant;

• again, it's attributing the entitiness, qualities and functions/actions of the greater depth to the surface;

• we see Pavlina and the Secret doing this mistake and calling it “subjective reality”, as if their delusion was a valid partial truth;

• only flatlanders can do that without blinking;

• only psychotic people can manipulate reality with their thoughts;

• it is my contention that many have done the same fundamental mistake, just by choosing another wave to their liking, as surfers do;

• some have here used rigged philosophy to do that;

• the spiritual culture depends on authentic wisdom, which is a direct perception not by eye, or mind or even soul, but perception by sheer understanding (in buddhist terms, prajna, which is a function of foundational awareness) through any of those organs; by any other name, it's a realization, a “permanent adaptation” to something inherent, not an acquisition; but in absence of such in our midst, or in absence of our capacity to recognize such in our midst, we must rely on testimonies of known realizers and compare those to our experience and sound judgement;

Endnote
The terms I have used above, like witness or awareness, have a very precise meaning, and all have a signified/referent to be ascertained experientially, and to be checked and discussed in one's own spiritual culture to only then attain to a linguistic adequacy. These are not things to be discussed if one has not ascertained the referents accurately beyond reasonable doubt. It is not a conceptual fabrication.

Beyond the person?

Taken from a comment in a larger discussion link here

“Beyond the person”. Person is shorthand for conventional identity, i.e. being identified with one's stories about what this separate self-sense is as opposed to it's nature of being a product of biogaphical conditioning. These stories are negative/positive type of scenarios, “i'm a good person as opposed to…” or at other times “i'm a bad person as opposed to…” there's always a reference to an opposition, an expectation, a false standard extraneous to the separate self-sense itself. Because of this unobserved otherness being crucial to the meaning of the story, the narrative itself is a source of fear, since one cannot control the extraneous element. (this is one way putting it, and i'm not sure it's consonant to conventions of contemporary psychological science in any of the schools)

Where there's fear related to being good, there's guilt. However, this (the persona with a shadow) is a stage-appropriate phase in development, not to be avoided before it is established, as what preceeds it is even more constricted. To cut a long story short, when repressed stuff gets integrated, we have a relatively healthy ego (a more-subtle-mental developmental construct), and when bodily sensations are well integrated, we have what had been called a centaur (an existentially vital, death-aware separate self-sense). This is all frontal development I have subsumed in my comment as “a person”, or conventional identity.

On a deeper level, however, irrespective of frontal development, there's the deeper psyche, the higher self, in more traditional terms - the soul. And beyond the soul is the “witness”, a formless spaciousness, very subtle, technically still relative.

The deeper psyche (also called the authentic self by some, but these terms get easily confusing) is beyond the person in at least two ways. First, it is not explicitly constrained by the biographical conditioning. / see graph here / It lives a quasi-independent life, at least until the person reaches the summit of available frontal development, which is a rather complex concept determined by individual, cultural and environmental factors. In this first sense, the soul is “beyond” the person.

In another sense, it is “beyond” because soul-work, when initiated prior to the frontal development reaching an optimum, tends to negate the frontal identity, as the fundamental meaning of “soul” is openness to and apprehension of vast spacio-temporal relations, and trans-biographical meanings and purposes - i.e. the soul presumes all existential knowledge, finds confirmation in physical death etc. therefore being of some threat to the frontal structure prone to defy the existence of some such “thing”. But most importantly, the soul cannot be an object of the frontal self-sense, which can only apprehend symbols of it or be drowned in torment if unwanted exposure would occur. Many methods of meditative development are expressly designed to enable experience of the subtle/soul identity and realm in a controled, induced manner. Enough said.

Back to responsibility and “respons-ability”. A centauric ethos is based on responsibility for all one's bodymind states (this is what colloquials usually mean by experiences), including reactions, unconscious intentionality etc. and is not based on guilt, but rather on acceptance, recognition and, if necessary - remorse. Basically, as opposed to guilt, remorse feeds into resolution to work on one's growth and awareness.

Being a character, does not imply having a character. The same is true of conscience and responsibility. Feeling guilt actually means not being able to take responsibility, either generally or in particular circumstances. All this has to do with integrity, and authority, “being an author” (of which original meaning see here an introductory presentation, and an elaboration through Weber's understanding concerning positive and negative potentials of it).

But deep responsibility, to which I was refering if I remember well, goes even beyond that, because it's a profoundly transformative power coming from beyond the relatively healthy personal domain. It may emerge sometimes in an unprepared or ill-prepared individual. It's a commitment, and a humility, to do our best and live in accordance with that which is beyond and therefore stretches our capacities to their furthest limits (in both sense of “beyond” I mentioned previously). This often requires personal sacrifice, that ought to be balanced with some kick-ass personal maintenance.;-) There's a state-training component to all this, obviously, but also a structure-stage appropriate translation - i.e. interpretation and application - at least equally important.