Integral Movement vs Integral Awareness
From early 2006 until mid-2007, I was an Integral groupie. I dove into Integral Naked, read a handful of Wilber's books, bought a Stuart Davis CD and had the great fortune of receiving a scholarship to attend an Integral Life Practice 5-day seminar. I was very active in the Integral Institute Zaadz pod after bailing from the catastrophe that the Integral Multiplex forum presented. I checked Ken Wilber's blog every day. I was fascinated with the whole Kenchilada.
Then I woke up. Again.
In January of 2006, I had a minor awakening experience. My experience of it then was major: mind-blowing, ego-shaking and myth-shattering. The energy that came out of that experience launched me out of bed at 4:30am every weekday to do mantra chanting before work; it lasted for about four months, until I went to the ILP retreat. That process (at the retreat), which I dove into as deeply as I could, felt like stripping naked in front of a mirror. And when you identify as transsexual, that can be an especially heart-ripping, mind-fucking experience. The internalized cultural voice - the one that maligns transsexuals - packs a punch that hits below the belt. And the fight that ensues between it and the Defender is one bloody battle.
Over the subsequent year, I was in and out of regular practice, in and out of shadow. I kept holding on, even when I felt like screaming FUCK YOU to the world and to God (which, in fact, I did on more than one occasion). During stronger periods, I watched my mind with all of its arising emotions and thoughts. I pondered my actions and their results. A willingness to see ME, dark and light, began to crystallize. Slowly, I strengthened the ability to look at my self and the world around me through clearer lenses. I see and feel the impermanence of everything. I realize that contraction and expansion are part of an authentic spiritual path (and life in general), and that I'm not ever doing anything "wrong" when challenges arise and I temporarily contract. I experience myself as a process with a ground of Being. I laugh at the simplicity of it all. And I know that I will likely never see or know all of my self, and that's OK. I love the Mystery.
This summer, I jumped off the Integral ship and found the Ocean that includes it. Instead of being enthralled with the Integral Movement, I am in Love with this Dance of Life. From this position, I can reengage with the Integral Movement as part of the Dance. I've moved from identifying with the Integral Movement to experiencing it with Integral Awareness. Big difference.
So today, after checking in with Joe at Until, I clicked on his link to Stuart Davis' blog, and I found this beauty: The Feminine Divine. Not that I've read all of Stuart's stuff, but this represents the most mature Stuart I've ever seen.
Then I woke up. Again.
In January of 2006, I had a minor awakening experience. My experience of it then was major: mind-blowing, ego-shaking and myth-shattering. The energy that came out of that experience launched me out of bed at 4:30am every weekday to do mantra chanting before work; it lasted for about four months, until I went to the ILP retreat. That process (at the retreat), which I dove into as deeply as I could, felt like stripping naked in front of a mirror. And when you identify as transsexual, that can be an especially heart-ripping, mind-fucking experience. The internalized cultural voice - the one that maligns transsexuals - packs a punch that hits below the belt. And the fight that ensues between it and the Defender is one bloody battle.
Over the subsequent year, I was in and out of regular practice, in and out of shadow. I kept holding on, even when I felt like screaming FUCK YOU to the world and to God (which, in fact, I did on more than one occasion). During stronger periods, I watched my mind with all of its arising emotions and thoughts. I pondered my actions and their results. A willingness to see ME, dark and light, began to crystallize. Slowly, I strengthened the ability to look at my self and the world around me through clearer lenses. I see and feel the impermanence of everything. I realize that contraction and expansion are part of an authentic spiritual path (and life in general), and that I'm not ever doing anything "wrong" when challenges arise and I temporarily contract. I experience myself as a process with a ground of Being. I laugh at the simplicity of it all. And I know that I will likely never see or know all of my self, and that's OK. I love the Mystery.
This summer, I jumped off the Integral ship and found the Ocean that includes it. Instead of being enthralled with the Integral Movement, I am in Love with this Dance of Life. From this position, I can reengage with the Integral Movement as part of the Dance. I've moved from identifying with the Integral Movement to experiencing it with Integral Awareness. Big difference.
So today, after checking in with Joe at Until, I clicked on his link to Stuart Davis' blog, and I found this beauty: The Feminine Divine. Not that I've read all of Stuart's stuff, but this represents the most mature Stuart I've ever seen.
Could it be the most integral decision yet - inspirational guts, honesty & authenticity...
Thank you for sharing this for it may be life changing, soul clearing & spirit uplifting for me indeed.
Keep dancing with and as Life as you do/are,
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Yes! Moving away from the smaller integral picture to the all-encompassing! Beautiful!
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Hi there,
I think I can really grok with what you are saying here, my minor awakening was also the one that turned me most off being an Kenchilada groupie. Being in Australia and practicing from afar, I was never part of I-I however, so can I ask you, what do the people that you worked with that are still part of I-I think about your decision?
Cheers,
bzn
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Thanks for engaging! It's a rare occurrence in these woods and a pleasure.
Grateful: I'm happy to hear that my experience offers you encouragement. Best wishes.
Gary: Beautiful, indeed!
bzn: Honestly, I was never involved with the small inner circle that comprises I-I other than peripherally through the seminar and online forums, so I don't think your question really applies.
All: My commentary on all things Integral is not meant to slander I-I in any way. I appreciate the efforts of all those involved with I-I; the portal presented by them is a distinct and valuable part of my path up to this point. I was simply pointing out that being involved in the Integral Movement does not necessarily equate with being 2nd tier or integral or anything else. More importantly, I am hoping to prompt some to realize that reading Wilber's books or hanging out in Integral spheres is not sufficient for causing profound personal transformation. I've personally met enough people through the Multiplex that I know this is true. There's lots of work to do. Ultimately, there's no work at all to do, but one doesn't usually realize this until one looks deeply within (e.g. meditation). And my own understanding is still very new and not as deep as it will be, I'm sure.
Deep Bow,
Colin
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This is a draft of something I am working on:
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The integral trap, to me, is what will tend to marginalize efforts to claim a truly universal scope for Ken Wilber's interesting theorizing about ... everything.
The trap is the theory's immersion in the culture of personal evolution. This is different than acknowledging that Wilber and others have done significant work on the stages of life. For heaven's sake, so did Erik Erikson and he is not mentioned in the litanies of the cogniscenti. The immersion of which I speak is essentially related to the transcendent culture of Eastern thought and Eastern religion.
Wilber does not appear to understand, or else he relegates to lower positions in his quadrants, understandings that are essentially part of what I woulod call the transformational culture of the West. This is too simple a distinction, and it may help if I list a few aspects of "reality" that I feel are given short shrift by Wilber, partly because of his own immerson in, and identification of integral vision with, the culture of meditation, and the tendency to do within this culture exactly what the theologians of the West have done with the Christian religion: to posit a sort of metaphysics that is entirely suppositional and beyond the capacity of human beings to identify, beyond some subjective confession which has no particular validity.
1. A sense of history. This tends to be subordinated to the imposition of broad and highly speculative stages of the past, as if history represented the unfolding of everything toward Wilber's integral consciousness, with percentages given for those who have reached this state, whether they know it or not. If history is a spectrum it would look more like a spiral with fluctuations internally all the way along.
2. A sense of the importance of human actions in history. The vagaries of individuality, "free will" and such. Also the "messianic" problem. (For example the one Ken has/had with Adi Da.) Or even, we might say, celebritization. I think Harold Bloom's suggestions about the power of influence are relevant here.
3. The tendency of human beings to want to claim more than they can know. This is the bane of religion but it applies to every discipline and endeavor. A good example is reincarnation which Wilber is said to be inclined to. I do not have knowledge of what happens after death and no one else does either. But entire historical developments can be adduced from how people answer the question of what happens, even though they have no knowledge to support their suppositions. Resurrection, reincarnation, nothing.
The integral trap is the cultural matrix into which the growing integral movement will be placed unless it is capable of seeing just how likely it is to become characterized by the three factors I have mentioned above, and anything else that fails to see that it is part of the solution, not the solution itself.
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Hi Stephen,
Thanks for playing. I appreciate your argument because it has me thinking. Here's what I think:
"The trap is the theory's immersion in the culture of personal evolution."
I get the conceptualization of the theory as a trap. In some ways it is a trap because it is a conceptual model. In my experience, though, there's a door inside the trap that leads to deeper levels. Not all will find the door (even though Wilber keeps pointing to it). The door is found by looking within, not by reading books.
Personal evolution is both a culture and a personal practice; lots of people narcissistically cling to the culture; not so many implement the practice.
"The immersion of which I speak is essentially related to the transcendent culture of Eastern thought and Eastern religion."
First, collapsing Eastern thought and religion into one monolithic transcendent culture is not particularly helpful. Eastern thought and religion are diverse, both in theory and praxis. The Eastern thought that Wilber seems, to me, to identify with, however, is explicitly not transcendent; it only looks that way to those who have not grokked it. A transcendent component exists; it transcends and includes the lower (or higher, depending on the perspective) levels of being (see Wilber's No Boundary). This transcendence is not limited to Eastern philosophy or religion.
"partly because of [Wilber's] own immerson in, and identification of integral vision with, the culture of meditation, and the tendency to do within this culture exactly what the theologians of the West have done with the Christian religion: to posit a sort of metaphysics that is entirely suppositional and beyond the capacity of human beings to identify, beyond some subjective confession which has no particular validity."
Sure, some get into metaphysics that have no particular validity. This is not what the core of meditation is about (the instance to which I'm referring, anyway). Meditation is about what can become readily apparent here and now, not in some metaphysical plane or afterlife. And just because many insights derived from meditation are subjective does not mean they cannot be validated empirically (by experience) through comparison. This is the heart of empiricism, in fact: conduct an experiment (meditation), repeat it many times, and compare the results with others who have performed the same experiment. All true experiments are of this nature: subjective: we experience "objective" external phenomena and "subjective" internal phenomena through the same human senses. It's all phenomena.
"The tendency of human beings to want to claim more than they can know. This is the bane of religion but it applies to every discipline and endeavor. A good example is reincarnation which Wilber is said to be inclined to."
Not sure what works of Wilber you've read. The ones I've read (and the way I've read them) show him explicitly stating that his integral vision is not some final philosophy. AQAL is simply a map that is more inclusive than previous maps used by humanity. Even the nascent awareness that humanity uses maps to explore and explain our experience - and that they cannot possibly contain all the territory since we don't and can't know it all - is a giant leap above the understanding of nearly all human minds.
I can't speak for Wilber, but I'll bet his definition of reincarnation is not the one you are holding. I experience reincarnation; the version I subscribe to has nothing to do with a belief that my self will have another life. It has more to do with patterns or habits reincarnating.
Finally, whether or not the Integral Movement spearheaded by Wilber has any longevity still remains to be seen. Whether or not it does is completely out of his hands. And he knows this.
Rereading the above shows me potentially appearing as a Wilber apologist. I don't believe myself to be that; I just think many people confuse what they think he thinks with what he actually thinks. Myself included.
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I much appreciate this response. Rather than reply as if to rebut, which I have no real wish to do, let me continue to suggest where I was going.
Transcendent-Transformational. My background is Protestant theology and I first used this to create some basis for critiquing the positions of Reinhold Niebuhr and to some extent of neo-orthodoxy as a whole. I was holding that the gospel proberly understood was vastly more immanent and transformational than it was transcendent. That is where I was coming from when looking at Wilber and I suppose the subtext of my own thoughts is that Wilber does not really seem to wrestle with the Western Christian tradition as did many of the philosophers who ultimately rejected its tenets (Nietzsche, among others). I have also rejected its tenets to a large extent but mainly in the direction of affirming that orthodozxy had it wrong from almost the beginning. My own phrase for the problem is creedal messianism.
Suppositions about states of being and depth states in meditation. I did make a parallel between these suppositions and the faith suppositions of Western Christianity. In essence I am hoping that meditational paths not make the mistake of creating a language which implies a creed or credo relating to attainable states of being. Stage this or that. This could be as oppressive as Christian tenets for which there is no empirical evidence. How evolved are you" (That sort of thing.)
Take resurrection and reincarnation. No one knows whether either is more than a possibility or a hope.
I do not see you as a Wilber apologist but as someone kind enough to instruct me as I do not claim to know much at all, but keep trying in my own way to be very integral.
For example I feel the biggest error of most "helping" disciplines is the failure to reckon with the need to integrate and harmonize various technical and strategic approaches to solving problems. A simple example would be to integrate the solar, wind and water-collecting technologies into a single design. Another is to surmize and widely discuss the chape of human settlements after we have finished with the oil economy and reliance on internal combustion.
I will stop but I do value this chance to discuss.
Cheers, S
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Sorry for the delay. The weekend brings different priorities.
"I was holding that the gospel proberly understood was vastly more immanent and transformational than it was transcendent."
I agree, and I actually experience Buddhism in much the same way; though, it is very often misunderstood until one gets deeper into the philosophy and, more importantly, the practice.
"That is where I was coming from when looking at Wilber and I suppose the subtext of my own thoughts is that Wilber does not really seem to wrestle with the Western Christian tradition as did many of the philosophers who ultimately rejected its tenets (Nietzsche, among others)."
He does seem to rest more heavily on Eastern philosophy and religion. The Integral Spiritual Center is relatively diverse, however, and Father Thomas Keating and Brother David Steindl-Rast, both Christian contemplatives, are involved in the interfaith dialog that ISC hosts annually (two years now, I think).
"In essence I am hoping that meditational paths not make the mistake of creating a language which implies a creed or credo relating to attainable states of being. Stage this or that. This could be as oppressive as Christian tenets for which there is no empirical evidence. How evolved are you"
Well, given my own experience, which I liken to an evolution/involution process, there ARE stages. I have proceeded through stages as my contemplative practice has matured over the last two years; there were stages before that as well. And there is empirical evidence - again, based on subjective experience - which can be, and is, compared with the observations of others who have attained deeper (if you don't like higher) stages already. Again, none of this empirical evidence can be uncovered by reading or even thinking, really. It has to be experienced through a disciplined practice; at least, that is the most common route versus sudden profound shifts that some think originate out of Grace.
I appreciate this opportunity to dialog, BTW. My own background, like many Westerners, is in the Protestant line: I was raised Lutheran.
Best,
Colin
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The Third God -- Where Ken Wilber Seems To Draw A Blank
There are said to be some Christian contemplatives within the orbit of the integral movement Ken Wilber and others are seeking some visibility for. But every description I can find about the formless ultimate state (fulfillment by any other name} -- the observer state -- identifies this state with Being or God or whatever.
As though, when integral becomes the accepted way of thinking, the world will fall into this concept of deity.
Here is what I think, in a nutshell:
That Jesus radically modified the concept of God by perceiving of God as being the familiar Abba and by removing from his/her person the fangs of human projection that produced the Biblical texts that make what I'll call God One not merely omnipotent and omniscient but mean, jealous, vengeful and side-taking.
I think Ken probably sees God One as easily dispensable, a stage of development. I suspect most fundamentalists and evangelicals still cotton to God One because it's there in the Bible. And it is echoed in the creeds, creating a fearsome and historically influential basis for a Christianity that has been mean, jealous, vengeful and side-taking.
My own integral position is that Ken risks throwing out the baby with the bathwater and consigning his integral movement to an academic backwater. He has failed to wrestle with the fact of God One. He may really believe it is a stage of development that will somehow fade away as things evolve. Dream on Ken.
Ken Wilber is left with a language and and understanding to which it is hard to relate if you have "evolved" to a Christian universalism. or what I call Abba's Way or the Way of Abba. Yes, I am saying that if he wishes to have a truly influential integral movement he will take on this issue and wrestle with the theological evolution needed to truly confront the God One partisans who number in the billions worldwide.
What is the difference between an integral sort like me and Ken WIlber?
I think I retain the concept that history is real and that events are real and that violence is the linchpin issue that needs to be addressed in the Way one cleaves to. And that this cuts across all the quadrants and stages. It cannot be explained away or assumed to be magically absent when people have attained whatever it is they attain in their individual meditations.
I think Ken agrees but puts his concepts almost entirely in a way that sociologically means he will be left with a small percentage of documentable evolved sorts while whole billions cleave to God One and their various Armageddon Scenarios.
I believe Abba's Way will prevail but that it will be a sort of secular, post-institutional faith that eschews idolatry of anything, including most likely the integral if it does not come out of its own ghetto and deal with all of reality.
I think the way ahead is to identify as the Third God or God Three, this personal and internal One who is not radically different than Being.
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"But every description I can find about the formless ultimate state (fulfillment by any other name} -- the observer state -- identifies this state with Being or God or whatever."
I think this is a misunderstanding that may be strengthened by the words chosen to describe this state. I don't think that the observer state (or witness) is to be confused with God (however "Being" is another concept that might be a closer fit). Anyone with a thinking mind and a willingness to observe reality closely should understand that the Witness is not God, if by "God" we mean the Infinite that is beyond human conception (while including all humanity and our concepts).
"As though, when integral becomes the accepted way of thinking, the world will fall into this concept of deity."
Humanity seems to need to have some organizing worldview in order to have a stable egoic manifestation. All worldviews up to this point are partial; in fact, from an Infinity perspective, all human worldviews that might ever come into existence will, by their very nature, be partial. As far as I can tell, the Integral worldview is the most inclusive (realistic) worldview that humanity has ever created. I would love it if the world would "fall into" this conception. We all have some conception; why not have a more "integral" one?
"That Jesus radically modified the concept of God by perceiving of God as being the familiar Abba and by removing from his/her person the fangs of human projection that produced the Biblical texts that make what I'll call God One not merely omnipotent and omniscient but mean, jealous, vengeful and side-taking."
This is a great concept. I love it.
"I think Ken probably sees God One as easily dispensable, a stage of development. I suspect most fundamentalists and evangelicals still cotton to God One because it's there in the Bible."
This is a misunderstanding of Ken's position. His focus at this point is the 1-2-3 of God. He unequivocally does not dispense with God One; he simply wants to discard an archaic and destructive concept of God One.
"My own integral position is that Ken risks throwing out the baby with the bathwater and consigning his integral movement to an academic backwater. He has failed to wrestle with the fact of God One. He may really believe it is a stage of development that will somehow fade away as things evolve. Dream on Ken."
Again, this is a very definite misunderstanding of Ken's work. Try reading his recent "Integral Spirituality" and see if you come away with a different view.
"I think I retain the concept that history is real and that events are real and that violence is the linchpin issue that needs to be addressed in the Way one cleaves to. And that this cuts across all the quadrants and stages. It cannot be explained away or assumed to be magically absent when people have attained whatever it is they attain in their individual meditations."
Humanity definitely has a habit of violence, in many forms, and I agree that this is of primary importance. Humanity is prone to violence because of a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of reality: that "I" is fundamentally separate from "you."
"I think the way ahead is to identify as the Third God or God Three, this personal and internal One who is not radically different than Being."
Again, check out Ken's "1-2-3 of God" concept that is outlined in Integral Spirituality.
This is one of the biggest challenges that Ken's Integral faces: a range of misunderstandings and projections about what his work really states.
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This response makes me double-glad I found this opportunity for discussion. I suspect there are few who would put up with my "insularity" when it comes to understanding Ken Wilber. I tend to feel that I see large patterns arising from short statements here and there and I am fully aware that I bring my own lenses to the party, so that between my misapprehension and the partiality if what I am responding to, there is room for considerable error. I cannot respond until I have had a deeper look at the text you reference. Hopefully we can continue when that has been done. Thanks again for your replies. Cheers, S
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Stephen, I am also glad that we had this opportunity.
Best wishes as you further explore Ken's integral theory and your own views.
With respect and appreciation,
Colin
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