Inquiry

For one, I have thought of writing it. That thought is rapidly met with the realization that no one person could ever write such a work.

Outside of that though, I can see the tides of our current mass consciousness shifting. I feel this movement when I attempt and free think through whatever primary vision logic, imaginative process, that I have access to at this point in my life. I would like to be a writer and in many cases these imaginative sessions open up various possible works that I could devote my self to. One of those ideas has been a new bible to live by.. Something that takes a narrative form, but that explains integral spirituality much like Ken does in the book by the same name. I think we could open up higher levels of spiritual practice and awareness to more people in a Book or series of books were created that put into narrative the form of teal/indigo spirituality. Along with this I also reconize the precession of the equinox's.. We are ending the age of Pices and into the Age of Aquarius, also know as the water bearer. Basically each one of these ages lasts around 2200 years (there is much disagreement over exact time dates, but they are generally within a hundred years or so of each other.) The interesting thing to look at is what ages we have come through already in human history, and what type of advancements, religious ideas, political formations, nation building, scientific contributions have come about in each of these stages, and they generally correlate to the major archetypes of the astrological signs. Pices has been the age of christianity and started around 1 AD. I believe what will take place is a spiritual writing process that addresses a narrative of Aquarius or a character or group of characters that would embody this age's major archetypes. Aquarius is the water bearer, and it could be seen as a return from patriarichal oppression to a balanced and more centered axis between the male and female poles. 
 

Alot of what im saying is pretty generic, but I promise the ideas in my head make a little bit more sense and have more supporting pieces of information, I just havent really ever tried to explain this general feeling Ive been having recently regarding this.

I send intentionality out into the Universe and believe this will happen. I put my faith in the fact that if It does not come to pass that will alright, and things will fall into place in due time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrological_age

Greg, all,

Returning to Dr. Fowler's Stages of Faith...

it occurs to me that many of the Church's current crises of doctrinal dilemma and healthy dogma development may be related to kinds of systemically engendered fulcrum shadows around the transition between Stages 3 and 4, the stages entered around puberty, where most adults, in and outside of the Church tend to plateau in their personal growth.

Over this last week, Greg, I read you as generally expressing Stage 5 conserns, btw.

About the body...

There seems to be sets of psycho-somatic/energetic correlates to the expression of the stages.

At a First Profession of Vows for six of Mother Teresa's novice nuns I saw something I recognized from observing Zen teachers. The women aligned in a row before her ("Ma T." as we used to call her), stepping toward her one at a time as she'd greet them, inserting a wood Cross into their sashes. As each novice stepped aside, the next one coming into Ma T.'s view, it was as if Ma T. herself became a new person in front of the approaching nun. Her stance, facial expressions, tempos of movement, words spoken, and length of engagement, were radically distinct with each novice. Such an immediate responsiveness to particulars, the demonstration of the ability to embody a precise expression in accord with the uniqueness of the moment, was hers. The stage behind that behavior: Universal, Fowler's 6th. 

For years I'd heard of her as primarily a shrewd administrator. The Turquoise cognition said, by KW, to be required for Universal has, in my own assessment of one who Dr. Fowler calls Stage 6, a definate reflection and expression in the body. A use of the body beyond the self (re: stage 6). A fluidity of being that is itself a Cross. Firsthand accounts of the lives of those mentioned as examples of Universal Faith seem to bear out a correlation to their lived koans of embodiment.

'all for now,

Kerry

Dear Richard:

Thank you so much for your thoughtful post. I understand exactly what you are talking about. You express perfectly the view from the top of the Vedic/Buddhist mountain. I’ve learned Zen not from academic comparative religion courses, but by practicing it since my early 30’s and haven been confirmed by two Zen Masters, Ryoun-ken Roshi and Kyoun-ken as a Zen teacher, given the teaching name Ryuun-ken. I know by personal experience that non-dual is the “highest perspective” in this tradition, and you nailed it in your post. What you say makes perfect rational sense.

Where you go off the track is trying to cram Christianity into this foreign anthropology. The integral model is based on this Vedic/Buddhist anthropology and it does not adequately take into account the Christian experience of the Absolute: the unrelenting unconditional love of the One God, Father, Son and Spirit; the Resurrection and the unique divinity and role of Jesus the Christ. Playing around with labels like ‘Christ Consciousness’ is just word gaming, hiding Vedic/Buddhist tradition in Christian sounding terminology. BTW, you need to be aware that this winds up being offensive to both Buddhists and Christians. (Just hoping to raise your sensitivity level a bit, I’m sure the offense was unintentional.)

Unfortunately the Christian religion gets tagged with a host of misinformation. One of the dirty words these days is the word “dogma”, which is quite unfortunate. Dogma is not a set of propositions one is required to accent to, like the proclamations of a political ideology, although it might have been ignorantly taught that way. Dogma is more like the “pointing out instructions” for entering into the Christ experience of the Father and Spirit. And if the Church is insistent on dogma it is because she doesn’t want the instructions to get diluted and therefore leave us coming up short.

Of course dogma evolved over the course of time, which brings us to another dirty word, “tradition”. Tradition is the lived experiences of our Christian ancestors and sometimes tradition gets formulated into dogma so that we may enjoy the same “freedom in Christ” they enjoyed. I don’t want to get rid of dogma and tradition. That is like wiping out the memory of our family. We’d have to start all over from the beginning having destroyed the centuries of wisdom they left us. BTW, every religion, Buddhist, Vedanta, Islam, and Judaism not just Christianity depend on tradition. Without tradition there would be no religions at all and thus no Integral Model. It is something of an irony isn’t it that on this blog where the Integral Model wouldn’t exist at all without someone’s tradition, tradition is being trashed?

Please understand that I am not trying to convince anyone that the Christian experience is better than the Buddhist experience or any other religious experience. I am trying to point out that it is different, and trying to plaster over the differences is to do violence to both traditions. It appears to me that early 21st century 1st world mentalities embrace a Frank Santra variety of spirituality, “I did it my way.” There is nothing that I can think of that is more egocentric than that, except a person claiming to be Enlightened or otherwise free of an ego mentality. This is self delusional and dangerous. Self deception is the most common of “sins”, integral shadow work notwithstanding.

Your metaphor of the one view from the top of the one mountain is one that is shared by many today. I originally embraced that point of view, but have since changed my opinion. I did not come up with the original idea that Buddhists and Christians climb different mountains. I first heard that expressed in Leverkursen Germany by Robert Aikten Roshi at a public talk on the occasion of an Inka ceremony. It was very early in my Zen practice and I was frankly shocked by Aitken Roshi’s assertion. I badly wanted there to be one mountain. I adamantly nurtured that metaphor for many years after that day. Other reputable scholars have also confirmed Aitken Roshi’s assertion. Huston Smith, the author of the still relevant “The World’s Religions”, in an interview with the notable Bede Griffith responded negatively to Bede’s opinion that just as our five fingers end up at one palm, so all religious traditions end up in the same place. Huston Smith respectfully disagreed saying that they all end up on different mountain tops and that they are all true. Huston Smith is correct.

The Eastern Orthodox accuses the Roman Church of overly rationalizing theology starting as early as St. Augustine and I think their criticism has much merit. The West in general, and us 1st world-ers in particular, suffer from intellectual arrogance, thinking we can think it all out to make sense of reality. Christianity does not make that kind of sense, and trying to make it make that kind of sense does a great disservice to this deeply mystical tradition. Too many opinions I’ve read on IL have reduced Christianity to some pre-rational level of evolution or tried to conflate it into a Vedic/Buddhist anthropology. That is an easy and self serving way to dismiss what is a bothersome anomaly in integral circles. The Integral model does not adequately account for the Christian experience and tradition.

So while your arguments are wonderfully logical, they miss the Gospel is “foolishness-to-the-Greeks” part that St Paul points out. In integral language, Paul was trying to say that the Gospel is trans-rational. He spotted the pre/trans fallacy very early on. Christianity is a religion of Divine Revelation. “Everything that I have received is from the Father,” says Jesus in St. John’s Gospel. What does it reveal? A higher level of Reality than the mind alone can comprehend. To give an example from Christian dogma, Olivier Clement points out that God overcomes our otherness (unique personhood) without dissolving it (thus we can be both one with God while being our unique selves), just as He (the One) overcomes the Otherness in Himself (Father, Son and Spirit) without dissolving it. If I were to borrow language from Zen I would say that “not different and not the same” comes closest to the incomprehensible mystery Clement is pointing to. This is way beyond “rational”, red-shifted, to borrow a Doppler metaphor from physics, into deep mystery. I think it might even be beyond non-dual, which is heresy in integral circles. Try thinking outside the integral box. Play with the model.

One of the great virtues of Ken Wilber and the integral model he is developing, is his willingness to let it evolve, to change his model over time so that it includes more of reality. I am very encouraged by his magnanimous mind and heart. And I have every hope that the integral model can evolve to include the Christian tradition and experience. But it is not there yet. Nor is there anything like an integral Islam, which is a great hole in the model. Islam means ‘to submit’, specifically to submit to God – what is more contra-ego than submitting to another, the ultimate Other? To say it another way, the Integral model has not yet met the high standards it’s set for itself, that is to include everything. It leaves out some essentials in Christianity and practically ignores Islam.

I don’t know how Zen’s no-self fits with Christianity. It probably doesn’t. I belong to a lay Zen lineage, Sanbo-kyodan religious organization based in Kamakura Japan that recognizes a distinction between Zen and Buddhism. When joining the organization no one is required to abandon his or her religious heritage or lack of one. I remain a Catholic Christian while practicing Zen in this lineage. Oddly enough I ended up being a very good Buddhist, without confusing Christianity and Buddhism. I take the Buddha’s teaching seriously: Be a lamp unto yourself. Buddha warned his disciples not to simply believe what he said because he said it. He wanted them to rely on their own experience.

Finally, if anyone wants to know the truth of what I say, don’t take my word for it. Don’t look for it in books. It’s not there. Submit to the pointing out instructions. I sat in Zen meditation for 27 years now and have practiced my Catholic faith for many more than that. And I am just now beginning to begin to get it.

Thank you, Richard, for helping me to clarify my thinking on this important matter.

--

If the Message is
Received there’s no need to cling
To the Medium.

(First thought: a paraphrase of a Marshal Mcluhan quote from the 60’s.)

RE: I’m not so sure about your claim that we can’t do justice to a tradition if one ignores its major dogmas. 

Tradition, per se, deserves no reverence, Greg, any more then any outmoded way of thinking about anything needs to be revered.  Simply put, dogma and doctrine that suited the intellects of those of the first through the six century AD need to be ungraded just like computer software (Windows 95, for instance).

Ultimately, the real point is to answer Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I Am’? for ourselves; and that only after coming to our own heartfelt conclusion (re: the Spirit -- not carnal mind -- hath told me); and not just affirming the thought of 1st through 6th Century theologians who, at the time, felt "personally compelled" to do all the thinking for the uneducated masses.

Neither I was arguing for ignoring ‘doctrine and dogma,” but rather that we see it for what it really is: as "metaphoric fingers" that only serve to point to "Christ as the One I Am in All, as the Consciousness of God;" and so realize that to “worship those fingers” is, quite literally, “missing the point.”

RE: If you don’t understand the historical-political context in which Christianity was accepted as the orthodox religion of Rome and thus was spread throughout an empire, then you won’t see where certain Dogma was injected into a tradition that had been around for hundreds of years.

I’m afraid I did do a considerable amount of study in that area over the years (while swinging back and forth between Mystical Christianity and Vedic/Eastern Philosophy), Greg, and that is the very reason I consider a great deal of the “doctrine and dogma,” cannons produced by the political demand for a “unified” Christian position, more a product of “carnal minded conjecture” then the divine inspiration I willingly grant Scripture (and not just those that were Canonized).  In short, I do believe a lot of the “Divine Baby got thrown out with the bath wash,” at least conceptually, based on political expediency and the politics of power.

(The Gospel of Thomas, for one, has the literal potential to revolutionize Christianity were it allowed to enter the mainstream of Christian Thought and get preached from the pulpit.)
 
RE: The point comes down to saying this, is the true Christianity.. organized Christianity? No. I don’t believe it is.

100% agreement on this, Greg.

RE:  That just happens to be where many people find themselves in this life. Dogma is not something I think is inherent in a tradition, even if a belief to be followed is stated. Dogma is created by rigid inflexibility in how a society, religious institution, or family grouping holds other individuals to one certain belief. The Dogmatic aspect of something only comes into play through embodied interaction.

No disagreement here either, Greg. 
 
RE: Integral Christianity is decidedly non-dual. It recognizes the non-dual awareness of the pure Christ witness.

If that’s the definition of an “Integral Christian” it’s a good one.

RE: It may be slightly more integral than many of the purely non dual traditions because it incorporates our lived bodily experience.

I am afraid, Greg, one’s Christianity is neither integral nor non-dual if there is “still someone who thinks and feels” he is separate and apart form Christ (or the Consciousness thereof) as the One I Am; and so still needs to integrate in mind and practice “things” such as “body, mind and spirit” which are actually nothing more than mental concepts about temporary states of energy mankind presently self-identifies with instead of the Consciousness in which they arise and fall.

Here’s how Sri Nisargadatta, for one, incorporates the body (or integrates what might be called Spirit and Flesh in Christian parlance):

“The relationship between the physical body and consciousness, says Maharaj, must be very clearly perceived (not conceived).  Consciousness can be conscious of itself only so long as it has manifested itself in a phenomenal form, a body, whether it is an insect, or a worm, or an animal, or a human being (or, perhaps, the Entire Cosmos).  Without the body, in un-manifested state, consciousness is not conscious of itself.  Without consciousness the body is merely dead material…In fact, he says, consciousness is the ‘nature’, or ‘suchness’ or ‘taste’ of the physical body like sweetness is of sugar.” (from Pointers of Sri Nisargadatta)/(Note: The parenthesis are mine.)

RE: It says to be enlightened, to be integral, is to embrace Christ consciousness (this is non-dual awareness), and then embrace our human and mortal aspect.

Embrace implies that there is still “someone” (even if only in imagination) separate and apart from “something” to be embraced. In this regard, I have to go with the hard-core non-dualists and say that "enlightenment is not of the person, but from the person." In other words, "I Am" enlightened of  a "personal sense of separate being" (re: personhood) that feels there is something other than itself that needs to be embraced.

RE: To be fully divine (conscious) , and fully human (embodied). The point then is to use this awareness of non dual reality to DO WORK in the dualistic world of manifestation.

Who other than the “Christ Consciousness” (or Consciousness of Christ) is “DOING THE WORK” you refer to when Jesus himself said, “I of mine own self can do nothing, the Father in me, He doeth the work.”  And where does that “thinker” you imply is the “doer or worker” when he is asleep; and, if he is really the “thinker,” why is he not able to control his thoughts when awake (in the dream)?

If I can’t control
Myself perhaps I am not
Who I think I am!

Once again, to be fully human and divine at the same time (whether referring to Jesus or Greg) is to be “fully a child” and “fully an adult” at the same time; and, thus, a conceptual non-sequitor.
 
RE: Integral means embodying the divine aspect of non dual consciousness, and use that awareness to lighten up the world around you.

Greg, your words still imply that  there is “some one or some thing” separate and apart and, thus, substantially other than this Non-Dual Consciousness you refer to; and that  this “someone” is going to use that "non-dual consciousness" to do “some thing".  When, by definition,  in Non-Dual Consciousness (which is only another Name for Pure Being or Existence, Aware-Presence, Conscious Awareness, Christ, Krishna, Ishwara, Shiva, the Lord, the Son of God, I Am, etc.) there is no "inside and outside, no self and other" (which are no more than self-reflective images and concepts that relative thinking itself projects into apparent Being) and, thus, no “outer world” around an ‘inner you” to “lighten up.”

RE:  I believe Jesus did this (in the narrative), by recognizing his divine witness, and then realizing the embodied nature of our human existence, and combining the free release of the former with the here and now of the latter in the pursuit of social justice on earth.

Jesus said “he could do nothing,” so how is he going to use this Divine Witness to “do something”?  Jesus, if anyone every did, at least after the transfiguration (except for the moment of Self-doubt on the cross), identified with that Divine Witness, Witnessing Presence or Consciousness of God as his True Identity or Self, as the One I Am, Christ Consciousness or the Mind of God.  (Aside: In fact, try this right now: As yourself, "How can I use myself"? and see how far the mind can carry that ball.)

Jesus wasn’t out to bring “social justice” to earth (only a person with an alienated sense of Being could ever have such an personal agenda).  Besides, if that is what he really wanted (or intended to do) he could have become King of the World and simply enforced his will and justice you speak of by Divine Fiat (and please let us not introduce "free will" into the equation, for inorder to "have free will there would firt have to be someone apart (re: essential duality) to exercse it"). But he didn't.  Instead, he declared that His Kingdom was not of this world and invited Us All (as Children of God and the Light of the Word) to wake-up (or in Paul's words: "Awake thou that sleepeth, arise from the dead and Christ shall give thee Light.") to the fact that it isn't our Kingdom or world either.

RE: Recognizing non dual awareness to see that heaven is here and now, and that with that you can now stop "trying" to do this or that, but instead become vibrantly alive agents of love and compassion.

In agreement with this one, Greg, but it would be better to use “Empty, Selfless Vessels” of Divine Life, Light and Love, instead of “vibrantly alive agents” for the latter implies that We are "some thing" other than Life, Life and Love (in manifest and/or self-reflective form) expressed locally (or apparently so) in the First Place.

Oophs!  Just noticed that "to stop trying" involves self-effort that is in itself "trying" (not to mention "self-inditing") or"doing nothing" (with someone still there to "not do it")!

RE: Standing with the sick, the old, the outcasts. Jesus stands with the oppressed as a person who themselves has identified with their pure Christ consciousness, (The potential lying in each and every one of us).

A “person” is someone who has a “personal and particular sense of separate existence and being” rather than an “Impersonal, Universal Knowledge of Conscious Union and Oneness that Naturally Embraces and Transcends All Existence (which necessarily includes "oppressed and oppressor" alike, for the Sun/Son shines Its/His Grace on the just and unjust alike) as "One Self" (or SELF of ALL).

In other words, once identified with Pure, Unitary, Non-Dual Consciousness of Being, the “person (or illusion of being that) dies and only God/One remains (or is seen to Be all there ever Is, Was, or Could Be).  For, as the Highland so profoundly said: "In the End there can Be only One"!!!

Yours I Am/We Are All One in Christ  --the Consciousness I Am, You Are and All Is!...Rich
 

Dear Marion:

Christianity, like Buddhism, is a proselitizing religion and has been so since its initiation. Both of these Great Traditions have enjoyed enormous success with their proselitizing efforts, suggesting that they will continue to do so in the future. But it is not without its dangers. Many who have been angry, resentful or jealous at Christians and Buddhists, lead to the martyrdom of missionaries. This too seems to be in the cards for the future. Nonetheless announcing the Good News of the Messiah is encumbered upon every Christian.

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