Unity/Cindy Wigglesworth

As a New Thought minister (with United Centers for Spiritual Living), I am grateful integrallife has included a New Thought minister, at last, in the many dialogues happening around spiritual development. 

New Thought spiritual centers and churches teach spirituality primarily from the rational and pluralistic stages of development, thus have a great deal to offer the conversations around western spirituality.  I have heard many, many discussions based around people raised in mythic Christianity, and find in integral spirituality a hope, as if religion/spirituality is just discovering itself at the rational and pluralistic stages.  Yet, I was raised in rational Christianity, moved to pluralistic in college and have been there most of my adult life until the last few years.  So much of what is being touted as "new" with integral, has been around for over a hundred years at the rational and pluralistic stages, and it's nice to receive a little recognition of this in Cindy's interview.  I hope to see more!

I enjoyed this interview, though I have a bit of a different take than Cindy's about teaching the rational stage to appreciate structure...she said something like they "innovate into bankruptcy" or something like that.  From my understanding, folks at rational excel at structure, excellence, making money etc.  It's the pluralistic folks who "follow their bliss" expecting that money will follow, who move so much with their heart, that structures fall away, and money more often than not, does not follow.  This is the stage where healthy integration of mythic and rational values of structure are really needed.

On a similar note, I have heard it said that the economic recession is reflecting a breakdown of economic institutions at the orange stage of development and having them rebuild at the pluralistic stage of development.  There are worthy values here, one being a more equitable distribution of wealth, financial support for the enviorenment etc.  At the same time, I have not been impressed with the financial acumen of folks at the pluralistic level.  It begs the question a friend of mine and I have asked...can't our financial institutions skip the pluralistic stage and move right to integral, if the collective cognitive understanding of the economic world is integral?  Do we really have to go through the nightmare of financial institutions being built at the green stage of development?

Just a few thoughts on this, my first integrallife blog.