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iEvolve: Marc and Terry on the 2nd Person of God

Posted June 14th, 2010 by Jennifer Grove in Integral Religion

This isn't going to be very popular. But I just posted this up at iEvolve and I need to put it up here too. This is what I'm seeing.

--oOo--

I just finished listening to them talk about this for over an hour and a half! Wow! Two people in Sacred Struggle to find the place of shared meaning. Fantastic.

I have to admit, I don't fully agree with Marc that Terry is saying the same thing as the Sufis and Hassidic Masters. And I've been in Sacred Struggle myself lately with a few people about this. It's more than a problem of language. And it's more than a problem of which direction we are coming at it from. Something about this is incorrect. That's the only way I can describe it.

--oOo--


I do not believe that one has to lose one's faith and stand in the place of No-God or No-Other in order to progress to the next step or for the religious experience to be "purified" or to "end the trance". I believe, instead, that what is required is for one's faith to be made an object and be fully disconnected from God's existence and also from the self. In other words my religion becomes a system of dogmas that may or may not say anything real about God and may or may not have any bearing on God's interior or intent, and my faith in that religion is something that is not self. My faith, then, must become disposable, even if God is not.

It is, therefore, one's faith in one's religion that one has to lose. God, therefore is freed from the 2-dimensional frame that He/She has been trapped in and becomes a True Other. God becomes Someone that one doesn't know at all and must start over with.

At that point one can finally begin a relationship with God that is very much like the ancient relationships that were written about in the Holy Books instead of simply maintaining a belief in those ancient relationships. One is called away from the faith of one's Parents and to a faith that one has never seen or heard of and that only God knows about. And then God can and will reveal Him/Herself in the way that is most effective and meaningful according to the development that you're at now and in the world as it is today... just as God has always done.

--oOo--

I think the difference between what I'm saying and what Terry is saying is that there is a healthy "transcend and include" way to go thru the Rational Cognitive Development and there is a pathological way. I believe Terry - along with most other people who call themselves "integral" - have gone thru it in a pathological way of "transcend and exclude". There are two basic forms of "transcend and exclude" that I see in Integral groups.

The first one became evident when Terry explained how he could not consider tribal or exclusive religious expression something that God was involved in at all. This is the faith in the God of the Higher Mind only or the God that excludes all lower life forms and expressions - and from what I know about Integral, this just cannot be true. How can God create (Spirit manifest as) the wolf yet not the natural mind and behavior of wolves and the parts of our brain that are still the same as that of a wolf? The God of the wolf is one who destroys all other wolves and/or animals who would kill their young and steal their food. Nothing is better in the imagination of the wolf or the human who is operating at the level of thinking like a wolf. So, in the sense that Terry's childhood God didn't support killing or racism, Terry has still not yet turned that childhood faith into an object. This is probably true for many people who are interested in Integral thought.

And the other problem of Atheism that Marc brought up is slightly different. This problem is the exclusion of God altogether. This is a result of the Lower Right's imposition of the Flatland atheistic dogma onto people in the academic and economic institutions that most of us were indoctrinated into.

Marc described this problem as a "wound". And while I don't consider it a character defect or mark of inferiority on the part of any individuals, I will still put it in even stronger terms:

The existential No-God land only existed as a hyper-physical dogma of the A-theistic Lower Right. It is a fantasy. It doesn't really exist. Certain individuals invented it to manipulate the masses into doing their bidding - mainly that of transferring their servitude from that of a theistic Master Race to an economic and political one. The Age of Reason began and continued for quite a while as a compliment to religion and faith. Atheism came later.

--oOo--

The issue of what the 2nd Person of God looks like after one has been transformed by the 1st Person of God is different. And because this is a State issue, it is utterly disconnected from the Stage conversation that they were actually having.

I realize that this idea is not going to be popular. I would estimate that about 90-95% of the people interested in Integral thought are in one of these two "transcend and exclude" camps. I'm sorry about this. But this is what I'm seeing.

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you are...

Posted June 14th, 2010 by Federico Parra

G R E A T !!

I will digest this a little more and come back.

Take much care.

Federico 

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Not bad

Posted June 14th, 2010 by Christophe Witz

Hi Jen,

what happened? are you on a new holosync level or what? lol

Either way I must say you have some fresh and very innovative intuitions about the End of Faith. I can tell you are coming from a christian background and you have studied the Alchemistical Process of Fermentation extensively. Congrats for your proceedings!

Then when you talk about Terry and Wolves and Exclusion you begin to lose it IMO. Are you saying we should exclude all excluding religions? Doesn't make much sense to me.

Your grasp of orange/rational (or 'modernity') is actually pretty good. And yes, being rational involves a dissociation, or a "wound" as Marc puts it; it means a certain distance to God, wherein lies more room to breathe and think, but also a loss of direct connection with life. At least that's what they say.

As an aside, there are examples for a relatively peaceful co-existence of orange/rational and God from very early on. Immanuel Kant laid down the very foundations for orange, yet he was not an atheist.

You say: "The existential No-God land only existed as a hyper-physical dogma of the A-theistic Lower Right. It is a fantasy. It doesn't really exist. Certain individuals invented it to manipulate the masses into doing their bidding"

Hm. You seem to think that the 'No-God Land' was invented by bad-intentioned individuals. I don't think this is the case - I think it was actually created by God him/herself, unintentional as it may be. And believe me, it's not a fantasy. This desert is very real; it's almost an overdose of reality.

This is not to say that there aren't any individuals who took advantage of the unfolding Aeon of modernity: I think this is exactly what happened, and today we are dealing with the aftermath of it. We should be very awake to such a possibility, without getting too paranoid about it. On thing's for sure: humans make mistakes. Percutiantur.

greetings,

--

>Five Star General of the Seven Armies, Archon of Atlantis<