Jonathan Cobb

"The arch of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

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I was brought up in Sacramento, CA. I currently live in Portland, OR. My grandfather is John B. Cobb, Jr., a process theologian. Although I had this great thinker in my family, I didn't really get into his works until I first got into Ken Wilber's work, which is influenced in part by process theology.

Although I'd always had some spiritual inklings, I distinctly remember having a spiritual rebirth around my senior year of college. I was getting heavily into LSD at the time, and one night I had a vision of Christ. I felt this overwhelming feeling of universal love come over me, and I was, as they say, "born again." I had been long interested in Eastern spirituality and pre-Christian pagan and shamanic ideas. I never in a million years imagined that my path would be Christianity, but that's where the Holy Spirit led me.

Such an experience might turn some people into a fundamentalist, but fortunately I had long since passed the Amber meme. At the time, I was undergoing a transition from Orange to Green(though at the time I lacked the terminology and level of consciousness to describe it as such), and this spiritual experience basically catapulted me firmly into Green territory.

Fast forwarding a couple years, I joined a New Age spiritual center that was by and large very Green meme, but there were hints of higher levels of consciousness within the organization. The most powerful tool they handed down was Kabbalah. Their Kabbalah class is a year long, during which the teacher ascends you into each sephiroth. It was a very transformational year, and at the end of it, I discovered Integral Theory.

I had seen Ken Wilber's books before, but couldn't make sense of them because I had not yet achieved integral consciousness. I believe it was during this Kabbalah program that I made that transformation, which is why I'm taking it again this year.

However, this "New Age" group, whatever its virtues, doesn't really represent my beliefs. It's lonely enough being Integral. It's especially lonely being an Integral Christian. I'd like to learn more about contemplative prayer. Most of the spiritual practices I've learned are either Eastern meditation techniques or magickal invocations. These are fine enough as things go, but I'd like to find some spiritual practice which is connected to my own tradition.