Labels and the nitty gritty

I was trained in a Buddhist order years ago.  We inevitably met on Sundays and I inevitably made a point of going to some other religious service earlier in the day.  So, while never having had a shred of direct Christianity in my upbringing, I've been to a heck of a lot of Christian churches & lived out a lot of adventures in their shared psychic spaces.  And 95% of the people there were so far from anything that I would call even minimally "religious" or "self-understanding" that it is pretty laughable.  But the tradition itself has many historical elements which make it more inclined toward shadow work than toward a lot of other potential avenues of human development.  Mostly, though, my comments are for "us".  "We" need to always out-think ourselves by trying to see if the opposite of every post is also true... else what is an Integralite for?

Layman Pascal

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 Hi Kurt,

I would certainly not say that there is no substantial difference between Eastern and Western cultural approaches to work at this stage.  My points would be only that (a) there is a common human origin to all these traditions (b) that Christianity contains certain elements which leave it "vulnerable" to intentional shadow work -- even though our personal knowledge of Christians might make this seem counter-intuitive.

Confession is pretty self-explanatory.  Different schools (and historical epochs) have handled it differently but basically it's an institutional way to get people to temporarily articulate & embody disruptive energies that they are holding away from their consciousness.  "Sin" is the reference point for conflicted, repressed and quasi-anti-social emotions and ideas which are allowed to surface because of a ritualized therapy event in which a trusted figure is officially open to you in a shared context of redemption.  But you don't need a church for this if you have a good analyst or competent lover.  

The drawbacks to this approach are (1) that it does not actively engage a person in speculation/processing about the roots and associations of their shadow content (2) it tends to narrow its approach to a certain few dimensions of the unconscious (3) there is possibility of getting so caught up in self-blame that purification is thwarted (4) the important of negative transference in an analytic setting is not engaged.

And yes, I've familiar Mother T's situation and, like so many other fairly obvious pieces of evidence, it suggests that the spiritual bio-cultural machinery of Christianity is largely weak, broken, inadequate & even diseased.  Although I lend my support totally to Integral Christian attempts, and even produce a few myself, it is by no means certain that this or any of the "outdated religions" can be salvaged.  However, we give the benefit of the doubt.  And this also means looking purposively for those places where there might be openings to new intelligence.  DNOTS, confessional and "the principle of suffering" are spots where deeper shadow work and healing could be grafted into orthodoxy.

Layman Pascal