Knowledge of the Universe

I love the show The Universe. It does a great job making the latest knowledge about our universe accessible to common-folk in. I caught this episode one night as I was fighting off a coma from lack of sleep.

I was struck by how human's knowledge of the universe "transcends and includes". We discover something new and the next person uses that knowledge as a platform to jump to the next level of understanding. Exactly what Integral Theory sees as "evolution".

I also noticed how the different conclusions correlate with stages of awareness. From pre-rational to rational to trans-rational. From premodern to modern to postmodern. From egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric. As human's develop, the universe appears to keep getting bigger. Perhaps co-created?

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the history of our knowledge of the universe....

The Spiraling Jesus

So, lets say that you were contemplating your favorite spiritual text, and you decide to close your eyes. You experience a phenomenon of inner light and a feeling of universal love. (This is a state of consciousness as opposed to a stage.) Or, lets say you were hiking through the mountains and at the edge of the highest cliff you see a majestic snow capped mountain with green fields below and you feel "oneness and peace" with the awesome beauty before you.You have experienced a state of reality that is not part of your normal waking life. What do you do with it? How do you interpret this experience? What influences your interpretation? All of the major religions deal with this phenomenon and each may interpret this experience differently. Additionally, you will interpret your experience according the STAGE of development you gravitate towards. (Here is a link for the Stages of Awareness.)

So, lets also say that the person has a "we" that is Western Christianity that provides the context for interpretation. The chances are this person will describe this phenomenon as an experience with the Jesus and/or the Holy Spirit. This experience can occur at any stage, but will be interpreted within the "limiting principles" of that stage.

Here is an example from Ken Wilber's "Integral Spirituality":

Magic Stage - Jesus is experienced as a personal savior who can miraculously alter the world in order to satisy my desire and whim: Jesus as Magician, turning water into wine, multiplying loaves and fishes, walking on water (Jesus may or may not have actually walked on water, but at this stage, this is the thing that would matter most to me). This stage is preconventional and egocentric, so Jesus only cares about me.

Mythic Stage - The same kind of subtle-state experience might be interpreted as communion with Jesus the Eternal Truth bringer. This stage is absolutistic in its beliefs, so you will either believe the Word exactly as written, or you will burn in hell forever. This stage is also ethnocentric, so only those who believe in Jesus Christ as their personal savior can be saved.

Mental/Rational Stage - Jesus Christ becomes a humanized figure, still fully divine and fully human, but now fully human in a more believable way, as teacher of the universal love of a Deistic God (who has read Principia Mathmatica and knows where to draw the line). Because this stage is the beginning of the postconventional and worldcentric stages, this is also the first stage of development that can find salvation through Christ Jesus but also allow that others might find equal salvation through a different path. You will moving in Vatican II fashion.

Pluralistic Stage - You will likely find yourself one of the authors of the Postmodern Bible, an example of interpreting Jesus Christ and the Christ-experience through the lens of "green stage" development.

Integral Stage - For Gebser this was one stage, but Integral Theory sees this as the opening to at least four higher structure-stages of development, any of which will insist on integrating its experience of Christ-consciousness with other expressions of the Holy Spirit around the world, and if so in your case you might also be interested in Integral Theory. (Frankly, any earlier/lower stages of development would simply not find this topic interesting. But if we do pat ourselves on the back, let it still be with humility: whatever stage we might be at, there are always higher stages; and somewhere, someplace, in some universe or dimension, somebody is writing a text that is over our heads. . . )

So, the same state, experienced the same way, can be interpreted in a variety of different ways in the same religion. Heck, often in the same church! Add to this the fact that the inner "I", the part of us that experiences the phenomenon, is unaware of these structure/levels (which leads to all sorts of problems), coupled with the fact that we are inconsistent in how we define terms, and we get all kinds of mis-communication and grief.

Wilber also claims that people functioning in earlier/lower stages can not see the higher/later stages, so the more complex stages are dismissed as inaccurate etc. What Wilber means is that someone can conceptually understand the higher levels, but they cannot tell you what is like to have a first-person experience in those levels. So, a person at a lower level and a person at a higher level may share the exact same experience and interpret them completely differently.

For example, someone who is interpreting life and experience in Mythic/Blue will always view the world in "black and white". There is only one "right way" to think about anything. They will see life as rule based and will function bound by laws and regulations. Violating these rules gets you booted out of the "club". So for instance, when a person functioning in a Mythic awareness dialogues with a person in Pluralistic/Green (who sees many points of view), the Mythic Blue person will judge and ostracize the Pluralistic/Green because he/she simply cannot see that worldview and therefore completely discounts it as rubbish. Sound familiar to anyone?

In conclusion, I think these Stages of Awareness matter when it comes to spirituality. We can only act on what we are aware of. If being conscious of these Stages helps me to interpret my personal experience and life more accurately, and communicate with people better (at least understand where they are coming from, sometimes real communication just won't happen), then I consider it helpful. In addition, I think there a lot of other questions that may be answered:

What are the implications for church?

Do you think people at a particular stage tend to gravitate towards the same church? Does this explain the concept of "liberal" and "conservative" churches?

Can you think of people you know that gravitate toward a particular stage?

What are the implications in communication? Do particular stages use different vocabulary? Maybe even expanded vocabulary as each stage is open to expanded "I, We and Its"? Does this explain why when we talk about religion and spirituality we often wind up in disagreements and misunderstandings?

Inaugural Thought

I guess I am a little jaded by all the political hoopla. In the words of Ben Harper in "Black Rain" I think the spin doctors have been "Selling false hope like some new dope we're addicted to."

I think there is a reason that young people are motivated by Barak Obama though, and it is really the only thing that I "hope" for. I hope we have a president that understands and experiences the world in a different way.

I would guess we are moving from a president who thought and experienced the world in Red/Blue to a president that thinks and experiences the world in Orange/Green. I think that's really what the election boiled down to also.

That would mean we have a leader that is moving towards a level of greater complexity, creativity, concern and care. That is something to "hope" for.

For further reading from someone much more astute than I.

"How can the same leader ask Reverend Warren to provide an inaugural invocation; seek an unprecedented Keynesian stimulus package; seek to further socialize health care; have a private dinner with leading conservative intellectuals; and consider how to rein in devastating and unrealistic long-term social security and Medicare liabilities? How, indeed. Embodying an integral view of the world, by definition, means seeking to integrate, to fully include everyone under the umbrella while also transcending the narrowness and partiality of each. (This, incidentally, is why every group that looks at Obama claims him as “one of them.” This is the ultimate litmus test of an integral leader.) A great leader is one whose sense of self is not threatened by a vigorous war of ideas, and an integral leader is one who wages the war from a worldview of love and abundance."

States of Consciousness

Before I get into how the stages work in real life I'd like to share a little about states of consciousness. Then I'll link both together and look at how all this effects our interpretation and experience of Jesus.

When I was a youth leader in El Paso (Hi Val!) we took our college age kids to a WorshipTogether Conference. On the last morning David Crowder was to lead about 30 minutes of worship and then we would go to some classes. The place was filled with a couple of thousand worship leaders ready to enter in to the "heavenly realm". At the end of the worship set Crowder's band began to drop out one by one and then with only Crowder left onstage he slowly and quietly left the stage. This huge place was completely silent. Not just for a minute, but for many minutes, and then someone in the audience began to sing a hymn and the couple thousand people joined in. The conference leaders began to look at each other, and then someone began to sing another hymn. Then everyone erupted in applause to the Creator. It was exactly 9:00am and time to go to class. We found out after the fact that the leaders were worried the spontaneous singing would go on forever with a couple thousand worship leaders in the house. But it ended just when it should of....as if God had orchestrated the whole thing.

I had an extremely intense experience during this worship time. I had no idea that David Crowder and his band had walked off the stage. My eyes were closed and I was experiencing an intense inner state of consciousness. My whole self seemed filled with light. There was abundance of overflowing peace and joy. Tears were flowing down my cheeks. I felt "undone". I had experienced similar things before, usually during worship times, in fact I think the goal of worship really was trying to provide a context for helping others reach this state. Bottom line. I had a very deep, intense "spiritual" experience with very little context with which to understand it. So, I went on living life as I normally did at the time. IMO, it just is not something that fundamentalist Christianity values (and a few denominations seem to give lip service, but no practical teaching).

When I started reading about Buddhism and stumbled across Integral Theory I had very little exposure to anything regarding States of Consciousness. In fact, as a fundamentalist Christian it was strongly encouraged not to do things like meditate, which could open you to the "influences of the devil". Eventually, I did begin to experiment with Lectio Divina and contemplative prayer, but there was no "we" to support it. Let's just say it would be a stretch to say these were common practices in my strain of Christianity.

Wilber, using his experience with deep meditative states and knowledge of Buddhism claims there are three natural states of consciousness EVERY human experiences (yes, even fundamentalist Christians): waking, dreaming and deep formless sleep. I had never given these three states much thought in my Christian experience. They were just part of life and taken for granted.

There are five meditative/contemplative states: gross, subtle witnessing, causal and non-dual. Here are some general definitions.

Gross/Waking States - what I experience riding a bike, writing or reading this post, exercising etc.

Subtle/Dream States - such as I might experience in a vivid dream, daydream or visualization exercise, as well as in certain types of meditation.

Causal/Formless States - such as deep, dreamless sleep and types of formless meditation and experiences of vast openness or emptiness.

Witnessing States - which is a capacity to witness all other states; for unbroken attention in the waking states and capacity for lucid dreams.

Non-dualism - ever-present awareness which is not so much a state as an ever-present ground of all states (and can be experienced as such).

If you are a conservative Christian, you might be thinking I've gone off the deep end, and you might be right, but that's another story. The fact is that Christian mystics have explored these states too. Here are some examples: St. Teresa's Interior Castles, the cartographies of St. John of the cross, the Early Church Fathers such as St. Gregory of Nyssa, Origen, and St. Dionysius.

In fact, check out St. Dionysius whose "way of purification, way of illumination, and way of unification" is as short and succinct a summary as you will find: purify the body via discipline and still the gross mind via concentration; find subtle interior illumination; surrender even illumination in a prayer of quietude and divine ignorance; thereby the soul and God find union in Godhead, on with the radiant All. However, if you are open to what other religions have to say, Buddhism has a rich 2000 year history in exploring these states of consciousness.

Some interesting points about these states:

• Natural states do not show development. Meditative/Contemplative states can be trained and do show devlopment.
  

• I can have peak experiences of states. In other words, I can get a peak into the next higher state without having permanant access to it, which may explain my experience above. Please note that I CANNOT skip stages or have peak experiences in stages, only states.

• These states are available at any stage. This is perhaps one of the most interesting point because each experienced state will be interpreted according the stage one is functioning in.

I promise to tie all of this in to our experience and interpretations of Jesus in the next post. Looking forward to what you guys think about these states though. Have you experienced them? Do they explain any of your experience? Have you ever experimented? Does your flavor of Christianity encourage or discourage these states? Do you think they are helpful in your spiritual journey? Are there dangers?

Stages of Awareness

In this article, "Levels of Devils, Gradations of God" Stuart Davis examines why worldview and how we experience the world matters as it relates to world leaders. Lots of fodder for further discussion, but I'd like to focus on a particular part of his post.

Humans develop. Developmental studies have shown that all humans seem to progress through similar levels of expanding care, concern and complexity. These developments take place in all of the quadrants (the singular and plural of the inside and outside) and are documented by many different disciplines. These changes take place physically, socially, psychologically, cognitively, psychosexually (yeah baby!), relationally etc. The interesting thing is that each of these stages "transcends and includes" the previous stage.

Let me briefly switch topics briefly from the "I" to the "It" to explain. Matter is composed of atoms which are whole in and of themselves. Molecules transcend and include Atoms. Molecules cannot exist without atoms, but they are also something completely different from atoms. Cells transcend and include molecules. Organs transcend and include cells and so on....(this is the concept of a Holon. Simultaneously, a whole, and part of a whole).

Individuals and societies go through real developmental stages that also transcend and include the previous stage. For instance, Gebser's Structures of Consciousness is taking snapshots of stages of the development of consciousness. By the way, this would be like looking at the "I" from a 3rd-person point of view. Which means you cannot see these structures from a 1st-person point of view. In other words, one can pray and meditate all day and not be aware of these levels of development. Here is a brief summary of combination of Gebser's structures and Spiral Dynamics. Please note that many other studies show very similar patterns of evolution.

Archaic/Beige - Do what you must to stay alive. Instincts and habits used to survive. "Deep, dreamless, sleep". Distinct self is barely awakened.

Magic/Purple - Keep the spirits happy and the tribe warm and safe. Language, unitary world, any event can be substituted for any other, Preserves sacred objects, places and events. Rites of passage, seasonal cycles and tribal customs.

Red - World viewed as a dangerous place. Be what you are and do what you want. Distinguish ourselves from the natural environment. Enjoys self to the fullest without guilt or remorse. Conquers, outfoxes and dominates others.

Mythic/Blue - Life has meaning, directions and purpose. Sacrifice of self to a transcendent cause, truth or righteous pathway. Order enforces code of conduct based on absolute principles. Impulses controlled through guilt. Laws, regulations and discipline build moral fiber.

Rational/Orange - Act in your own self-interest by playing the game to win. Change and advancement are inherent in the scheme of things. Progress by seeking out nature's secrets. Manipulates earth's resources to create and spread abundant life. Optimistic, risk-taking people deserve success. Societies prosper through strategy, technology and competitiveness.

Pluralistic/Green - Seek peace within the inner self and explore, with others, the caring dimensions of community. The human spirit must be freed from greed, dogma and divisiveness. Sensitivity supersedes cold rationality. Spreads the earths resources and opportunities among all. Reconciliation and consensus. Spirituality harmony, and human development.

Integral/Yellow - Experience the wholeness of existence through mind and spirit. The whole world is a single dynamic organism with its own collective mind. Self is both distinct and a blended part of a larger compassionate whole. Everything connects to everything else in ecological alignments. Energy and information permeate the Earth's total environment.

There's so much to say about how these structures are relevant. Society and individual consciousness both seem to go through these structures. Keep in mind they are hierarchical, and not predetermined. Gebser calls them mutations and not part of evolution. So, what comes next is always a mystery, but each structure transcends and includes the previous. So, we still have residue from the older structures in our subconscious, if not conscious.

I'll link these to spiritualityin general, and Christianity in particular, and note why I think this stuff matters with an example from Ken Wilber.

If you are interested I found this article after I got done with this post. It describes the structures in more detail. THIS is interactive integral stuff. Cool resource.

Stuart Davis - Nothing In Between

Beautiful, poignant, creative.

The "I"," We" and "It" of Life

I've made to many uninformed decisions in my life. The tough thing about life is that you can only make decisions based on the information in your awareness. So, I've made decisions based on less than the all of the information available. Sometimes things workout, and sometimes they don't. Either way I learn, grow, change, evolve. . . But at the time that I made the less than informed decision, it was based on my understanding of what was true.

Just about every language on our earth has a form of the pronouns I, We and It. Those pronouns represent the different ways we look at life, and more importantly, truth. Let me roll through an example to make it clear (at least as clear as my limited intellect is capable).

If I want to describe myself I can do so from a variety of perspectives. Science/Modernity would view me as an "it". I can be reduced to a bag of skin hanging around muscles and bone. I could be reduced to a cellular level. A scientists could pop the brain out of my head and say "See, this is Roger." But it would only be partially true. I am more than the sum of my physical parts, although my physical parts are certainly necessary.

I can also describe myself from a 2nd-Person perspective; the "we". Postmodernity has pointed out that we are inexorably connected and influenced by our culture and language, and our perception of truth is as well. We are limited by our language and our culture in ways that are difficult to grasp if we are not aware of them. Needless to say I am more than my culture and language, though they are needed to fully describe who I am.

Last, I am a 1st-person, "I". This is the realm of phenemonology and religion. This is how I experience life. I could describe to you how I feel, what I think, what I see, how something tastes. But, these experiences are not all there is to me. The pre-modern, pre-rational religions dug deep into the "I" (especially Hindu and Buddhist traditions, but there are some interesting Christian Mystics who were on the same path).

These different understandings of truth unfolded in history in a sequential pattern. The various spiritual traditions were born out of a pre-modern, pre-rational worldview. They had almost no knowledge of science and culture, but they were masters at phenomenology and left lots of information for us to assimilate. They attempted to build an understanding of the universe based on their inner, 1st-person experiences.

The pre-modern, pre-rational world gave way to the Modern/Rational. The Enlightenment gave us scientific methods and for all the great advances in science, medicine and technology it raped the world of religion and phenomenology because it could not be measured or quantified. From it's perspective 3rd-person perspective of truth, spirituality and religion was B.S.

In the last few decades postmodernity has shown that the truth claims of both premodernity and postmodernity were outright influenced by the language and culture of the person. All of truth was reduced to culture and therefore there could be no one, universal truth.

Integral Theory says that all of these truth claims have a place at the table. Each discipline or science is merely looking at reality from a different perspective. Religion/Phenomenology looks at the 1st-person/"I". Hermenuetics looks at the 2nd-person/"we". Science looks at the 3rd-person/"it".

In conclusion, (mainly because I'm tired of typing) these three perspectives of truth must be considered together for us to get an accurate view of reality. It has really helped me to put the "truths" that each of these worldviews and their corresponding disciplines give in an appropriate place. The mystic religious traditions have their place along side modern science. The radical pluralism of postmodernity makes me aware of my cultural influences that help me form the ideas of what is "true". Perhaps, if I take into account all three of these perspectives, I will have a more accurate view of reality.

Now the really interesting stuff comes when you lay all of these truth claims out and attempt to harmonize them. Patterns emerge. Stages and states in each one of the quadrants unfold, and it appears that humans, along with the universe and our earth, are evolving.

Happy New Year

You know...if time really matters to you....

YEASAYER - 2080

I can't sleep when I think about the times we're living in,
I can't sleep when I think about the future I was born into,
Outsiders dressed up like Sunday morning,
With no Berlin wall what the hell you gonna do.

It's a New Year,
I'm glad to be here
It's a fresh spring,
So let's sing.

In 2080
I'll surely be dead
So don't look ahead,
Never look ahead

It's a New Year,
I'm glad to be here
It's the first spring,
So let's sing.

And the moon shines bright
On the water tonight
So we won't drown
In the summer sound.

If you find me I'll be sitting by the water fountain,
Picket signs, letdowns, meltdown it's Monday morning
But it's alright, it's alright, it's alright, it's alright
It's alright,
Cause in no time, They'll be gone I guess I'll still be standing here.

Yeah Yeah we can all grab at the chance and be handsome farmers,
Yeah you can have twenty one sons and be blood when they marry my daughters,
And the pain that we left at the station will stay in a jar behind us.
We can pickle the pain into blue ribbon winners at county contests.