Archives for posts with tag: Integral Theory

Mapping Out Our Challenges

August 31, 2011 //
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“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. ” …..Martin Luther King, Jr.

I don’t like to dwell on negativity, but sometimes we have to look at things we don’t like so we can learn from them. The contrast between what we desire and any negative experience creates a gap that we need to transcend.  The first step in moving across the gap is to bring its existence into our awareness.

Humanity is currently experiencing such a gap.  As we look out of the world, Read the rest of this entry »

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Categories Culture, Featured Article, Politics

We Are Already All One

February 23, 2011 //
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Next week I’ll be in San Diego participating as two organizations who teach “oneness” decide whether to become one. Over 50 years ago, the one group that taught Ernest Holmes’ Science of Mind philosophy divided into two groups. Operating for many years as the United Church of Religious Science and Religious Science International, they created their separate operational processes and developed their own cultures all while teaching the same beliefs.

In today’s article, we sprint through humanity’s evolutionary path in honor of these two groups (now known as the United Centers for Spiritual Living and the International Centers for Spiritual Living) for taking this important step. They are evolving to their next logical step, just as you and I are.

To begin this jaunt, let’s consider that there are two ways by which we humans come to experience life – peering inward and looking outward. Gazing externally has allowed us to develop the wonderful gift of science, a tool which allows us to make sense of the external world.

Science has looked back into the past and offered us conclusions about how we got where we are now. Although they cannot tell us why or how everything started, most scientists believe that at the beginning of the universe all matter was compressed into one very tiny spot. The familiar “big bang” exploded outward disbursing everything that had been one into the vast recesses of space.  From that moment that all substance moved apart, science suggests that all the physical laws that we have discovered that act upon this matter existed as well.

As matter expanded from its initial state of oneness, the laws of gravity, strong and weak nuclear forces and electromagnetism began guiding it into clumps which eventually became stars and planets. Planets with the right conditions saw the elements combine in a form of self cooperation to produce simple organisms.  Science says something called “life” emerged and it grew more and more complex as it followed processes that later we described as evolution and survival of the fittest.

Eventually evolution led to something called consciousness emerging within these more complex beings and ultimately one of them became so complex that it crossed a threshold into becoming conscious of its own consciousness –humanity was born. As humanity’s evolution continued, so did its development of both its ways of experiencing and understanding life – that is, peering inward and looking outward.

The outward empirical gaze of science has served us well, bringing increases in our standard of living, technological advances and greater understanding of our universe.  Yet this outward gaze also tends to reinforce a perception that we are separate and apart from one another. It calls our attention to our differences. It fosters our sense of competition.  And, it contributes to our dividing ourselves up by our dissimilarities, be they our different races, cultures, countries, religious or political beliefs – and sometimes even our different organizations who teach oneness.

But just as we can peer outward and gain understanding on our evolutionary path, we can also peer inward and gain equally valid insights. Mystics and sages have been looking inside via meditation and reflection for years and reporting back their discoveries – we are already one. They remind us, as does science, that we were born from oneness. At the depths of that inner awareness, they sense that in spite of outward appearances to the contrary, we are still one. They state with conviction that as we continue to evolve we will return to truly living from that oneness.

Interestingly, in our past knowledge was knowledge – we valued both inner and outer wisdom without distinction of its source.  Hundreds of years ago a great “split” put the physical world under the domain of science and left the world of the nonphysical – God, consciousness and so on – to be the concerns of religion/spirituality and philosophy.  Along the way, each developed their own processes and cultures.

In recent years, there has been a move to reunify our inner and outer ways of understanding the universe – an integration of science and spirituality.  This was certainly one aspect of Ernest Holmes’ work in the creation of the Science of Mind early in the 20th century.  Individuals such as Sri Aurobindo, Ken Wilber and others have made contributions to this aim in creating “integral” philosophies.

The melding of the outer and the inner approaches to understanding have offered some interesting insights.  For example, many now realize that observed evolution of physical life growing into more complex forms is mirrored by a similar evolution going on inside everything.  Many philosophers suggest (and mystics concur) consciousness is embedded in everything.  As physical life evolved in complexity so did the consciousness embedded within it.

Here’s how Ernest Holmes put it – ” Through eons of time life has been slowly climbing up the ladder of unfoldment to the present self-conscious state achieved in man.   Some degree of consciousness exists in everything because everything is some form of Spirit, and Spirit is Intelligence.  However, there are degrees of intelligence, or consciousness.  We often hear the expression, “Consciousness sleeps in mineral life, dreams in plant life, awakens in animal life, and comes to self-consciousness in man.”  Man, then, stands at the very peak of the evolutionary climb.  He is now a self-conscious individual which means that he not only knows, but knows that he knows.  He can think about his own consciousness, and he now has the power of choice – the very summit of life’s upward striving.  Evolution, through infinite ages, has done much for him.”

So in essence, our journey has always been one that follows the same path.  That path begins in unity, it wanders into the experience of separation, and when that sense of separation has served its purpose, it returns home to the unity from which it began.

Millions of years ago, Spirit-God-Consciousness began in oneness and cast itself out, splitting itself up and embedding itself into all of its creation and allowing itself the experience of separation.  Yet the forces that would lead us out of the wilderness of separation were embedded within us from the beginning – evolution.  Evolution has allowed both the outer expression and the inner consciousness to simultaneously grow– along the way experiencing greater complexity, greater levels of self cooperation, greater degrees of conscious awareness, greater involvement in directing the evolutionary process.  There appears to be a direction to the progression.  Where is it going?  As Holmes put it, “Evolution is the awakening of the soul to a recognition of its unity with the Whole.”  In other words, we are remembering that we are already one.

Hundreds of years ago, our ways of knowing began in oneness but humanity split them into science and spirituality.  We have allowed ourselves to believe that there are two separate ways of knowing – the outer and the inner.  The material successes of science has on the one hand contributed much to the quality of our life while on the other leading us to turn against ourselves in conflict as we believe ourselves separate.  Something within us says it is time to move beyond this duality.  The evolution of our understanding is reuniting in an integral viewpoint where we realize that everything is connected.  In other words, we are remembering that it’s already one.

Tens of years ago, the philosophy of Science of Mind began in oneness but our humanness allowed it to split into two organizations.  We have allowed ourselves to experience separation via different rules, different structures, different cultures – forging different relationships with different people.  Evolution has now brought us to the point where we realize that separation has served its purpose and now returns us home to the unity from where we began.  In other words, we are remembering that we are already one.

Some years ago, your essence born of the oneness came into physical form at the moment of your birth.  Your senses have allowed you to experience separation from everything that appears “out there” in the earth.  You have believed that you are different from others, that you are in competition with humanity, that competition and conflict are appropriate in this world of duality.  But forces and urges within you question this sense of division, pushing you to grow beyond it.  Evolution and love call you to a sense of connection with others – to truly know your unity.  In other words to remember that you are already one.

Blessings

Mark Gilbert

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Categories Featured Article, Spirituality

Where is “love” in Wilber’s Integral Theory?

February 17, 2010 //
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Love Shines its Light in All

So, where is “love” in Ken Wilber’s AQAL model which we have been exploring the past 2 days?  On our first day (What the Heck is Integral Theory and Why Should I Care?) we looked at why I find it interesting and how it can be useful to our intentions for the highest future.  Yesterday (Integral Theory Made Simple) we looked at the nuts and bolts of the AQAL model.  Today we move beyond the intellectual aspect of integral (the ”head”) and down into the “heart”. 

This question swirled around in my mind after a recent meeting I attended. On that evening, a gentleman was giving an overview of Ken Wilber’s work and his AQAL model. In addition, he and an assistant were also attempting to cover Spiral Dynamics as a part of the presentation. Knowing a bit about both subjects and having taught them both, I listened not only to the content but the manner of their presentation to see if I could glean a new way of describing things. I also thought about each of the questions from the audience and considered  how I would respond.  Generally, I was fairly pleased with my internal answers.

It was the question on “love” in today’s title that stopped me dead in my tracks. The answer given by the instructors seemed somewhat incomplete or unclear. As for myself, although some general thoughts came to mind, I realized I was going to have to think more on the issue. So, without checking in with Wilber’s writings to see what he says, I gave it some thought and here is where I am at the moment: 

As most religions and mystics have claimed, God is love. What is love, though? Although I am sure there are lots of writings out there to define it (including a couple of my own that have discussed love in recent weeks!), I would at this moment say that love is some feeling that comes from within us that seems to percolate out of our essence and in our awareness is directed out beyond us. This feeling can seem to overwhelm us at times. It moves us to sense of connectedness for which there are no words which even seem to adequately describe what we are feeling. We do know that the feeling is positive and something within us calls us to experience it more and more. 

This feeling’s outward direction tends to lead us into focusing on certain specific things in our environment to which we attach the feeling. In early life, our feeling of love is directed to our parents and caretakers, our family, our pets, those things in our immediate environment. Later in life, we “fall in love” with one or more significant others who we hope will walk through life with us. Still later, many have children who become the objects of their love. Although most of us keep this attachment of the feeling of love to others in our lives, at some point we also expand beyond those in our lives to a broader sense of love. Yes, the description here obviously relates to the movement through the moral stages of development…..from egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric and beyond…but we are also talking about a sense of love that begins to transcend people and be less specifically directed. We begin to love our experiences, our life, our sense of something transcendent, and recognizing that everything out there that we are “loving” is also a part of inside us, we begin to love ourselves as a part of that Oneness.

Ultimately, we begin to realize that love is a gift from Spirit. The ability to experience love was placed within everyone of us. We were given the free will to choose in this life how to use and express this gift. We can express it in only a limited manner if we choose, although generally such choices are not totally “conscious” ones. Such limited uses may have us not express love or only express it with a few people. We may never reach a sense of feeling love for the world and everyone in it. We may never sense a love of Spirit. We may never love ourselves. However, the possibility is always there. 

What is the ultimate purpose of this gift? In a sense it relates to the old story about Spirit looking for a place to hide our Truth or Essence and then after giving up on placing it anywhere in the world “out there” ends up hiding our Essence within us. Love then becomes the “clue” Spirit gives us to guide us where to look. Love feels good and grabs our attention. We want more of it. We follow its path. It takes us to other people and things and events and ultimately to Life, to Spirit, and back to where Spirit was hiding all along, within us.

But what really is Spirit? Wilber tells us that the term along with “spiritual” can have up to six different meanings: (1) God, consciousness, ground of all being. (2) The conscious energy of life such as prana, qi, Holy Spirit, etc. (3) The higher levels of development in every line where we experience some transpersonal sense that we might label “spiritual”. (4) A specific “spiritual” intelligence line of development through which we grow. (5) Peak numinous experiences or states of consciousness that can be called “spiritual”. (6) Finally, “Spiritual” can refer to a special attitude involving love or compassion or wisdom. 

So where is love in AQAL? 

Love is part of this special attitude that we label spiritual. And again, God is love. At the highest level of development in each line or intelligence, we experience God. Therefore, God or Spirit is in everything. in all quadrants, lines, levels, types, and states. Hence, love is in all aspects of the AQAL model. 

Love is an evolutionary spiritual force. Love is the feeling that guides us and moves us towards our knowing of Spirit.

Blessings.

Mark

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Categories Consciousness, Science and Spirit

Integral Theory Made Simple

February 16, 2010 //
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Map of the Quadrants

Today, we continue our 3 part series on integral theory.  Yesterday (What the Heck is Integral Theory and Why Should I Care?) we looked at why I was drawn to it and find it beneficial for us to understand.   Today, we are going to look at Ken Wilber’s AQAL model (which is at the center of Integral Theory but by no means conveys all aspects of it) and break it down into simple terms.  Most folks avoid it as it seems at first blush to be overly intellectual.  But, at its core, it is fairly simple to understand as you will see (but, yes, alas, a bit “heady”….tomorrow we take it to “heart”).

So let’s get into the details….Wilber’s AQAL map begins with four quadrants (consider simply a box that is divided into 4 internal boxes and you have the four quadrants!).  These are areas of our life we can stop and experience in any moment.

The upper left of the quadrants represents an individual’s interior (our sense of  “I”) which for humans is our sense of self and consciousness.  The upper right represents an individual’s exterior (or “It”) which for humans is our brains and all of our physical body.  The lower left represents a collective interior (or “We”) which for humans is our culture and worldviews.  Finally, the lower right represents the collective exterior (or “Its”) which for humans is our social systems and environment.

Wilber then looks at how we are evolving or growing.   This growth is occurring in all four of the quadrants, along what he calls “lines” of development.   Stated simply, these lines incorporate what we commonly refer to as “multiple intelligences”.   These are areas such as our intellect, emotions, morals, spirituality, musical ability, interpersonal skills, kinesthetic ability and so forth.

Each of these “lines” or “intelligences” appear to have a common path of development that all humans move through as they grow.   For example, humans have been shown to grow morally through the same stages.  Children are first concerned with only themselves (egocentric) but later expand their care and concern to their larger group (ethnocentric).  If they are able to transcend this level, morally they begin to care about all humans (worldcentric).

As we gain life experience and grow in an individual line or intelligence (such as this moral path), we attain and retain that growth in what Wilber terms “levels” or “stages”.  Egocentric is a level, ethnocentric is a level, etc.   Think of anything that you have learned and you can see that you progressed through certain levels as you learned more.  We do not have access to the “higher” levels of development until we have moved through the prerequisite experience of the “lower” levels.  However, once we grow into a level, it has a degree of permanency even though we can temporarily shift back to lower levels.

Next in the AQAL model,  “states” refers to our various states of consciousness such as awake, dreaming or deep sleep.  We also experience other “states” such as ones induced via meditation, spiritual experiences, peak experiences or drugs.  These “states of consciousness” can be experienced by everyone without any training and they are temporary and fleeting.

Finally, “types” refers to any kind of classification that generally speaking is not a state of consciousness or line of development.  We are either male or female.  We all have some type of indicator on the Myers-Briggs instrument.  We all have a specific enneagram type.  Normally, all types can have both a “healthy” or “unhealthy” (shadow) manifestation.

So that’s the model in fairly simple terms.  There are other aspects to Integral Theory that I have obviously omitted, but if you understand these key concepts, you can put it to use right away.

As mentioned yesterday, the value in the theory comes from  mixing and matching different concepts onto the map and seeing what it offers us.  The advantage is that in everything—from spiritual growth, to medicine, to business, law, psychotherapy, and so on—integral theory reminds you to consider how the various elements of Truth are at play in your life.  This way, Wilber says you “can more easily appreciate them, exercise them, use them.”  If you only consider something from one perspective, then you are limiting the  possibilities for attaining the highest solution.

To make this more real, let’s look at a brief example.  One area where the integral view has been employed immediately is in the world of medicine.  Traditional western medical treatment has generally focused exclusively on the upper right quadrant.  That is, it seeks to treat the individual’s body without concern for their inner world or the person’s relationships. Drugs, surgery and other body focused treatments are helpful, but are they the highest possibility for how we can provide health care?

Yet, looking at health care integrally calls us to consider the patient’s inner states of awareness (emotions, attitudes, spiritual beliefs, etc.) and  how they have a bearing on health.  Hence there has been an increase in treatments such as counseling, visualizations,  meditation and so forth which consider this.  An integral approach also requires we look at the impact of our interpersonal relationships (attitudes of the family, communications between doctor and patient and so on) and our social systems (impact of health insurance coverage).  Failure to consider the interplay of all of these factors leads to our providing health care that may not lead to healing the whole person.   If we are to look to what are the highest possibilities for providing health care we must look at all of these factors and how their interactions are at play in healing.

So then for any issue with which we are trying to determine the best course of action, the challenge is for us to expand our awareness beyond the myopic way we might normally have approached it simply because it’s the way “I know” or it’s the common practice (etc.) and to ask how we see it with fresh eyes and a new perspective.  It opens us to new solutions and a reinforces within us an awareness that  everything really is connected.  Now, let’s connect the head and the heart…..(tomorrow).

Mark

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Categories Consciousness, Science and Spirit

What the Heck is “Integral Theory” and Why Should I Care?

February 15, 2010 //
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Bringing Things Together

Starting today, we’re taking a three-day look at Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory.  Today, I want to explain why the integral model appeals to me and how it can be helpful to all of us.  Tomorrow we will look at the basics of integral (which will be a bit “intellectually oriented”–sorry) and then on the third day will bring it back to the heart and see how love fits into the model.  I hope you find all of this beneficial.

Every once in a while, I bump into a concept or idea which makes me see things in a different light.  Integral theory is one of those ideas.  I’ve noticed that one common denominator that is generally present whenever I have an a-ha moment is that the information being absorbed builds upon things with which I’m already familiar.  There is this mixing and matching of different facts and ideas that brings me to see them in a new light.  It’s sort of like those clear acetate pictures that used to be in the old World Book Encyclopedias where you would overlay page over page and see how things like organs in the body were connected.  Each acetate picture contained its own bit of the whole, but when you put them together you understood better how things interacted.

This fascination with connections between seemingly unrelated aspects of life has been a pattern of mine as far back as I can recall.  Recently, I came across in my files an old college psychology paper from 1973.  The interesting thing about this paper was that I had taken Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (a theory that has always made a lot of sense to me) and combined it with my understanding of split brain theory as presented by Robert Ornstein in his book “the Psychology of Consciousness.”  Now, I don’t claim that the paper had any great revelations in it, but I do find it of note that one of the few papers I’ve held onto for all these years was an attempt to integrate two different concepts and see what truths were revealed.

A few years later, I started working for the government and took a class in creative problem-solving.  Although it’s now been over 30 years since this class, I still remember two key concepts presented by the instructor.  His first point was advice on how to be successful in life.  He counseled us to “find a human need and fill it” (still beneficial guidance!).  His second suggestion I retained was on how to be creative.  He offered that we take two things that seem to be unrelated, to combine them, and then look for the insights that came from the combination.

Later in life while I was on my spiritual quest, I discovered the writings of Ernest Holmes and his teaching called the Science of Mind and Spirit.  It resonated great truth for me.  Interestingly, Holmes’ philosophy was derived by his combining truths from science, religion and philosophy.  Therefore, it probably comes as no great surprise that integral theory caught my interest as it too combines wisdom from all branches of human knowledge to see what insights it will bring.

As a way of background, the term “integral” was first widely introduced in the early part of the 20th century by the visionary yogi Sri Aurobindo.  His integral yoga sought spiritual liberation by bringing about a divine transformation through practices that included all aspects of ones being including the physical body, intellect, emotions, and more.  Central to Aurobindo’s teachings was that man continued to evolve spiritually and that his evolution occurred in relation to the evolution of society.

Although other teachers and writers have contributed to the concept of an integral philosophy, it is Ken Wilber and his prolific writings starting in the 1980s and continuing up through the present that have become synonymous with the term.  Wilber’s idea was that all of the wisdom traditions had a core of truth running through them and the key was to find a means of putting these truths together in a useful way.  As Wilber started “mapping” the essential ideas from various sources, he hit upon the key idea that has organically grown in his writings into something called the  “AQAL model” (short for “all quadrants, levels, lines, states and types”) .  We will look at this model tomorrow.

But beyond a personal fascination with learning something new by combining things that appear to be separate, why else are we covering integral theory?  My stated goal with these writings and this website is to shift our awareness away from any limitations we might sense, either in our personal lives or on the planet, and towards our highest possible future.  In order to transcend our current problems, we must find new ways of thinking.  We must use all human wisdom. We must not keep our wisdom contained in neat boxes like college subjects and encyclopedia articles.  We must find truth by moving knowledge outside human imposed boxes.

Like those old world book acetates, we must explore not only each area of human knowledge individually to see what it offers us, but we must also overlay the acetates of that knowledge and gain new perspectives from their intersection.  I believe the integral model leads us to the highest solutions for the problems of our day as it calls us to consider all views of an issue.   If we search for solutions that neither considers all possibilities nor taps all existing human wisdom, then we will find neither the best approach nor our highest potential for humanity.  Our times call for  the new thinking which integral offers.

Finally, integral calls  us to consider how we are growing and evolving in all aspects of life.  The question then becomes—what kind of future evolution do we want? 

Mark

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Categories Consciousness, Science and Spirit

Is Reality Real?

January 25, 2010 //
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What the heck does that mean?  I guess I’m asking is what comes to us through our consciousness a true reflection of the world?  Or, is it somehow colored by factors of which we are generally not aware?

I’m sure most of you know that what is delivered to our consciousness by our senses is simply a limited snapshot of what is going on around us in the physical world.  Obviously, we only hear a small range of potential sounds and see only a small sliver of the light spectrum.  Dogs howl at sounds we cannot hear.  Our skin burns when we are outside on a cloudy day from ultraviolet rays cannot see.

Even within the sensory inputs that are within the range of our physical senses, we tune out most of it as unneeded background noise.  Our consciousness delivers to our awareness only those sensory inputs that are deemed important.  Simply consider those times when you’ve been in a crowded room and tuned out all the noise but immediately came to focus upon your name being spoken across the room.

So yes, there is a lot going on around you of which you are unaware.  Even so, can we rely on the validity of that which is both delivered to our senses and then delivered to our awareness?  More and more science is telling us no.  Studies have shown that our awareness is colored by our history, our background, our worldview.  These factors interpret our sensory input invisibly.

But what about the information that comes to us from beyond our senses?  What about that “inner knowingness”?  What about intuition?  What about spiritual experiences such as those received during meditation?  Can’t we trust those to be true and real?  Unfortunately, the answer according to Integral philosopher Ken Wilber is no, we cannot count on these experiences to be untainted either.

Wilber says that the failure to consider the extensive evidence that shows how our subjective personal reality is constructed by intersubjective cultural connections leads us into naïvely believing that there exists one purely objective, pre-given world for all to experience free of any cultural bias.  One of our greatest mistakes he believes is that we inaccurately think that our inner experience, no matter its original source, is a pure reflection of reality. 

The reality Wilber says is that no matter how much we meditate and develop our consciousness there will always be invisible structures which play a role in constructing our consciousness awareness.  Without an awareness of the impact of these structures, we may think something is ultimate truth when it is not.  Some of these structures include linguistics, cultural beliefs, and our level of development on what Wilber calls “lines of development.”  A simple way to think about these lines is like multiple intelligences… cognitive, social skills, moral, emotional, etc. will speak more of this at a later time (or you can go Google “integral lines of development”).

What I want you to consider for a moment is this….you are born on the planet and you are growing… not only physically, but that there are aspects of your being within you and your consciousness which are also developing through various stages… and these inner states of consciousness generally settle into one stage which then becomes predominant in “coloring” your awareness of life. 

One model which has been helpful to me in understanding these stages of development has been Spiral Dynamics.  An understanding of this model will help you better see how these invisible structures are at play. For the next few days, we will look at Spiral Dynamics and its relationship to the Science of Mind. I hope you will find it as fascinating as me!

Mark

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Categories Consciousness, Science and Spirit

Do you believe God exists?

January 23, 2010 //
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People are generally going to answer that question, one of three ways — – yes, no, or it depends.

When people ask me that question, I generally stop and ask them back, “what do you mean by God?”  The common definition of God in our current culture is of an old man with long gray beard who sits in the sky on a throne and judges us upon our death.  If that is the inquirer’s definition, then my answer is “no”.  Unfortunately, that old outdated myth is the common meaning of the word “God” that most people conjure up when they hear it.  It’s usually what the media means when they say God.  This meaning is usually what is in the mind of the person who unequivocally answers “yes” immediately upon being asked the question.  Obviously, Pat Robertson would answer yes.

Interestingly, the same meaning is usually what is in the mind of the person who unequivocally answers “no” to the question about God.  Rev Michael Dowd has a great line on this.  When people tell him they don’t believe in God, he asks them to tell him about the God they don’t believe in and says he probably doesn’t believe in it either.  Although he goes on to say he does believe in God.  Hence, the answer depends on your definition.

What this leads us to is the fact that there is a new vision of what God is.  Frequently people who hold this new vision steer away from using the word God because it conjures up the old myth.  I know I tend to use the word “Spirit.”  There are other words given to this new vision of God.  They include: Infinite Mind, Infinite Intelligence, Oneness, Suchness, Divine Being, Divine Mind and so on.

In this new vision of God, it is a power, a presence, a force, an intelligence, an essence.  One might think of it as an intelligent energy, which permeates everything.  This energy moves in and through everything and gives everything its existence.  This includes all of the world of matter and physical stuff that we can measure and see and sense and it also includes everything that is beyond the world of the seen.  Technically this is called “Panentheism”.

Here’s a few words from Wikipedia, on the definition of panentheism, which might be helpful (especially in distinguishing it from its close cousin “Pantheism”…pardon the technical jargon):

Panentheism is a belief system which posits that God exists and interpenetrates every part of nature, and timelessly extends beyond as well. Panentheism is distinguished from pantheism , which holds that God is synonymous with the material universe. Briefly put, in pantheism, “God is the whole”; in panentheism, “The whole is in God.” This means that the Universe  in the first formulation is practically the Whole itself, but in the second the universe and God are not ontologically equivalent. In panentheism, God is not necessarily viewed as the creator or demiurge, but the eternal animating force behind the universe, with the universe as nothing more than the manifest part of God. The cosmos  exists within God, who in turn “pervades” or is “in” the cosmos. While pantheism asserts that God and the universe are coextensive, panentheism claims that God is greater than the universe and that the universe is contained within God.

So then, God is in everything and everything is in God but God is greater than everything.  The funny thing is many people have never heard this word or this definition, but it’s what they’ve come to believe through their life’s experiences.  Many scientists have come to the same conclusion on their pursuit of scientific truths.  For these people, something leads them to this conclusion (either an inner knowingness or their empirical evidence) that this is what God is… but again, they may not use the word “God”.

So where are we?  When asked “do you believe in God?”  The so-called “believers” who hold to the old myth will answer yes.  Those who hold to a strict materialistic scientific view (often called “scientism”) will answer no.  Then there are those who have let go of the old myth, but have questioned the gaps in the materialistic viewpoint.  They say, “it depends”.

So why do we have these different viewpoints?

In a sense we’re talking about “the evolution of God”.  Robert Wright, in his recent book by that name, tells us that it’s not God per se evolving but rather its humanity’s evolving worldviews that are leading us to see God in a different light.  Both Spiral Dynamics and Integral Theory point us to the same conclusion.

The bottom line is how you answer the question depends upon your worldview.  We’ll look at that next.

Mark

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Categories Science and Spirit, Spirituality

Haiti opens our hearts

January 14, 2010 //
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Haiti Opened Our Hearts

The news reports showing the devastation of the earthquake in Haiti saddened me. The people of that island country are in my prayers. My heart is open to the pain and sorrow which they are experiencing.

My heart is opened by this event, just as it was by the Indian Ocean tsunami, the destruction of New Orleans by Katrina, and similar natural disasters that have shaken the lives of so many people. I suspect yours was too.

Natural disasters such as in Haiti not only open our hearts but bring out the best in people in countries as they reach out to help the people in need. This should always be our first response. Yet in time, tragedies such as this cause us to pause and reflect upon their greater meaning for our lives and the life of the planet.

Some people see such events as being consciously caused by a judgmental external God in retribution for human errors. I obviously don’t agree. My view of God or Spirit is not as an external being but rather an intelligence or consciousness or energy that permeates everything. This Spirit does not “judge” our actions. Comments by others regarding such acts being caused by a judgmental God simply reminds me that in the diversity of humanity there is quite a diversity in our worldviews. This diversity of thought is natural and to be understood from a higher perspective and not “judged” even when we disagree. If we were in their shoes and life experiences, we might see things the same way.

For me, there is a different and more positive message that we can take from such tragic events…simply stated, our perception of the world is shrinking, and our hearts with their care and concern for others are expanding.

It wasn’t too long ago that my perception of the world was that it was a bigger place than I sense it to be today. When the earth was “bigger” in my mind, natural disasters on the other side of the planet did not have the emotional impact that they do today. So much of technology such as pictures of Earth from space and the immediacy of television broadcasts from around the planet have served to expand my mental “neighborhood”. Now events around the world touch my heart like only tragedies in my city could do before. I know from discussions that many people feel the same way.

This is part of our spiritual evolution. Ken Wilber and his integral theory offer us a perspective here which might be useful. He points out that we are all evolving on many “lines of development”. For ease we might just consider these as different skills, abilities and intelligences that we all possess but have developed within us to a certain “stage” which will differ from person to person. For example, we all can play the piano, lift weights, and do mathematical calculations but not at the same level. One area in which we are all growing or evolving is in our care and concern for others which Wilber calls the “moral line of development”. Wilber also points out that we develop through these ‘lines” in four different “quadrants” of experience. These four areas can be sensed as we consider that we have an internal awareness of our thoughts and an external awareness of our bodies and other physical stuff. Then both our internal and external awareness occur within our individual singular world of “me” and in the collective relational world of “us”. (I, and others, have written on this elsewhere if you want to go into it in more detail.)

We might consider that as our collective external technology has evolved, such evolution has pushed us along our internal “moral line of development.” Scientific studies have shown that humans grow morally through the same sequence, generally settling into one moral way of looking at the world. When we are born, we care only about meeting our personal needs, and therefore are considered “egocentric”. As we grow up, the circle of people for whom we have care and concern expands to a broader and broader group. Here we are considered “ethnocentric”. Many people never get beyond some form of this level. Yet more and more people are expanding their circle of care and concern to all beings and to the earth at large. These moral levels are often called “worldcentric” or “kosmocentric”.

And, as we move up this moral developmental line, we sense it both internally as our hearts open and we feel empathy for others. And, we act externally from that higher view point by reaching out and sending relief and helping others that we might not have assisted in the past.

Therefore, when the time is right we might step back and view tragedies such as a Haiti in a broader light and see how they are serving our evolution. As we move through our experience of time, more of humanity senses the shrinking of the world. With this, more and more people will sense the expansion of their hearts and truly feel how we are all interconnected, and the Oneness of Life. And, that internal sense of our Oneness will out picture in the world by our treating others with dignity, respect and love….no matter who they are, where they live, or what they believe. That will truly be heaven on earth.

My heart and prayers are with the people of Haiti and all the emergency response workers who are serving there. May all of our hearts be open to sending them our love and support.

Mark

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Categories Culture, Spirituality, Uniting Nations