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ISC Editor's Weekly Blog

Content, Context, and the Three Faces

This Week on Integral Spiritual Center....

The Three Faces, from Altitude - Ken Wilber
Manifestation: Love in Drag - Diane Hamilton

The Three Faces, from Altitude (audio)


The Three Faces of Spirit meditation reveals an exquite view of the Divine, in each of its primordial manifestations (1st-person, 2nd-person, and 3rd-person perspectives).  The quadrants, after all, go all the way up.  But, as Ken Wilber points out in this week’s featured audio, the view will vary significantly, depending on the developmental altitude of the viewpoint.

As ever, altitudes provide the context in which the content of any experience is interpreted.  A person's altitude is literally the space in which their experience arises, the stage upon which their life’s play takes place.  Part of the reason for the “varieties of religious experience,” as William James put it, is that Spirit manifests in three perspectives—or faces—which are then experienced by billions, from every color of the rainbow of developmental altitudes.  Spirit in 2nd-person, experienced from the amber altitude, appears very differently than the same face, viewed from turquoise.   

In a sense, the view of each of the faces evolves, along with the stage upon which it is set.  Says St. Paul: "At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known."  The charicatured, bearded, white-haired man in the clouds is a perfectly appropriate—though stage-specific—view of Spirit in 2nd-person.  As perspectives deepen and widen, the view evolves, clarifies, and comes into focus.  Closer to the source, the view takes on an increasing resemblance to its original manifestation.  So what would Spirit in 2nd-person look like from Supermind, the highest structure to have evolved to date?

The last words of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount give us a hint.  The concluding verse is often translated:  “therefore, be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  But another translation takes a beautiful twist:  “you must therefore set no bounds on your love, just as God sets no bounds on God’s love.”  Love unbounded is precisely the second face of Spirit, when viewed from Supermind.  And on the journey back, from the highest structure and the deepest state, the second face continues to arise, though without contraction.  It no longer need be sought, only to be manifested—as boundless love, shared between Lover and Beloved.

So it is, too, for each of the faces of Spirit.  Even the insight of the three faces doesn’t hold much meaning prior to the integral altitude.  But once the insight emerges and is understood and practiced, it becomes an exquisite way to seek—and to embody—Spirit as it moves in and through the precious human birth we have been given.

Manifestation: Love in Drag (video)

Diane Hamilton introduces the topic of the shadow at an Integral Buddhism seminar.  In a relative sense, she says, the shadow refers to those parts of ourselves that we find unacceptable.  In an absolute sense, though, it's all love, dressed in drag....

Published Saturday, August 30, 2024 1:05 AM by rollie

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