Regarding training for the Lower Left:

 

I think that meditation practice is training in the LL.  Are you sitting by yourself or with all sentient beings?  Becoming more open and free in my own being dissolves boundaries and gives strength and courage to go out.  I start to feel into people more.  I am more curious about them and want to share this life.  Annoyingly, this means that I also get hurt a lot more deeply.

As far as the questions about where someone is at in their development, the beauty of having some kind of access to 2nd tier being is that you can relate with everyone.  For instance, if you come across a "purple" pagan, that's great.  Let's get naked and dance around a fire. 

Or, how about an uptight "green" peace activist.  Sure, I'll sit in the park with you while you demonstrate.  It's a nice day out and I can just be with you and whatever else happens. 

Or a "red" relative of mine at a family party.  Yeah, let's crack racist jokes and shoot guns.  That's actually not a bad way to spend an afternoon with loved ones. 

Not to mention that everyone has a gross, subtle and causal body and therefore you can tune in to those regardless of a person's general level of development.  As Trungpa Rinpoche says, everyone has a soft spot.  Even if it's for tacos or guns or a comic book collection.  We can communicate with each other.  Of course, the problems come (in my experience) when I have no one with whom I can resonate at 2nd tier with.  Because, after a while, you start to absolutely crave being with someone who has the space that comes along with 2nd tier.  That's where life could really be extremely rich and fun and scary.

 

Finally,

The thing is, I don't think there is any training more important for the lower left than meditation.  When you really get interested in this adventure and exploration of relationships then as Morpheus says in The Matrix (roughly) "Neo, you will have to learn, just as I did, that there is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path."  If it were otherwise our relationships would just be some boring made-to-order thing.  Together, we are exploring new territory.

 

These are some of my thoughts.

Thank you,

Jeffrey

Jeffrey

Many thanks for sharing those thoughts.  I liked your post - it had an endearing freshness about it!

But I'm not wholly convinced.  Here's why:

Sure, UL practices make some contribution to LL (and UR and LR) - just because of tetra-emergence.  To change in one way is necessarily to change in others.  But change doesn't seem to be proportionate:  for example, if my social engagement (LR) increases, its likely that I'll feel better about myself, more valuable to others (UL).  If my physical health (UR) improves, I may function better socially (LR) and also be a better companion (LL) and be more at peace with myself (UL).  So far so good.

The thing is, its not enough to rely on development in one quadrant.  Relying wholly on meditation (UL practice) is like relying wholly on physical exercise or helping others: its imbalanced.

And, with respect, your post kind of confirms me in this opinion.

ChangchupNyima:

the beauty of having some kind of access to 2nd tier being is that you can relate with everyone.  For instance, if you come across a "purple" pagan, that's great.  Let's get naked and dance around a fire. 

Or, how about an uptight "green" peace activist.  Sure, I'll sit in the park with you while you demonstrate.  It's a nice day out and I can just be with you and whatever else happens. 

Or a "red" relative of mine at a family party.  Yeah, let's crack racist jokes and shoot guns.  That's actually not a bad way to spend an afternoon with loved ones. 

Those aren't examples of relationships, of intersubjectivity.  They're examples of brief interactions, with no real sharing.  They're 'spending an afternoon'.  They're snacking, not sitting down for the meal!

They're one-way.  You don't really believe in dancing around a fire, or demonstrating for peace, or shooting guns.  If you do those things, you're patronising those people, aren't you?

Yes, because of meditation practice one grows to be more tolerant of others - which is great.  Growth in one quadrant influences the other quadrants - to an extent.

Tolerance isn't the same as intersubjectivity, though.

Its not the same as engaging in heart, mind and soul with another - a partner, a son/daughter, a parent, a friend.  If you think Second Tier means transcending all these messy little difficulties, think about Ken Wilber himself, who tells us how he fought with and even beat his dying wife.  

I love your thought that in relating with others, together we are exploring new territory.  Indeed so.  If you stay with it, though, that territory will eventually get pretty rugged now and then.  We get lost, we fall into traps, we struggle - just as we also find ourselves enjoying the splendour of sunsets and mountain tops! 

Ken himself says that the key to relationships is compassion.  Including and transcending our ego, we care enough about the other to forgive them the hurt they cause us, just as they forgive us.   Growth in the LL is growth in compassion.  For ourselves and for all beings.   Sounds good to me.

warmest wishes Jeffrey

~ David

 

---

'This is all the time you'll ever have'.
~ Dr Hannibal Lecter

Hi,

I don't recommend only meditation.  I just think it is absolutely foundational to really taking on the challenge and delight of relating with the world and others.

Noticing where someone is at and then meeting them there is not being patronizing.  At least not in the "bad" way.  If a human being is a department store then, yes, you could say I was patronizing the peope I mentioned.

You say those interactions were not intersubjective.  Well, you can't avoid intersubjectivity.  It is always present.  It sounds like you "know" what deep relating is and that what I described doesn't match up with that.  However, I've heard stories of people falling in love with gurus and/or having glimpses of the awakened state just by chance, little, "brief interactions."  Depth doesn't necessarily mean that you and I have to make a project out of our relationship.

You mistake my "being with" those people as me "tolerating" them.  Those are radically different ways of relating to other people.  Playing peek a boo with your baby doesn't mean you are tolerating your stupid baby's ignorant ways, it is meeting them where they are at.  Babies like peek a boo and I like playing it with them.  My uncles like drinking and shooting guns and I like doing that with them.  Some women I have known like being naked and worshipping the earth and the body and I love doing that with them.

If you can tolerate me a little longer,

When the going gets tough as you say it does and I've also experienced, how do you work with that if you have no relationship to the vast spaciousness of your own mind? 

Meditation enables you to meet someone and say, "Let's play in space together."

Meditation is the tried and true method of developing compassion. 

Thank you for responding to me.  It really brightened my day up this morning to jump right into this kind of contemplation.

-Jeffrey

 

 

"Let's play in space together" - don't know if you mean this literally , or not, Jeff...bec. you don't mention, give examples or notin'  about astral-body/souls  meetings.

It happens. Ever heard your loved ones speaking voice? Kids, spouse, guru-type teacher?

 Don't want to be repeat boring, sameol' sameol' stories..'cept maybe this one, since someone brought up Wilber's name...which I thought was way intriguing. With a bit of 'context' note first. I am the healthy type , but on that occasion - of c. 3 years ago? time flies! - I had a fever and stayed in bed most of the two days .No other symptoms. Yes, cooked dinner the first (worst of two days) too, while weeping from lack of strenght. Kid son helped.

Was in zombie-like state - horizontal - when all of a sudden heard what sounded like mouse-noise on the south facing window ledge, the home of my toy donkey :) and I think lady bug too. Or was she chilling there another time-season? wotever..................................................then,  clear as bell, Ken's normal speaking voice .. first chuckling .. then, a bit of noise-shuffle, then speaking as if on the teli-fone.. For several seconds I kept listening...not actually recalling what was said...but if you read my post, over these last few years,  you may recall my '-in person'- meetings scribble shares now and then...With some,  private  ,  "for my ears only" notes.  

 

 

Thanks for your interesting response, Jeffrey.

I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I think I know all about deep relating!  The length of this thread testifies rather to my continuing puzzlement about it...

But I do challenge your claim that meditation is 'absolutely foundational'.  That isn't the integral position, though the claim is often asserted in the spiritual traditions, especially those which developed in the East.  From an integral point of view, these spiritual traditions are 'pre-quadratic' in Wilber's sense that they lack a full appreciation of the 'all quadrants, all lines, all levels, all states' complexity of reality: 

  'The whole point of a quadratic approach is that all four dimensions arise simultaneously: they tetra-enact each other and tetra-evolve together. The pre-quadratic approaches that imagine one of these dimensions to be prior or fundamental--and the others to come after or out of the allegedly prior dimension--are caught in what we called quadrant absolutism, which takes a favorite dimension and absolutizes it, making it the ground out of which all other dimensions must issue.'

http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/kosmos/excerptC/intro-1.cfm/xid,6360/yid,6355320

To argue that meditation is foundational to the development of relationships and of compassion is to fall into Upper Left Quadrant absolutism, one might say.

In my previous post I tried to explain that while I don't in the least underestimate the value of UL practices such as meditation (there are of course other UL practices) - indeed, I practice them myself - I do see them as limited in their application to activities in other quadrants, in this case to the development of intersubjectivity.   Its not that they don't apply, but that they are limited in their application.

To take the obvious:  while you can sit with others and meditate in a group, you still basically meditate alone!   Its subjective.  It isn't inter-subjective.  

Sure, as an individual, you may well benefit from meditation, and this may well make you a happier and more peaceful person.  And that's a good start when it comes to developing a relationship.

But its only a start, right?

As we engage more and more deeply with another, we leave the subjective behind and venture into the wholly new and mysterious world of the inter-subjective.   Which Wilber calls 'miraculous' - rightly so in my opinion.   And I still say that guidance on this journey is a little scarce....  Certainly from the spiritual traditions, other than guidance to monks on how to relate to each other in their organisations, and so on.

Re 'interactions':  I'm less concerned with their brevity, though some duration seems necessary for a relationship to flower, and more concerned with their relative superficiality.  I agree with you that a degree of intersubjectivity can't be avoided, and of course that fits with the AQAL model - we are necessarily in some kind of relationship with every being we encounter.  But a brief interaction with a passerby, say, although it involves a small amount of intersubjectivity, isn't what we normally mean by a relationship.  I do think that depth is involved in the kind of intersubjectivity which we as humans spend so much time searching for, and listening to songs about, and watching movies about!    Shallow doesn't seem to cut it for us, does it?   This actually comes out in your first post, Jeffrey, where you write about wishing for someone you could relate to 'at your own level'.  Though personally I'd say that assigning other people to 'levels' (an unfortunate tendency across this very forum) isn't really conducive to good relationships.... 

Fun to 'play in (cyber) space' with you anyway, Jeffrey!

~ D

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

'This is all the time you'll ever have'.
~ Dr Hannibal Lecter

Davidd:

IAMisHome:

Share the freedom.  Share our creativity.  Share the unknown. It's so exciting. And fullfilling.  It's the erotic part of life.

Yes, that's the wish.  To pick up Gita's point, though - UL doesn't translate directly into LL.  If it did, progress in meditation etc would be paralleled by increasingly joyous relationships.  Does that seem to happen?  Or do some who seem highly evolved live solitary lives or find difficulties in relating to others?

If we have a wish, that means that we don't have a reality.   We're still the maiden yearning in her tower, still the knight searching on his steed...

What if we surrender wishes altogether?   What if we share our lives, right now, with what is?

What if THAT is 'The Secret'?

 

What is Now if not Freedom, Creativity and Unknown, in intersubjectivity.

I have to say that our conversations, for a long time now (!), helped me to focus on the Now for intersubjectivity.  

But the wish, individually, is the creative push.  It's a component of who I am now.  Without individuality, we cannot have intersubjectivity.

The feeling of Freedom is expressed in one choice amongst an infinity of choices. As a creator, a human being listens to his impulse, his desire of expression.  It is the expression of Joy, no matter what the kind of expression. An act of creation is in the becoming.  Most of the time, we need time to express an idea, an impulse.  Learning piano, or a new language, creating a newspaper, writing a book.  We are constantly defining who we are but with an orientation.   We are playing piano Now enjoying it but we play piano to fulfill a desire.  So, I honor the movement and the moment.

 The subjectivity is a movement, the intersubjectivity is the encounter Now the two movements.  Without desire of expression, we are not alive.

I have the certitude of the desire.

Martine

I like those thoughts, Martine.

It reminds me of someone's definition of happiness as 'wanting what we have'.

My concern was that we shouldn't place our happiness 'out there', believing that it is dependent on certain conditions which we are waiting to come about or a certain person who we might one day meet or who we want to come back to us. That's a recipe for unhappiness.  By staying open to what is, Now, we are always getting what we want!  Because we want what we have.....

~ D

---

'This is all the time you'll ever have'.
~ Dr Hannibal Lecter

We want what we have.  I certainly agree with that.  No matter if it's pain or joy.  Appreciating what we are living no matter what it is for that it is.   OK, after that,  don't say that someone enjoy to have the same recurrent pattern day after day! Why do someone want have that in his life?   Like Helene quoted, if you don't like your life, you can change it. 

This morning, I listened to KW' talks on states and stages.  Very good talks, clear and all. We have also books and many readings about that.  It was a seminar for psychotherapists and I imagine it is very helpful for their work.  In our daily relationships, it's another thing. I believe it's why I'm here.  For the practice with people knowing the matter. Probably it is translation.  Interracting as usual on and in relationships, with the look of others and the translation in integral talks, it gives me matter to transform.  Walk the talk.  The other day, in a difficult situation in my life, my daughter returned back the same words I gave her few times ago for a difficult moment in her life, inspired from the "talks" here.  I walked the talks, forgetting my pain's ego and it worked.  It was a joy to see a concrete result from that. 

I KNOW that we want what we have.  It's our life, our creation. 

I remember when you told me your experience with your wife about the way to decorate your home.  What do you think about the partnership in creation?  More than two beings, another entity, if I remember well? What about the creation of this new entity?  What about the talks between two to have a one walk?

Martine

Dear David:    I have got to come back here.  Soon.   But for now Ihave to say that KW did not beat his wife.   He hit her one time and they both knew he had never done that before.   No one needs to be hit but she was aggravating him and he deserved to go over the edge in some way.  He had gotten sick himself.  At least to me, there is a big difference in a beating and getting hit out of total frustration and anxiety esp when he just ask for some space to be alone in his office.  Later Pattye

Wasn't gona post here again, but since my name came up, I shallso.

"if you don't like your life you can change it"

Helen said the above? - in the I-I  sense,  I did - didn't I? , but actually Helen qouted John White, my fav. reverend teacher whose 6, I belive week course I signed up for in May-June of 1991 was one hellava Spirit-in-action  validating experience. Each week  a different focus/topic. Real hands-on stuff. It was great! John , at the time was - maybe/hopefully  still is!  a Vice President of the InternationalCollege of Spiritual and Psychic Sciences.  

But I digress......Sometimes the changing-life thing can occur without one's actual desire to do so...Ever noticed? I wanted to live in the forest happily ever after...and it didn't happen. It's as if an invisible hand was directing ...  was co-ordinating events in such a way, that at times it seemed right down spooky. Stuff I gabbed on and on over the years (here , the  old forum and shambhala f.)

 

And speaking of 'inter-self'  relationship - it's rather impssible to have a soul to soul meet-up, unless the soul/s are 'energetically linked. Vibrationally , 'intact/formed'..for lack of better words. In short-hand? EIF-ed I better copyright this fast!!!!!

I met/saw my 'inter-self' in subtle........

What year was it? 97ish? ...a time of,  "only my soul can teach  me now" - (thus I wrote in my note to my Reiki master) 

zzzzzzzleeping on my left side....when I became aware of... "it doesn't matter, have courage it doesn't matter it doesn't matter" - silent,  chant-like ... Next, I became aware someone was behind me...at the same time , was aware my mouth was wording ... 'doesn't matter' ... turned around and saw a subtle/faint head of a woman whose face-image  reminded me of Michelangelo's 'Eve'... The woman, who is featured   in Sistine's chapel's  Creation of Adam ceiling painting...She who is  craddled in God's protective right arm-hold....ohyah! one detail I'm forgeting , 'eve's' head turned in the same direction my head did. Very brief..very wondrous-weird. And I had no one to talk about this ! I never heard of such a thing! But I guess by then so much 'weird' stuff happened I didn't really dwell on it.

Talk about topic-digressing! 

 

 

 

pattye:

Ihave to say that KW did not beat his wife.   He hit her one time and they both knew he had never done that before.   No one needs to be hit but she was aggravating him and he deserved to go over the edge in some way.  He had gotten sick himself.  At least to me, there is a big difference in a beating and getting hit out of total frustration and anxiety esp when he just ask for some space to be alone in his office.  

There is?

Look again:

'We started yelling, louder and louder, screaming, red-faced and furious.

"Get out, you goddamn obnoxious bitch!"

"Get out yourself!"

I hit her. Again. And again.  I kept hollering "Get out, goddamnit, get out!" I kept striking her, she kept screaming, "Stop hitting me! Stop hitting me!"

Grace and Grit, p 154.

I don't think we need to see this incident as somehow justified to be able to feel deep compassion for Ken and his wife, Pattye. And to acknowledge Ken's total honesty in sharing with us.

My father used to beat my mother.  I understand now, long after they are both dead.  But he was wrong.  People who are violent to others always have a 'reason'.  She provoked me.  I was just teaching her a lesson...   But. There just isn't a justification, is there?

My reason for referring to this painful incident was that it reminds us that, when it comes to relationships, even the most wonderful and highly developed people can never escape from trial and tribulation...  The absolute includes the relative.

Good wishes

~ D

---

'This is all the time you'll ever have'.
~ Dr Hannibal Lecter

IAMisHome:

I remember when you told me your experience with your wife about the way to decorate your home.  What do you think about the partnership in creation?  More than two beings, another entity, if I remember well? What about the creation of this new entity?  What about the talks between two to have a one walk?

Yes, that's the other side, Martine, when the trials and tribulations melt away! 

Since you ask me about my life, sometimes I'm at one with others, sometimes I'm 'at-two'!  The same was true for Ken and Treya - and for us all, no?

What I've learned is to stay with it through the times when I'm at odds with others, to want those times too, not to see them as failures on the road to some 'perfect' relationship!  Being at odds with the other, being in conflict, being subject v subject instead of inter-subjectively harmonious - I've learned to value all that too. 

Not to 'enjoy' it, to use your word.   To value it, to see it as another miraculous manifestation by 'what is'...    How about you?

~ D 

 

---

'This is all the time you'll ever have'.
~ Dr Hannibal Lecter

At first, I want thank all of you for your comments. I know, by the feelings I have, that they have great value for me and will give me great matter to think about.  

The value of relationships, in all that a relationship is, comes also from the ability to look at, and not only to live it.  A kind of perspective taking of the relationship, different of the peoples composing it's perspective taking. I value those relationships in my life not perfect in harmony but so rich and interesting.

David, you ask what about me?  You know that I know that you know that I choosed the forest (quoting Helene again) to have the "perfect" relationship.  She (H) says that events out of our control makes that what we want doesn't realize.  That is the external view. But what is this invisible hand if not ours.  The deep one.  I had to look at this hand and you did it with me some parts of the road.   I trust this deep hand more than ever. 

Martine

 

I spent today walking in an actual forest, with my wife and our dog, Steve.

The sunlight glittered among the first, fresh new leaves.  Once I thought that I had seen a buzzard flying in the cloudless azure above us.   In this part of England a buzzard is rare, almost legendary.  It would be amazing to see one.  I found spring violets hidden in the moss, golden kingcups shone beside a stream, Steve charged around in the undergrowth seeking rabbits, but I didn't see the bird again.  Had I been mistaken? 

My wife doesn't know the names of birds or flowers like I do, but she loves them nonetheless.

We had been talking about the lives of our friends and relatives.  Suddenly my wife's eyes looked upwards, and she smiled.

'Look, David.' she said.  'There's your buzzard'.

I looked, just in time, as great wings glided away...

Just then. Man. Woman.  Bird.  Dog.  Trees.  Sunlight. 

One.

 

 

---

'This is all the time you'll ever have'.
~ Dr Hannibal Lecter

Hey there!

The creative powers in man are thaught and feeling, no? Trials and tribulations...so memory emotion-filled recycled energy!... which can keep one cycling for-ever... And since I'm not into sharing past , personal relationship information - been there done that - I shall share a quote from beautifully illustrated  volume : : The Music Of Man - penned by  Yehudi Menuhin /Curtis W. Davis , (published in 1979) ,  because of its 'harmonic' significance.

Kirillian photography shows that when a new person comes into a room , their aura and that of persons already in the room undergo a change, linked to the emotional states of the individuals. we respond to the others, "feeling their vibes," as we do to the sound of a friendly or a hostile voice. Deep within us is the never-silent sound of our own vibrations, which we may ignore, but which is the musical core in us all. We vibrate like the untouched violin string lying next to its neighbor, trembling in symphony though unstroked by the bow.

- I do declare, once I was jarr-awkend when my entire being  became one  note,  loudly vibrating  like crazeeee! for sev. seconds my body felt like a missle-at-ready for a take off.... so I know the above 'musical core' note-quote is right on!