Multiplex: What's New | Site Map | Community | News My Multiplex Account | Sign In 
in Search

Comments on Integral Spirituality - Ch. 7: A Miracle Called "We"

Last post 08-25-2006, 12:50 PM by ralphweidner. 7 replies.
Sort Posts: Previous Next
  •  08-11-2006, 7:26 PM 4138

    Comments on Integral Spirituality - Ch. 7: A Miracle Called "We"

    What possible meaning can there ever possibly be to the word Love . . . .

     . . . . without a "we" . . . .?

     

     

    This may be the most important chapter Ken has ever written . . . .

     

     

     


    What you see is what you get, What you get is what you see,
    Don't see it? Don't get it. Don't get it? Don't see it.
    What you see is what you get.
    • Post Points: 35
    • Report abuse
  •  08-13-2006, 6:23 AM 4244 in reply to 4138

    • JaneMc is not online. Last active: 08-21-2006, 6:16 AM JaneMc
    • Top 25 Contributor
    • Joined on 07-24-2006
    • Posts 40
    • Points 925

    Re: Comments on Integral Spirituality - Ch. 7: A Miracle Called "We"

    Oh, immutable laws of physics: F=ma and you can’t push a rope!

     

    The miracle of WE is emeshed in the other miracle, the miracle of ‘not-WE’.

     

    I have helped many women have their babies.  It is an amazing time when the fabric of subjectivity (spirit) teases itself apart momentarily and palpably from the fabric of objectivity (matter), all in the moment of birth.  I love to think about the women dolphins who circle a birthing mother so that at the moment the  baby slides into this realm, they can flip the baby up into the air for the first breath. It is an amazing moment, that first moment.  I watch it quietly filled with awe, these little babies arriving, covered in fluid and blood, organizing their breathing, quieting down and opening their eyes to peer out, and then beginning to root for nourishment. These little precious sweeties.  I am reminded that each one of us started in some manner just the same way…..Each time, I am filled with a shiver of awe.

     

    Of course, for all the outside perspectives, the zones #2, #4 with the birth of a baby, a molecular functioning holon born in time and space, born in a context,  there is really the birth of another perspective, another set of eyes that can peer into the mystery, another subject.

     

    My guess it that a baby starts on the WC lattice at the moment of conception, near the 0 on the Y axis of structural development, and likewise, in infinity on the X axis in ‘non-duality’.  So a baby emerges out of non-duality, into the linear time of structural development.  

     

    To be clear, a baby does not start at absolute 0 on the ‘Y’ axis at the moment of conception.  Absolute 0, from what I can figure, was the moment of the big bang, when the universe managed to rip itself into a polarity of positive and negative, and thereby begin to birth itself.  I love thinking about this, how in that moment, all of us were together, you and me, sharing the same time and space, not only sharing, we were the same.  We were undifferentiated from each other.  I was you, you were me…..I was Hildegard and Jesus and Attilla the Hun….we were all there together in each other, as each other.  Sometimes when I look at fireworks, I am reminded of this cosmogenesis, the explosions, the ripping apart, the glorious fluorescence, the fizzling and the spent dying phase….. I watch these explosions of magic and colour. Sometimes off in the distance a full moon is sitting, almost ignored, gracefully shining on us with her immutable presence. Yet even, the moon, I was the moon too in that first moment…even the moon! And stars! and so were you!

     

    So a baby starts not at absolute 0, but already, 13.8 billion years into the journey of differentiation, of shadows upon shadows, of deaths and births and mutations and permutations, of twist and turns, of happenstance and lucky breaks, and of tragedy and destruction, of passion and beauty, and despair and longing…….  I love that expression when old family friend says to a little kid, “Oh, I knew you when you were just a twinkle in your father’s eye.”  What is my original face?  A twinkle in my Father’s Eye…..and resonance of soul waiting to emerge in a particular time-space context.

     

    Time. Linear time belongs with the “y” axis of structural development.  13.8 billion years and counting. This is contextual time, and indeed, consensual time.  It is the time we measure with our watches and with our calendars.

     Time for a baby, for a brand new perspective emerging out of non-duality, is the time of eternity, a vast screen upon which events emerge and submerge.

     

    A friend of mine once said, “Eternity is a heart beat away.”  It is so true.  My heart is my primordial clock, the measuring device of my linear time.  It is the observable measuring device in the right upper quadrant, set, and standardized  with my fellow travelers with the right lower quadrant.  My heart with its contractions and expansions is ticking out my physical life in this body.  I loved the way Robert Sardello wrote about this in one of his books ( I just went to find it in my bookshelf, and I can’t find it…. or even remember its name..soul something).  He writes, as I recall, about the heart being primarily an afferent sensing organ, which responds efferently with the motor functions of diastole and systole in its muscular configuration., expansion and contraction.  As such, our hearts, literally, are birthing our objective, linear time.  Indeed, this is the tantric energy, the dance of polarities, the sexual ecstasy of the universe…..the resonance and reverberation of how we are all born in love, both in that first moment of the emergence of the universe with the Big Bang, and later, in our own time, as the reflection and nexus of our parents love-making and orgasmic union, into a specific context of linear time, and physical space, as articulating stardust.  This is the miracle(another trinity): I am carbon thinking, I am thinking carbon, carbon is thinking me.  Or as Brian Swimme says so beautifully something like, ‘hydrogen left on its own become humans, what bigger miracle can we look for?”

     

    I also love the way that Satish Kumar spoke of this once, “Our bodies are not here to separate us, but to bring us together. Kiss these lips, touch this body.”  Our bodies are here to embody our radical inter-subjectivity, to create the 'miracle of we'.  Interestingly, and painfully, we are so often confused by this—or indeed, perhaps this confusion is really just part of a particular, incomplete, objective view of ‘differentiation’, some stance from half way up the mountain or adrift in the ocean, of shadows imposed on shadows, of life observed through the illusion of the Jordian knot.

     

     Indeed, as it turns out,  I cannot be fully present, or bring myself to my Father’s table of radical inter-subjectivity, only to the extent I am also fully differentiated……and further, it is strange to find out, that full ‘differentiation’ is not only about accumulating some set of spectacular credentials, but rather by accumulating them(as is any particular person’s capacity-'two shillings at the temple gate'), AND then further, by letting them go, differentiating yet again from the pile of stuff that is ‘the marvelous me’ to a place of ‘I am’.…..In other words, to walk through the gate into conscious non-duality, I must pared down, naked again, naked as the day I was born. ….to die before dying and thus become fully alive.

     

    Differentiation, subjectivity, communion….the alpha to the omega and back again….the sun is coming out again this morning after days of cold rain….if it dries up, I am going to pick blueberries…..and later tonight, I am going to see the Pirates of the Caribbean-the secret of the Dead Man’s chest-Part 2…..ah, yes, the miracles of Being never cease, it seems.

    Love Jane


    The fabric of my life is the cloth with which it is my responsibility to polish the lense of my own perception
    • Post Points: 20
    • Report abuse
  •  08-13-2006, 6:07 PM 4282 in reply to 4244

    Re: Comments on Integral Spirituality - Ch. 7: A Miracle Called "We"

    Easiest reading I saw in Ken’s books.  Not for the content obviously, but for the form.

     

    Flowing reading, each chapter enriching those before, just like yes transcending and including the previous.  Even if I had some questionning, feeling the answers were to come.  I’m way far of the state of Ken’s knowledge about philosophical, psychological and other theories.  The same comment about some participants in the forum. I don’t say that with false humility, it is an honest observation.  

     

    But even knowing that, I feel also participating in this is a manner to honour the dedicated work of this man and this team.  After all, it is a place to belong, a place to grow, a place to learn. And, it is my intimate belief that each sparkle of consciousness in the Kosmos contribute in a positive way in the well being of the whole, no matter what is the contribution. 

     

    “We”:  the most difficult way to see God in my point of view.  The one needing the most big work on it. 

     

    Even if we can perceive it in different ways, a large majority of human beings, since several thousand years, see the 3rd person of God.  Even if we generally have to improve our consiousness about all that included in, it is easier to see the greatness of this figure. The first person is more difficult to conceive.  Each human being has his/her own experience of it, in a peak experience or on a longer period of time, perceiving and explaining it at his/her own stage.  As it is a personnal and intimate experience, each one may have his/her own experience of God at the first person.  With just a glimpse or  straight on the eyes but like it is intimate, the challenge is with our own self. 

     

    Not those two expressions of God are easy in themselves, far of me this idea, but God at the second person is a really, really greater challenge. Don’t know about you but for me it is, with any doubts.  How to believe at the glory of the Other in the day-to-day life?  How to keep continuously in mind the abandon in the Other, the faith in the Other and the abandon of our own ego.  The same humility in face of the Other than in the Kosmos. 

     

    Ken, the scientist, is also able to express his Faith and his Love in the Other.  It is really beautiful to hear.

     

    Puisses-tu recouvrer la santé le plus rapidement possible.

     

     

    • Post Points: 5
    • Report abuse
  •  08-14-2006, 1:48 PM 4312 in reply to 4138

    Re: Comments on Integral Spirituality - Ch. 7: A Miracle Called "We"


    tim! in one short sentence you've evoked for me what's most important about this chapter. not as beautiful as the ending to the chapter, but definitely to the point.

    i have to admit i was looking in other directions. i came to it fairly well prepared. not only had i studied all the previous chapters, but over the last few years i've been through the excerpts somewhere between two and four times, and, more recently, i've done considerable mulling over the three-part IN dialogue between mark edwards and ken wilber. my focus has been on what 'we' is not rather than what 'we' is. clearly, both are important--we want both seated at the integral table, but the latter most of all.

    my problem, and ken indicates i'm not the only one, is that i've had some very confused notions about what 'we' is--all the way from 'atomist' (we is just me and myself) to 'organicist' (everything is we). if i want an excuse, all i have to do is point out the confusion that abounds, not only within me, but out there. so, again, ken is showing us how we can be more integral, and challenging us, in effect, to do so.

    on a more mundane level, i have some basic comments and questions:

    on p.5 it says 'they [individual and social] are equivalent dimensions of each other', but elsewhere, '...equivalent dimensions of an occasion', which makes more sense to me.


    the footnote on p.15 refers to excerpts A-E. is excerpt E available? at some other point in the chapter i've lost track of he refers to vol. 2 of the kosmos trilogy and not the excerpts. should this be qualified as not yet published?

    the footnote on p.19 says 'if we use 8 perspectives, syntax is 7/4, semantic is 8/3, signifier is 5/2, signified is 6/1.' this is as baffling as integral math to me. of course, integral semiotics would take into account all 8 perspectives. but wouldn't the outside and inside perspectives of syntax, which is itself the LRQ perspective on semiotics, be situated in zones 7 and 8? whereas zone 4 pertains to the inside perspective of the LLQ, the perspective on semiotics that yields semantic? i'm obviously missing something here.

    i'm intrigued by the 'who we are, that we see' aspect of this presentation. some of us, or parts of us, are going to be annoyed by what we see, but maybe that's what we need. if we're looking for all sweetness and light, we've come to the wrong kosmos.

    ralph









    • Post Points: 20
    • Report abuse
  •  08-15-2006, 6:36 AM 4344 in reply to 4312

    • JaneMc is not online. Last active: 08-21-2006, 6:16 AM JaneMc
    • Top 25 Contributor
    • Joined on 07-24-2006
    • Posts 40
    • Points 925

    Re: Comments on Integral Spirituality - Ch. 7: A Miracle Called "We"

    “Spirit in the 2nd Person— is the great You, the great Thou, the radiant, living all-giving God before whom I must surrender in love and devotion and sacrifice and release.  In the face of Spirit in 2nd person, in the face of the God who is All Love, I can have only one response: to find God in this moment, I must love until it hurts, love to infinity, love until there is no me left anywhere, only this radiant living Thou who bestows all glory, all goods, all knowledge, all grace, and forgives me deeply for my own manifestation, which inherently brings suffering to others, but which the loving God of the Thou-ness of this moment can and does release, forgive, heal, and make whole,  but only if I can surrender in the core of my being, surrender the self-contraction through love and devotion and care and consciousness, surrender to the great Thou, as God or Goddess, but here and now, radiant and always, this something-that-is-always-greater-than-me, and which discloses the depths of this moment that are beyond the I and me and mine, beyond the self altogether, and given to me by the Thou-ness of this moment, but only if I can deeply and radically surrender in love and devotion to the Great=Thou dimension of this now. This Great God/dess that faces me right now, that is talking to me right now, that is revealing Him/Herself to me as a communion with thou in a sacred we, is Spirit in its 2nd-person mode.”(p194)

    Ken Wilber breaks my heart with this beautiful run-on sentence. I say, Express the inexpressible, or die trying!

     

    …..just like William Blake did in his little verse committed in my memory:

    “To see the world in a grain of sand

    And Heaven in a wild flower,

    Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

    And eternity in and hour.”

     

    …or my sister Jocelyn singing:

    "I'm coming to you,

    You're coming to me,
    Weaving magic,

    In this strange devotion, this strange devotion,

    The brightest pearl from the deepest ocean,

    This strange devotion...."

     

    ….and Rumi, too:

    Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
    and rightdoing there is a field.
    I'll meet you there.
    When the soul lies down in that grass
    the world is too full to talk about.

     

    The great Open Secret of the deepest surrender……….It is enough to explode the mind and quake all of  the senses…yet off we go, off I go, into this rainy day,  intent on trundling along, peering out behind frozen eyes, one foot ahead of the other……making some sort of history to be sure, but not likely the history that I imagine. I know, that somewhere, I am  weaving magic, we all are, waiting for ‘the moment to become the Beauty turning in Your Light’.

     

    PS: If we are looking for all sweetness and Light, Ralph, it may be that we have come to the right Kosmos too!

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     


    The fabric of my life is the cloth with which it is my responsibility to polish the lense of my own perception
    • Post Points: 35
    • Report abuse
  •  08-15-2006, 6:48 PM 4394 in reply to 4344

    Re: Comments on Integral Spirituality - Ch. 7: A Miracle Called "We"


    you could very well be right, jane. if we see according to who we are, you may just have a better perspective than i do. in any case, i'm happy, whether it was the dirty sock i ended my message with, or not, that it got such a beautiful reply from you.

    ralph

    • Post Points: 5
    • Report abuse
  •  08-16-2006, 3:46 AM 4417 in reply to 4344

    Re: Comments on Integral Spirituality - Ch. 7: A Miracle Called "We"

    JaneMc:

    PS: If we are looking for all sweetness and Light, Ralph, it may be that we have come to the right Kosmos too!

    I LOVE this, Jane.

    • Post Points: 5
    • Report abuse
  •  08-25-2006, 12:50 PM 5327 in reply to 4312

    Re: Comments on Integral Spirituality - Ch. 7: A Miracle Called "We"


    some further thoughts on the classification of the elements of semiotics, viz. the footnote on p. 19:

    the denominators probably refer to the quadrants instead of zones. in that respect, syntax is LR, semantic is LL, signifier is UR and signified is UL: 4,3,2 and 1. that makes sense in itself, but is inconsistent with the numbering of the zones. such a numbering of the quadrants puts the interior/exterior dimension first (1 and 2 are UL and UR, respectively), whereas the numbering of the zones puts inside/outside first, singular/plural second and interior/exterior last (1 and 2 are the inside and outside of UL, 3 and 4 are the inside and outside of LL, UL and LL being singular/plural correlates).

    not only that, the perspectival numbers in the numerators still don't make sense to me:

    ok. 7 for syntax is right, but 8 for semantic? shouldn't it be 3? 5 for signifier might be ok, but 6 for signified?

    ralph

    • Post Points: 5
    • Report abuse
View as RSS news feed in XML
 © Integral Institute, 2024. all rights reserved - powered by enlight™ email this page del.icio.us | terms of service | privacy policy | suggestion box | help