Essay on Spiritual Practice

Spiritual Practice – Personal Perspectives and Opinions From an Integral Worldspace


Shadow work

Any part of the psyche’s I-stream can be severed from our self-identity and be either repressed, projected, dissociated or in some other way hidden from ourselves. The cut-off parts are usually unconscious and hence referred to as Shadow. Normally we tend to think that Shadow is a bad thing and something that needs to be fixed ASAP. While it is definitely true in my book that Shadow work and reintegration of lost parts of the psyche are some of the most important spiritual practices there are, let us also remember that our ability to be able to form Shadow is a gift without which human societies wouldn’t be able to function.

Growing up, our life in general and our families (or lack thereof) in particular expose us to a series of mini-traumas and possibly bigger ones as well. The ability to form shadow in these situations is what keeps us sane and enables us to keep on growing cognitively, value-wise, in our sense of self, etc. As children we still don’t have the ability to change our life circumstances, nor do we know how to sublimate or use other more mature strategies to deal with life’s hardships. To a certain extent this can be true throughout people’s lives which makes the ability to form shadow an important and natural part of being human.

So how do we deal with shadow?... because deal with it we have to if we are serious about our spiritual practice. This is more true than ever within the Integral Worldspace where high levels of cognitive development make it easier to hide shadow and keep the facade of a functional individual to the outside world. It's also important to remember that the higher up the spiral we go the greater our ability to affect other people, and large amounts of unprocessed shadow will make us about as responsible as Darth Vader.

First let me say that I do not include psychosis and PTSD in the concept of Shadow, these are distinct disorders and need different approaches.
The method of choice for Shadow work as far as I'm concerned is psychotherapy, and has been for a long time now. The second person perspective that a trained therapist can bring to the table is invaluable, considering that our deepest projections and repressions are very hard to spot on our own. Furthermore a therapist can provide a cocoon of unconditional acceptance that eases the knots of anxiety that usually keep repressed/projected parts in place.

Some of the more common therapies include psychodynamics, cognitive-behavioral, Gestalt, dialectical behavioral therapy, transactional analysis, body psychotherapy, and many more.


Framework

How do we think about ourselves, our lives, Kosmos itself and where we are going? All of this is largely determined by the framework we consciously or not so consciously ascribe to. At integral levels of consciousness Ken Wilber and his AQAL framework is the best known and as far as I know most complete framework. Having some intimate knowledge of his latest model Wilber-5 is invaluable to any person with an integral cognition. It is of great value for quickly and effectively communicating with another person who knows of the framework, and it has great potential as a tool to bring different branches of science together. Once you “download” the AQAL framework to your mind it is there in the background for you to draw upon as needed.

However, AQAL is not the only framework around nor do I feel it’s enough to assist me on my path. Susanne Cook-Greuter for example has some vivid, alive and yet scientific descriptions of Ego Development that add some much needed meat to the dry bones of AQAL levels. Robert Augustus Masters, a k a RAM, is an Integral Therapist who in his texts repeatedly displays a grounded Integral consciousness while remaining fluid in thought, body and spirit. To me it is apparent that there is deep value in freely expressing interior Integral worldspaces without automatically being restricted by AQAL, Spiral Dynamics or any other rigid framework.

To be effective in one’s daily life I believe in having a framework that is not strictly related to different stages of consciousness. One such framework is NLP. One of its simplest techniques is focusing on what you want versus focusing on what you don't want, and this is a key concept for everyone wanting to be effective. Human creativity is linked to the images, thoughts and feelings we carry around; so intentionally focusing on what we want will automatically give us a stream of ideas on how to achieve it. This also connects to the importance of Shadow work, since we will naturally focus on positive goals/dreams instead of negative fears as the death grip of the Shadow subsides. Whether strong human intentions can sometimes translate into non-local communication between humans, and thereby also aid us in pursuing our highest purpose, is a controversial topic in the Integral movement and I will therefore let it rest for now. At the end of the day it doesn’t even matter since a clear focus and strong intentions are still needed to put your brain and creativity to work for you.

Other interesting NLP concepts are Presuppositions (here and here), Representational Systems (a type model), Meta Programs and Reframing.


An UR practice??

This is the 21st century and there is technology available to us nowadays that simply didn't exist when most of the great traditions were formed. These great traditions certainly still have their place, but it would be naive to think that they are the only option or necessarily the best one for every individual in every circumstance.

A core component of my own spiritual practice for the past five years has been an hour daily “meditation” with Holosync. This is a technology that uses binaural beats to take the brain electrical state from high alpha brainwaves all the way down to deep delta or even sub-delta brainwaves. When hooking up traditional meditators to an EEG machine you will find that most people meditate in the alpha or high theta range, and only the most experienced with decades of experience will reach the delta frequencies. The unique feature of Holosync compared to other binaural beat CD's is that it employs a progressive lowering of the carrier frequencies to enable a gradually deeper entrainment of the brain, level by level in the program. Explaining the technology in detail is beyond the scope of this text, but if you are an IN member you can check out the dialogues with Bill Harris and Ken.

Nearly 300 000 people around the world use Holosync, and the almost universal results reported are a healing of past traumas, accelerated cognitive development and over time an increased tendency to rest in Witness awareness throughout the day. The theory behind these results is that the stimulus of Holosync ("involuntarily" putting people in deep meditative states) pushes brain neurons to make new connections, or as the founder Bill Harris would put it “the brain reorganizes at a higher level”.

In other words this is a pure UR method, but it can easily be combined with a regular meditation technique thereby combining UL and UR approaches in the same session. My only wish at this time is that Centerpointe, the company that sells the product, would conduct some systematized research on the large number of participants it has.


Body Practices

Our body is the only known vehicle available to us in the relative realm. In fact I shouldn't say body in singular, since we need to include all our bodies. In this text I will focus on our gross and subtle bodies, and leave the more advanced ones to those in the know ;)

My own core idea in this area of practice, and one that I find is often overlooked in the Integral movement, is that transcending the subtle body is not enough. We usually talk about the meditative state progression from gross, subtle, causal to non-dual. This is fine in itself, and is an important way to describe horizontal spiritual progression and state plateaus. However, transcending subtle does not mean that our subtle energy systems are healthy or integrated! Just like we know shadow work to be of immense importance for Ego Development and the gross realm in general, we need to heal and integrate our subtle energy systems as a foundation for further spiritual practice as well as to maintain health in the gross body.

My eclectic combination for working with subtle energies includes yoga asanas as a preparation. These stretch and expand the gross body and massage the internal organs. Nadis/meridians relax and become more open to the flow of energy. Then I do Qi Gong which is all about moving the energy about and clearing out blocks and stagnant parts. Finally Reiki healing almost effortlessly fills up the system with fresh subtle energies. I don’t always do them in that specific order, nor do I always do all of them in the same session, but I do feel they complement each other very nicely.

Something that has also been of tremendous value for me, amongst other benefits inducing a Kundalini awakening, is the remote healing and subtle energy reprogramming of the Regenetics method. The framework of this method has a lot of green and new agey components, but the energy work itself is incredibly sound and effective. Parts of the framework do ring true to me but I don’t recommend people sensitive to New Age lingo to go read about it :P
My own general experience is that there is a lot of interesting energy work going on within green spirituality, if you can look past the framework which is almost always subpar.

Another body practice (gross body) of great value is The Alexander Technique. This method truly aspires to prepare the body for the centaur stage. When practised repeatedly it reprograms the nervous system through hands-on techniques while simultaneously fostering a different way of using intention while moving. This can eventually lead to whole body integration and the feeling of moving with one body instead of a body of parts.


The Masculine and The Feminine

You can call them types, energies, polarities, modes of being or any number of terms. Throughout history man- and womankind have been fascinated with the eternal play between the masculine and the feminine. Integral is the the first level where we have access to a space wide and resilient enough to start investigating and integrating these two energies in a deeper way.

On a group level men clearly have a predominance of masculine energies and women of feminine ones, but there can be large variations individually. Important to remember is also that every individual possesses both, and therefore must make peace with each of them and somehow find a way to work with both in spiritual practice.

Besides making the distinction between the masculine and the feminine, I distinguish between the intellectual, the visceral and the spiritual. This leads to six different combinations: the intellectual masculine, the intellectual feminine, the visceral masculine, the visceral feminine, the spiritual masculine and the spiritual feminine.

The intellectual masculine means having the agency and guts to flesh out your own ideas as clearly as possible, and also daring to disagree with others if you don't feel that their ideas hold up to scrutiny. It all takes place in the world of concept and ideas, and the intellectual masculine is usually thriving on Integral forums such as the I-I pod and the Multiplex forums.

The intellectual feminine is less preoccupied with structures, framework and agentically challenging others’ ideas. Instead it wants to engage the intuitive and messy parts that it feels doesn’t get, and might never get, addressed by ever-expanding frameworks from the intellectual masculine. Instead of wanting to challenge other people's ideas, it simply wants to be heard and hear others sharing their ideas. Stream of consciousness writings, story telling and poetry belong to this category, but regular writing might just as well be used.

The visceral masculine is something more personal/interpersonal than the intellectual masculine. A core example is lovingly challenging someone else to grow, or challenging them to own something they appear to resist. This could be when somebody openly claims to have a certain shadow, but behaves in quite the opposite way - to take one obvious example. It can also be in the form of asking a tough penetrating question, and that of course has the advantage of letting the other person choose how deep he/she wants to go. Fatherly tough love also falls into the category of the visceral masculine.

The visceral feminine wants to unconditionally embrace people, in ever-expanding circles of love. This is complementary to the agentic outward force of tough love described above, which makes me think that every individual would do well to have an ounce of both however polarized we are.

The spiritual masculine is addressed rather often in the Integral movement. Key points include the striving for freedom and transcendence. In some ways it is a “clean” and ascending spirituality that leaves messiness behind.

The spiritual feminine is also increasingly addressed among integralites. Keywords to describe this would be messy, earthy, flesh, blood, etc. Engaging paradoxes and trusting intuition also belong here.

How many of these six perspectives do you regularly touch base with?



Steve Pavlina and VA Tech

This topic currently seems to be an endless source of controversy and debate, spawned by a blog entry from Steve Pavlina. Many people felt he was championing a dissociative approach and not accepting the suffering of samsara. I want to state my position on these questions briefly but clearly.

Pain cannot be escaped. Loss cannot be escaped. Emotions cannot be escaped. These are intrinsic parts of human beings in 3D reality.

However, our relationship to pain, loss and emotions can be modified in at least two general ways. First of all Ego Development as well as healthy translation can make us more complex and resilient as individuals. This leads to the ability to feel pain more fully in the moment and hence process it more quickly and more thoroughly. Secondly, horizontal spiritual development through meditation and other state training techniques lessens our exclusive identification with the gross realm. This does not make pain go away, but it can make suffering as a consequence of pain all but disappear.


New Age

This is another point of controversy and a pet peeve for lots of Integral debaters. I personally believe New Age to have both healthy and unhealthy green spirituality hidden inside of it. The healthy parts include love, hands-on healing, community, treating people well, reconnecting to spirituality after losing touch within the orange worldspace. Unhealthy parts include magical thinking, not wanting to look at one’s dark parts (Shadow!), not wanting to do any uncomfortable work at all, not being able to distinguish compassion from idiot compassion.

The healthy parts have their given place as partial truths within an Integral worldspace. The unhealthy parts need to be addressed by integralites, but lovingly as well as firmly, so as not to alienate those who are struggling to find a spiritual path in their life. Didn't we all use to be green at some point in our life? Can we find compassion for those we were and for our current internalized green selves? If we can, I think it will be much easier not to attack green but instead gently point out its inconsistencies and carefully explain to its followers how a more Integral approach could be of benefit.



peace and blessings
pelle