(The foundational map: suffering, impermanence, no-self, and the eightfold way)
the 3 marks of samsaric existence—dukkha (or suffering), anicca (or impermanence), and anatta (or no-self); and the 4 Noble Truths: (1) Life as lived in samsara is suffering; (2) The cause of this suffering is craving or grasping; (3) To end craving or grasping is to end suffering; and (4) There is a way to do so, namely, the eightfold way—of right view, right intention, right speech, right actions, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentrative absorption.
(Nagarjuna’s revolution: samsara and nirvana are not-two)
For Nagarjuna, there is no ontological difference between samsara and nirvana. The difference is epistemological only. Reality looked at through concepts and categories appears as samsara, while the same Reality looked at free of concepts and categories is nirvana. Samsara and nirvana are not-two, or “nondual”—two different aspects of the same thing. And this caused a major revolution in Buddhist thought and practice.
Nagarjuna says, “It is neither void, nor not void, nor both, nor neither, but in order to point it out, it is called the Void.” The Void, shunyata, or Emptiness. It’s a radical “neti, neti”—“not this, not that”—except “neti, neti” is also denied as a characteristic.
Looked at through concepts and categories, the universe appears as samsara—as built of radically separate and isolated things and events, and grasping after those and attachment to them causes suffering. But looked at with prajna (nonconceptual awareness), the world of samsara is actually self-liberated nirvana.
One no longer has to retreat to a monastery—away from the world, away from Form, away from samsara—in order to find Liberation.
The goal is no longer the isolated saint or arhat, but the socially and environmentally engaged bodhisattva—which literally means “being of Enlightened mind”—whose vow is not to get off samsara and retreat into an isolated nirvana, but to fully embrace samsara and vow to gain Enlightenment as quickly as possible so as to help all sentient beings recognize their own deepest spiritual nature, or Buddhanature, and hence realize Enlightenment.
“There are no others to save,” the arhat’s chant, but “There are no others to save, therefore I vow to save them all”—reflecting the truth of a samsara and nirvana joined, no longer torn in two.
“All is Mind. Mind is Empty. Empty is freely manifesting. Freely manifesting is self-liberating.”)
(Tantra: befriending everything as an ornament of Spirit)
The motto here is “Bring everything to the Path.” Nothing—absolutely nothing—is taboo—food, alcohol, sex, money—all are to be deeply befriended and lovingly embraced (within, of course, sane limits) as being ornaments of Spirit itself, direct manifestations of the ultimate Divine or Dharmakaya. And all of this because the sacred and the profane, the infinite and the finite, nirvana and samsara, Emptiness and Form, are not two different and separate and fragmented realms, but co-arising, mutually existing, complementary aspects of one Whole Reality, equally to be embraced and cherished.
Every single phenomenon, when viewed and experienced apart from Spirit, was a source of pain and suffering (dukkha), while the same phenomenon, seen as an ornament of Spirit, was a source of potential wisdom, compassion, skillful means, and playful luminosity, all arising as textures of the Primordial Buddha—to give one painfully abbreviated summary of an extraordinarily rich topic.
Being one with everything that arises moment to moment, there is literally nothing outside of us that we could want or desire, nor anything outside of us that we could smash into—thus no fear, no anxiety, no angst.
“To supersede is at once to negate and to preserve,”
(Views and vantage points: how development structures experience)
What is less often—in fact, rarely—understood is the importance of Views and Vantage Points in determining human experience—how it is seen and how it is interpreted and experienced. These Views and Vantage Points are every bit as real as cultural and social factors.
In dominator hierarchies, with each higher level, the few dominate and oppress the many. In growth hierarchies, each higher level is more and more inclusive.
But that’s what the Pluralistic View does—it cuts out all hierarchies, or flattens them, as the current phrase has it. And thus in heroically deconstructing all dominator hierarchies, postmodernism catastrophically deconstructs and destroys all growth hierarchies as well, a cultural and spiritual catastrophe. But the denial of all hierarchies or ranking is one of the surest indicators you’re dealing with the pluralistic level of development.
First and foremost, it’s 2nd tier; unlike each 1st-tier View that believes its truths and values are the only real truths and values in existence, 2nd tier sees important contributions made by all previous stages, rungs, and Views.
It is the first stage to integrate knowing and feeling, consciousness and being, epistemology and ontology, and not fracture them from each other and then try to “ground” one in the other, but rather seeing and feeling them to be complementary aspects of the seamless Whole of Reality, operating not by disembodied reflection or representation but by embodied mutual resonance within all 4 quadrants.
potentials in that person. It literally “knows all,” at least for that individual. A Super-Integral Spirituality has all the features of an Integral Spirituality, plus, among other things, an inherent conjunction of each stage with a given state, giving all of its stages a transpersonal or spiritual flavor (at least the possibility of either gross nature mysticism, subtle deity mysticism, causal formless mysticism, or nondual Unity mysticism). These mystical states are, of course, available to virtually all the lower 1st- and 2nd-tier
There are still “over his head” and not available in his awareness the entire pluralistic world, holistic world, integral world, and super-integral world. The individual will NOT be one with those worlds because they are completely beyond the reach of his awareness.
(Pathologies of development: addiction, allergy, and the 3-2-1 process)
If the self fails to adequately integrate any of these elements, it will either remain fused and embedded in these elements (failure to differentiate)—thus creating an addiction to these elements (food, sex, power, etc., in the gross realm; soul luminosity and clarity, etc., in the subtle realm; archetypes in the causal realm; and so on)—or it will dis-own and dissociate from these elements (failure to integrate)—thus creating an allergy to those same elements (food, sex, power, etc.). Especially at each developmental junction—structure to structure (called a fulcrum) or state to state (called a switch-point), these types of dysfunctions are most likely to occur.
(As Robert Kegan summarized development—and this is true in both structures and states—“The subject of one stage becomes the object of the subject of the next.” A subpersonality is a subject at one stage that refuses to become an object of the next—it’s a “sub-subject,” not an object. It’s an “I” that won’t become a “me,” and thus either remains embedded in the central “I” or split off as a sub-“I,” both of which are unconscious, or not a proper object of awareness. This can happen at virtually every structure, and every state, of development.)
The 3-2-1 process starts by identifying the 3rd person that one is most reactive to, either in life or in dreams. One then faces this person (which can be either enormously positive or negative—overly admired and hero-worshipped, a projection of one’s own positive qualities; or overly feared and avoided, one’s own negative qualities). Facing this person, hero, or monster, one talks to it, converting it to a 2nd person. “Who are you? What do you want? Why are you here?” and so on, for several minutes, creating an I-Thou dialogue with this 2nd person. Then one takes the role of this 2nd person, identifies with this person or monster, speaking as them, until one has thoroughly re-owned and re-identified with the quality, feeling, or characteristic that this projection was holding, thus returning it to the 1st-person element it really is. When the process is done correctly, there is usually a great sense of relief and release when finished. Most meditators find this process
We have seen that the Tantric view of nonduality is particularly powerful, and doesn’t renounce negative emotions or work to gradually transform them, but rather steps directly into the emotion with nondual Awareness, which almost instantly transmutes the emotion into its corresponding transcendental wisdom (so that anger, for example, then arises as the brilliant clarity of nondual Awareness).
Thus, in our example of dis-owned anger appearing in the dream as a monster: the monster is likely to generate emotions of fear, not anger. And it’s not obvious at all that this fear is the result of a projected anger—
Integral Life Practice contains a chapter on the 3-2-1 and the 3-2-1-0 processes.
how one looks at a phenomenon helps co-determine the nature of the phenomenon seen, and the nature of the phenomenon seen helps co-determine what is seen.
(Every integral thought carves a kosmic groove for future generations)
act as if your behavior were to become part of a fixed structure governing all future human behavior. The form of future evolution is literally up to us: the more a particular thought or action is repeated, the stronger its morphogenetic field becomes, and the more likely it will be sedimented as a relatively fixed Kosmic groove, an actual, ontologically real groove cut into the very structure of the universe for all future generations.
As we saw, Gilligan’s work suggested that men tend to reason in terms of autonomy, rights, agency, justice, and ranking; and women in terms of relationship, care, responsibility, communion, and nonranking.
Helen Palmer does a particularly fine job working with the Enneagram, but there are many terrific books on the subject that can be found. The point is to use the Enneagram or similar typologies to help understand exactly where the student is in his or her overall development, and tailor the teachings and practices to fit the particular personality type, so that spiritual practice isn’t wasted on trying to change things that, in most cases, are just not open to change, any more than the student’s height or ethnic origin is.
self-centered, fractured, fragmented thinking, and a new way of thinking—driven by dialogue, where we suspend assumptions and judgments, participate honestly and transparently, and stay connected—would open the door to more authentic, real, creative thinking capable of dealing with the world crisis.
(1) suspension of past associations and knowledge; (2) redirection of awareness to the timeless present source and away from the object, co-enacting a group field; and (3) letting go (and “letting come”), and away from “looking for.” Otto Scharmer expanded this into his “U process,” which actually deals with the 3 major states of consciousness—getting a detailed overall awareness of the gross problem; shifting into subtle awareness and viewing the issue from there; then drawing on causal source, will, and creativity to allow new solutions; moving those back down into their subtle dimensions; and then finally materializing the solution in the gross realm.
All of these “lack of progress” complaints equate the real world with the mere sensorimotor world, and overlook the existence and fundamental reality of all of the interior worldspaces—from infrared to magenta to red to amber to orange to green to teal to turquoise to indigo to violet to ultraviolet—and the very real phenomena that can be found in each and every one of those very real worldspaces (worldspaces every bit as real as the sensorimotor worldspace). And then when progress isn’t made in the sensorimotor world, all of the other progress being made in the other worldspaces is completely overlooked, and the whine of “no progress at all” rises up, deafeningly.
movements that has ever been seen in history. Your very activity in your consciousness is building internal objects and ontologically real phenomena of an Integral nature that are literally being stored in the real Kosmos and that will one day reach down and bring men and women to their knees with joy and gratitude and grace, and will rewrite history as we know it, and will shape the world with a greater Truth and Goodness and Beauty than has ever been conceived or seen or known. YOU, my friend, are—by every Integral thought that you have, or conceive, or read, or write, or share, or hear, or pass on, or dream, or envision—by the very fact of your interiorly entertaining that Integral object of awareness—YOU are driving a progress that will one day bring the world to a shuddering surrender of gratitude and grace and all-caring embrace.