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Spirit’s Next Move is moving!

October 5, 2012 at 5:00 pm by Joe Perez Leave a Comment

Thank you for visiting SpiritsNextMove.net, a spot which has been the home of the Center for World Spirituality’s new blog for the past several months. As part of our organization’s web presence reorganization, we have moved the contents of this blog and will no longer be posting here.

You can find the new Spirit’s Next Move daily blog, better than ever, on the Center for World Spirituality’s main site at www.iEvolve.org. You can find new daily material on the left sidebar of the site. Thanks once again for sticking with us … we look forward to seeing you on the new site!

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Exploring the Unique Self and beyond (Part 5): Making it real ….

July 16, 2012 at 11:38 am by Hans Jecklin Leave a Comment

By Hans Jecklin

The following post continues a series of spiritual reflections beginning with this post.

Writing and conversing over the beauty and magnitude of the Unique Self is one thing. Transferring it to our own real life is the real challenge. As illustrates a recent e-mail exchange with a friend:

Good morning Hans

It is humbling but also motivating what you have written. I nearly wrote “managed” to write, but it flows too smoothly, so “managed” conveys struggle, no, there is no struggle for you the author.

The “where to begin” is the problem on this end. So I shall go back to Nr 1, read again and then move very slowly through the others. I just wonder if I am able to keep abreast of your profound experience, even just following it, not even becoming active. I shall try, it is confirming to me that the struggles in life, my life?, will remain, how we manage them is something else.

May I allow myself forwarding to a very special friend in Biel? She and her husband, hmmm, yes, I would like to do this and can’t imagine anything but whole-hearted reception on her end.

Ann

_______________________

Thank you, Ann, for your feedback. The struggle is not writing these texts, they come quite easily and are of course based on experience. But still: the real challenges come from what life presents to us and when it reveals as what we do not want at all. And maybe, the Unique Self wants us to become an ever clearer instrument and leads us into exactly those conflicts that have the potential to open our minds?

I do not know, but looking at life’s challenges from this perspective is always revealing and – if we look back – who and where would we be without our past? And I am confident that we will never arrive in a state of perfection, because this maybe beyond human condition anyway.

Thanks for giving me food for reflection! – And if you like to pass the information – about this or our music – on to your friends, this is perfectly in our sense.

Warm regards, Hans

________________________

Dear Hans

It is what I am mulling about: where is my home supposed to be, quite literally, when this place here cannot be, ever ever, but where? What role is it playing in my life to define certain directions and states, I am searching and getting no inner replies. Fine and good to say there are a few priorities, they will in this life be defined by financial means, physical needs, social set-ups, and the one certain fact: age and aging. It has me puzzled, my health is affected in that I have had to get, the first time in almost 20 years, medication against allergies. Something is really out of line. So finding answers determines where I am looking, horizontally and/or vertically. Am fairly sure you follow my very simple scheme.

Shall send off immediately your texts, thank you, thought it is the intent of work. Still, I want permission.

Truly yours
Ann

_____________________

Dear Ann

It is difficult to respond on personal matters from distance, apart from the risk of being misunderstood.

This, however, seems evident to me: If our prior home is inside, we are looking at the world from an unalienable security. This enables us to look at the world with untroubled trust, with a view less veiled by emotions like fear or scepticism. Our view becomes wider and clearer and our inner ear more sensitive to the inner directions. We may intuitively be led to more effective actions and unexpected solutions may spring to our perception that we might have missed before. We just may become more creative and inventive.

However, again, becoming more sensitive has many advantages, but we may also become more sensitive to imbalance in the outer world – material and subtle – and allergies or increased need for rest may be the result, until we discover new means to handle them.

That’s enough of preaching for now! Have a wonderful day, and we are looking forward to seeing you on Saturday!

Love, Hans

____________________

Thank you Hans. ……….. On a personal basis, which this is, you have hit many bulls’ eyes. A lunch-time break is needed, my balcony welcomes me.

thanks ever

Ann with love

Filed Under: All Posts, Featured

Exploring the Unique Self and beyond (Part 4): Eros – in search of Enlightenment

July 2, 2012 at 10:32 am by Hans Jecklin 1 Comment

Diotima

By Hans Jecklin

Eros needs human consciousness to become enlightened. He cannot do it by himself. Only enlightened human consciousness can embrace the huge evolutionary span wherein Eros manifests as what I understand a primordial driving force of evolution: Supreme Grace.

We can see with awe how on all levels of manifestation – from matter to spirit – a similar pattern of attraction between wholes leads to connection and unification into ever-greater wholes: Eros at work, guided by a greater intelligence.

When we look at human relations and love, it is interesting to watch Eros at work on many levels, most of them being unconscious: Survival instincts in many guises – physical, vital, emotional, mental – that do not differ so much from what we can observe in the animal world. Beyond the realm driven by instincts, it is very likely that what Jungian psychology understands as projection of anima or animus on a partner is a human accomplishment: It means that we are attracted to the other by what we believe to be missing in ourselves.

This the nature of Eros which Socrates relates in Plato’s Symposium as a teaching he has just been given by the sage Diotima: Eros as an aspect of human nature that incessantly searches and creates outer connections which he can not escape to lose, until he finally understands his true history and fate.

This is Diotima’s story: When the divine Aphrodite was born, the gods celebrated a big feast. Befuddled by the delicious nectar, Poros – an incarnation of wealth and abundance – took a rest in the garden and fell asleep. Penaia was attracted to the vicinity of the Gods by her innate nature of need and greed. She cunningly lay down by Poros’ side and conceived Eros from him. Eros, as Penaia’s son and unaware of his father, was a poor, rough and scrubby fellow, scouring barefoot and with no shelter. However, he also carried within him an unknown heritage which made him a searcher for the good and beautiful. Brave, courageous and ingenious he was, inspirited by an indefatigable drive for insight and truth. He felt happy whenever abundance smiled to him, as much as he was heartbroken when all abundance had again melted away between his fingers. “Lacking Goodness and Beauty, he strives for what he believes to be in need of” was the beginning of Diotima’s teaching to Socrates, leading to the realization that “If he gave birth to the supreme Truth within himself, he would be granted the Love of God and attain immortality.” Socrates, convinced by Diotima’s message ended his report to the symposium by sharing his insight “that there is no better guide to enlightenment than Eros.”

Looking back at my own path from the present, through all delusions, confusions – material, emotional, sensual – and notorious dis-enchantments, I can now fully and with great gratitude appreciate Eros’ play of consciousness, driven by an unalienable longing for the One Love and Wisdom: Eros unveiling as pure Grace.

This is the moment when we may wish to honor all imprints from past illusions and deceptions held in our body, asking for healing and transformation by the grace of our Unique Self. Only now, an enlightened Eros can play within us, liberated from all needs and bonds. This is – to my understanding – conscious Love, in full freedom: a most precious gift, to be handled with loving awareness and care! For ourselves and the other!

Filed Under: All Posts, Featured, Love, Sex & Ethics

The Daily Wisdom: YES

June 13, 2012 at 10:15 pm by Marc Gafni 3 Comments

By Marc Gafni

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine,
and still stand on the edge of a lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes”!
– Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It was to this that Emerson referred when he said, “Love is the affirmative of the affirmatives.” Love is the universe shouting out a joyful yes when our names our called.

In Hebrew the word yes – Kein – means integrity. Yes is the ultimate affirmation of our integrity. The question of your existence is whether you can say yes to the adventure that is your life. That is self-love! When you wake up to a beautiful day which is simply divine – when you eat a piece of carrot cake which is just out of this world then you experience the universe embracing your with a resounding YES. e. e. cummings always succeeds in capturing life’s little quintessential affirmations. I quote:

I thank you God for this amazing
Day: for the leaping greenly spirit of trees
And a blue dream of sky; and for everything
Which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes

The Erotic and the Holy
Marc Gafni

Filed Under: All Posts, Featured

Why discipline and will power are completely outdated, and an evolutionary alternative

June 1, 2012 at 9:09 am by Kristen Ulmer Leave a Comment

By Kristen Ulmer

This may surprise you, but discipline, perseverance, setting an intention, drive, the will; all those celebrated states usually taught by sports coaches, are completely outdated. Same with goal setting.

Here’s why. I remember having to perform a difficult ski photo shoot while still recovering from an injury. I wanted to maintain status and sponsors so I “sucked it up” “did it anyway” “refused to give up” “pushed through the pain and fear.” Sounds powerful right?

Such willed effort is fine in a pinch: I skied great that day, but here’s the problem: doing something I didn’t feel like doing was the first step toward future burn out and ultimately resenting my sport.

There’s a better path.

Let’s say you don’t feel like going the gym but force yourself to go anyway. Sound familiar?

Picture a hose. All day long feelings and experiences flow through that hose. In this case ‘should I go to the gym?’ shows up. Next comes ‘no I don’t want to!’

Now picture you’re a corporation made up of 10,000 different employees. The mind is one of these employees. Throw in determination or a fitness goal and the mind becomes very clever at suppressing any employee who gets in its way, in this case; ‘No I don’t want to.’

She puts duct tape over ‘No’s’ mouth and throws her down the basement stairs. You trot off to the gym feeling victory over perceived ‘negativity.’

The mind does this enough times and guess what? The employee of ‘No I don’t want to’ isn’t taking the abuse quietly. She isn’t dying in the basement. She’s fighting back, plotting, building strength, having to do her job in a covert, pathological way and will even scream now in order to be heard.

Your hose is now kinked, and a war has started. You are now at war with your self. And you can’t see it because it’s being carried out in your subconscious.

But you can feel it. Repressed experiences and emotions remain in our systems and run our lives covertly, sometimes for decades or even lifetimes. They come out in the most disruptive ways — straining our relationships, causing injury, showing up as disease and body aches. They pinch off the possibility for happiness to enter. Over time you become burned out. All because the mind and the will refuse to be intimate with anything negetive ot working against a master plan.

What if, instead you had a consciousness practice, where you could first see how the mind and all her buddies act as slave drivers. To see it is to stop it. Stop that war. In today’s evolutionary world, next you welcome your emotions and experiences as they flow through the hose, and this way your mind instead sets you free.

What would you do with that freedom? Could you just listen to the wisdom of each moment as it flows through the hose, rather than crack a whip?

If I could go back and feel that pressure to ski injured over again, I would have honored fear and pain instead, and chosen my ‘No.’

How about you? When you think you should go to the gym and ‘No’ shows up, would you let her be this time? If so, she’ll only speak for about 15-40 seconds before she’s gone and another employee shows up.

It might even be this time: Yes.

Photo Credit: jontunn

Filed Under: Featured, Health & Medicine Tagged With: fitness, psychology, self-help, sports

Exploring the Unique Self and beyond …. Dialogue and Guidance (Part 2)

May 31, 2012 at 9:40 am by Hans Jecklin 1 Comment

By Hans Jecklin

This post is continued from Part 1.

Whenever I wish to enter into dialogue with the Unique Self or ask for its guidance, I first feel an impulse to bow to its all-encompassing wisdom and love. It seems important for me to always remember that the Unique Self is not a useful tool of my ego but that I am its manifestation at this moment, with a determination to become an ever more transparent instrument of its unique potential.

When I thought about writing this blog in the middle of the night, I had a vision of the eternal and undivided ONE from which all potentials and probabilities ready to manifest as and in this cosmos keep arising from moment to moment; my Unique Self being one single aspect of what I understand as Prior Unity of all manifestation. Allowing myself to be taken in by this vision, I immediately experience a state of absolute stillness, like having come home.

Experience has taught me to understand all energy centers, regardless of their spiritual tradition or school, as projections of the Unique Self, whereby each center filters out the information that it needs to function. The higher up in or beyond the human body, the finer or more subtle is the information received, whereas downwards — also beyond the body — the energy becomes ever more dense. This is why I like to connect through a vertical column — either within the backbone as Kundalini or through the middle of the body according to other traditions — the most subtle above with the most dense below.

As to the densest region, I used to take the center of the planet into my vision, but lately I had the impulse to ask for a connection to the most dense level of the cosmos, which might be, according to the findings of a young physicist, Nassim Haramein and his Resonance Project, a giant black (w)hole from which the cosmos keeps constantly arising and which might contain all information for the universe to manifest. The resulting energy proved to be extremely powerful, at least to me, and I needed a steadfast and warm heart to slowly attune to its intensity. There is a great strength, but be aware!

Likewise, I now like to see the energy centers functioning as doors between the manifest world and “their” black (w)holes. This makes deep sense for the adapted Tonglen practice I had picked up from a video by Sally Kempton at the Integral Institute: Breathing in all incoherence from situations in the outside world through my heart chakra, directly into the black (w)hole at its back side, and breathing out the coherent information from the back to the situation in front of me. It seems important to me to always surrender such activities to my Unique Self, trusting its love and wisdom to exactly bring into effect the quality and quantity of energy that the situation or the person needs.

To surrender to the Unique Self — our own and that of the person we might be working with — is not new to most healers. I had to learn early that the other’s Unique Self will always have the final decision on what might be healed and what not, regardless of my intentions. In spiritual coaching, wonderful results were experienced, when I asked the client to write his wish for understanding, transformation or healing on a piece of paper as an intent addressed to her or his Unique Self and then radically let it go out of the mind; no thought activity should then distort the coherence of what may be happening by the grace of the Unique Self.

It even seems to me that the space between out- and in-breath where all activities come to a stand-still is the best moment for communion to happen. I consciously use the word “communion” rather than “communication” because I do not believe that the information is traveling from here to there; it seems much more likely that all happens in a space of non-locality, so to speak of Prior Unity (or a black (w)hole?). Local or distant healing: there is no difference under this perspective.

This for today; with more to come!

Photo Credit: Mara ~earth light~

Filed Under: Belief & Practice, Featured, Health & Medicine, Unique Self

In defense of the Qur’an (from a World Spirituality perspective)

May 29, 2012 at 2:28 pm by Joe Perez Leave a Comment

By Joe Perez

Today on the Daily Dish, Andrew Sullivan asks his readers a fair question, crudely stated:

“If there is an argument for why the Quran is so good, please bring it forward. I’ve read the Quran several times and it’s not that good. In fact, it’s conspicuously bad as a moral map, and a spiritual map. You can wander blindfolded into a Barnes & Noble, and the first book you pick off the shelf will have more wisdom than the Quran. The Quran is uniquely barren of wisdom relevant to the 21st century. It’s got a few good lines about patience and generosity, and the rest is just vilification of the infidel,” – Sam Harris. Can any readers counter?

To which I responded today:

Dear Andrew,

The Qur’an is a classic of world spiritual literature far exceeding the disposable drivel that you will pick off the shelf in the vast majority of the books at a Barnes & Noble. I would have thought you know this and could have written a defense yourself. In any event, as non-Muslims, there are many people better qualified than you or I to give a defense of the Qur’an’s merits as a guide to Islamic life and culture.

My own defense as an enthusiast of a world-centric spirituality enthusiastically inclusive of Islam would start with the observation that a classic is to be judged not by reference to its compatibility with the New Atheist mindset of a small minority of people in early 21st century America (i.e., Sam Harris and his readers), but by its enduring influence over well more than a millennium. The claim that the Qur’an is “so good” begins by noting that many millions of people have for many centuries thought it so good, and that in a world of constant cultural evolution it is hermeneutically garbage to assess their aesthetic and spiritual opinions crudely by certain contemporary standards.

You can’t throw the Bible out as barren of wisdom because it sanctions social practices we find offensive today, and you can’t judge spiritual depth simply by how frequently a text enjoins virtues such as patience and generosity. You need to judge the Qur’an more holistically and as a mystical vision, not a self-help tome spouting chicken soup platitudes nearly everyone today will agree with.

At the same time, I want to go beyond saying that the Qur’an is important historically and also claim that the Qur’an is worthy of reading as a spiritual guide for people today … if one does the difficult work of attempting to enter into the prophetic and mystical mindset of Muhammad whose visions and divine communications form the book’s essence. I take into account — as many non-fundamentalists do — Muhammad’s human fallibility and historic/cultural contexts (which leads to many statements that our own cultural worldspace rightfully holds as objectionable), and see it as an ingenious expression of a vision of a completely Integral Universe, one in which there is no secular (i.e., godless) realm, but every facet of existence is harmoniously in sync with every other facet, and the core of that essence is Love. This is a deep and timeless truth that is lost on Sam Harris.

It is also important to note that for Muhammad, every syllable, sound symbol, number, and even the shape of every Arabic letter is a meaningful representation of the Divine, in an aesthetically orderly expression … and the Qur’an’s esoteric nature is one that has inspired Sufi mystics such as Rumi and Hafiz to deep realizations of inner divinity. The Qur’an continues to inspire Muslims and non-Muslims today who are interpreting the scripture not literally (fundamentalists) or merely metaphorically and poetically (progressive religionists) but as a sacred expression of evolving cultural wisdom and mystical realization (integral thinkers) to which everyone in the world is called.

Much love,

Joe Perez

Filed Under: Arts & Culture, Belief & Practice, Featured Tagged With: andrew sullivan, islam, quran, sam harris

What does it mean to be fair?

May 29, 2012 at 10:39 am by Marc Gafni Leave a Comment

By Marc Gafni

What does it mean to be fair? In one sense being fair means to be just and good. To be fair is to be honest and have integrity.

Fairness implies appropriate weights and measure. To be fair means to give things the right weight and measure accurately.

When my sons were young the phrase that would indicate that they were the most upset or disturbed was the mixed English and Hebrew idiom, “Zeh Lo Fair.” It’s not fair. When they said that, they were appealing to a universal standard of the good and the just, which has ultimate natural authority.

The word “fair,” however has a second meaning as well. To be fair means to be beautiful.

The Queen asks the Mirror in the famous Snow White legend, Mirror on the Wall, “who is the fairest of them all.” And of course there is My Fair Lady. To be fair then is also a quality of aesthetics.

This reminds us that a lack of fairness is not merely an issue of justice but also an issue of beauty. Goodness and integrity are beautiful. To be unfair is not only a violation of justice, it is to be ugly.

All too often in the spiritual world fairness is seen as a practical obligation and an ethical value. And it is that as well. But it is so much more than that.

When someone — anyone — is treated unfairly, a kind of sordid ugliness is born into the world. It can be papered over with a thousand popular albeit numbing spiritual platitudes. It remains just as ugly.

In a forthcoming book (Radical Kabbalah, 2012) I trace the original texts in Hebrew mysticism that talk of the goddess, especially in the work of one pivotal Hasidic master. From a careful reading of that the entire Eros of the goddess is really about justice. The erotic passion of the goddess in Hassidic teaching is about the radical erotic commitment to fairness.

It is in that sense that some of the minions of the goddess in this world are sometimes called fairies. A fairy is a gentle yet sacred and seductive incarnation of the goddess. The fairy is both fair and fair. Beautiful and just. Any good devotee of Peter Pan and Tinkerbelle knows is that to believe in fairies is to give them life. If we would chant Tinkerbelle’s mantra, “I do believe in fairies I do, I do,” fairies come to life as integrity and beauty are once again united and made manifest in the land.

Filed Under: Belief & Practice, Featured, Shadow & Psyche Tagged With: fairness, goddess, goodness, kabbalah, morality

Protest as Prayer (Part 11): God’s Language

May 22, 2012 at 1:05 pm by Marc Gafni Leave a Comment

By Marc Gafni

This post is continued from Part 10.

The Zohar writes that the Shechina is called “I”. This is a particularly dramatic way of expressing the idea that the Shechina speaks through the human voice. This means that whenever a person finds their voice on the deepest level, they are finding the voice of the Shechina. The human cry to God “Please be King” is also God crying out through the same voice, “Please I am trapped — bound in chains — free me and let me be King.”

God’s voice and our voice are one. The language of God is man.

Precisely the same spiritual dynamic is at play when the human being cries out in question, in protest and even in rage against the evil and suffering that so defines our reality. The question is not against God. The question Is God. God is speaking through his creatures. The cry of question is the Shechina in exile crying out for redemption. Our question, rage and protest are our ‘participation in’ and ‘expression of’ the cry of the Shechina.

We allow God’s voice to resound in ours when we refuse to accept facile solutions to the great question of human suffering and instead cry out in protest and anger. This is the deepest meaning of the Zohar’s declaration — “the shechina which is called I.” God’s voice and the human voice merge into one. Our protest is God’s protest. Our rage is divine rage. In some mysterious sense our question is God’s question.

Now we can finally understand the hidden implication of a seemingly straightforward teaching in the Zohar.

The teaching – ‘When texts refer to God as the King — Hamelech — reference is being made to the upper three sefirot.’ At first blush this is a typical Zoharic statement which identifies each Biblical name of God with a different sefirah or set of sefirot. That is, until we remember what Luria taught us – that the word Ayeh, where, as in ‘where is God,’ also refers to the upper three SefIrot. Then we have to add our understanding, based on a close reading of mystical sources, that the cry “Hamelech’ is the merging of human and divine voice in a plea for redemption.

I would suggest that Luria’s source for the poignant cry of Ayeh as the three upper sefirot is indeed this Zoharic teaching about Hamelech. The Zohar, far from being innocent, supports our radical understanding of the Hamelech of High Holy Days liturgy as being not a statement but rather a question, a plea — God, Hamelech, where are you, Ayeh?

This means that God’s title itself, Hamelech, expresses not only certainty, but also the question. This last radical notion can be sourced in bold relief in a Zoharic teaching in Genesis. There the mystical text points out that the divine name Elohim is made up of two distinct Hebrew words — Eleh and Mee (Eloh-eem). The first three letters spell ‘eleh’ –- which means ‘this’, and the last two letters spell ‘Mee’ – which means ‘who’. ‘Eleh – this,’ indicates knowledge and clarity, while ‘Mee – who’ is a question, expressing the uncertainty rooted in the divine name Itself.

The divine dances between the Judah Moment of certainty and the Israel Moment of question…. And we dance along with it.

Photo Credit: chany14

Filed Under: Belief & Practice, Featured Tagged With: god, kabbalah, language, prayer

Exploring the Unique Self and beyond … Discovery and Gratitude (Part 1)

May 19, 2012 at 10:56 am by Hans Jecklin 3 Comments

By Hans Jecklin

When, more than 40 years ago, I undertook my first steps into the cosmos of Jungian psychology, I was soon confronted with the opposition of an “I”, the person I am in this life, and the “Self” that Carl Gustav Jung understood as both the source and fulfillment of the “I” or as the prior source of potentials for the “I” to manifest in life. Jung was aware of the danger for the “I” to identify with this “Autonomous Reality” or “Divine Archetype” and warned of ego-inflation when a person would – even unconsciously – try to occupy or control that higher reality.

This mostly intellectual differentiation of “I” and “Self” accompanied me for a long time after I started my spiritual search. The longing for the direct experience of God had not only led me beyond psychology, but also to quit the reformed (Christian) church that had been my parents’ choice. I then spent nearly twenty years of practicing Zazen, Tao Yoga and Kashmir Shivaism and went through many dis-illusions, having mis-taken the impermanent for the eternal, until finally grace took over.

Tired of the year-long search through cultures and places, I had at one point asked my Self to make no more fuss and take me over to the Siddhis: “This is like dying” it responded and faster-than-I-could-think a chorus of inner voices exclaimed “This is what we have been waiting for!”. When after a seemingly endless fall through extreme darkness, I ended in indescribable bliss, I realized that this was the unconditional love I had always been looking for and that the irresistible longing that had led me through this labyrinth of temptations is the nature of GRACE.

The natural wish to bring this deep experience into my life of a family-father and business-man soon brought me to understand that — yes! — one hand there was nothing more to search for, but that, on the other, this was just the beginning of the real exploration into spirituality, one that might never end in this life-time.

Happily enough, my longing and curiosity had also led me to a form of past-life therapy where I could experience the “Inner Self” as an undeniable reality: as the presence of eternal, all-encompassing love and wisdom within me. Within this setting, I learnt to surrender to its guidance as an ever-present source that would not only send showers of love through my cellular, emotional and mental bodies but was capable to help me understand and transform traumatic imprints that had been limiting the unfoldment of my life purpose: Unconscious imprints or conditioning, resulting from this lifetime and — depending on our understanding — from cultural heritage (familiar, ethnic, racial, human) or past lifetimes.

Having become a facilitator of this transformational work — which I do not label as strictly “past-life” anymore — I have over the years been enriched by so many experiences that I can gladly surrender to it, without any doubts about its unique power of love and wisdom. It is my supreme inner guide that not only carries the potential to manifest my unique role on this planet (or in the universe?!) but its wisdom is constantly guiding me into perfect circumstances and moments, right people, books and teachings that I need at a given moment to better respond to the challenges of the ever-evolving present.

I have learnt that I can grow into such subtle intimacy with this endless source of love and wisdom that it has become a supreme partner of dialogue It may — at my request — permeate and transform or expand my consciousness by its love and wisdom in order to more completely perform my role in the favor of humanity, our planet and the cosmos.

I know that the “Unique Self” that manifests through me is but an aspect of what I would call a “Prior Unity” of all possible potentials, ready to manifest in this or other universes. These potentials constantly arise from the “ONE undivided and eternal presence”; they must originate from before the singular event that we assume as the BigBang and — according to limited human understanding — have evolved through the play of eros and agape ever since.

I have been shown by GRACE how to knock at the door of the “ONE” that as to my present understanding might be my eternal home, but I know at the same time that NOW my role within this life will be guided by the “Unique Self” that is constantly present within and beyond me.

————

I am open for additional inspiration to enlarge my present view which — as we all know — is provisional. Please also do not hesitate to ask whenever my limited capacity of writing in English needs support.

Photo Credit: woodleywonderworks

Filed Under: Belief & Practice, Featured, Shadow & Psyche, Unique Self Tagged With: grace, jungian psychology, love, mystical experience, past lives, prior unity, self, spiritual journey, unique self

Is a politics based on World Spirituality conservative or liberal?

May 18, 2012 at 12:10 pm by Joe Perez 1 Comment

By Joe Perez

In truth, there is no division between spirituality and politics that can be found in The Way Things Are. If you believe, as I do, that there is only one True Self and that every unique individual is a completely whole and infinitely valuable Unique Self which is one and the same as that Ultimate Identity, then how can there be a separation?

In an Integral view of ethics, care and justice evolve in ever expanding reach from egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric to kosmocentric levels. Ultimately, there is a sense of self-identification with responsibility and empathy for all sentient beings in all times and places. Thus, politics — which I define broadly as the expansion of our circle of concern to ever wider levels of embrace — is deeply wedded to our sense of self and our understanding of the nature of reality.

Spirituality and politics are distinct aspects of our human existence, but not separate ways of being. In other words, every spiritual act is also a political act, and every political act is also spiritual. But if spirituality is related as Paul Tillich formulated to our “ultimate concern,” then politics relates to concerns that individuals share with other individuals in their community.

There are family and tribal/organizational politics, there are national and international politics. And as plans in recent decades for human colonization of other worlds has demonstrated, there is even a politics of the relationship between the inhabitants of Earth and everything extraterrestrial. Politics is inescapable, no matter how apolitical one’s views.

If you scan articles written about politics by members of the World Spirituality, Integral Spirituality, or Evolutionary Spirituality communities, you may come away with the impression that most people are progressive. After all, among those in the U.S. you will frequently hear praise of Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Barack Obama — all Democrats. You will hear support for remedying income inequality, addressing climate change, and legalizing same-sex marriage.

But read more closely and you will find a more complex picture.

The liberal and conservative writers divide opinions into warring camps of “the ones who are right” and “opponents.” They advocate positions based on their convictions of the values that are most important to them: for example, civic republican virtues such as self-reliance and individual responsibility for conservatives, and progressive values such as equality, protecting the vulnerable, and giving voice to the voiceless. Conservatives often invoke religion to justify their aims, and liberals invoke secular principles (while those who are religious add that they are motivated by their privately held religious or spiritual convictions).

In contrast, a more authentically Integral approach is grounded in a spiritual view that includes people of all faiths as well as secular perspectives. For instance, as we’ve noted, World Spirituality recognizes an evolution of political views from egocentric to worldcentric and beyond. The values upheld by conservatives and liberals are all embraced as valuable if they lead towards greater levels of love and compassion, and the policies they advocate are assessed on the basis of how they enhance the well-being of all sentient beings.

Thus, people embracing an authentic World Spirituality may take stances that look conservative, liberal, or radical … depending on how they discern the merits of particular choices that must be made in particular contexts at particular times and places. I’m not talking about situational ethics, but context-aware and forward-looking decision-making.

Conservative and liberal values are balanced in practical situations, but not out of a desire for warring parties to compromise irrespective of what is right or wrong. Rather, World Spirituality calls for individuals to enter into political life not with our egos, but in a We-space of Unique Selves joining together to discern how our political life together can allow everyone to be more fully who they are, the heart and mind of God. From this vantage point, petty politics is vanquished and a World Politics more noble, humanizing, and inspiring is permitted to emerge.

Filed Under: Featured, Unique Self, World Politics

Oleg Linetsky’s open letter to Ken Wilber and other integral teachers

May 11, 2012 at 10:17 am by Joe Perez 1 Comment

Oleg Linetsky

By Joe Perez

Recently the Center for World Spirituality received a welcome and intellectually stimulating letter and paper by Oleg Linetsky from the Ukraine. We’re pleased to be reprinting the letter and paper on the CWS website. These include a major rethinking of “boundaries” in integral theory and an innovative application of Unique Self.

Open letter to Ken Wilber and integral teachers

Dear Ken,

First of all I would like to express my deep love and gratitude for the light of wisdom you bring and your incomparable contribution for the good of sentient beings. Your works had a great impact on my own life, for which I am very grateful to you. On my journey through the pages of your books I experienced a true divine joy.

In this letter I would like to illuminate a side of the Integral Approach (IA) which up until now remained in the darkness, i.e. boundaries. Just like any other objects inside the quadrants, boundaries are objects that can be felt and realized, so they cannot be ignored and left outside the integral map. There are boundaries, even though also illusory for the non-dual witness.

In the natural state of non-dual oneness it becomes clear that all forms arise from the light of primordial ground, and even boundaries are a concentrated light of clarity of the nature of the mind and the final barriers on the way to the inexpressible. They are the very core of our feeling of aliveness and awakeness. They let us feel joy and suffering of life and make life meaningful. The message about boundaries (as five elements, fivefold mahabhuta or five skandhas) came to us from ancient traditions dating back thousands of years. This message is as valuable for humanity as The Great Chain of Being. There is a special method which lets us study boundaries today even in our usual waking state. Boundaries are the missing link between the absolute and the relative, emptiness and form, spirituality and religion, IA and its popularity.

Today we see that the message about boundaries actually describes the mechanism of conscious evolution, understanding of which can promote a progress of humanity towards 2nd tier and simply help us living from the deepest part of us that you and Marc Gafni call the Unique Self. Five boundaries described here are right about how to live in resonance with our Unique Self and how to resolve the problem of wise choice in everyday life using an integral approach.

I want to share my view of boundaries which arose from combining pure non-dual vision (when all boundaries are seen but seen as illusory) and integral vision. Five types of boundaries initialize the format of our evolutionary Game. Here I speak of a timeless, but not of an absolute wisdom that is also called diamond or vajra wisdom in Buddhist tradition. As you know, the state of oneness is paradoxical: everything is “I am,” but “I” remains above everything. But living in this state brings another paradox: although everything is ”I am,” “I” is not the only source of game novelty, so “I” constantly has to face challenges from a nameless source. Each of us is simultaneously the great Creator and an ordinary player on the common playground structured in a certain way.

The text below is composed as a very brief set of theses which are written in terms of IT and still have to be discussed and elaborated. I talk in detail about the message of boundaries in my book The Game. User’s guide. This message can be called “the integral approach to experiencing” as well. It is astonishing that today the wisdom of vajra is being revealed to the world again, largely through the integral approach. This letter is the expression of gratitude to you and all the pioneers of evolutionary spirituality and the integral approach. I would appreciate your feedback and hope there’s a possibility of a broad dialogue about boundaries with you and integrally oriented spiritual teachers like Sally Kempton, Marc Gafni, Terry Patten, Roger Walsh and others.

Love, light and wishes of good health,
Oleg Linetsky

20th of march 2012

Read the entire paper here.