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Greetings from Venwoude’s community days event

May 23, 2012 at 1:33 pm by 1 Comment

Venwoude SquareBy Chahat Corten

Hello dearest friends,

Sending you all love and blessing from Venwoude in Holland. This is the first blog post from the Venwoude community days in Holland. In the first couple of days, we had an ecstatic evening with chanting, a teaching on chanting and storie-telling. Ecstatic and passionate ending!

Simply said Marc Gafni has been working round the clock since he got here. First he created a new World Spirituality process which he called “Growing Up,” which was four four-hour sessions in which he guided the community a brilliant and beautiful exploration of what he called Evolutionary We Space.

The process guided people through seven levels of consciousness in which Marc would describe the level and then put us in the voice of that level of consciousness and have everyone talk in first person about they experienced god, community, love and integrity from that level of consciousness.

It was awesome to see, how Marc used this process to kind of surprise everybody into engaging and enacting all the issues on surviving, belonging, power, rules and the great topic of autonomy and community. All the hidden issues were surfaced in away that inspired everyone, made no one bad and gave great honor to each person and the whole community. It was really awesome awesome to watch. It reminded me again of what Center for World Spirituality is so precious.

We have been recording the whole process and there will be some great clips coming from this!

Tomorrow Marc will have a day of conversations (and some students in between) and then Monday-evening diving in 3 days of visioning process, with the leadership group of our community….. I have the sense that something really will shift these days…. :). It also awesome to watch Marc’s love as he makes the issues and dynamics of our community “his issues” and holds everyone with so much care and love and with firmness and direction.

I’ll have another blog post for you soon.

Sending Love,

Chahat

Filed Under: Belief & Practice, Shadow & Psyche, Unique Self Tagged With: , , , ,

Not at all a horror story: Stephen King and the virtues of patriotism

May 3, 2012 at 1:28 pm by 4 Comments
Stephen King

Stephen King

By Joe Perez

Patriotism is often taken as the virtue of virtue by conservatives (and by politicians posing as conservatives to win right-wing votes). Mitt Romney, for example, has made patriotism the centerpiece of his book No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, his campaign, and his attacks against the president Barack Obama as “apologizer-in-chief” for statements made overseas admitting to the imperfections of the United States.

On the other hand, liberals and progressives have often demonstrated an allergy to patriotism and some of the things associated negatively with it (xenophobia, ethnocentrism, simple-minded acceptance of the ruling party, foreign policy aggression, etc.). It’s almost as if patriotism is a litmus test dividing the ethnocentric from the more worldcentric views of the world.

But this isn’t quite that simple. An Integral approach does not tell us that patriotism is good or bad, more developed or less developed. It tells us to honor all the ways of relating to patriotism that contribute to the greatest good for the greatest number of people. And when talking about patriotism, it is the case that progressives who can honor patriotism often make the best case for its virtues, and conservatives who argue against the downsides of patriotism are often its best critics.

Stephen King, the world famous author of thrillers, horror, science-fiction, and other literature, is also believed to have a net worth of $400 million. Despite being “filthy rich,” as they say, he’s now written an article in The Daily Beast criticizing rich people who don’t want to pay more taxes and the ideologues who reinforce their beliefs and block legislation that would make the rich pay “their fair share” in taxes.

What’s more, in making this courageous and unusual argument, King tells us that it’s patriotism that ought to motivate the rich. He writes:

I guess some of this mad right-wing love comes from the idea that in America, anyone can become a Rich Guy if he just works hard and saves his pennies. Mitt Romney has said, in effect, “I’m rich and I don’t apologize for it.” Nobody wants you to, Mitt. What some of us want—those who aren’t blinded by a lot of bullshit persiflage thrown up to mask the idea that rich folks want to keep their damn money—is for you to acknowledge that you couldn’t have made it in America without America. That you were fortunate enough to be born in a country where upward mobility is possible (a subject upon which Barack Obama can speak with the authority of experience), but where the channels making such upward mobility possible are being increasingly clogged. That it’s not fair to ask the middle class to assume a disproportionate amount of the tax burden. Not fair? It’s un-fucking-American is what it is. I don’t want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share. That our civics classes never taught us that being American means that—sorry, kiddies—you’re on your own. That those who have received much must be obligated to pay—not to give, not to “cut a check and shut up,” in Governor Christie’s words, but to pay—in the same proportion. That’s called stepping up and not whining about it. That’s called patriotism, a word the Tea Partiers love to throw around as long as it doesn’t cost their beloved rich folks any money.

This has to happen if America is to remain strong and true to its ideals. It’s a practical necessity and a moral imperative. Last year during the Occupy movement, the conservatives who oppose tax equality saw the first real ripples of discontent. Their response was either Marie Antoinette (“Let them eat cake”) or Ebenezer Scrooge (“Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?”). Short-sighted, gentlemen. Very short-sighted. If this situation isn’t fairly addressed, last year’s protests will just be the beginning. Scrooge changed his tune after the ghosts visited him. Marie Antoinette, on the other hand, lost her head.

PatriotWhat I want to highlight here is simply King’s brilliant move of honoring patriotism and making the case that people who say they are patriotic are hypocritical for not being true to its ideals. Although his position might be debatable, it is certainly Integral in the best and widest sense of the term: open to truth wherever it can be found, taking the virtues upheld by “the enemy”  and explaining not how wrong they are, but how the virtues actually demand a more compassionate and loving stance than is being offered. Fairness, King says, is an American virtue, and Americans who are proud of their country ought to stand up for all its ideals, not cherry-pick the ones that make their bank accounts the fattest.

World Spirituality based on Integral principles is not based on dividing people up into “the people who are right” and “the enemy,” which is something that King arguably does in his article, so it isn’t the case that King speaks for a truly authentic World Spirituality. But it is definitely the case, I think, that World Spirituality does not tell people that in order to take a more worldcentric spiritual view they must lose their patriotism. Love your self, love your family, your neighbors, your city, your state, your country, your country’s allies, and ultimately your country’s enemies and the people of every nation on the planet.

Patriotism as a partial identification of the self and the state is not an evil. Like any limited sort of self-identification, it removes us from the True Self, the Ultimate Identity of which of there is truly only one. But it is part of our Unique Self as a station on the way to a wider and ultimately truer identity. Love calls us out of narrow conceptions of self into larger wholes, and it is also love that can lift our nations into larger frameworks that solve global problems.

Filed Under: Arts & Culture, Featured, World Politics Tagged With: , , , ,

Why disgust is important from a spiritual perspective

May 2, 2012 at 3:53 pm by 2 Comments

Worms

By Joe Perez

One of the most important insights of the Integral Framework is that it helps us to integrate psychological research regarding the basis for our worldviews with our spirituality. For instance, when we learn that many (but not all) liberals and many (but not all) conservatives are more likely to hold a common psychological type or structure-stage which per se is neither good nor bad, and for which they are not morally accountable, then we become less judgmental of them.

Thereupon we learn to dis-identify with exclusively liberal or conservative impulses as we locate within our own psyche the basis upon which liberals and conservatives usually hold out their warring worldviews as the only one worth belief. This change in political beliefs is associated with the arrival of a more expansive identification of the self and the world it inhabits. The self holds more of a both/and perspective rather than either/or.

Now it turns out researchers are constantly giving us greater understanding of how this all happens. Writing on Towleroad, Chris Mooney reviews the evidence to substantiate the fact that there appears to be no rational basis for the belief that children are harmed by same-sex marriage and unions. But Mooney’s main point is not political, but psychological. He argues that there is a psychological basis for differences in belief among liberals and conservatives regarding gay marriage, and it has to do with feelings of disgust:

There are a small number of Christian right researchers and intellectuals who have tried to make a scientific case against same-sex marriages and unions, by citing alleged harms to children. This stuff isn’t mainstream or scientifically accepted — witness the APA’s statements on the matter. But from the perspective of the Christian right, that doesn’t really matter. When people are looking for evidence to support their deeply held views, the science suggests that people engage in “motivated reasoning.” Their deep emotional convictions guide the retrieval of self-supporting information that they then use to argue with, to prop themselves up. It isn’t about truth, it’s about feeling that you’re right — righteous, even.

And where, in turn, do these emotions come from? Well, there’s the crux. A growing body of research shows that liberals and conservatives, on average, have different moral intuitions, impulses that bias us in different directions before we’re even consciously thinking about situations or issues. Indeed, this research suggests that liberals and conservatives even have different bodily responses to stimuli, of a sort that they cannot control. And one of the strongest areas of difference involves one’s sensitivity to the feeling of disgust.

A recent study, for instance, found that “individuals with marked involuntary physiological responses to disgusting images, such as of a man eating a large mouthful of writhing worms, are more likely to self-identify as conservative and, especially, to oppose gay marriage than are individuals with more muted physiological responses to the same images.” In other words, there’s now data to back up what we’ve always kind of known: The average conservative, much more than the average liberal, is having visceral feelings of disgust towards same-sex marriage. And then, when these conservatives try to consciously reason about the matter, they seize on any information to support or justify their deep-seated and uncontrolled response — which pushes them in the direction of believing and embracing information that appears to justify and ratify the emotional impulse.

The key takeaway, for my purposes today, is that when we look at our beliefs and those of our neighbors about important subjects of concern to us all, we are not looking at beliefs formed strictly out of either emotional or rational bases. Beliefs can also be almost instinctual, rooted in primordial feelings planted deep in the reptilian brain. In a sense, debates about gay marriage can turn into a show of force between a mature human perspective and a reptile perspective rationalized with human defense mechanisms.

Perhaps disgust is not something quickly changed, but it is a conditioned reaction that can be changed given the right amount of time, inclinations, and technique. But anyone concerned with making positive changes in the world needs to know this information and develop strategies smart enough to account for more of reality. And that is one way to characterize the Integral perspective on which World Spirituality is grounded: it is based in reality, and a commitment to continually embrace and include as much of it as possible… and perhaps, by extension, be disgusted by as little of it as possible.

Filed Under: Love, Sex & Ethics, Shadow & Psyche, World Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

What is Somatics?

April 25, 2012 at 12:39 pm by Leave a Comment

Somatics

Originally published on iEvolve on February 1, 2012.

By Mary Ann Gray Voorhies

Somatics, in the tradition of Thomas Hanna, is a powerful new discipline in the field of health care.  Somatics (also called Clinical Somatic Education) gives us the technology and the tools that enable us to learn to control our own physiology. Now, arguably for the first time in history, we have the POWER to change our own bodies in relatively rapid ways — ways that can dramatically improve our health and well being. Now, thanks to Thomas Hanna, we have at our disposal simple ways to become victorious over the negative effects of accumulated stress or trauma on the human body.

Through the use of this “new” discovery and the employment of simple movement techniques, we can harness innate powers of self-sensing, self-regulating and self-healing. Through the discovery and the utilization of these innate powers we have “set foot on a new continent as far as health care is concerned” as Hanna said. This discovery is a giant leap for humankind — a paradigm which its proponents say significantly advances our embodied understanding as well as our ability to transform our own bodies through leading edge somatic technologies.  It is evident to practitioners that the practice of somatics enables us to create fast, direct, long-lasting changes in our movements, range of motion, postural alignment, coordination, pain relief, youthful appearance, and body efficiency.

The practice of this type of somatics (which reprograms the neuromuscular system through simple movements) can place in one’s hand the wonderful key that that can powerfully and easily change the brain/body wholistically and systemically from within. The practice of this slow, gentle non-invasive movement technique relatively quickly brings the body back into balance and alignment and can naturally and effectively clear up (and prevent) up to 80 percent of all functional bodily complaints, pain and diseases.

According to Thomas Hanna, through the proper use of human consciousness (by directing our intention and attention inward) and by performing specific easy slow movements, we can easily overcome physiological limitations in heretofore unheard of ways. According to Hanna, our bodies are not THINGS or objects to be manipulated from the outside. We are somas whose minds and bodies are one. In fact, CONSCIOUSNESS is a powerful and causative force that can reshape our whole system. Somatics is based on a thorough understanding of neurophysiology and how we can harness innate powers of self-balancing, self-healing and self -ejuvenation.

In his book “Somatics,” Hanna quotes a physician who attended one of his classes, saying, “This is the missing link in health care. What I have learned (from Hanna) has as much potential for understanding the mind-body relationship as Einstein’s theory of relativity had for physics.”

How Does Somatics Work?

Many diseases have as their root cause a “disconnect” between the sensory motor cortex and the muscles or muscle groups. To put it simply, the practice of somatics restores that connection. The disconnection (which occurs because of accumulated stress or accident, i.e. physical trauma) results in chronic muscular holding patterns that can wreak havoc on one’s health and comfort. When the muscles or muscle groups become chronically contracted — what we call sensory motor amnesia — the posture is pulled out of balance, often causing pain or discomfort and can contribute to many complaints and diseases. The chronically shortened and contracted muscles can impinge on and pull on nerves, bones, organs and joints and other bodily structures causing a myriad of common and painful complaints. Among these are bursitis, some types of arthritis, bulging discs, scoliosis, knee problems, back pain, hip problems, bent over posture, fibromyalgia, avoiding surgery, impotence, some forms of high blood pressure, and much more.

Sensory motor amnesia can also be a cause of breathing problems and the root cause of many of the major health problems (such as heart disease). Sensory motor amnesia is also widely mistaken for old age. Clearly aging is a healthy process of the body which  the body can gracefully experience with enormous beauty and  dignity.  Yet so much of what we feel is inevitable and label as “old age” is really not that all. Much of the decrepitude of old age is what Hanna refers to as myth. In fact it is the result of sensory motor amnesia and can be fully overcome through somatic learning and practice.

Through the practice of somatics, the signs and symptoms —so much of  the creakiness, decrepitude, poor posture, aches, pains and discomforts of aging can now be prevented, alleviated or even at times, reversed! All of this is possible because the brain controls the body. And, we can learn to reprogram our brains! Aspects of Hanna’s leading edge work has since been confirmed by multiple studies in the nature of neuroplasticity, and ongoing research continues to contribute to the scholarship around somatics and holistic health to this day.

Sensory Motor Amnesia

A more detailed scientific explanation of sensory motor amnesia is that it is a loss or distortion of freedom of movement, of control of muscular tension, and of the body-sense. It’s a maladaptation that occurs in the brain — in the person’s internal self-sense, and in their capacity for activity.  Here’s how it happens:

Commonly, with long-term stress or injury, the memory of stress or bodily trauma displaces the memory of healthy movement and feeling. Memory takes place according to contemporary neuroscience, primarily in the sensory motor cortex which is right behind the frontal lobe of the brain and it is the part of the brain that controls all movement and motor actives.  The person forgets what free and balanced movement feels like and how to move freely. (That’s the “amnesia” part.) Involuntary muscular tension and, often, pain sets in.  The person starts limiting their life to avoid pain. So, the effects are both physiological and psychological (right and left sides of the AQAL matrix of Integral Theory).

The practice of clinical somatic education frees a person from the grip of memories of stress and/or trauma and develops healthy memory patterns in the brain of sensation and movement that, in turn, restores healthy movement, a healthier self-sense, and healthier physiological homeostasis among all systems of the body, with corresponding psychological effects. Since the brain controls the muscles the brain transmits these new memories into the muscular system and this in turn produces healthier movement patterns.

Hanna found that through the skillful employment of the pandicular response (an innate action pattern), one could easily, effectively, rapidly and powerfully:

  1. Dispel the “controlling charge” of memories of stress and trauma,
  2. Develop healthy patterns of function,
  3. Cause large, durable improvements in one’s health and self-awareness.

As a mind-body learning process, the practice of somatics develops new neural pathways in the brain (which is why it is called education). And, since the mind and body are the “inner” and “outer” sides of the same thing (“soma”), not only is the “body” affected, but the whole human being (inner and outer) is affected in very positive ways — in energy level, self-awareness and capacity for participation in life. In fact, as part of an integral life practice, somatics can assist powerfully in spiritual transformation.

Hanna says that “the human species, possessed with a brain whose genius is unlimited learning and adaptation, is a species that is genetically designed to age by GROWING. (Not by declining.) Not to expect to grow (physically and psychologically) is to misunderstand what it means to be human. Not to do so is to fail in the God-given task of living a fully human life.”

This marvelous discovery  — that we can somatically learn our way back to restored vigor, health and wholeness in a relatively easy and rapid fashion (through somatic learning) is tantamount to saying that we are now is in possession of an amazing powerful evolutionary technology and knowing, which teaches us how to  easily care for ourselves in marvelous, effective and wonderful ways. Somatics gives us valuable tools and practices that  have the power to literally transform our bodies, and shift inexorably the experience of aging, in ways that were never before thought possible before in the history of humankind. We now have the know-how and the God-given ability to become autonomous, self-determining, self-balancing and self-healing which, in turn, can lead to human freedom — and optimal health and well being. No longer do we have to be helpless victims of negative circumstances and many physically painful situations.

In his book Somatics, Hanna says, “Somatic exercises can change how we live our lives, how we believe that our bodies and minds interrelate, how powerful we think we are in controlling our lives and how responsible we should be in taking care of our total beings” …  “This new discipline in health care realizes that sensory motor amnesia describes a category of health problems that has not been recognized until now. Sensory motor amnesia (which can wreak havoc on one’s health and comfort) is a somatic pathology that requires not treatment but somatic movement education.” He goes on to say that ”we must break the bonds that limit us, so that the growth and evolution of the human species may continue toward that greater destiny which now, with increasing impatience awaits us.”

Thomas Hanna’s Vision

As put forth in many of his books, writings and teachings, Thomas Hanna was concerned not only with Clinical Somatic Education (the education of the sensory motor system) but he also had a larger concern about the somatic education of the entire human being. He was very concerned with the more philosophical and psychological aspects of somatic education. He was also concerned with alleviating psychological and emotional suffering (in the thinking mind). As a trained academic philosopher himself, he focused his study on the figures that he referred to as somatic psychologists and somatic philosophers. These included the likes of William James, Kierkegaard, and key teachers of Eastern philosophies. In this sense somatic meant for Hanna embodied  experiencing from within. For Hanna the somatic experiencing which lies at the core of his system was already to be found in nascent forms in the teaching of many of the great traditions.  For Hanna there was not split at all between body, mind and heart all of which came together to form the wholeness of the human soma. Hanna had a deep and thorough understanding of how spiritual teachings and practices can be somatically life giving and transformative.  For Hanna it is empirically clear that consciousness can be directed also to change attitudes, interpretations, negative beliefs and values and by doing so can actually change brain chemistry and reshape the system.

In Body of Life, Hanna says, “What the neurophysiological research of the last several decades tells us is that the kinds of thoughts we think determines the quality and effectiveness of our lives. It has been found the thoughts are sensory motor events and thinking can tense and activate muscles (causing contractions that can negatively affect our health).” He goes on to say that when we repeatedly think thoughts and memories of hurt, despair, anger, revenge or fear, we are physically injuring ourselves — we are engaging in self destruction. You can be sure that the weight of neurological evidence is massively on the side of those who advise us to think positive thoughts rather than negative ones when at all possible. Hanna said that what he was teaching was NOT just a manipulative technique (not just “body work” — heaven forbid), but a wholistic science of total transformation that would include all aspects of our beings and that “mind” and “body” are “one.” He called this learning process Somatology — the wholistic science of human experience and behavior.

We must “shine a light,” not only on our unconscious maladaptive memory patterns in the sensory motor parts of our brains (which keep us stuck, suffering and unfree) — but we must also “shine a light” on our unconscious maladaptive psychological and behavioral memory “habit” patterns, as well.

According to Hanna this is done by unlearning the maladaptive patterns that keep us stuck and enslaved to our own conditioning, like puppets on a string. We must enact more empowering patterns, which will liberate us to relate in a more loving and whole way  to ourselves and others. To be liberated from these patterns of “suffering” in our total beings —both physiological AND psychological — is  to be truly free. To be free in both of these ways is what Hanna called “The Fair State.”

Who Was Thomas Hanna?

Thomas Hanna ­ — born 1928, died 1990 — was a philosopher who through years of study, research and practice, developed Clinical Somatic Education, also known as Hanna Somatic Education. Hanna spent his life searching for ways for human beings to become free — intellectually, psychologically and physically.

After receiving a Ph.D. in philosophy and Divinity from the University of Chicago in 1958, Hanna began a successful teaching career at several colleges. He also had the fortune to teach, conduct research and write in Paris, Brussels and Mainz, Germany. In 1965, Hanna became chairman of the Philosophy department at the University of Florida. While there he studied neurophysiology at the medical school. His experiences in studying divinity, philosophy and the neurosciences led him to the idea that all life experiences lead to certain physical “patterns” in the body. He coined the word somatics (with an s). To him, soma did not mean only body (like the old Greek meaning) but soma means the entirety of who you and I are, wholistically. He contended that we as somas are always wanting life and wanting life more abundantly. He believed that we can, through certain somatic practices, both “bodily” and “psychologically,” we can achieve what he called the “Fair State,” — optimal mental and physical health. In other words, human beings have the capacity to FREE themselves from suffering on all levels, wholistically … body, mind, spirit.

In 1973, Hanna moved to San Francisco, where he became the director of the graduate school at the Humanistic Psychology Institute. There, he discovered Functional Integration, which was developed by Moshe Feldenkrais. Hanna founded and directed the first Feldenkrais training program in the United States in 1975.
From the previous experience, education, research and background, plus the experience he gained from his studies with Feldenkrais, Hanna developed his own very powerful way of dealing with mysterious symptoms with his clients who had seen many doctors without relief. Hanna was able to relieve and eliminate the pain and suffering quickly with his new technique. During the 1980s Hanna continued his work and research calling himself “a philosopher who works with his hands.” During that time Hanna helped many people overcome what were thought by the medical community to be hopeless cases.

In 1990, Hanna began his own training program. Tragically, though, he was only able to complete the first summer of a three-summer training period. Thankfully for us, he was able to transmit the core of his teachings and practices.  Thomas Hanna died in the summer of 1990 in a car accident.

Thomas Hanna’s Vision and Dream

Thomas Hanna was engaged not only with helping individuals, but he was passionately concerned with the collective well being of the human race  in a larger cultural and societal context. He was interested in educating people in how we as a society could learn to understand how to prevent suffering from happening in the first place. In his book Body of Life he wrote that “all somatic distortion (and suffering) reflect problems that are simultaneously problems in the person`s lifestyle. A somatic understanding of ourselves allows us to understand, to a larger degree, what is happening to us and why our THOUGHTS , our culture and our individual ways of living affect us in emotional and physiological ways. By understanding ourselves and the fuller aspects of our functioning, we are empowered to help ourselves. We can learn healthier ways to process our experience. Our total beings can be transformed by our daily experience and what we focus our consciousness on. We know now that our sensory-motor systems are just as capable of positive life-giving transformations as of negative ones. Quite apart from society and culture, we can redeem ourselves and take control of our own sensory-motor growth just as easily as we can abandon ourselves and lose control. We simply need to know how. It is a question of somatic LEARNING — learning those patterns that are more efficient and unlearning patterns that are painful and inefficient.”

Above all else, Thomas Hanna was concerned with the evolution of  the human race as a whole. And, he envisioned that a somatic understanding would lead us there. He also had a traditional yet evolutionary spiritual understanding of who we are as humans. He believed that we have a destiny to fulfill. In his book The End of Tyranny, he wrote, “As humans move toward the possession of themselves and our brotherhood, there is only one thing that stays our hand and holds us back — the uncanny inward voice that tells us that is really not possible — that the control of one’s destiny is naive, unrealistic and foolishly utopian. It is the taunting pessimistic voice that says — you will fail — you will fail.” He goes on to say that we CAN transform the world by transforming ourselves into “free humans” (though  inner experiential somatic education — body, mind, spirit.)

In the conclusion of The End of Tyranny, Thomas Hanna anticipates the potential emergence of a World Spirituality rooted in love. He writes:

“Our religious traditions are correct, mankind does stand in need of forgiveness, and we need to forgive one another. The prophetic injunction to love one another always seemed to be a promised destiny and a forceful necessity. We must LOVE or DIE! Learning to love other human beings and achieving the happiness of creating positive community bonds with others is a crucial need of us all. Only human LOVE and the realization that we are all ‘one’ can save us from ourselves (our ego driven madness) and heal our social fragmentation. We can create conditions that can create superior human beings.”

So, in my opinion, Thomas Hanna would be delighted and thrilled that his work has become a part of World Spirituality because his mission is our mission, as well — nothing less than the positive evolution of consciousness of the human race. In his book Bodies in Revolt, written in the seventies, Hanna talks about the Evolution Revolution. It the energy of this evolution revolution which drew me to support and participate in the Center for World Spirituality.


Filed Under: Belief & Practice, Featured, Health & Medicine, Shadow & Psyche Tagged With: , , , ,

Joe Perez on the evolution of attitudes towards gays and lesbians

April 21, 2012 at 4:39 pm by Leave a Comment

Lesbian Wedding

“Given enough time, modernity is enough to show traditional churches that homosexuality is not an illness or disorder, and ought to be tolerated. Given enough time, postmodernism is enough to show modernist churches that they need to accept gays, lesbians, and other sexual and gender minorities for the diversity they bring. Given enough time, an integral wave of consciousness — a World Spirituality — will be enough to show traditional churches that they have held an honorable role by keeping the flame burning which knows the inner divinity of gays and lesbians; it will be enough to show modernist churches and secular organizations the ways in which gay/straight differences in perspective offer many fruitful new avenues for investigation of  the interior life of all sentient beings; it will be enough to show postmodern churches, spirituality-based, and mission-driven organizations the best ways to bring homophiles and heterophiles and all people within whom gender/sexual/energetic polarities exist into a constructive theology of interrelationship, marriage, and social ethics. All this is within our reach in the stratums of pre-modern, modern, and post-modern life-worlds in which we dwell, but it most definitely requires a World Spirituality.” — Joe Perez

Recently on this blog: Towards a World Spirituality theology of gay marriage

Photo Credit: anna and liz

Filed Under: Love, Sex & Ethics, Quotes Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Loss of religion linked to worrisome social trends

April 13, 2012 at 9:48 am by Leave a Comment

Empty Church

By Joe Perez

As religion declines in the U.S. and Europe, weighty issues arise about our collective human future. In “Protestant Ethic 2.0,” Joel Kotkin, executive editor of NewGeography.com, describes key aspects of the sociological significance of religiosity.

First, without a healthy religious base to a society, economic growth as we have known it may not be possible. He writes:

[I]n reality, the religious connection with economic growth may be still far more important than is commonly supposed.

Many in the pundit class identify religion as something of a regressive tendency, embraced by the less enlightened, the less skilled, intelligent and educated. Yet some scholars, such as Charles Murray, point out that religious affiliation is weakening most not among the middle and upper classes but among the poorer and less educated who traditionally looked to churches for succor and moral instruction. Secularism may have not hurt the uber-rich or the academic overclass so far, but it appears to have helped expand our lumpenproleteriat.

Some might be surprised to learn that religious affiliation grows with education levels. A new University of Nebraska study finds that with each additional year of education, the odds of attending religious services increased by 15%. The educated, the study found, may not be eschewing religion, as social science has long maintained, even if their spiritual views tend to be less narrow, and less overtly tied to politics, than among the less schooled.

The decline of religion may also be associated with losing benefits of cohesive groups, which can encourage communal values, charity, and a strong value on education. Joel writes:

Overall the most cohesive religious groups — such as Mormons and Jews — still outperform their religious counterparts both in educational achievement and income. Both Jews and Mormons focus on helping their co-religionists, providing a leg up on those who depend solely on the charity of others or the state. In countries with a substantial historical Protestant influence such as Germany, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands continue to outperform economic the heavily Catholic nations like Italy, Ireland and Spain, according to a recent European study. The difference, they speculate, may be in Protestant traditions of self-help, frugality and emphasis on education. None of this, of course, would have been surprising to Max Weber.

Religious people also tend to live longer and suffer less disabilities with old age, as author Murray notes. Researchers at Harvard, looking at dozens of countries over the past 40 years, demonstrated that religion reinforces the patterns of personal virtue, social trust and willingness to defer gratification long associated with business success.

Thirdly, Kotkin targets the connection between lower religiosity and the rise of individualistic materialism and the decline of an ethos of personal responsibility.

But perhaps the most important difference over time may be the impact of religion on family formation, with weighty fiscal implications. In virtually every part of the world, religious people tend to have more children than those who are unaffiliated. In Europe, this often means Islamic families as opposed to increasingly post-Christian natives. Decline in religious affiliation — not just Christian but also Buddhist and Confucian — seems to correlate with the perilously low birthrates in both Europe and many East Asian countries.

Singapore-based pastor Andrew Ong sees a direct connection between low birthrates and weakened religious ties in advanced Asian countries. As religious ideas about the primacy of family fade, including those rooted in Confucianism, they are generally supplanted by more materialist, individualistic values. “People don’t value family like they used to,” he suggests. “The values are not there. The old values suggested that you grow up. The media today encourages people not to grow up and take responsibility. They don’t want to stop being cool. When you have kids, you usually are less cool.”

It is going ahead of the evidence to suggest that the decline of religion will result in a destruction of personal ethics, cohesive families, collective cultures which value education, and economic vitality. But it is worth taking note of worrisome trends and asking: what role will the rise of World Spirituality play in ameliorating rather than compounding the potential pitfalls of secularism?

Also, how can leaders today, foreseeing the long-term destructive potential of a fully secular society, advance a World Spirituality that can attract a new generation of young people and families?

Many secular humanists and folks who check “none of the above” on surveys of religiosity are attracted to World Spirituality when they are presented with its affirmative, hopeful, and value-driven message. They see the embrace of the best wisdom of pre-modern, modern, and post-modern systems of knowing as a way of reclaiming what they lose by leaving their religion, and find in new enlightenment teachings a path forward to creating a world with a rejuvenated spirit.

Photo Credit: David Boyle

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Marc Gafni and Joe Perez in Dialogue (II): Where is the World Spirituality Movement at Today?

April 12, 2012 at 7:42 pm by Leave a Comment

CWS Board

By Joe Perez

This is the second post in a series on Awake, Alive & Aware featuring short dialogues with some of the leaders of the World Spirituality movement. Today there is a transcript of a telephone call with Marc Gafni, Director of the Center for World Spirituality.

Continued from Part 1: “Marc Gafni and Joe Perez in Dialogue: What is World Spirituality?”

Joe: Where is the World Spirituality movement today?

Marc: The World Spirituality movement has many expressions in the world. There are many people practicing World Spirituality not in an organized way, not in a theoretically consistent way, often not in a dharmically completely sound way, but they have this core intuition and they are grasping and looking for ways to express it. At some point, we are looking to develop means to allow this grassroots world movement expression, and the book you’re working on, The Rise of World Spirituality, I hope will at least in part, the way you described it to me which sounds really exciting, you’ll be able to point to this, that it’s already happening.

The leading institution in the movement is the Center for World Spirituality. We just finished our second annual board meeting. I want to give you a sense of where we are because it’s really exciting. We’ve decided that our mission, our mantle, is to shift something in the source code of consciousness. The evolution of the source code of consciousness is our core mission statement. Some of our board members, Tom Goddard and Kathleen Brownback, are heading a group to work on this. It’s a fantastic board of people from around the world.

What we’ve done is identify what we’re going to do. We identified two things at the meeting. One, what is the theoretical framework of World Sprituality? And two, what are the action items? The theoretical framework is different, so I’ll talk about the action items.

Joe: So by “action items,” just so my readers are clear, you’re talking about this organization, called the Center for World Spirituality, you’re talking about what this organization has in store for the near future. Is that right?

Marc: That’s correct. The Center is one I founded a few years ago with Mariana Caplan and Sally Kempton, and Ken Wilber was involved as a very important member on the Council, and any number of fantastic leaders and teachers from around the world. We’re partnering with our friends who have a Global Spirituality website and we will be integrating that into the Center in a very deep way.

The center is both a lower-left and lower-right expression, actually an all-four-quadrant expression now that I think about it, whose prime purpose is to articulate the dharma of a World Spirituality and to evolve the dharma of a World Spirituality. That’s the job of the Center. The job of World Spirituality itself is to evolve the source code of consciousness.

What are the methods for doing this mission? We’re focusing on three major areas.

First, the Center has decided to focus on acting as a think tank / publishing concern. We actually chartered approximately 12 – 15 major projects of different natures.

Joe: I’m glad you were able to keep track of them. There were about 25 different people in attendance, and just about all of them committed to some sort of project or other key way of supporting World Spirituality. That’s more than I expected. I heard that too from some of the other board members, the newer ones who didn’t know quite what to expect. Once we engaged with the rest of the board, we got a feel for the caliber of the people in attendance, our expectations were exceeded, and we ended up feeling more optimistic than when we sat in our first meeting.

Marc: That’s great feedback to receive. Even though I knew going into the meeting all of the different pieces, but just hearing all the pieces spoken aloud into the room, hearing the interaction of the board community. Of the 20 projects, if the top 10 happen, we’re in really good shape. The top 10 include a book on The Rise of World Spirituality, a collection of essays on the Enlightenment of Fullness. There will be a major book on World Spirituality based on Integral Principles with Ken Wilber. There will be a book on shadow work – Lighten Up. There will be a World Spirituality practice book. Without going down the entire list, there’s … people like yourself, to Kathy Brownback, to Ken Wilber, to Warren Farrell, Wyatt Woodsmall, Helen, Tom, Mariana. And there were some board members who weren’t there who all have fantastic contributions to make. So we’re very excited about the think tank / publishing dimension.

The second dimension is training. We’re working on creating a new series of trainings which are rooted in World Spirituality and Unique Self technology.

And third we are calling “community lab.” Instead of creating one big World Spirituality Center or Church, there will be smaller circles meeting around the world, circles of people. That’s a big deal, that’s exciting, that’s good. At least at first, those circles will be circles of study – whether in Holland at Venwoude or Shalom Mountain or San Francisco, perhaps in Seattle something will emerge.

And finally a very strong Web presence which we are going to be working on in the next six months. I hope by six months from now the Web presence will reflect this vision of World Spirituality, its five-part theoretical framework – which we won’t get into on this phone call – but which is a beautiful, modular way of understanding the core principles, which you can understand on a popular level and a deep mystical level, will appear as the core of the website as the core module of all the books. It’s a lot.

Joe: We’re running out of time today. On this topic, we could drill into detail on all of these and talk much longer, so we’ll need to look for updates on the CWS website, watching for news as it develops. I know there’s a lot of information coming in the future. But if somebody wants to get started today practicing World Spirituality in Toledo, Ohio, or the jungles of the Amazon, what are they to do?

Marc: We’re not completely yet prepared to fully receive that question, meaning, the framework is not yet completely articulated. I would say, go to the website, go to the teaching tab – “Core Teachings” – and they’ll be able to read the basic principles of World Spirituality, which will give someone a framework for practice which they can immediately implement.

Joe: What about the book Unique Self which we’re all waiting for?

Marc: I don’t have a final word. But the last word I have as of a few days ago is that it’s supposed to come out in mid-June or July. The latest it would come out is the fall. We’ve just completed the transactional pieces of that book. We’re very excited that Your Unique Self: the Democratization of Enlightenment, will be out by the summer. And there’s already some key pieces on the Web. On our website, there’s a keynote address I gave at J.F.K. on Unique Self, and there’s the Journal of Integral Theory & Practice, Vol. 6, 1, on Unique Self. There’s a core article there, a 40 or 50 page article there, which gives you the core of the teaching, which is already available and will be fully fleshed out over the book. We hope over the next 18 months there will be about 5 volumes coming out covering these dimensions even as we’re writing the next stage for the library.

Joe: Thank you for your time today. I’m excited to be working with you on this movement.

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Marc Gafni and Joe Perez in Dialogue (I): What is World Spirituality?

April 12, 2012 at 7:36 pm by Leave a Comment

Symphony

By Joe Perez

Spirit’s Next Move’s first dialogue with luminaries, change agents, and leaders in the world Spirituality movement is with Marc Gafni, Director of the Center for World Spirituality.

Joe: Let’s limit our dialogue today to about 10 minutes so it won’t overwhelm readers of my blog. I sent you a few questions earlier to get us started. With that in mind, let’s begin by talking about your vision of World Spirituality and go from there.

Marc: Fantastic. It’s great to be with you on the phone, as always. You sent me three different questions: What is World Spirituality? Is World Spiritualilty a new religion? And what’s the difference between World Spirituality and the interfaith movement?  Those are awesome questions and I understand why you limited it to 10 minutes; we could easily talk for eight hours on just these three questions.

World Spirituality is not a new religion. A new world religion is exactly what we don’t need.

Particularly in the World Spirituality framework where Unique Self is a key lodestone, we have a realization, not only a belief, but a realization, that every human being has a Unique Self. And that every religion has a Unique Self. Every great system of knowing, pre-modern, modern, and post-modern, is a unique epistemological expression of Knowing.

We use a number of images to describe this. One is a symphony in which each instrument is playing its own music, recognizing that the essence is not the instrument but the music, but the uniqueness of the instrument is irreducible and each reveals a different dimension of the music. In that sense, the great systems of knowing in the world are music. Each great system of knowing is approaching the knowing asking different questions, using different methodologies, enacting different inquiries, and those different instruments produce different faces, dimensions, notes in the music.

Joe: Are you suggesting, Marc, that each of the world religions is like a musical instrument or a band, and somehow World Spirituality steps into play like an orchestra conductor might?

Marc: Exactly. That’s right. … Each system of knowing is a unique instrument in the symphony of gnosis. The job of World Spirituality is to act precisely as the conductor and help these different instruments find their right tone, find their right relationship to the other instruments, and ensure that each instrument is listening to the others, so that what emerges is not noise but music. That’s what World Spirituality is. Not heaps, but wholes. Not noise, but music. It’s a grand symphony with enormous texture and depth in which the integrity of every instrument is honored and yet a larger whole emerges from it.

Joe: That’s fine, Marc, but you know there are people who don’t want that. They would say that if every religion is like an instrument, then each individual is his or her own symphony conductor and they don’t want some holistic framework or universalizing narrative to enter the scene which can become another competing instrument. They want every individual to be her or his own orchestra conductor, not to look to some outside authority. How would you respond to that?

Marc: That is green [post-modern] thinking, classical green thinking. Green thinking says there is no canon, no authority, and so everyone does it in their own way and they’re all equal. That’s not true. It’s impossible for even the wisest person to swallow whole all the great systems of knowing, and be able to independently navigate them, find the right weight of each one, etc We need an operating system. An elegant operating system to allow us to get what we need from each, establish right relationship, etc.

Now that doesn’t mean that the operating system is the one eternal authoritative voice. It’s an evolving operating system. You could have open source code. People could participate, share their insights, and more deeply evolving what World Spirituality is. But at its core, it’s a “framework/symphony” in which the job of World Spirituality is to create an ability for people to see the patterns that connect the dots. An individual is practically and epistemologically usually unable to do. It’s an evolving system.

One last point. To take issue with one word you said: you referred to the world religions. As you know, when we talk about great systems of knowing, we aren’t just talking about world religions. They are almost exclusively pre-modern, with exceptions for Mormonism and a couple of small exceptions. We are talking about a framework which includes modern: for example, science and psychology, which come out of modernity; and post-modernity, which is this deep understanding that context is essential, the crucial recognition of development and finally the great insight that everything arises and develops within an evolutionary context.

We want to take all the great systems of knowing, give them all an appropriate place at the table, and then show the patterns that connect. What are the deeper structural understandings that will allow us to live in a context of meaning? That’s what World Spirituality is. It’s to create a shared framework of meaning in which an individual can realize the full gorgeousness of their Unique Self, in which every great system of knowing can be honored, reverentially received … and evolved.

Joe: I think you’ve begun to answer my question about interfaith. At least one way that World Spirituality differs from the interfaith movement is that interfaith leaves out of the picture science and post-modernity. They’re interested in inter-religious dialogue. What are some of the other distinctions?

Marc: That’s an important distinction. That’s distinction one. First off, interfaith has made an important contribution. We bow to it. It’s critical and necessary.

There are two versions of interfaith: version one — what I call “soft interfaith” — says, “Hey we’ve been killing each other. We need to respect each other. That’s not helpful. We need to respect that we’re all doing our best, we have good intentions, we are all engaged in spirit in some sense, so let’s respect each other and love each other if possible. And so we need dialogue.” Clearly important.

A second, what I would call a “hard interfaith” says that the depth structures are identical, even though the rituals and other surface structures may be different. The same core practices and core understandings are shared. Another name that has been given for what I’m calling hard interfaith is perennial philosophy.

Perennial philosophy is a version of hard interfaith. World spirituality transcends and includes. It negates the problematic elements of each one of these, to borrow Hegel’s phrase, including both soft interfaith and hard interfaith. In that, clearly we need to respect each other.

Clearly there are shared depth sstructures. But the next step is to recognize that actually there are evolving depth structures. The cosmos is evolving and everything is evolving at the same time. Everyone is tetra-evolving. All four quadrants of reality. Everything Spirit is evolving. We don’t want to reify what we know today and freeze it. We wan to recognize that in a thousand years from now these depth structures will have evolved.

World Spirituality is perennial philosophy in an evolutionary context.

Joe: We’re out of time. I think that’s going to have to be the end of part 1 of our conversation. Let’s continue next with a discussion of where we are at today in the development of World Spirituality as a distinct movement.

Note: Originally published on February 22, 2012, on Joe Perez’s Awake, Alive & Aware.

Photo Credit: haglundc (Flickr)

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On the possibility and necessity of a World Spirituality

April 11, 2012 at 1:18 am by Leave a Comment

By Marc Gafni

For the first time in the history of planet Earth, in the history of consciousness, a World Spirituality is utterly possible and utterly necessary.

A World Spirituality is one that trance-ends. It ends the trance of any particular religion or nationality. It weaves together the best medicines of every great system of knowing into a larger whole.

It’s a World Spirituality which tells us that what unites us is far greater than that which divides us. We understand and live the common truths and calls and obligations that are laid out by all the great systems of spirit.

And we also experience and benefit from the unique gifts of the systems of spirit woven together in a large great tapestry, and all people of earth can find themselves as citizens of a World Spirituality. That is a possibility that exists today in a way that never did before in the history of planet Earth.

This vision is an utter necessity today and this vision of a World Spirituality is only possible today and was never possible in any other time in the history of the planet.

Why? Because the new life conditions, the world’s challenges, need a world response. The beginning of that response is a World Spirituality.

So the evolution of a World Spirituality is Spirit’s next move… the beginning of creating a genuine felt sense of wholeness of all the peoples of the Earth, a sense of the interconnectivity of the All with the All which can only be led by a shift in consciousness to a World Spirituality which is an utter necessity today.

The second reason why this necessity is a possibility: for the first time in the history of the world, there’s a huge piece of good news. There are for the first time hundreds of millions of people who are living at worldcentric consciousness.

Egocentric consciousness means my caring and my concern and my love is for me and the people who give me security in the world. Me. My immediate, my family. The people around me, the people I work with.

A higher level of consciousness is ethnocentric consciousness. Ethnocentric means I care not only about my immediate people, I care about my tribe, my nation.

A higher evolution is worldcentric consciousness. My circle of caring and concern expands to include all the peoples of the Earth.

That’s amazing! That leap of consciousness from ethnocentric to worldcentric has never happened before at this level, where there is a public culture with hundreds of millions of people who are holding a worldcentric consciousness.

And it is that group that will be the formative group in the creation of a World Spirituality. That’s the second factor. It makes a World Spirituality necessary and utterly possible today.

Third, for the first time, the best and greatest teachings of all the great systems of spirit, every great religion, the sciences, physics and psychology. Every great religion, its medicine, it’s available online, in books, libraries, and through living teachers.

You have living teachers and books today which are being disseminated way beyond the boundaries of a particular system. Buddhist systems don’t only teach Buddhists in Nepal or China but all over the world. Jewish teachers teach all over the world. Christian teachers teach all over the world, but not in the way of coersive missionizing, but in a beautful new way of opening up the systems of knowing to all the people on Earth.

That’s a new reality that never existed before in the history of planet Earth.

All three of these factors come together to yield the necessary evolutionary emergent, a World Spirituality … which is Spirit’s next move.

It’s what we need to evolve into the next generation, to evolve Spirit, to create joy, to create sustainability, to create responsibility, to create depth and meaning for the future generations of this world.

The most urgent need we have today is to participate in the gathering of all of us who want to participate in this great evolutionary unfolding. It’s already happening all over the world.

World Spirituality is breaking out all over the world. When? Right now. Who? We are. All of us need to participate. If we feel we are beyond the religions or if we are dual citizens. The time is now. Welcome to this great necessity and the great privilege of our generation.

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