Integral Post Metaphysics (May 27 2007) part 4

3:20 - the twenty tenets are just tendencies; try to hold this stuff loosely

7:30 - a new holon includes eros

7:50 - a new holon has prehension, prehends its preceding moment

8:58 - including is the past determining a holon's present configuration; transcending is introducing novelty / creativity

18:01 - the horizon (the end limit) for vertical development (structures) is supermind (still sounds goofy to me), the horizon for horizontal development (states) is big mind

32:47 - when you understand the difference between states and structures, a lot of the traditions' ideas about ascending and descending paths become much more coherent

36:38 - higher structures eventually include states

46:04 - cultures survive adding a higher stage only if they make the previous stage a workable, functional station of life

Integral Post Metaphysics (May 27 2007) part 3

3:44 - meditation can cement you at a certain level

3:51 - if the quadrants are working with you, meditation can help you develop

8:38 - the formless infinite ground, Nirguna Brahman, subsists before humans, but does not exist until humans

45:19 - the theological conundrum: God is all-knowing, all-present and all-good; you can have two of those

53:52 - involutionary givens: what are the minimum requirements needed?

54:26 - 1. eros

56:23 - 2. logos

57:11 - 3. spacetime cosmos

58:42 - when you get an explanation of what those three are, that will vary according to altitude

Integral Post Metaphysics (May 27 2007) part 2

0:10 - enlightenment is not the result of any action (that would make realization temporal)

0:39 - what's happening is you're going through each state one by one, exhaustively seeing that it's not there

4:26 - progression is making each state an object

4:38 - if you can see it, it's not your real self

20:40 - is what's arising dependent on the altitude?

20:57 - the traditions described nondual as the union of emptiness and form, but keep in mind that form is evolving

21:25 - you can have state enlightenment, and only be one with all form up to a certain level

21:37 - if the higher structures haven't arisen in your awareness, you can't be one with them

22:38 - so if we're having a discussion about enlightenment, be sure to determine whether it's vertical enlightenment or horizontal enlightenment

57:33 - nonduality is the union of freedom and fullness

Integral Post Metaphysics (May 27 2007) part 1

1:53 - the nine yanas, the nine vehicles in Tibetan Buddhism, the stages of meditative development are states of consciousness

2:11 - which is horizontal development

2:15 - vertical development is structures of consciousness

19:57 - social holons are individual holons plus their exchanged artefacts

20:13 - institutions don't have agency; institutions are the pathways that human agency follows

21:09 - socio-cultural holons don't have a dominant monad

24:24 - green has a tendency to not allow development or discussion of growth, because that implies that something is better than something else

34:33 - the ten paramitas are lines

36:56 - there are state-stages of meditation

37:25 - there's a difference between structures of consciousness and states of consciousness

37:30 - and thus, a difference between structure-stages (Loevinger) and state-stages (Underhill, ten ox herding pictures, St. John of the Cross, St. Theresa's seven mansions, etc.)

38:19 - They are both developmental, but are not the same kind of stages

38:31 - meditation and contemplative stages are transpersonal stages (so far so good)

38:39 - modern psychology deals with pre-personal and personal stages (here it comes)

38:44 - so let's stick the transpersonal stages on top! (wrong!)

40:13 - meditation allows you to push wakefulness from the waking state into subtle, causal and nondual (state-stages)

42:22 - what happens in meditation is you wake up; that means literally you push wakefulness into waking, dreaming and deep sleep

44:35 - what's wrong with the statement "you have to be somebody before you can be nobody"?

44:56 - if that were true, then only people at an extremely high level of development could have spiritual experiences (that's obviously wrong)

47:58 - developing through state-stages can help accelerate development through structure-stages

49:08 - in structural development, that statement is of course correct, you have to form an egoic structure before you can transcend it (the same as having to develop rationality first to get to post-rational, etc.)

49:44 - states of consciousness are ever-present; structures aren't ever-present

57:10 - why is enlightenment important?

58:18 - Buddha and Christ didn't have Buddhism and Christianity in mind

58:27 - perfectly realized human being is an oxymoron

58:52 - good definition of awakening: one's awakening to the realization of how ignorant one truly is (awakening as the beginning of spiritual maturity, not the end)

Appendix 1 (May 12 2007) part 3

Appendix 1 (May 12 2007) part 3

Appendix 1 (May 12 2007) part 2

2:16 - contextualization, green postmodernism sounds like Maha Ati (but there's no injunction)

11:55 - generally, ontology is the study of being

12:26 - epistemology is the study of knowing

12:50 - metaphysics is the study of reality

18:33 - while in I Am-ness, there's not even a sense of I-ness; there's no first or second or third person; there's just everything arising and self-cognizing

18:43 - as soon as there's a boundary in your own self, that indicates others (God, perhaps, or others like yourself)

19:16 - Nirvikalpa - without form; Savikalpa - with form

19:26 - Nirguna Brahman is Brahman without qualities and can only be known through the injunctions to awaken the direct experience of it

20:57 - coming out of an experience of oneness, then experiencing a boundary (and thus, others) can be overwhelming

24:21 - agape is the love that embraces

24:24 - you get to nonduality by having the union of emptiness and form; when emptiness and form are one, that's nonduality

25:04 - could emptiness emerge?

26:08 - Nirguna Brahman has no qualities; Saguna Brahman has qualities

26:43 - Saguna Brahman is evolving; emptiness isn't

26:52 - Whitehead divides Godhead into primordial nature and consequent nature

27:02 - primordial nature is Sine qua non, necessary qualities

27:29 - consequent nature is the sum total of the evolving world

27:42 - Saguna Brahman has an agape, a reaching down to embrace everything that has emerged; and has an eros, a reaching forward to its higher unions

33:29 - anything you say about emptiness will have an opposite; therefore, incorrect

34:40 - every holon has four drives, two vertical and two horizontal

34:49 - the drive upwards toward greater wholeness is eros

34:55 - the drive downward that embraces what is already in existence is agape

35:06 - the two horizontal drives are agency and communion, the drive to be whole and autonomous, and the drive to be a part of something, to be in relationship

35:33 - if you're just talking about the relative realm, you can say that nonduality is the union of eros and agape, agency and communion

55:48 - I, we, it and its co-emerge

Appendix 1 (May 12 2007) part 1

8:33 - there's something more than the everyday, physical, manifest world of sin, separation, samsara

8:51 - there are also states of freedom, liberation, transcendence, salvation

9:02 - but you must give reasons / explanations in support of that position

9:24 - and the reasons / explanations didn't hold

9:34 - because the framework was outmoded

9:46 - transpersonal theorists / spiritual people / proponents of the great chain need to pass the validity claims of modernity and postmodernity

9:49 - the validity claim for modernity is evidence, the validity claim for postmodernity is contextualization

10:34 - we can have a metaphysics that works in modern and postmodern contexts

14:12 - the physical, material, gross world is not the lowest level of the great chain, it's the exterior manifestation of all levels

47:06 - first there is undifferentiated, ineffable unity

47:18 - unity breaks into polarity

48:05 - Spinoza defines substance as an escape from modal, finite, relative thinking to the ineffable unity

48:38 - Ken thinks the absolute ultimate has a different relationship to the relative

48:50 - the ultimate does not give rise to the relative

49:01 - the problem is when we try to philosophize about the absolute without doing the injunctions that give rise to the absolute

49:20 Spinoza identifies substance as having a thousand qualities, including thought and extension; Nagarjuna says that the absolute is not thought or extension or both or neither and cannot be discussed at all (Ken misspoke and said Spinoza when he meant Nagarjuna)

49:43 - the absolute is what you experience when you do an injunction that will allow you to experience the deep formless dream state

50:04 - you can only define the absolute given the injunctions that will give you a realization of Godhead

50:14 - so Spinoza's problem is he is trying to get at the absolute through thought without an injunctive program that will yield realization of the absolute

50:55 - metaphysics is (here defined as) assertion without evidence

51:56 - the only way to arrive at nondual is through emptiness (and there must be an injunction to have that experience)

52:11 - that's emptiness united with form; if you don't have the emptiness, then you don't have nonduality (there can't be a union of emptiness and form because you didn't have emptiness to start with)

53:15 - you can always intuit emptiness, the everpresent ground (the left hand quadrants and the right hand quadrants are inseparable)

54:50 - the emptiness described in the traditions is the witness remaining conscious through all states through all 24 hours

55:45 - no injunction, no nonduality

55:59 - you can intuit it, though

Integral Life Practice (Apr 29 2007) part 4

1:02 - enlightenment is not an experience

3:40 - does artificially induced states of consciousness detract from the benefits of a "pure" meditation practice? do binaural beats programs have the same or additional transformative potentials as regular meditation?

4:10 - there will always be some who just are never going to be able to meditate

4:32 - theta (UR) correlates with the subtle level (UL)

5:19 - there's a danger of developing a dependence on binaural beats programs, locking you in to their experience

9:11 - these programs are not completely valueless, but very limited

20:33 - consciousness is the ground from which all manifest existence arises

21:32 - why is there something rather than nothing? - Schelling

22:03 - it's no fun having dinner alone

22:23 - creation is a way to play

24:55 - the Kadampas prayed for troubles and obstacles, not so that they could suffer, but so that they could have endurance and tolerance for pain, and dissolve the self-other boundary

25:29 - if you retract from the point of exhaustion, you're missing the chance for transformation

31:12 - realization restores humor

Integral Life Practice (Apr 29 2007) part 3

0:05 - the world is illusory; God alone is real; God is the world

7:54 - a common interpretation of the crucifixion; the small self or ego dies, and the true self or Christ consciousness is resurrected

8:49 - Buddhism may have a lighter touch about it, but the concept of the great death is still firmly stressed

10:31 - find your flaw and that's where your true glory lies

10:58 - where your aversions are is where your shadows are

11:10 - Adler asked clients what would they do if they were well? their answers reveal what they are trying to avoid

14:41 - the better our ILP, the likelier we will retain the awakening

14:52 - self power or other power? answer: self power up to a point, then other power

24:16 - is meditation escapist or time taken away from activism?

28:51 - if you want to improve the world, help move the society up the levels

29:54 - to get a high level of society, you have to get the people up to a high moral stage

29:59 - meditation is the best tool to get people to advance up the levels

30:43 - so if you want to improve the world, meditate and promote meditation

33:41 - is depth or breadth better?

34:10 - depth (until you can stabilize nondual awareness, Christ consciousness, etc.)

35:09 - consciousness is not a thing, not something to feel, not a substance, not a process, not an energy, not subjectivity, not a sense of self

35:20 - consciousness is the opening, the space in which all phenomena arise

35:41 - there is the self space, the self that I am, and there is the other space, everything I perceive; both arise in the same space

35:57 - when that ever-present awareness is stabilized, then you can begin to extend that

39:01 - let's look at Ken's practice

45:46 - Vajrayana is complete Buddhism, Zen is essential Buddhism

46:05 - Vajrayana covers the Nirmanakaya, the Sambhogakaya, the Dharmakaya, the Svabhavikakaya

46:12 - Zen is just the Dharmakaya (and the others are just illusion)

48:10 - briefly: Nirmanakaya - the body realms; Sambhogakaya - the mental realms; Dharmakaya - the spiritual realms; Svabhavikakaya - integrating all of them

52:12 - an ILP provides you with a better ground for awakening and realization experiences, and helps you hold on to them and handle them when they do happen

Integral Life Practice (Apr 29 2007) part 2

4:54 - four definitions of spiritual: the highest level of any line, a line itself, a state, a type

22:10 - does all this just perpetuate the search for spirit, and fortify the ego's attempts to master and control reality? Doesn't awakening happen accidentally, in spite of all our self-improvement projects?

23:53 - the more you search for God, the more you reinforce the notion that God is not present

24:16 - a Zen saying: If there is any seeking, then the result of that seeking is a dharma born dead; if there is no searching, one remains an ignoramus

25:21 - you have to seek; at some point the seeking reveals the futility of the search

26:06 - seeking can go on because there is ever-present a consciousness of seeking

26:33 - a fool who persists in his folly will become wise, says Blake; meditation speeds up the folly

Integral Life Practice (Apr 29 2007) part 1

2:17 - translation is movement on a level; transformation is movement between levels

2:52 - 99% of life is translation

23:00 - the deep structures of a person's values and morals are determined by the altitude of their lines

54:00 - three definitions of nature; the sum total of everything (all quadrants), everything in the sensorimotor world (two right hand quadrants), and everything non-human

The Conveyor Belt (Apr 14 2007) part 4

7:34 - variety of definitions of spirituality

7:56 - the contemplative tradition doesn't accept dogma, it accepts an individual's experience

9:09 - God the father, God the son and God the Holy Spirit is 1st, 2nd and 3rd person in the contemplative Christian tradition

10:16 - mysticism is a technology of interior development

13:55 - monotheistic traditions fight state and structure growth

22:06 - science was open to experimental / contemplative religion

The Conveyor Belt (Apr 14 2007) part 3

3:46 - compassion is wishing to remove others' suffering; love is wishing to positively embrace them

The Conveyor Belt (Apr 14 2007) part 2

3:29 - second tier seems to naturally acquire a spiritual awareness, a spirituality of consciousness, compassion, transcendence, timeless truths, etc.

20:08 - the knowledge quest proceeds funeral by funeral

39:04 - significant, large-scale change needs to come from the top down

51:44 - good definition of first tier: the levels that think that their truths are the only truths; second tier: the levels that see that all truths are valuable

53:22 - states are exclusionary and structures are inclusionary

53:35 - the transpersonal structures start making states permanently available

The Conveyor Belt (Apr 14 2007) part 1

6:59 - it's common for people who have moved on from traditional, mythic religion to still find depth and meaning from it

8:30 - prerational spirituality is a concrete, mythic form, transrational spirituality is an interior, contemplative form

9:15 - Buddhism does not cover transrational structures of development; it covers nonrational lateral states

15:34 - recognition of your primordial nature is effortless, but then you have to manifest it in the relative world

15:41 - if you want to bring anything into manifestation, including the dharma, effort and achievement is required

18:35 - The Secret, again, The Secret; oy vey

18:44 - a better understanding of quantum mechanics is needed here

19:04 - consciousness does not collapse the wave function; stop saying that it does

31:12 - satori doesn't tell you anything about the content of the manifest world

33:31 - Big Mind is a progressive disidentification with subpersonalities

The World of the Terribly Obvious (Mar 31 2007) part 5

0:03 - an individual at a level tries to understand other levels, but holds that understanding at the space they are at

1:11 - this has been a major tripping point for the whole mythopoetic movement: the pre-trans fallacy rears its head again

1:24 - Joseph Campbell: when myths are taken as literal, that perverts the meaning of the myth

1:46 - Campbell is attempting to make prerational myths carry transrational truths: a classic pre - trans fallacy mistake

3:03 - Campbell is saying that only myths held in a rational space are real

5:31 - few myths are generated at a transrational level

7:53 - only at second tier does perspective become expansive enough to allow for hermeneutics

14:51 - Krishnamurti didn't recognize relative levels of development

16:47 - you can't see structures - they're not in given awareness

17:19 - the individual subject is used by the structure

18:14 - but deconstruction of the self is not the same as the Buddhist no-self

18:32 - structures are intersubjective systems - a nexus agency

21:46 - the postmodern exploration of phenomena has divorced itself from state training

30:33 - each transpersonal structure transcends and includes the previous states; as you go through the higher structures the previous states become permanently available

32:05 - the more you can attain deeper transpersonal states, the more freedom and creativity you have in shifting your awareness

33:15 - traditional levels of the subtle body: the etheric, the astral, the mental, the psychic

39:44 - green is susceptible to pre-modern myths and other aspects of the pre-rational world (the eco-primitive purism, "yesterday was one with source", etc.)

40:44 - green is also susceptible to the anti-rationality of the boomers (just trust your feelings, don't think, etc.)

40:44 - feelings can't take the role of other (which is kind of important)

46:21 - art connects with an audience when some part of it resonates at their altitude

50:23 - an artefact is something made by a sentient holon whose agency or form is imprinted on it

1:00:15 - reality is not only physical, it is psychophysical -Adi Da

1:00:32 - but don't take that to mean that we are creating phenomena (e.g. The Secret)

1:00:44 - what it means is we are co-creating our experience of phenomena, and we can shift our world by shifting our perception

1:04:25 - The Witness, no-mind, is absolute subjectivity

1:04:33 - that doesn't mean it's a subject - it's nondual, neither subject nor object

1:04:39 - what it means is that it lies in the direction of subjectivity (I Am-ness)

1:04:45 - when you objectify everything and enter absolute subjectivity, then you hit the nondual

1:04:51 - in absolute subjectivity all subjects and objects are arising within it

1:07:00 - The Witness is usually looking through a relative I

1:07:11 - but the feeling of The Witness is not there - it is vast emptiness

1:07:17 - The Witness is that which you can't see or feel

1:07:32 - who am I?

1:15:15 - there can be an art, morals and science in all four quadrants

1:17:27 - in modernity, the it domain (science) took over the I and the we domains; that's a problem

1:17:39 - but don't make a worse mistake by then condemning all of modernity

The World of the Terribly Obvious (Mar 31 2007) part 4

0:50 - just being aware of transpersonal structures helps our working with transpersonal states

1:06 - that alone can increase our depth and our height

2:26 - an understanding of all four quadrants can help any one quadrant evolve

3:04 - you don't see the level you're at

6:00 - that's why having a map is important; it helps you see subject as object, helping you transcend

10:08 - there's a dialectical process between agency and communion and Eros and Agape

10:37 - agency is the drive to be a whole, to maintain integrity, autonomy and freedom

10:45 - communion is the drive to be a part of a larger culture

11:37 - Eros is the drive upward, to let go of objects and negate the lower

12:02 - Agape is the drive to identify, feel into awareness, reaching down to embrace lower levels

13:03 - it's healthy to alternate between all of these

14:31 - it's possible to be at a nondual state and have let go of all objects in your awareness

14:41 - but that's the trick; your awareness is still at a particular level, and thus all that's in your awareness are the objects below that level

21:35 - structures are referred to as higher or lower, states are referred to as deeper or shallower

21:44 - when the we space is at a specific altitude, it will exert a pull on your I space

22:48 - more than a help, the we space is essential for growth and transformation

23:00 - the I, it and we are Buddha, Dharma, Sangha

27:19 - how do you reach all levels of development on their own terms?

30:14 - zen thinks you can look within and see your true self - the myth of the given

30:55 - the relative, finite self is ultimately false, when compared to the absolute self - but you can get that false self wrong

31:42 - inside the relative realm, there's a true and false

32:55 - we work to get the relative world right

33:23 - Marx was looking at unfreedom in the social realm; Freud was looking at unfreedom in the personal realm

33:41 - when we say the shadow is producing a false self, a self that is not the true self, that true self we are talking about is not the absolute Self, we are talking about the relative true self

34:20 - there are two forms of falseness, relative falseness and ultimate falseness

34:29 - two goals: the relative goal is to make the four quadrants as healthy as we can; the absolute goal is to drop them

41:44 - history is a chronicle of men and women born too soon

42:33 - let's get one thing straight: we are not on the verge of a global outbreak of consciousness expansion that is going to liberate everybody

46:32 - green looks at teal and thinks it's seeing red

54:45 - the various dimensions of existence, body, mind, soul, spirit, are held in consciousness in ways particular to each level

58:04 - contemplatives, when they describe stages / levels, are almost always describing state-stages

58:48 - the world coemerges differently based on the structure of consciousness

The World of the Terribly Obvious (Mar 31 2007) part 3

2:22 - placing your separate self at the center of the kosmos, rather than placing the kosmos at the center of your separate self

3:44 - lower holons determine the possibilities of the higher; the higher determines the probabilities of the lower

11:20 - delusions of reference; the delusion that something happening in the exterior world is there for a special reason just for me

11:53 - examples: six-month-olds, paranoid schizophrenics, purple / magenta magic, The Secret / Law of Attraction

12:20 - the magic level of consciousness has it that wholes with similar parts are equated

13:00 - also it confuses whole and part

14:21 - green was trying to transcend distancing, monolithic orange thinking, and made two mistakes

15:09 - it confused transrational feelings with prerational sensations

16:18 - and it confused synchronicity with nondual holism

18:43 - when you drop your everyday, ordinary awareness / consciousness / sense of self, whatever structure / level attempting to emerge is all that is left

22:22 - when the next phase of growth is about to occur, it may be triggered by an event that wouldn't have been noticed earlier

29:53 - quantum mechanics does not cause the higher levels - pranamayakosha causes quantum mechanics

30:14 - quantum mechanics has nothing to do with spirituality, other than it is a manifestation of spirit like everything else

32:08 - all this is Eros

51:44 - the question of freedom is how do we transcend; the question of fullness is how do we embrace

51:58 - the answer to the first question is the subject of one level becomes the object of the subject of the next level

51:34 - development through states is important (meditation)

51:37 - but you also want to have the states contribute to the growth into structures of consciousness

51:45 - you need both

52:48 - you can go through all transpersonal states and become further cemented in the dogma of your surrounding culture

53:57 - intellectual, conscious awareness of the structures does help you move through them

54:12 - without a good map of horizontal state-stages and vertical structure-stages, meditation can often keep you just on the horizontal path (through the transpersonal states)

54:37 - let's get some terminology for the differently-state-centered types of self-sense down

54:47 - a self-sense oriented at gross state is ego

54:58 - a self-sense oriented at soul / subtle state is soul

55:01 - a self-sense oriented at causal is Self

55:06 - a self-sense oriented at nondual is suchness

55:26 - meditation moves you through these states

55:48 - states are exclusive

56:23 - good definition of structure: a pattern of wholeness

56:57 - evolution is the process of states transforming into structures

57:12 - there are potentially many different structures possible

57:39 - having a peak experience can help you advance through the structures

58:14 - the contents of enlightenment can change as time passes

58:24 - an enlightened shaman at 4,000 BC is red - because that's all that was available at the time

59:18 - Gautama Buddha: orange structure, causal state

The World of the Terribly Obvious (Mar 31 2007) part 2

6:56 - you can have a state of consciousness when the structure of consciousness is not yet ready to hold it

8:04 - higher states and higher structures can presage themselves; tragically, contemporary psychiatry interprets this as a breakdown

24:05 - postmodernism gives us some profound insights, along with some bad mistakes

24:25 - the pre-trans fallacy; pre and trans look similar, so tend to get confused

25:01 - which leads to either elevating pre to trans status

25:33 - or reducing trans to pre

41:40 - the myth of the given is that my perceptions of the world are correct, the world is not partially a construction of my consciousness

47:14 - some of what science sees is culturally constructed

47:46 - postmodernism threw out monolithic interiors

48:54 - a quick summary of postmodernism: all structures and states have a lower left quadrant

49:19 - Foucault's archaeology of knowledge focuses on zone four; his genealogy focuses on zone three

55:32 - why the given is a myth: there is no single pre-given world that's universally true for everybody; the given world is different at every stage / level / structure

55:55 - pre-human stages are shared by everyone (interpretations of those stages will be different at different levels, of course)

The World of the Terribly Obvious (Mar 31 2007) part 1

2:10 - intersubjective dialogue is important in our deepening our spiritual practice

2:13 - we can only hold our own perspective; sometimes it takes an outside perspective to clearly see what's happening

7:20 - Idealism means setting the bar above where you currently are, with some assurance that you can reach it

16:00 - zones three and four: cultural anthropology is looking at the lower left from the outside (objective), hermeneutics is interpreting the lower left from the inside (subjective)

17:37 - pluralism starts with an important insight: all cultures are different and cannot be bound by any universal principles

17:54 - but that insight quickly slides into relativism: no truth is better than another, there is no objective truth, etc.

18:03 - and that of course leads us to the performative contradiction: you're asserting that there are no universal truths applicable to all cultures, and that truth is universally applicable to all cultures

18:20 - green wants us to believe that it is freeing all viewpoints: it isn't

24:22 - second tier has nested hierarchies, not monolithic hierarchies, hierarchies of internal growth, not of external oppression

24:40 - all growth hierarchies are non-oppressive

24:45 - oppression is a pathology within the actualization or growth holarchy

26:08 - the paradigm of the pre-post fallacy: they (green, usually) understand the problems with modernity, but they romanticize pre-modernity

A Miracle Called We (Mar 11 2007) part 5

0:12 - taking a second person perspective is to move from egocentric to ethnocentric

0:19 - there is third person awareness, but not a third-person perspective

0:32 - which come with formal operational cognition / orange / adolescence

0:54 - the quadrants are always present, but they're not self-reflexively aware (until a certain stage of development)

10:21 - an eight-year-old may be in a hermeneutic space, but that doesn't mean they can do hermeneutics

16:22 - there's no freedom involved

17:34 - quadrant absolutism is denying things in other quadrants

17:51 - freedom is in zone one

19:07 - our freedom is not as clear-cut as we would like to think

20:41 - but let us not eliminate freedom entirely

21:01 - if freedom is to some extent defined as indeterminacy, there is some in every holon

23:00 - how is it great meditators did not advance through the stages / structures / levels?

24:22 - they didn't because conditions have to be right in all four quadrants

24:54 - meditation is a help, but is not a cause (of growth)

24:59 - it's possible meditation can reinforce a level

25:24 - a state of consciousness will be interpreted by the structure of consciousness that holds it

25:33 - if you are in an environment that encourages freedom, growth and exploration, meditation will increase the likelihood of advancement (but not be the cause)

26:13 - in an ethnocentric, traditional environment, higher states will be interpreted according to the dogma

27:20 - all of which goes to show once again that structures of consciousness and states of consciousness are independent

28:17 - if you are inside an amber / blue / mythic membership culture and meditate, you won't attain higher structure; higher structures don't exist in that culture

28:30 - meditation fundamentally encourages horizontal movement through states of consciousness

28:57 - meditation can exert a micro-transformative vertical pressure (if the quadrants are not directly opposing it), but the results are spotty

34:40 - a good theory is a theory that can last long enough to get you to a better one

36:00 - there are 8 fundamental methodologies - use them

36:25 - traditional Zen teaching tells you to just drop everything, which is really pretty unhelpful

37:21 - in Buddhism, there is a relative truth and an absolute truth

37:33 - in the absolute realm, there is no qualities, no division, all is eternal, timeless emptiness

37:53 - in the relative, manifest realm, we have politics, society, environment, psychology, health, etc.

38:03 - saying "just drop all that" is outright unethical - http://www.mro.org/zmm/teachings/daido/teisho57.php

38:14 - yes, it's all a dream, it's all an illusion, maya, to be dropped, okay, cool, we got it

38:21 - once you achieve that awareness, you have to integrate emptiness and form

38:27 - easing relative suffering is an ethical demand; the relative world of form requires scientists, educators, politicians who can work toward this

38:43 - sitting and achieving nondual awareness is an individual achievement; it gets you off the wheel, but helps no one else

39:25 - there are currently popular teachers of the nondual path; Byron Katie, Eckhart Tolle, etc.

39:52 - but where they're lacking is in the integration of emptiness and form

40:25 - we need to get people well-rounded and awakened; not just awakened

40:57 - the Lankavatara Sutra integrates emptiness and the manifestation of the world of form into a complete holarchy

A Miracle Called We (Mar 11 2007) part 4

3:27 - is the student-guru relationship one of I-thou? does this get confused with a second-person relationship with God?

3:34 - yeah, pretty much

3:38 - in the ideal, theoretical student-guru relationship, the relationship models the relationship to God in the second person by seeing the guru as spirit incarnate

3:55 - thus helping students find their own spirit in first person (because eventually you identify with the guru)

4:08 - note that it almost never works out this way

6:09 - it doesn't seem like groups have stages, exactly

13:22 - how do you move a dominant mode of resonance up?

24:13 - mature monogamy: the other person is a partner in awakening (Robert Masters' work)

35:26 - skillful means: how do we communicate 2nd tier concepts to 1st tier?

36:39 - first, know the audience: one on one or a group or an informal gathering, etc.

36:55 - translate 2nd tier ideas into 1st tier versions

55:49 - self-awareness is not present at all levels

58:54 - first person perspective develops at age three to five, egocentric

A Miracle Called We (Mar 11 2007) part 3

2:07 - we all know the story of course, but let's go through it again - from the 60s on, the only God / spirituality that was available was a blue / amber / mythic membership God / spirituality (God in second person)

2:28 - so we rejected that

2:35 - and were introduced to the eastern traditions (God in first person)

2:57 - and then we started in with systems theory, Gaia hypothesis, Tao of physics, etc. (God in third person)

3:22 - our concept of God in the second person seems to have been arrested at blue / amber / mythic membership

4:34 - suppressing God in second person really allowed ego to nest

4:57 - an embrace of God in second person comes with surrender, gratitude, humility - a bit of a sticky point with Boomers

6:08 - as soon as there is manifestation, then there is I Am, God in first person

20:36 - the kosmos relieves tension by escaping to a higher level of order - that is eros, self-transcendence through self organization

22:22 - all holons have four drives

22:33 - operating vertically are the drives of eros and agape; eros is the move upward, to attain higher and more encompassing embrace, agape is the reaching down and embracing what's already present

22:46 - operating horizontally are the drives of agency and communion

22:57 - pathological eros is phobos; transcend and repress

23:22 - pathological agape is thanatos, the urge to move down; regression

23:44 - agency is the drive to be autonomous

23:58 - pathological agency leads to alienation, separation, divorce from emotion; pathological communion leads to fusion, addiction to relationships, loss of autonomy, loss of freedom, loss of self in the union

25:09 - an individual holon has a distinct boundary

33:53 - wherever you find an I, there is a we

40:34 - are there horizontal stages social holons go through?

41:29 - artefacts are detachable, which is why social holons do not go through stages of development in the same way individual holons do

A Miracle Called We (Mar 11 2007) part 2

18:57 - people (green, particularly) have been known to create a holarchical model of increasing expansion that's a bit confused

19:46 - for example, an ecosystem is not an expanded holon, ranking higher than a nation

21:21 - the nature of this confusion is a misunderstanding of individual organisms and communities of those organisms, the difference between a forest and a tree (a forest is not a super tree)

21:56 - the we is not a super I, the individual members of a social collective are members in relational exchange, not parts

22:21 - individuals and collectives arise simultaneously (there's no first instance)

23:02 - (interiors and exteriors are there at all points on the scale, too, and hopefully you all know all this by now)

23:23 - an individual holon has a locus of intentionality, a capacity to engage in intentional activity

23:59 - when a dog gets up to walk, 100% of his atoms go along with him

24:14 - what Whitehead called the dominant monad

24:25 - an individual has a dominant monad; a collective has a dominant mode of discourse

26:19 - individual holons develop in stages

32:03 - operating definition of a social holon: individual holons and their exchange artefacts

35:40 - when we form a we, there is no dominant monad

35:58 - exploring the we from the inside is hermeneutics (the art and science of interpretation)

38:33 - shadows serve a function

59:14 - until you can argue for another person's position better than he can, you don't understand him

A Miracle Called We (Mar 11 2007) part 1

A Miracle Called We (Mar 11 2007) part 1

Shadow and Disowned Self (Feb 25 2007) part 5

1:49 - meditation is not a cure all

3:19 - we need both relative and absolute practices

5:30 - attaining awakening does not eliminate the separate self sense

9:14 - two things transmigrate, wisdom and virtue

9:32 - wisdom is understanding of emptiness (absolute bodhicitta)

9:52 - virtue is your capacity for compassion (relative bodhicitta)

13:26 - once again, you do not lose the ego when you advance spiritually; you lose exclusive identification with it

14:08 - if the fear is very extreme, you know you've struck gold

15:12 - it's hard to do this without a teacher

17:21 - when Big Mind is touched, there is no fear because there is nothing outside of Big Mind, and there is no grasping or desiring for the same reason

22:11 - the more types of self you create, the more types of death there are to die (creating stepping stones out of tombstones)

32:52 - Buddhism might be attractive to someone with a borderline sense of self to begin with

37:24 - prematurely letting go of an attachment can be experienced as a death

Shadow and Disowned Self (Feb 25 2007) part 4

12:01 - every level has its own wisdom

16:49 - there are at least four different definitions of spiritual

24:59 - development is a process of negating and preserving; both can go wrong

25:10 - negating wrong is repression; preserving wrong is addiction / fixation / arrested development

36:46 - you have to frustrate the level just a bit to encourage growth

37:15 - you can have too much or too little of anything

43:33 - shadows are an impulse that was once I

44:56 - a common spiritual seeker's mistake is to think that an advanced, enlightened being had no sexual drives, does not eat, has no intentionality, etc. (yeah, that's a big mistake)

45:12 - an advanced, enlightened being is not attached or identified with those things

48:54 - the standard method for growth: make subject object

53:38 - if you're a spiritual seeker, do not neglect your psychological growth

54:01 - you can go into emptiness at any psychological stage / structure / level, but when you come back, you'll still be at that same structure

54:31 - many popular teachers are hooked on nothing but states (Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, etc.)

Shadow and Disowned Self (Feb 25 2007) part 3

4:49 - the shadow of green: the Jonah complex

9:45 - Ken's decided to drop the term 'psychic', which is good I guess; that term has been fairly exclusively co-opted by the new agers

9:53 - but it'll take me awhile to get used to saying "indigo - subtle - causal - nondual"

10:20 - and, honestly, paramind, metamind, overmind and supermind sounds incredibly goofy to me (but I suppose we're stuck with it now)

10:32 - by the time you get to psychic / paramind / indigo, you have permanently objectified all gross phenomena

10:40 - that's why nature mysticism experiences come about - oneness with the entire gross realm, because all of the gross objects have now been disidentified with

11:03 - at the subtle / metamind / violet / archetypal level all of the subtle objects have been objectified, bringing about lucid dreaming, etc.

11:41 - structures are inclusive, states are exclusive

12:50 - structures are the way that exclusive states become inclusive, structures are the way that you transcend and include, structures are the way that spirit permanently wakes up

13:11 - at the causal / overmind level it has access to permanent emptiness, but it also has access to all causal, all subtle and all gross objects - they've all been objectified

14:01 - the overmind is over all mind and there is permanent access to the causal state, just as at the metamind you have permanent access to all subtle states, and at the paramind you have permanent access to all gross phenomena

14:24 - gross, psychic, subtle, causal and nondual are states that can be experienced at any stage or level (the Wilber-Combs lattice)

14:59 - a transpersonal awareness state experience, being one with gaia, being one with all of nature (nature mysticism) can happen as a plateau state at any stage or level, but it only becomes a permanent orientation at psychic / paramind / indigo

16:00 - there's still going to be a separate self at psychic / paramind / indigo and at subtle / metamind / violet / archetypal, and then at causal / overmind you have access to the pure self, the true self, as causal emptiness

16:20 - that's the last form of dualism (the witness still separate from that which is witnessed)

16:27 - at nondual / supermind you have the last permanent dissolution of the separate self-sense as a permanent disposition in consciousness

21:10 - group shadows

22:03 - five types of unconscious - ground (potential), archaic, embedded, submergent, emergent

Shadow and Disowned Self (Feb 25 2007) part 2

1:29 - repression is not seeing your blind spots and ever more clever ways of not seeing

2:10 - your shadow is the opposite of what you're consciously aware of

2:33 - deliberately trying to "not feel anger" (a common mistake beginning Buddhists make) only guarantees repression

3:14 - getting in touch with your feeling is insufficient; it won't get you in touch with your shadow (which is, again, the opposite of what you're consciously feeling)

7:04 - how do you deal with the fear and suffering of the self contraction (the ego's fear of its own death)?

7:24 - first give awareness to the resistance to feeling the feeling

7:38 - and then give attention to the feeling

10:25 - paradoxical intentionality is a help in accessing the shadow

12:11 - the attempt to enter into transpersonal states without feeling fear is itself causing the fear

12:26 - if you assume responsibility for your feeling, you notice it, bringing it into your awareness, and out of your shadow

13:50 - fear essentially is the emotion / feeling of the separate self

15:30 - when the separate self dissolves, there's nobody to be afraid - there's just fear arising

20:51 - the fear incipient on a nondual experience is the fear of letting go of the sense of self

22:25 - observe the fear, thoroughly and completely

23:32 - the fear is a signal that you're getting to something important

43:26 - developmental sequences are responsible for most shadow elements

43:52 - symptoms and defenses are coming from two different levels; two different sequences, the structures and the fulcrums

44:38 - as the self moves through waking, dreaming and deep sleep states, each one of these states becomes objects of wakeful presence

50:07 - fixation or aversion can happen at any fulcrum or switchpoint

50:32 - some spiritual teachers are not at 2nd tier, but are conversant with causal states (Byron Katie)

51:30 - transpersonal states can still carry shadow elements

52:20 - 2nd tier green aversion is becoming common

54:03 - as are addictions to lower levels

56:50 - if your attachment is unconscious, you're repressing it

57:14 - Buddhism spots fixation, conscious attachment, not repression, unconscious attachment

Shadow and Disowned Self (Feb 25 2007) part 1

3:30 - what is the difference between transcend-and-include and dissociate-and-repress?

4:33 - agency can go pathological in two ways

4:55 - there is pathological transcendence or pathological negation; repression, driven by Phobos

6:09 - there is pathological preservation; fixation, driven by Thanatos

6:46 - agency and communion are the horizontal drives; Eros (transcendence) and agape (embrace) are the vertical drives

7:06 - pathological Eros is Phobos; pathological agape is Thanatos

7:17 - pathological transcendence is repressing a lower level

7:25 - many transpersonal critics have confused transcendence with repression

8:15 - some aspect of view is what gets repressed

9:01 - muladhara chakra / fulcrum one - physical, gross, material plane

9:25 - in essentially every classical conception of the great chain, matter has always been ranked as the bottom rung; that's not going to work

9:40 - matter more correctly belongs as the exterior correlate of the interior

10:20 - this has been one of the stickiest points in spiritual studies: it's why transcendence has always struck scientific, materialist rationalists as metaphysical wispiness

11:41 - successful vertical development includes all the aspects of all levels

12:01 - healthy transcendence is no exclusive identification with any level

12:20 - what's transcended or negated is the limited view of each level

13:44 - the "I" is a small subset of the phenomena of any given level

13:57 - the view from a level is where our identity is centered

14:19 - you can dissociate or repress that view or you can remain attached or addicted to it

14:37 - the part of your consciousness that gets dissociated or attached will be split off into a sub-personality

16:19 - meditation is not a good tool for shadow work; it lets you see what's arising, but it won't tell you if what's arising is distorted

18:16 - pathological agency is alienation; pathological communion is fusion

57:53 - is 3 - 2 - 1 too cognitive for shadow work?

58:36 - 3 - 2 - 1 is introductory only

The Shadow (Feb 11 2007) part 4

The Shadow (Feb 11 2007) part 4

The Shadow (Feb 11 2007) part 3

0:55 - the name of this game is transcend and include

1:31 - negate and preserve

1:39 - to grow you have to get bigger, to get bigger you have to let go of something smaller and grab hold of something bigger - there's a death and a life in every transformation

3:31 - the benefit of green was the multicultural respect, but without the integration

4:32 - the contribution of the west was the ability to take a global view, beyond a limited local view (attaining a high structural development)

5:25 - the contribution of the east and contemplative western traditions was the development of states

15:49 - five states in vajrayana and vedanta: waking (gross), dreaming (subtle), formless / deep sleep (causal), everpresent / witness, and nondual

22:50 - cognitive structures usually run one or two stages ahead of the self (center of gravity)

23:17 - phenomena arise, events arise, all being produced by the ultimate ground

23:40 - we can come to the awareness that phenomena and things are arising within our awareness

24:34 - we practice to deepen our structures and states

24:49 - and dysfunction can occur at any point

25:44 - the process is: you're in fusion with a state, you differentiate from it, then you integrate it

25:55 - remaining in fusion with a state is remaining attached, embedded, fused, fixed

26:04 - if the rest of your awareness continues to grow, this fused part will split off as a sub-personality (and will appear to you as other)

26:22 - for example, if you have become fixated with anger, you may see the entire world as angry, and as angry at you

26:36 - your feeling (phenomenology) is not enough to correct this, because you can't feel the problem

26:58 - psychodynamic treatment and interpretive therapy is necessary

27:08 - when we feel an emotion when we encounter an event, getting in touch with our feeling is insufficient; we must get in touch with the event

27:16 - that's how we find our shadow

29:37 - movement is changing predominant orientation of concern

31:26 - if you think losing your orientation of concern and identification with the gross, physical realm is something, losing your identification with the soul (going from subtle to causal) is a wallop

31:56 - losing that is usually the dark night (although really there are dark nights at each switch point)

32:22 - the insight of the nondual or tantric traditions: the goal is not to get off of samsara into nirvana; nirvana is not other than samsara, samsara is not other than nirvana

32:44 - dying to dying, letting go of letting go

33:34 - pathologies can happen at any point

35:12 - the nondual or tantric insights of vajrayana caused the rediscovery of the importance of the physical realm

36:55 - attaining advanced transpersonal and meditative states doesn't heal shadows or compensate for inadequate line development; you can't cover your structures by your states

38:20 - these waters are extremely tricky to navigate; attaining an advanced transpersonal state can actually trigger a regression (I call it the missionary urge)

45:17 - moving through a structure takes about five years

49:08 - the shadow cannot be seen by definition

52:26 - people make the mistake of thinking that Buddhism is about emptying the mind, having no thoughts

54:09 - there are times when you suspend the intellect, but it is a useful tool that can accomplish great things

55:10 - the east did not have structures or the shadow in their maps

56:12 - emotions such as anger can become repressed and denied in bodhisattva vows to not get angry

56:41 - the advice is to continue to apply the dharma practices and it will be taken care of, but that's not the case

57:23 - the by now perennial issue: spiritual teachers who are advanced in states but not in structures

57:33 - the pathologies particularly are in the physical realm

58:00 - some aspects of structures can be so deeply repressed that meditation will never uncover them

59:38 - an important contribution of the west: the separation of the value spheres; ethical, cognitive and aesthetic (morals, science and art; the good, the true and the beautiful)

The Shadow (Feb 11 2007) part 2

17:24 - cultural background must always be taken into consideration in our maps - this is the insight postmodernism gives us

17:30 - cultural backgrounds evolve (in stages)

20:35 - nondual awareness is always already present

20:42 - that's why you can't attain it, you are fully aware of it right now; it's called the gateless gate

20:55 - why practice? practice exhausts the mind that can't see this

21:31 - if any Buddhist teacher tells you that stages are an idea from the gaining mind, they have it half right (there's nothing to attain, but you still have to practice, and practice unfolds in stages)

22:20 - structure stages and state stages are different

22:30 - the incorrect way of fitting them together was to stack the psychic - subtle - causal - nondual states on top of the psychological structure stages (actually the transpersonal states can occur at any stage)

22:51 - why do post-centaur structures get mistaken for the transpersonal states? because those structures permanently objectify the transpersonal states, so it looks like a person is going through those states

23:44 - you have to be somebody before you can be nobody

23:49 - that's true for structures, but you can have a peak experience of any state at any level

24:00 - but structure peak experiences are impossible

26:43 - metamind permanently objectifies the subtle state

26:55 - overmind permanently objectifies the causal state

28:27 - not having any gaining ideas is a gaining idea

58:59 - Wilber's work is a map only

The Shadow (Feb 11 2007) part 1

2:24 - personal manner is not the test for enlightenment

3:05 - your odds of getting enlightenment are greatly improved if you get your structures in shape so that they can be dropped

17:07 - techniques like 3 - 2 - 1 and Big Mind are first grade, intro only, shortcuts to give beginners a taste

17:35 - of course it should go without saying that you must go deeper in shadow work

22:21 - there's more truth in a bigger view (the reason for sangha, community)

22:51 - transformations are usually not fun

24:59 - good teachers produce students greater than themselves

28:16 - what should be negated and what should be preserved in the traditions

28:27 - we are at the edge of the fourth turning

28:47 - a lot of dying is involved

38:05 - bad things happening to you are not necessarily your doing, some things are genuinely chance happenings

38:28 - taking the karma generated by the other three quadrants and making the upper left quadrant solely responsible is a misunderstanding

43:46 - the west has a wonderful contemplative tradition that didn't really get woven into the culture as well as the eastern contemplative traditions did in theirs

43:57 - but western culture did allow orange to develop, in a way it didn't in the east

50:59 - when you work with a partner, your advancement can be more rapid

51:28 - a partner can catch your blind spots

Boomeritis Buddhism (Jan 28 2007) part 4

Boomeritis Buddhism (Jan 28 2007) part 4

Boomeritis Buddhism (Jan 28 2007) part 3

1:40 - when a peak realization occurs, what do you do? continue to meditate for five more years

2:12 - how do we get practitioners who are stuck in Boomeritis Buddhism to see this?

3:00 - have them look at some developmental books; Kegan, Spiral Dynamics, Wade, Cook-Greuter, etc.

4:39 - describe the behavior of a psychologically healthy human being

5:38 - it spirals between agency and communion

6:02 - spiral dynamics tracks the values line, and nothing else

8:08 - the secret of human development: making subject object; the subject of one stage becomes the object of the next

8:37 - eventually you exhaust all subjectivity, rendering everything as objects, and that which is aware of all objects is the Absolute Witness

9:30 - which is not another object / experience / phenomenon, it is the space in which all objects / experiences / phenomena arise

12:33 - even if someone disagrees with this model, the process of disagreeing requires them to think about it (making subject object), and will eventually move them forward

14:22 - what's the deal with cultural relativism anyway?

15:55 - the way through the postmodern dialectic: you take the position and apply the position to itself

16:21 - if all meaning / statements / truth is contextual / culturally relative, then so is deconstructionism

19:30 - Buddhism and postmodernism both see that meaning / statements / truth is contextual / culturally relative

21:17 - what Buddhism had a leg up on postmodernism was that it had a practice to arrive at ultimate truth

36:51 - two types of development: vertical (structure / stage / level) development

37:29 - and horizontal (state) development

39:01 - horizontal development can be had at any stage

39:36 - pathologies can occur throughout both of these developmental schemes

40:51 - if you move into a subtle state from a waking state and any of your identity remains in the waking state, that will be a split off subpersonality, or shadow

41:24 - this is how you can get shadows in both structures and states

41:31 - shadows are subjects that you did not make object, subjects you are still identified with

43:20 - you can attain psychic / subtle / causal / nondual states at any stage

44:56 - it would be great if teachers could help to advance people through stages as well

49:03 - most contemporary new age spirituality is green-subtle

50:12 - much of green has gotten used to combating the bad forms of hierarchies, ranking, judgmentalism, etc., that they rebel at the idea of any hierarchies

50:27 - internal hierarchies are hierarchies of inclusiveness

51:30 - saying ranking is bad is itself a ranking, saying judging is bad is itself a judgment

59:03 - meditation doesn't solve shadow issues

59:49 - every structure stage has a different type of shadow

Boomeritis Buddhism (Jan 28 2007) part 2

2:54 - part of our practice is to allow the thinking mind to arise in the openness, emptiness

7:01 - there is a relative and an absolute truth, they're not two, but they're also not one

7:41 - we acknowledge all manifestations of the relative realm of form as they arise in samsara

9:54 - part of the problem is that when people have an experience of big mind / one taste, because it's not different from anything else that's arising, they confuse the phenomena of their relative egoic self as the absolute

20:22 - western psychology has developed a quite sophisticated hierarchy that makes finer-grained distinctions than eastern systems have

22:25 - so eastern traditions saw green and yellow / turquoise as the same level

26:00 - the pre-trans fallacy

26:08 - pre-verbal and trans-verbal are both non-verbal, but they are not the same thing; pre-conventional and post-conventional are both non-conventional, but they are not the same thing; pre-rational and trans-rational are both non-rational, but they are not the same thing

27:05 - in the popular western new age spirituality of the last thirty years, only two dimensions had been identified: egoic rationality (bad) and everything else (God)

27:32 - so a lot of crap has been identified as trans-rational, Buddha nature, Christ consciousness, spiritual advancement, etc.

35:10 - you're going to interpret your state experience according to your stage

35:52 - when someone at green says that everything is mutually interrelating and interpenetrating, it doesn't mean the same thing as when someone at second tier says that

39:33 - the chakra system is a good hierarchical model, but doesn't make enough distinctions

44:24 - most states don't occur in stages, they're just random experiences

44:53 - but trained states will unfold in stages

46:19 - the state someone can have is independent of their structure / stage / level

46:45 - meditation and/or other techniques of repeatedly exposing oneself to psychic / subtle / causal / nondual states can help advance one up a stage or so, but it helps to have the quadrants support that growth

47:05 - if the idea of hierarchies and ranking people doesn't sit well with you, you're green

47:41 - the problem is that green confuses "everybody is equal, no one is better or higher or lower than anyone else" (green values) with Maha Ati

47:51 - that's a confusing of relative and absolute truth, and that's Boomeritis Buddhism

49:10 - another problem: using emptiness as an excuse for unskillful behavior

49:35 - how helpful are the Mahayana teachings to our everyday lives?

49:45 - the idea of emptiness as lack of inherent existence is not really what the Buddha taught

49:56 - the Buddha's teachings on emptiness deal directly with actions and their results

50:04 - to understand and experience emptiness requires a personal integrity willing to admit the motivations behind your actions and an acknowledgment of the actual benefit and harm they cause

52:21 - the purpose of the Madyamaka dialectic is to dislodge any relative belief

52:48 - by showing that all phenomena are interdependent, that none of them have any inherent or absolute reality

52:58 - all phenomena depend on each other, none of them are self-contained or self-existing

53:15 - western Buddhist scholars looked at that and confused it with systems theory

53:50 - the short version (equally wrong): emptiness means no concepts, no rationality, whatever feelings come up, whatever you want to do is cool, man

54:35 - emptiness is neither conceptual nor non-conceptual nor both nor neither

55:03 - if you want to play with emptiness, do the work

55:11 - Americans tend to want to leap straight to Maha Ati, without putting in the necessary preliminary work

56:11 - (as well as conflating it with their green values)

58:32 - on the absolute plane there is neither self nor is there no-self

58:56 - nirvana and samsara both coarise; both are relative

59:02 - the tantric understanding is that all that arises in samsara is one with nirvana

Boomeritis Buddhism (Jan 28 2007) part 1

7:16 - if every religion and people has a different perspective, what is truth?

41:01 - Trungpa was completely honest about his failings

46:38 - there's a difference between structures of consciousness and stages of consciousness (yeah, I know, news to me, too)

59:17 - the secret to all relative growth is to see subject as object; seeing the shadows and ego-generated ideations helps to transcend them

States and Stages (Jan 21 2007) part 4

11:51 - what is the role of compassion in enlightenment?

12:12 - compassion is not an absolute, compassion is relative bodhicitta - the enlightened mind (bodhi - enlightenment; citta - consciousness, mind)

12:38 - there's a relative bodhicitta and an absolute bodhicitta

12:42 - absolute bodhicitta is sunyata (emptiness), relative bodhicitta is compassion

13:00 - the practice of compassion will not lead you to enlightenment

13:25 - absolute bodhicitta awakens you from the dream, relative bodhicitta prevents the dream from becoming a nightmare

13:37 - the practice of compassion makes the dream as relatively comfortable as it can be

13:49 - but it won't wake you up

14:10 - should a person practice compassion before enlightenment, or after?

14:39 - you practice compassion before enlightenment, because after enlightenment, you tend to not want to change anything

16:58 - what is the relation between states and stages and compassion and sunyata?

17:20 - lines have structures / stages

17:35 - in Mahayana, sila is ethics, dhyana is meditation, prajna is illumination / awakening

18:22 - if you're dealing with the relative / form side, you're dealing with structures, if you're dealing with the absolute / emptiness side, you're dealing with the ultimate state

20:30 - crazy wisdom isn't wisdom

25:01 - it's healthy to have a sense of confidence and a sense of humility

28:29 - there's nothing more dangerous than a contemplative without direction - Merton

29:24 - we honor the traditions and the accumulated wisdom they offer,

29:45 - and we take the next step, begin the fourth turning

30:04 - you do not need to adopt pre-industrial, feudalistic, mythic, agrarian, patriarchal values of a religion in order to attain enlightenment

30:31 - at earlier stages of development, those values are perfectly appropriate

30:35 - but we also include each tradition's higher teachings

32:01 - is holding on to a tradition a filter?

33:36 - disengaging with the values of a particular religion is stage development

34:33 - we make the mistake of thinking that the limited values of a stage are the problem of a particular religion (e.g. Christianity)

34:45 - and so we reject that religion, thinking that it is that religion that is generating the stage

34:48 - we could develop through the stages while staying in one religion,

34:54 - but many jump from one religion to another

35:06 - but it must be realized that the modality of expression (a particular religion) is irrelevant to vertical stage development

35:14 - everybody is born at the beginning of the hierarchy, and everyone is at a particular level of the hierarchy

35:28 - so there needs to be a conveyor belt that can take people through the hierarchy

36:38 - god and spirituality mean different things to different levels - the hierarchy exists in all traditions, all paths, all lines

States and Stages (Jan 21 2007) part 3

6:33 - structure = probability cloud (50% at the level, 25% above it, 25% below it)

10:32 - use it or lose it

12:18 - chakras have a structure and a state

13:11 - each chakra has an ida, pingala and a central channel - those are states, with a waking, dreaming, nondual aspect

15:03 - even an awakened zen master continues to sit - use it or lose it

18:14 - it's easy to mistake a peak experience as full enlightenment

18:57 - you can actually end up worse off

19:30 - a major problem arises when you start to think that some of your misunderstandings are backed by the authority of God

21:27 - enlightenment is an accident - meditation makes you accident prone (you'll come across this saying often)

26:26 - anyone can have a peak experience and sustain it into a plateau experience

30:38 - two things can happen with sustained practice in one line

30:57 - stage development can occur in the line

31:25 - a line can become a state transformative practice - you can have a psychic / subtle / causal / nondual state experience at any stage in the line

34:19 - there's a difference between a temporary state and a permanent stage trait acquisition

34:51 - stations are plateau experiences, not structures / stages

35:25 - when a temporary state becomes a permanent trait, that's applying just to a station, just a plateau

35:51 - we have to acknowledge the stage within the line the state is operating in

36:45 - permanent traits are not structures

36:51 - temporary states do not become structures, they become permanent plateaus

37:21 - states and stations / plateaus are both first person experiences, structures are third person assessments

41:20 - the more you experience states that are above your present interpretive capacity, the more it helps move you up

43:06 - learning a state in one line tends to make it easier to access that state in another line

48:03 - does the shadow develop?

49:19 - lines are independent

49:25 - the shadow can develop all the way up

50:12 - it is possible for damaged / broken / dissociated shadow elements to be present in the higher stages of development,

50:18 - but it is less and less likely, because it is less and less likely that a shadow-burdened person will develop that high

52:30 - what is needed for nondual realization is to realize that your fundamental identity is emptiness, and that it is one with everything that arises

52:47 - you can have that realization at any level / stage

57:35 - you learn select things from a teacher, not anything in areas the teacher is not competent in

58:58 - learning vertical development is the integral contribution to spiritual study

59:15 - people have different values and perspectives, as they travel through the psychic / subtle / causal / nondual states

States and Stages (Jan 21 2007) part 2

4:16 - you have to present the information in a way the audience can hear

5:32 - the world traditions offered types of non-ordinary reality

6:13 - you got access to these non-ordinary realities through non-ordinary consciousness

6:49 - there was ordinary, rational, egoic reality (bad), and there was anything that was not rational, not ego, non-rational (God) (note: pre-trans fallacy!)

8:17 - stages unfold in a sequential order

9:51 - the higher you got in stages / levels, the wider they got

11:22 - the stages of enlightenment didn't match with the stages of psychological structures

12:04 - states can unfold in stages, though it's more common in structures

12:36 - the incorrect way of fitting them together was to stack the psychic - subtle - causal - nondual states on top of the psychological stages

13:21 - many people who had spiritual experiences weren't very developed through the stages

15:12 - people are in a state and a structure at all times

16:05 - you can be at any structure of consciousness and have any state experience

17:55 - there are two different types of growth, vertical growth (through the structures / stages of consciousness) and horizontal growth (through states)

23:39 - the self moves through the levels, identifies with the level, then disidentifies with the level, and then integrates it

25:11 - the self moves through states, also

27:55 - it's useful to talk about a center of gravity in a dual sense

30:19 - the traditions, Vedanta particularly, saw the differences between the structures (sheaths) of consciousness and the states of consciousness and the bodies

31:00 - states and structures are independent

31:07 - be careful to note that though we often use the terms structures and stages interchangeably, actually structures and (some) states both do have stages

33:24 - structures are spirit's permanent unfolding, complexifies in physical matter until full awakening

33:52 - but you can experience any state at any stage / structure / level, all the way up to full enlightenment

34:20 - states are the samsara offramp to awakening, structures are the evolutionary path to awakening

34:28 - which is better? you want both, you want to engage in the evolutionary game and not be identified with it (the two truths doctrine, being in both the relative realm and the absolute realm)

36:21 - structures and states develop independently

40:43 - the Bodhisattva approach is to approach and affect people where they're at, and invite them, give them opportunities to grow if they want to or need to

41:29 - allowing each stage to be what it is, helping each stage to be the healthiest it can be

56:46 - the world is whole, but seen differently by different people (a nested hierarchical view)

57:41 - Judging and ranking is mandatory

59:10 - the dark night is seeing paradise, and realizing that only 2% agrees with you

States and Stages (Jan 21 2007) part 1

States and Stages (Jan 21 2007) part 1

States (Nov 6 2006) part 4

2:07 - two truths doctrine, two kinds of awareness

3:31 - pure awareness is seen through a particular perspective

4:24 - pure awareness doesn't give you access to higher stages

5:28 - Japanese zen masters supported atrocities - why?

6:26 - you can be enlightened at any stage

10:58 - your altitude colors/informs/structures your observations

14:42 - where is Santa Claus? Where is the square root of -1?

17:21 - different forms of body work allow access to different states

17:42 - practicing in a group of more developed practitioners accelerates your development, objectively and subjectively

18:32 - does it make sense to practice in the company of individuals who are at a more vertically advanced stage?

19:29 - body movement creates an energetic state in the body and a correlative state of consciousness

20:15 - Sophia Diaz and South Indian temple dancing

21:13 - eight years of practice before you're allowed a public performance

21:24 - every body movement not only elicits a state of consciousness in the person doing the dance,

21:35 - but will elicit the same state of consciousness in the person watching the dance

21:44 - hundreds of body positions and movements designed to evoke the subtlest shades of consciousness

22:56 - if you're in a group that's a tad ahead in structure development and state development, it can help accelerate your own development

23:13 - this is true due to modeling, and because of subtle energy generation

25:05 - the more you're plunged into states of consciousness that are higher than your present state, then not only do you open to these states, you more quickly develop through stages

25:25 - peak experiences of higher structures can't happen

26:44 - meditation can move adults through stages consistently

27:36 - the energies of meditation can be used to cement the values of any level

28:30 - yoga is a practice in its own right

30:09 - does marathon meditation correct emotional imbalances?

30:54 - he was learning profound things of freedom, but not much of fullness

31:02 - freedom is in touch with nirvana, fullness is in touch with samsara

38:24 - the ascending path selects for cognitive emphasis, de-emphasizing emotion and interpersonal

44:11 - present meditation as attention training

50:07 - match the stage with the phase of the business cycle

50:37 - take the altitude of every worker into consideration

53:51 - is enlightenment the same as taking LSD?

54:02 - no

54:05 - psychedelics can give an experience of one taste, the cosmic void, but it's temporary, it's not a structure

States (Nov 6 2006) part 3

States (Nov 6 2006) part 3

States (Nov 6 2006) part 2

2:50 - freedom and equality are contradictory

11:50 - should we let go of form to arrive at unity / nondual or connect with and embrace form to arrive at unity / nondual?

16:00 - the meditative paths and states of consciousness (horizontal enlightenment)

17:00 - the difference between structures and states

18:15 - five major states of consciousness according to the great traditions

25:12 - the subject has structures and co-creates phenomena

34:26 - structures allow you to see the level

35:03 - people were doing spiritual practice, meditation, contemplation, etc., and nobody knew that structures were tilting/filtering/coloring what they were seeing

36:22 - you find none of this in the traditions

36:31 - the relation of states and structures

39:35 - the state isn't wrong, but the structure interprets it according to its values

43:40 - do we expand our attachments for nondual awareness or cut our attachments for nondual awareness?

44:44 - two ways of knowing, witnessing knowing and touching/feeling knowing

45:58 - masculine and feminine types of practice

46:20 - the tantric path

46:51 - let's start with imagining sexual congress

47:46 - use bliss to meditate on the higher stages

49:35 - as bliss, you cognize emptiness

50:21 - bliss manifests as compassion

53:38 - the feminine path isn't faster

54:14 - every path involves a breaking of attachment (death process)

55:30 - shadow stuff still comes up

56:06 - spirituality is hard, rough work, no matter what path you choose

57:31 - do you do both anyway, or are they incompatible?

58:40 - the two types of zen practice, koan and sitting

59:03 - John Daido Loori

1:00:52 - gross to subtle to causal

States (Nov 6 2006) part 1

States (Nov 6 2006) part 1