Worldview Community Blog

The Worldview Community Blog is a place in cyberspace to meet and share your views with fellow travellers in your journey towards the higher reaches of consciousness. It is moderated by Terry, the co-owner of the Worldview Centre and a student of consciousness development, and is intended as a vehicle to explore and debate perspectives on the issues, puzzles, roadblocks and challenges you encounter in your efforts to be all you can be in this lifetime.

It’s about the big questions in life… who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? How should we treat each other? And what’s the point of it all anyway?

Beyond that, it’s about searching for an understanding that is adequate to the incredible complexity of modern life. I am swamped with so many choices between so many bizarre and intense experiences, and it seems ridiculous that they are all meaningless and without lasting value. So if there is meaning in amongst this hurricane of phenomenon, how do I find it?

In the end, this blog is about Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory and putting it to the test in the real world. The claim is that Integral Theory is “The Theory of Everything”. It claims to make sense of everything from spirituality to politics, from the environmental crisis to the reason Bill Clinton couldn’t keep his zipper up. Well, so far, that appears to me to be true. I’m hoping this blog will put that to the test.

What I’ve posted here are some views i have that arise out of studying integral for a dozen years or so. In some cases, I’m at the edge of my own exploration and my ideas are still cooking. The value I place on ideas is not so much whether are they true, but whether are they useful. Please add your comments on what value (if any) you find, or what alternate view you believe helps to unravel the mysteries of modern life.

This post is for those attending the Integral Symposium at Worldview on 26-29 August.

What topics or themes would you like to explore at the symposium?

• Exploring the Integral Stage: how is an integral worldview qualitatively different than a first-tier experience of existence? How do qualities like flexibility, presence, trust, freedom, relative fearlessness, resilience, sensitivity to beauty, etc. change at second-tier? How do we embody, understand and communicate these qualities and their promises?
• Energy Age: what does the next wave of humanity look like? What characterises a post-postmodern culture? What does a “subtle energy economy” look like? How can we participate?
• States work: particularly ways of categorizing states, and reproducing them (through music, movement, guided focus, group activities, ?)
• Types work: what is integrally informed gender? can masculine and feminine instincts be understood as forms of quadrant favouritism? How do we view masculine and feminine forms of spirituality?
• What is the unique selling proposition of integral? How does an integral product distinguish itself in the marketplace above non-integral approaches? What are the markets and what business opportunities exist for those with integral insight?

While some of these are obvious head-trips, I am passionate that discussions on heady topics are accompanied by exercises that show me what is being described. My hope for the symposium is of a being-and-connecting-fest, not a talkfest (even though we will probably talk a lot). The final schedule will protect adequate spaciousness to be free and peaceful at our stunningly beautiful Maleny-Montville ridge location. For example, we can watch each sunrise in silence, not broken until after breakfast.

Click to visit the IOS web page

Please leave a comment with suggestions or support for a particular theme or question.

Easter has come and gone for 2010, leaving behind a host of different experiences that vary widely depending on your approach. For many, Easter is a long weekend and a chance to chill out or catch up with family and friends, or do a bit of work around the house. Many see it as the modern remnants of a ritual going back to ancient times that is relevant only to historians. For others though, it’s a series of both solemn and celebratory rituals and the holiest time of the year in the Judeo-Christian world.

Personally, I’m a recovering Catholic, having been subjected to various forms of brutality during my 1970’s Catholic school education (join the club!). So I rejected the church and all it stood for with a passion for many years. Only more recently have I come to discover the precious baby sloshing around in all that dirty bathwater.

The myth of Easter, of the death and resurrection of Jesus, is a story from olden times that carries within it a few central truths about the journey toward awakening. By “myth” I do not mean fairytale, but rather a story created by wise Elders from long ago, encoded with priceless messages on the eternal elements of human nature, dripping with meaning for those who look through the literal story into the underlying mysteries. When viewed through this lens, the message of Easter is utterly relevant to modern folk.

Great myths often contain seeds of fact. Chances are there was a literal person named Jesus who was crucified by the authorities of the day, a quite common occurrence at the time for anyone who agitated against the prevailing order. Beyond that however, the story of his resurrection holds it’s most credible meaning if interpreted for it’s symbolic value.

The Easter myth (and indeed the story of the life and times of Jesus) suggests that beyond the death of the mortal ego, there awaits a transcendent “kingdom” of higher consciousness not bound by earthly pain or the antics of a hungry ego grasping for worldly pleasures and eternal safety. When there is no more (symbolic) blood to spill, when the world has utterly failed to deliver anything of lasting value and we finally surrender to our mortal limitations, the soul awakens to the eternal truths that lie behind the veil of everyday life.

As Jesus was purported to have said in the Bible, “The kingdom of heaven is within.” in that context, “heaven” is a state of being, available in this very moment to anyone who awakens to their own true nature. That “true nature” cannot be spoken of directly, as all words are symbols and mere ideas, while the awakened state is an experience that must be lived. The qualities of that lived experience can however be implied through metaphor, art, poetry and other symbolic forms of communication. The Bible and all the sacred texts are brimming with such metaphors, parables and puzzles, all designed by the ancient Elders to point us towards the mystery of our true nature. In Zen, they describe such teachings as like a finger pointing at the moon. There is no point paying attention to the finger itself, but rather the invitation is to allow your inner gaze to follow to where it points.

The myth of death and resurrection is one that all of us have lived through. In the average span of a western life, we die and are reborn usually five, six or seven seven times. Remember when you were a child and believed that fairytales were true? That part of you has since died and been reborn into a worldview that understands the symbolic nature of story. Remember when you were afraid to step away from your parents and begin to live your own life? Your co-dependent self died in that moment to make way for an independent self capable of navigating your own life. Each of these transitions is a mini-death and a mini-rebirth, the letting go of an old identity to make space for a new one to be reborn within.

There is a new death/rebirth cycle upon us in our culture. Not everyone stands at that precipice, but those who are determined to create a better world for our grandchildren hover precariously at the edge of the abyss. It is the death of the idealism that all we need to do is hold the intention for a better world, and it will become so. It is the death of the idea that if only everyone were like me, the world would be a better place. On the other side of the abyss, a new worldview awaits that embraces the truth that intention must be forged in the furnace of objective reality if it is to survive and become manifest in the world of form. It also embraces the diversity of humanity, and surrenders to the differences that have always been, and will always be there.

This new worldview (called the integral worldview) is the first structure of consciousness that marries the inner world with the outer world. It finally reconciles the world of spirit with the world of earthly form. It understands in a deeper way how the mind works, which sets free the heart to shine without fear into the messy, painful world of human affairs.

When our last major rebirth exploded into our culture, the result was the 1960’s. The Summer of Love in 1967 heralded the birth of a new worldview no longer bound by the rigid social rules of the 1950’s post-war mindset. From that frenetic time was born numerous powerful social movements, including feminism, civil rights, the environmental movement, rights for the disabled, recognition of the rights of indigenous cultures and more. That was the birth of postmodernism. Already, just 50 years on, we are midwives the birth of the integral worldview.

The promise of the integral worldview is perhaps best embodied by Barack Obama. While he is still embedded in a vast cultural system rife with vested interests and power-over politics, what set the world alight on his election was his rhetoric around a world where we all work together to solve the problems of our age. Leaders with an integral worldview strive for the highest good, not the most power for the select few. They are capable and willing to acknowledge the need for sustainable approaches to business, health, education, foreign policy and all the other domains of human affairs.

Most importantly, they are wise and flexible enough to engage with the needs of competing vested interests to carve out inspired compromises that set us on the path to a sustainable future.

So may this Easter period be a reminder and an inspiration for those of you who are ready to take the momentous leap into the integral worldview. And may the wise among  us create a new myth that will be told for aeons to come about those courageous souls back in the 21st Century that died to their ego-based identities, and were reborn as the inspired souls who took the world back from the edge of a self-inflicted disaster.

Worldview runs weekend workshops on Integral Life Practice, which reveal the contours of the integral worldview and show you how to construct a daily practice that will ensure your steady progress towards the rebirth you have been waiting for. For more information, click here.

There is a well-known maxim in the business world that business owners tend to spend too much time working IN their business and not enough time working ON it. For example, they spend too much time moving merchandise without checking to see if it is the right merchandise, or even the right market. Such businesses are inevitably amongst the 90% or so that do not survive the first 5 years.

This same question applies to our personal lives. Carl Jung once quipped of how we spend our lives climbing the ladder of success only to discover at the top that it’s against the wrong wall.  You may know from experience (or at least in your imagination) just how devastating that can be to find that you’ve spent your life pursuing the wrong goals. Is it any wonder the mid-life crisis syndrome has reached pandemic proportions.

This conundrum also offers insight into the apathy of our youth. Apathy is ultimately a symptom of a deeper condition of meaninglessness. Imagine a teenager looking around at all the standard walls offered by our culture (various career choices, politics, religious life, home-maker and parenting, etc) and seeing quite clearly that none of them equate to a happy life. Examples abound of miserable people with their ladders up against every possible wall. Our teenagers may ask us, why bother to begin? How do we truthfully answer that question?

We might begin by observing that the choice of which wall is less important than the intention of the one who climbs.  If the intention is to gain wealth and power as a means to happiness, then the top of every ladder is assured to be a disappointment. If the intention is to prove to others that you can do “it”, then similarly, the top of the ladder will be empty and meaningless. If the intention however is to enjoy the climb, and to achieve excellence so that you might ultimately serve the wellbeing of others, then all ladders are almost equal, and they are all good.

Note, “almost” equal. The difference between one ladder (one career choice, one study path) over another is the question of what Buddhists call “Right Livelihood”. If you put your ladder up against the wall of pointless consumerism, the manufacture of unhealthy food, the creation of mind-numbing video games, or marketing to children, chances are you will struggle to feel good about yourself when the penny finally drops. In the end, it’s not all about you. You are responsible for the consequences of what you contribute, and if you profit through the suffering of others, the Buddha within will not smile upon you.

So what does it mean in real terms to stand back and check which wall your ladder is up against? To use a metaphor, it’s the same process as going on a holiday. From afar, you have a chance to look back on your daily life and assess its qualities. That same process can occur in your own mind, at any moment you choose. But first, you must disengage from focusing on your usual obsessions. Only then can you take the broader view of what you are actually doing with your life.

The actual practice is called mindfulness meditation. It’s the practice of being present with your breath, in the present moment, as you watch your usual obsessions arise within your awareness. Those obsessions might be things that need doing, or persistent emotions, or feelings like worry, anxiety, stress or even despair. From this place of witnessing, you might notice sensations in your body when you allow yourself to think certain things. You will probably notice agitation, and hear a compelling voice urging you to stop wasting time and get on with “it”.

With practice, you will eventually become more at home as the one who witnesses what is arising in your awareness, rather than the usual habit of tumbling into obsessing with whatever happens to come up. From this place of witnessing, you are empowered to work ON your life. You are empowered to make choices about where you put your life energy.

You are still free to allow yourself to work IN your life… to tumble into immersion with something that has arisen in your awareness, but you do so consciously. When you work IN your life in that way, you take full ownership of what happens in your life. You lose identification with the victim, and become the protagonist of the greatest story of all… the story of YOUR life.

Worldview offers workshops that include mindfulness meditation skills. To learn more, click here.

Imagine you were one of those folks utterly dedicated to their quest to fully awaken to the dimension of Spirit. You spend years searching the world (both out there and within yourself) for clues as to how to achieve that. You meditate, you contemplate, you chant, you visualise the light, you work through your shadow, you practice various forms of yoga, you sit under every Bodhi tree you can find. Eventually, you awaken! Your ego-identity is transcended and you become the uncorrupted embodiment of Spirit, manifest in human form. You have had a spiritual experience.

Pretty soon, people begin to notice your radiance. They are inspired by your wisdom and moved by your presence. They ask you how you did it, and you do your best to tell them. You use parables and stories, metaphors and koans. Your followers listen carefully, write down your words as “gospel”, and begin talking about you with some reverence. They tell their friends about you, and are careful to ensure that your instructions are followed to the letter. Now we have a religion.

Religion then is institutionalised spirituality. It is an effort to pass down through time the wisdom of the awakened ones.

Religion in itself then is not a bad thing, only bad religion is a bad thing. Bad religion is what happens when people confuse the institution with the spiritual message. The original message that seeks to guide followers towards a direct spiritual experience gets corrupted to serve the institution itself, which is linked to the vested interests of those who run it. Some degree of corruption is virtually inevitable in all religions, and some seem clearly more vulnerable than others. Just the same, at the heart of every religion, there sits a spiritual baby in the dirty bathwater of human foolishness.

The great benefit of established religions is that they carry a tried and proven lineage of spiritual transformation. Every tradition has a long line of awakened souls (saints, lamas, etc) to vouch for the authenticity of their methods. The phenomenon of “transmission” (where practitioners are positively influenced merely by being in the presence of an enlightened one) is real and valuable. As well, over time, substantial bodies of work emerge to support a given spiritual tradition, offering further value to devotees.

The downside is that you can drown in dogma and one’s spiritual aspirations can potentially be hijacked by unscrupulous teachers. Next thing you know you are being groomed by a sexual predator or urged to strap on a bomb belt as part of your liberation. In western Judeo-Christian countries, our passions are activated when we read of the Inquisition, or the power-hungry antics of past Popes, or the ongoing sexual abuse scandal presently rattling the church to its foundations. Modern minds are inclined to want to completely dismantle the church, curse the Koran and judge the Jews because of past and present sins. That would be a mistake.

While post-modern minds usually reject the dogma of any spiritual tradition, the fact is that the vast majority of the people on this planet need dogma to help them live a good and decent life. For those people, the traditional religions offer practical guidance of immeasurable value, enabling the vast majority of people everywhere to maintain sufficient moral decency to sustain their given society. Most Muslims are peaceful people. Most Christians are tolerant and forgiving. Most Jews love their God. If we dismantle the religions, we deny those good-hearted folk the guidance they need on their path to the higher realms of consciousness.

Ken Wilber calls the traditions the “great conveyor belt” of spiritual transformation. At different stages of our development, we find value in different kinds of spiritual instruction. Sometimes we need to learn the “one true way”. Later we may study multiple traditions and cherry pick value from each. Still later we might abandon external sources and go find a Bodhi tree. So, a willingness to accept the need for different strokes for different folks may ultimately serve the highest good.

Does anyone have a view on this question? In general terms, what is it that makes men and women different from each other? (aside from biology! Why do men appear to come from a different planet than women, and vice-versa? And what is about some couples where they seem to have this gap nicely bridged?

Gender differences is one of those topics that is still taboo in chunks of our culture, likely to result in men and women alike being tarred and feathered as being sexist. The reason is because the beginning of any discussion about gender differences is presumed to end with some silly assertion that all women belong in the kitchen, barefooted and ready for sex, or that all men are bastards and rapists. Here I want to move beyond that. It is vitally important that we explore and discuss gender if we are to begin working together to address the chronic ailments of our society.

Gender is multi-faceted affair… biology, gender identity, social gender roles, and ultimately as a spiritual orientation. Any meaningful conversation about gender differences needs to touch base with all those aspects.

Biology is the most obvious, including not only genitals and the shape of your chest but also all the hormones and other physiological variances. Biology still matters… only women can bear and suckle children. Only men have the levels of testosterone needed for the dirty jobs, like warfare driving a jackhammer.

Where all the contention comes from is the idea that biology determines your role in the home and in society. With the advent of technology, the physical prowess of men, once highly valued, has now been largely neutralised. A 60kg women can drive a 30 ton excavator, pull a trigger and push a big red button. Women now have at their fingertips the same destructive power once reserved for men. Men can operate a washing machine and fire up the vacuum cleaner.

While higher levels of testosterone are still an advantage in the competitive world of business and governance, many women have pushed through and, in some cases, occupy seats at the highest levels. Many women I speak to are not entirely content in the rough and tumble world of business, and quietly yearn to not have to bother with such things. Hormonal research suggests there may be a biological force at work in such yearnings. So biology plays a role in orienting us to what we do in life, but is by no means a solid little box into which we must try and fit ourselves. We need to move beyond that argument if we are to touch into the essence of our gender.

Gender identity is how we feel about our gender within our biological skin. While most folks feel themselves clearly as men and women in a body that matches, many are not so aligned. In every gay and lesbian relationship, one partner holds a masculine polarity while the other holds the feminine pole, even though both are of the same biological gender. And of course there are those folk who feel themselves compelled to undergo sex change operations in order to bring their biology in-line with their inner gender identity.

Gender is ultimately a spiritual question, which makes it not so much about male and female as about masculine and feminine principles. In this view, the feminine is the descent of Divine Love into the world of form (Agape), while the masculine is the ascent of consciousness from the world of form back into union with the Divine Source (Eros).

So the Earth itself and the entire physical cosmos is the feminine expression of Divine consciousness manifest as form. Our raw sensory experiences moment-to-moment are feminine in nature. How this moment feels is the basic expression of the feminine principle.

How we interpret how this moment feels is where the masculine begins. Interpretations, both conscious and unconscious, cluster together to form the ego… the inner conception of me as a human being in this world. The ego is essentially masculine. Every mental conception of anything in the world is also masculine, including philosophy, mathematics, engineering and all the academic domains.

The feminine principle is unconditionally accepting of everything she encounters, and unconditionally loving towards all of it. She perceives the world as a whole, and is attuned to the flow of energy. She lives in the present moment, spontaneously expressing the feeling tones of the moment. She creates effortlessly. Her gift to the world is the spontaneous embodiment of beauty, love and joy.

The masculine principle breaks the whole down into parts through the reasoning mind. It discriminates between all the possibilities of existence to choose his path towards freedom and peace. He exercises discipline to disentangle himself from that which does not serve his ultimate purpose of reunion with the Divine. He lives in the flow of time, focused on the future consequences of his choices while trying to free himself from the karmic consequences of the past. He creates with great effort. His gift to the world are life conditions conducive to wellbeing and freedom.

I use the pronouns “he” and “she” loosely… remember, every living person has both the masculine and feminine principles alive and active within them. The feminine principle is supported by the in-breath, the masculine by the out-breath. It’s not so much about men and women… it’s about the way both men and women embody these cosmic principles. Any person of either gender who operates at the extreme of either principle is nearly always profoundly dysfunctional… we all need BOTH to be decent, functioning human beings.

The characteristics then of people who embody these principles at the extremes are clear enough. Starting with the feminine, in whose very nature is the capacity to embody the Divine in the world of form…

• spontaneous displays of beauty and radiance
• inclined to celebrate the pleasures of embodiment
• perceives the whole of the moment all at once
• inclined to be caring and loving to all creation
• natural access to intuition (knowing without reason)
• inclined to trust feelings over reason

Meanwhile the masculine principle seeks to transcend the world of form in the quest to reunite with the Source…

• prefers to witness the world without getting too involved
• seeks resolution of worldly chaos in search of inner peace
• uses reason to “dismantle” the moment in search of a “solution”
• inclined towards rights and justice for all creation
• focused on constructing generalized wisdom (knowing with reason)
• inclined to trust reason over feelings

Sound like any men or women you know?

Feminism was the process of women claiming for themselves the masculine principle. From the 1960’s onwards, women became empowered in the world to witness with equanimity, make rational distinctions, fight for rights and justice and develop a wisdom of her own. Some 50 years after the rise of feminism, the men’s movement is about opening to feelings and intuition, bringing love and care into their behaviours, and developing trust for feelings. In other words, integrating the feminine principle into their masculine world.

So these days, many women are oriented to the masculine principles, while many men orient to their feminine side. In my experience, while this is powerful and necessary, it does not make for an attractive intimate partner. Women are often left wanting with sensitive new-age guys who lack equanimity, drive or purpose. Men are not so attracted to tough, assertive women who lack trust, tenderness and receptivity. This is the reason that relationships are so unstable these days… we are in the midst of a period of polarity reversal, where men and women alike swing back and forth trying to figure out who they really are and what they really want.

The ultimate peace in the war of the gender worlds is when both men and women can utilise both the masculine and feminine principles consciously, as required by the context of the moment. So women want men who can be tender, unconditionally accepting and loving in some moments, but then assertive, purposeful and rational in the next. Men want the same thing from their women, in running the household, in making life decisions, and especially in love making.

Sex is at its best when one person is unconditionally receptive and the other is profoundly penetrating to the soul level. If two poles with the same charge come together, either both receptive or both assertive, nothing much happens. The sexual dynamic is dry and floppy. It’s like electricity… you need a positive and negative polarity of you want to get the big charge happening.

What is happiness anyway? Is it really different for everyone, or is there some common denominator for all forms of happiness? And why does it seem so elusive? I know a handful of people who appear happy most of the time, but most folk I know are more miserable than not. Is happiness something that can last, or is it just a fleeting thing that comes and goes like clouds on a windy day?