Worldview Community Blog

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.