When Julian first invited me to be a part of this symposium, my first reaction was “Wow! How cool! A guy like Julian thinks I have something important to say!” My second reaction was “Oh, shit! What if I don’t have anything to say? Damn, dude. You
don’t have anything to say. You’re gonna make a fool out of yourself.” Opposite reactions, but both coming from a place of insecurity and fear.
. . .
As I’ve been thinking about this whole thing, following the discussion that has arisen around the event, and reading (and, to some extent, intuiting) more about Julian’s vision for it, I realize that I may not be able to make the kind of contribution that Julian originally had in mind.
But I should clarify that. I think I have a pretty good
cognitive understanding of spirituality and integral theory and totally resonate with pretty much all of Wilber’s work (i.e. what comes
directly from Wilber), and I think I’m able to grasp the “big picture” of what he’s trying to do(
1), but I don’t have the kind of background that I feel qualifies me to really add my own perspective on integral (or integrative) spirituality. So any “philosophizing” I might do would really just end up being a rehash of stuff Wilber and others have already said much better themselves.
But…
The title of the symposium is
“Integrative Spirituality: Grounded Contemporary Perspectives”, and I think the only way for a person to have a grounded perspective is, obviously enough, to be fairly grounded themselves. One way of doing that, I think, is through self-reflection and self-analysis. And one technique I’ve “discovered” that I think can be a great way to do that is what
Joe Perez calls “
Whole Writing” (see also this
blog entry).
Now, there are probably loads of similar techniques out there, but Whole Writing basically starts with taking a few minutes to write down whatever comes to mind, stream of consciousness style, on whatever topic you feel like writing about. Once you’ve finished writing, you then go back (not necessarily immediately) and evaluate what you’ve written through an AQAL lens (although Joe typically uses his own variant he calls
Kronology), adding some sort of markup coding to indicate levels, lines, quadrants, types, etc., as you think is appropriate.
So what I thought I’d do here is show you all how something like this might work. If you look at Joe’s steps for Whole Writing, you’ll notice that the last step is to edit and refine what you’ve written(
2) so that it’s suitable for sharing with at least one person. As Joe says in one of his blog posts about Whole Writing, “Sharing one's Whole Write with a small group is intended to allow [for] sharing the actual internal writing process and opening one's self to higher potentials.” Well, I don’t know if this is going to be a “small group”, but my point is that I’m sharing this bit of writing with you so that you can all share your thoughts, and we can all work towards achieving “higher potential” together.
Also, tying in to some things Julian said in his Monday contribution to the symposium, it’s also important to note that the process begins with meditation in order to get into the proper frame of mind and awareness for producing a stream of consciousness that is as sincere as possible and so is, in other words, coming from the
depths of your true Self, rather than being reprocessed and rationalized by ego. That’s not to say that the Whole Write will be coming from your
highest Self, just that it will be spontaneous and coming directly from whatever sub-personalities or voices (in the Big Mind sense) happen to want to express themselves in that writing. The final step then, the analysis, is more of a
surface activity in order to become more cognitively aware of what is happening beneath that surface.
So… I thought the topic of today’s Whole Write was going to be “Fear”, but then I chickened out. Too afraid to
expose myself to that kind of personal scrutiny… ;-) And since there’s been quite a bit of discussion at this symposium about “second-person” spiritual devotion, I thought I’d make that the topic of the Whole Write.
The Second Face of God
Second person… What is a second-person relationship? Interpersonal… Avoiding? Fear? Yes, there’s that fear again. Fear of failure. Fear of being judged. Fear of looking stupid. Thought that after an hour of meditation that I’d put that aside for a bit, but here it is again as I face having to write something that I know will be seen by… the world. By loads of other second people.
But a second person can also provide support. Love. Comfort. So can a second-person relationship with God. With Spirit. Love. I love the Spirit in all things… and seek to open my heart to the love that all things… that Spirit has to give back to me.
And this interpersonal Love helps to keep me grounded, too. So neither getting to wrapped up in my fears and insecurities, nor going too far off in the other direction to think that I, personally, my manifest self, have … control over all things.
Thinking to much? Avoiding?
God. What is God? Who is God? I don’t really know. Does it matter? … No. When I meditate, I can feel the blissful non-duality of Spirit, of God. Being infinite and in all things, it is also necessarily “out there” to be perceived in both an interpersonal sense and in an objective, analytical sense, not just as an internal… self-serving? sense. No, not self-serving necessarily, but self-absorbed. Self-focused. Loving devotion to Spirit, to God, provides balance in my spiritual practice. Objective analysis, too. Meditation and first-person experience, as well. But I feel I need all three of these in more or less equal measure in order to be a whole person. In order to be balanced.
Avoiding? Time to close for now?
Peace. Love. Harmony. The Good, the Beautiful, the True.
[end of Whole Write]
OK, I want to follow Hokai's lead and get this online at around sunrise U.S. east coast time, so I've just thrown in some quick color coding (which may very well not be all that "accurate" -- btw, it follows the updated I-I color scheme) to give a general idea how the process might work and to maybe provide a starting point for discussion. I may come back and update this markup later on with more detail on lines, quadrants/quadrivia, types, etc. (Now I just hope that Joe doesn't tell me I've totally screwed everything up! ;-)
Namaste.
. . .
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March 2009 
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