The Myth of Transcendence and Other Evolutionary Geek-ness

Stages of Evolution. Waves of unfolding. The spiral.

You are familiar with the holonic stages ::: from pre-personal to personal to trans-personal; from body/physical to mind/mental/intellectual to Spiritual; from ego-centric to ethno-centric/Nationalistic to World-centric/global. From pre-rational to rational to trans-rational.

:::

From vengeance to justice to Grace.

From your emotions running you to having choice around your emotional reactions to achieving a place of actual freedom; from crawling to walking to running.

Stages of ever increasing inclusiveness. Stages of ever-increasing whole-ness. Levels of ever-increasing expansiveness.

Now, in the first paragraph, replace "to" with "transcending, and then including". You see, these are ever expanding holonic spheres. And part of the healthy spiral or waves, if they are to be healthy and not hobbled by pathology, is not "transcend, and then deny" it is "transcend and include".

Part of the Integral, or in Spiral Dynamics [henceforth "SD"] Yellow, or second tier, SD7, SDi, is being able to call upon the entire first tier, as need be. As the context calls for it. To have the behavioral and situational flexibility to realize which memetic code you are dealing with and address it at its level, and if it serves, to give it the egoic and emotional "food" to go the next stage.

You may be asking ::: So f***ing what, Jason?!

There is this myth that you are not supposed to be angry. Or have "lower chakra" drives [sex, for example] or that you are somehow immune to emotional injury. The truth is that this is...well, myth. What is true is that you are more free from identification with any of those things. You are free to choose. You notice your sensations to be sure. They pass through quickly. Or as I like to say ::: it hurts more, but you care less.

But what a whole class of developmental organizations and schools of thought have implied is that you should not feel these things--and thereby causing people to become disembodied. They are walking heads. Their body is just a vehicle to get them to meetings. They are over weight. They perhaps even have addictions. They do not admit their emotional aspects that are "negative" and they are attempting to "just" be Spiritual [skipping the material/rational/Just/monetary]; they are attempting to skip stages.

This is impossible without significant pathology developing.

Just try and have an infant run before they can walk. See how far they get. The bump on their head is a great metaphor for the pathology created. Skipping rungs on the ladder of the development of their consciousness. It amuses me. People attempting to transcend to the spiritual "plane" before they've even figured out how to move the furniture around on the material plane.

And it saddens me, because they are not fully alive. To be fully alive, our chakras [for lack of a better label] should be firing all at once. ALL fully open and alive. All flowing with the energy of Spirit. Life force.

AND, at some level/stage, you have enough choice to be responsible with those energetic flows and not get them on other people, in an irresponsible way.

However, what is means to you [especially at SD7 or beyond] is that you are able to call upon whatever is required. Outcome. Context. Efficacy. If what is required is love and Grace [trans-rational] then you call upon those capacities you have developed; if justice is required you call upon the levers of justice/courts/legislation [and a lawyer/practitioner if need be]; if brute force is put upon you, then perhaps equal or greater force is what is required--and if need be, you call upon those capacities.

So think we should not consider those as options when "higher" solutions are ineffective is at least naive. 

It is a bill of goods sold to us by people attempting to sell one-step transformation. One-step enlightenment. One weekend "breakthroughs" to X, Y, or Z. Well intended people attempting to change your life setting you up, quite unknowingly, to compare yourself to some imagined ideal. One-step. Only people who have practiced, meditated, or whatever for years get to say that "trying to be enlightened is like trying to get a left foot". You already have it. Right. After 20 years of daily practice they tell you it is one step.

What you get in an experience like that is a peek and a peak at what is possible for you. This, is good. It is a picture of the next camp or the summit perhaps. And after the buzz of the workshop or the retreat wears off, you are faced with being in the same old place again. How long does it take? 3 weeks?

So settle in. Enjoy the view of the peak. Use it as a goal. Or as Mr Mark Michael Lewis says, use it as a guiding light, not a whipping post. And allow the stages to unfold. Allow your depth to become ever-increassingly more exposed. Allow the rose that is your soul to open to to all that is. To your divinity.

And know, it is a lot of work. And that is good. Building muscles does not happen over night. And nor should it.

So settle in to your daily practice. Whatever it may be. I have two I recommend ::: vipassanna meditation and Core Transformation. Use them. Use them well. Use them daily.

Yours in Evolution, 

Jason