"The Psychology of Awakening" article @ Tricycle.com

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13 years 3 months ago #527 by Kate Gowen
I've not been overly impressed with Wilber's writing [except for the raggedly honest Grace and Grit]-- and I'm distinctly critical of his bad taste in spiritual teachers to whom he has given his hyperbolic praise. But what kind of 'fake' do you mean: as a philosopher? scholar? teacher? genius?

I'm not asking rhetorical questions here-- I think he exemplifies a bunch of characteristics that it is important to think critically about, for my own sake. He's a hard guy to 'argue' with even in the privacy of my mind; countering the sheer volume of his work, his ubiquity, and his salesmanship, is a daunting task. I guess my take is that he's not so much a 'fake' anything-- I think he believes that he's got an unassailable encyclopedic analysis of just about everything. But I think he's wrong about at least a few things that I have enough experience with to fact-check him on; and that leads me to suspect that there's more.

Maybe Bob Dylan hit it square on the head: "Don't follow leaders. Watch for parking meters."

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13 years 3 months ago #528 by Chris Marti
There is, I think, this idea that volume matters. Wilbur has generated volume. The sheer amount of his stuff is crazy daunting. I've never read one word of Wilbur, though, so I can only comment from outside the barn.

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13 years 3 months ago #529 by Jackson
Some thoughts on Wilber...

I've read a good amount of Wilber's work, but not all of it.

I think he does a good job explaining the major worldview shifts of recorded human history, particularly from pre-modern to modern to post-modern. He is right to say that scientific materialism has run amok, and that we should include information from both internal and external realities, and from both individual and collective perspectives (including "I", "We", and "It/Its").

What I don't like about him is the way he states all of his opinions as if they are facts. Not only that, but he also mentions having all of this "empirical research" to back up his opinions, although he never really comes out and says what these sources are. BIG red flag. His most valid sources are from developmental theorists like Piaget, Graves, Fowler, Erickson, and others. His approach to Evolutionary Psychology is also largely developmental, which is kind of peculiar. A lot of the good Evolutionary Psychological research has more to do with identifying evolved psychological mechanisms/modules that shape our experience and decisions. It's not always dependent on economics and culture, as is often framed by Wilber.

With Wilber there is also an assumption that what the majority of "experts" say about a given area of inquiry must be closest to the truth. Where there is some merit to this approach, in light of statistics and probability theory, it isn't a given. I think its fallacious to assume that the opinion of the expert majority are always the most valid. Wilber could very well be building his grand Integral theory of the Kosmos on a foundation of quicksand.

-Jackson

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13 years 3 months ago #530 by Kate Gowen
Oh, wonderful! Trenchant remarks, indeed, Jackson. Can I 'like' this a dozen times?

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13 years 3 months ago #531 by Chris Marti
I have "Theory of Everything" by Wilbur here at home waiting to be read. Maybe I'll accelerate it past some of the other books in my "to read" queue ;-)

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13 years 3 months ago #532 by Jackson
Oh man, I am LOVING Toward a Psychology of Awakening. And I'm only a couple chapters in. :-)

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13 years 3 months ago #533 by Kate Gowen
I continue to enjoy, second-hand, your delight in discovering John Welwood.

And I continue to muse about the contrast between Welwood and Wilber: the former's training as a psychotherapist was deeply influenced by Eugene Gendlin, whose technique of 'Focussing' has long fascinated me with its obvious parallels to meditation practice. And I think part of what prompts me to criticize Wilber is that very Aquarius drive to KNOW [that so easily leads to the dead-end of being a know-it-all]-- this is something all-too-familiar to me, as a fellow Aquarius. [Trying to follow up on the astrological angle ran into a lack of data for John Welwood, unfortunately; just when my curiosity was piqued, too.]

Having your knowledge forged into wisdom in the crucible of relationship-- is an entirely different matter than having the King Daddy Analysis of Everything There Is To Know. For one thing, it is evidence of a kind of confidence and equanimity that no volume of knowledge or expertise can produce.

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13 years 3 months ago #534 by Jackson
Here's a noteworthy excerpt from the chapter titled Making Friends with Emotion...

"If ego is the tendency to hold on to ourselves and control our experience, then feeling our emotions directly and letting their energy flow freely threatens ego's whole control structure. When we open to the actual texture and quality of a feeling, instead of trying to control or judge it, "I" -- the activity of trying to hold ourselves together -- starts to dissolve into "it" -- the larger aliveness present in the feeling. If I fully open to my sorrow, it may intensify for a while, and I may feel all the grief of it. Yet opening to this pain, without stories, also makes me feel more alive. As I turn to face my demons, they reveal themselves as my very own life energy."

I can't tell you the last time I enjoyed a book on psychology or meditation (or both) as much as I am enjoying this one.

-Jackson

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13 years 3 months ago #535 by Chris Marti

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13 years 3 months ago #536 by Dharma Comarade
Replied by Dharma Comarade on topic "The Psychology of Awakening" article @ Tricycle.com
That quote is so true.



Resist not evil.





It's strange but true that the only way to real happiness is to really experience one's pain.

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13 years 2 months ago #537 by Kate Gowen
Charlie Tart's blog most recently is right in line with this subject: http://blog.paradigm-sys.com/

Here's an excerpt:

Student: How would somebody go about doing that?
Using spirituality to bypass.
I can’t even imagine having to do that.

CTT: One example
that came up quite prominently during the hippie era – you folks are
probably too young to remember hippies, but…

(Laughter)

CTT: Most of
them, well I can’t say most, a lot of them, lived by basically sponging
off other people and didn’t feel in the least guilty about it because
they were, they believed, pursuing love and enlightenment.
They weren’t
going to get trapped in earning a living, which would support a corrupt
society anyway.
And hey, in one way that’s true, but it’s also a
wonderful rationalization for just sponging off people instead of taking
responsibility for yourself.

I can see
Buddhism misapplied that way too.
One way of looking at Buddhism is
it’s the ultimate way of being cool, right?
Nothing fazes me!
Nobody
can get to me!
I don’t have any suffering!
Well, that’s because you’ve
stifled all the feelings that might arise within you.
You’ve stifled
them either by some kind of active suppression process or by a
distraction process.

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13 years 2 months ago #538 by Jackson
I just finished Toward a Psychology of Awakening this morning. I must say, this could be my favorite "spiritual" book yet. Welwood eloquently describes the personal, I-Thou, and universal aspects of the path of awakening and spiritual growth and transformation. Ken Wilber, eat your freaking heart out.

Please pick up a copy of this book, if you haven't already. I am sure to read it again and again, many times over. I can draw on this material to help my life's personal, relational, and professional domains.

A very satisfied customer.
-Jackson

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13 years 2 months ago #539 by Jake St. Onge
HI all--

Welwood's great, huh? I also am fascinated by the link to Gendlin, Kate; there are some very interesting zones of overlap between some western psychotherapeutic modes and meditation, and this is one of them. Actually I did my final paper in my Buddhist Psych class last semester on some of what I see as these intersections and relied heavily on Welwood and Trungpa... but I digress!

As for Wilber, there is a very interesting pdf available on line by Susan Cook-Greuter, a developmental psych researcher. She uses Loevinger's Sentence Completion test to gauge the general developmental level of a subject, and her model is pretty compatible with what I find pretty solid in wilber's work-- namely, just the basic idea of psychological development moving through the stages identified by earlier researchers such as Piaget into post-formal operational levels, such as what Wilber calls the pluralist and integral levels. anyway, in her pdf, she details the characteristic "views" of each level of development. These are very basic views of what a self is, how the world works and so on, including characteristic ego-defenses and characteristic types of cognitive error which tend to be expressed at each level.

What I find really interesting is her description of the assumptions embodied in the Integral level. If you take a look at her descriptions of the basic limits of that "view" or as she calls it 'action-logic", you will see everything that's off with Wilber! Really fascinating.

Most of the explicitly thought out critiques of wilber that i have encountered are coming from an earlier level or action logic, so they really don't "get" Wilber and make too many assumptions which he can easily critique himself. Nevertheless, many folks, such as I think everyone on this thread, do have the sense that there is something off in Wilber's work. Well, it turns out that there are a lot of profound critiques of Wilber possible from a post-integral level of view. Most post-integral people just get this sense of off-ness and stay away, which is fine. but I think it will be important for a well considered and clearly expressed post-integral critique of Wilber to emerge, since so many of the explicit critiques are, as wilber claims, based on not-getting him.

Again, i don't see this not-getting him happening here; I think the folks I see commenting here are sensing the way in which Wilber expresses some of the characteristic blind spots of the integral level in a downright pathological way, to be frank. So it's not just that the integral level has blind spots-- it may well be that Wilber is stuck in those blind spots in a more neurotic way.

Kate, this actually is directly connected to Wilber's fascination with Adi Da and Andrew Cohen-- I think it's a direct expression of the neurotic way that W embodies the Integral perspective...

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13 years 2 months ago #540 by Kate Gowen
Wow! Thanks for this, Jake: googling Susan Cook-Greuter RIGHT NOW!

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13 years 2 months ago #541 by Jake St. Onge
I can email you the pdf as well

Some might find it kind of dry, it's very condensed, and it comes at developmental research from a certain angle... I think she's doing research into different action-logics in the context of business! Like corporate business! But there's also some really interesting data on demographics of different levels of development, how common different levels are--- at least in corporate america (and U.K.)

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13 years 2 months ago #542 by Kate Gowen

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13 years 2 months ago #543 by Chris Marti
I'd be interested in that, too, Jake.

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13 years 2 months ago #544 by Jake St. Onge
Chris I'm not sure if I have your email but you can get mine from kate

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13 years 2 months ago #545 by Mike LaTorra

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13 years 2 months ago #546 by Jake St. Onge
thanks mike-- looks like a new paper-- no wait, a very nice revision of the other paper I was talking about. thanks very much for this-- I look forward to taking a look at it!

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13 years 1 week ago #547 by Jackson
I know I finished John Welwood's Toward a Psychology of Awakening a while back, but I just re-read a portion of it and felt like sharing a paragraph with you all:

"The open space of being continually breaks through into consciousness in unexpected flashes and glimpses; for instance, when we encounter some unfathomable mystery in ourselves or those we love. This simple awakening also happens in meditation when some burdensome mind-state suddenly falls away. Then we see that even the densest mind-states merely float, like buoys, on the larger open sea of awareness. Meditation opens a gateway into this larger space by relaxing our tendency to identify with the compulsive thinking that usually fills it up."

To give a personal example (as I know Mike Monson loves them), this morning I was meditating downstairs while my wife was getting ready for the day upstairs. She was watching some soap opera on TV. At some point she turned up the volume, and I found myself really irritated by the noise. There are many ways that I could have dealt with the situation, but I think all responses can be reduced to two main types: either responding by controlling one's environment (internal or external), or responding by changing the context. The former might include external forms, like turning on a fan to drown out the sound, or going upstairs and telling my wife to turn the TV off. Or, it may include internal forms, like trying to concentrate harder, or by trying to change the content of my thoughts or feelings ("I feel good, I feel great, I feel wonderful. Things aren't so bad.") I could even react with self-defeating thoughts, like, "I don't deserve peace and quiet, so I guess it's OK."

This time around, I chose the second type of responding - changing the context. To do this, I first allowed the experience to happen and be recognize at a basic level. There were sounds, I was irritated, thoughts and feelings were involved, etc. I accepted this process as it was. Then, instead of trying to change it, I investigated it. Is it true? What do I have to assume in order to feel this way? A whole story emerged. "I" was trying to meditate, and "my" wife had the TV on. How rude! There's no way "I" can feel peaceful if the sound kept interrupting "me" and "my" practice. Is any of that true? Is this me? This type of investigation tends to loosen up the "burdensome mind-state" so as to allow it to fall away. And that's what happened. I allowed it to be seen for what it was, and in time it was replaced by mindfulness and clarity. Sounds were sounds, thoughts were thoughts. Even "I" is just a thought. As the unhelpful relational frame gave way, the openness of being was allowed to express itself without block.

Of course, new blocks arise, and the process begins all over again. Maybe there are those who experience the openness of being and then stay in that space without any new blocks arising. That isn't the case for me. Each new moment brings a new opportunity to respond to experience in a way that brings presence and release instead of contraction and suffering. How nice it is to have learned a better way to respond!

Jackson

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13 years 1 week ago #548 by Kate Gowen
"The open space of being
continually breaks through into consciousness in unexpected flashes and
glimpses; for instance, when we encounter some unfathomable mystery in
ourselves or those we love. This simple awakening also happens in
meditation when some burdensome mind-state suddenly falls away. Then we
see that even the densest mind-states merely float, like buoys, on the
larger open sea of awareness. Meditation opens a gateway into this
larger space by relaxing our tendency to identify with the compulsive
thinking that usually fills it up."

Excellent! And let's also acknowledge the 'power of the small'-- the unimpressive, the momentary, the easily-overlooked. That tiny space of seeing a choice between irritation and discovering that the irritant and meditation can be acommodated by the space available. It may not seem vast, or even peaceful, but there's room enough, time enough, calm enough.

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13 years 1 week ago #549 by Jackson
"Excellent! And let's also acknowledge the 'power of the small'-- the unimpressive, the momentary, the easily-overlooked. That tiny space of seeing a choice between irritation and discovering that the irritant and meditation can be acommodated by the space available. It may not seem vast, or even peaceful, but there's room enough, time enough, calm enough." -Kate

You bet :-D

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12 years 5 days ago #550 by jackhat1


I have been focusing for over 25 years. One of its interesting recent offshoots is called Thinking at the Edge. That is, taking our conceptual knowledge as far as it can go and then just being there at that confused, fuzzy edge to see what comes up. It is about operating out of the place where our knowledge ends. That is where creativity can come from. It shares with meditation a technique to break through conditioned patterns of emotion, behavior and thought.

Here is a link to more info on focusing: http://www.focusing.org/ . Click on Philosophy of the Implicit. Also good info at the Thinking at the Edge tab.
xjack

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