Spiritual, Not Religious a Rational Approach to a new Integral Spirituality for the 21st Century, by Terrence Bishop
This course is ideal for a basic introduction to the key integral concepts of the Integral Spirituality movement a source of some of the ideas of Universe Spirit.
Table of Contents
Introduction 7
Foundations 10
When Travelling, Choose your Map with Care! 12
Is God Really Dead? 14
Spiritual Train Wrecks 15
The Sins of the Fathers 16
How We Got So Lost 19
The Great Chain 29
The Two Roles of Religion 32
Spiritual versus Religious 33
Levels of Consciousness 34
Why Levels are So Important 35
Personal Evolution 37
Evolution of Relationships 38
Evolution of the Collective 39
Summary of the First Tier 40
All Levels, All the Time 41
A Few Notes on Hierarchies 43
Boomeritis 47
Sidebar: The Pre-Trans Fallacy 51
The Incredible Leap to 2nd Tier 53
Deficiency vs. Abundance 55
The Prime Directive 55
Why is 2nd Tier So Rare? 56
How to Grow to 2nd Tier 59
States of Consciousness 63
The Great States 63
The Shadow 69
The Nature of Projection 69
Blind Spots 70
3-2-1 of Shadow 71
Subtle Theory Notes 72
Perspectives on Reality 73
1st, 2nd and 3rd Person Perspectives 74
It’s All About ME! 74
The Miracle of We 76
The Objective View 78
1-2-3 of God 79
Domains of Spiritual Practice 80
Masculine And Feminine Approaches to Spirituality 84
Ascending and Descending Currents of Spirit 86
Everyday Currents 87
Gender Preferences in Practice 88
A Final Word on Levels 89
Relationship of States and Stages of Consciousness 90
Craving States 93
Craving Stages 95
Integral Life Practice 97
ILP Rubber on the Road 99
Time with The Friend 100
In Conclusion 102
Resources 104
Credits 105To begin this exciting and amazing course click the Online Courses link at the top of the page and select ththe proper course title.
IntroductionSpirituality is the domain of human endeavour that is concerned with ultimate reality. It seeks to provide practical answers to the very deepest questions of life… Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? How should I live?
There is, of course, no one-right-answer to any of these questions, although you and I might find answers that are right for us. Every wave that breaks on the shore of our consciousness may bring forth a meaning unique to each of us.
But what we can all share in common is a broad conception of the infinite ocean of Spirit. Even though we may be limited to poetry and metaphors and paradoxical stories in our efforts to try and describe the nature of this mysterious ocean, those who dive deeply into its crystal depths over and again return with the same urge to share the wonders of their experience with anyone willing to listen.
All around us lies the wreckage of the religions of our ancestors. The modern obsession with scientific thinking has ripped apart the great spiritual vessels of the past like balsawood ships on the hard rocks of reason.
The purveyors of such rationalism convince us that the ocean is a figment of our imagination, an ultimately meaningless and sometimes dangerous pursuit. Best to turn your back, they say, and focus on these pretty worldly objects that are so much more real and useful.
Yet the ocean beckons. Without it, nothing seems to make sense. The very nature of the sandy shore of our everyday lives is continuously sculpted by the unseen forces of the ocean. The gentle waft of the sea breeze calls us over and over, finding its way through the ever growing piles of possessions and mental distractions.
How are we to answer these questions?How are we to make sense of the wreckage of the once noble religions? Are the scientists right after all? is this yearning for contact with the Divine really just a psychological reaction to the inevitability of death? Who can we trust to help us make sense of such an important matter as our spirituality? And even if we were to rediscover our passion for Spirit, how can we possibly find the time to pursue spiritual matters when life is already so busy and so full?
Over the last 25 years, a new philosophical approach has emerged that is revolutionising our understanding of human affairs. This is not the kind of philosophy spouted by old men in smoky rooms full of dusty books, but a vibrant, living philosophy that does not presume to have any value if it cannot provide meaningful and practical answers to the everyday problems of the average person.
Called the Integral Approach, it comes through the genius of American philosopher Ken Wilber, who in turn stands on the shoulders of thousands of researchers over thousands of years of enquiry into the human condition. Wilber has managed to substantially integrate into a single coherent framework the wisdom, insights and knowledge from every major branch of human enquiry, including philosophy, spirituality, psychology, physics, biology, art, business, politics, systems theory and several other fields.
The result is a map or model that offers a broad outline of what is possible in this adventure called Life. It describes the terrain of human potentials, from babies to Buddhas and pretty much every human condition in between. It helps to make sense of all of history, and explains much of the madness we see on the nightly news. Importantly, it offers a simple and believable story that explains how we could, as a species, be so foolish as to waver on the brink of global catastrophe as we blindly grasp for more power, possessions and security. When we understand why a problem has occurred, we become empowered to do something about it.
When applied to the domain of our spirituality, the integral approach offers some tantalising insights.It explains why there are so many apparently irreconcilable conceptions of the Divine, and why they are all true and all of great value. It tells a good story of why the churches have come upon such hard times in the modern west, and yet how they continue to carry within their traditions insights of unspeakable value. It lays bare the strengths and weaknesses of the New Age spirituality movement, while placing clear markers on the snares and pitfalls that await the unsuspecting. It explains the essential differences between the spiritual yearnings of the masculine and feminine within us all, and how the spirituality of the future brings these two great currents together in a single embrace.
Wilber has written over two dozen books that drill to great depths in his efforts to unpack the dynamics of the modern world. Spiritual Not Religious aims to reveal the essential insights from this vast body of work in a way that is accessible to those of us who lead regular, busy lives.
Insight however is useless if not followed up by practical application. The final sections of this book describe what is known as Integral Life Practice, which maps a range of simple, proven, concrete spiritual practices that you can mix and match to create a practice plan customised to your own being and life circumstance. The structure of the ILP approach ensures that even a moderate commitment will yield tangible results much more quickly than you might expect.
Foundations
The underlying assumptions behind Spiritual Not Religious are:
1. Spirit exists. For the sceptics, this can be proven if you are willing to explore the question with adequate conviction.
2. Every person contains within them an ‘enlightened’ perspective, or a living spark of Divine Consciousness that exists beyond the world of space and time as both ‘The Witness’ within and the essence of all that arises.
3. Every person also carries within them a system of interlocking beliefs that describe the nature of themselves and the world. The majority of these belief structures are formed in early childhood, and exist in the sub-conscious body-mind of the adult as the foundations of our current worldview. We use these beliefs (like a map) to guide us in our day-to-day choices on questions such as ‘what is important?’ and ‘how should I live?’.
4. The reason we don’t live from the enlightened perspective is largely a case of mistaken identity… we mistake these mental-emotional constructs that guide the way we live in the world as our core identity.
5. It is possible to upgrade the maps we use to navigate through life, even if we are mature in years. This occurs naturally when we see our old familiar maps for what they are. Awareness of the fact that we have been navigating life using a map created in childhood (that was originally designed to help us avoid the things that hurt us and give us more of what gave us pleasure) is often enough to change forever our skills as a traveller on the journey of life.
6. There are as many paths up the mountain of Spirit as there are travellers with that goal in mind. Not all paths take a direct route. Some paths turn back on themselves, and some go in circles. If we are serious about making progress, we have the option of listening to those who have gone before us who offer hints about what works and what pitfalls to avoid.
7. The broad consensus among spiritual traditions is that there is nothing to do to attain our true nature, except to relax our hold on these mental-emotional constructs that obstruct our view. This is harder than it may first appear… like asking a fish to comprehend the water in which it swims. When the certainty of those constructs recedes from our awareness, a quiet spaciousness is created within which our true nature can arise.
8. We cannot relax our hold on what we do not recognise to exist.
9. The integral map is a map of what obstructs our view of the Divine. Once understood, this map offers insight into the structure of reality which we can then observe as it arises within us and around us moment to moment. We are then empowered to skilfully engage with that reality in a way that is more likely to produce the desired outcome (e.g. to bring more love and freedom into our own being, and from there into the world).
10. The process of evolution towards our fullest potential is the process of learning to take on more and more perspectives, until we can hold all perspectives simultaneously (at which point we have merged with Infinite Consciousness). At its root, the integral map is a tool to generate perspectives.
In the words of Ken Wilber…
“The Integral Map is the result of what started as The Human Consciousness Project. Similar to the Human Genome Project, the Consciousness Project was created to map every state of consciousness, personality type, meme, neurotransmitter from dopamine to serotonin, every synapse, PET distribution scan, meditation state, altered state, peak experience, neuropeptide, stage of consciousness, neuronal display, twitch, twinge, and tingle of the human mind, or psyche, or bodymind, or brain-mind, or whatever you want to call our being. The idea was to get a complete map of the human brain-mind -- a composite map created by looking at every known culture and its psychological, spiritual, and scientific maps of the human psyche -- going back thousands of years, and then using all of those partial maps to create a composite map of the full potentials of the total known territory of the human psyche to date."
An Excerpt from Ken Wilber's new trilogy, "The Many Faces Of Terrorism"
When Travelling, Choose your Map with Care! There are an infinite number of ways to map the terrain of human potentials. Every one of us has a map within us that explains to us who we are and what is our relationship with the world around us. Not all maps however are of equal value in the effort to assign meaning to experience and to realize our deepest potentials while living in the chaotic world of form. The value of a map can be assessed by how effective it is in suggesting the meaning of our experiences and how useful it is in the process of making decisions about how to live.
And, even the very best map is still just a map. Studying maps alone will change nothing in myself or the world. Understanding is merely the precursor to action. The great quest of our age is deciding Which Action? Given the huge range of possible options and the degree of personal empowerment available to us today, how do I decide what to do? How do I live in a way that enables me to create more peace or more love or more freedom? Or at the very least, how do I live in a way that does not create even more suffering?
Clearly intent is not enough. The world is full of well-intentioned people who are just as likely to create suffering as alleviate it in their efforts to ‘save the world’ or to ‘help out’ and fix others. Good intent must be accompanied by skilful action, and skilful action requires understanding in order to choose in a way that at least avoids the likelihood of inadvertently creating harm. If our intention is to actually do good in the world, then the need for a reliable map is all the more important.
The integral map is arguably the most comprehensive map in existence, and therefore the most useful. The more you contemplate it the more it reveals an ever-deepening array of perspectives that bring understanding into the chaos of modern life. Using it, we can better understand our strengths and weaknesses and the way we create for ourselves the joys and suffering that punctuate our lives. It offers insight into the plight of humanity, and offers clues about what to do to help us turn the collective corner before we trash the planet that will sustain all future generations of humanity and countless other species that make up the web of life.
The invitation of this book is to check it out for yourself. There is no implied argument that suggests THIS is THE RIGHT WAY. The intention of this book in not to tell you how it is, but rather to inspire you to discover for yourself some new possibilities in how you perceive and approach the unique journey of your life. In the process, perhaps you might discover new routes around some gnarly old problems, or even a few hilltops from which you can enjoy a longer and broader view than you previously knew.
If the integral map annoys you, that may suggest an aversion to maps (even though you are using an inner map that says ‘maps are bad’). Such annoyance can be used constructively as a signpost that reveals a ‘holding’ of an anti-rational belief that may be blocking progress towards your full potentials.
About the Author of this Online Class
Terrence Bishop has lived a life covering a broad and unusual scope of experiences. His roots are embedded in the toxic soil of an industrial suburb of Melbourne in southern Australia. His high school education came second to being a drummer in a rock band and his weekend passions of rock climbing and motorcycle riding.
After graduating (just) in 1978, he stumbled into a job in the software business before anyone knew what that meant. The subsequent explosion in the industry propelled him into an international career that saw travelling the globe for 20 years. He lived in seven different countries on five continents (including apartheid-era South Africa) and travelled to fifty others, offering a smorgasbord of experiences in a range of radically different cultures.
In 1999, he and his business partners sold their company, enabling him the freedom to pursue what had become an obsession to understand what was happening around the world and what hope, if any, there was for the future of humanity. He then bought a 36’ yacht and began an 18 month private retreat in the Caribbean, during which time he read most of Ken Wilber’s works on Integral Theory.
In 2001, he and his partner returned to Australia to set up a retreat centre dedicated to the emergence of the Integral Worldview. After attaining his qualification as an Expressive Therapist, he ran numerous personal development workshops, informed by integral theory and practice. He has attended several integral events in the USA, and was part of a group of international integral practitioners that met with Ken Wilber in his Denver loft in 2006.
He is on the executive committee of the Men’s Health and Wellbeing Association of Queensland, and heavily involved in various aspects of men’s work. He is presently working on a new book on the subject of integral gender liberation.
To begin this exciting and amazing course click the Online Courses link at the top of the page and select ththe proper course title.
© 2008, Terrence Bishop
Worldview Centre
42 Brooks Road,
PO Box 285, Maleny QLD 4552
Australia
info@worldviewcentre.com.au
www.worldviewcentre.com.au
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