Including the Self Beyond Self Through Me.... or Remember Meditation

The Mind is the Cause of Bondage and Liberation - Amrita-Bindu-Upanishad as translated by Georg Feuerstein

The mind is said to be twofold; pure and impure.
The impure has desire and volition; the pure is devoid of desire.

The mind alone is the cause of bondage and liberation for humans.
Attached to objects, it leads to bondage; devoid of objects, it is deemed to leas to emancipation.

Because liberation of the mind devoid of objects is desirable,
The seeker after liberation should always make the mind devoid of objects.

When the mind, freed from contact with objects and restricted in the heart,
becomes nonexistent, then that is the supreme state.

It should be checked until it meets with destruction in the heart.
This is wisdom; this is meditation. The rest is diffuse speculation.

- Amrita-Bindu-Upanishad

All Day Practice

The Integral Spiritual Centre recently posted a video of Father Thomas Keating and Diane Musho Hamiltion talking about spontaneous practice outside the consecrated space of prayer or meditation. I loved the way their chat coursed around an underlying theme of unconscious competence being the hallmark of stabilised transformation.

The video caught my attention mainly because I've been noticing a marked improvement in my ability to carry the embodied wisdom cultivated in mediation and prayer into my daily interactions since recommitting to daily practice a few months back.

The big one's been finding innovative ways of practicing 'not this, not that' with the thought process that seeks to define categories and concepts outside of my proximate self as I (e.g. judgements or expectations at work or old concepts of who I am in relation to family). I've been finding that I can hold that mind in a not this, not that state to reveal a deeper level of presence, and then from that state of presence, allow the conceptual mind to do its work. It's been great practice. I'm finding myself aware of my self system as an undefinable process, and then in not suppressing any part of it, I'm able to experience a more unconditioned presence as self and a healthy self concept in perpetual motion.

When doing it today, I noticed an interesting way of returning to consciousness which is able to be found when I try to not define myself. I open myself to the realisation that everything is in flow, then notice it through my thinking processes (which is where my attention is when I feel the need to return to consciousness other than thinking!) that this is true, and then commence the not this, not that from there. What happens is that my thinking mind is satisfied that it has worked out that the entire universe is flow, then turns to defining me, and from that spot quickly realises that the rules outside also apply inside, and then rests. It's a nice neutraliser for my neuroticism!

Resting as open presence at work has been really pleasing for me. It's given me the ability to get through this rather incongruent temporary compromise with more equanimity and also allowed me the space to challenge my assumptions of what "this is". The mix of the two has been a critical insight. In the past I've thought that being in deep presence would just end up pointing out the pains of this compromise, and so I engaged in avoidance. I've also existed in the concepts of what I think this thing "is" so deeply that I've not been able to locate my presence beyond the clockwork universe I'd sealed myself in. With the two together, I get to notice that I'm not stuck beyond the inevitable slips into unconsciousness, and that I'm also able to inhabit perspectives relating to this work which are pleasing and productive for my health and wellbeing.

Beyond that, I'm also noticing that through holding this practice throughout the day, I'm also able to see the distinction between presence and the self-structure more. It's given me a cool insight into application of a Wilber-Combs matrix type analysis of my own path forward. From the distinctions I'm inhabiting, I'm able to be my present less-conditioned self anywhere, and yet, I also need to have a healthy ego which is happy and engaging in activities which are developmentally appropriate. This has been a big shift for me. I've been trying to overcome a horrible greeny/spiritually pluralistic defence inside me which has been either seeing wide presence and thinking that all is manifest so there's no good grounded reason for allowing myself to do things which are at my edge (a terrible neurosis around seeking permission for being myself to avoid the revocation of love in previously contingent relationships), or seeing my edge of development and then losing presence in the sole identification with that ego. This healthier space between the two is very bright indeed.

It's a place where I can intersect my own state capacities with my own stage capacities (across various lines). It's a bit like the triangular conception done by Terri O'Fallon at Pacific Integral on charting through the matrix what you can and can't see. To me, by knowing where my presence is, I don't have to be at the mercy of the self-concept all the time. By not being at the mercy of the self-concept, I can get enough subject-object distance on it to engage in transformative work, anywhere, in real time. With that, I'm able to be in process while I engage with the ways my stage-structure conceptions (rather than my defences and disillusionment) want to interact with the world(s) that stage-concept discloses to my perceptions and analysis... and all that's happening across my self-system continuum (proximate, distal etc). It's a very liberating practice for a dude who has been stuck in emotional and physical turmoil (and the scripts inside that turmoil) for a while.

Theopoetics

In researching for a poetry project I've been working on, I happened this morning on the interesting work of the theopoetic movement. I'll let them tell you more about it:

Madeleine L'Engle: … I sometimes think God is a shit-and he wouldn't be worth it otherwise. He's much more interesting when he's a shit.

Melinda Henneberger: So… to you, faith is not a comfort?

ML: Good heavens, no. It's a challenge: I dare you to believe in God. I dare you to think [our existence] wasn't an accident.

MH: Many people see faith as anti-intellectual.

ML: Then they're not very bright. It takes a lot of intellect to have faith, which is why so many people only have religiosity.

--Newsweek, May 7, 2006

Theopoetics offers us another path, another tool to help us deepen our faith and challenge passivity and oppression toward a deeper becoming. And unlike the proof and comfort of assurance that the tools of religiosity can seem to provide, theopoetics replaces certainty with Beauty and sureness with Art. It lets us open old drawers and crates, unpack grandmother's theology, great-grandfather's books, and read them in the light, their dust swept aside by the movement of the breath: Spirit.

For all that it offers, theopoetics is not a readily found idea, and as such, has not garnered as much attention as perhaps it might be due. In fact, without access to a specialized library, much of the information pertaining to it, and certainly direct access to its literature, is not available. Should one begin their search online, the smatterings of reference to it are few and far between.

A handful of articles and texts are repeatedly found, and yet they are just a few facets of the jewel.Consequently, after I had begun to look around for theopoetics materials, and found them to be relatively rare and far flung, I came to believe that there should be a means of corralling the available information so that it was more accessible to those seeking. After some months I decided to move on the idea and make a site (even if an asynchronous, non-spatial one) from which people could begin to explore. From that point forward, working, reading, and exploring for the site has only made me more certain that there needs to be more work, reading, and exploration.

I believe that the site can become the digital nexus for what I imagine will become an increasingly covered and interesting topic. While I am unabashedly Quaker, it is not. Though my selections are undoubtedly influenced by my Membership in the Religious Society of Friends, I intend for this little corner of the web to be useful to a broad range of spiritual and poetic thinkers; my desire is that it serve as a crossroads for all those interested in the field, process, and potential of this Art as theology. I would like it to become a ready reference for all things theopoetic. For students and teachers and for all of us that read, aware of the Breath.

While what I present here is not complete, I believe it covers most of the major work and workers to date. I will continue to update content substantially in the following months: in the future I plan for, there will be more names, texts, details and conferences to add. To that end, if there are desires for additional information to be included here, or clarifications/corrections, I hope to learn of them and will do my best to accommodate. The only thing I ask is that you send me an email if you find this site useful and/or interesting. Contact from others helps to lubricate the gears.

http://theopoetics.net

There's also a really interesting article co-authored by process philosopher Catherine Keller here.

Golden Wedding Gown

Robes of light
cloak and veil
anticipation
for his return.

Weaving and stitch,
painful and patient,
again tugged gently
to whisper return.

Braids and binds,
loosen, reveal,
nesting my flesh,
in welcome return.

Rope and thread
helix and whirlpool
place, moment, memory,
blood, breathing eternal
return.

Trusting the Masculine

My friend Jeremy recently did the Trusting the Masculine course I did last year with Sydney teacher Trevor Grey. We caught up on Sunday night to chat about his experience, and over the last few days I’ve been reflecting on how different he seemed, how different we seemed and, mostly, how different I am, both since I did the course, and simply “these days”.

I’ve been thinking today about David Deida’s ‘three stages of masculine’ distinction, and the ways that conceptual framework speaks to my experience over the years*.

For the uninitiated, it seems to me that Deida’s stages chart his observations of the genealogical unfolding of affect and spirit in the (possibly western) human male. I consider Deida’s first stage (traditional) Man to be a cultural role defined by stoicism, denial/suppression of affect and the maintenance an illusory omniscience in the I-Thou relationship designed to intimate power, protection, performance and perfectibility (think John Wayne/Clint Eastwood). I’d describe his second stage as the post-modern fella where the socio-cultural expectations of gender are loosened and gender roles are toyed with, men opening themselves to emotion, affect, authentic relationship and other domains traditionally protected by Woman (think a pony-tailed me circa first year uni, with a goateed mouth singing protest songs on my acoustic guitar). Deida’s third stage is where it gets interesting. My exposure to his work suggests that in response to the limitations of the pluralistic second stage, we enter a space where authenticity of heart and mind become one’s predominant experience through a complex process involving a loosening of the ego, the emergence of aperspectival cognition and a deepening of present self-perception as an emergent open-system, among other things. In that new consciousness, gender needs not be narrowly defined, denied nor politicised, but rather, the complexity of its many faces is experienced as another aspect of the arising of forms. In response to that perception, we openly experience the various aspects of gender which arise in our first person experience, we surrender in devotion to the limitless gender relationships inside our sub-personalities and between those of others, and hold lightly, yet still hold, the evident faces of gender observable in our nature (from gross through all subtle realms available).

In this space, a sexual wonderland has emerged for me. I’ve been able to inhabit the fullness more completely, feeling self-preserving sexuality, self-adapting sexuality, transcendent sexuality, compassion, force, passion, commitment, care, fire, intimacy, sensuality, frivolity, heterosexuality, homosexuality, fantasy, longing, denial, trust, dismay, lust… in a ceaseless tangle of legs, sweat, breath, hearts, souls and God.

Given the transcendent opening I’ve been experiencing through sexuality, I’ve been unsteady with Deida’s notion that we have a pre-given ‘essence’ which we can locate and use as the grounding for a permanent polarisation. That hasn’t been my experience. My experience of life discloses a kosmos far more enacted than pre-given. For one, I’ve never been able to locate a stable, permanent and divinely granted basis for my existence that hasn’t been utterly ineffable. Despite all the illusory promises my perceptions provide from moment to moment, the shifting sands of the groundless ground of existence is the only promise, and a promise which can never be grasped… such is the torment of incarnation. Given the depth of realisation evidenced in his prose, I wonder if pressed, Deida would yield on this position? Given my perception of enacted realities, my experience has been deeply diverse (and correspondingly deeply confusing to a sense of self that seems to require the absence of dissonance in a naively congruent self-sense). I’ve simultaneously felt sensual and powerful, compassionate and directed, certain and submissive, dominant and emotionally intimate. I’ve felt hetero, homo and trans attraction and curiosity. I’ve felt identified as a man, and often identified much happier as one of the girls. I’ve sensed assertion and denial of my male sex…

… and yet, I’ve made a choice to enact a polarised self sense in sexual congress to dig a karma that feels trusting, rewarding and beautiful. That self sense identifies as a trustable heterosexual male interested in a deep, committed relationship. It’s limited to my sexuality, and not to the way I show up in the relationship (I’m not keen on any relationship that requires me to express the fullness of masculine tosspottery in every given moment). The basis of this choice hasn’t been pre-ordained. No ontological given. Not even close. I’ve searched high and low for the holy grail in regards to my gender/sex/sexual identity… fuck me, in regards to everything in my life… and the only thing that remained at the end of the painful journey was an exhausted self laying bare in the reality that I Am Agency in the choices about my identity and the mental/emotional/spiritual criteria for those choices. Karma is made.

I’m very different “these days”.

* Of course, as with all conceptions, there’s gradations between, around, and within these ‘stages’, but for conversational purposes around type distinctions, I find it a handy metric.