Monday, January 09, 2006

Curiosity

My core curiosity is about awakening the deepest and truest human potential. I have practiced many different modern Western psychological techniques, such as gestalt, encounter groups, tantra, breath work, dehypnotherapy, body work. I was a student of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, am a student of Vajrayana Diamond Way (Tibetan Tantric Buddhist) Lama Ole Nydahl, and am learning/practicing Big Mind with Genpo Roshi. This work is primarily experiential.
My core curiosity is how we can wake up, how more of us can actually complete this practice, what practices would enable far more people to wake up, and how the development of society is creating new potentials for larger-scale awakening and how the creation of awakening as a social phenomenon, not just an individual one, can change society.
In other words, being fully awake, timeless, and fully human in the early 21st century.

Other relevant terms:
Integral, Ken Wilber, chod, guru, enlightenment, A. H. Almaas, felt sense, soul recognition, circuitry alignment, John de Ruiter, Poona 1, Enneagram,

Sunday, January 01, 2006

The enneagram and the Christian Right

The enneagram is a map of nine personality types, their passions (sins) and virtues, and how to go beyond personality.
In this system, One is the perfectionist, the moralist, the Puritan. Three is the doer, the winner. America as a nation is a combination of the puritan and the winner, two types that do not harmonize with each other easily.
Fundamentalist Christianity was originally a One phenomenon. "The world at large is a wicked and sinful place. Live apart from it for the reward in the next world." The focus was inward to avoid being caught up in the temptations of the world.
In recent decades, fundamentalism has shifted to become more and more a Three phenomenon. "Live right and Jesus will reward you." Mega-churches provide relationship counseling and job and social networking. The focus is outward.
But the inner puritan is still alive. So moral short-comings are projected onto non-believers. This allows the believers to not see just how worldly their religion is becoming.
More generally, it is important to see what role right-wing Christianity serves for its followers. And not to take for granted that this role is primarily religious.

All spiritual groups, schools, centers, lineages, workshops, workshop centers, etc. are parts of a whole that has not yet come into existence. A whole that can only be brought into existence by the parts that make it up. No one individual and no one group can do that job.
What this whole will be like, I do not know. No one can know. Yet.
Most spiritual groups do not even know that there is a whole yet to be born. So most make do one way or another. A single community (sangha) or teaching either may try to handle areas that it is not very good at. Or it may deny the importance or even the existence of any spiritual practice/area outside its range of competence. "Just do this one practice and it will take care of everything."
Very rarely, a group or collection of a number of groups may try to create the whole-that-is-to-come by itself. From the top down. From on high.
What is the best posture to take? One of trusting curiosity.
This is not just about an approach that integrates these elements. It is about allowing something new to come into form, something new that will provide a new context in which existing elements can be more themselves because they are no longer needing to be what they are not.