Open your mind… and look inside.

I have continued reading Integral Life Practice, which I guess is a small form of integral life practice on its own.

I mean, there is reading and there is reading and there is reading. On one end of the spectrum there is escapism reading, the “trashy novel” and such, which lets the reader enjoy a freedom from the normal restraints, and escape into what I call “lower worlds” where you feel powerful and your surroundings easily conform to your fantasies. On the other extreme is the contemplative reading of Holy Scripture, in which your purpose is to ascend to a “higher world” which is greater than you and commands your awe and obedience. And of course in between these you have the purely informative non-fiction, which sets out to inform us about the “real world” in which our bodies already live.

Integral Life Practice does not qualify as Holy Scripture – Ken Wilber’s AQAL is a philosophical system rather than a religion – but neither is the book purely informative. It seeks to inspire the reader to grow toward his highest potential. As such, it transports the mind to a slightly higher reality which you then have to move your real life into by living a disciplined life to some extent. The discipline in this case is the Integral Life Practice from which the book has taken its name.

I have now come to the Mind module, the second of the four main modules. A central tenet of ILP is that you have to practice something from each of the four modules every day, even if it is just a tiny 1-minute exercise. The Mind module centers on the AQAL system itself. It sees reality as consisting of four quadrants. Things can be either internal (to the mind) or external (physical). They can also be either individual or collective, or should we say singular and plural. But all these things are explained lucidly by Wilber himself for free on the Net. Likewise the concept of lines, in this case lines of development. For instance you can be highly developed along the cognitive line (you’re smart!) but poorly along the moral line (you’re a scoundrel). Likewise you can be spiritually advanced but neglect your body. And so on – there are a number of lines, mostly taken from decades of science done by others.

Now the idea is that you can use the “practices” to shore up the lines that are lagging disastrously, especially if they are main lines. (Your musical skills may or may not have a bearing on your life, although they could certainly enrich it if you have the opportunity. Your interpersonal development is pretty much essential, unless you are a hermit in this life and aiming for Nirvana – extinction – in the next.) Besides getting out of trouble with your weak spots, you can also identify your special talents and develop these for the good of the world. Evidently mediocrity does not command much sympathy in the AQAL camp – there is little mention of the lines where you have just trudged along passably.

The authors make special note of the fact that several spiritual teachers of great repute have had their life and teaching marred by sexual misbehavior. This is not a purely American thing, I remember the elders in the Christian Church pointing out the same trend among the more airy wing of the Pentecostal movement. This is what happens when one thinks spiritual growth can run ahead without Shadow Work. The Church was big on Shadow Work, at least in its early years. The thing is, if you have this kind of weak spots, they can totally ruin all the good you thought you could do.

The purpose of the Mind module is basically to make the reader aware of all the different facets of daily life: The quadrants, the lines, the levels and the types. By bringing awareness into everything, we get new choices. We don’t need to react automatically, as we often do. Merely knowing that things have different sides, and that people are different in so many ways, can be helpful. But awareness is something more than just bookish knowledge. It requires us to be present and witness the things we are aware of. This is where the practices – exercises, if you will – come in. And that is why we should think of AQAL every day.

I think this is a most excellent idea, to shine awareness into every corner of our daily life. Whether this really is the ultimate Theory of Everything, and whether it does a better job than certain other life practices, is open to debate. But given the human tendency to shrink back from awareness and into an automated life, I can only cheer on this attempt to go in the opposite direction.

You don’t need to know what a Kokuchi is – the link to darkness is true for even the most trivial of “possessions”.  Whenever we have to say “I don’t know what possessed me”, the shadow was there.

Let’s continue looking at my latest purchase, the book Integral Life Practice which I wrote about yesterday. The first of the four essential modules is the Shadow Module. I think this is an unfortunate placement, albeit understandable.  The authors have reason to be excited that they have included this module at all.  If you think “shadow work” is an alien phrase in mainstream literature, imagine the New Age movement where people start their day with positive affirmations of the type “I am God. I attract health, wealth and happiness.  I deserve to be happy.  I manifest everything I want by the power of my mind.”

Long time readers will be familiar with my studies of automisanthropology, the science of why I, of all people, am up to no good. I have been at this since my youth, and consider it a major reason why I am generally happy in my near-hermit life. Living closely with oneself without having done shadow work is likely to be uncomfortable if not outright dangerous. So yeah, shadow work for the win!

However! In the book, this is the first of the four basic modules. And while the authors sensibly mention that a good therapist is the common way to go about it, they don’t let this stop them for long. After all, you may not be able to or willing to see a mental health practitioner. So they quickly move on to their quick, bare-bones gold star method for assimilating your shadow, the 3-2-1 method.  This name comes from the starting point of thinking of the shadow in the third person, as something remote and external; then talking to it in the second person, as a “you”, and finally assimilating it into the first person, I.

This probably works, with some practice. And the book is all about practice – it’s actually in its name. But perhaps you should wait a little longer before you set off to reclaim the parts of yourself that you have thrown down the stairs to the basement and locked the door after. Because there may just be a reason why one would go to such an extreme step with a part of oneself.

Shadow work is not a hobby, to be undertaken for the excitement of it. At the very least pick your shadows carefully, because you really don’t want them to take over your house and throw you down the stairs to the basement, then lock the door.

The authors have been practicing various self-strengthening techniques for many years. In order for you too to be able to face your own shadow, you should first make sure your body, mind and spirit are not a total wreck. If you worship a god, be sure to enlist its help too. I agree that shadow work should be done concurrently with the other three, but I would like to put it at number 4 rather than number 1. It should be approached with great caution, after careful preparation.  But approached it must be, eventually.

Overall, we aim to gradually increase awareness in our lives.  Awareness is the silver bullet, the panacea, the skeleton key, the cheat code to the game of life. (OK, actually it is more like the “sudo” command in Linux, in that you have to use it over and over, not once and for all. But you get the point.)  As we gradually raise our awareness in all parts of our lives, we cannot avoid becoming aware of our projections and our repressed parts. In which case we have to either take a good hard look at them, or give up this whole awareness thing and shrink back to a more constrained state of mind with fewer choices and more slavery.

As I said on September 16, 2001: If you want to see the rainbow, you have to face your own shadow.  I mean that literally:  This is the way light works in the natural world. But it also has some deeper meaning. The rainbow, in the ancient Hebrew myth of Noah’s Flood, was God’s promise that he would never utterly destroy the world.  But if we want that hope, we have to face our shadow.

More about the book later, Light willing.

Proof that I have at least unpacked it!

So I have cracked open the book I got in the mail the other day. I have even read the first chapters. Obviously I can’t give anything like a sensible review until I have either read it through or thrown it in the recycling bin. Even then, I shall have to be cautious, for this is a book that could save or damn the world.

The concept of integral life practices looks very much like what I in my near future fiction called “the Innerways”. This is not surprising, since when I made that concept, I already had a cursory knowledge of Ken Wilber’s theories, and had taken an interest in them since they resonated with my own writing about what I call “the Next Big Thing”, the necessary shift in human consciousness to enable our new role as stewards of the planet rather than simply one of its millions of species. The way from our current halfway apelike state to that frightening responsibility goes through the Innerways, the practices that prepare each of us to reach our highest aspiration. The book Integral Life Practice is an attempt at just that, guiding individuals onto the beginning of those paths.

For those who haven’t read or don’t remember my series of essays in 2005 (starting June 18), let me briefly state my own position. This is one of the most important things I have written about. In fact, it is one of the few important things I have ever written. So bear with me for a paragraph.

Our ancestors until around 60 000 years ago did not have culture as we know it. Well, recent findings show outbreaks of it here and there in Africa, but scattered and temporary. Mostly they lived like their ancestors a million years earlier, despite having the same body and brain as us. At some point there was an explosion of creativity, traditionally associated with the invention of abstract language, although we don’t really know that. There has been a lot of upgrades since then, but none nearly as fundamental. There is a gaping abyss between any healthy human today, even the naked Stone Age hunters of the jungle, and our ancestors who knew nothing of inspiration or aspiration. A similar leap, I believe, is about to happen again. The Ice Age mind will give way to something so much greater that it is hard to believe we are the same species. Either that, or we’ll all die terribly along with most of the planet’s higher life.

The Innerways – or integral life practices – are the perfectly natural, non-magical things we can do while we are ordinary humans, but which will at the same time move us toward the next stage. It may be that we who live today will never be part of the next phase – actually, I am pretty sure of this – but we have to move in that direction, so that the next generation can stand on our shoulders and reach for the stars. We may not become more than human, but we have an obligation to become more human than we were.

The genius insight of Integral Life Practice is to serve a “balanced diet” of such practices, which can mutually strengthen each other. This is not a new concept – “a healthy soul in a healthy body” is an ideal that has lasted for millennia. But it is extended to four core areas: Body, mind, spirit and shadow. (Shadow here refers to the subconscious, not to demon worship or some such.) I know many people today think that spirit may be an epiphenomenon, kind of like the sun seems to rise and set while in reality it is the earth that rotates. But even if you don’t believe the sun rises, you would still be a fool to think the night will last forever. In the same way, spirit is an experienced reality, and you ignore it at your own cost. Spirit – in the form of aspiration and inspiration, at the very least – has been with us since we became human.

This was pretty random, as can be expected of a chaotic mind in a sick body after a brief look at the beginning of a new book. I am not going to recommend it just yet, but I sincerely hope to complete it and test its basic ideas – to the extent that I have not accidentally tested them already. The terrain seems strangely familiar.

Oh, and one more thing: The book is a very accessible read for something so groundbreaking.

PS: I found that the book was also recommended by Bill Harris, of HoloSync fame. It is a small world Integral movement after all!