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Introduction to Integral Recovery Video Series
The player below will let you watch all 16 videos in this series.
Introduction to Integral Recovery Video Series
The player below will let you watch all 16 videos in this series.
I looked for myself and found only God. I looked for God and found only myself.
-One of my favorite Sufi sayings
On January 1st, I did a special two-hour New Year’s meditation with my wife Pam and a friend. We wanted to center ourselves, acknowledge this new year and cycle of time and also, in my case, seek some inner guidance that would direct me in the year to come. As it happened, in the last half hour of the 2 hour meditation, I went to a very dark place that was painful and also frightening, as these dark places often are. However, from what my experience has taught me, I have a growing faith that these places are not only part of the spiritual journey but essential to it. The intuitive voice that arose from this place said something to the effect that “God is found in the depths.” Ruminating on this message afterwards, I interpreted this as a personal call to deepen—deepen my practices, my writing, my relationships, my life.
A few days later, Pam and I traveled for the first time to St. Benedict’s Monastery outside of Snowmass, Colorado for a three-day retreat. St. Benedict’s is a Trappist monastery and the home monastery of the Integral luminary Father Thomas Keating. Prior to this, Pam and I had been using another monastery in the southwest part of the United States for our retreats. This other monastery is a very Blue/Amber Catholic fundamentalist type of monastery. That said, it is located in an absolutely gorgeous place and the architecture is spectacular. But I always had a sense that I had to spend the first couple of days transcending the fundamentalist Blue/Amber field of energy at this monastery.
In contrast, at St. Benedict’s I felt immediately at home. Instead of having to struggle with the fundamentalist field of energy, I felt met right where I was at. The outward evidence of this was in St. Benedict’s wonderful bookstore and library, where almost everybody who matters in the contemplative Christian, Buddhist, and Integral canons was well represented, including most of the works of Ken Wilber. This was really good news for me as I have a habit, whenever I’m in a religious facility or in somebody’s home for that matter, to immediately scan the book collection. I do this almost unconsciously, but it supplies tons of useful information to help me understand what’s going on in a particular place. All that to say, throughout the next 3 days, I engaged in a deep, contemplative, meditative journey, in which I meditated or prayed (prayitated, my new word) on an average of four hours a day. In addition, I also practiced yoga, reading of sacred texts, and journaling. I went to some pretty deep places and emerged with some new insights.
Firstly, and something that I’m still resonating with as I write this, is the difference between meditation and contemplation, which seem to me to be very similar but also distinct in certain aspects. When I say contemplation, I am speaking in a Christian context simply because that is what seems to be arising in my inner work. Most of us are aware of meditation as a process in which we slow down and move into deeper states of meditation (and deeper brain wave states), and bring pure awareness to all that arises. This includes an awareness of awareness itself, which in many cases eventually leads to the Aha! breakthrough realization that pure awareness is what I AM. In some schools of thought, this is said to be enlightenment itself. Contemplation, on the other hand, is similar but it seems to be different in that it is not just a practice of emptiness, but a practice of opening oneself to the presence of God. These experiences are very similar, and I seem to move through both of them in my personal practice.
But let me talk about contemplative practice as I am currently understanding it. The first step is simply becoming aware of one’s own inner personal ego landscape. This would include one’s thoughts, one’s fears, one’s shadows, one’s self-narratives, conditioning, karmic knots, etc., etc. The second stage in the contemplative process is where the contemplative simply opens his or herself up to the presence of God and waits in faith, with the attitude of “Lord, make me an instrument of peace, and not my will but thy will be done.” In this stillness and in this waiting, grace can happen. What this grace might do or look like can be almost infinitely varied, depending on the individual, the context, and, dare I say it, God. At this point, profound healing and transformation can occur, deep insight and wisdom can arise, as well as descent into the darkness, crucifixion, death and rebirth.
At this point, I believe we can experience that which is perhaps the deepest part of the Christian mystery and faith, the Paschal mystery. In a nutshell, Christ died and Christ arose. On our personal Christian contemplative journeys, this translates as the soul must die in order to be reborn. It is in this opening in faith to the deepest levels of our own personal suffering and the suffering of the world, if not the universe, that I believe that transformation and rebirth can and do happen. And perhaps also the healing of the world, because it is only at these depths of opening to our deepest human despair and suffering that we can be reborn into a larger, transformed self, a deeper wisdom, a greater connection, and deep forgiveness. I am becoming more and more convinced that ultimately the only way our species will survive is if this path of forgiveness and reconciliation becomes realized between individuals, peoples, nations, and tribes, etc.
In my personal experience while I was at the monastery, in my practice of prayer and contemplation, I experienced a deep inner light that seemed to penetrate all parts of my being. On the last day, as I was engaged in an hour and a half meditation, my experience became very terrifying and painful. At first I thought I was getting physically ill as I was feeling nauseous and sick. But soon it became apparent that it was not physical illness, but some sort of inner space that I was moving into that was making my body feel as it did. The experience mirrored the pain that I had felt on the first of the year, but this time it was more powerful and more profound. The darkness and pain were very intense and it was all I could do, by the grace of God, to stay with it. My breathing came in sharp and shallow, rapid gasps and there was very little mental activity. Just the darkness, the depths, and the suffering. And a sense that this darkness was something beyond my own personal suffering and that I had entered into a pain that was collective with the human family of all times and places, and perhaps even Creation itself. In short, I felt as if I were being crucified.
At the end of the meditation, this experience passed. I was left with a deep stillness and a sense that I had participated in a mystery that is at the center and the heart of the Christian tradition and transmission. This all builds on the intuition that I have for the Integral Recovery process that we must go into the deepest, darkest parts of ourselves in order to find the healing, transformation, and rebirth that is, at the deepest level, the heart of the recovery process.
As I write this, I feel a deep sense of gratitude and humility and a sense that this process is not over.
An Integral Pilgrimage to Assisi
December 2-12, 2010
Led by John Dupuy, Leslie Hershberger, and Rollie Stanich
“What we are looking for is what is looking.” Francis of Assisi
Welcome to the Home Page of our Integral Pilgrimage to Assisi. Assisi was St. Francis’ home when he was alive, and is still home to his presence. Assisi is a miracle. To go there with an open heart is to be touched by the love of God.
St. Francis is one of the the biggest souls our human family has ever produced. His love, humility, and pure joy transcends and includes the Catholic Church which he was a part of. Francis is a light for all peoples and traditions and a brother to all creatures and creation.
Why an Integral Pilgrimage? Because Integral helps us to re-member that which we, in our forgetfulness, have dis-membered. We go to Assisi to have that process of re-membering infused with the Love of God that is reflected so perfectly in the Life and Presence of St. Francis of Assisi. As we go to Assisi, Francis’ work becomes our work, his struggle our struggle. In the pages of this website you can sense into the work that we will do on our pilgrimage to Assisi. We will go as individuals and leave as family. If you are called to this pilgrimage, come. Come meditate with us, come and learn with us. Join us on the Holy road to Assisi, and let us pray together… Lord, make us instruments of your peace…
Merely to know St. Francis is to understand the gospel, and to follow him in his true, integral spirit, is to live the gospel in all its fullness…he did not think of himself as an apostle, but as a tramp.
Thomas Merton
We provide healing and renewal intensives for those challenged by alcoholism and addiction, depression and PSTD, as well as those interested in becoming an Integral Recovery provider. We will be holding 4-week recovery intensives in Teasdale, Southern Utah, throughout 2010. Please contact us right away if you would like to join us.
Our IR Intensives are intense―also highly individualized and personal. You will work in a very small group and receive tons of individual attention and support. IR Intensives are appropriate if you have 2 days of sobriety, or 8 months―and if you’re suffering involves drugs, depression, or PTSD. The treatment is the same. You study the AQAL™ map, apply it to your individual life and learn to practice a lifelong Integral Recovery Practice that will keep you sober, healthy, happy, and growing into the most beautiful version of your own unique self.
Below are the schedules of a typical weekday and weekend in an Integral Recovery Intensive.
Intensive Daily Schedule
Typical Weekday
Wake up 7:00 a.m.
Yoga/Movement 7:30 – 7:50
Meditation 8:00 – 9:00
Journaling & Process Group 9:00 – 9:20
Breakfast 9:20 – 10:30
Class 10:30 – 12:30
Lunch 12:30 – 1:00
Free time 1:00 – 2:50
Gym 3:00 – 4:00
Meditation 4:45 – 5:45
Journaling & Process Group 5:45 – 6:15
Dinner 6:15 – 7:00
Evening Activity 7:00 – 9:00
Lights Out 10:00 p.m.
Weekley evening activities include Dharma talks & potlucks at the local Zendo, AA Meetings, kishindo classes, movies, and kirtan.
Typical Weekend Day
Wake up 7:30 a.m.
Yoga/Movement 8:00
Meditation 8:30 – 9:30
Journaling & Process Group 9:30 – 10:00
Pack up for Day Trip (could be a hike, a trip to the Hot Springs)
Dinner
Evening Activity (could be bowling, a movie, etc.)
Lights Out 10:00 p.m.
 Centerpointe Research Institute (Holosync meditation CDs) |
 Immrama Institute (Insight meditation CDs) |
Meditation is a core Integral Recovery practice. However, it can be hard for some people to start (and maintain) a traditional meditation practice such as Zen, TM, or Vipassana. That’s why we recommend the above CDs, which use binaural brain entrainment technology to make your meditation experience a lot easier, deeper, and more pleasurable. Binaural meditation is scientifically proven to reduce stress, improve brain functioning, and provide a host of other physiological benefits. This is essential stuff for anyone in recovery!
Read more about Holosync meditation technology:
Also check out these other useful meditation aids:
 Bio-Tuner by Sota |
 Alpha-Stim Device |
  Integral Life Practice Starter Kit - Integral Institute |
  Kosmic Consciousness - Ken Wilber |
  The Integral Operating System: Version 1.0 - Ken Wilber |
  The One Two Three of God - Ken Wilber |
 The Disease Model of Addiction Part 1 - Dr. Kevin T. McCauley, M.D. |
 The Disease Model of Addiction Part 2 - Dr. Kevin T. McCauley, M.D. |
  Integral Life Practice - Ken Wilber, Terry Patten, Adam Leonard, Marco Morelli |
  Strength for Life - Shawn Philips |
  The Integral Vision - Ken Wilber |
  A Brief History of Everything - Ken Wilber |
  Integral Psychology - Ken Wilber |
  Thresholds of the Mind - Bill Harris |
  Spiral Dynamics - Don Beck, Chris Cowan |
  High Society - James Califano |
  Soulfully Gay - Joe Perez |
  The Translucent Revolution - Arjuna Ardagh |
  The Sedona Method - Hale Dwoskin |
  The Life We Are Given - Michael Murphy, George Leonard |
  The Future of the Body - Michael Murphy |
  Mastery - George Leonard |
 Big Mind - Genpo Roshi |
  Buddha Is as Buddha Does - Lama Surya Das |
  The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success - Deepak Chopra |
  Creativity - Matthew Fox |
  Motivational Interviewing - William Ross Miller, Stephen Rollnick |
  Everything Belongs - Richard Rohr |
  Mega Brain Power - Michael Hutchison |
 The Wisdom of the Enneagram  - Don Richard Riso, Russ Hudson |
 Sharing the Presence - Thomas Hubl |
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Ken Wilber has said in talks that if you want to check the depth of your spiritual realization, go home for the holidays and see how you do. This always evokes nervous laughter from the audience, and I know from my own experience, that it is quite easy to feel at Second Tier during an Integral workshop in the presence of great teachers and other like-minded aspirants. Nothing to it. On the other hand, go home for a week (in my case it was 10 days) and see how you fare.
First of all, let me say that I adore my family, and that I got off the plane with an heroic intention of practicing loving kindness, and avoiding conversations about politics. Much to the credit of my parents, they realized this also, and we experienced only a few slips, from which we quickly recovered.
One thing I have learned is that, at least for me, there is no excuse for not practicing. I think I did miss meditation the first day there, but made up for the slip with meditating two to three hours a day for the rest of my stay. I also managed to get to a gym 6 times while I was home (a big help). One thing that I noticed was that my rigorous practice over these last few years allowed me to be much more aware of my conditioning and old patterns and step out of them and simply observe. The old conditioning was by no means gone, but I was able to observe my stuff from the much greater context of the Witness, a much greater percentage of the time. As Sean Hargens once told me, “I realize that in every situation or occasion, a part of me is always free.”
It was also painful to witness the extreme right wing xenophobic stream of amber/blue consciousness that they have immersed themselves in. “Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ – all the signs say so!” The news source almost always on at the house is Fox News and in the cars, the radios are tuned to right wing talk shows. I had to watch how this propaganda stirred up hatred, anger, and despair, in two of the kindest, most decent, and honest people I have ever known: my beloved parents. This caused my heart to hurt and my anger to rise at the blatant and toxic manipulation of these so-called pundits and “news” organizations. It was, and is, a heck of a practice to hold all of that in an open loving heart. Allow the hurt, feel the pain, access the tears and deepen into Love.
In a recent conversation between KW and Integral Christian Rollie Stanich, Rollie says that Love is to meet everyone where they are at, and at the same time come from the highest level of which you are capable. I find that immensely beautiful and extremely useful and that is where the rubber of Integral Theory meets the road of life.
One, maybe two last points. Where we meditate, where we are located in the space/time continuum, has a powerful effect on practice as an all quadrant context for what arises in our practice, whether it be at your parents’ home, your regular meditation place, the site of a former concentration camp, or in some beautiful, secluded canyon in Utah. As I sat in my bedroom in parents’ home, I began to see that in the first part of the Second Tier journey we become aware of all these stage and value memes etc., and as we move up from there we actually are called to do the inner work of reconciling these different stage and value conflicts within ourselves, not just cognitively, but integrally: body, mind, heart and soul. The dissociations, fractures and fissures left over from first tier development must be healed, metabolized, transmuted. Only then, in the truly deep Loving way referred to by Rollie, can we become instruments of the healing of the developmental spiral and the human family.
I will close with this stunning quote from a Don Beck talk I recently listened to: “No more awards for predicting rain, only awards for building the Arc.” Amen
We provide healing and renewal intensives for those challenged by alcoholism, addictions, and depression, as well as those interested in becoming an Integral Recovery provider.
John Dupuy is currently offering ongoing Integral Recovery Intensives in Teasdale, Utah. Enrollment dates are open. Please contact us right away if you would like to join us.
One of the main insights of the great mystics, and one of the essential truths of Integral Recovery is that all suffering comes from identification with surfaces. This is not a dogma that one has to believe or buy, based on what I or anyone else is saying, this is an experiential given that one will discover as one practices and plunges again and again into the depths of one’s own being in daily contemplative and meditative practice. And yes, again, daily contemplative interior practice is an essential part of Integral Recovery practice. Someone recently defined practice as “cultivation through repetition.” This is the best short definition I think I’ve heard. What are we cultivating? Through exercise and nutrition: strength, health and vitality; through our cognitive work: new perspectives, knowledge and wisdom; through our emotional and shadow work: freedom from the dysfunctional aspects of our past programming, and the freedom not to get lost in our current drama; through our spiritual practice: the ability to live our lives from our core, which means our best and truest self. This means going beyond the apparent to the essential. We cultivate all of these qualities by the constant repetitive exercise of these four essential aspects of our selves: body, mind, heart, and soul.
As Marco Morelli once told me, daily practice is equivalent to keeping the fire going under the pot. To keep the fire of transformation and growth going, one has to keep the heat up. If one approaches the project of transformation and transmutation piecemeal, or sporadically, the desired changes simply will not happen. Again, the call and challenge of Integral Recovery is daily Integral Practice.
One of the main problems that I have seen for people on this path is the fear that arises often when one is doing the work. The problem is not that “oh, this doesn’t work,” but “this is too much!” When the darkness and the pain and the chaos and the dark nights emerge, the natural tendency is to run as quickly as possible from the darkness, and even the light. It was this same attempt to avoid unpleasant and unwanted states that lead to using drugs and subsequent dependency in the first place. As Bill Harris has said for those using Holosync and facing the chaos that necessarily comes up, “you should high five your partner,” because chaos is the mother of evolution and when chaos kicks in, you are getting ready for what Prigogyne called the “escape into higher order.” If one does not short circuit the process and stays with it, one will transform and grow. How do we do this? By continuing to expand, invite, and allow the process of going from chaos into higher order to continue. We can’t control the chaos, but we can invite it: from caterpillar, to chrysalis, to butterfly. Not just once, but over and over again: the constant process of recreation (death and rebirth), expansion, evolution and growth.
A teaching for me in this regard happened when I was on retreat at a Benedictine monastery in northern New Mexico. It was an unstructured retreat, so I was on my own. I was doing Holosync meditation for three hours a day and was experiencing a tremendous darkness that was scary as hell. It was all I could do to stay with the meditation: my nose seemed barely above the water line. During a break, I was helping out in the monastery bookstore and came across a pamphlet by the great American monk, mystic, and writer Thomas Merton. My eyes fell on a passage that said something to the effect that the mystic recognizes that God is in the darkness as well as the light. This was just the Zen slap I needed. I returned to my interior work with a new acceptance for the darkness, fear and pain, and soon the darkness turned to heat and warmth, and then brilliant clarity. And again I emerged from this period into what seemed like a new plateau, or level of emotional healing and spiritual understanding. A line from one of my favorite poems illustrates this point brilliantly: T.S. Eliot’s “East Coker.”
I said to my soul, be still, and let the darkness come upon you, which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre, the lights are extinguished for the lights to be changed.
To be changed, transformed, to move to the next level or stage we must “let the darkness come upon us,” and let ourselves move through the darkness of the birth canal in which our old ideas, beliefs, and identities die and are reborn again and again. How do we do this? By continuing to expand and become identified with the context, the Witness, and not the objects that arise. We suffer and get stuck when we identify with objects, mistaking them for subjects, or our self. Meditation is not a process of ceasing to think. This has lead to great misunderstanding and often a hurtful anti-intellectual stance. The mind does not cease to think, but the thoughts arise as objects in the vast sea of pure awareness that is our original face. Our former subjects become objects, until eventually even that dichotomy disappears and there is only the One and you are IT, always have been and always will be. But even this is misleading, because You do not exist in time, time arises in You. I think this is the vital living core of the spiritual work that we do.
Let me tell of a recurring dream that I had when I was very young, perhaps seven or eight years old. This is the last part of a longer dream but it is illustrative of what I have been talking about, the constant repetitive plunging below our surfaces into the depths of our being through daily meditative contemplative practice. In the last part of this dream I am standing in front of this huge pit. I look down into the pit and see darkness and horror, like looking into the mouth of hell. At this point I awake completely freaked out and terrified. Sometimes it took a long time for the fear to leave me. Years later, when I was attending graduate school, we were doing a process group and a woman was speaking of some deep traumatic experience that she had experienced. While she was talking I closed my eyes and had a waking dream or vision. In the vision I am standing before the pit of darkness again, and this time I do not recoil in terror but dive into the pit and the darkness. And I feel myself going down and down into this pit of darkness. I feel the gore and slime as I plunge deeper and deeper into this pit… suddenly I am through the darkness and find myself swimming through this beautiful blue-green water and all the filth and gore is washing off me. I then surface and see the beautiful blue sky and billowy clouds and I am in between two islands with palm trees and immaculate white beaches. It felt like a glimpse of paradise. I quickly returned to the group and realized that I had found the meaning and resolution of this terrifying dream from my childhood. The meaning was clear, the only way out of my darkness was through it, and the darkness is not deep or infinite but a thin and shallow surface compared to the immensity of the beauty that was underneath the surface. It is the hero’s journey. We must be willing to cross the threshold from the known into the unknown. We must enter the dragon’s lair, the dark cavern and face our own demons to find the treasures that lie beyond our darkness and fears. By our willingness to take this journey we find our medicine, and power: that is our gift to the world, our payback to life. This is a journey that we must be willing to take again and again, through fear, darkness, and chaos, into wisdom, strength and compassion. Over and over again. Not just once (that would be nice!), stress, chaos, crisis, the mother of evolution. The good news is that as we embrace this chaotic rebirth process we can do it with equanimity and confidence in the ultimate goodness of the process. The more we do this with time and practice, the more that we can do this, and the more we can take on. First, just for ourselves then ultimately for all sentient beings, and, as Wilber succinctly put it, “we suffer more but it bothers us less.”
Again T.S. Eliot:
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope. For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: so the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
This passage from Eliot’s “East Coker” is not just pretty poetry but an accurate description of the interior journey, of the inner work. We must be still and wait. There can be great activity both emotional and intellectual as we “be still”, because being still does not mean freezing the universe, it means holding it in the greater context of emptiness and pure awareness. Imagine a wiggling bug on the surface of a vast, still ocean. From fifty thousand feet looking down on the ocean we would say that the ocean is still indeed, even though our little bug is shaking all over. In the context of emptiness, this vast endless spaciousness, no matter what the ego or mind is doing, it happens in stillness: the Witness is always still (or as Ken Wilber says, “emptiness is simple – it has no moving parts.”) To further look at this, imagine you are a hundred meters under the ocean in still calm water. There could be a tsunami passing over your head and at that depth all will be still. In our daily meditation, as we plunge ever deeper into this vast spaciousness that is our true Self, we are less perturbed by the disturbances on the surfaces, the peripheries. This does not mean that we ignore the surfaces either, but we can, for the first time, perhaps, become really effective in dealing with these surface manifestations, because for the first time we can hold them in their true context, and we can do so with lightness, wisdom, and compassion. We can dance the dance of life with beauty, skillfulness, and grace because we have seen and know our original face: the vast consciousness from which all arises.
We don’t “hope” or “love” because we have “faith” in the waiting. Because as things, emotions, thoughts, and feelings arise in the vastness of our true Self, they will arise, release and self-liberate, and the understanding and wisdom that arise from this waiting is of a nature and order that seems to be from a different altitude and magnitude than our formerly contracted state could have grasped. This is just one of the reasons that “cultivation through repetition,” or daily practice is so vitally important to our future as individuals, a species, the planet, and so on. Because from these states of expansion and transcended awareness, a creativity and intelligence that we are perhaps just beginning to realize, can burn through the fog of our separate, isolated, little self-dreams and can allow us to truly create the world anew in all quadrants, lines, stage, states and types.
“We wait without thought, for we are not ready for thought,” yet. When I plunge into these depths, I cannot stop my mind from doing what it does most of the time. That is, think. I do, however, bracket my thoughts, not believing the fictions and stories that it spins about what is arising. They are just stories that my little mind creates and will keep me stuck if I pay them heed. After I do go through the darkness or whatever is arising, through the surface into the vast stillness, then I am ready for thought. In that darkness, comes the light and in that stillness the dancing. Again, the problems that we have created are not solvable from the level, state, or consciousness that created them. At the level on which they were created, we just create more problems, more karma, more knots. To undo the knots and problems we have created on our surfaces we must go through our surfaces into the depths of our true being. From that depth we can cultivate the ability to release, unwind and untie our traumas and dramas and fictions that keep us prisoners and asleep.
Let me introduce a question that I often use in teaching that functions something like a Zen koan, that is a question that, if we struggle with it, and find the solution in ourselves, leads us to a new level of understanding of the deepest essential levels of reality and provides us a glimpse of our true self, our “original face” before our parents were born, before the Big Bang.
This is the question: How could a Jew forgive the Nazis? Given these Nazis had murdered your children, wife, husband, parents, family, friends, indeed your whole world and culture. How could you forgive this? Stop reading. See and feel this. See the doors being kicked in, in the middle of the night. Feel and smell the stench of the cattle cars, the claustrophobic horror. See the Nazi SS guards, look at them, feel their arrogance and the cruelty. See the attack dogs, their dogs with them as they open the cattle cars and force your family out and separate them and strip them and prepare them for the “showers,” the gas chamber… See your family dying in the gas chamber, slowly, horribly, obscenely. Feel it. See it. Smell it. Hear it. And ask yourself, how could a Jew forgive the Nazis?
It is not humanly possible. It is too much, way too much. Some people say, “well you can realize that you have the same potential for hatred and cruelty inside of your self.” Maybe. But you did not do it. You made choices that did not lead you there. It simply doesn’t wash.
There is only one way out of this. You wake up. You realize, “I am the Jew and I am the Nazi, and I have been doing this to myself the whole time! My God!” You awake. The game of hide and seek is over, and you are IT. This is what we call a non-dual state realization. It is beyond good and evil. Am I proposing a new category “goodevil”? Am I saying that somehow such a realization or stage of development puts one beyond such moralizing categories as good and evil? Am I saying that good and evil don’t exist? No, good and evil do exist as much as clouds and rocks, trees, you and me. What I’m saying is that both good and evil arise out of emptiness, pure awareness, Spirit, You. They are forms, objects, if you will, that arise out of emptiness, pure luminescent awareness that is your “original face”. Good and evil are part of the manifestation of reality that arises out of our true essence. Emptiness is the paper that the Universe story is written on, which contains the Big Bang, the evolution of Life, good and evil, the Beatles, the internet, the 85 Chicago Bears on so on, world without end. But what we truly are, is the paper and in some sense the pen. The story can be beautiful or horrible, the story can be preserved or utterly erased, but the paper abides. What we truly are in the deepest truest sense is the paper from which all stories arise. When we realize that we are the paper and the story as it is written, and our being does not depend on the story, but is the paper, then we are free. You are not Macbeth; you are an actor playing Macbeth.
Recently, in a series of meditations an injunction arose that went like this: “Feel the fear of the creature that has forgotten that he is the Creator.” And that was the focus of my meditation for a few days and I truly and deeply felt the existential dread, terror and fear of being a finite, isolated, self-reflecting being. “I am alive and will die and cease to exist and all that I love will also die and cease to exist.” When we go deeply and openly into that most human tragedy, that whole can of worms, it can be terrifying and profoundly awakening. “I come into this world (or as Alan Watts said, “I emerge from this world” ), and now, as a self-aware being, I realize that I and my world will pass.” I stayed absolutely present with this during my interior work for the next week or so. Once I had confronted, experienced and released all this existential grief, terror, and fear, a new injunction arose. “Feel the joy of the creature that remembers that he is the Creator.” Joy indeed. Oh I remember now… I’m not me! I forgot who and what I really am. Beyond all stories, beyond all characters, beyond all time, beyond all universes, “I am that I am”, and am that, that all arises in: “I am that I am,” and that is all that there is, and thou art that. Always have been, remember… “Oh yes, I do remember…. I’ve been lost in the dream that I created for sooo long. Does the dream go poof! At this point does the dream cease to matter or exist? Not at all. Romeo and Juliet is not any less valuable because it is fiction. It is still valuable as fiction for it’s beauty, depth, truth, and tragedy, and each one of it’s scenes and characters, and words, and thoughts were created by a character Shakespeare, that arose out of pure emptiness and inventiveness that is my own original face; the unity out of which all multiplicity arises. How then, do we live this beautiful dream, and this, at times, horrible nightmare? Lucidly. Be awake in your dream, in our collective dream. How do we do this? How do we live this dream of the relative ever-changing, evolving world lucidly and with the knowledge of the beauty, inventiveness, and wisdom of our truest, deepest self? Again we have to practice. Wilber said recently, something to the effect that awakening is relatively easy. You’ve always really known anyway. But bringing this awakeness into every fiber of our relative, manifest being and into our every action and thought is the real work. To bring the knowledge of our true nature into the relative, evolving, rollercoaster that the “AQAL map” maps, is the purpose and purpose of all our questing and work: the union of emptiness and form, heaven and earth, freedom and fullness. Once we have completed our erotic quest for transcendence and realization of who and what we really are, then the true work begins. No longer do we just create and spin more karma in our dream state, but we use the karma as energy to play off of, to fulfill our Agape inspired work to transform the world into the most beautiful reflection of our true nature. In every moment the great perfection shines through the story from Auschwitz to Assisi, from Hitler to his Holiness the Dalai Lama, from George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden to Albert Schweitzer… the great perfection blazes through all forms when we remember who we are.
And again, Eliot points us to look beyond mere surfaces…
In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.
In my beginning is my end.
All this and more in every moment arises from you and me…
The flux continues… Universes expand and collapse. Heroes are born and die; scoundrels prosper; masterpieces are created; garbage multiplies; creatures die of despair, and lust for the unattainable… until all is revealed! The curtain is lifted, the veil is torn, all are imposters. God is exposed, posing as you and me. Of course.
In my beginning is my end.
I am working on the last few chunks of the book I am writing on Integral Recovery, and this weekend I wrote a brief bit called the “The Integral Recovery Relapse Prevention Kit.” In this piece, I wrote about the traditional AA wisdom of quickly removing yourself from the scene that is triggering the cravings, calling your sponsor, and getting to a meeting. This is good advice. But in the spirit of the Integral approach, we include this time-tested intervention—and a lot more.
One of the truths that I have been finding in my own practice, as well as with those with whom I work, mostly recovering addicts, is that in times of increased stress (which for the chemically dependent is the most vulnerable time), we must increase or ratchet up our practice. This goes against the grain for most of us, as we tend to say, “I’m too busy today; I’ll practice tomorrow.” In the Integral Recovery model, I teach that relapse happens when we stop practicing—not just when we ingest the drug. Relapse does not happen in a vacuum. It starts with a passing thought about using, then one entertains the thought, and starts to remember the “cool,” good feelings associated with using. ‘Euphoric recall,’ we call it. One remembers all the good things and conveniently forgets the feelings of being toxed out, down and out, burned out, and in despair; those little items. And so it goes… the addictive trance takes over and you are off to the same old races.
Well, all this is to say, this weekend I was writing about this and, as usually happens to me, I got the Kosmic boomerang effect. Whatever I am writing about or teaching comes right back at me and hits me in the forehead. This morning when I woke up, I was feeling FINE—fucked up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional—brought on by some things that had happened the day before. I made my coffee, sat down in my favorite chair, put on my headphones, and started the Holosync binaural meditation track (I’m currently using Purification 3, Level 3 for you cognoscenti out there.) My mind swirled around with ‘To do’ lists for a few minutes and then the work started.
A major pain emerged in my chest that felt like a hot, open knife wound. I’ve been doing this stuff for quite a while, so this is not totally new, but the intensity of the experience sometimes is rather amazing. I have various techniques that I use, from the Sedona method to the 3-2-1 Shadow process to simple mindfulness. I recalled something Sally Kempton teaches that Rabbi Marc Gafni talked about in a workshop a couple of weeks ago. Sally says:
As part of the story part, I did a quick 3-2-1 Shadow process, which went very quickly from 3rd to 2nd, and back to 1st person, where I just stay with the pain. I have learned that you don’t do anything with the feeling, you just let the feeling do whatever it needs to do to release. Which it did. I began to breath deeply and quickly as the knife-like wound feeling intensified. Then after about an hour, I became very tired and began to yawn deeply. After fifteen minutes of this, I became very present and alert, the feeling released, and I was left with an experience of depth and luminosity in which thinking was truly optional. I could have stayed in this state for hours, but I do have things that need doing. Anyway, this experience of peace, spaciousness, serenity, and bliss is how we know the stuff has been released.
Marc Gafni said in his talk that we have entered a virtual Copernicum revolution in our understanding of how to deal with our shadow aspects. It would seem to be so, as I find that insights into shadow and trauma, and techniques for their release, transmutation, and transformation, are popping up all over the place, seemingly independently and concurrently. It has certainly caused a revolution in my life and those I have taught this stuff to. To sum it up, it goes like this:
Our pain, our shadow elements, our most terrifying places are the Dharma gates, the doorways to God, the base lead that our mindful and conscious awareness transmutes into the radiant gold of expanded mind and evolutionary, erotic growth. They also free us from the unconscious control of our conditioning and unhealed wounds, which, in Integral Recovery, comprise some of the main stumbling blocks that lead to relapse after relapse. For those willing to take the plunge into their own greatest fears, they will find the darkness a mere surface, and the depths luminescent and endless.
