(It seems this thread is not really discussing this topic. Might we come up with another name? - PSR)

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Could it be that some are attempting to get to heaven by refusing to stand on the ground? from Michael Washburn's article, "The Pre/Trans Fallacy Reconsidered."

Let no one be dissuaded from following their conscience and their heart and their deepest moral aspirations and spiritual intuitions. We are radically together on the journey, to be there for the struggles, and are also radically alone, to make decisions regarding our life with God, Who loves you as an absolutely and unique and irreplacable beloved, with a call to intimacy and a level of relationship whose depth no psychologist or philosopher can truly plumb.

So, the Shalomplace motto might best be captured in Nickel Creek's verses: When You Come Back Down

You gotta leave me now
You gotta go along
You gotta chase a dream
One that�s all your own
Before it slips away

When you�re flying high
Take my heart along
I�ll be the harmony
To every lonely song
But you�ll learn to play

When you�re soaring through the air
I�ll be your solid ground
Take every chance you dare
I�ll still be there
When you come back down
When you come back down

I keep looking up
Waiting your return
My greatest fear will be
That you will crash and burn
And I won�t feel your fire

I�ll be the other hand
That always holds a line
Connecting in between
Your sweet heart and mine
I�m strung out on that wire

And I�ll be on the other end
To hear you when you call
Angel you were born to fly
And if you get too high
I�ll catch you when you fall
Catch you when you fall

The memories, the sunshine
Every new day brings
I know the sky is calling
Angel let me help you with your wings

When you�re soaring through the air
I�ll be your solid ground
Take every chance you dare
I�ll still be there
When you come back down

Take every chance you dare
I�ll still be there
When you come back down
When you come back down

namaste, I feel your fire
jb

JB--

I'm on my way to university these next few days, but just a short thanks to you in particular. I won't be posting, as I have little time nowadays (and little to offer), but I read the essay on Griffith and can concur with him on many points--points which Levertov puts in a modern context, I think. I am printing it out for futher study. I have also visited the site (yours?) on Mathematics and Poetics. Looks brilliant.

No matter how much people try to convince me about the necessity of religious paradigm and no matter how hard I try to implement one, it all seems unfitting for my psycology. Essence creates experience, and my life emerges out of essence, not on faith in any doctrine, no matter how much that doctrine may appeal to my intellect, my psycology resists it. Perhaps this is in part due to a belief only in individual experience, and the irrationality of certain experience. For instance, Paul struck by lightning on the road to Damascus, a highly irrational event, an unexpected "reversal." And why cannot irrational events, shape a persons life. The woman at Tim Hortons, in the brozed light of the morning before writing an exam, the unutterable smile/compassion--the welcome, the brush of her hand. That smile that carried itself throughout a day, and into this--is somehow meaning, sense, orde. And that smile made me want to spread bread over the pavement for the hungry pigeons. It wasn't pity, but remembrance of her smile. And after the exam, dizzy from thought, from trying to arrange thought onto a typologically fixed page with margins of hindsite and presumption, I walked out and was totally enraptured by the current of Grace that awakened from above, surging in the tangles of my being. This forms me, these create a structure--release from stricture, movement. These irrational events are mediated by a pre-formed rationality. Hope is colossal if it is felt from nowhere. When there is no book, person, logic, sense to give credit for it. It is not irrational, but purely rational, without needing structure, words like grace, without needing a self to create something from it, to contort it into shapes of an unlikely God, a Shiva and Parvati copulating, a Ganges, a Christ. Our thought formations are pre rational, before mind, they are imprinted in A-G-C-T: the unique combinations of our ancestory. We can run, but we can't hide and holy is this world. Holy are you, my brother.

Ground can only be created from essence, Ground emerges from essence. This is what I know.

Individual thought, untamed and radical thought, poetic thought, new thoughtforms, emerge from essence.

Holiness is no formula, holiness has no obvious manifestation, holiness depends on the optic nerve and the configuration of genes and the divine suitor.

What is essence?

I don't know and couldn't care less to know)

For instance, Paul struck by lightning on the road to Damascus, a highly irrational event, an unexpected "reversal." And why cannot irrational events, shape a persons life.

They can certainly be breakthrough moments, but let's not forget that Paul spent the rest of his life integrating that experience and was Christianity's first great theologian. Also, his Damascus experience was an encounter with the ascended Jesus, with whom he had a conversation -- and a somewhat rational one, at that. This conversation deeply influenced his theology of the Church as the mystical body of Christ.

I would maintain, here, that the difference a religious paradigm can make is first to direct people to God, and second to help them integrate that in a community. In fact, let's even go so far as to say that encountering God is no big, special deal; integrating that experience is much more difficult. How will that take place? Will it enhance the development of one's humanity? Detract from it? Without a religious paradigm and community support, it doesn't usually go very well, imo.

BTW, perhaps a different thread title could be suggested, here, as this discussion really has little to do with Wilber's ideas on a pre-trans fallacy regarding content from the unconscious.

It seems that Paul had an experience which radically altered the course of his life, and sent him to the early Christian community to seek answers from Jesus' followers and offer his support. It also sent him way for a long time into solitude in order to work through these changes as a mystic is inclined to do.

It is perhaps in order to point out that Wilber believes Christianity to be mythical, with people who believe in the "barbaric" idea of hell to be gravely mistaken. (he might be right about that) He also believes that the idea of a personal God who cares and watches over us is an infantile
fantasy. ( he may be wrong about that)

I have the Brief History of Everything and The Simple Feeling of Being, which is comprised of excerpts from his
other books. I have not run across the pre/trans
fallacy yet. I would say that it has been my observation that people make up these scripts for their lives based on inacurrate reporting of events colored by emotional content and interperetations that have to be discarded in favor of a new way of looking at things.

Paul's experience made him into a religious genius
and that does not seem to be neurosis to me, although some of his behavior in the book of Acts reveals personality conflicts which may have come from Paul's ego.

caritas,

mm <*)))))><

In fact, let's even go so far as to say that encountering God is no big, special deal; integrating that experience is much more difficult. How will that take place? Will it enhance the development of one's humanity? Detract from it? Without a religious paradigm and community support, it doesn't usually go very well, imo.

It is an interesting point Phil. I agree with you. I know from my experience Experiencing God is not a big deal but to integrate and live with it is a great task. I believe the guidance of Spirit is very important and it become understandable by the support of religious paradigm.

quote:

Originally posted by Grace:
[qb] In fact, let's even go so far as to say that encountering God is no big, special deal; integrating that experience is much more difficult. How will that take place? Will it enhance the development of one's humanity? Detract from it? Without a religious paradigm and community support, it doesn't usually go very well, imo. [/qb]

Living life is integration, imo, living without hoping for any sort of experience, opening ones heart to the possibility of love. This is the point where the ABCDE this life come together and memory makes sense, in a spherical way. To see love breaking through woundedness. I pass by the grass and the whole field is alive, tender, so much so that I will not step on those blades. I remember the grass and this creates a viable self that doesn't cling to old-thought-patterns, in remembering those moments I affirm them and they grow. Living this remembrace unfolds into seeing it, and the desire awakens to knit a world from this, to write a paeon of this field of grass as it bends, to see a tree, to truly see a tree is to love a tree. Who creates this love? I don't know. I yearn to find comfort and security in not knowing, in not seeking to know.

I cannot love a word, or a book, unless it is like this tree that stands sanguine in this backyard. The start of rain on the catalpa brings the end of sorrow. Perhaps I am a pagan tree worshiper and my book is this unfolding vision, which shapes me, as I hope, yearn, invoke, intend to allow myself to remember again. This mystery of sap, of blood, of words. Who writes them? I don't know. I honestly don't. Not out of hatred for self, but out of the mystery of the heart.

A paradigm will arise out of nothingness.

If it doesn't then I will simply be a lover of the mystery.

Without a religious paradigm and community support, it doesn't usually go very well, imo.

And there you have it, the grand synthesis between your seemingly disparate views, between the rule, one on hand, and the exception, otoh.

There is peril to the road less traveled and there is promise, as with marching to the beat of a different drum. Gibran notes that no one crashed the walls of stubborn tradition and escaped the falling stones. But that is not the only peril. Sometimes the road less traveled has been marked by expert cartographers as a dead end and it behooves us to look for their signs. Both Washburn and Wilber are expert cartographers, see The Teachings of Ken Wilber thread, here, at Shalomplace such as regarding the pre/tran fallacies, ptf1 and ptf2 described by Wilber and ptf3 described by Washburn. If Wilber could commit the fallacy, himself, in describing Jung, and possibly the English Romantic poets, in some cases, I take the lesson to desist from too facilely labeling anyone else's journey too very quickly. Rather, here's the map and there are some of the signs. Mapping formative spirituality is a curious endeavor, though, inasmuch as the map only tells you where you've been and whether or not your are on a recognized road or dead-end. It doesn't have ALL roads and by-ways and it doesn't tell you the precise route to your destination (you're already supposed to have some notion of the destination, however, that suitably motivated you to undertake the journey in the first place.) There is a tie-in between any esoteric journey and that Ken Wilber thread. It is a tie-in that can only be made by a sojourner and a director after arduous discernment ... per ardua ad astra.

There is also promise along a road less traveled that can make all the difference and that gives me pause, at each fork I encounter in the road. The journey remains my destination and the quest, itself, remains my grail.

See y'all September 8th. Live and almost in real time at SPlace

pax, AMOR
johnboy

quote:

Originally posted by Grace:
[qb]It is an interesting point Phil. I agree with you. I know from my experience Experiencing God is not a big deal but to integrate and live with it is a great task. I believe the guidance of Spirit is very important and it become understandable by the support of religious paradigm. [/qb]

Right, which doesn't preclude the responsibility to test all things. Without a religious tradition to bump into and hold oneself accountable to and test, however, there is the serious danger that the Ego will simply pick and choose what is convenient, disregarding what is inconvenient or difficult. Joseph Campbell said it best when he noted that he would never be a saint because he was too ecclectic, I suppose because in his ecclecticism, he would be too scattered to ever become deeply integrated and holy. What's interesting, however, is that even the ecclectic is operating out of a paradigm, although not a traditional religious one. Deciding what to keep and what to reject implies a paradigm, however unconscious it may be. My fear is that this is far too often it is a creation of the false self, although it need not be.

In Christianity, it is Christ who is the decisive factor, and so one's journey is always referenced to him and through him. In my experience, this is not a confining situation--as though I could do better than Christ on my own!--but a gift. This gift is offered to all who would embrace the cross of being formed on the journey unto a likeness of him through his Spirit.

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Who creates this love? I don't know. I yearn to find comfort and security in not knowing, in not seeking to know.

Why is it better to not know, Asher? Can you conceive of the possibility that knowing the Giver does not necessarily diminish the love or the mystery?

- - -

JB, good thread title.

Spiritual attachment in every aspect is an impediment to spiritual growth. Material attachment is easy to identify. Attachment to the experience of God, attachment to the feeling of bliss that associated with the experience of God etc produce spiritual pride. By the same token attachment to religious paradigm is not good. Using paradigm practically without attaching to it is supportive and compliment to ones spiritual growth.

Grace, I agree. Where it gets sticky is that one can be committed to the truth taught by a religious tradition without necessarily being attached to its paradigmatic representation. That's a nuance that you don't often hear developed very far.

That's a nuance that you don't often hear developed very far.

Correct, I knew that you will notice this nuance. My spiritual journey is like zig zag way. Following those mystical experiences I have, new knowledges and wisdoms unfolds which always surprised me. I have always asked myself about the necessity of paradigm in spiritual journey. You remember the discussion we had recently on form/content, exoteric/esoteric. I was skeptical to the excessive indulgence of exoteric tradition. I'm still skeptical to this kind of worship.

Since God is beyond our mind, I noticed the mind has difficulty to understand God's experience. Although the Spirit led rightly and give correct message it is not sure the mind can understand the message immediately. Here can paradigm play an important role to integrate the experience or to integrate body and soul. This is the insight I gain recently from the experience. That is why I didn't highlight this point in my previous posts.

I think the term "paradigm" might be another one of those "baddies" like "concepts" that has gotten a bad rap in certain mystical traditions. It need not be, however. The critical distinction in the spiritual life is our degree of attachment to these, and our willingness to let go of them when necessary. Having done so, the mind will begin to create an updated paradigm, for that is what the mind does and that's OK. Paradigms help us to mentally understand how things fit together and interrelate; as such they influence our will and judgement in many profound ways. There's nothing wrong with that, imo, unless, as noted, excessive attachment develops. Then the paradigm becomes an ideology, and that can be a problem. But to the extent that a paradigm validates what we sense to be truth and helps us discover more truth and find our bearings, it's a great help.

So I guess one of the things I'm saying here is that I'm totally skeptical of teachings that claim to be non-paradigmatic. As soon as you start asking questions and getting replies, a paradigm of some kind may be said to be informing the responses. Makes sense?

Yes, it makes sense Phil. It is like you read my mind. You put it very nicely. Thank you.

Sandra M. Schneiders: MODELS OF THE CHURCH: PARADIGM SHIFTS

quote:

Shortly after Vatican II, American theologian Avery Dulles published a book which fascinated theologians and laity alike. That book, Models of the Church,(3) shed light on the confusingly rich ecclesiology of the Council. By explaining the role of the theological imagination in the development of our understanding of the church, Dulles helped us to see that, as a community, we have not always functioned in terms of a single ecclesiology. On the contrary, in the course of history many different models of church have successively held sway. What is particularly characteristic of our own time, is the fact that a variety of ecclesiologies is operating simultaneously. It is even sometimes the case that the same individual functions at different times in terms of different models of church. Dulles' description and evaluation of these diverse models -- church as institution, as herald, as mystical communion, as sacrament, as servant, and his most recent and adequate model of church as community of disciples, helped us realize the deeply mysterious character of the ecclesial community which our virtually exclusive reliance on the institutional model had obscured for many centuries. He also helped us realize that no one of us can intellectually master nor exhaustively express that mystery. Overinsistence on any one model shackles our theological imagination, impoverishes our ecclesiology, and thus cripples our practice of the Gospel.

Most of us are well aware of these developments and have learned to recognize the operation of diverse ecclesiologies: in our own thinking, in our conversations with others in the church with whom we may disagree on important issues, and in official documents. This diversity, as we well know, is both liberating and tension-producing. Not everyone holds his or her ecclesiology lightly! There are still many Catholics at both ends of the ideological spectrum -- clergy and laity alike -- who feel called by God to excommunicate in one way or another those who operate within a conception of church different from their own.

What holds for a discussion of paradigms of ecclesiology holds for formative spirituality, too.

In the words of 38 Special :
Just Hold On Loosely
but don't let go ,
If you cling too tightly,
you're gonna lose control
Your baby [jb inserts - psyche] needs someone to believe in
And a whole lot of space to breathe in

Now, that's good ole Southern Rock for ya.

loosely,
jb