Integral life practice 3: spirit

November 23, 9:59 PMLA Religion & Spirituality ExaminerKurt Barstow

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God as 1st person. Paul Haussenstamm, Blue Meditation.

In the development from matter to mind to spirit, spirit is both the highest level to which we can attain and also encompasses the other two realms. It is immanent and transcendent. The Spirit Module of Integral Life Practice could include any spiritual practice, but what is covered in the booklet and on a CD and DVDs is meditation with an integral twist as well as a new psychological/meditative process created by Zen Master Dennis Genpo Merzel known as Big Mind, Big Heart. Meditation, or contemplative prayer in Christianity, has long been the royal road to an experience of Spirit, Godhead, Absolute Reality, Emptiness, or the Ground of All Being. In recent years, there have also been an enormous number of studies indicating the beneficial effects of this activity on diseases or physical ailments such as chronic pain, high blood pressure, and cancer, as well as on behavior modification. It can bring a greater sense of peace and equanimity and less reactivity to our lives, helping to reduce stress and lessen unhealthy behaviors.  Integral meditation provides a framework in which Siprit may be approached from a number of perspectives.
 

God as 2nd person. Fra Angelico.

Two of the most innovative Integral meditations are The 1-2-3 of God and Big Mind, Big Heart. In the former, the Divine is experienced in the three modes in which we can address consciousness: 1st person, 2nd person, and 3rd person.  In the first person, we  experience ourselves as divine, resting in the witness consciousness, the "I am" that has always been and always will be, the part of us that can watch our own thoughts, feelings, and sensations that is the same in everyone. Our relationship here is one of identification with God. In the second person, we relate to God as an other, as "thou." This might take the form of a particular deity, of Jesus, God the Father, Mary, or of The Beloved. Here the relationship to God is one of personal intimacy. Having the sense of a group of people acting as a Higher Power would also fit into this category. In third person, we contemplate God in an objective sense, as Cosmos or Nature or Absolute Reality. Here the relationship is of an impersonal other. The 1-Minute Module in the ILP Handbook, which describes these different perspectives, suggests saying the following sentences to yourself and letting each perspective naturally arise:

-I contemplate God as all that is arising--the Great Perfection of this and every moment.

-I behold and commune with God as an infinite Thou, who bestows all blessings and complete forgiveness on me, and before whom I offer infinite gratitude and devotion.

-I rest in God as my own Witness and primordial Self, the Big Mind that is one with all, and in this ever-present, easy, and natural state, I go about my day.
 

God as 3rd person. The Cosmos.

The Big Mind Process, alluded to in the last line, is in many ways the heart of Integral meditative practice. Developed by Genpo Roshi, a Zen Master in the White Plum lineage, this is once again a process of taking different perspectives, first from within one's own psyche and then as different transcendental states. In his foreward to Genpo Roshi's book Big Mind, Big Heart: Finding Your Way (Salt Lake City, 2008), Ken Wilber describes the Big Mind Process as "arguably the most important and original discovery in the last two centuries of Buddhism."  The process came about as a way of accelerating the pace of awakening or enlightenment that in traditional spiritual practice can take many years. As Genpo Roshi says, "Why couldn't that sudden realization, since it's ever-present, be attained or realized by anyone at any time?"
 

Big Mind has its roots in Los Angeles. In the eighties, when Genpo Roshi was in residence at Zen Center Los Angeles, the psychologists Hal and Sidra Stone who developed Voice Therapy held some workshops at ZCLA. Voice Therapy holds that we all have sub-personalities, often of disowned or shadow parts of our selves. These sub-personalities can be named, brought into awareness, and made into part of a dialogue. The Big Mind process, which in the ILP Starter Kit can be viewed on two DVDs that show Genpo Roshi facilitating a group, first takes us through some of these psychological voices that are part of our selves and then to the transcendent voices that are also part of our selves. The facilitator asks questions of the various voices and each time a new voice is addressed the members of the group are asked to shift their bodily position and speak only as that voice. The process itself is extraordinarily moving as we see people first dealing with some of the most human and even painful aspects of a psychological self and then, often with startling realization expressed in their faces, discovering higher aspects of a transpersonal self that connects us all to a larger awareness.
 

Voices of the self, or dualistic voices, include The Protector, The Controller, The Skeptic, Fear, Anger, The Damaged Self, The Victim, The Vulnerable and Innocent Child, The Dualistic Mind, Desire, The Seeking Mind, and The Mind That Seeks the Way. To give an idea of what these voices are I will provide some examples from Big Mind, Big Heart. The facilitator, for example, asks The Damaged Self to describe its function:

I'm damaged. I don't know if I have any really useful function, I'm just damaged. You know, a lot of bad stuff has happened over the years and I'm the one who takes all the damage. I'm broken, maybe even kind of ruined--definitely damaged... Because of me the self can feel the pain of other damaged selves, and since I am the Damaged Self, the self is undamaged. The self is perfect, complete and whole because of me.

Desire says of itself:

... I want, I crave. I want things that bring him pleasure, satisfaction, joy, happiness. I'm always wanting more...

But The Mind That Seeks The Way says:

You could say that I'm seeking truth, seeking understanding, seeking enlightenment, seeking peace, happiness, fulfillment, unconditional satisfaction, and joy.
 

Non-Dualistic or Transcendent Voices include The Way, Big Mind, Big Heart, Yin or Feminine Compassion, Yang or Masculine Compassion, Integrated Free-Functioning Human Being. Great Joy, Great Gratitude and Appreciation, and The Great Fool, Great Joker. Once the many voices of the false or separate self have been brought into awareness, the facilitator asks eventually to speak to Big Mind:

I am endless, I am eternal, I am infinite. There is nothing that is beyond or outside me. There is nothing that is not me... I see things just as they are. I do not judge, I do not evaluate, I do not condemn. Everything is absolutely perfect, complete, and whole as it manifests... I have no beginning and no end, no birth and therefore no death. I am unborn and therefore undying. I am the unborn mind. I am the one mind.

Following Big Mind, Big Heart is asked to speak:

I am just as vast, just as infinite, just as eternal. I am just as immeasurable as Big Mind. However, I feel. I care. I am heart. I love and have compassion for all beings... When I see suffering I want to put an end to suffering. When I see pain I want to alleviate that pain.

In this fashion, the members of a Big Mind process group move together from a sense of disparate, divided selves to a sense of the transcendental and eternal aspects of self, which leads to The Integrated Free-Functioning Human Being. As an individual meditation, the meditator might first call upon the voices of the self that are most in evidence at that particular moment and then to Big Mind and its companions. While the process comes out of the Zen tradition, it may be employed as well by any other tradition using different names. The reason people taking part in this process who have never heard of it and never practiced Zen can again and again come up with the same answers is because all of these voices are indeed a part of all of us.