Where do we begin? We all need maps!

We all need maps to navigate life…

Our family, local community, and social culture are the initial sources for these maps that we are soaked in, like a bath, before we realize it.

These maps that we absorbed like air and water told us how to survive and thrive as human beings at this time in history, according to other people from the past and present, from ancestors, and from society’s values and social rules.

As I begin this personal blog, I start with a video (see link below) that I have watched countless times during the last year, as one type of map.

This video reassured me that others know what I am experiencing, that there are signposts along the way and discernible stages.

Without this map, I do not know what would have happened with me and my life over the last year, but I suspect I would have given up, freaked out emotionally, lost my mind and become unable to re-orient in the social world, or become self-destructive.

But maps like these, as well as the materials available from the Integral community by Ken Wilber and colleagues kept me alive for over 15 years now, and kept me moving and reaching toward something unknown and unusual. (to see Integral maps of development, click here and here and for integral leadership application click here and here for a summary by Ken)

Toward something not on the maps used by mainstream society, business, and academic cultures in which I have participated (at least not yet ,-)

The last three years of my life closely followed the stages of awareness described in this video: descending down into the body, the mind becoming aware of itself, the heart waking up to feeling the bittersweetness of being alive, and the body gaining a sense of feeling/seeing itself from the inside out, as if each cell became aware of itself and could sense its innate intelligence and aliveness.

For me, this process required that any suppressed emotions be felt, most/all traumas  released from the body, and for shadow issues in the unconscious mind to come forward and be let go and/or integrated.  In this blog, I will likely describe all of this in detail over the months and years to come.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_Nl01z8Ea75NFllMjFSemxnc3c/view?usp=sharing

The video is a conversation between two “spiritual teachers” on this process of awakening into the body, and yet I do not see the need to label this process as spiritual.

For me spirituality and science are not mutually exclusive explanations of life. They exist in the same world, and could be seen as a continuum, where the spiritual communities rely on direct experience of the world and finding words and stories to explain them, and science relies on measurements of the world, and uses different words and stories to explain what is happening, what is real, etc.

Therefore, science is limited by what can be measured legitimately according to the scientific communities at this moment in time.

Just as science has changed its stories about the world (it is flat/round) and what is really happening in our physical world (we are revolving around sun versus the universe revolving around the earth), spirituality also changes its stories over time as it gains more experience. Being involved with both scientific and spiritual communities has shown me the pros and cons of both.

The spiritual communities are much more willing to explore new territory even if it cannot be explained or understood or controlled, and even if the insights and experiences threaten a person’s sense of self, identity, and safety. However, some people who are labeled as spiritual may be seen as “out there” making claims without basis, and assuming that their own personal experiences and interpretations of reality apply to everyone. As I see it, each human is a biased filter once it opens its mouth and creates words.

The scientific community comes from a view of critical reasoning, demanding measured replication of patterns observed in the physical or social worlds, and as a result is much slower to adapt to changes in our experiences and stories of reality (read Kuhn´s and Zukav´s books listed below for more on this).

The downside is that by the time something is legitimized by the mainstream science community, the cutting edge of new direct experiences and knowledge in other communities are way past this point.  For example, Julia Mossbridge summarizes this in the first two minutes of the video linked here as she compares her cutting edge scientific research to how it occurs to people in the contemplative/meditative communities.

So in the end, from my view we are all playing in the same space, just using different tools and words to describe the same things.

Since this is my personal blog, I take liberty to say whatever I want that I directly have experienced and how I interpret it, without needing scientific evidence to support my views. However, for those who want scientific research behind these kinds of topics, you have two options:

1) I will provide references to most of my blogs, and

2) you can shift to my professional blog for academic scientific research summaries – click here or go to www.tarawernsing.com/research

References:

Kuhn, Thomas. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Zukav, G. (1979). The dancing Wu Li masters: An overview of the new physics. New York, William Morrow.