awareness
December 2007 
Eat Lead Wyatt! (A Couple of Rounds for Your Buns of Steel!)
David Jon
(Warning: This post may ruin your day (especially if you see Ken Wilber as incapable of any error in judgment or action.) Further check the following links for context and background--Ken Wilber as Wyatt Earp which prompted the following discussions found here at C4's Zaadz blog)
I have to trust myself here. After all, if you, as a person, are unable to trust your own awareness--to rely upon consciousness through you, specifically as consciousness is registered in the forms of thoughts, emotions, hunches, intuitions, gut-feelings--and the like--then what the f*&k do you have? You got nothing! If you cannot rely upon what is arising in your awareness right now--immediately (should I say, im-mediately... meaning, without mediation... ergo, im-mediate)--then you are destined to be little more than the pawn constantly referencing 'others' in order to know what you feel... .what you should think... how you should be, etc. and so forth.
This whole point is what kind of pisses me off about the Wilber essay fiasco and the resultant discussions propagating all over the Web. Ken plays a little trick on people. Master Wilber and his gamesmanship. For instance, someone's initial reaction is that Ken is acting like a prick. Yeah... a prick. But then it is stated that this was a shadow-exercise enacted by the Master himself. Suddenly people are recanting their initial reactions and confessing with awe and adoration just how masterful Ken was/is.
But get this peeps. What has Ken really served to do? Ken has actually served to sever people from 'trusting themselves.' Ken's exercise is an installation of 'doubt' into people who wondered--initially anyways--where the civility was in Ken's comments.
Taken to extremes this ''perform like a prick" and then call it a "test" later on can totally erode a person's ability to trust their own most basic intelligence. Imagine yourself walking down the street, engaging with people at work, sharing time with your friends and family and having to wonder what is and is not a "test" ... a "Master's ploy" to bait you into being seduced by your own so-called "projections." Imagine how burdensome life would. Imagine how ... literally now... take these words to heart... imagine how schizophrenic you would become.
If you are not able to rely upon your own intelligence--as you are in-formed by a Consciousness at once Universal, as well as peculiar to your own circumstances--and instead are made to rely upon the intelligence of an abstract Master sitting in a loft somewhere thousands of miles away, typing out eloquent passages made to at once seduce you, as well as convince you that you are "projecting" dick-headed behaviour on someone who is just baiting you... then what can you rely upon?
It's sort of like someone creating the image of a spade, wanting you to believe it is a spade... and then saying.. 'Aha... gotcha... it is just a fake spade and you projected the image of a real spade where there wasn't one. Surprise. You can't trust yourself!"
(You can implant either 'uncivility' and/or 'dickheadedness' into where you see the word 'spade' above).
Further imagine that you are involved in a community in your daily affairs and you are witnessing someone act in an in-appropriate manner to others around you (defining inappropriate as offensive in someway... defining offensive... as rude... defining rude as uncivil... or uhm, I suppose... obnoxious). Now, your initial reaction is to think what a 'jerk' this person is acting like. But now that you have had some recent 'shadow-work' done you are skeptical of your own most im-mediate reaction. So you don't respond to the situation. You fail to act in the community. You separate your-self out and reflect on your own reactions as if they are merely and only 'projections.'
In short, you have alienated yourself from a communal obligation to act in an inter-suibjective way. You have turned into the solipsistic nightmare of an extremely subjective analysis of social relations. And it is all thanks to the Master's ploys.
(stay tuned... )
Access: Public
Quite an intersting way to see things.
Here is my take:
“If I slap you in the face, and then say that you respond angrily because you project your shadow on me, than not only am I right, of course, because the anger is in you after all, but I am also being very nasty at the same time if I am an authority (rightly or wrongly) to you. Because deep down you know I’m right and are thus utterly helpless. The Wilber question is in this case, “Are you mature enough to get my lesson?” If you are, you didn’t need it. And if you aren’t, not only will you not get get my meaning this way but you will probably also be estranged enough to henceforth scheme behind my back to slap me back in some way.”
(from http://www.mushin.eu/en/blog/2006/06/15/abuse-in-spiritual-circles/)
Love,
Mushin
Very interesting perspective, David Jon. I appreciate it immensely. I've been very put off by this whole situation myself–and I already had my concerns about the Ken Wilbur worship I've been witnessing around here before this started–but you and the link in the comment above helped me understand exactly what it is that bothers me.
I had a spiritual teacher pull one of these “games” on me a little over a year ago…supposedly bringing me to recognize my ego by being cruel to me and what I felt were my genuine attempts to understand the process of spiritual evolution. I experienced extreme confusion and felt betrayed by someone I had exposed my deepest, darkest places to (as well as my biggest and brightest). It was the beginning of the end of our relationship, which did end with her telling me I wasn't doing my work the way she thought I should be and thus was not truly committed to achieving evolution and/or creating a ministry (I was working to be an ordained minister). And she ended our relationship–what is supposedly one of the most intimate relationships in existence–with an email, even though we live a few miles from one another. I am supposed to believe this is someone who has achieved enough mastery to teach me how to achieve transcendence and unconditional love? Ironically, The Conspiracy was birthed a few short weeks before she accused me of being totally stagnant and I have experienced at least four major consciousness transformations, healings, and expandings since leaving my spiritual community. Kind of makes me wonder what was truly contributing to my stagnation? I think it was the dependence on someone else to expose me to the Truth. Every time I invest in a person or specific belief system or theory, I do stagnate or struggle and have to be guided, or startled, back to my own path, often through painful means.
I've come to the conclusion that there is no human guru for me out there (or channelled one either). I have something to learn from every human being I come into contact with in any way, shape, or form, but there is no individual teacher who can lead me where I want to go. My path is completely Self-Directed. The Integral Revolution has things to teach me (I intuited the approach before being introduced to it), but I have little desire to actually participate in what I perceive to be an exclusive and overly intellectual/abstract community (the empath and artist in me have yet to relate to anything in the Integral World I've been exposed to…other than Alex Grey's art and Ed K.'s music long before they were associated with Integral).
Thanks for the thought-food. :)
Blissings, April
Really good post! Isn’t it ironic that a master can claim to have looked deep into his own shadow before instigating a ‘lesson,’ yet rarely do those close, who might see it, call him on it? The masters capable of acting solely from the highest possible place have been far and few between. Most people, being human, drag theirs in all the time, including the gurus and the pandits.
Ken admitted the marketing ploy of polemic for SES and intimated he was doing the same for the multiplex launch. It’s as if all, who loved the ‘lesson,’ were so enthralled that the master might deem them ‘second tier’ that they failed to notice they were thanking him for advertising. Do we thank Wal-mart for their TV ads? If we did, would that tell us we are orange or lower?
Good points, well written, but I'd like to add another perspective.
You said:
“Imagine yourself walking down the street, engaging with people at work, sharing time with your friends and family and having to wonder what is and is not a “test” … ”
But sometime I wonder if Buddha was saying we should do just that. If you did do that, all day, everyday, you'd be pretty damn close to enlightenment - in my (trying to be) humble opinion isn't this whole point of the perfection of wisdom (prajnaparamita)?
I'm not saying Ken is never wrong (not does Ken, Wilber-1 was 'wrong' when see from Wilber-2 and so on).
But really, I don't know Ken's mind. None of us do. We can only know our own.
But how much do we know about our own mind?
Are we following our own projections rather than trying to see through them day-in day-out? Are we following the projections and games of others rather than trying to see through them?
“a “Master's ploy” to bait you into being seduced by your own so-called “projections.”
I think it was a wake up call rather than a slumber party! I don't thinkhe wanted us to be seduced, but rather challenge us all to show our true colours in all their gory glory. If you really think you're 2nd-tier and declare it to the world you can be sure the universe will throw you a screwball sooner or later… I've had my biggest tests after my most inflated “insights”… pride comes before a fall.
“Imagine how burdensome life would [be]. Imagine how … literally now… take these words to heart… imagine how schizophrenic you would become.”
Not if you train in widsom and compassion, the whole point of the Buddha's path is that you recognise that nothing has any inherant existence - it's there, that's not denied, but it's not substantial, it's projection, karma ripening, temporary storms in temporary teacups. The Buddha didn't say don't act when you see injustice. He said see through the illusion and act compassionately out of wisdom. Don't get caught up in the illusions, they're not really real.
“Compassion stops the dream from becoming a nightmare, and wisdom helps us realised it's all a dream”.
Sschizophrenia might occur but that's a clear sign that you're unbalanced, using bits of Buddhist wisdom but not integrating them properly.
It's ALL a test.
Good luck and have fun
x
Hi Mu,
I understand what you are saying. Thought about all of that myself. But it all seemed to be pretty standard rhetoric, which is why I didn't mention it. Besides, it seems like an easy cop-out to use the Buddha as an excuse to create 'drama' and 'illusion' as a way to bait people into their so-called 'projections.'
In other words, do you honestly think the Buddha would have played games and been explicitly dishonest and deceptive in order to test others? Really? Do you?
:o )
Genuinely,
David Jon
Thank you for sharing that April. So glad you came out the 'other-side' of that situation—and all the better too!!
I suspect each and everyone of us falters somewhat when we 'follow' someone else too closely. That is part of the impetus behind this song I wrote too. How Can You Follow. Maybe summing it up better than all of those words of yesterday. ; o )
Thanks again for writing and sharing April,
David Jon
Is that THE VICTORIA marking her presence here??
BIt me! ;-) You’ve been talking to Rommel, haven’t you?
I agree with Mu, challenging your preconcieved notions is exactly what Buddhism and Integral and all that stuff is all about. We can’t always trust ourselves because we are not perfect machines. That’s the secret to happiness and success in these philosophies: understanding that nothing is absolutely real, no matter how real it appears on the surface. The only thing you can completely trust is nothingness. So trust Mu!
And, yes, the Buddha did lots of trickery to get his point across! Ever read any of the traditional Buddhist stories? They are full of trickery! Though most of these stories aren’t real accounts, at least the idea of trickery was considered acceptable in helping people transform into more aware beings.