Hi everyone,

Happy New Year!

I have been posting a lot at the Integral Institute Pod and though to blog one response from a thread I started clled Spiritual Atheism. View the whole dialog here.

The integral Institute Pod is the discussion board on Zaadz for all things related to Ken Wilber's Integral Theory.....check it out!

Stay tuned also for video blogging in 2007. I have a little video bit coming up on the same subject...

This is actually part of a group conversation with some great people spanning four threads:
1) Enlightenment?
2) The Myth of the Given
3) Spiritual Atheism
4) Prerational and Transrational Spirituality, The Difference Is?

yes, i hear the fear that without religious myths life would be meaningless. my point, however, is that surrendering the literal interpretation of myth (ie religion) actually deepens, expands, enrichens and exponentialy multiplies the mystery!

that is the existential initiation i am referring to. it goes something like this:

a) the rational honesty and courage to acknowledge that no myth has ever been literally true.
b) the same honest courage to acknowledge that there is not anyone anywhere who actually knows what happens after death and there never has been.
c) the recognition that it is the fear of death, chaos and meaninglessness that leads us to cling to unprovable bliefs or “faith” about that which no-one actually knows anything.

from these flow three blossomed realizations:

a) the myths are creations of the brilliant and mysterious poetry of the psyche!
b) death is a universal constant that binds all of humanity together and that is a powerful archetypal force in the human psyche and culture.
c) the understanding that through setting oneself free of superstitious defenses and really embracing the mystery and inevitability of death as well as the extraordinarily high probability that death is quite simply permanent sleep - one is more spiritually present, more alive to reality, more appreciative of the preciousness of love and the torment of suffering, more commited to living actually in the hugely improbable mystery of human consciousness and feeling.

this is the great irony:

belief in a literal god is not at all mysterious. it is a closing off of an exquisite inquiry that keeps going and going.

having “faith” ie - belief without evidence in a defined idea is actually the exact opposite of embracing the mystery.

and worst of all believing literallly in tthe socially constructed god of my culture (be it from your traditional roots, your subculture exoticism, or the new age orthodoxy i am pointing out) actually profoundly limits awareness of the problems with that cultural worldview and how it blocks growth to the next level.

whenever  i talk about relinquishing superstition, like say in my conversation on my blog about people who claim to channel alien intelligences, others wisely try to accuse me of not being open to the mystery.

actually, i am not open to unproven superstitions that limit the mystery in unsatisfactory ways!

what you are expressing here is i think a confusion of tolerance on the one hand - which of course we should have on a practical level, with, on the other hand, the merely pluralistic green meme position that takes offense at honest inquiry into the relative truth or falsity of certain worldviews.

in other words i can be tolerant of the fact that someone believes in a white bearded man in the sky who grimaces everytime we take his goddamn name in vain or have dionysian premarital sex - but still state, at the same time, that this is a ridiculous and oudated superstition.

tolerance does not exclude rigor, courage or honesty. faith is not an effective path into mystery.

btw - HAPPY NEW YEAR! & thanks for the dialog so far….:O)

Hello again!

I got a new camcorder from santa/visa :O)

this is me jamming on an original acoustic blues theme and then throwing in a riffy and spiffy arrangement of Jimi Hendrix's 3rd Stone form the Sun.

A couple people wanted to see my face after the last video - well you asked for it - soulful grimaces and all......:OP

Click here to see 3rd Stone Acoustic Blues Part 2!

Enjoy!

~Julian

this is from a recent post at the I-I pod in a thread i started on ken wilber's pre/trans fallacy - something that, ten years after it was written, people in wilber circles are still confused about.

i though to repost it here as you may find the connections between santa, jesus, wilber, kohut and piaget interesting.

for more on jean piaget's work click here.
for ken wilber's original pre/trans fallacy essay click here.
to look at the entire discussion on the Integral Institute discussion board click here.
for more on the work of heinz kohut click here.
Read about peter levine's trauma work here.

Santa Claus is Real!

observe the child who believes in santa.

how wonderful it is.

usually between 6 and 8 years old, as concrete operational cognition (piaget) is coming online, the child doubts santa. the appropriate parenting response is a) to support the illusion while it is enjoyed and b) to support the emergence of rational cause and effect awareness as it arises. in other words - thats right my child, santa is not really real.

though recognizing that santa is not real is a little disappointing, if the child has adequate resources (levine) has been appropriately mirrored through different age stages (kohut) they will be able to “tolerate the dissapointment” of another little step forward in growing up. for kohut it is the building of this tolerance that constitutes the development of what wilber calls the “self” line.

in addition, what is discovered in surrendering the illusion of santa - is something even better: your parents loved you so much that they created this really fun and magical illusion for you. it was them all along who bought, wrapped, hid the gifts they knew you would love and created the whole game for you!

real awareness of love and orientation in reality as it is is far more valuable and has more depth to it that the illusory fantasy. this is a touchstone of development and is true all the wa up the scale; we sacrifice illusion for reality at every step and it allows more and more awareness, truth, beauty and goodness to emerge. we are unable to surrender the illusion and embrace the reality of the next level when something has gone wrong in the process.

Jesus?

now around this same age, kids will probably question that other fantasy construct - the literal mythic god figure and perhaps the concretized archetype of, say, jesus who was born of a virgin and rose from the dead not unlike quetzalcoatl and dionysus before him.

it is incongruent with concrete operational cogniton to continue believing in magical explanations. this is a technical fact.

we use magical explanations when our minds canot yet see cause and effect. pre-operational children will use magical explanations for just about everything if asked because they do not yet have the cognitve capacity to understand cause and effect.

with cause and effect comes the nascent ability to reason.

with the development of concrete operations comes for the first time - the ability to put oneself (mentally) in anothers shoes.

rationality is thus the begining of genuine empathy and compasion. children in the preop world of magic and myth cannot actually experience compassion and empathy in a meaningful way.

as this cognitive capacity is strengthened we begin to be able to surrender the healthy and natural narcissism that has thus far characterized our very limited relationship to reality. (kohut)

the preoperational stage of cognition can also be called prerational.

at this stage we use magical explanations and interpret reality through narcissistic eyes. we are the center of the universe and all things are interpreted as having special meaning for us, we have a sense of omnipotence and immortailty and we idealize our authority figures intensely as being perfect and all-powerful.

 

conversely, at preoperations we tend to intermalize any negative experience of our authority figures and believe we must be at fault, because our idealization of the parent or authority figure is so great taht there is no rrom for the possibility of their imperfection or "bad-ness." when adults regress into childlike idealization of a spiritual teacher, especially one who claims to be perfect/enlightened, this dynamic often gets played out with disastrous consequences for the regressed devotee.

with the onset of concrete operations, we begin to let go of the narcissistic illusion that has allowed us to tolerate the difficulty of forming a self, we have enough ego-strength to let in the experience of others wothout being threatened by it. we begin to have empathy and basic compassion. we start to realize that we are not omnipotent and we have to accept our limitations and the conventional rules, limits and consequences that are being imposed on us. we surrender magical interpretations of reality more and more in the face of the powerful and accurate cause and effect and reason-based skills we are learning.

most of us adults understand this intuitively. when a child gets to be say 9 years old and still believes in santa, we think - something is going wrong here.

if the child is 12 and still thinks that superheroes are literally real, we become worried.

these are signs of prerational, preoperational cognition and that is not age appropriate, therefore there is some kind of pathology. it is intelligent and compassionate to address this and try and get the child some help.

of course there is always play and imagination - but we intuitively get the difference between play and imagination on the one hand and being literally convinced of something unreal on the other.

in fact, knowing the difference between symbolic representations and literal reality could, in extremis, be said to be the difference between sanity and mental illness.

now in the realm of religion/spirituality, when the concrete operational child says - i don’t think i really believe in god anymore, we often have a different reaction than we did with santa.

because most parents are caught in a version of the pre/trans fallacy they encourage or even insist that the child maintain certain magical and prerational beliefs - and then call that religion or spirituality.

instead of allowing the natural developmental process to refute the prerational level of the spiritual line (wilber) and because they themselves have not integrated rationality with spirituality in such a way that genuine transrational spiritual levels might emerge and be differentiated from prerational narcissistic magical fantasy, the parents unwittingly stunt the spiritual growth of the child.

 

The Not So Fantastic Four

later on for the vast majority of people, one of four things happens:

1) they grown up and have serious zealous irrational faith in religion even though they may be very reasonable in other ways - all of the need for meaning, spirituality, morality, ecstasy, redemption, consolation, etc gets put inot the basket of mythic religious belief.

2) they grow up not questioning religion but "letting sleeping dogs lie" and playing along with or paying lipservice to religious ideas and the “existence of god” as something important for reasons they can’t really articulate and try not to think about. the spiritual line is basically deactivated and the cognitive line is not permited to interact with the religious material.

3) they grow up and rebel completely against religious belief and use rationality to the exclusion of the spiritual and often emotional lines. pure science and rigid reason dominate.

4) they grow up and romanticize the regression into magical and narcissisic interpretations of reality as being spirituality itself. rationality is the enemy of authentic spirituality for these folks and it is a big taboo to think critically about mythic and magical material. everything non-rational, from literal belief in mythic gods and godesses, to angels, spirit guides, channeled aliens, shamans who can take the shape of animals, the universe organizing itself to provide a parking space because you were a good boy or girl in the energy you were putting out there, the world being a divine school in which you learn eactly the lesons you need before reincarnating or going to the source (because there really is no such thing as death) - this is all seen as deeply spiritual, meaningful and in contrast (and reaction against)  to the “negative” interpretations of the harsh world we live in and the realities of suffering and scientific method and even psychology.

A Solution for 21st Century Spirituality

the fifth option i am suggesting in response to the PROBLEM of the pre/trans fallacy lies in:

a) cognitive development - so as to stabilize healthy concrete operations and formal operations (piaget observed from voluminous research that less than 35% of adults in industrialized countries stabilized at formal operations!)
b) psychological/shadow work - processing the painful feelings and events that keep us from developing higher and deeper stages and keep us enamoured of the regressive defenses.
c) inquiry-based spiritual practice that is able to see the prerational material for what it is and be fearless in it’s discernment and compassion

so what is (formop) formal operations?

well, it is the stage that comes after (conop) concrete operations.

at formal operations we learn to think more abstractly, symbolically.

for the conop child who has not been indoctrinated, religion is just a bunch of slly nonsense, because it makes no sense. this is healthy and should be supported unless we intend to create the kind of religious confusion that we see all around us.

for the formop child, religion might begin to be interesting as a metaphor. mythology and poetry might begin to be available to their nascent interpretive intelligence. this is the breeding ground for adavnced intellectual and artistic pursuits, as well as transrational spirituality.

unfortunately it is usually incompletely supported and integrated, and we end up with one of the above "not so fantastic four" options.

in terms of developmental psychology i think this is properly understood as a developmental pathology - and it is extremely widespread and responsible for untold suffering and carnage on the planet.

formop usually comes in between 10 and 12. you cant teach a child algebra or anything but very literal poetry before this. they just dont have the software running. some never will. most (over 65%) will not fully install it and make the transition to the new operating system.

The New Age Pathology

NOW if we do not have strongly developed formop we cannot healthily develop any of the higher stages that wilber and others have postulated.

INSTEAD, if we attempt ot have a spiritual lfe, we will end up with some mix of regressive mythic and magic preoperational belief managed by a very confused and incongruous conop cognition that is commited to the magic and mythic material being literaly real and has confused it’s thin grasp on formop metaphor with nonsensical mystification and ends up associating that feeling with “spirituality” - because, after all, if it doesnt make rational sense, but it gives you that narcissistic  glowy feeling that everything is perfect and you are "taken care of",  it must be a higher truth.

from this confused perspective, the more cognitive dissonance the better, the more disscoiated from critical thinking and hard reality the better, the more suggestive of the fantasy world of childhood magic, superhero archetypes and all good idealized enlightened authority figures the better.

this is the new age green meme regressive narcissistic magical pathology that wilber describes and that i started this thread to discuss. this is in part the explanaton for the religious insanity that causes so much destruction and cruelty on the planet in the name of a literal mythic god.

the question remains: how do we differentiate pre and trans? this is one attempt at an answer.

the problem as described by wilber in the essay i referred to at the top has many powerful real world ramifications. i am suggesting one way of understanding it and responding to it.

for me this is not only intellectually compelling but deeply rooted in compassion and love of the truth, beauty and goodness that emerges as more and more of us take the real journey up the developmental spiral.

www.julianwalkeryoga.com

Hi Everyone,


Response to Comments

Recent interest and controversy over my review of The Secret has prompted me to write a very brief part two!

First of all, thanks to all of you who have responded so overwhelmingly positively to the critical eye I have cast over a piece of pop culture spirituality that is being lauded in several different quarters, from new age Santa Monica to Larry King Live, to the hallowed Zaadz discussion boards!

Over on Brian's blog, both C4Chaos and MsCapriKelli have suggested that The Secret is appropriate for a certain level of spiritual development and that, while much of what I am saying makes sense from a more evolved view, i could be a little gentler - I think MsCapri said something about a "velvet hammer"......

Several people have said that my review was unbalanced because it did not include mention of what was positive about the intention and content of the film. Lastly Brian suggested, astutely, that the review could benefit from the addition of Ken Wilber's Pre/Trans Fallacy idea.

Thank you for all of the comments, criticisms and suggestions - this dialog is what I love about Zaadz!

Let's Get To It:

First of all I think it is important, if we are going to talk about stages of development to acknowledge that within those stages there is also pathology or sickness. Within a stagewise process of development there is also a tendency to regress, or move backwards, out of fear of continuing to move forward and accept the difficult struggle of higher growth.

My assertion is that this description of pathological regression reflects about 90% of what is commonly called the New Age, and The Secret is, through-and-through, a new age phenomenon. Part of what is going on is that spiritual seekers balk at the existential initiation required to move into adult spirituality and find it is much less threatening to embrace a childlike belief in magical thinking a la pieces like The Secret and What The Bleep - two perfect expressions of the regressive, narcissistic, junk science zeitgeist in the New Age today...

Pre/Trans Fallacy

I have provided a link to Wilber's original short but potent 1980 Pre/Trans Fallacy essay above  for those interested  in grasping this groundbreaking piece of spiritual/philosophical/psychological theory.

Basically the essay came about as a result of Wilber's anguished realization that the "Romantic" early period of his own spiritual path and theoretical stance was not holding up to the evidence he was gathering from his continuing study and practice.

The Romantic position Wilber had adopted basically stated that spirituality was a "return to some lost glory." That somehow through our growth from pristine infancy and through humankind's growth from our ancient wisdom we had lost touch with Spirit and needed to return to that former glory.

Wilber observes that most  (if not all ) of us begin our spiritual path with this romantic assumption and that particularly the green meme new age culture dislikes developmental models that suggest a kind of progress toward glory instead of return to repressed glory for this reason.

The essay says basically this:

There are three broad stages of development. These are prerational, rational, and transrational.

Given this, because both prerational and transrational states and stages are non-rational - they are easily confused with each-other.

There are two ways that this confusion is enacted:

1)  Viewing both transrational (or higher than rational) ideas/experiences and prerational ideas/experiences as being prerational. Hence (for example) empirically minded people might lump all psychology, spirituality, poetry, dance, belief in aliens, meditation, dream interpretatiion, animal worship etc in as being meaningless nonsense.

2) Viewing both transrational and prerational as being transrational - thus all of the above get lumped in with the transrational by (for example) New Agers as being profound and meaningfully spiritual.

So Wilber begins to differentiate the two as an attempt to correct the mistakes he had been making in his writing and thinking from around 1973 until 1980! Brave man indeed....

Stages of Development

Regarding The Secret, let's look at Wilber's stages of development as borrowed/modified from Jean Gebser - they are: archaic, magic, mythic, rational, pluralistic and integral.

Now those of you familiar with Spiral Dynamics will see that of course this  maps nicely onto their color coded stages too!

See also my essay Santa Claus, Jesus, Ken Wilber. Piaget and Kohut for a more extensive explanation of how cognitive development relates to spirituality viz Pre/Trans fallacy.

Suffice it to say that if you look at:

archaic, magic, mythic - these are pre or prior to 'rational', and pluralistic and integral are trans or after 'rational', yes?

New Age spirituality is in part predicated on the emergence of a pluralistic, transrational worldview that can appreciate other cultures and is interested in an embrace of multiple perspectives. Unfortunately the New Age worldview  gets very confused along the way, turns pathological and ends up regressing to prerational (magic and mythic) ideas as if they were transrational truths.

My assertion is that this happens because of a lack of tools to deal with the conflict of integrating the rational (cognitive) developmental line with the spiritual line, as well as psychological trauma that has not been resolved and a fear of the practice based existential initiation that makes way for adult transrational spirituality to emerge.....as such the New Age worldview is not stage of growth but a defense against growth. See here for 21st Century Spirituality: Mental Development - a more complete description and prescription for this pathology.


Whatever do I mean?

Well think of it this way: at the rational level of development we realize that magical ideas about reality (i can make it rain by chanting a special prayer for example ) and mythic ideas about reality (jesus was born of a virgin for example) are not literal truths. They may have some metaphorical value, but they are not accurate reflections of reality. Period.

Rational people agree on this fact, it's part of the definition.

At the pluralistic level we might start to wonder about the psychological, poetic meaning of these prerational ideas and look at them through translational lens, as did master world mythologist Joseph Campbell.

But, when the pluralistic level goes awry, as Wilber points out in Boomeritis and his multiple references to the MGM or "mean green meme" it results amongst other things in a regression to once again embracing magic and mythic prerational ideas and interpretations of reality as if they were transrational higher truths.

Now my position as stated above is that 90% of the New Age is infected with this pathology. So yes, there are a lot of spiritual seekers out there to whom The Secret will make a lot of sense and seem really life affirming and empowering.

But it plainly is not.

It perpetuates delusion, which helps no-one.

It denies the multiple factors that influence our reality (psychological, sociological, economic, racial, historical, educational etc)  in favor of an over-emphasis on the power of intentional thought, which is immature and unrealistic.

It offers as ultimate ancient wisdom an oversimplified extremely partial truth that is more damaging than a direct lie and will actually actively prevent these seekers from hearing the truths that would enable them to keep growing.

What I would add to the Pre/Trans Fallacy to back up these assertions is this:

Authentic spiritual growth occurs as a genuine maturing process in which we learn (through practices that cultivate presence, compassion, honesty, courage, critical thinking) to be more and more in touch with reality as it is and to see the extraordinary complexity and bittersweet beauty of the world we live in.

Authentic spirituality creates a space within which we can wrestle with the distinctions between what we have power over and what has power over us. This occurs through learning how to deal with disappointment and feelings of helplessness, not through deluding ourselves into believing unreasonable and inaccurate things - and calling our faith in that "spirituality".


Conclusion

I am going to go out on a really safe limb and say that no one is ever going to change the bills in their mailbox into checks by thinking about it differently on their way down the driveway.

No-one is going to beat cancer who would have otherwise died from it by watching funny movies for three weeks.

No African kid on his death bed from a rare form of hepatitis is going to make a magical recovery by being sent "gratitude rocks" from L.A.

Also: no gay, black, Jewish or Muslim person is going to get bigoted co-workers to transfer out of their office or hate-criminal thugs to leave them alone by holding a positive mind-set.

These assertions are insulting to the depth and difficulty of these problems and erroneously imply a lack of character, spiritual positivity or mental resolve in those who suffer from them.

No-one is ever going to dependably master the "skill" of manifesting parking spaces. This is an asinine fantasy of infantile omnipotence and shouldn't even be in the same ballpark of anything appropriately designated as spiritual.

Now of course, yes - using the power of the mind to visualize, to dream, to imagine your possibilities, to shift out of your self-sabotage - and then doing something about it CAN be very useful - but it is no guarantee of success - and failure this time does not mean you didnt visualize hard enough or believe deeply enough - it might mean that you need to re-orient yourself to reality or do some deeper work on what is under the surface of your self-sabotage - or it may just mean that life doesn't always work out as we had planned.

As a yoga teacher I encourage people to exercise the power of focused intention every day - but more as a way to enter an inquiry-based transformational process than as a magic trick to get everything to go just as we want it through the assistance of some mythic force in "the universe."

So to Brian I say:
Thanks for the stimulus.

To MsCapriKelli and C4Chaos  I say:
Not so! The Secret is not stage appropriate for anyone. What one can say for it in terms of empowerment and third chakra focusing of will is entirely overshadowed by the regressive prerational emphasis on faith in magic and belief in a mythic reality that simply is not so. This will hamstring ongoing growth and perpetuate a dissociative, fragmented, self-blaming pathology.

To those who thought I was not being balanced enough, I say:
Sorry, the film really is a piece of shit. A well shot, edited, staged and post-production computer effect-ed piece of shit, but from a philosophical, psychological and spiritual standpoint - just appalling!

If you are interested in some alternative perspectives to what I am debunking, here is a link to my essay Beyond the New Age: An Integral Vision, which includes a critique of What the Bleep.

Though I know this may ruffle feathers even more, I hope it creates more context and clarity about where my critique is coming from!

For The Secret: Part Three - An Antidote go here.

For more spiritual cinema reviews, check out:
 The Fountain: Integral Cinema at it's Best
 What the Bleep and Ken Wilber

Peace Out!
~Julian

Introduction

In response to the wonderful dialog about The Secret, I thought it might be interesting to do a slightly less polemical step-back here and talk about what I think healthy stage appropriate spiritual practice and philosophy can and should be for people likely to be taken in by The Secret, What the Bleep and the New Age paradigm they represent.

This is, of course, the basis for 90% of what you will find on my Zaadz pages, the website for my work ( www.julianwalkeryoga.com ), and this blog. Here too is an introduction to my Open Sky body of work, integrating yoga, meditation, hands-on bodywork, ecstatic dance and dialog in private sessions, group classes, workshops, trainings and retreats.

Some felt that I was unfairly slamming The Secret and it's adherents for what is a well-intentioned, stage-appropriate spirituality with training wheels - that ultimately the movie is positive and empowering and so what if it doesn't live up to some advanced spiritual or intellectual ideal, it's a good first step.

In my previous blog post I dismissed this position pretty strongly with the assertion that the Secret was stage appropriate for no-one, that in fact it represents a spiritual pathology rampant  in the broad, popular and influential New Age movement that actually distorts reality, mixes junk science with superficial philosophy, and effectively limits healthy stage-wise spiritual growth.

Some felt that my critique and  Part Two: Wilber, Gebser and New Age Pathology was not making enough room for whatever their favorite New Age idea was, be it the power of intention, the universe's benevolent creative generosity, or the reality of synchronicity. What was interesting to me about this position is that it came off not so much as a defense of The Secret (because the movie is relentlessly about one single oversimplified incorrect idea presented as an ancient universal truth in laughable and indefensible ways) but more of whatever New Age particulars still held a revered place in their heart or mind.


The Power of Intention

Perhaps the most common response to my criticism of the Secret, What the Bleep and the New Age worldview in general over the years has been this:

"But the power of intention is so important and people need to hear that message."

Let's use this well-meaning assertion as a starting point.

The central difficulty I have with the pop spirituality phenomenon of the New Age is it's unfortunate lack of depth. I know, I know I said I'd be less polemical, but I don't actually mean that as an insult. It's a simple fact.

The New Age worldview suffers from  a basic lack of depth, even a lack of  awareness that there is such a thing as depth. The popularity of "intention" as an all-powerful spiritual tool is a perfect case in point. Intention, in and of itself, is of little value. What matters is what the intention helps to reveal and how the intention is, in turn, shaped by an interactive relationship to the process.

Intention can be an entry point  into an inquiry process that allows for insight and healing. Intention can also be used to take those process-generated insights and apply them with some discipline to one's life. But there has to be insight first. Without a relationship to depth, intention remains superficial and empty. Without a way of interpreting meaning intention can be rigid and ineffective. Inquiry and depth makes the difference between the intention of a  Martin Luther King Jnr. and the intention of an Adolf Hitler.

What most New Agers mean by "intention" is some combination of faith and determination. This can be useful, but like all forms of faith and determination it benefits immensely from, and is directed more efectively by,  a relationship to the depth discovered through a genuine process of inquiry.

Spiritual practice and philosophy should be a sequential process of initiation into successive layers of depth, complexity, nuance and, yes, truth. I am going to use two approaches that I feel are legitimate spiritual practices that succeed in this duty, one from the East - Vipassana Meditation, and one from the West, Psychotherapy.

Two Spiritual Practices

In Vipassana Meditation practice, one sequentially learns several different skills that allow one first to concentrate a strong conscious intention to stabilize in the present and then to gain entry into one's own inner world with that concentrated awareness. The purpose of learning to concentrate on the breath (the "apana" stage of the work) is not merely an end in itself, it allows one to cross a threshold into depth. This meditation technique then allows the practitioner to become more and more familiar with first their sensations and then with the next layer of depth, which is the emotional and mental dimension of their embodied experience, this evokes yet another layer of depth which has to do with gradually becoming more and more stabilized in the observing or witnessing awareness that remains as the constant as the sensations, emotions, thoughts and even sense of self keep going through their ever-changing cycles.

Each of these deepening movements, from surface level concentration which calms the static of the mind, to focused awareness of the sensations as they arise, intensify, fade and pass, to the inquiry into one's emotional/psychological experience, to the deepening sense of one's witnessing consciousness, is a stage in a process that takes many years. The word "Vipassana" means "insight", and the assertion is that through this gradually deepening path, one gains insight into not only one's own being, but also the nature of the human condition itself.

Along the way one will have to sit through many sessions of boredom, physical discomfort, emotional anguish, and psychological torment, alongside (and often transitioning into) periods of deep gratitude, bliss, release and clarity. Along the way one may find that several different belief systems, defense structures, and habit patterns come up for reconsideration. This is quintessential spiritual practice. It's inquiry-based, not faith-based, and it is as rewarding and transformational as it is gruelingly difficult. No short cuts.

In psychotherapy one goes through a deepening  process of relating with a therapist who is there to be present and support your inquiry. initially, one usually brings in a some difficulty that is present and asks for help. That is the doorway. Through the process of sitting, talking, (and various other techniques depending on the therapists training), discussing dreams,  expressing emotions, analyzing and attempting new strategies outside of the office, one goes on a deepening journey into self-discovery. Why do we feel the way we feel? What are the beliefs and expectations we hold? What do we really want out of life?

The most valuable part of a psychotherapeutic process is this initiation into depth, the fact that it asks us to consider what is beneath the surface. We pay attention and inquire and through that process we gain insight into the patterns, fears, defenses, beliefs and traumas that underlie the way we structure our present experience. Often there is deep healing work that is needed, intense unresolved emotions, fearful associations, unmet needs and longings that are almost unbearable to touch, but over time this gets easier and our surface ego gets more related to the authentic self that dwells in the depths of the psyche.

Just like in Vipassana Meditation, the Psychotherapeutic process takes us through stages of gradual deepening that allow us to become more honest with ourselves and to see reality, both internally and externally, more clearly. The wishful thinking, fantasy, projections, defenses and reactions become less powerful. As with Vipassana, this increase in clarity allows us to see ourselves and others with more compassion.

Both Vipassana and Psychotherapy are powerful spiritual practices that facilitate what Joseph Campbell calls The Hero's Journey. Here is the inner world and it's monsters and treasures as described by the world's rich mythological traditions.These practices take us into the unknown, into the depths of the psyche, into places where before the light of consciousness has not shone, and create a more open and vital channel of communication between the inner/depth world of the soul or Self and the outer/surface world of the ego. In Jungian terms this channel is called the ego/Self axis and strengthening it is the central purpose of the analysis.

You'll notice in both of these processes intention plays a part. It is the firm resolve that gets us started and keeps us going. Intention is a function of the surface mind. As such, intention needs direction and content from the depths if it is to serve it's function well. During the course of one's inquiry-based spiritual practice, one may have insights and  set new intentions about how one wants to bring those insights into lived reality. It is also sometimes useful (and sometimes not) to enter the inquiry-based practice with an intention, to help direct the process towards discovering a particular hidden truth, feeling or motivation.

Through this kind of practice, one gets to be in a feedback loop with reality, with one's lived experience. It is not a guarantee of success or a strategy for happiness or wealth, rather it is a method for discovering meaning, for being in relationship to one's inner and outer life with more consciousness.

This awakens an unfolding freedom, but it is freedom from the need to control everything, freedom from the fear of life and death and feelings, freedom from the obsessive conditioned response to acquire money and power and possessions at all costs, - not freedom to have some kind of magical power in these domains.


The Magical Defense

In fact, from a psychological perspective the desire spoken to by The Secret to find the magic trick that gives one power over the unknown and makes the universe unconditionally grant whatever you wish is understood as a very immature need that comes from childhood and is incongruous with an adult relationship to reality. It's called magical thinking and belongs to a narcissistic stage of development appropriate to a young child but problematic and even, depending on the severity,  quite pathological in adults .

From a Buddhist perspective that same longing to have magical power and limitless manifestation would be seen in terms of the never-ending reflexive grasping and pushing away of pleasant and unpleasant experience that creates suffering in the first place.

Now Buddhist philosophy and practice and Psychotherapy do not match up entirely. In fact there are areas of difference and disagreement that are fascinating and important for the serious student of either, and especially of both, - but my point here is that both are methods of self-inquiry that allow us to enter a process that leads us though stages of deepening awareness.

The New Age in general and movies like The Secret , in particular, do not.

The idea that through merely focusing one's intention, one can have and do anything without limit, while inspiring-sounding is actually delusional, regressive and perpetuating  of what both Buddhism and Psychotherapy see as an unhealthy relationship to reality.

The failure to include a discussion of the limits of intention and to introduce people to the concept of depth, of practice, of being in the kind of feedback loop with reality, is disastrous. It ends up unwittingly pinning adherents between the rock of surface level intention and  the hard place of a world that actually doesn't work that way. Without a methodology for interpreting meaning and assessing depth, for coming to terms with feelings, disappointments and bringing expectations down to earth, one is left with a vicious cycle:misplaced faith in a grandiose, but erroneous magical belief coupled with a self-blaming response when it turns out, time and time again, not to work.

This does not generate insight, nor will it cultivate compassion. It also fails to initiate a relationship to depth. In fact the central idea of The Secret decreases ones compassionate and curious relationship to oneself, other people and the world at large, by reducing everything to the magical relationship between thoughts and "the universe."


Beginning Spiritual Practice

My sense is that there are three broad areas that contemporary spirituality should address:  cognitive development,  psychological awareness, and spiritual  practice.

A beginning practice is only worthwhile if it serves as a genuine bridge into more advanced practice. As such, one should enter the domain of spirituality with a healthy sense of respect for depth and for the amount of work one has to put in to get anything meaningful out.

Movies and books  like The Secret are mere entertainment, worse, they are a kind of drug that creates a false sense of depth, meaning and power and leaves one in a confused hangover once the high fades. They perpetuate the very defense-structure that real spiritual practice helps one to dismantle. Beginning practice should be clear on this point, not as a way to demand that people be advanced right away, but so as to appropriately begin the process of turning towards the depths and doing the first layers of work with one's delusions and defenses. The Secret dresses up the defensive delusions and grandiose fantasies as if they were themselves the higher truths.

So instead I suggest reading philosophy, literature, poetry and watching great artistic cinema, as well as reading current events/politics and watching documentary films. One will gain far more spiritually from attending to great art, literature and analysis of the day than from superficial opiated entertainments like The Secret. This will also deepen critical thinking and develop cognition in ways that equip us to be in relationship to depth.

For the beginner I recommend starting to engage genuine spiritual practice by reading Jack Kornfield's classic synthesis of Buddhist meditation and psychological awareness - A Path with Heart.

If you are really interested in spirituality, begin meditating and avail yourself of the plethora of incredible books by people like Kornfield, John Welwood, Pema Chodron, Ken Wilber and Stan Grof. Explore the myriad of experiential psychological awareness processes from certain forms of yoga, to bodywork, to holotropic breathwork, to ecstatic dance to straight -up talk therapy.

There is a real path and The Secret ain't it.

Please browse through the rest of my blog to see more on this subject and go to my website at www.julianwalkeryoga.com if you are interested in coming on my three-day Open Sky Retreat to Ojai, California, where we practice yoga, meditation, noble silence, ecstatic dance, Core Sequencing Bodywork and supportive joyful community in absolutely beautiful surroundings.

Zaadz and the YouTube interface seem a little shaky right now. If the video is not showing up above: CLICK HERE TO SEE THE VLOG!

This is about the true power of intention, psychological depth work, the importance of inquiry-based practice and critical thinking in 21st Century Spirituality.

The distinction I have ben fumbling towards with my fine jousting mates (Siona,Laura, C4Chaos, Klare, Brian and Matthew amongst others...) has been between stages of spiritual growth on the one hand and on the other - distortions/unhealthy expressions of a stage.

To make my point clear:

 This is not a mattter of one stage unfairly judging another, Healthy Green meme spirituality is still very much in touch with the kind of Orange rationality that makes the following self-evident:

These explicit assertions from The Secret are not only ludicrous, but insulting, untrue and corrosive to critical thinking, psychological depth and ongoing spiritual growth. They are examples of the unhealthy expression of Green (New Age) spirituality.

1) That an African child dying of a rare form of Hepatitis could be "healed" by "gratitude rocks" from California.
2) That anyone, anywhere can "manifest parking spaces" with the power of their mind.
3) That oppressed minorities are "creating the reality" of hate crimes through their "negative thoughts" and could quit manifesting that reality if they thought more positively.
4) That those protesting the Iraq war (and indeed any injustice) are actually perpetuating it and should instead just focus on good thoughts to help create change.
5) That the wealthiest people in the world got that way because they know how to apply the secret of positive thought and that the poorest people in the world are that way because they think negatively.

Clearly these actual examples from the film are highly problematic extrapolations of the supposed  "ancient secret" of the so-called "Law of Attraction." They kinda half make sense in some vague New Age way, but if you look closely and really think about it honestly - they are complete nonsense.

I challenge anyone to believably defend or prove the above 5 points. I also invite spiritual critical thinkers to offer their debunks of these 5 points and what makes them problematic in their eyes...

In the above Vlog (video blog) I suggest alternatives ways of thinking about and applying the true spiritual power of intention - as a doorway into depth.

Please watch the vlog too!

Be well
~Julian

www.julianwalkeryoga.com

Here's a fun and informative video on the statistical relationship between religious belief, crime, teen pregnancy, stds, divorce, imprisonment etc...

Of course we could have fun dissecting the definition of morality - but this short film does make a provocative case for religious faith as a very bad incubator for moral behaviour and societal heallth.

The second video is George Carlin doing a brilliant and hilarious deconstruction of religion.

Enjoy!

"Resourcing" is an idea and an experiential process from somatic psychology. "Pointing out instructions" are a traditional way to enter into meditative states, Here, I am guiding you through 6 dimensions of your being: physical, emotional, mental, witnessing, simple being, and the unconscious.

Think of this as Multidimensional Pointing out Instructions for Resourcing. The process/techniques are all about being present with and exploring various aspects of who you already are, and require no belief - they are meant to support inquiry, healing, embodiment and spiritual development in a grounded, direct way.

The idea is to create a space for experiential inquiry and exploration that allows you to identify real here and now resources that support you.

This kind of resource meditation allows access to a sense of well-being, calm, groundedness, energized aliveness, spiritual open-ness, wonder, beauty, pleasure, compassion - whatever you might need or have access to on a given day. Ideally, this approach would be partnered with more fearless inquiry techniques, but just the art of getting resourced is really important for many of us to emphasize for some time...

My ongoing yoga classes, workshops, bodywork sessions, trainings, and retreats are all based on the relationships between breath, presence, compassion, resourcing techniques, energetic/emotional process, inquiry and community support. I use yoga, meditation, touch, breath, and free-form dance as vehicles for this 21st Century Spirituality.

www.julianwalkeryoga.com

What follows is my initial review of the movie - I have since written part two, which deals more explicitly with the mythic structure and psychological symbolism of the film. Read it here!

The Plot

Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth is a contemporary masterpiece of traditional mythic form. Political repression, family relationships and the mythic psyche all inhabit the canvas that Del Toro paints dark with the palette of the struggle to find meaning and resolution within traumatizing circumstances.

Rurally set in Franco's Spain of the 1940's, the principle story concerns itself with a sickly pregnant mother, Carmen, and her pre-pubescent daughter, our heroine Ofelia.  These two have entered the world of the coming infant's father - the archetypically evil Captain Vidal of the fascist army.

Ofelia's real father is a casualty of the war, and her new stepfather is a cruel and inhuman sadist. Carmen is clearly grasping at straws to try and ensure survival for herself, her daughter and the child she is carrying through a very troubled pregnancy. Captain Vidal cares only for the son he imagines is growing in Carmen's womb as a mirror for his pinched and hateful sense of masculine power.

Ofelia takes solace as she has done for some time in her much-read treasure trove of fairy tale books, but as she crosses the threshold into the Captain's domain the line between fantasy and reality begins to blur. What ensues is a near classic unfolding of the stages of the mythic journey as laid out by Joseph Campbell. Don't let the inclusion of the mythic and fairy tale material fool you - this is no typically superficial representation of the inner world, in which magical forces enact a Disney-esque victory over evil for the pure-of-heart true believer. Del Toro restores his mythic motifs to their proper place as the symbolic representations of a psyche struggling to come to terms with traumatic social and familial conditions while forming a nascent sense of self. We are not in Kansas anymore.

This tragically constellated family unit is installed in an old mill that has been turned into a small military base to try and squash a Red rebellion from the hills. The Captain has a huge stone basement room to himself, where he spends his non-combatant time in reverie with his phonograph, booze, straight-razor, shaving mirror, and the repaired watch his father smashed at the moment of his death so that his son would know the time and "honorable" nature of his demise. The expendable Carmen is near death in a bedroom upstairs. The kindly and noble country doctor is under instructions to save the baby at all costs. The proud and unbroken housekeeper, Mercedes, and the Doctor are in secret collusion with the rebels.

The Mythology

Meanwhile the aptly named Ofelia is interacting with the mythic dimension of the psyche as she struggles to survive in impossible circumstances. She becomes immersed in the fantasy of herself as a reborn princess from a world where "there is no suffering or pain." In a meeting with the Faun - a most well-realized and captivating supernatural trickster, she agrees to take on three tasks that will take us into the heart of darkness on her quest to be reunited with her lost and kingly father.

The creatures of the mythic fairy tale realm are unsurpassed in their representation, and Del Toro is playing a supremely hip and psychologically savvy jazz with his storyline here, but it is in the resonances with real world torture, cruelty and loss of innocence that he strikes his most telling (and contemporary) chords.

Pan's Labyrinth dances nymph-like, or perhaps maenad-like (the Dionysian imagery works here too) between inner and outer reality, civilization and barbarity, the loss of innocence and the perverse quest for power, nature and the unnatural repression of our humanity. Ofelia is as appropriately lost and fallible in her fantasy world as she is in reality, and her guides carry an unpredictability that is sometimes as scary as the monsters she faces.


The Psychology

It is here that I would like to introduce the work of extraordinary Jungian therapist and theorist Donald Kalsched. His book The Inner World of Trauma; Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit uses myth and fairy tale as a reflecting pool to witness both the healing genius and the  potential for pathology in the traumatized psyche.

Kalsched uses (amongst several others) the myth of Eros and Psyche as well as the Rapunzel fairy tale to  illustrate his "self-care system" hypothesis of how "when human resources are not available, archetypal resources appear", and how the Protector figure in classic tales as well as contemporary psyches has also the double face of being the Jailer. In other words, the very defense that initially saves you from unbearable pain becomes the limiting factor to resolving the healing process and participating fully in a real life-in-the-world.

This is no small insight for a world that has lost its appropriate relationship to both the psyche and its dream-language of mythic symbols. Too often, as in the case of both fundamentalist religion and New Age spirituality, this potent symbolic language is misinterpreted as literal information or as a factual map to a world in which we escape the trials of human maturity and depth. In this case we are still trapped in the dissociative fantasy defense against trauma, instead of making the complete journey into the rich imaginative connection between the inner and outer worlds that allows a fulfilling, though imperfect, engaged human life.

This theme is echoed through the several stories Kalsched utilizes, and once grasped can be seen again and again, particularly in powerful movies like The Piano, the under-appreciated The Cell, The Fountain, Jacob's Ladder, and Fearless. It is here too in Pan's Labyrinth.

Here again is  Vincent d'Onofrio's contemporary Pan from The Cell. Here's Doug Jones' Pan from the film in question. Both of these mythic character depictions carry the Archetype of Protector/Jailer of the inner-world. Here too is Sam Neil from his similar  but less mythically-themed role in The Piano.

Consider this kind of work in total alignment with a 21st Century Spirituality that concerns itself with the intellect, the psyche, and the life lived in authentic struggle with reality. The movie should make you shudder more than a little- it is about the confrontation with what Jung called the Shadow - and that aint' easy for anyone, but it is the road toward a more integrated, liberated, grounded and spiritually awake self. Consider it, too, a powerful antidote to such patty-cake "spiritual" fare as The Secret and What the Bleep.

In a forthcoming piece, I will enjoy unpacking Ofelia's mythic journey and comparing it to some other myths, fairy tales and movies to elucidate Kalsched's theme of the self-care system and how the psyche deals archetypally with trauma.
(click above to read part two)

For now i leave you with my soulful recommendations for those interested in life-changing and mind-opening cinema:

{Note the similarity in the classic "world tree" imagery for the first two. Here's more on trees in mythology...}

Pan's Labyrinth
The Fountain
Babel
Fearless
The Piano
The Cell
Jacob's Ladder  {here is William Blake's painting of the same name inpired by a Biblical myth.}

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