Finding the Father, Our Journey Home

This talk was originally presented by Max Warren at our June 16 Father’s Day service at Straub Park in St. Petersburg.

Whenever he hurts himself, my seven year old son comes running to my wife and I with a death grip on his injury. He won’t let her touch it and he won’t let me see it.

Sometimes, in life, we act the same way with our emotions. We know we are wounded, but we are afraid to let anyone see.

My sense is that we are all, to some degree, comfortable holding the wound but are unwilling or unable to release our grip on apathy. I believe that we can find a way to see ourselves (and our fathers) with a new perspective — a perspective that is provided by an integral framework.

The last post touched on the need to move on, and to embrace Religion 2.0, moving past the familiar, antiquated concepts of “that old time religion.” Integral theory holds a unique position that is unlike classic modernity or post-modernism. Without going into too much detail on the evolution of maps from modern to integral, here is a brief thumbnail sketch.

Modernism is sometimes defined as “a socially progressive trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve and reshape their environment with the aid of practical experimentation, scientific knowledge, or technology.” Modernist philosophy concerns itself with absolutes, meta-narratives and holding a monolithic view of spirituality, life, work, and relationships. Post-modernism was by and large a knee-jerk reaction to the ideology of modernism, which it essentially saw as a box. Post-modernist thinkers have questioned the certainties of absolutism, have declared that we’ve lost the meaning in the very words we speak, and that we must deconstruct this box. For the most part, post-modernists have blown up, torn down and ridiculed all that modernism brought to us as a global culture. In short, they view it as worthless. An integral lens appreciates the validity of all the perspectives along the way (including previous pre-conventional and mythic stages) and sees them as a holarchy that transcends and includes each previous level.

I want to share a quote from Richard Rohr’s book Adam’s Return that I think succinctly expresses what authentic, transcendent, integral spirituality looks like. Rohr states that “healthy religion always finds God in the present much more than in the past. The past is only to create a runway for us so we have some communal assurance that ours is a valid experience.”

This rich and ever-present approach to spirituality demonstrates the most validity by moving us past pet doctrines, divisive arguments and entrenched ignorance. If we look through this integral lens, we will find within all the the great wisdom traditions the “esoteric” core beneath the “exoteric” trappings. And by looking beyond the “letter of the law” that can, at times, serve only to isolate and kill, we may find the wellspring of a living Spirit — alive in every experience.

Creating a Cohesive Worldview (Part One: Either/Or)

“What can we do when things are hard to describe? We start by sketching out the roughest shapes to serve as scaffolds for the rest; it doesn’t matter very much if some of those forms turn out partially wrong … In the final filling-in, discard whichever first ideas no longer fit.

That’s what we do in real life, with puzzles that seem very hard. It’s much the same for shattered pots as for the cogs of great machines. Until you’ve seen some of the rest, you can’t make sense of any part.”

– Marvin Minsky, The Society of Mind

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e are born. We are taught to communicate. And most of us are immediately asked to choose a side.

We’re told by people that we love and respect that we are either liberal or conservative, left-brained or right-brained, introverted or extroverted, left- or right-handed. Either/or. We’re sometimes told that these traits are predetermined – by the stars or by destiny. That the universe is a magical, vibrating world of opposites, and that we hang in the balance. We’re told that this duality is our reality. But this is not the whole truth.

Our compass orientation need not point us in only four directions. In three-dimensional space, we’re not limited to only 360 degrees. Are there not an infinite number of grays, colors, dimensions, subtle gradations and subjective ethical and cultural nuances between the concepts of black and white – or good and evil?

Haridas Chaudhuri writes in The Evolution of Integral Consciousness, “One devious root of war-mindedness is the dualistic logic of the arrogant intellect – the logic of either/or. Dualistic logic says: Either communism or democracy, either socialism or capitalism, is the ultimate truth, and thus creates an irreconcilable opposition between them, diving the world into two warring camps sworn to destroy each other.”

We are also taught that we are innately masculine or feminine. We are not told that there are both masculine and feminine qualities in each of us that will be appropriate at certain times and in certain moments. We are not taught how to easily switch from barking orders (“being the rock”) to nurturing flexibility (“being the tree”) and back again. But there is a time and a place for each. We are never explicitly shown how to change our mind, but every moment as a conscious human being – living among other conscious beings – demands it.

Even before we’re born, people start asking, “Is it a boy or a girl?” But, what if we are both? What if we are a girl on the outside and a boy on the inside? And what of the hermaphroditic, the transgendered, the bisexual, the polyamorous? Sexuality and gender roles exist along a full biological, psychological and sociological spectrum, and the idea of simple one male/one female binary pairs is a learned one. Perhaps the fact that we’re learning untrue (or partially true) things about gender might explain why there is so much confusion and trauma around human sexuality (not to mention sexual ethics).

Even our worldviews – our philosophies and religions – are separated into “Eastern” and “Western.” We may be told that Eastern religions are all about Zen and the Tao and “formless emptiness” and are based in concepts like “detachment” and “discipline.” We may be told that Western religions are all about monotheism and hierarchy and are based on things like “compassion” and “reason.” But in actuality, some religions have sprung forth on one hemisphere and migrated to another over time. In actuality, all religions are a product of a certain time, place and culture. In actuality, there is nothing more unreasonable than seeing only part (or one half) of the bigger picture.

One of our primary tasks should be to unify eastern and western thought into a global philosophy that satisfies both detachment and compassion, both discipline and creativity, hierarchy and holarchy. Yes, we need to honor and uphold the need for ceremony and ritual as well as the deep social roots of our individual cultures and our learned roles within them. But we also need to bring science and religion into alignment as aspects of the same universe – convincing both that not only is there room for the other, but that neither can stand on their own.

A modern approach to religion should not only be inclusive of the mostly partial truths found throughout the world’s wisdom, but also shouldn’t rely on a solitary book, philosophy or teacher. It should continually adapt and evolve, co-creating and recognizing new mythologies (from Star Wars to Shakespeare to Dharma Bums). It should be written by the people who live it, breathe it, and believe it.