There is too much emphasis on transcend and too little emphasis on include.

[aurum]

On 11/16/2024 at 9:38 AM, Shane Hanlon said:

Every spiritual circle I have been a part of always promises transcending your problems. How often is the focus on including and integrating your current and past beliefs, feelings, thoughts, actions, pain, love, relationships? It often seems like this is given no value or is the uglier cousin no one cares about in spiritual circles. It's all about realizing enlightenment, or god, or ending your suffering as fast and efficiently as possible - Totally missing the point of a human life and ultimately making for a more confusing, more shallow, and more painful journey.

To include is to Love.

It is the opposite.

Almost every spiritual community is focused on human endeavors.

People might talk a lot about God, but don't confuse that for people actually doing the work, or even wanting to do the work.

[Shane Hanlon]

@Da77en I can't help but feel like when we are talking about inclusion/integration, we are not talking about the same thing.

How are you getting to including/integration and a tiger in your room? What am I not addressing that you are feeling is missing?

8 minutes ago, Da77en said:

It still seems like you are making including into an action. By default everything is already all-inclusive. If you make inclusion into an action and start including boundlessly you lose all direction.

In my interpretation inclusion/integration is generally active. This second part though there is something here where I feel like we are talking about different things. Or talking differently about the same thing.

[Da77en]

@Shane Hanlon I thought we addressed that you were generally talking about the idea of including more things into your experience and not talking about letting go of the illusion of separation. If you just start including things into your experience without discernment you would die.

My definition of inclusion is letting go of the illusion of separation. I’m very confused about the kind of inclusion you are talking about.

You spoke about infinite inclusion, what’s your definition of that, I don’t understand.

Edited 18 hours ago by Da77en

[Shane Hanlon]

@Da77en I am not talking about having more new experiences to let go of. In fact, I am not talking about letting go at all. I am talking about forever deepening the understanding, richness, Love, perception, interdependency, and complexity of the experiences that you do have and integrating that into the deepest well of your being.

[Da77en]

@Shane Hanlon I agree with that definition of integration/inclusion.

Edited 18 hours ago by Da77en

[Shane Hanlon]

@Da77en Yay! 

[Brittany]

48 minutes ago, aurum said:

People might talk a lot about God, but don't confuse that for people actually doing the work, or even wanting to do the work.

I think this is what is happening.

People often find Transcendence as more "fun", and so they will ramble about it for hours.

Integration is very important, but not always as "fun" to talk about for hours.

So what is missing in the spiritual space, is the people who DO find Integration as fun and are passionate about it, should start rambling about it for hours. haha 

People who are frustrated at others for teaching too much about Enlightenment/Transcendence, probably just have a calling or gift to be teachers of Integration.

Sometimes our gifts and calling for something, will make us frustrated with others, who are not pursuing it.

I see this a lot in the Fiction Book spaces. Where for example, a Black or Asian person is frustrated that White authors are not writing about the Black/Asian experience. But some of that frustration is that we need more Black and Asian authors. And some of that frustration is because they are called to become Authors themselves.

[aurum]

32 minutes ago, Brittany said:

People who are frustrated at others for teaching too much about Enlightenment/Transcendence, probably just have a calling or gift to be teachers of Integration.

Having participated in these kind of communities for several years, my POV is more cynical.

I think what's happening is that people don't actually want to do real spiritual work. What they want is all the human stuff often associated with spirituality (manifesting money, healing emotional trauma, romantic relationships, physical health etc).

So the mind rationalizes that there's "just too many people focusing on God" in order to justify focusing on what they actually want.

It's like a collective coping mechanism spiritual communities engage in. An imaginary problem invented so people can meet their survival needs.

Of course, this doesn't mean spiritual bypassing can't occur. It can and does. But that's not the primary reason people are frustrated.