Friends Who Don't Understand Actualization?

[Mal]

@Psychonaut @Psychonaut

Yes. That's right. A lot of I and a lot of perspective. 

Welcome to reality

Mal

[abrakamowse]

7 minutes ago, Mal said:

A lot of I and a lot of perspective. 

Cavalier perspective or One-point perspective?

[Mal]

@abrakamowse Is that your perspective?

[abrakamowse]

6 minutes ago, Mal said:

@abrakamowse Is that your perspective?

Like Mooji says "I dunno"

hehehehe

[Mal]

@abrakamowse

Ah yes.  Moojji satsang guru.  Not my Integral cup of tea.  But still an important part of the picture 

 

[abrakamowse]

@Mal  Which one are your favs? Maybe I should post a thread separately...

[Ajax]

I see that thread has gone off-course, since I contributed to it... I would like to attempt to steer it back.

1 hour ago, Mal said:

And judging by the shambles you got yourself involved in with the yogi thread I'm curious as to why you haven't  learned your lesson on this thread.

I do always try to see my blind spots, after all that is what moralizing is... blind spots. If there is something that I am continually doing wrong, I would certainly like to know about it. 

I got into shambles? How? What do you mean? What is the lesson?

You say to transcend and include... that is what I wish to do.

[Mal]

37 minutes ago, abrakamowse said:

Like Mooji says "I dunno"

hehehehe

I'll hold you to that during your next debate.  Have a fruitful day gents 

Peace and love

Mal

[Mal]

21 minutes ago, Ajax said:

I see that thread has gone off-course, since I contributed to it... I would like to attempt to steer it back.

I do always try to see my blind spots, after all that is what moralizing is... blind spots. If there is something that I am continually doing wrong, I would certainly like to know about it. 

I got into shambles? How? What do you mean? What is the lesson?

You say to transcend and include... that is what I wish to do.

Shambles is my opinion. If I sensed you genuinely wanted to take some feedback I'd gladly help you out with it. 

Now please stop wasting my time, as there are indeed people on here who would value my help. 

Mal

[Ajax]

@Mal I think you ought to give me the benefit of the doubt. I did state that  I wanted to bring this topic back on course. However, if you choose not to believe me I guess we will leave it at that. Take care.

Jax

[Mal]

@Ajax Hi Ajax,

In case you didn't catch the irony, my opinion on your yogi post was a strawman. 

And how did you respond to my strawman? Your way? Yes. I deal with it my way. Bob the builder deals with  it his way. 

What does this tell us? 

Yes, there are different levels of human responses, not one, but many. 

Warm Regards

Mal

[Ajax]

@Mal Thank you, Mal for that post and it ties in so nicely with the beginning of this thread. It was very helpful, I appreciate your feedback.

Jax

[Mal]

@Ajax

You're welcome. 

The crux of the matter is, what are the "causes" of the different ways of responding to life?

Development.

Environment.

Causes and conditions.  

This is what my preferred teachers advise.  I listen to respected credentialed experts rather than random dudes on an internet forum who claim self realization. That's just who I am, through years of trial and error and contemplation and transformation. 

Of course there really is no free will.  This however does not mean we are determined to act out our conditioned patterns, moralise and push our values onto others.  There are self-realized people in our world who are also highly developed, and highly developed people, if you know any, you will know are much more tolerant and reflective than the average Joe.  There are also highly developed but not yet realized people who look at some self-realizers and shake their heads with dismay. Take Satsang Gurus like Andrew Cohen for example, he had many devotees but his behaviour and the negative impact he had on people wasn't transformed through his spiritual awakening. His enlightenment became his Achilles heel because he was merely "one" with his shadow.  As far as he was concerned being an asshole was part of the great perfection (which it is! But a fool is still a fool whether they are self-realized or not!)

We develop the ego, and then we transcend it.  But we develop it to the point where it's not going to cause us any problems in the relative world.  The ego is a tool, what sort of tool do you want? A screwed up one that creates and attacks strawmen or something a little more humane and is able to take a much wider and more mature view on life and able to shift paradigm easily?

So, it depends what state we want the vehicle to be in when we transcend the realtive body mind? Donald Trump or Ken Wilber? The choice is ours.  We can still condition ourselves to eat better, work out, condition our ego defenses in better ways.  This includes interpersonal skills.  Please understand that there is value judgement at 2nd tier.  However it's not based on judgementalism, it's informed by the non evaluating process of "Witnessing Presence" informing the intellect.  An Integrally informed mind rather than a disengaged and atrophied thinking mind, which is a trademark of many popular Western Guru. 

Something else to consider is 2nd tier do not subscribe to 1st tier intellectual views much in the same way you or I would not consider putting training wheels on our bycicles.  Those structures are there for sure, but 2nd tier don't live embedded in those early developmental perspectives.  We tolerate 1st tier because we know that disowning a 1st tier perspective would be to deny an aspect of our own being. Limbic resonance is still a part of 2nd tier life, so civility and people skills are a large part of being cognition.  Treating people with respect and dignity and observing the golden rule. 2nd tier can still use any aspect of first tier structure to deal with life.

The only thing missing from 2nd tier is the victim mentality and the high morality of "unhealthy green".  Yellow is a lot more relaxed in its attitude, but is a very complex structure, and the conflicting emotions, thoughts and values are now being integrated and transcended for use as a tool to live in the relative domain. 

This is shadow integration.  Shadow integration is the end of the antagonistic play of opposites. A celebration of self and other, a place of wholeness and integration. 

I hope this further clarifies things for you.

Mal 

 

Edited June 10, 2016 by Mal

[DizIzMikey]

@BeckoningCat Leave them and find some with common ground

 

 

[BeckoningCat]

On 6/8/2016 at 6:50 PM, Mal said:

@BeckoningCat @charlie2dogs

Beckoning cat.  

I feel it's an appropriate time to point out here that highly developed people (Post-conventional/pluralistic) will feel for both the victim and the rapist - because they are both victims of a larger social problem.  There are also other perspectives to take into account, if you have ever read anything on a liberal left-wing publications forum, you will have been witness to a plethora of articles and responses in regard to the multi-sided nature of rape.  To assume it is only the attacker's fault, and that the victims of rape are only women and children is a sign of a person's inability to healthily cognize and take perspectives.   

This type of highly developed post-conventional reasoning is not widely accepted in our current society because of a widely pervasive phenomena called "conformist" moral stage development.

Yes, there could be a number of reasons why your friend got upset at you, however because you mentioned she exposed her intent, it's most likely a moralizing situation where her moral development is stunted at "conformist morality".  In this particular case she was most likely projecting and getting you to identify with it using subtle or even not so subtle shaming tactics. As we develop we pass through stages of moral development, we transcend and include the content of what came before.  Unfortunately as we climb the ladder of moral development we also find there are increasingly less people able who understand our perspective.

High cognition = compassion.  One cannot develop true compassion unless one develops their cognitive capacity to step inside the shoes of all involved and see a situation through a number of lenses.

Off-loading, instant assumptions and blaming is the realm of conformist projective and introjective "moralizing".  

Warmly

Mal

Goodness! I left the forum and got busy several days and now I've come back to a 4 page thread! Lots to catch up on. I agree with your statements here. The thing that made me most uncomfortable was because she was wanting a specific response from me, something I just didn't want to provide to her. Her intent was to get me to agree with the notion that "the rapist's father, the judge of the case, and the rapist himself should be severely punished." I recognized the crime the man commitment was not "good"---I myself am a victim of that sort of abuse and I would never not have compassion for someone who went through it. That being said, I did not authentically agree with the notion that other people (outside of the criminal himself) should be "punished." (Most of this is in reply also to Charlie2Dogs who asked me whether or not I felt anything should be done about rape.) 

On 6/8/2016 at 6:20 PM, charlie2dogs said:

i never heard you address the issue of rape that she raised, why not?  recognizing a crime against women and children is not moralizing.  Should we just ignore it and pretend it doesnt exist, or that we are untouched by it,  should we just reject people who are concerned about rape of women and children because we are self actualizing?  Do you think anything should be done with people who rape women and children. 

you said: I said that I did not want to moralize it and was trying to look at it from a neutral perspective,  what is there to be neutral about after some woman or young girl was raped.  She had every right to be upset with you.  Just because people are trying to self actualize doesnt mean you stop being  compassionate, caring, and lose all sight of how horrible rape is against women and children and the effects that it leaves on them often for their lifetime.  If everyone felt neutral about every crime and no one wanted to do anything about it, what would the world look like in a few years.  There is no way to be neutral about such crimes as this or any other crime against humans or animals.  This has nothing to do with self actualization.  being neutral concerning crimes like this wont help you become self realized,

 

Please see my reply above to Mal. I will also reiterate here that I was an abuse victim of that kind of behavior and so it isn't exactly something I would say is "okay." I simply was uncomfortable being asked to examine the offender, plus his father, plus the judge, in this "punishment" judgment. 

On a related note, I did watch a video from Eckhart Tollie in which he explained the difference of "judging" and "observation" and I realized one of my true faults with this (opening post) was that I hadn't considered it from his POV. While it was true I felt uncomfortable with ranting or agreeing on all of these people being "punished" for the offense, I also felt that by saying my authentic feelings (which would not be very positive at the time, perhaps, given my abuse history?) it would have been passing critical judgment on the offender. Was the crime he committed bad? Absolutely. But I don't derive pleasure from verbally/mentally demonizing other people in general. 

 

 

My responses will be quite limited because I'm working and also having dinner. The thread has gotten very long and I'm not sure how many people I can reply to at this moment. 

[Mal]

@BeckoningCat

Thanks for responding and clarifying. 

I'm very sorry to hear of your experiences. 

If you need to somebody to talk to you are most welcome to p.m. me. 

Warmly

Mal

[Ajax]

@Mal

Thank you very much for your post. I wanted to take a week to think about it. It is fantastic information and I especially appreciate how it helps explain why people react differently.   I know an apology isn't necessary but  would like to apologize anyway, if I came across antagonistic or combative.  My  father died that day  I was having a little difficulty integrating your understanding in my thought processes so it may have appeared that I was belligerent but the fact is, I simply didn't understand.

 

On 6/10/2016 at 3:29 PM, Mal said:

This is shadow integration.  Shadow integration is the end of the antagonistic play of opposites. A celebration of self and other, a place of wholeness and integration. 

1. What is shadow exactly? I am afraid I am unfamiliar with the concept.

2. What do you mean by the end of the antagonistic play of opposites? Does that mean the results produced from playing all of the sides of the field?

[Natasha]

@Ajax Sorry to hear about your Dad. He is eternally self-realized and at peace now.

[Mal]

@Ajax

Hi Ajax, 

The shadow is anything that one has disowned in themselves.  

A crude example of the play of the opposites is when we try to identify with only the light aspects of ourselves and disown the darker aspects of the psyche.

2nd tier is a lengthy process of transcending and including the opposites of the "psychic" life.  This is why 2nd tier are called the Integral stages - 1st tier is a process of increasing differentiation and 2nd tier is integration.

The process of shadow integration happens at every stage long the way of developmental unfoldment.  Failure to properly integrate a shadow aspect at any of the developmental fulcrums results in a "sub-self" that covertly runs a person without the person being fully aware of it.

The litmus test to look for a dissociation is for us to look out at the environment for those aspects of our experience that "bother" us and re-integrate them.

Mal

[Mal]

@Ajax And Ajax, 

My condolences are with you.  There is no need to apologize, but thank you anyway.  Our play of opposites was not an antagonistic one for me

Warmly

Mal