Holy Rascals

"Holy Rascals are spiritual culture jammers who playfully pull back the curtain on the great and terrible wizards of parochial piety and shallow spirituality to free religion from hucksterism and pious pabulum."

-- Rabbi Shapiro

Spiritual Promiscuity

"“Many seekers do not take full responsibility for their own liberation, but wait for one big, final spiritual experience which will catapult them fully into it. It is this search for the final liberating experience which gives rise to a rampant form of spiritual consumerism in which seekers go from one teacher to another, shopping for enlightenment as if shopping for sweets in a candy store.

This spiritual promiscuity is rapidly turning the search for enlightenment into a cult of experience seekers. And, while many people indeed have powerful experiences, in most cases these do not lead to the profound transformation of the individual, which is the expression of enlightenment.“

~ Adyashanti

Photo -- Adyashanti, Mukti, Loch & Paige Brewster-Kelly

Hardwired for Spiritual Connection

"     • Spirituality is an untapped resource in our understanding of human development, resilience and illness, and health and healing. The absence of support for children’s spiritual growth has contributed to alarming rates of childhood and adolescent emotional suffering and behaviors that put them at risk. Knowledge of spiritual development rewrites the contemporary account of spiraling rates of depression, substance abuse, addictive behaviors, and other health concerns.

      • Awareness of spiritual development creates opportunities to prepare teens for the important inner work required for individuation, identity development, emotional resilience, character, meaningful work, and healthy relationships. Spirituality is the central organizing principle of inner life in the second decade, boosting teens into an adulthood of meaning and purpose, thriving, and awareness.

       • Spiritual development through the early years prepares the adolescent to grapple more successfully with the predictably difficult and potentially disorienting existential questions that make adolescence so deeply challenging for teens (and their parents). It also provides a protective health benefit, reducing the risk of depression, substance abuse, aggression, and high-risk behaviors, including physical risk taking and a sexuality devoid of emotional intimacy.

       • Biologically, we are hardwired for spiritual connection. Spiritual development is for our species a biological and psychological imperative from birth. The innate spiritual attunement of young children—unlike other lines of development such as language or cognition—begins whole and designed by nature to prepare the child for decades ahead, including the challenging developmental passage of adolescence.

       • In the first decade of life, the child advances through a process of integrating his or her spiritual “knowing” with other developing capabilities, including cognitive, physical, social, and emotional development, all of which are shaped by interactions with parents, family, peers, and community. Without support and lacking encouragement to keep developing that part of himself, the child’s spiritual attunement erodes and becomes “disaggregated” in the crush of a narrowly material culture.

       • The science of spirituality enables us to see adolescence in a new and more helpful, hopeful light: the universal developmental surge in adolescence, previously viewed as a fraught passage toward physical and emotional maturity, is now understood more fully to also be a journey of essential spiritual search and growth. This developmental phenomenon is seen in every culture, and research shows clinical and genetic evidence for this adolescent surge of spiritual awakening.

       • Parents and children share a parallel developmental arc in which a child’s need and yearning for spiritual exploration coincides with a similar “quest” phase in adult life. For parent and child, meaning and connection often lead to spiritual self-discovery. This mutual impetus means that the adult’s quest phase and the child’s can be mutually awakening and supportive. Our children can be our impetus for spiritual discovery, our muses or guides, and at times the source of illumination."

"There is no question that the parenting journey wears away our ego, but ultimately we are not made less by the exhaustion, tired eyes, worn short-term memory, and endless laundry. Rather, we are so very much more—from our children’s wondrous arrival into our lives to their rounds of questioning and development, when we pay attention and we reflect, we can see great things through their spiritual lens. What if this parenting journey is actually the ultimate spiritual journey? The equivalent to the deep awakening of the isolated monk, the pilgrimage to Mecca or Jerusalem, or the climb up Mount Everest?

I come to this work as a scientist, a clinician, and a parent. I consider each scientific finding to be a bright dot in an Impressionist painting of my journey...I combined aspects of several stories to illustrate a larger idea or paradigm. The voices of children, adolescents, and adults sharing from their own experiences and reflections, including transcendent experiences that rarely are shared, have a prominent place in this book. I have also made practicality a priority, weaving in examples and suggestions for parents throughout the book to enable science and theory to serve them in the most direct possible way: in their everyday interactions with their children and one another.

I am hopeful that these narratives bring science to life so that you can feel the presence and power of spirituality and science and explore its place in your journey. A commitment by all of us to foster children’s spirituality, grounded in science and in our natural love, can truly change our global culture. We will know our nature, and discover before us an opportunity to live in dialogue with our world."

~ Dr. Lisa Miller, The Spiritual Child: The New Science on Parenting for Health and Lifelong Thriving

The Spiral is Messy

The new physics, it is said, shows us the mind of God. Well, perhaps, but only when God is thinking about dirt.
~ Ken Wilber

“The leading edge of consciousness evolution stands today on the brink of an integral millennium—or at least the possibility of an integral millennium—where the sum total of extant human knowledge, wisdom, and technology is available to all. And sooner or later we will have, of course, a Theory of Everything to explain it all… But, as we will see, there are several obstacles to that integral understanding, even in the most developed populations… Moreover, there is the more typical or average mode of consciousness, which is far from integral anything and is in desperate need of its own tending…

Even if we have a Theory of Everything that charitably embraces all and unduly marginalizes none, will it really benefit all peoples? And how can we help to ensure that it does?... Integral: the word means to integrate, to bring together, to join, to link, to embrace. Not in the sense of uniformity, and not in the sense of ironing out all the wonderful differences, colors, zigs and zags of a rainbow-hued humanity, but in the sense of unity-in-diversity, shared commonalities along with our wonderful differences. And not just in humanity, but in the Kosmos at large: finding a more comprehensive view—a Theory of Everything (T.O.E.)—that makes legitimate room for art, morals, science, and religion, and doesn’t merely attempt to reduce them all to one’s favorite slice of the Kosmic pie.

And, of course, if we succeed in developing a truly holistic or integral view of reality, then we will also develop a new type of critical theory—that is, a theory that is critical of the present state of affairs in light of a more encompassing and desirable state, both in the individual and the culture at large. The integral paradigm will inherently be critical of those approaches that are, by comparison, partial, narrow, shallow, less encompassing, less integrative… But it is definitely not a final view or a fixed view or the only view; just a view that attempts to honor and include as much research as possible from the largest number of disciplines in a coherent fashion (which is one definition of an integral or more comprehensive view of the Kosmos).

Yet the very attempt itself does raise the interesting question: can a truly integral vision exist in today’s climate of culture wars, identity politics, a million new and conflicting paradigms, deconstructive postmodernism, nihilism, pluralistic relativism, and the politics of self? Can a T.O.E. even be recognized, let alone accepted, in such a cultural state? Aren’t the cultural elite themselves in as fragmented and rancorous a state as ever? Perhaps the masses of humanity are bent on tribal warfare and ethnocentric cleansing; but what if the cultural elite itself is likewise so inclined? We are talking, in other words, about the leading edge of consciousness evolution itself, and whether even the leading edge is truly ready for an integral vision. In the end we will find, I believe, that there is some very good news in all this; but first, a little bit of what I see as the bad news.

Developmental psychology is the study of the growth and development of the mind—the study of interior development and consciousness evolution. So let us ask: Can developmental psychology shed any light on this problem?... Development is a not a linear ladder but a fluid and flowing affair, with spirals, swirls, streams, and waves—and what appear to be an almost infinite number of multiple modalities. Most of today’s sophisticated developmental theories take all of that into account, and—more important—back it with substantial research. Let me give one of them as an example. The model is called Spiral Dynamics, based on the pioneering work of Clare Graves. Graves proposed a profound and elegant system of human development, which subsequent research has validated and refined, not refuted.

“Briefly, what I am proposing is that the psychology of the mature human being is an unfolding, emergent, oscillating spiraling process marked by progressive subordination of older, lower-order behavior systems to newer, higher-order systems as an individual’s existential problems change. Each successive stage, wave, or level of existence is a state through which people pass on their way to other states of being. When the human is centralized in one state of existence, he or she has a psychology which is particular to that state. His or her feelings, motivations, ethics and values, biochemistry, degree of neurological activation, learning system, belief systems, conception of mental health, ideas as to what mental illness is and how it should be treated, conceptions of and preferences for management, education, economics, and political theory and practice are all appropriate to that state.”

Graves’s model; to date, it has been tested in more than fifty thousand people from around the world, and there have been no major exceptions found to the general scheme. Of course, this does not mean that any of these schemes gives the whole story, or even most of it. They are all simply partial snapshots of the great River of Life, and they are all useful when looking at the River from that particular angle. This does not prevent other pictures from being equally useful, nor does it mean that these pictures cannot be refined with further study. What it does mean is that any attempt to understand humanity’s struggle to reach an integral embrace ought to take these studies into account.

These studies, in fact, appear to be a crucial part of any genuine Theory of Everything. If we are going to include the physical, biological, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of existence, then this important research offers us a more generous overview of the many possibilities of the psychological dimension. In a sense, this research is the psychological correlate of the Human Genome Project, which involves the scientific mapping of all of the genes in human DNA. Just so, this overall psychological research—this Human Consciousness Project—is a cross-cultural mapping of all of the states, structures, memes, types, levels, stages, and waves of human consciousness.

This overall map, as we will see, then becomes the psychological component of a possible Theory of Everything, where it will be supplemented with findings from the physical, biological, cultural, and spiritual dimensions. And, we will also see, this psychological map will help us to understand some of the many obstacles that make it hard for individuals to appreciate a more integral vision of their own possibilities. We return, then, to Clare Graves’s work, which has been carried forward and refined by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan in an approach they call Spiral Dynamics.

Far from being mere armchair analysts, Beck and Cowan were participants in the discussions that led to the end of apartheid in South Africa. The principles of Spiral Dynamics have been fruitfully used to reorganize businesses, revitalize townships, overhaul education systems, and defuse inner-city tensions. Spiral Dynamics sees human development as proceeding through eight general stages, which are also called memes.

“Meme” is a word that is used a lot nowadays, with many different and conflicting meanings—and many critics say the word has no meaning at all. But for Spiral Dynamics, a meme is simply a basic stage of development that can be expressed in any activity (we will see many examples of this as we proceed). Beck and Cowan affirm that memes (or stages) are not rigid levels but flowing waves, with much overlap and interweaving, resulting in a meshwork or dynamic spiral of consciousness unfolding. As Beck puts it, “The Spiral is messy, not symmetrical, with multiple admixtures rather than pure types. These are mosaics, meshes, and blends.”

Beck and Cowan use various names and colors to refer to these different memes or waves of existence. The use of colors almost always puts people off, at first. But Beck and Cowan often work in racially charged areas, and they have found that it helps to take peoples’ minds off of skin color and focus on the “color of the meme” instead of the “color of the skin.” Moreover, as much research has continued to confirm, each and every individual has all of these memes potentially available to them. And therefore the lines of social tension are completely redrawn: not based on skin color, economic class, or political clout, but on the type of meme a person is operating from. In a particular situation it is no longer “black versus white,” but perhaps blue versus purple, or orange versus green, and so on; and while skin color cannot be changed, consciousness can. As Beck puts it, “The focus is not on types of people, but types in people.”

~ Ken Wilber, A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality

“Integral theory is Ken Wilber's attempt to place a wide diversity of theories and thinkers into one single framework. It is portrayed as a "theory of everything" ("the living Totality of matter, body, mind, soul, and spirit"), trying "to draw together an already existing number of separate paradigms into an interrelated network of approaches that are mutually enriching. Ken Wilber's "Integral Theory" started as early as the 1970s, with the publication of The Spectrum of Consciousness, that attempted to synthesize eastern religious traditions with western structural stage theory, models of psychology development that describe human development as following a set course of stages of development. Wilber's ideas have grown more and more inclusive over the years, incorporating ontology, epistemology, and methodology. Wilber, drawing on both Aurobindo's and Gebser's theories, as well as on the writings of many other authors, created a theory which he calls AQAL, "All Quadrants All Levels." ~ Wikipedia

Contemplative Suckling

“The open and the full are one and the same, bound at the root within a single continuum. This continuum is the changeless ground that always manifests as constant change, awaiting recognition at the twilight between knowing and unknowability. Heavy ordinary conceptuality is invited to drown within it, awakening the mind to the fact that it has never been other than this same mystery from the beginningless beginning.

Drawing forth the subtle resonances through which the ultimate awakening ground can be discovered is what the great thirteenth- century kabbalistic master Isaac the Blind called “suckling.” It is based on a thirst for the nourishment of absolute meaning in the midst of the barrage of its relative projections. It coaxes and draws forth its nutrition by direct immersion in the onslaught of mind’s upheaval, accepting and rejecting nothing, always reaching further and deeper to recognize what is truly meaningful with single-pointed focus.
The suckling is accomplished through the flesh and blood of appearance, poised at the cusp of its emergence and dissolution. As poetic resonances flood the perceptual fields, the ground of space sparkles with scintillating life, suffusing it with ungraspable beauty. Contemplation trains the mind to enter this boundless resource no matter what things appear to do or not do. It hangs with the spread of pure possibility, hiding within the parade of everyday details, displaying and consuming itself like the Ouroboros serpent swallowing its own tail.

Any display of phenomena can be used for contemplative suckling if awareness is trained to enter the mixing field of phenomena to endlessly reach toward its essential nature. Within the clusters of randomness gnosemic and conventional tendencies mix, mingle, and permeate one another. Within the amalgam the treasure can be excavated. The key is the ability to recognize what is truly precious and not waste energy on lesser concerns. It comes down to a question of learning what is truly meaningful within the barrage of possibilities that extend to forever without end…

Any set of relative meanings can be used for contemplation if the mind can clear a path to approach their innate absolute nature. Breaking through the reified shells that obstruct such paths does not leave a trail of broken pieces without value. All phenomena express equal value. All mental activity without exception is the self-elaboration of the awakening ground. The shards of broken conceptions melt back through the same space that they arose in. The continuum of the mind also returns, equalizing itself with the broken pieces of its own vestigial artifacts. The whole process goes where all dead dreams go, to the placeless place beyond the coming and going of relative concerns. In point of fact, nothing ever leaves that place. Understanding that no construct can ever depart the awakening ground is monumentally important. Whatever interferes with contemplation only persists until the ground itself becomes the central concern. Through it no such things as distractions or interruptions can possibly exist, and all differences are made irrelevant.”

~ David Chaim Smith, The Awakening Ground: A Guide to Contemplative Mysticism
"David Chaim Smith began an immersion into the root sources of Alchemy and the Hermetic and Hebrew traditions of the Kabbalah. In 1996 he abandoned visual art for a total dedication to spiritual practice, from which came a unique blend of practical mysticism and creative innovation. This blend coalesced while working with an obscure thirteenth-century text called "The Fountain of Wisdom", which he mapped out diagrammatically in notebooks during his ten-year hiatus from visual art. The resulting symbol vocabulary served as the basis for his 2006 return to art, generating the content for several books. He currently lives in the suburbs of New York City with his wife, Rachel."~ Amazon

Suckling

"The pathways of the wonders are like veins in the stock of a tree, and chochmah is the root. They are inner subtle resonances which no mind can contemplate, except that which suckles from it; a mode of contemplation by way of suckling, not by way of knowing."

~ "Rabbi Yitzhak Saggi Nehor, also known as Isaac the Blind (1160–1235 in Provence, France), has the Aramaic epithet "Saggi Nehor" meaning "of Much Light" in the sense of having excellent eyesight, an ironic euphemism for being blind. He was a famous writer on Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism). Some historians suspect him to be the author of the Book of the Bahir, an important early text of Kabbalah." ~ Wikipedia

Image ~ popularly thought to be a portrait of Rabbi Isaac

Mother Daughter Project

"In 1997, a group of mothers of young girls in western Massachusetts gathered to address the challenges of mothering adolescent daughters in today's world. Among us were a family therapist, a high school guidance counselor, a psychiatrist, three teachers, a community organizer, a health professional, and an artist. We were determined to come up with a plan that would enable our girls to thrive through adolescence, that would help us to remain close and connected with them, and that would support us as mothers and as women.

We began by reading Mother-Daughter Revolution (1993) by Elizabeth Debold, Marie Wilson, and Idelisse Malavé, a groundbreaking book that encourages women to join with each other in mothering their daughters while challenging the common expectation of mother-daughter separation. Starting with monthly mothers-only discussions, we explored our own experiences of adolescence and our relationships with our mothers, and brainstormed ways we could stay close to our daughters as we nurtured them - and ourselves - through their teen years.

Group of girlsTogether we came up with the plan of creating a small, supportive community - an extended family of committed mothers and their daughters-in which mother-daughter connection was the norm. Banding with our daughters, we created two ongoing mother-daughter groups that met regularly, grouping girls of similar ages. We developed playful but powerfully effective activities that fortified our girls' self-esteem as they explored key issues with us, such as girls' friendships and puberty when they were young, and more challenging subjects, such as body image, drugs, sexuality, and violence against women, over time. As they matured, we marveled at the strength and confidence with which they thrived through adolescence, and found that our groups did indeed provide an antidote to the perils of teen culture. We also learned that it was possible for mothers to have warm and loving relationships with our teen daughters. Equally important, our mothers-only group offered us the sustenance we needed as mothers to navigate our daughters' adolescence with integrity and grace. Five years after we started, when two of the original mothers' younger daughters reached age six, we started a third mother-daughter group, which named themselves the Butterflies, inviting in more mothers and their six and seven year-old-daughters.

SuEllen and Renee with daughtersOne of our original goals was to share any ideas we discovered that might be helpful to others. Starting in 2002, we, SuEllen Hamkins and Renée Schultz, two of the founding mothers, have been writing and presenting workshops to mothers, psychotherapists and other professionals about The Mother-Daughter Project, first in the U.S., then around the world. Mothers have been thrilled to hear that they can stay close with their daughters and get the support they need to do so, and mother-daughter groups have sprung up all over the world. Women asked us to write a book about the Project so that they can have more support and guidance, and so, with the blessing of the other mothers and girls in our group, we did: The Mother-Daughter Project: How Mothers and Daughters Can Band Together, Beat the Odds, and Thrive Through Adolescence, published by Penguin in 2007.

As our daughters reach adulthood, we are turning more of our energies toward helping other mothers and daughters connect with each other and create the communities in which they can thrive. If you would like to share your story of mutual mother-daughter thriving or what your mother-daughter group is up to, we would love to hear it!"

~  "We would love to hear stories about how you and your daughter are staying connected and thriving through her adolescence despite the challenges, or to hear about your mother-daughter group.

Email us at:

motherdaughterproject@comcast.net

For information on author interviews and appearances, please contact Elizabeth.Keenan@us.penguingroup.com.

SuEllen Hamkins and Renée Schultz are both available for speaking engagements through the Penguin Speakers' Bureau."