Dave's Blog

In Buddhism, having been born a human is special and rare in this universe and therefore something that we should be very grateful for.  Realizing the preciousness of our body means that we need to treat it with kindness and respect.  Exercising all aspects of our bodies allows our bodies to support our efforts in all the other areas of our lives.  Living well in all areas of our lives in turn helps to support and honor our bodies.  Having a body allows us the opportunity to transcend our body without discarding our body--transcend and include.  Our ability to self-reflect creates the ability to see beyond those things that arise, stay awhile, and then pass away.

The integral view of our bodies can see that our bodies contain the same building blocks of everything in the universe since the Big Bang; namely, subatomic particles.  These particles came together to create atoms and then molecules and cells and organs leading up to this human body.  It has been observed that our bodies are somewhere in the middle between the smallest and the biggest things in the universe.  All of these seemingly independent entities acting as a single unit that we call our body is truly amazing.  In fact, this points to the interrelatedness of everything in the manifest universe.  These comings together create ever greater complexity.  The health of the complex entity--our body--is dependent on the health of the entire system.

Maintaining the health of the system means eating and exercising so that our cells, organs, and muscles function effectively and efficiently.  What we place into our bodies should come from sources that create the least disruption to the ecosystem.  The health of our body is dependent on the health of the planet.  Having this integral view is absolutely essential to dealing with the issues facing humankind. With this integral view we can create solutions that honor the whole system.

As one grows from an infant to a toddler to a pre-teen to a teenager to an adult, assuming a normal development, our view of the world changes substantially.  I can remember moments in my life when I was surprised at how radically my view had changed, seemingly overnight.  Activities I had enjoyed now held little or no interest.  Things that had gone unnoticed now became obvious.  Since my body was changing along with my views, I attributed the changes to the normal growing up process.

These changes that seem obvious to most people in this culture were not always so obvious.  Child labor restrictions and the protection of children from certain kinds of experiences are relatively recent events.  In some ways, children were seen as small adults who were ignorant but not as human beings who were going through developmental stages.  Universal literacy made these developmental stages more obvious as it could be seen that learning is progressive and depends on earlier building blocks.

The more complicated the culture that a child is born into, the more developmental stages that are available to the average person.  And conversely, the less complicated the culture, the fewer the developmental stages that are available.  Hunters and gatherers can be fully functioning adults with relatively limited worldviews.  Agricultural societies require a more complicated worldview because of the increased need for technical knowledge and societal cooperation.  In both cases, the number of developmental stages to be a fully functioning adult is not as great as is needed in 21st Century America.

These developmental stages have emerged to address problems whose solutions are not available at lower stages.  This process was articulated by Einstein when he said that no problem can be solved at the same level of consciousness that created it.  The time frames between the emergences of developmental stages have been shortening, going from thousands of years between stages to only decades.  These emerging stages have allowed us to hold more and more in consciousness at the same time.  With an increase in developmental stages comes an increase in the depth of consciousness.

A common way to look at this increase in depth is to note the increase in what can be taken into account.  We move from an ego centered view to an ethnocentric view to a world-centric view to a kosmo-centric view.  Each of these views has been at the cutting edge in our evolutionary history.  What we can say about each of them is that they are all needed and are necessary building blocks for the subsequent stage.  You cannot skip stages any more than you can have a cell without first having an atom and a molecule.  All three have to be present and if you get rid of all molecules you automatically get rid of all cells.  In the same way, if you got rid of ethnocentric views, you would automatically get rid of the world-centric view.

Does this make cells and the world-centric view elitist?  If one considers these as more complex and useful than what preceded them, then they are elitist in some sense.  However, they could not exist at all if what preceded them did not exist at the same time.  This is the principle of "transcend and include."  There is a need to honor all of the building blocks since the health of the whole is dependent on the health of the parts.

The relative newly emerging developmental stage called "integral" is often labeled as the first developmental stage that can look back at the stages that preceded it and see their necessity and the importance of promoting the health of all of them.  Because it can be seen that the developmental stages are progressive with increasing complexity and depth, it can also be seen that the integral stage is not a ceiling and will be subject to the same kind of limitations as the earlier stages; namely, that problems will be created that need a more inclusive view for their solution.

If by elitist is meant that "my view is better than your view and I'm right and you're wrong," then the integral view is not elitist in the same way that worldviews that precede integral see each other.  The "culture wars" that are currently raging are only raging because of a belief that my view is better than your view rather than each view contains partial truths.  Something is being excluded in any partial view and what makes integral more inclusive is the attempt to take everything possible into account, including the views of preceding worldviews.  The AQAL (all quadrants, all levels, etc.) model is a map to assist us in the process of being as inclusive as possible.

The Integral Life Practice (ILP) is a compendium of practices to make the integral approach real in our lives.  Without the practice, integral remains abstract and heady.  As with Zen practice, the point is not achieve some rarified state but to carry our understanding into the world--chop wood, carry water.