Ken Wilber on Conscious Love

Anyaa and I just returned from a weekend in Boulder with Ken Wilber where, for the first time in 21 years, he spoke of his experiences around Conscious Love in his relationship with his wife, Treya, and their battle with Treya's Stage 4 cancer diagnosis ten days after their marriage, and their struggle around it.

The weekend was primarily scheduled around Cynthia Bourgeault's amazing book, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity,  and was billed as "Mary Magdalene and the Path to Conscious Love." it was a great opportunity for both of us to meet Ken Wilber for the first time, and for Anyaa and I to share more of her work around Mary Magdalene.

The Reverend Dr. Bourgeault spoke eloquently Friday night about her book and Mary Magdalene and and her role in Christianity that is been suppressed for so many centuries. Bourgeault's intriguing  portrait of Mary Magdalene recognizes her distinct, yet intertwined roles as Jesus's disciples, apostle, and intimate beloved. Mary Magdalene's unique contributions to spirituality invite us all to discover a revolutionary path of transformation through love. She explored the relationship between Jesus and Mary, meditation, and kenosis (self- emptying love), and the uniquely Christian non-dual wisdom practice.

Cynthia and Ken have both personally experienced intimate relationships that forever shifted their spiritual practice. Her relationship with the Trappist monk, Brother Rafe, taught her how to embody a living Christian contemplative path; Ken's account of his loving relationship with Treya as she succumbed to cancer has touched millions in his book, Grace and Grit. By weddng the spiritual and the intimate, not only do these relationship have striking parallels to each other, they also embody the relational path of love modeled by Jesus and Mary Magdalene. The most radical claim of this path of conscious love is that it's open to all.

When Anyaa and I first met online, one of the things we immediately had in common was a love of Ken Wilber’s book “Grace and Grit.” It was, frankly, one of the things that attracted me to initially contact her. Ken’s reading from Grace and Grit, on Saturday afternoon, tearful and passionate, later spurred more conversation between Anyaa and I about why we came together and what our Sacred Purpose is.

We talked about how amazing it was that we initially came together partially because of Grace and Grit, how it had helped form our own paths into conscious relationship, and how incredible it was that we were in Boulder to hear Ken speak about his own experiences after 21 years of silence. It was difficult to think that this was just a coincidence.

Very early in our relationship, we had several conversations about the state of the planet and what we thought was unfolding, mostly around unsustainability, and that what was unsustainable, would eventually collapse. This was a test for us, to see if we shared what we thought was, and still do, a realistic shared worldview. 

Anya had no desire to be with another New Age Guy and wanted to be with a spiritual warrior. Someone she could grow with through the coming times. Gary wanted to be with a powerful conscious woman in community where they could build the base to survive and thrive through those coming times to help plant the seeds for the much-needed next stage of consciousness to emerge on this planet. Having done many past life regressions together where one or both of us had died for what we believed in, we have chosen to no longer be martyrs, something I'm sure many of you can relate to. And while we are still willing to die for what we believe in, we also believe that it's a higher strength and consciousness that challenges us to live for what we believe in.

We believe that part of our sacred purpose as a couple is to help usher in that new dimension, and that we are called to that by not only surviving and thriving, but assisting others to our own Full Moon Sanctuary Ministry. We've been further  inspired by Andrew Harvey and his path of Sacred Activism and Networks of Grace, and by Carolyn Baker who does transition counseling as her main practice through her book Navigating the Coming Chaos: A  Handbook for Inner Transition, with forward by Andrew Harvey and highly recommended by Carolyn Myss.

Anyaa And I highly recommend ALL of these life-changing books.

Dominate Modes of Discourse, Part II

I wrote about Dominant Modes of Discourse back in October on this blog (read it here) and not everyone had a positive reaction. A brief discussion took place on the Denver Meetup site and can be found here. One of the comments was that the posting had a "tone of altitudism -- a tendency to use Altitude to rank, or classify the perspectives of others in a limiting way rather than to enhance dialogue and understanding."

Yes, I would agree that there is "altitudism" at work, but we can choose to use "altitudism" in either a negative or positive way. I prefer to think of it in terms of discerning awareness as opposed to elitist judgementalism. Also, the terms "altitudism" and being "judgemental" have a bit of egalitarianism and relativism. Isn't making claims of "Altitudism" and "judgemental" an altitude judgement? We make judgements, no matter, whenever we are thinking, wherever we are.

In that thread Doug, who I don't know, but am sure I would like, asks "Just what is a First Tier (1T) conversation and should I be embarrassed to be having one? Is it unfortunate if we have a 1T conversation?"

As members of integral communities, if we have the means to have, or to steer towards, a second tier conversation, why would we want to have a first tier one? It doesn't mean that we're not including first tier folks in the conversation, or that we're not seeing the value of what they have to say. It just means that, as integral leaders, we want to have the skillful means to allow the conversation to come from the highest (latest, and most mature) place possible. We want to pull people forward, not get pulled back into the food fight. Using skillful means to assess where someone is coming from (translatively or transformatively) before speaking with them is wisdom. That way, we know how to speak, and not to speak, accordingly. It is, quite frankly, one of the hallmarks of second tier: appreciatiating all of the contributions of the earlier levels.

The benefit of trying to keep the conversation at the highest possible altitude should be fairly obvious: Fake it until we make it. We continue to allow ourselves to dip into higher stages so that we eventually begin to embody what we've been faking.

I'm also quoted and then responded to"

Gary quoted: "Now, there are some things you can do about that: be aware of the dominant monads of the individuals attending your meeting, if possible (you'll learn who is what very quickly in these situations, but it may take several meetings), and set up your meeting accordingly. Second tier, or teal/turquoise can skillfully guide the conversation by setting the tone of the meeting response before that participation begins."

the response: "Starting to sound a little heavy handed to me."

I can't imagine what sounds heavy handed about skillfully guiding a conversation through awareness of the 4 quadrants and varying altitudes. In SeattleIntegral, which may be very different from other groups, while we're still learning how to do this, it's been working quite well.

When we continually place ourselves in first tier, make observations from that perspective, even in a joking, self-deprecating manner, is it possible we're really saying, "well, my perspective is better, because I don't have arrogance and altitude problems?"

Wanting to have a conversation in the most mature mode of discourse possible with whomever we can seems reasonable, and necessary, especially in a salon atmosphere. Like many of my teachers, I prefer "earlier" and "later" in terms of transformational development (maturity) as opposed to "higher" and "lower". The relativistic/egalitarian types seem allergic to vertical metaphors--"Earlier" and "later" are an example of more skillful means.

I agree there's nothing wrong with green, or any other level of development, as long as it's manifested in a healthy manner. Perhaps the world could use a lot more green, but I also believe the world needs better translation at every stage. We are consciously trying to hold space for both translation and transformation, and it's a challenge because who's done it before?

(Note: My friend Tom Mull contributed to this article)