Saturday, June 14, 2014

What is integral postmetaphysical spirituality continued

For those not on Facebook, or a member of the IPS forum there, I will post some of my other responses below.

So what would constitute an appropriate social spiritual practice as a topic here? Engaged Buddhism? Insight dialogue? John Heron's relational spirituality? On the latter Heron says: "A more convincing account of spirituality is that it is about multi-line integral development explored by persons in relation. [...] spirituality is located in the interpersonal heart of the human condition where people co-operate to explore meaning, build relationship and manifest creativity through collaborative action inquiry into multi-line integration and consummation."


Per Heron an 'integral' spirituality is about multi-line integration. I'd also argue, as I have in many places before, that one of the definitions of the metaphysical is the clear distinction and separation of categories like absolute and relative. That also applies to quadrants, zones and specialized areas of study. Post-metaphysics sees the mutual entailment of categories. Granted, it doesn't eliminate the categories, as they still retain their relative autonomy. And as you say, it is helpful to limit some conversations to a particular paradigm and its specific validity criteria. But a current trend is as you note using cross-disciplinary methods to contextualize and expand on disciplinary limitations. i.e., how categories can still be autonomous but have areas of overlap. Or in dynamic systems terms, how an object is both open and closed.

Is spirituality on the other hand a particular paradigm with its own validity criteria? And/or more about multi-line integration as Heron said? And isn't an integral meta-theory exactly about the relationships between theories? Metatheoretical study itself is plural per Mark Edwards, not itself a singular category or theory of everything. So perhaps our integral meta-theory of spirituality should be a bit more...integrative? 


I wonder though, like Eric, which definition of spiritual we use to gauge its particular validity criteria. Rifkin, e.g., notes an emerging Commons ecological consciousness that might be more akin to the likes of Heron's multi-line integration than achieving different states of consciousness during individual meditation. We've explored how such states are indeed important, maybe even spiritual in a sense, but perhaps not in themselves.  

Btw, our discussion is related to one Cameron Freeman started a few days ago on Zizek's recontextualization of Hegel's dialectic, and how it impacts the very nature of Wilber's spirituality. And I'd say spirituality in general.

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