Spiritual Crisis

NOTE: The following is a private letter between Eliot and I in November 2005, the beginning of my journey in self-awareness. I read this so many times and still continue to read his reply as it helps me develop interior awareness. I am posting this, even as it is personal, in the case that it might touch someone out there.

Dear Eliot,
    I have totally destroyed myself and others with ego games in the name of spirituality. My heart is so broken. I am in complete darkness wanting to die and I don't understand because I thought my intentions were always good and that evil was just when I forgot about my spiritual nature. No one in this community wants to talk about evil, everyone told me it is an illusion and that we are always enlightened. Can you please describe for me the nature of good and evil as it pertains to integral as I believe you have higher consciousness than me. How can I be part of a spiritual-integral community and feel that the devil has my soul? No one undestands me. How could this path have led me to such a place. How could I have done this to myself. Please help, as this is life and death for me. I want to be a bringer of light...

In search of truth,
Jana
                                 

Dear Jana;

We are absolutely blessed by the pain we experience; it is the soul pain of a true and honest heart living in this world of ours. The gong of your heart has been struck HARD, so to resonate louder, longer and deeper. Cherish and appreciate the increased sensitivity and clarity this gift affords you, in one sense, it fades too soon. My dear friend Lewis told me, "Eliot, there are two kinds of people in the world: those we learn with and from; and those who test us." No shit. And the ones who test us are the VAST majority. I am really, truly thankful that you and I can learn with and from each other, and I too feel the beauty and goodness of our connection, as it is based on a mutual love of truthfulness, wisdom, goodness and compassion, and aspiration toward increasing love, wholeness and growth.

One of the main developmental lines that I've been aware of in my own life is that of character judgment, and I seem to be gifted in that area, subjectively it almost feels like esp or clairvoyance sometimes. As my close friends ask for and seek my counsel, I always point out the opportunity to develop along this line, however, the "rub" is that without an extremely intimate awareness of one's own consciousness (the illusory nature of content vs. structure), and the tricks that the body-mind is always playing, honestly looking within, seeing how we ourselves have been party to darkness and [self] deceit, takes sincere intentionality towards truth [and in this case, that means away from the ego], and unfortunately, most people would actually rather literally die than look upon this with innocent recognition), they don't "get it", or it doesn't "stick". I can hear my old Wing Chun Master, Hawkins, the Evil Genius himself, saying, "You need the eye to see, and the standard to check" in relation to the martial arts. Our inner "standard" in relation to this issue, pathologically sick vs. adequately healthy, is our own character, our "eye" must see clearly inwardly and outwardly. Seeing with clarity inwardly naturally brings about character development in the individual interior, seeing clearly outwardly with sensitivity to the inner resonances in relationship naturally develops character judgment, or more accurately: character discernment.

So, the appropriate question becomes: What is the source of this evil, where does it live, breathe, and breed? What is its true nature?

Is it the inner trickster, the archetypal joker within, or the evil in others, their dark side feeding on our energy and light?

Yes.

Of course. "Dracula can not enter, until he is invited in." It takes (at least) two to tango, so to speak, the "inviter" and the "invitee". This is a gift from God, an opportunity for you to look within and clearly differentiate "LOVE" from "ATTACHMENT", they are not even opposite, they are so different. The darkness, evil, never gets "less", it just gets less obvious, more evolved, more subtle (the lovely scent of almonds, is someone cooking up some delicious Trout Amandine, or are we getting cyanide gas?). The potentials for good and evil are always infinite, our stuckness in a perspective, however "second tier" it feels, and however "enlightened" we tell ourselves we are, is just a pitiful rationalization and egoic self-justification for our inner, and by extension outer, selective blindness. Living in dynamic truthfulness will set us free, attaching to a static truth that supports our attachments keeps us in bondage, which is rationalized as freedom. The hard path toward life and true freedom (resonance in truth in spirit), or the comfortable path toward death and false validation and support (resonance in spirit), PICK ONE. Choose wisely. After the feedback loops and support systems (internal and external) are in place, most people don't get another chance; the die is cast, so to speak.

Kenny and Andrew (Ken Wilber and Andrew Cohen in conversation in "What Is Enlightenment?" magazine, in the regular column, "The Guru and the Pandit" {one of my favorite things in the world to read}) talk about the need "to get your ears boxed" from a spiritual teacher, and the main thrust of that thought is that people need to be reminded of this fact, they need to be "kicked" loose when they get stuck, and they need to be guided to grow up straight and tall when they start to lean and bias themselves away from perfectly vertical. Spirit is the bottom line, however, and the choice to be open to the truth is made in spirit long before it ever gets to the (thinker's) mind. I have been both cursed and blessed in this life, but one of the great blessings is my early training in metaphysics by my friend (and to be honest, somewhat of a surrogate father/big brother) Lewis, and I have unusual clarity about this, due to that. The post-metaphysical perspective merely re-frames these truths in a co-enacted worldspace, rather than a pre-given one, and has little to do with the relationship between the truths revealed in principle and their manifest counterparts, only the structure within which this arises.

I must state that if I had not seen all this (stuff, movement, attachment, etc.) in myself, I would not be able to recognize it, so please know that I have had my heart broken too, and all this work of differentiation and integration is what we're here to learn, and what I'm doing is opening my heart and mind and life to you. We all (even ME!) have a dark nature and a light nature, and we mustn't be (self) deluded into thinking we've won the battle, for in that instant we have lost the war. I want you to KNOW that there is love and compassion, and no negative judgment, just clear discernment. You are one of the best people I've met in this life, and as we agreed, I'm not censoring or watering down what I feel needs to be said.

People cannot hide their true self-system center-of-gravity, for as Confucius said, “A man (or woman) can not hide his (or her) true character, it reveals itself in what he (or she) takes pleasure in”. These “friends/humans” you speak of... it is a pitifully childish game you describe; one moment of acknowledgment followed by hours, days, and weeks of projections and blame, all rationalized to their cognitive limit, beige [infrared] hijacking red hijacking green; it is so unbalanced, so obviously biased, how can one possibly be deceived? One can not, without one’s willing participation. To quote Dr.Phil, “Everyone does what they do for a payoff; if there was no payoff, they wouldn’t do it; what’s your payoff?” To see and acknowledge an ego need while still stuck in relativistic embeddedness, and to balance that thought form into freedom by seeing objectively it’s genealogical grounding with integral/aperspectival awareness and setting it free in love, are indeed different levels of differentiation and integration. Can you let go? Who would you be if you let go? Do you see it AS you (structure) or is it within you (content)? Sit with it until you know, look at it until you see, be it until you know yourself and can recognize that spirit in others. Understanding and compassion are appropriate responses to seeing this in others, but never forget the first law of metaphysics,” You become like that which you stand in relation to". Choose your identifications wisely, inner and outer, my friend, your authenticity and sanity hang in the balance.

Animals do what feels natural, led by feeling, feeling good, feeling safe, and feeling secure. People have the potential, they MAY act from principle, doing what is right, doing what is fair, doing from the larger perspective, even if it doesn’t feel good, natural, safe or secure subjectively – because it is right – a triumph of the higher potentials over the lower embeddedness – a triumph of character over personality, of healthy WE centeredness over pathological I embeddedness - IF they carefully choose AND manifest their humanity over their human weakness, animal nature, and body-mind centeredness.

Let us not forget that the truth test of the upper left quadrant is authenticity, sincerity, and subjective truthfulness, NOT objectively accurate truth. One can be sincere, and be wrong (in either type, yin or yang). I see it all the time. Subjective and objective truth in dynamic balance is the apex, the summit, of upper left development; some archetypal psychology models reflect this with the structure: passive shadow, active shadow, balanced fullness.

My two cents: choose the growth path, my friend, feel like crap in the beginning and feel authentically good at the end, rather than its much more popular inversion, the rationalized, justified and subjectivized self-absorption that feels great in the beginning, and then, much later, commits suicide after destroying the lives of its “loved ones”, feeling powerless against the inertial onslaught of it’s own design. Choose wisely, my friend, as though your life hangs in the balance, it well may. An old folk wisdom saying reflects this, "Those who begin with certainty, end with uncertainty. Those who begin with uncertainty may end with certainty". Another good one that comes to mind, from Stephen Hawking, is "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge". The really sad thing is, some people use their illusions (a vicious circle between spirit, energy, thought, feeling, character, and life conditions) as a source of power, they think it is they who are choosing it, when in truth it is that spirit feeding on them, for they have the gift of life and its energy, without which that spirit is merely an unmanifest potential, waiting for a willing host upon whom to feed. Symbiosis becomes addiction, becomes identity, becomes self, invoking the hierarchy of hell in spirit and energy,” Bring food or become food". I once said to my meditation teacher, "There are two kinds of people in this world, agents and super-agents, agents not knowing what spirits control them, and the super-agents both knowing and embracing that spirit. Super-agents are extremely rare, almost non-existent, and they appear in both types, good and evil. My teacher was pleased, and a little surprised.

The bottom line with love as relates to relationship, it seems to me, is that the love be good, true, and beautiful, evolving with us and as us, true Eros born from romantic spark, sensuality growing into real concern for the other's spiritual growth and welfare, honesty and authenticity in relationship fearlessly reflecting truth (we know who is open to truth, in our hearts, and which relationships we risk by speaking truth freely and openly), mutually enacted compassion for and as the other. Human love has a developmental spiral of growth, physical attachment and familiarity gives way to shared values and communion while encouraging healthy agency, which can become spiritual and transcendent; attachments can die and be reborn as universal love free from all attachment. In his book "The Road Less Traveled", M.Scott Peck gives a sensitive treatment of this subject.

Are we good enough? That's up to us. We answer that question with our every thought and action, every intention we allow to take root in us, our contracted motives murdering love in it's sleep, our willingness to witness this small, dark spirit in us is our only chance for love's revival; do we choose to die, painfully, to our contractions as we witness the light of truth shine in our being, the old self and its attachments burn in the light, replaced by motiveless and unattached true love; or do we choose our comfort, looking away just in time, quietly maintaining our position in the status quo, safe in our embeddedness and "love", with all its constructs and attachments?

We all choose, all the time. To be conscious that we have a choice is the interruption of our inner inertia, a split second of clarity, which offers a way out. Freedom and love are scary, do we really want them? Most choose safety. The light can be too bright, it burns and hurts, do we really want it? Most choose self-acceptance and self-absorption. Jesus said "He who hateth not his own soul can not come unto me", telling us all to choose self-awareness and inward objectivity, and that which survives the burning of the light is what is real, true, and deserves to live in the light of truth. Today's last quote, from Albert Einstein "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits." We are "what passes for humanity", let us all feel the responsibility that implies.

A test of character, indeed. Keep choosing, my friend, just don't forget that you are.

With Loving friendship,

Eliot

P.S. Be careful with the desire to be a "bringer of light" (I know you mean it in a good and loving way), it cost a close friend of mine his sanity. Remember what I wrote about Krishnamurti and his cautions about the imprisonment in time that attachment to a motive, however beautiful and well intentioned, guarantees? More subtle, indeed. "I want to become a better person, and I don't know what that is" aligns the intention correctly, without the fatal error of ego identification with a crystallized thought-form (or, in blue meme bible thumpin' terms, a "graven image", i.e. a "bringer of light"). I think I know what is in your heart, though, which is to be an agent for positive change. Yeah, me too. BEING is more than doing, in many cases involving higher consciousness, and simply being (in energy and vibration) around people can help more than any doing ("bringing", for example). It is in "doing" that ego attachments can creep quietly in, which is of course not to say we shouldn't "do", only that it can be dangerous, and we must be "mindful" (like good little Jedi - remember, Anakin became Darth, the brightest of the angels became Satan - it gets so subtle that it fools the very best, highest, and brightest - it is a matter of spiritual life and death to remain mindful of this - it was their sincere, well-intentioned desire to DO that led them down their fateful path).