God, Science, and Sexy Bananas

My banana's tail stretched five feet.
This one is from Malaysian photographer
http://idkhalid.blogspot.com/

A Poolside Contemplation of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness

On a recent trip to Florida, I stood awestruck before a banana palm by my hotel room door. I'd seen bananas on the hoof before, but I'd never seen the long tail that proceeds from the bottom of a bunch and ends in a dangling, pointed, orb of smoky-crimson, looking like God's hypnosis pendant or the devil's tail. The tail on this baby was five feet long. I wanted to fall to my knees in adoration.

God or evolution? From Wikipedia I learned that the orb is a flower spike known as the inflorescence. Seeking a photo, I misspelled it as "fluorescence." That led me to an article proving that ripe bananas glow in the dark, but only if they're sexy. The article was an absolutely delightful example of the scientific method at work. Author Carolyn Tepolt described her persistent quest as her first several experiments failed to produce glowing bananas. Just as I had been enthralled by the beauty of God's creation, now I was enchanted by the scientist's devotion to truth.

Terry Patten's Integral Spiritual Practice tells us that contemplation is the preferred spiritual practice for both nature worshipers and scientist philosophers. So I chose a poolside-table with a view of the tree and ordered a banana daquiri from the tiki bar. And it was good.

Travel note: You, too, can contemplate fluorescence and inflorescence at the Dolphin Key Resort in Cape Coral/Fort Myers, Florida.

Integral Subtle Energy: Call Notes from New Thought

The four Integral teachers on the Subtle Energy call of 3/8/15, clockwise from upper left: Diane Musho Hamilton, Jeff Salzman, Ken Wilber, Terry Patten. Background image is Emanations, a collaboration by Victor Raphael and Clayton Spada.

Some of my friends in New Thought were befuddled by the heavy Buddhist terminology in the first part of a recent Integral Living Room call on Subtle Energy.  So I want to share some of the highlights for me, as someone interested in what's next for New Thought.

The many levels of energy described by ancient and contemporary mystics are summarized in Integral as

GROSS: electro-chemical, gravity, etc.

SUBTLE: Images, dreams, visions, the "feeling" of a room, etc.

CAUSAL: "The subtlest possible patterns of consciousness and energy, a fractal pattern of causation that ripples all the way down though subtle and gross realities," as per Corey deVos in his excellent article "What is Subtle Energy."

From a New Thought perspective, it might be said that affirmative prayer (aka treatment) "works" when it shifts us into the realm of Causal energy.

Subtle as the Gateway
But Ken Wilber started out the call by claiming that Subtle states are the gateway to Causal states. All states are available all the time. But you can't skip the gateway. This might explain why treatment starts with an acknowledgment of union with the divine--that opens our awareness to subtle states.

Ken reviewed the tendency in Buddhism to seek escape from form by jumping from Gross to Causal -- from form to emptiness in meditation. He told the story of a great Japanese Zen monk. No matter how much he meditated, he could not cure his headache. Another monk provided the key to healing by telling him to visualize butter melting on his head in a golden glow that flowed down to the ground taking the pain. Visualization employs subtle energy. "Imagine that," said Ken. "A great meditator who didn't know how to cure a basic kundalini headache." (of repressed gross energy)

The need for Subtle energy as a mediator, Ken said, is indicated in Christianity in that nothing transcendent happens between the Father and the Son without the presence of the Holy Spirit -- visualized as a Dove descending at the baptism of Jesus or tongues of fire at his ascent from form. This echoes the New Thought trinity, depicted in the symbol below.

Science of Mind symbol based on charts by Ernest Holmes.
The "V" represents both the devolution of Spirit into form and the evolution of form into Spirit

Dangers of the Subtle: Transcend and Include
Because a subtle experience is inherently subjective, each person's experiences will be different, Ken said. And this leads many moderns to be "allergic" to subtle experiences as non-scientific fantasy. The opposite danger, he said, is becoming too fascinated by subtle experiences, becoming "addicted" to them. The solution, he said, is Transcend and Include. Transcend the fascination with subtle experiences, but include their useful manifestations.

Start with Mindfulness
But how do we develop awareness of subtle energy? The most useful comment for me was Terry Patten saying that the way to go to a place in the subtle realm is to think about it. Wow, I thought, That simplifies a massive field. Diane Hamilton told of a meditation student who wanted to leave her classes after six years because nothing was happening. She gave him instructions to point out subtle energy experiences he was having but not noticing. It revolutionized his experience and changed his mind to continue.

Bringing the Subtle to Relationships
Terry said that the work of Integral should not primarily be teaching people to achieve samadhis  (states of bliss in meditation), but about developing a live engagement with each other in relationships. He called for an "indigenous" Integral approach, not based in Tibetan or other cultures. And for this approach he may have been "off the reservation" of previous Integral discussions. But now he is squarely in the center of them.

Terry said we can think of two kinds of spiritual practice.

• Space-based: in which we wake up to nondual dimensions of consciousness
• Time-based:  in which we discover the unique blueprint for our soul's journey using the animating energetics of this world.

Enchantment and Second Person relationship to the Divine
Jeff  Salzman told how his primary focus these days is reclaiming the sense of enchantment he had in his traditional religious youth. As he nurtures a Second Person (I-You) communion with the Divine, he likewise communes with all of nature. For example, he said he loves tulips in the springtime. He grows masses of them and surrounds himself with them. He speaks to them, telling them he loves them. And he likes to imagine they love him back. The trouble is, he says, enchantment can go too far. He begins to realize they may not love him because he chops their little heads off. And when he chooses one,  is the one next to it lonely or jealous? I  love the joyful way Jeff always brings things down to earth.

The Course in Miracles tells us that the Holy Spirit resides in relationships. Second person is about relationships. And relationships, Jeff said, are messy.

This call was offered in advance of an October Integral Living Room workshop in Boulder on Subtle Energy and Soul Work. I may consider going.

Roadtrip: Terry Patten's Encountering the Beloved

More daring than group sex, a chance to pray aloud was the highlight of a Terry Patten  workshop on "Encountering the Beloved" in NYC this past weekend. Patten is a hero of mine for pushing Integral theory into embrace of the three faces of God and for his emphasis on daily practice.

Terry Patten

 Attendees at this workshop were mostly experienced seekers for whom the first day's session was high quality versions of things we'd done before: authentic dialogue in small groups, voice dialogue, and even a chance to dance. What made these extraordinary was Terry's presence and his street-smart, siren call to  bring our connection with the Divine into our daily life. (The day also featured lovely listening and touch exercises by Terry's wife Deborah Boyer.)

Michael Pergola

The workshop was opened by Michael Pergola whose booming, eloquent, anthem to the evolutionary impulse called us to integrate masculine and feminine energies in this time of unprecedented crisis and opportunity. By contrast, Terry's opening sentences were a raw, immediate, plea to authentically acknowledge that most of us must do so while struggling with shadow baggage that leaves us like "bloated bags of protoplasm fiercely struggling to keep our noses above water" in a sea of change. And thus, "Our own 20 watts cannot solve the problems we face," he said. Even though we know there is no God out there in the metaphysical sense we used to believe, we still must find a way to pull down help from the unlimited Divine source.  The vulnerability in his tone landed for me like a shepherd's call. I heard his voice; and I was riveted for the remainder of the weekend.

Deborah Boyer left, as Terry and Malcolm encounter the Beloved.

The workshop was held at the lovely TAI Center near Madison Square Garden.

Post-Mythical Prayer
On the second day we did a glorious version of the three body workout which Terry is now calling the 3D workout: stretching our bodies, our sensing souls, and our spirits to the inner, intimate, and infinite faces of God. And then we prayed. Patten does a magnificent job of re-envisioning prayer in a way that opens the possibility of it again for those of us who have left behind the mythical God of our childhood. (The only other person I know with a comparably deft approach to "post-atheist prayer" is Brian McLaren, as I report at Does Mature Conscious Prayer Get Better Results?)

Lurching to Freedom
We broke into groups of three, and I was lucky to have as my partners two beautiful young men who had helped to organize the weekend: Michael Stern and Armando Davila. Going first, I decided NOT to use my comfortable and beloved format: affirmative prayer from New Thought. Instead I lurched and stumbled my way through two minutes of out-loud prayer, trying out several approaches. Next came Armando who said his communion with the Divine often takes him to ecstatic states. His prayer had a simple, direct, quiet, purposefulness. Then came Michael, who spends an hour a day in prayer and meditation. In deep and sonorous tones like the tolling of a cathedral's bell, he called forth the energy of God to share with the world.

Unlike earlier exercises, we didn't share much about ourselves, and yet I felt a strong connection and love among the three of us. And THAT confirmed something I'd been sensing. The quality of "we space" that develops in the two conditions--personal sharing and group prayer-- is completely different and not interchangeable. I need both! I want both! I intend to create both! (I also felt simultaneously grateful for the structure of affirmative prayer, and freed to experiment with other formats.)

My only regret is that I didn't get to hear from every person  their experience of that exercise. We did each  get a chance to say a final word at the end of the workshop. And in that round, I heard from those who were unmoved by the prayer exercise, as well as from those like my normally quiet homie Bennett Crawford--who radiated a starburst of joy as he told of feeling liberated to pray (see video clip below). Picking up that theme, the next fellow said, "My name is Dan, and I love God," getting a laugh.  DC's  newest member Jonathan Pratt said that if the world was like the workshop, we'd all live in heaven.

Bennett Crawford shares his experience at the end of the workshop

In Love with My Integral Possee
Taking the workshop with members of my practice group from DC doubled the richness of the adventure. I drove up with six fellow members of the DC Integral Emergence Meetup: Coordinators Malcolm Pettus and Anita Conner, Barbara Kinney, Bennett Crawford, and intrepid newbie Jonathan Pratt. We used the car ride up and back to get to know each other at deeper levels, developing a bond of love we didn't want to break at the end of the ride back home.

 DC Integral Emergence Coordinators Malcolm Pettus and Anita Conner
drive us to Terry Patten workshop in NYC. Take us out, Mr. Zulu.

DC crew at Tryp Hotel  from left: Teri Murphy, Anita Conner, Bennett Crawford,
Barbara Kinney, Jonathan Pratt, and Malcolm Pettus, with our new friend Nomi,
a Pakastani American interested in development within Islam and currently in
One Spirit's Integral Mentoring and Ministry program.

The DC crew at a great Thai restaurant around the corner from the Tryp on 9th Ave.

 More to Come
The workshop was the first in a series organized by volunteers from the new organizations Integral Alignment  and Universal Consciousness. We'll be back.

DC crew packs up for home.

UP Next: tomorrow on my other blog, I will report on my meeting later today with the head of the DC Meetup on Emerging Christianity. Crossover?