Who or What do You Worship?

The purpose of this writing is to lay out different “gods” or objects of worship as an outgrowth and/or expression of the mimetic stage [meme codes within values spheres] of individuals and groups using a rough sketch of the Spiral Dynamics model.

Be forewarned ::: this is serious personal evolution geek stuff.

I am also going to make the unusual move of saying the very premise of what I am about to lay out is inaccurate. That’s right. I am beginning by saying I am wrong in my assertion that there is an individual relationship between mimetic stage and what one “worships”. Why? Because we experience / interpret through and emotionally react from our stage of development—and an individual can therefore have an experience of a particular spirituality or spiritual expression that is the same religion and same “god” as another at a radically different stage and therefore experience it differently. However, I have noticed cultural clumps that gives us enough evidence to make these generalizations below for the purpose of engaging in this thought experiment.

To understand some of what I will say in this writing, one must have an at least basic grasp of the Spiral Dynamics model. There are two summaries attached for your downloading HERE and HERE. Source ::: LINK . Review those before reading further.

My favorite way of representing Spiral Dynamics comes from Dr. Claire Graves himself: The memes are “degrees of activation of the nervous system”. These are not types of people but rather ways of thinking that are holarchically emergent within people. Having established all of the above as our foundation…

The status of the world today is precarious.

All we need to do is turn on the television or spend a day reading the New York Times, WaPo, The Wall Street Journal, Instapundit, or google news, to see some article about humans attempting to force their value system—often expressed through religiosity—onto others.

Whether you are a Israeli having to worry about your existential existence while others in the name of Allah want to push you to the sea, or a secular humanist fearful of the Christian Right in America and some Nation States in Europe, or you are a secular Jew shaking your head at the expansion of settlements deeper into “Palestine”…or you were a New York Resident who watched the twin towers fall you are probably–to varying degrees—aware of and worried about religious fundamentalism and its perilous impact on the global web of life.

But there are other forms that are not as obvious and are more popularly accepted and advocated in today’s media and the latest social mimetic in vogue.

Regardless of which belief system you call your own, the dangers of religious fundamentalism are undeniable.  In all likelihood, you just think it is the fundamentalism of the Other that is dangerous. But what of your own? You may or may not worship a traditional god, but there is a 98% chance you worship something—and have your own attachment and identification to it.

Who or what do you worship? It may not be a god, a goddess, or a Great Spirit but it is something. Is it success, achievement, or the all-mighty dollar? Is it Gaia, Mother Earth, the biosphere? Is it the Nation State, government, or the democratic process?

What do you surrender your mind to? What are you an activist for? Put your worship into? Become irrational over or about? Deny evidence to the contrary for/of?

Once someone says anything is a settled matter—and are closed to debate or dialogue—and go so far as to say that those who do not agree should be tried and hanged, that, my friends, is religious fundamentalism regardless of the form of the deity. In fact, here is an organization advocating Nuremburg-Style Trials for Global Warming Skeptics. Lovely. Lovely example of fundamentalism, that is. Gaia as God/dess.  Apparently we are going back to burning people at the stake for being heretics. Only the deity has changed.

Now that I have your attention, the rest of this piece will be a geek-out session of personal evolution and the emergent in spiral dynamics coupled with cultural clumps and the waves a particular god/dess or “deity” is most inclined towards.

Purple or “magic/mythic” will worship nature and the spirits in nature. The trees talk to Purple. So does the wind. They may worship the great Spirit or the Directions and their elements. Red worships power, respect, might, and most notably, blows things up in the name of Allah. Their “gods” may be the gang, the dictator, the Authoritarian State and so on. Blue/Conventional is likely to worship a Christian/Judeo god in a fundamentalist way—taking the bible or the Torah literally. Orange will worship the all-mighty dollar, success, status, and achievement, and/or hard science. Green will worship Gaia or Community or Multiculturalism and “Diversity” with great fervor and no regard for real-world results.

And thus ends Tier 1, where the “Momentous Leap”, as Dr Claire Graves called it, emerges and occurs. At Yellow, or Integral—the first stage in Tier 2, there is little or no “worship”, but rather an appreciation of all forms of worship and all metaphors [yes I said it] for the highest form of consciousness; what some refer to as “God” or Goddess”.

Having said all that, it is possible for someone to rise through these emergent stages in one of any of the religions or forms of worship listed above—but the way they interpret it moves from maniacal and fervent to literal to obedient to questioning to rejecting to appreciating it for its metaphorical value–yet having choice around it. And as one rises through those waves, stages, or levels of development in relationship to it, its grasp and its “Truth-ness” becomes less and less rigid and less and less fundamentalist and therefore less and less violent both physically and metaphorically.

We hold our beliefs less rigidly and in relationship with them, our beliefs do not hold onto us quite so rigidly either. They lose their grip on us.

So…who—or what—do you worship?  Each memetic stage in the evolution of values [another way of thinking about and representing SD] has its own fixation and spiritual expression. Is it God? Jehovah? Allah? Is it the Market? is it Gaia? Is it Community or the State?

Consider this ::: your view, while accurate and valid, is incomplete. It is partial. It must be. They all are. I look forward to a day when we can all truly appreciate the value and beauty in all beliefs while creating a stable and sustainable dialogue between all of them as we transcend our fundamentalism in all forms and create an Integral and integrated world.

Beliefs, intra-personal dynamics, spirituality integral, integral religion, personal evolution, spiral dynamics, spirituality, wilber

 

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21st Century Marketplace, Beliefs, Listener Questions, Purpose, audio, organizing principles nlp, Purpose

Be sure to read Part 1 here first.

Practical Steps to Emotional Freedom

Your practice, if you want to develop choice, facility, and ultimately, personal freedom and mastery over your own subjective experience, is the following:

Make a decision right now to take 100% responsibility for your subjective experience. Every bit of it. Your interpretations, your feelings, your emotions, your beliefs—accept that 100% of your subjective experience is generated by…you.

This will give you power and access to choice and freedom. It is also a spiritual and emotional truth with over 2600 years of testing, verification, and validation.  There are certainly things you will have to give up, self-righteousness and blame being to two big ones, but you have to decide if you want to be right, or be happy. If you want to be happy and free from the emotional matrix of self-generated misery…make the decision now.

Having made that decision, then:

1. Notice when you are agitated
2. Notice how you are characterizing the events [is it descriptive, scientific, or is it a judgment or characterization?]
3. Ask yourself what other possible interpretations there are [generate at least three alternative interpretations, making at least one fun] this will build in interpretive flexibility and assist you in taking on multiple perspectives–a critical faculty to build for your personal evolution
4. Ask yourself what you know—scientifically, descriptively—and what you are making up or imagining—and separate the two
5. Verify your interpretations directly with the party involved

In the unlikely event that your disempowering and/or negative interpretations are accurate, your work continues by being vigilant against the old habit patterns of the mind to then extrapolate out a generalized disempowering and/or possibly a “global” belief. I recommend conducting a sentence stem exercise to uncover some of your own beliefs—particularly the global or personally limiting beliefs. What are sentence stems and what are the guidelines for such an exercise?

I am glad you asked. Some examples of sentence stems are as follows:

• I am _________.
• People are _________.
• The world is _________.
• I will never _________.
• They always _________.
• Men [are] _________.
• Women [are] _________.

The guidelines for the exercise are to

1. Finish the sentence in writing as many times as possible within 90 or 120 second—that is, 1.5 or 2 minutes.
2. No less than 10 completions, no more than 20 is a useful range
3. All answers are acceptable; no filtering, no reframing, no changing of any answers
4. Let it flow—that is try to complete the exercise as much as possible without thinking about the answers.
5. If they start to get “strange” or unexpected, you are on the right track.
6. If they are all happy and shiny, redo the exercise focusing on the shadow side

What this exercise does is allows us to uncover beliefs from parts of ourselves we do not always allow to come through. Beliefs that are there are the time, and are running our lives; beliefs that may be limiting us, may be causing dis-ease and tension in our body, robbing us of possibility, connection, opportunity and prosperity, and ultimately health and well being. These beliefs, once we have scoured the world for enough “evidence” to support them become the glasses through which we view the world creating a clouded and disempowered experience-not to mention inherently inaccurate, at least in part. Begin to look for counter-examples. Notice your attachment to beliefs and how that only serves you short term, and stalls your personal evolution.

Once again, as always, awareness is the gateway. Awareness of your sensations, is the first entry point. Are you agitated? Do you feel a sinking feeling in your stomach? Is there tension in your chest? Etc. From there, what are the thoughts and interpretations leading to those sensations? Are the labels you are attaching to those sensations even accurate? To what degree? How accurate are your interpretations of the events? Once verified, then ask, what did I make it mean? And then ask yourself, “what else could it mean?”

The answers to that last question must be positive or empowering about yourself or about the world or about people. You get extra evolutionary bonus points if you do this even when you don’t have to—that is, when your anger is “justified” or your frustration is “understandable”.

Be vigilant against this pitfall. While it may feel good in the moment–and there is a short-term pseudo-self-esteem boost [that is, pre-rational, stage 1 ego reenforcement], it does not serve your evolution in the long-term to indulge in the place of justification for your “negative” emotional states.

Develop your awareness. Use the power of your mind to free yourself and to prosper. Prosper financially, emotionally, relationally, and spiritually.

Beliefs, ego, emotions, intra-personal dynamics

When most people hear the word “hypnosis” they get a little unsettled. They usually get unsettled as a result of some fantasy about what hypnosis is or is not. Some associate it to stage hypnosis and the Vegas show world. Others are afraid of what someone might do to them when they are unconscious. Still others are afraid of clucking like a chicken when the phone rings. Others my simply roll their eyes thinking that hypnosis is more mumbo-jumbo for the woo-woo set who wear patchouli oil and live in Northern California or in Boulder, Colorado.

So what is “hypnosis”? For our purposes, hypnosis is simply the use of language and imagination to direct experience. If you have ever watched television and felt enraptured in a show, you were in a hypnotic trance. When it seems like time flew by, you were in a hypnotic trance. If someone has ever told you a story and you began to visualize aspects of it, you were in a hypnotic trance. If you have ever fantasized about someone or something positively or negatively, you were in a hypnotic trance. If someone has ever asked “how are you today?” and you took a moment to truly consider it, they had put you in a hypnotic trance.

And the list goes on.

The truth is, we are in a state of hypnotic trance more than we are out of it.

That is the good news. Once you notice it, and have enough facility to intervene in the process, it becomes a tremendously powerful opportunity to harness the power of your mind. Once you notice it, you can be more respectful of other people’s experience and avoid adding anything negative. The truth is, we are directing each other’s experience all the time. We are hypnotizing each other all the time. Are you adding beauty and joy? Or are we directing people to their internal struggles or pain out of ignorance and “empathy”?

One of my favorite jokes to play in a partially full elevator is to look at the floor, placing both my hands on the side of my head, slapping lightly while say, “Shut up. All of you shut up!” What fun. However, there is an unfortunate kernel of truth in this joke for most of us.

Recent studies have indicated that over 77% of our self-talk or internal dialogue is negative. This is a stunning number. That is also an average from largely untrained minds.

You Notice What You Think About

The Law of Attraction has been one of the mainstays of personal development since its inception. That is, that we are likely to get what we focus on. Like a search engine, we put something in it, hit return, and we get ranked results. Our mind goes looking for what we often unintentionally tasked it with. And yet, we are often telling ourselves and our minds things that are negative, will not help us realize our potential, and will not serve our ultimate happiness.

There is a resurgent interest and focus on this Law as a result of the movie The Secret. There is no magic to this. When we set our intention or focus on something, our reticular activator goes into action. A part of our mind and biology left over from hunter gatherer years.

Some common examples:

• You decide on a new car you like and want to purchase; suddenly you see that model everywhere
• You make a decision to start a new business venture, and you overhear a stranger at a restaurant who may be helpful
• You make a commitment to a change in your life change and within the next week you see and/or hear multiple marketing messages offering solutions to the very problem you have decided to overcome

People who do not understand the science of the mind and body behind this will say things like “I manifested that/them”, and similar formulations that say more about their stage of development that any particular objective reality, After all, we interpret the world through–and react from–our stage of development and its accompanying filters and value memes. The truth is, the thing we suddenly see or the opportunity that arises was already there, we just notice it now. As a function of our biology, our senses have to reduce and filter out over 50% of our stimulus for processing. That is, over half of the information coming to us through our sense tools [eyes, ears, nose, skin, taste] is filtered out. We do not have the ability to process it all. Particularly visually and auditorally in an urban environment.

So our mind notices what we have consciously or unconsciously set it to notice. I recommend the conscious option as much as possible. becoming more and more intentional about this tool rather than leaving it to chance.

How do we train this powerful tool? How do we harness the full power of our minds for our benefit, rather than allowing it to run roughshod over us? How do we leverage this aspect of our consciousness to create a life in which we thrive?

…read about that in part 2 in a few days.

Find Part 2 HERE now.

Beliefs, emotions, intra-personal dynamics

Imus of Imus in the Morning, one of the original morning shock jocks, has been fired by CBS. He was released from his contractual obligations for an abhorrent offense: referring to the Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy headed hos”.

Unlike other times in the recent past, CBS did the right thing. We should not tolerate this kind of derogatory language. And the market adjusted—sponsors pulled their advertising, money was being lost, and so CBS made the appropriate political as well as financial and business choice. They fired this tone deaf man.

Just another reason to love the free market.

They did so after an initial 2-week suspension by MSNBC for the simulcast. CBS did so after the black community came up in arms and grilled him, quite appropriately, for his words.

Having said that, it was interesting to watch the professional racists come out against subtle racism. From Al Sharpton to Jesse Jackson to Al Sharpton [again].

I guess it’s okay to be a racist as long as you are black.

Read more…

Beliefs, Communication, emotions, inter-personal dynamics imus, politics, racism, responsibility

From the Opinion Journal:

Our current crisis is not yet a catastrophe, but a real loss of confidence of the spirit. The hard-won effort of the Western Enlightenment of some 2,500 years that, along with Judeo-Christian benevolence, is the foundation of our material progress, common decency, and scientific excellence, is at risk in this new millennium.

But our newest foes of Reason are not the enraged Athenian democrats who tried and executed Socrates. And they are not the Christian zealots of the medieval church who persecuted philosophers of heliocentricity. Nor are they Nazis who burned books and turned Western science against its own to murder millions en masse.

No, the culprits are now more often us. In the most affluent, and leisured age in the history of Western civilization–never more powerful in its military reach, never more prosperous in our material bounty–we have become complacent, and then scared of the most recent face of barbarism from the primordial extremists of the Middle East. Read more…

Beliefs, Uncategorized, ego, emotions, inter-personal dynamics freedom of speech, politics, religious fanaticism, western enlightenment

In this installment of Evolutionary Radio, Certified Hypnotherapist Andrew Gentile and I discuss what hypnosis is, what people can expect from a session, what results hypnotherapy can offer you, and Andrew’s vision for the future of hypnotherapy in society at large.

Beliefs, Podcasts: Evolutionary Radio, audio, emotions hypnosis, hypnotherapy, nlp, podcast

[As a preface, this piece assumes the rules of justice are commonly agreed upon and in place. That people are free from force and fraud as a matter of justice, principle, and integrity. These ideas are meant to build creativity within, and are not meant to give a way to violate that premise.]

“I would never die for one of my beliefs. I may be wrong [about it].”—George Bernard Shaw

“I am not interested in being right. I care about finding out whether I am or not.” –Albert Einstein

What Einstein and Shaw were both saying was that they would rather be accurate than be “right”.

Have you ever had a friend who thought they remembered something a certain way while you remembered it differently? Have you ever had a friend willing to argue with you about this very discrepancy? Have you ever done the same? While some may be eager to tell you how you are wrong, still others are willing to say “you may be right…but I remember it thus…”. Oh, what a difference a few words can make.

And it is that difference that makes the difference. It is that difference that can create ease, or foster dissonance. Generate grace, or create tension. Resolve differences or create new ones out of thin air.

Some would rather be right than be accurate. That is to say that they are constantly looking for evidence that their positions are “right”—buttressing their opinions in the face of contradictory information. This shows up in a range of behaviors from eco-terrorists violently attacking companies based on junk science to others ignoring the evidence of man-accelerated climate change. From those blaming intolerance for incompetence on racism whenever they can to the Bush Administration only listening to views that supported the existence of Saddam Hussein’s WMD programs and the call for the invasion of Iraq. From someone judging an acquaintance on limited information when their own self-esteem issues are triggered by them to having a fixed perspective on someone without direct personal experience with them. On both sides of the aisle—both ends of the spectrum—equally distasteful manifestations of this mind-set can arise.

At the same time, others would rather be accurate than be “right”. That is to say they are constantly taking in new information to verify their interpretations—and in fact working constantly to update them—having far less identification with them. They know they are not their opinions or views. They have their views. However, their views do not have them. These people are far more enjoyable to engage in political dialogue, they are truly intellectually curious.

Let us briefly examine both mindsets.

As usual, self-esteem plays an important role. As well as attachment. As well as ego—the antitheses of true self-esteem.

If one is interested in being “right”—they have their ego wrapped up in whether they are right or not—they are then deeply identified with their perceptions as an extension of themselves—then you can expect them to defend their positions as a matter of “honor”. They will be “up in arms” doing so. What follows may be a rather distasteful display of emotion in support of their belief, perception, etc. And, as a useful side note, you can always calibrate yours or another’s attachment to their view by whether or not they have a sense of humor around it. A sense of humor is a signal to a fluid perspective.

If one [you] are interested in accuracy, then they will be open, curious, have a lack of attachment to their views. They will be constantly working to verify their interpretations of the events in the world around them—of the people around them. This person will inevitably have high[er] esteem for the self, as it is only from this place that one can relax into the not-knowing that is required for fluidity around one’s perceptions.

What if one [you] in their self-reflexive moments notice that they are being attached to their view as “right” being blind to new information that may correct their accuracy?

What to do? As usual, the answer is to witness it, and then choose another path. Build the muscle of a lack of identification with your views. Build the muscle of witnessing. As it is from this place of pure witnessing that your spiritual path may lie ahead of you—quite clearly. Enjoy the view…and then step down and begin to walk the path. One. Step. At. A. Time.

Beliefs, emotions, inter-personal dynamics

We, as a people, seem to love classifications. As humans, it is what we do best: identification. It separates us from primates. We can identify and classify things into systems, genres, classes, subclasses, and so on. This is a great skill; a skill that could even save your life some day as you classify “dangerous, not dangerous – deadly, not deadly”. The ability to identify (what is it?) and then extrapolate accurately (what does it mean?) is indeed a critical skill. A skill no less critical even as we get more and more civilized. In fact, it could be argued that the dangers get ever more complex and demanding of this skill the more complex our society becomes and the more knowledgeable we become.

When this gets interesting is when we apply and over apply this skill to other human beings where physical safety is clearly not a concern. We have all sorts of categorizations and systems of classification. We have race, sexual preferences and orientation, political party affiliation, zodiac sign, political orientation or leaning, class separation, high school cliques, enneagram number, etc., etc. These are all tools we use to classify, to categorize, and to put people into some box or drawer. At first, it may seem like we use these tools to gain a better understanding of who they are, really. Is that how we typically use them, in actuality?

The way I have seen myself and others use them is as I described above. We put them into a box. We now think we “know” them, or at least that portion of them. They are a democrat or a republican and all of a sudden, we now “know them” politically. They are a 3 on the enneagram, and all of a sudden we “know” what to expect of their behaviors; their light and beautiful side and their darker patterns. We put them into a box and we can then relax, or tense, or whatever, but some part of us relaxes. We know them; we can now relax and move on to putting another part of them into a box. Are they heterosexual or homosexual? Ah, they are bi-sexual. We can now relax (or tense [laugh]) because we now “know” who they are sexually. But do we? (It is fascinating to see someone feed their ego when they think they have “nailed” someone’s zodiac sign or enneagram number by guessing at it; excited about putting someone in a box.)

Once we put someone into a box, we then stop relating to who they are as a unique and beautiful being — we begin to relate to the box. We begin to fit all of their behaviors into that box or view their behaviors through the filter of said box. Sure, we are more comfortable ourselves once we have classified them, but the real relating begins to die a slow (or rapid) death. We now stop relating to who they are in this moment, right now, and begin to relate to what we read about them in a book, or what we see about their “type” on TV, Etc. Then what began as a tool for greater understanding and deeper relating has ended up as a wall or a barrier to greater and truer understanding – a barrier to more intimate relating; a wall around the heart. A wall and a filter we are often not even aware of.

And what are human Beings anyway? They are manifestations of the divine. Can we really classify that? Human Beings at their best and most inspirational are creative, spontaneous, dances of improvisation, which is completely unpredictable, and if we get too caught up in who we think they are, we may miss a glimpse of god as it dances right before us, right within our grasp.

While these tools for classification are useful to a certain point, they are only useful to a certain point, where if we want true relating, true intimacy, they must then be cast aside. If we truly desire peace on this planet, it will take something like this, from all sides, from all perspectives, from all lands.

From the heart, guided by the head, enveloped in Spirit,

Beliefs, inter-personal dynamics, relationships