Philosophy

The Law of Attraction for Socialists: Part II

Posted by Chris Dierkes in Healing Arts, Philosophy, Shamanism, Spirituality, The Imaginal

(For Part I, see here).

I’ve worked with a number of clients with a sincere struggle around the question of manifestation and money. They want to be successful but also struggle with the questions of mass poverty in the world. They look to manifestation teachings which essentially argue in one form or another that systemic injustice is a consequence of poverty consciousness, either that of the poor themselves or of the rich (usually the former admittedly). And this answer doesn’t really satisfy them. Yet somehow they sense some intelligence or wisdom inherent in the manifestation teachings, not necessarily related to this specific point but to other aspects of the overall teaching. Hence the confusion.

So my first reply is that we need to separate out the process (or practice) of manifestation teachings from the wider context and framework within which these practices are taught. I described some of the flaws of that framework, most especially the blindness to its own contextual nature in Part I.

I believe many, if not most, of the processes and practices at the heart of manifestation teachings could be retained if they were put within a different political, social, economic, cultural, and ecological framework.

Just so my own cards are on the table, I’ll say I’m personally of the view that capitalism and the classic liberal-democratic social order which undergird it, are in significant breakdown globally. That’s far from an entirely positive thing in my view–quite the opposite in fact. I’m not gleeful at this prospect but nevertheless I agree with analyses that point to inherent contradictions at the heart of capitalism and even liberal-democracy itself. I think those inherent contradictions and flaws are revealing themselves on a global scale.

For the purposes of this article, the reason I mention that is because manifestation teachings are entirely sourced in a capitalist economics/liberal-democratic value systems. Since I think that system is increasingly at war with the flourishing of life itself, then manifestation teachings (as they are currently contextualized) are part of the problem for me.*

In other words, manifestation teachings–in their current form–have no solution to the problems humanity faces. What they can do, in a very small percentage of people, is help individuals acquire greater material prosperity. But that’s not a strategy for solving poverty given that the primary way one can become rich (under our current economic realities) is by the immiseration of others.

What I want to explore here then is the possibility that elements of manifestation teachings however could be a part of the solution (or at least part of a solution, as I believe there are many possible solutions). What I half-jokingly/half-seriously am calling The Law of Attraction for Socialists.

In other words, seeing if we can separate out the valid insights and practices of manifestation teachings and place them within a more liberation-minded frame of reference.

To use some philosophical jargon for a second, I think most manifestation teachings make the error of confusing is for ought. Just because capitalism is the way of the world does not mean that’s how it should be. (Just ask The Pope).

So….

If we retain a capitalist currency framework, then we need to install a whole series of realities to create for a more equitable and just distribution of goods (material goods, social goods, etc.).

Things like:

  • A Guaranteed Basic Income
  • A much higher rate of taxation on wealth (particularly as gained through financial investments) concomitant with major public investments in social goods like education, health care, and the like.
  • Creating a legal framework that acknowledges the public ownership of the commons (e.g. the air, the water, etc.) and charging rents on private interests that use the public commons property.
  • A separation of the media and the political process from the corrupting influence of major financial investments.
  • A series of strictly enforced legal measures meant to protect the environment and promote (even force) technologies that are beneficial to all forms of life and degrade the power of technologies and energy sources opposed to the flourishing of life.
  • A recognition of the historical wrongs done to many groupings of people and the ways in which those historical wrongs have been inscribed into the current reality, along with steps taken to adjudicate that present reality (sourced in historical wrong).

I can’t say I’m super optimistic that is happening anytime soon to put it very mildly.

The other option would be a more revolutionary one, like the one envisioned by Eileen Workman in her book Sacred Economics. Workman describes a society not based on money (i.e. debt). Instead she lays out a clear vision of a society built around credits (interestingly derived in its root meaning from the word belief, credo).** That it an economic system that would be predicated upon and cultivate trust as an actual currency. In contrast to neoliberal capitalism which bases itself on the mistaken belief that individuals working in mind of their own supposed self-interest ends up (magically) encouraging the good of the whole. This view creates mutual distrust throughout society (i.e. the prisoner’s dilemma of game theory). Workman envisions more worker-controlled forms of commerce, reversing the power of finance over labor (her name after all is Workman).

Let’s for the moment imagine (as best we can) one or both of those two options being a reality. Very hard to imagine but let’s try. Neither would be anything approaching a completely perfect society of course. They would simply be ones far more aligned to the truth of existence. They would be substantially better than what currently is the case.

Imagine then a society and culture formed this way. The key element to hold in mind here is that your artistry or profession is not tied to your ability to actually eat, have a roof over your head, or clothes on your back. Your gifting, your offering of goodness in the world is not inherently tied to the anxiety and panic of survival. (This energy underlies the experience of many artists and entrepreneurs, not to mention many others).

At this point commerce, exchange, artistry, production could actually be truly free. We might say that would be an actually free market, i.e. free of the endemic injustice of the current reality.

Then manifestation teachings could actually be put to use within a just social reality. The reason manifestation teachings currently talk so much about monetary or financial freedom is because our current reality is very oppressive. I mean what’s the opposite of freedom if not slavery?

Manifestation teachings do have a great deal of wisdom within them. It’s too bad that this wisdom is either too closely aligned with the problematic nature of capitalism or rejected altogether (because of it’s naivety around historical, economic, and political power relationships).

But for the moment let’s acknowledge the wisdoms present in these teachings. Here’s some simple but powerful examples (shared with me by a friend of mine).

People often think of manifestation teachings as picturing some future state that person desires, e.g. more money, a better relationship, more meaningful work, etc., and then meditating on how to get that. It’s also possible however to wake up each day and ask Life, The Universe, God (however you call it) to send you a revelation for that day. Ask for something from life to teach you, something to reveal, in ways large or small, a glimpse of the spiritual world become real in this world. What the ancients called a wonder (the original meaning of a miracle).

Wake up each day and ask for two wonders that day. Then keep your eyes and ears peeled.

Or consider this one (adapted from Robert Moss). Upon waking ask Life to send you a question that day. As you are going through your day–reading, talking and interacting with people, scrolling through your FB profile, listening to the news, whatever–when you encounter a question posed to you (as a reader, conversation partner, citizen, or consumer) consider it being asked by Life itself.

Spend that day wrestling with that question.

These kinds of practices play with the dream-like nature of reality. You begin to become a conscious participant in the psychic nature of life itself. Animals, dreams, babies, social media, images on tv & movies, the land, the waters, ideas, people you interact with, all become part of a subtle array of energies and forces, dramatically and creatively at work.

And this same magic can be directed specifically to one’s gifting or vocation. The 101 version of manifestation teachings typically has the individual impose upon life the vision he or she wants and then use these techniques to attract the energy necessary to complete it. For example in mega-popular book The Secret the Universe is depicted as a genie in a lamp who simply says, “Your wish is my command.” In other words, The Universe is enslaved to our human desires in such a view. The manifestation practices are a technique for controlling the magic of Life to serve our own individual ends which of course almost always become an (un)conscious replication of cultural dreams.

But if we come to a more mature relationship to manifestation we should hold a different view. Rather than a genie in a lamp manifesting my wishes, why not imagine the Universe’s magical play as something more like a spirit guide? Like Virgil or Beatrice leading Dante through realms of hell and paradise, we could play with the magical manifesting forces of life. Those forces would be tutoring and guiding us and yet we would still free to make our own decisions in the process. The autonomy and dignity of the Manifesting Energies would be appreciated and honored (just as Virgil and Beatrice are not slaves to Dante’s wishes to journey in the Divine Comedy). They would direct us as much as we would direct them. There would be mutuality, communion.

Which brings us back to the issue of a social order. If we lived in a just economic and social order, then we could approach these manifestation teachings from a healed place. We wouldn’t be using them as a way to get out of our woundedness or to escape from the inevitable pains and sorrow of living under capitalism.

This manifesting way would be true both in its more general sense of wonderment as well as the more specific sense of harnessing the magical forces to (co)create something as a gift in life.

All of the magic of learning to play with the psychic nature of Life would still be there. Those practices and that way of being however wouldn’t be so tightly funnelled through a world built around debt, constant insecurity (for many) and constant debilitating stress (for many more). It would fundamentally about play and true service.

Until then (as I do in my own work) all of us doing this kind of work either need to ignore the real complexities and ethical ambiguities of charging or we each find our own particular ethic. That usually means some combination of various responses to the economic reality (e.g. here are mine).

If we lived in a truly just and wise reality then we wouldn’t have to do such half-measures.

Nothing stops us now from incorporating these kinds of manifestation practices either in the more general or the more specific sense. But having considered these perspectives, I don’t think it would be possible to go back to some utterly naive or pre-critical view around them either.

—

* Given the philosophical limitations laid out in Part I, the best manifestation teachings can do is amelioration. They can lead people to have greater resources so they can give more to charity, aid foundations and the like. That’s difficult however insofar as the belief of the teachings of themselves is that everyone should follow and manifest their true heart’s desire. They are best then treating wounded people on a battlefield and sending them back into the battle rather than seeking to end the war altogether.

** In Biblical terms, debt is an expression of sin. For the record, The Bible’s vision of a perfect world is not one where everyone has the perfect life they all individually desire but one in which there is no debt or hunger. Abundance in the true meaning of the term.

25 Feb 2015 1 comment / READ MORE

The Law of Attraction for Socialists: Part I

Posted by Chris Dierkes in Emotions, Healing Arts, Philosophy, Shamanism, Spirituality, The Imaginal, The Soul

Soul work is classically defined as having two major components: healing and manifestation. Another term for manifestation would be creativity or creative expression.

Healing at the level of the soul involves a release of negative soul conditioning (often called karma). There are patterns that lie at the level of our energy. These patterns have been cut into deep grooves and from there shape our lives in ways we are often only dimly conscious of. Soul healing purifies personal karma, ancestral karma, even at times our own participation in collective human karma. Soul healing requires coming to face and embrace and love our shadow–to find the light always hidden with the darkness and to release that light.

Soul healing calls forth a posture of welcome. Soul healing demands we welcome the full range of our human emotions and grasping the wisdom of each, even emotions like shame and fear. Soul healing is an affirmation of the nature of our soul, i.e. our unique personal expression of The Divine. It is a healing act to learn and to feel validated at the deepest personal level of our existence, to learn the kinds of energies that fundamentally drive our being, the inherent gifts as well as challenges of being who each soul is. In soul healing we come to realize the fundamental truth of our singular expression and identity.

Manifestation work, however, is aligning with the soul’s deepest desires and works to make those desires concrete. Manifestation is following the creative process to its fulfillment–in some concrete, material expression. For example studying to be a counsellor and then developing an actual practice with real live clients. Creating a work of art.

I freely admit I’ve had a bias towards healing. Soul healing seemed real, mature, and sane whereas manifestation can seem very ungrounded, excessively fake, and too happy. (I’m after all the guy whose on record as being against high vibrations!). It’s also true that the healing side of the soul dyad has always come easier to me. I have more natural gifting for it than manifestation work. So to be fair, it’s been safer for me.

It’s clear however that both personally and in my ongoing work with individuals that manifestation is calling to me. Creative expression is finally starting to burn deeply in my gut. While I haven’t been denying that creative impulse, I haven’t known really what to do with it either. In some ways I still don’t, at least not fully. I figure I’ll take one step at a time and learn along the road.

But I am starting to think about what manifestation really means. As I do, one question keeps gnawing at me as I contemplate this possibility:

What is the proper context for teaching on manifestation?

I think this is a hugely under asked question.

One reason why it’s an under-explored question is that very many spiritually inclined traditions simply don’t address the question of creativity and manifestation. They are typically much more interested in spiritual awakening and therefore the question doesn’t really arise in the first place. The question of purpose or vocation or creative expression comes from the soul not the spirit. Therefore spiritual teachings that bypass the soul usually leave out this dimension of being human. Consequently the question of creativity has deeper roots in the worlds of art, drama, sport, and music than spiritual practice.

In the Western spiritual tradition manifestation work has predominantly come through the New Thought and New Age traditions. For better and for worse, it’s to these we’ll need to look for guidance. These teachings have set the context for the majority of folk exploring the topic of manifestation.

The issue is the context and background set of assumptions from those traditions is highly problematic in my estimation.

I don’t normally break out the old four quadrant map from integral theory anymore, but this is a good moment to do so–it reveals a really important point about why the context of manifestation teachings is often so confused and problematic.

quadrants31

In this map you see there is individual inner experience (Upper Left), individual outer physical form and behavior (Upper Right), external collective structure or social reality (Lower Right), and interior cultural reality (Lower Left). The map states that each moment in time is all four these dimensions of existence–no quadrant is superior or more primary than another. An integrated pattern therefore is one that takes into account all four dimensions. Anything less than all four is by definition less than integrated.

Why this schema matters is because manifestation teachings of The New Thought/New Age variety emphasize inner individual experience (Upper Left), outer action and spiritual laws (Upper Right). They also spend a good deal of time discussing how to relate to the social networks of the day (Lower Right).

What that leaves out is culture or what is known as the intersubjective (Lower Left). The intersubjective space is the source of our ethics, cultural narratives, and worldviews. The intersubjective points to the truth that all of us always arise in relationships, from specific languages, cultures, nationalities, and histories. These aspects of our being-in-the-world inevitably influence and effect the ways in which we see the world.

To paraphrase the philosopher Wittgenstein, if your language does not have a word for something it doesn’t exist in your world. It’s a thought you can’t think.

That’s the intersubjective. And that is the one that’s missing in most, if not all, manifestation teachings. For the record the cultural-intersubjective is basically missing in all personal growth or spiritual practice of any variety. These cultural factors often are held as deep unconscious biases within spiritual communities and The New Thought/New Age manifestation traditions are no different in that regard.

When the intersubjective goes unacknowledged it simply goes underground. It’s influence is still present, the influence however has become unconscious. What that means in this case is that manifestation teachings unconsciously continue to replicate the cultural biases of 19th and 20th century America (the historical context that gave birth to New Thought and New Age teaching).

In other words, almost all manifestation teachings unconsciously assume a very modernist, North American culture. That culture has its roots in what Max Weber called The Protestant Work Ethic. The Protestant Work Ethic is the belief that if one was healthy and prosperous it was a sign of blessing from God. Therefore a strong value is placed on thrift, hard work, efficiency, and rugged individualism–because those values will help accrue wealth and therefore retroactively prove blessing from God. In the United States particularly The Protestant Work Ethic became fused with the American mythology of being a land of total freedom where everyone could succeed if they were simply hard working enough.

The dark side of such a view is that if one is poor or suffering it’s one’s own fault. Such a person is lazy or stupid or consistently making bad choices. This view undergirds most conservative US political philosophy and leads to criticisms of the welfare state as a form of “handouts” to the “takers”.

And the key point here is that manifestation teachings from the New Thought tradition (and later New Age) have essentially replicated this ideology. It’s no longer that being rich is a sign of blessing from God per se although that is still explicitly the case in some such teachings like the prosperity gospel movement. Rather in most New Thought/New Age traditions health and wealth are signs of being fully actualized in one’s true self. It’s a sign of holding true abundance consciousness and not therefore poverty consciousness.

Consequently if one doesn’t have material wealth, physical health, fulfilling work, and emotionally satisfying intimate relationship then one has clearly not manifested properly. Just as with the Protestant Work Ethic there is a real dark side in this teaching, namely that failure to manifest one’s dreams is one’s own fault.

Looking at the integral map we see that the context (Lower Left) of a teaching, its practice (Upper Right), and its social vision (Lower Right) is as important as its inner experience (Upper Left). It’s only North American European-descended culture that describes itself as having no culture–as being a place of individuals. It’s a culture of individualism. It’s a culture which is unconscious of its own cultural influence.

And up until now manifestation teachings have been almost, if not, entirely unaware of that gigantic blind spot. Modernist Western philosophy recognized the validity of the Upper Left, the Upper Right, and the Lower Right quadrants but didn’t recognize the Lower Left (the cultural or intersubjective). Manifestation teachings all arose during the modernist era, hence they are typically ignorant of the intersubjective realm. Consequently, the assumed cultural norms under which they were born are simply passed on.

This flaw is true of all the big name manifestation texts–The Course in Miracles, The Secret, you name it–as well as a host of lesser-known ones.

There’s a dark underbelly of personal shaming, spiritual bypassing, and problematic political and social views in this world. For nearly 200 years, manifestation teachings have essentially been fused with the dominant North American individualist lifestyle. Again consider titles like “Think And Grow Rich”, “The Power of Positive Thinking”, and so on.

Now someone might well say, ‘what’s wrong with healthy relationships, financial stability, personal health and creative meaningful work?’

Nothing obviously. Those are good things. But why is it that manifestation teachings focus on those? Well in truth it’s basically because for middle and upper class North Americans those are essentially the only things they have in their life–along with, for some, a desire for some kind of spiritual life however they define and practice it. Oh and nowadays a very reeved up sexual existence.

Most manifestation teachings assume the culture of North American individualist consumerism. They then try, within the bounds of such a culture, to help people make the best of their lives.

But what if the cultural pattern itself is sick? What if individually adjusting well to a maladjusted reality isn’t really health?

It’s worth saying that it would definitely be easy to dismiss that entire tradition of manifestation work. There’s no lack of room for criticism of positive thinking and the damage it can do to people (especially ones with low self-esteem). It has no real understanding about what would be a just distribution of goods creatively manifested. It basically assumes the dominant capitalistic model of North American society with its so-called free-market bias. The winners have earned their spoils and deserve them. And so on and so forth.

Now while it would be easy to simply stop there, the reason these teachings continue to persist is that, in their best moments, they are actually onto something. They are (partially) right. That partial right-ness however is wedded to a series of very problematic elements. From within the world of such manifestation teachings, the problematic elements are rarely, if ever, exposed and critiqued. From outside that world, the problematic elements are criticized, but the partial truth is then ignored or denied (goodbye baby with bathwater).

What I’m interested in is the possibility of incorporating the valid aspects of these teachings but placing them within a very different cultural, political, economic, and social framework. (Or at least for now imagining how that could be achieved).

To get to the partial truth though we need to proceed by a process of elimination–getting rid of the problematic elements.

Manifestation teachings always begin with the notion that Consciousness or Mind or Intelligence is the primary reality and materiality is only a secondary outflow of Consciousness. (It’s biased towards the upper left hand quadrant in integral terms). In other words, material reality has no agency of its own–it’s simply the result of consciousness, particularly thought. Hence New Thought.

Given that bias, these teachings have no real understanding of the material, structural reality of money. For manifestation teachings money, like any material reality, is simply the inevitable outcome of thought and consciousness. Money is often described (in manifestation works) as simply a neutral energy. In and of itself it is neither positive nor negative. It is what we do (or don’t do) with this energy of money that is positive or negative.

Money however isn’t entirely or even predominantly neutral. And it’s not simply an energy. There is no room within the teaching itself to view money from its actual historical, structural history. How it was created, how it functions, how it replicates itself (hint: it’s not by people meditating on the energy of money and imagining more of it coming into existence).

Consequently, these teachings are, for example, radically naive about the ways in which our current dominant money system creates debt–not as a bug but as a feature. They can’t point to the work of say a Thomas Piketty who has shown that absent a collective political will installed in the legal system, investments and financial instruments always increase at a higher rate of return than income, leading inevitably to massive wealth inequality and social injustice in capitalist societies.

That occurs not because a bunch of people lack abundance consciousness but as a consequence of the social structure of money within a capitalist system (Lower Right Quadrant).

Again, I’m not saying these teachings have nothing to offer. It’s just that they are missing hugely important elements.

Money consciousness teachings of whatever variety place the emphasis on connecting to the consciousness or money through individual meditation. They deal with individual beliefs around money. They emphasize individual behavioral practices, e.g. paying oneself first, paying down debt. They suggest ways of functionally adapting and fitting within the existing structural channels of moneymaking (e.g. internet marketing, online courses, global trade, etc.).

What I guarantee they never do is show you the history of currencies. It won’t cover the history of state domination or colonialism. It won’t bring up the realm of ethics or norms. To do so would upset the apple cart.

The advice in such works is simply and always to charge for your services what the market will bear, never asking if that is a just thing. Recent economic research has shown that markets aren’t inherently always so intelligent and all-knowing as they were made out to be in modern Western economics (i.e. the so-called invisible hand.)

But nobody seems to want to focus on that. That’s seems so mental and judgmental and spirituality is all supposed to be about how I feel inside (again a modernist value). When we deny the intersubjective, we deny the fact that we have responsibility to one another. We deny that we are alive through what Thich Naht Hanh calls inter-being. We inter-are.

Culture and society is not simply what happens when we add up all the individuals. Culture (Lower Left) and Society (Lower Right) are intrinsic aspects of being-in-the-world.

The key wisdom of the intersubjective is profoundly missing from the manifestation world which is simply a reflection of the larger cultural problem of our contemporary age.

Manifestation teachings typically spend a great deal of time focused on what an individual’s authentic desires truly are. It turns out that framing the search as one for authentic personal individual meaning is a cultural trope. I’m not saying it’s inherently wrong as a cultural form but it is a cultural form. It’s a cultural form that’s not recognizing itself as a cultural form. That’s the problem.

As a result a bunch of individuals think they are simply meditating and connecting into their individual personal inner space and finding their truest most authentic desires and wants. And those authentic desires and wants, it turns out, look pretty similar to everyone else’s. Because after all it’s an unconscious cultural pattern.

Just a reminder I’m not saying all manifestation teachings are bunk. Or that the practices in those teachings aren’t valid. It’s just that they need to become conscious of their cultural setting.

Once we highlight the Lower Left, the cultural intersubjective sphere, then we can start to inquire into what kind of culture we want to participate in creating. Without making the intersubjective conscious we have (collectively) no choice nor responsibility. When we do make it conscious, we make such conscious creativity and responsibility possible.

In sum, then before we even get into the manifestation teachings themselves we need to first acknowledge major foundational flaws intrinsic to them. These holes I believe can be patched up leading to the possibility of their wisdom becoming more readily available in a much healthier form. Nevertheless that change isn’t possible until first there’s an honest recognition of the flaws.

17 Feb 2015 1 comment / READ MORE

Money, Ethics, and Healing: An Ambivalent Brew

Posted by Chris Dierkes in Emotions, Healing Arts, Philosophy, Shamanism, Spirituality, The Soul

Introduction: Money and Healing Arts

Recently I was asked to speak on energy healing at a bookstore here in Vancouver. In the discussion period a gentleman asked me about my sense of how money relates to energy healing (or healing modalities in general). He wanted to know what were my ethics around energy healing–do I charge? If so, how do I decide what is a just exchange?

It’s an important question, one that too often is either not asked or dismissed altogether. It’s a complex topic to be sure, yet I find myself frustrated when it comes to this topic by what I perceive to be two dominant extremes.

One extreme basically equates being wealthy with higher consciousness (so-called abundance consciousness in a lot of New Age spirituality). In that camp, one should charge whatever others will pay. Anything less is to somehow be infected with the dreaded virus of “poverty consciousness”. I interact with folks advocating some version of this view very frequently. While there are more sophisticated and more gross versions of this one, the same basic philosophy underlies them all, i.e. the philosophy of capitalism. Namely individuals acting in their own perceived highest self-interest intrinsically leads to the best outcome for the common good. Unfortunately history has shown this view does not lead to the creation of just societies. There’s a great deal of shaming that goes into this approach since all the responsibility is directly laid at each individual’s feet. In other words, if you’re poor, it’s your own fault. This spiritualist view also holds a deep misunderstanding of the structure of capitalism as well as how money operates as a debt instrument within capitalism. It too easily denies the reality of material causality in favor of the notion that everything is about consciousness first and materiality is just simply the outward expression of intentionality and consciousness. As a consequence it’s views on politics, economics, and history are naive at best, oppressive at worst.

As but one example of how multifaceted a topic this is, consider the case of spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson. She recently ran for a seat in the US House of Representatives. One of her key criticisms was of the corrupting influence of unchecked corporate money in the US political process (she’s totally on target with that critique btw). At the same time however she published a book on Money, Work, and Consciousness that is oblivious to the similarly corrupting influence of excessive unchecked wealth in the North American consumerist spiritual scene. She failed to articulate (or perhaps see) how the spirituality of money she articulates in her book can easily co-exist with and even give support to the political and economic ideologies that create the destructive political and social situation she so rightly criticizes. (On the other hand she did take the piss out of some rich techies).

So the uncritical view of wealth = abundance consciousness really needs to be critiqued.

The other extreme, however, is to see all forms of specifically monetary exchange as inherently corrupted. This is not really the helpful critique it may look like at first. (These are the kinds of people the first camp always points to as a way to justify their own position). I encounter these folks from time to time in my work–they either explicitly or usually more implicitly criticize me (or others) for charging money for my work. Doesn’t matter the amount–it’s the belief that all healing or spiritual work should be free. In the worst of all cases, this is really just a spiritual rationalization for the fact that they don’t want to properly acknowledge and pay for the skilled work of another. They feel entitled to receive for free without any requisite reciprocity (i.e. they are being deeply unjust). Lot of self-righteousness in this camp in my experience, though a very different kind than the first one.

Fortunately my sense of the man asking me the question was he was sincerely asking. I felt like I had some space to explore this question. The honest truth is I haven’t yet found a way of being in this process that feels completely aligned for me. It may be that I never will reach that place. Perhaps at best I’m angling closer and closer to that mark.

Hell, there may not even be such a place. I think it’s a question those of us creating our own work and businesses in the world in the realm of spirituality, energy healing, coaching, personal development, etc. need to continually be asking. My experience is most folks actually fall somewhere along a spectrum, often an uneasy fluid space, realizing however implicitly, that both extremes are deeply flawed but not entirely sure what other options are available.

Over the course of the last year I’ve developed a diverse set of models that I deploy throughout this work. My hope in so doing is that I’m creating a practice that is balanced in terms of exchange and overall is a just one. Though as I said, it’s definitely a work in progress and I would never claim I’ve solved this conundrum (the more I delve into, the less convinced I am that there is a perfect solution).

Here are the different models I use. But more than anything if this serves any purpose, hopefully it will encourage dialogue on this important topic among practitioners.

Models

Set Energetic Exchange
This form is the most common one I employ. In other worlds it would be considered a fee or the price. I prefer the term exchange. There is a just reciprocity between one who offer gifts with their talents to another and that other then giving back proportionally in response. In this version that exchange comes through money. (Though as you’ll see I do include other forms of exchange in my work). Over the course of the last year I’ve increased the rate of energetic (i.e. monetary) exchange a number of times. I purposefully set the rate initially on the low side in order to gain a sense of facility with the process I was developing. Now that I’ve worked through that process for nearly two years and feel very confident in its beneficial effects, I feel it’s appropriate to set the scale of exchange at a different rate.

Pay What You Can
I’m experimenting with this model in terms of small group work. I learned about this model through a few articles on restaurants where customers can pay whatever they can (or in some versions what they feel the meal is worth). There may be a suggested rate but no one is turned away. Clients with more material means are encouraged (assuming they enjoy the service and meal) to consider giving a larger amount than the suggested rate, knowing that in so doing they are covering for others who can’t afford the suggested rate, thereby allowing the restaurant to pay its staff properly and to maintain itself as a business.

Donation (aka dana)
This one’s straightforward. From the Latin donatio (gift), donation is a pure free-will offering (sometimes with a suggested donation) but ultimately each person makes up his/her mind and makes a monetary offering (or none at all). When I worked in churches this was the dominant form of exchange. In my work now I incorporate donation typically for evening lectures, one off events, or open gatherings.

Gifting
I seek to give out gifts from time to time. I don’t take applications for this one. I simply make a choice depending on the situation or as I desire. The concept derives from the Latin word for grace (gratia, like gratis meaning free of charge), which has its roots in pleasing, favoring, good will. I find it a helpful experience to remind me of the feeling of giving on its own terms.

Barter
Barter is typically in my world called a trade. Trading one’s skill set and sessions for another’s–usually another practitioner of a different healing modality. I have related in that way in the past. I’ve also found alternative forms of trade, e.g. individuals cooking me meals (only really good chefs though quality for this category though!).

Service Tithe
This one is sometimes referred to as the sliding scale, though I don’t agree with that term. What it means in practice is I’ve set a certain number of spots in my work that are available for the right clients who have challenging circumstances around paying the full exchange. Someone very motivated who would connect well with the work but for whom that level of financial contribution is simply not feasible. Those spots only open when one of the individuals currently going through the process under this provision finishes.

Implications

I deeply value the notions of commerce, artistry, production, creation, exchange, currency. I even love the word economics, It was a word used in Christian theology to describe God’s saving relationship to creation. It’s root meaning is the system of fair and equitable distribution of food in an ancient household system (called an oikos). In fact many economic terms have their roots in theology (or alternatively, much of theology has its roots in economics). Words like redemption, which only remains in English in terms of redeeming coupons, originally meant buying the freedom of a slave.

Even the word business itself. Etymologically, it refers to one’s care. It connotes a sense of diligence, occupation. It has a historical meaning of ‘what one is about at the moment’, i.e. one’s business.

I’ve created a business as a means to enact this work in the world. I chose this path over my previous ways–employment in the non-profit sector and my earlier years as a monk with vows of poverty, living in a setting of communal property ownership. The business I’m creating and the revenue it is designed to generate is a means to facilitate the work I want to do as well as the way I am able to provide for the needs of myself and my family. The various models are simply various strategies of trying to balance a sense of personal well being, proper energetic exchange, and justice in an unjust society.

Sadly all of these processes–commerce, trade, exchange, production, artistry–have become funnelled through a very distorted and distorting reality known as capitalism (and money as a debt instrument within capitalism). In its globalized form, capitalism (on the large scale) it seems to me is increasingly driven to a vision of plutocracy–to the desires of simply generating more capital itself. Under the ruling economic ideology (neoliberalism), humanity is choosing to take off the restrictions on capitalism. Capitalism however has no mechanism within itself for the just distribution of the wealth it generates. The evidence is clear that without a contravening process (e.g. high taxation and strong social safety net) capital inevitably becomes massively concentrated by a minuscule percentage of human beings. That this massively unjust distribution and inequality occurs is not primarily due to the fact that the ultra-wealthy have higher consciousness than everyone else and that the masses are unenlightened in their poverty consciousness. Contrary to the New Age ideology, money is not a neutral energy. Everything is not simply a product of your thoughts and actions creating your reality.

It’s taken me a long time to separate out the business, commercial, production, and exchange side from the mechanism of the exchange (namely capitalism). Doing so has allowed me to redeem (there’s that economic/theological word again) a sense of business. But it does mean I do so with full recognition that my business and my service exist within a wider network of injustice.

So while it would be easy for me to rail against them out there, whoever they are, the truth is is that I’m implicated in what I criticize as well. I’m not immune from it. I have seen the enemy and he is me. (At least in part).

How to live with that dual recognition of the inherent goodness of what I seek to offer in this world and the natural reciprocal process of occupation that enables it (also good) along with the intrinsically destructive platform by which and through which it occurs?

Because the honest truth is that I’m not interested in these challenges slowing me down to a place of inaction. I do want to make a significant impact. But I do carry a grief within me–one that I think all of us do if we become sensitized to the injustices of the world. If we don’t cut ourselves off from our natural empathy and horror in the face of such wanton historical and present-time cruelty and brutality. At this point the New Age traditions would advocate that I shouldn’t go down this road because I’m attracting bad things into my life by thinking negative thoughts. But I’m not interested in a spiritual version of anesthesia, to numb out economic, political, and social reality.

So for now this concatenation of models is the best I know how to do. I will continue to seek to evolve those processes and move (hopefully) to a place where the business itself generates new forms of creative expression that instantiate the values I hold dear and reveal a different mode of being, one more aligned to the wisdom of life than our out of alignment and distorted reality known as capitalism.

08 Feb 2015 no comments / READ MORE

Dissolving Pain: Or Spiritual Practice in Tattoo Chair

Posted by Chris Dierkes in Emotions, Healing Arts, Philosophy

tat

Last week I got a tattoo (my second tat, pictured above). This one is much larger and more intricate than my first so consequently I was in the chair much longer. All told it was about 3 1/2 hours for this one (in one sitting).

I mention this because it gave me a great opportunity to practice experiencing sensation. The tattoo artist repeatedly told me I was “taking it like a champ”. And while it is true I do have a high threshold for pain—I spent a lot of my youth getting pocked and prodded with needles as well as various painful medical procedures–I wasn’t just grinning and bearing it.

What allowed me to work through the experience was something more than just a high threshold or tolerance for pain. It’s one of the fruits of a kind of conscious bodily practice.

What do I mean by conscious bodily practice?

In order to answer that let’s start with clarifying a couple of terms: suffering and pain. For this context I would define suffering as what we do to avoid pain. It is what we add onto pain itself. (This isn’t always true but in this case I think this definition holds and it holds in many many other contexts as well). In this understanding suffering is more optional whereas pain is inevitable. In other words, one can experience pain without necessarily suffering.

This is a good first start but it’s not the final step because pain as it turns out isn’t as simple as pain.

Pain is itself (in many cases) an interpretation. What I mean is that it’s possible to get underneath pain–to befriend pain as my friend Irene Lyon would say. Pain can be broken down into constituent micro-sensations.

And this is what I did while being tattooed.

Pain is a word we have for a series of various sensations, mostly unpleasant sensations. If a person senses into the experience itself and takes off the interpretive filter of pain then it is possible for the pain to shift into other sensations.

So while I’m sitting being tattooed there were times where it was painful. There were plenty of other times where it was not.

Sometimes I would simply acknowledge I was experiencing pain and that was about that. I could still be talking to the tattooist, the other guys in the shop, listen to the music that was playing, or be working through something in my mind. A bit of pain but nothing overwhelming or particularly concerning.

Other times I wanted to explore the sensations I was calling pain. In those moments I felt into the sensations and then they stopped being pain.

When I really focused and felt and became curious about the sensations I found that what I otherwise reflexively call pain ended up being a much richer series of experiences and sensations.

I would simply become curious and name each sensation as it was occurring, Internally it would go like:
“scratching”
“tearing”
“clawing”
“burning”
“searing”
“oozing” (blood)
“zapping”

Then there was sensations I would describe as:
“throbbing”
“shooting”
“sharp”
“stretching”
“tightening”

I kept going:
“pulsing”
“twitching”
“rubbing”
“numbing”

When there would be temporary breaks in the process I would even feel:
“pleasure”
“release”
“relaxation”

At the most intense experiences during which I focused most deeply into the process, I even began to feel blissful. Blissful in what others would label pain.

I became so intensely focused at points that I actually forgot I was being tattooed (no joke!). I had my eyes closed and became so drawn into the sensations I really for a time lost the world around me or what was going on.

I opened my eyes up and was for a second was pretty startled until I remembered, “Oh yeah I’m getting a tattoo.”

Throughout the 3+ hours in the chair I would never once describe my experience as suffering. I never got caught in a mental whirl about how painful this all was and when would it be over and how much longer and oh god this is terrible and I can’t escape and I’m feeling trapped and please make it stop.

Didn’t happen.

I never suffered. I did experience plenty of pain but without much resistance to the pain itself. A few winches that was it. The most painful place was in the soft tissue on my curving towards my armpit. The second most tender place was along the ridge of my shoulder, where we touched some bone.

At those points especially I went into the pain and pain dissolved into other sensations–plenty of which were uncomfortable and unpleasant in various ways but intriguing and fascinating. Not in a masochistic kind of way but in a clarifying way.

Of course you don’t have to get tattooed to experience pain or more accurately unpleasant sensation. It’s part of our daily lives. Though if you are getting tattooed this is the way to do it trust me.

The good news here is that it’s very simple to reduce our suffering and enter our pain. By welcoming and entering our pain we can find our pain isn’t as simple as pain.

As I was walking home after the tattoo I could tell there were some blocked parts in my arm. Parts that felt as if they had been zapped or poked and had quickly contracted. All completely normal at the time no doubt.

The experience however was over yet these places felt as if they hadn’t relaxed from their contracted state. Like in grade school when kids would fake punching each other in the gut, the stomach naturally caves in as protection. But it was as if part of my arm was still caved in long after I realized the kid was only faking a punch. Or in this case actually sticking a needle into my flesh.

On the walk home, I let my arm start to gently move. It wanted to do this kind of almost popping up motion, with my shoulder raising and then lowering. As I did I began to feel energy and sensation moving and releasing, like electrical charges firing off.

Peter Levine says that pain is trapped sensation. It’s unfinished sensation, a kind of unfinished movement. By allowing the sensations to finish, allowing them to move as they wished–both during the tattooing and afterwards–my healing process has gone very smoothly. Little bits of residual soreness and tightness in some spots (to be expected) but overall doing wonderfully.

Anyone can learn this natural yet powerful way of relating to the sensations we describe as pain. Whether those are chronic types of pain or temporary periods of specific localized pain.

We release suffering by entering the pain (wisely) and the pain then itself dissolves into component sensations. We then learn to follow the impulses of those sensations bodily–flowing, rocking, swaying, loosening, as needed.

Healing results.

—

* Tattoo courtesy the awesome dudes at Sanitary Electric Tattoo here in Vancouver.

24 Jan 2015 no comments / READ MORE

The Male Voice(s) of Spirituality: Part IV

Posted by Chris Dierkes in Philosophy, Spirituality, The Imaginal

For Part I, here
For Part II, here
For Part III, here.

—

In Part III of this series I argued for the possibility of re-imagining teachings around sexual essences (e.g. the divine masculine and the feminine) in light of the critical insights of postmodernism regarding the spectrum-like nature of biological sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

In Part IV I want to look at how we might reincorporate spiritual energies in relation to this the postmodern fluid world of gender, biological, and orientation. In so doing I think we find a way towards a post-postmodernism.

It’s an important line of thought because by nature the postmodern theories of gender fluidity, plural sexual orientation, and the spectrum-like nature of biological sex have a secular bias. They typically deny the value of spiritual energies and insights.

The ancient traditions which do describe the reality of spiritual energies tend to make a confused mess of biological sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation. They tend to reduce the rich diversity of sexual orientation, gender expression, and biological sex into very restrictive, even at times oppressive, static boxes (there are plenty of counterexamples within the traditions themselves but they nevertheless came from societies that had such strictures in place).

So (very generally speaking) we end up with a binary choice between a spiritual but socially regressive view or a socially progressive view absent any spiritual depth.

Asking the question in this way allows us to retain the insights of both the ancient and the postmodern, in the process opening doors to new creative possibilities.

When we look at the depictions of sexuality and gender (and even sexual orientation) among the gods and goddesses we see a surprising diversity and plurality from the ancient world, much more so than our simplistic, more modernist binary categorizations.

Given that I’m biologically male, heterosexual, and that my gender expression is fairly dude-ish, the normative assumption would be that I identify more intrinsically with male deities, male religious figures, and the so-called divine masculine (and perhaps even more broadly the male hero’s quest).

But I’ve spent a great deal of my life in devotion, connection, communion, and even at points identification with female deities, saints, and energies. In so doing, I don’t believe I’ve embraced my inner feminine but rather that through such connections, it’s helped to cultivate a certain energy in me classically defined as feminine but one that doesn’t need to be so named any longer in my view. At least I don’t believe it can be named and described as (divine) feminine in a pre-critical, simplistic way. At minimum to use the term requires a winking sense of humor. Not “feminine” in snark quotes but as if it had an slyly sardonic emoji following it.

After all there is an incredible range and diversity within the so-called divine feminine. There’s Mary in her apparitions (Guadalupe, Fatima, Lourdes, etc.). As Stella Maris, Mary is the The Anima Mundi, The World Soul herself. As The Black Madonna she is something else entirely.

There’s Lady Wisdom from the Wisdom Books of the Hebrew Bible (later Shekinah in Kabbalistic Judaism), walking through the streets seeking disciples–which by the way Christians later understood Lady Wisdom to be Incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, hence a male incarnation of a female deity symbol.

In pre-Islamic Arabian religion there was al-Lat, though she herself was one of a triad of female deities (along with Al-Uzzah and Al-Manat).

As Shakti, the feminine is radiance, light, and manifest reality. In other depictions, the Goddess is thought to be The Moon, The Night, The Virgin.

In Taoism the feminine (yin) is dark, cool, constricting. In Reiki, earth (or feminine) energy is warm and expansive.

And that’s just a very small smattering.

So when people ask me about the divine feminine my first response is always–which one or ones do you mean exactly? There’s 21 different Taras after all!

Also there are historical, concrete flesh and blood woman spiritual realizers–each of them expressing all kinds of various energies, qualities, and insights. There’s more well known names like Lady Tsogyal, Mary Magdalene, Al-Rabia, and Mirabai. There’s less well known (but no less potent) characters like Hadewijch of Brabant, Marguerite of Porete, Sarada Devi, Hazrat Babajan, and Francesa Sarah. Not to mention the many gifted living women spiritual teachers from a variety of spiritual and religious traditions. Really I should say spiritual teachers (who happen to be women).

Now I’m not suggesting we neuter or spade or androgynize these energies or persons (unless of course they were androgynous to begin with as some most definitely are) but rather we take off our preconceived filters of polarity and static essences when approaching the holy.

Also, the plurality described above need not fragment in all directions. There are ways to begin to unify these realities through proper relationship, not melding them all into one homogenous soup but maintaining their uniqueness. Again this is what I’m describing as an attempt at post-postmodernism.

The same is true for the divine masculine (also with an emoji after it).

There diversity, paradox, and humor abound.

Take how Christ Jesus is often attempted to be pigeonholed into Divine Masculine categories with rather absurd results. Christ is often described mythologically along the lines of Apollo (or for that matter Dionysius). But his energy is actually distinct. There are Sun (or Son) like qualities of Christ’s nature which superficially bear a resemblance to Apollonian energy. But in truth there’s far too much heart, far too much true spiritual sacrifice in Christ to parallel an Apollos (and actually also Dionysius). Christ incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth shows an entire range of human emotion: rage, grief, sadness, ecstasy, compassion, disgust, tenderness, abandonment, vulnerability, and terror. What he was able to do was remain conscious in and through and as all of those states. He was neither removed from emotions (in the more traditional Apollonian sense) nor simply succumbing to them in an increasingly unconscious way (as per Dionysius).

So Jesus is male and according to some the incarnation of the divine masculine and yet manifests a series of qualities classically identified as feminine, like nurturance, tenderness, caring, and embrace. So which is it? Maybe it’s easier to let go of the simplistic polarities and let the beings be who they are and open their revelation and insight to us from within their space rather than trying to squeeze them into our preconceived, excessively narrow boxes.

Consider some other examples of the divine masculine (emoji). There’s Shiva, aka The Dark Lord. Not dark in a demonic, satanic sense but as in the Darkness, the utter Void. Shiva sits in graveyards. He is untouched by everything arising and occurring here. As Nataranja, Shiva dances in order to destroy the world, making room for a new creation (he also looks like a woman in this form btw). As Ardhanarishvara, Shiva is actually half-man, half-woman (“The Lord who is half-woman”). Or consider Lord Krishna, an Incarnation of the Creator Vishnu, a beautiful male, often boyish in appearance, living in devotion to life and utterly charismatic.

These are energies that any man (actually any person I would argue) can access, cultivate, and receive through grace.

We could point to other great male religious figures or deities: e.g. Prophet Muhammad, Prophet Moses, The Buddha.

There’s overlap between these beings but there’s also clear diversity and distinction. The Buddha for example brings a characteristic serenity. A nature of equipoise. Buddha held no beliefs about the nature of the after life or questions of cosmic origins. He was solely focused on the nature of emptiness (nirvana) and living the right life flowing from such a realization.

That expression is quite distinct from that of a Moses.

There are thousands of various deities, angels, prophets, cosmic Buddhas in the traditions historically or mythologically male. This multiplicity points yet again I believe to the futility of trying to create a single, normative energy we would call the masculine. These are all spiritual energies with a historical connection (of some variety) to being male. Those energies are not only able to be held by men of course–e.g. women can be Christ-like or realize the awakening of the Buddha. Just that for this series I’m more focused on men.*

I often hear that The Divine Masculine is about witnessing, the background of consciousness against which everything arises. Some of those male beings connect with that aspect of spiritual awakening but plenty of others do not (in fact quite the opposite).

While I’m not myself a big fan of the words feminine and masculine–either as gender terms nor as spiritual ones–it is true that we lack a proper set of terms for these energies we’re speaking about here. Hence I believe we default to terms from biological sex and gender.

My argument is we are talking about energies that are in fact not intrinsically tied to men or women (on that point I actually agree with those teachings themselves). But then I don’t understand why we would choose terms derived from gender, often confused (wrongly) to indicate biological sex, and even within the world of gender are potentially flawed themselves (see for example The Feminine Mystique).

This terminology makes it more challenging to work with these energies in a healthy way.

Worse still, the binary nature of masculine and feminine also prevents more interplay. In the spiritual world I see far too much biological sex-segregation, explicit (or implicit) sexual orientation segregation and gender segregation. There definitely can be a time and place to be with people like us, especially for individuals who need a space to find their own voice. Overall however I think we really need to start supporting one another. I think there needs to be much more intermingling and intermixing and static categorizations of masculine and feminine have not been helpful in that regard (in my estimation).

With polarities (like masculine/feminine) people immediately get split off into various camps. They get labeled one or the other, which now defines them in all situations, contexts, and aspects of their being. This reduces them as human beings to simply being another version of some prior archetype. Their humanity is effaced in the process.

If however we started with a fluid understanding of gender, biological sex, and orientation, we could extend the fluidity into spiritual energies. Polarities then might be one possibled expression of spiritual energies but it would by no means by the only one or even the assumed normative and best one. It would simply be one. One construct among many constructs.

These varying expressions could take many forms (i.e. be formed into multiple constructs). There could be polarities as well as singularities. There could be multiples (beyond the two-ness of polarity) as well as the zeroness.

This way of relating calls upon our imagination as entryway into a world of possible-and- yet-somehow-also-already-existing-realities (aka the imaginal realm). The gods, goddesses, even the historical-based spiritual masters and saints, exist in the imaginal realm. The imaginal is a realm that is both partially constructed by the human but one that partially constructs the human (think Fantasia in The Neverending Story). The imaginal is a two way street in other words.

It’s not so simplistic as Ludwig Feuerbach’s thesis that humanity has created deities in its image--in this case particularly in its normative biological sex and gendered images. In that view, divinity is not ontologically real but simply a creation of human psychology (usually as some kind of coping strategy for the vicissitudes of life).

While Feuerbach was definitely not right, he wasn’t totally wrong either. Humans are, at least in part, (co)constructing the imagery of the divine based on analogies from the human, created world. And a strong–though by no means utterly determinative part–of human created existence is biological sex, sexual identity, and gender expression. So it is no surprise that in terms of co-creating the imagery of the divine humans are (at least in part) playing out their own forays into understanding their own nature (especially around sex and gender) by projecting those questions and images onto the screen of divinity.

It’s also true however that humanity is made in the image and likeness of God (gods, goddesses, deities) as the ancients understand well. Here in this regard the divine is imagining us into being and is playing out the various possibilities (among other things) of sexuality, biological sex, and gender through us.

The secular world is largely beholden to the Feuerbachian thesis. The contemporary spiritual scene is still largely based in the second camp, the metaphysical viewpoint, naively assuming a top-down model of the universe, disempowering and disowning the human (co)construction of divinity, particularly as it relates to the complex issues of biological sex, sexual orientation, and gender expression. Not to mention this nearly unnameable 4th category–the so-called sexual essences.**

In the imaginal realm it is both true that we are partially creating the imagery of the divine through metaphors and comparisons to daily existence but it is also true that the divine creates us through the interaction.

This imaginal two-way street is definitely in place when it comes to this difficult to name fourth reality we’ve been exploring here–what goes by the name of sexual essences (in addition to the “three” of gender expression, sexual orientation, and biological sex).

I think sexual essences is wrongly named and wrongly theorized but I do think nevertheless it’s pointing to another category of experience and insight. I think what underlies the term is a very real thing. This very real thing (for lack of a better word) is something that isn’t biological sex, sexual orientation, or gender and yet is intimately related to all those while remaining distinct. Something spiritual and connected to these others aspects of ourselves and yet not reducible to them either.

What we need is a new word or set of words to convey this reality of the 4th. Sexual essences, Divine Feminine, Divine Masculine don’t in my view cut it, but they hang around because they’re pointing to something very real and very important. The something they are pointing to is not described under more secular theories and rubrics of biological sex, gender, or sexual orientation.

But again as this 4th is described in far too many classic and contemporary teachings, the energies are bound to a very narrow frame of reference. The interpretative context in which these spiritual energies are practiced, understood, and incarnated culturally is often not life-giving. In fact they are often energetically death-dealing in my view.

Hence we need a new frame of reference. We need a frame of reference that is not reducible solely to pluralized postmodern understandings of sexuality, gender, and biological sex, but that is not incongruent to that view either.

At minimum it’s not less than postmodern in other words.

By that definition much of what goes on in New Age and Neo-Tantra communities and the like doesn’t cut it. While they typically market themselves as being progressive and evolutionary and cutting edge, their understandings and descriptions of biological sex, sexual orientation, and gender expression are usually at least 40 years out of date. Often more like 60-70 years behind the times. They are in fact quite regressive in many instances.

Because of that regression the postmodern critical word has denied the underlying reality of what they are pointing to. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater in other words.

Both of those approaches are false starts. We need another option.

Which brings us back to the nub of the problem–the word essences (as in sexual essences).

The word essences originally derives from the root perfuming (as in an essential oil). Maybe the term aromas or essences (understood in this perfuming-way) would be a term to work with.

We let go of the static notion of only two major Essences (The Masculine and The Feminine). We could potentially also let go of the term sexual in sexual essences. The energies are not per se about sex (either biological or sexual attraction). At least not always. Sometimes they are, sometimes they are not.

They are more Eros (or Erotic) than they are sexual. Eros can include any number of intimate loving relationships including but not limited to sexual ones–e.g. friendships, parent-child, grandparent-grandchildren, siblings, cousins. Why is the sexual model of monogamy (and usually heterosexually imagined) the primary model for this fourth spiritual energy?

As a spiritual metaphor sexual embrace does have value and beauty to it. But so long as we are also not incorporating the other metaphors say of friendship or sorority or fraternity or paternity, then we need to ask why we keep defaulting to the sexual to describe our essences?

Once we open up the metaphoric field to other kinds of intimate relationships, then we break up the static polarity model as the only model for practice and spiritual experience. For example, within the multiplicity of energies described under the rubric of the feminine and the masculine, some of those energies do tend to enter into polarity-based relationships. Plenty of others do not. Polarity relates well to two lovers. It doesn’t particularly relate well to say a circle of friends.

In sum then we have a responsibility for (co)creating the frames, the metaphors, and our own meaning around this “4th” reality. We are not simply beholden to some traditionalism–whether real or imagined.

But what we need to co-create has to have significant depth, subtlety, and a supple nature to it. A flattened out diversity that simply keeps extending horizontally leaves only silos of personalized meaning, cages of self-contraction and self-isolation.

We aren’t co-creating these frames and insights entirely out of the blue though either. I’m not advocating a view of denying what has come before and simply transcending into some new creative, evolutionary future of whatever. Inevitably that leads to an enforced and sterile androgyny and asexuality (as opposed to legitimate forms of androgyny and asexuality).

The energies are real. They have been described–at least a good many of them have been. Perhaps there are more such energies to reveal themselves but for now we have a large deck to work with.

Each being can come into a relationship with these energies–those known as The Divine Masculine, The Divine Feminine, The Divine Androgynous, The Divine Non-Gendered, etc–and find their own integrated configuration of them. They can find their own essential aroma or perfume. They can then share that aroma and blend their aromas with the aromas of others, creating a communion of integrations.

They can do this of course in whatever various configuration of biological sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, and sexual preferences they incarnate in human terms. This teaching of the spiritual energies/aromas would never be separate from those aspects of themselves but not reducible to them either.

—

While in this post I’m spending more time on classically depicted male and female imagery, it’s also true that there is asexual divine imagery, transgendered, hermaphroditic (really sex-shape shifting), and androgynous imagery amongst others.

** One other fluid spectrum related here could be sexual preferences (which can be seen as distinct from sexual orientation). That would be say a spectrum around various kinks, fetishes, preferences, and the like. e.g. Whether one is more into (so-called) vanilla sex, BDSM, etc. Again this cuts across sexual orientations. In this case, the sexual essences would be a fifth category.

16 Jan 2015 no comments / READ MORE

Male Pain and Male Voice: Part III

Posted by Chris Dierkes in Philosophy, Spirituality

For Part I in this series, click here.
For Part II, here.

—

When I used to write at Beams and Struts we often spoke of post-postmodern (or integral) thought. While the term post-postmodernism is quite jargony, the idea behind it is easy to grasp. Post-postmodern is an attempt to create a new cultural formation which incorporates the best of the postmodern world and yet adds its own distinctive elements: hence post-postmodern.

One of, if not the, central insights of postmodernity is that the world is pluralistic (pluralistic not inherently relativistic). It’s a world of different languages, different cultures, different gender identities, different ethnicities, different sexual orientations. Every person is a blend of these plural, diverse expressions. One’s social location or context heavily influences one’s worldview.

In its best moments, there’s a healthy appreciation of plurality in postmodernism.* No one group or identity gets to be made the norm to which all the others are then judged. Men aren’t the norm for being human and women aren’t simply deficient men (as say in Aristotle). European or European-descended peoples aren’t the norm of civilized humanity to which all other peoples are regarded as primitive or backward. Heterosexuals aren’t the norm for healthy sexual orientation to which everyone else is compared (nor is monogamy the norm for intimate, sexual relationship). Homo sapien sapiens aren’t the norm of earthly creatures to which all animals (or sentient life itself) are judged.

And vice versa for all of the above.

There is no center around which everything or everyone else orbits. That’s what I mean by postmodernism.

Post-postmodernism then builds up on that central insight. It adds a simple proposition: that there is a way to begin to weave and bind and join these pluralities. It does so not by trying to reduce the plurality back to some earlier form of imposed and artificial uniformity (e.g. colonialism) but in a respectful way. A way that recognizes that we are inherently always and already part of each other’s existences, though not in co-dependent nor in a forcefully imposed manner.

Consequently post-postmodern can be also be called integrated pluralism. It’s a movement towards integrating the multiplicities of existence.

If I turned it into a simple formula it would be: first postmodernism then post-postmodernism. First plurality, then integrating the plurality.**

This series is my very rough attempt at articulating some elements of a post-postmodern way of thinking and being specifically in relation to the question of men in Western societies. Part I laid out a vision of integrating male voices within the postmodern pluralist world. Part II discussed a man’s discourse built upon pain and wildness. And in Part III a deeper look at these issues are explored in the world of spiritual practice.

So first we need to take into account some postmodern insights. We want to make sure we don’t end up reinforcing views that are less than postmodern, i.e. less than pluralistic (pre-postmodern rather than post-postmodern to use the jargon). We need a healthy postmodern, pluralistic base upon which to potentially weave integrating or integrative thoughts.

This talk by Gabrielle Burton is a very good example of a healthy pluralistic view around sex, gender, and sexuality.

In it she describes three related but distinct spectra:

Gender identity is a spectrum (or a continuum of fluid expression)
Biological sex as a spectrum
Sexual orientation as a spectrum.

Under biological sex there’s male, female, and intersex. Under sexual orientation we have (mainly) heterosexual, (mainly) homosexual, bisexual, polysexual, asexual. Under gender identity we have a huge range of diversity.

Burton’s point is that none of those are binaries. Not even biological sex. The tendency of our minds is so naturally prone to creating simplistic binaries: male versus female, straight versus gay, masculine versus feminine. (We’re going to explore that last one–masculine/feminine–as it shows up in spiritual literature.)

Further her insight is that when you consider all three of these spectra as distinct from one another you can see a multiplicity of diverse combinations. e.g. A predominantly or even exclusively heterosexual man who likes periodically to dress in women’s clothing (gender expression), whose biologically male. That’s different from someone born biologically male who transitions to being biologically female (transgendered versus cross-dresser). Or a bisexual woman with fluid gender expression and identity. Or an individual with either male or female biology who does not identify according to a classic gender profile whose most often sexually attracted to women.

The various permutations are basically endless. We need to keep this crucial point in mind because it’s all too easy to reduce plurality back to simple binaries.

Which brings us back to this idea of a stallion energy, a wildness in men, discussed in Part III.

In spiritual communities this stallion energy is often labeled the masculine (as in The Divine Masculine). This energy is in then contrasted to the feminine (The Divine Feminine).

In the spiritual literature these masculine/feminine qualities are typically described as sexual essences–essences here being different from biological sex, gender expression, or sexual orientation. (See for example the writings of David Deida.)

The hypothesis of a sexual essence is that all of us–of all sexual orientations, gender expressions, and biological sexes–have both masculine and feminine essences (or energies) within us. For most people they have a dominant (say masculine) and therefore will be attracted typically to someone who has an opposite dominant essence (in that case, feminine).

This school of thought expends a great deal of ink and energy arguing that feminine does not mean women and masculine does not mean men. Masculine and Feminine are energies or essences, not (supposedly) indications of biological sex or gender.

I’ve written elsewhere at great length about why I think this masculine/feminine framework is not an entirely helpful one to really understand and work with this energy. I’m not going to repeat that entire argument here but the basic points are the following:

1. Using inherently gendered terms to describe something defined as non-gendered inevitably brings up gender. Why use specifically gender-based terms to describe something defined as non-gendered?

2. By calling these essences feminine and masculine, it often brings up people’s views on biological sex since it’s very common to conflate biological sex and gender. Remember from the talk above, biological sex and gender expression are different spectra. Biologically an individual could be male (that is have a XY chromosomal structure) though that male’s individual’s gender expression as a man could exist in a multitude of different forms.

Very often then calling a sexual essence masculine I believe indicates the following in the minds of many, if not, most of its hearers:

  • a biological male
  • with traditional or stereotypical “guy”, “masculine” gender expression and identity
  • most likely, a heterosexual male.
  • (very possibly) assumed to be white.

All that from the word masculine. Technically according to the spiritual literature none of those four markers is indicated by the term masculine: it’s not supposedly about being a male, it’s not solely confined to heterosexual or conventional male gender expression or only to be true for white men.

Simply put, the reason these writings have to spend so much time arguing that feminine doesn’t mean women and masculine doesn’t mean men is that (in my opinion) most everyone thinks feminine equals women and masculine equals men.

For the record, I’m all for having intelligent conversations about gender but when a person says there’s a masculine and a feminine energy and then say that those terms aren’t referring to gender but to energies then gender issues will be experienced and (mis)interpreted as ahistorical, archetypal energies. For example the masculine is said to be directive, while the feminine is receptive. But this leaves open a huge possibility to revive a very traditionalist cultural and social construction of gender where men are in charge and women are subservient.

3. Once mistake #2 is made (where masculine and feminine are confused with biological sex, gender, or both) it denies men and women capacities inherent to their beings by arguing that they must incorporate the capacities of the other side of the polarity. So for a man (ahem, excuse me the masculine) to be nurturing, compassionate, and embracing he has to become like a woman (er embrace the feminine). Compassion, nurturance, and embrace are said to be feminine characteristics. Just as how a woman has to become like a man in order to be a leader, a strong personality and so on. Since strong, forceful, agentic expression are said to be masculine–which again is supposed to be ahistorical sexual essence but in practice is a codeword for our very contingent human social and gendered expressions.***

4. By describing this energy as a sexual essence it has a tendency in our marketplace of spiritual practice to reduce Eros to sex and sexuality rather than seeing sexuality and sexual relationship as one very important expression of Eros but not the entirely or Eros altogether either. The whole rise of so-called Neo-Tantra in the West often falls into precisely this failure.

5. It sets up our experience and understanding of these energies as inherently polar. In a polarity one begins dominant in one side or another (say by nature more masculine than feminine). Then the only option in a polarity is to switch to the other pole (in this case embracing the feminine). And then one must come to some integrated space, a union of the two energies. But as we say above, gender, biological sex, and sexual orientation aren’t polarities–they’re each a continuum, a range of possible, fluid expression. What if what people describe as the masculine and feminine sexual/spiritual essences is actually pointing to something real but placing it within the framework of a polarity reduces the subtlety of possible experience and insight? (I’m going to argue that point in a second).

Given 1-5, to put it bluntly, there’s a lot of confusion and ignorance in this world. The feminine-masculine discourse of spiritual teaching doesn’t met the standards of critical postmodern inquiry. It doesn’t grasp the nuanced relationship between biological sex, gender, and sexual orientation. It doesn’t recognize how each of those exist along a spectrum. It’s very prone, in my estimation to believe itself to be using sexuality and sex as a metaphor for living a more Erotic life altogether, when in practice it’s often reducing Eros to sex, thereby potentially re-objectifying human beings (usually with an implicit or explicit heteronormative bias).

Now when I wrote my original piece I was criticized for denying the validity of the energies that people point to when they describe the masculine and the feminine. I explicitly stated in the piece that I didn’t feel that way. I did then and still now in fact believe they point to something crucial and meaningful but that didn’t seem to get through to a significant number of readers. It’s true however that I didn’t elaborate greatly on how I experience and understand those energies. I was more focused there on critiquing the frameworks and interpretations around the issue.

I stand by those critiques (I’ve repeated him here after all). I still hold to my argument that we need to start first with a postmodern pluralistic framework and from there see if there is something left of value in this spiritual world–something these sexual essence writings are correctly intuiting and pointing to even though they are framing it in inadequate ways. Something that could perhaps catapult us into some kind of post-postmodernity.

I do believe those teachings are onto something but that important something is currently all tied up in very regressive, uncritical views about biological sex, gender expression, and sexual orientation.

What if these energies are real? But what if how we relate to them can change our experience of them? What if there are more or less adequate frames of reference with which to interpret and experience these energies? And what if a binary/polarity structure is a limiting way of experiencing them?

Consider Carl Jung whose work lays behind much of the masculine/feminine discourse in New Age and contemporary spiritual circles. Jung described the animus (masculine) and anima (feminine). He is often criticized (rightly) for overlaying his understanding of animus (masculine) and anima (feminine) with Victorian social and gender construction, claiming something to be universal which was (at least in part) highly contingent. With the postmodern came a deconstruction of Jung’s unconscious social and gender lens. As a result however animus and anima as energies have largely been denied.

So the postmodern turn loses animus and anima while the New Age and spiritual teachings basically keep the framework as is and don’t take seriously enough the postmodern critique. Hence the New Age (and frankly much of integral thought) is in my estimation quite regressive on this front.

These are difficult topics. They’re complex, multifaceted. It’s taken three lengthy posts just to get to the point to be able to talk about these issues. I get the impulse to just have a simple discussion with simple terms. I sympathize with it, but I don’t think in the end it’s very helpful.

In Part IV I’ll explore my sense of how we might connect to our a multiplicity of energies referred to in the spiritual traditions under the garb of diverse biological sex and gender identities. How we might be able to retrieve some of these energies and merge them with a more critical interpretive lens.

—

* There are also plenty of dark sides and limitations to postmodernism. I’m not particularly focused on those in this piece but they do exist and I’ve written about them elsewhere. Indicating a desire for a post-postmodern world is already a sign of (partial) critique of postmodernism.

** In actual practice of course it’s not so formulaic.

*** I’m not denying (quasi)universal distinctions based on biological sex. I get accused of this frequently, though I don’t actually think that way. When we separate gender from biological sex and realize biological sex is itself a continuum then yes there could very well be in my mind intrinsic differences to the (multiple) biological sexes. That doesn’t change my view that having unconscious discussions about biological sex and gender under the guise of a non-gendered, non-sexed discussion of sexual essences at best doesn’t work, at worst can be very destructive.

13 Dec 2014 2 comments / READ MORE
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