Information and comments on the essay:
Growing up with Ken Wilber
From the book: Chum for Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters by David Satterlee
Find out more, including where to buy books and ebooks
Read or download this essay as a PDF file at: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4eNv8KtePyKdDE4UDdvR0JfdjQ/edit?usp=sharingA personal journey through Integral levels.
![]() |
Chum For Thought: Throwing Ideas into Dangerous Waters |
Growing up with Ken Wilber
Growing up is all about existential angst. Yes, that’s where
to start. Not with the spitting up, crawling, and preverbal babbling. The real
issues of growing up are: What’s it all about? To be or not to be? What do you
want to be when you grow up? What is the meaning of life, the universe, and
everything? As a crusty old man looking back, I can see that I repeatedly died
to myself and was reborn in progressive and incremental stages. [Below, I will
assign colors to these stages for later reference.]
I grew up as “young brother perfect” in an unconventional
Christian fundamentalist faith. The angels were watching and God knew
everything I did. I wanted a pony in the Kingdom. If I wasn’t good, I couldn’t
live in the New World. [purple]
I was one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Life was a constant
struggle with “worldly” people. I wouldn’t celebrate your pagan holidays, enter
one of your churches, and would not
spend much time with your children because they were “bad associations.” I knew in primary school that college would only corrupt my faith; it was clearly not for me. [red]
spend much time with your children because they were “bad associations.” I knew in primary school that college would only corrupt my faith; it was clearly not for me. [red]
By my teen years, I was past “Aren’t you a cute little boy
with your Watchtower,” and into earning approval inside the
congregation. We were Bible students. We were committed to getting it right and
we were better than you. To prove it, we would wake you up on Saturday mornings
to tell you so right to your face. We wanted nothing much to do with your
corrupt world. We were witnesses of our God and it was wonderful. [blue]
It was appalling. Something about it was not right. As a
young adult, earning a living and caring for my family, I was determined to
make a success of myself. Life was exciting. I had interesting technical work.
I read the news, studied every new field that caught my interest. I still had
ambitions to advance in the congregation, but it was not making me joyful. A
life of Godly devotion was supposed to be as good as it got. I explored the
self-help and leadership literature. I checked out books on psychology and
relationships. I sneaked home books on meditation and Zen. [orange]
Somewhere in this process, some author mentioned Ken Wilber
and I made a note of it. I searched him out at Borders Books and bought The
Essential Ken Wilber. It was strange and hard to chew, but there was
something essentially coherent in there.
I was hooked and read better than 2,500 pages of Wilber
before my orgy of introspection and expanded horizons had wound down. My world
had changed. I now belonged to all of humanity and could examine others’
beliefs without cringing and love them without reserve. [green]
Ken Wilber reports that he faced his own disillusionments
(with science) but completed school with degrees in chemistry and biology. He
explored Buddhism and tried to find a way to reconcile it with Western thought.
In 1973, he wrote The Spectrum of Consciousness, and began lecturing and teaching workshops about the
hidden unities and relationships of disparate scientific fields, philosophies,
and world views.
After the death of his wife from cancer in 1987, Ken
isolated himself and spent over a decade in intense research and voluminous
writing.
He reads voraciously and writes loquaciously. He writes from
depths of personal clarity, expresses himself with a mix of well-ordered
precision and poetic exuberance, and exudes unabashed authority.
Ken Wilber has a special interest in mysticism and what
Aldous Huxley called “The Perennial Philosophy.” The man walks his talk. He
meditates and achieves altered states of consciousness at will. He does all
this without abandoning Western standards of scientific inquiry. Any page in
one of his books may discuss authorities as disparate as Sri Aurobindo, Jean
Gebser, Clare Graves, Chogram Trungpa Rinpoche, Jean Piaget, or Plotinus.
Although this may sound like an unholy mess, Ken has
borrowed, trimmed and constructed a philosophical framework for organizing his
observations. He first assumes that every view has a discernible orientation
and something worthwhile to contribute.
The first construct of his framework is a four quadrant
matrix using internal vs. external orientation against singular vs. plural
reference. Essentially, these indicate internal perception, external
observation, closed cultural views, and open societal views. He adds multiple
lines of progressive development such as emotional, mathematical, musical, and
spiritual.
Development along any of these lines follows predictable
stages such as Jane Lovinger’s stages of ego development. Wilber distinguishes
between temporary peak experience states and permanently achieved stages. He
allows for both feminine compassionate/relationship approaches and masculine
agentic/justice approaches to achieved states.
Ken has also incorporated the research of Clare Graves (as
developed by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan into “Spiral Dynamics.”) Spiral
Dynamics describes and assigns color codes to the successive world views that
are experienced as individuals and cultures mature.
Beige for instinctual reactions;
Purple for spirits and superstition;
Red for survival struggle;
Blue for obedience to authority (including
religious conformity);
Orange for strive/drive ambition;
Green for sense of united open community;
Yellow for ability to observe the dynamics of
complex systems; and
Turquoise for an integrated sense of being and
belonging while within life’s chaos.
Now, I can see that I have been developing through
predictable transformations of worldview. This suggests a structure for growing
toward future stages. The existential angst is receding but not gone. I am a
brother to all things. My responsibility is to learn and love; to improve
myself and leverage that growth into the goal of enlightenment for all sentient
beings.
There remain unimaginable mysteries. There remains too
little time in this flesh. What can I do? What can it mean? What will come
next?
No comments:
Post a Comment