Comprehensive Spirituality

     Here is a link to one of the clearest and simplest expressions of a comprehensive spiritual path I’ve yet come across.  Very helpful, enjoy.

http://www.integralawakeningcenter.com/article_2spiritual-journeys.html

     Here is a fuller commentary of my own on the phenomenon of comprehensive spirituality, with a few more examples.  This essay was originally published on Examiner.com for the regular Berkeley Spirituality column.  Enjoy.

     A “comprehensive” spirituality is one in which you, as a spiritual practitioner, do not feel like any of your pieces are left out.  A non-comprehensive spirituality leaves you feeling like an aspect of you has been forgotten, consciously ignored, or even demonized.  Comprehensive spiritualities hold as great an admiration and respect for the relative as they do the absolute (and don’t just pay lip service to it), and likewise for the realm of subtle phenomenon in between.  And, because they are more embracing of the total spectrum of human identity, comprehensive spiritualities are generally less likely to leave confusion and trauma in their wakes.

     As far as this Examiner can tell, comprehensive spiritualities are the wave of the future.  The growing number and influence of comprehensive spiritualities signals an increasing unwillingness on the part of spiritual practitioners to disavow or deny any part of themselves or the world around them.  In some ways it is the dawning of a new common sense in the Western (or American, or at least Bay-area) spiritual scene.  This relatively new view has many significant tenets: that the body must not (because it literally cannot) be buried beneath a pedestal on which spirit is placed; that equanimity and inherent fulfillment must be the basis for action and activism at all levels; that both the desire to earn wealth and the global ethic which wrestles to discover most appropriate way to do so are respectable; and that individual development always and only occurs embedded in contexts of personal relationships and impersonal systems.  The motto of comprehensive spiritualities is: “Nothing left out.”  Indeed, for some, the practice of a comprehensive spirituality does not feel like “practicing” a “spirituality” at all; rather it simply feels like living life, awake and perceptive, continually trying to be as honest, informed, and developed as possible.

     Perceptive readers may of course be reminded of Ken Wilber’s influential description and injunction to “transcend and include.”  Indeed, Integral Spiritual Practice is a great example of a comprehensive spirituality.  And one decidedly useful element of ISP, and Integral Theory in general, is it’s application of the “3 Faces of Spirit,” which makes it possible to pursue spiritual practice in all three of its fundamental modes: self-inquiry, divine relating, and existential wonder.

     However, in this case ‘comprehensive’ may roughly be equated with ‘integral’ only as long as the ‘i’ is kept lower-case.  Integral Spiritual Practice, and other innovative disciplines, perspectives, and approaches officially associated with Ken Wilber and capital ‘I’ Integral Life are only one species.  The genus of comprehensive spirituality is a higher organizing category.  There are others species of comprehensive spirituality.  And there had better be too, because the mere fact that a spiritual system is comprehensive does not entail that it’s personality will be a match for any particular individual.  Nor are all comprehensive spiritualities created equal: some will be more comprehensive than others, and they will each have their specialties.

     Here are two more comprehensive spiritualities, to help illustrate.  One is the approach of Jonathan Gustin, which he calls the “3 Worlds Model of Consciousness.”  Jonathan has written an article on his website which is one the clearest and simplest expressions of a comprehensive spirituality that I have yet to come across.  And of important note, Jonathan has organized an Integral Evolutionary Palooza event, taking place on November 5th, which will feature nineteen teachers committed or related to this larger, growing movement of comprehensive spiritualities.  The Palooza will provide a good introduction to the generally shared ethos and values of comprehensive spirituality.

     Two more of the teacher-participants in the Integral Evolutionary Palooza, Saniel Bonder and Linda Groves-Bonder, are also long-time representatives of a comprehensive spirituality.  Their personal teachings, as well as those of Waking Down in Mutuality, the network of teachers and practitioners founded by Saniel in 1992, invite a profound level of self and other intimacy and understanding.  And their teachings on the ‘Core Wound’ illuminate and embrace the tension inherent in humans’ paradoxical composition as both infinite and finite to an unparalleled degree.

     The bottom line with these and other comprehensive spiritualities, which acknowledge and value the whole spectrum of human identity and which engage development from multiple perspectives, is that they bring about transformations in individuals more effectively and more efficiently than non-comprehensive spiritualities.  By being more inclusive, they utilize a larger proportion of our energy and mobilize our motivation for change with far less internal conflict.  

     But wait, a word of caution: once catching wind of this view, it is not truly possible to participate in non-comprehensive spirituality in anything like the same way again.  After being exposed to a comprehensive spirituality, all those less than comprehensive begin to appear simplistic, or confused.  Comprehensive spirituality is the future, but many non-comprehensive spiritual systems continue to operate as well.  They have much value, but their shadows are as large as those parts of us which they ignore or deny.  Even so, simply learning to recognize the partiality of such non-comprehensive spiritual systems is a great boon.  Not getting bent out of shape trying to fit yourself into a system which simply does not embrace all of who you are, you will in fact gain much more value from your continued practice in a non-comprehensive spirituality.

     In a comprehensive spirituality, more of who we are can ‘get on board’ with spiritual development because more of who we are is invited in.  Happily, the spiritual culture at large is beginning to recognize this.  The word on the street is that inclusivity engenders wholeness, and that multi-perspectival approaches to growth make more room for all of who we are.