Reflection on transcending & including

5/8/2022

To be on a humanistic non-dual spiritual path, we must transcend and include. You don't climb a ladder to the sky, cut off the rungs, and sever off the lower rungs that got you there unless theres something down there you're running from of course.

"Transpersonal," for example, can be misinterpreted as what is entirely NOT personal, or has nothing to do with the personal dimension of reality, so that it points to the notion of exclusionary transcendence (transcending and excluding personhood in this case), but I see it now as pointing to what is more than yet includes the person/personal dimension. Now you don't end up with disembodied, ungrounded and non-human transpersonal experience, but the down to earth embodiment of something that is personal and more than personal, an experience of personhood as an integral part of something bigger than itself- that transcends and includes it.

This is a dramatically different experience from the experience of/experience of oneself as "something" transcendent that is cut off from what's transcended. It's not an impersonal, or non-personal experience, it's a MORE THAN personal experience that the personal you is/gets to be a part of. Rather than a capital S "Self," that is INSTEAD of a lower case s "self" it's the experience of Sselfhood (Jason Shulman). It's becoming personal + instead of something less than personal.

As Ken Wilber wrote of "egolessness" (which self-negating non-duality considers a coveted quality of all self-transcendent experience), "Egolessness does not mean "less than personal," it means "more than personal" Not personal minus, but personal plus..."

Questions to consider...

Can you feel the difference? How does it feel different?

If you shift from transcending & negating, to transcending and including, is there anything valuable you'd lose? Anything valuable you'd gain/get back?

2 Comments

Lucas Koinegg

5/9/2022 11:14:35 am

Hah! I was about to link Wilber's article "egoless means more" but then noticed that you put a quote from it in here!

After reading Jed Mckenna for the first time, I became depressed for about a week. Life went from blooming and interesting to dull and meaningless - and everything it took was a trilogy by an "enlightened" being who uses a pseudonym for publication. It took a lot of personal experiences and a really deep dive into different non-dual traditions/epistemiology to get out of this dark night of the soul. One of the most interesting discoveries was the realization that if you compare various mystics and supposed enlightened masters: None of their accounts hold up! There are sometimes profound differences in how those realizers explain reality - which is kinda weird for some thing labeled "absolute". We have introspective traditions like buddhism & hinduism which contradict each other all time: "Nothingness" (Śūnyatā) & brahman/atman are NOT the same thing. Yes, the non-dual aspect is always there - the number of true-selfes is one - but thats just one part of the truth. Now, all this and much more finally led me to a more integral heuristic in my search for truth. I found a new spiritual home in teachers who combine western and eastern approaches towards a higher order truth. No one is smart enough to be wrong 100% of the time, as Ken Wilber said - and I think we kind of forgot this in our interpretations of "absolute" experiences. Marc Gafni's "Unique-self" or A.H Almaas's "Personal essence" are not mere concepts but actual experiences that are as non-conceptual as any neo-adveitan realization. Ultimately, this step towards a more integrated view of reality is something that needs to happen and Uni-duality is an important stepping stone on this path. Anyway, thats it!

Jessica

5/15/2022 10:45:22 am

Hi Lucas, I loved reading your reply. Is it your understanding also that Jed Mckenna is Adyanshanti using a pen name?

Ken Wilber also helped me along my path of re-validating myself and the material world, and eventually discovering that the "spiritual" and the material are indivisible - hence, true non-duality in my experience, rather than severing the two and calling that non-dual, go figure.

I also discovered evolutionary spirituality and resonate deeply with Marc Gafni's notions, and it's really this perspective of non-duality that marked a massive turning point for me in experiencing everything as the universe evolving into a relationship with itself, and my opportunity, as an expression of it, to play a role in the direction in heads in :) I also read the Pearl Beyond Price, and liked most of it. Thank you for sharing your insights!!

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Reflection on transcending & including

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