All Discussions Tagged 'wiki' - Integral Post-Metaphysical Spirituality2024-03-28T21:15:02Zhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topic/listForTag?tag=wiki&feed=yes&xn_auth=noRELIGIOUS BUBBLES: Generative (en)closures vs. "Traditions"tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-09-22:5301756:Topic:584102014-09-22T17:18:32.932ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
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<p>Generative (en)closures are like assholes -- everybody's got one. </p>
<p>These "magic bubbles" are ubiquitous and universal. Cells, selves & groups of all sorts are energetically engaged in establishing themselves as unique fields of relatively amplified coherence. These fields are partially set apart from their surroundings by a permeable membrane of physical acts, subjective impressions, communication systems and shared spirit. </p>
<p>Yet of all the myriad modes of…</p>
<p></p>
<p>Generative (en)closures are like assholes -- everybody's got one. </p>
<p>These "magic bubbles" are ubiquitous and universal. Cells, selves & groups of all sorts are energetically engaged in establishing themselves as unique fields of relatively amplified coherence. These fields are partially set apart from their surroundings by a permeable membrane of physical acts, subjective impressions, communication systems and shared spirit. </p>
<p>Yet of all the myriad modes of generative (en)closure we find ourselves especially interested in the "sacred" versions of culture. That means we are primed toward events, spaces, objects and forms of practice-communities that are conventionally associated with <em>religious traditions</em>. </p>
<p>However we cannot take these traditions at face value. Why not? Because all they have meaning that meaningfulness is not the particular style associated with the rather loft "integralesque" and complicated vantage point from which these sorts of discussions may issue forth. What cans the notion of a "religious tradition" mean to us?</p>
<p>Knowing the incorrigible habits of integralites, we can predict that such traditions must appear, eventually as metaphorical zones of heightened cultural coherence which are experienced distinctly through the cognitive apparatus of each major developmental layer of human consciousness. </p>
<p>So let us take a quick peek:</p>
<p><strong>AMBER</strong></p>
<p>Conventional popular terminology operates a set of associations which connect these linguistic acts with the mentality of orthodox/supra-tribal/believer-sects. For such people (within us) the production of religious bubbles is normalized into "traditions" which are based upon confessions of membership and the affirmation of standardized nation-like symbolism. </p>
<p>We immediately see that this is the orthodox meaning of famous "traditions" inherited predominantly from nationalistic, racial, sectarian city-state / agricultural-kingdom phases of history... including parts of the world still largely involved in this reality. So Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Shinto, Hinduism, etc. are a vision of generative (en)closures operating at this level and for this type of world. </p>
<p><strong>ORANGE</strong></p>
<p>Modern "enlightenment" mentality typically investigates the abstract mechanism-objects which may appear in the mind under various different names. This extra-cultural consciousness already seriously undermines the conventional assumption of religious bubbles as traditions. It supposes that every individual, regardless of their geographic and ethnocentric origin, is free to select from the big "menu" of normally presumed traditions. And we already begin to require those modifiers such as "seems like" and "almost" (which will become even more necessary at more complex layers) in order to fully clarify the experiential acts which are establishing generative (en)closures of the sacred-group type.</p>
<p><strong>GREEN</strong></p>
<p>Pluralism begins by alternating between realities. It therefore revalues apparent alternatives, folds in the obvious examples of minimized or excluded "others", and quickly moves to begin appreciating the inter-contextual effects operating at the semantic boundaries between interpretations. It proliferates alternatives and meta-models while deconstructing its options into creative sub-components. Here we require quotation marks around the word "tradition" and expect that a variety of Christianities, Buddhisms, Islams, etc. are holding hands with an indefinitely unfolding mixture of neo-archaic, quasi-fictional or hyper-individualistic attempts to performatively enact a religious bubble. The general ambivalence toward the hegemonic idea of a "tradition" arises quite naturally when our consciousness begins to emphasize background ecosystemic networks and the surprising world of unseen ingredients.</p>
<p>Here the definition of a tradition can only be a kind of game-piece in co-creative exchange. Linguistic habits, divergent states of consciousness, the activation of "neurosomatic brain circuitry" and the rise of the relaxed/sensitized universalist ethos requires that: <em>Traditions are "whatever" WE say they are.</em></p>
<p><strong>TEAL</strong></p>
<p>Integrative approaches to religious bubbles must take over and newly explain the complementary validity of the previous phases. It is no longer good enough to imagine that traditions are anarchic mutual constructs any more than it is acceptable to pretend that popular group-designations represent monolithic "traditions" (or even easily comprehended sets of sub-traditions). </p>
<p>A twin task emerges here. We must enfold and validate the previous layers while also asserting a new coherent scaffolding of organic-functional & trans-structuralist "types" which form the REAL traditions.</p>
<p>Religion here must be a temporalized spectrum of transrational tantric wholism dependent upon synchronization, creative appropriation of apparent incommensurability, and and advanced dialectical sensibility. </p>
<p>We assume that different modules/lines of development probably form the basis for a categorization of types of religious bubbles -- enacted in all quadrants and perceived distinctly at each layer of socio-cognitive reality. These basic types are the valid "traditions" when viewed from this level but they must be held alongside the embrace of non-pathological junior levels as well as held open for any degree of pragmatic usage among people whose temperament or prior-level conditioning leaves them instinctively skewed toward inherited styles.</p>
<p><strong>RECAP</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>If we start with <span style="text-decoration: underline;">traditional Traditions</span> and unfold one extra functional layer we discover the tradition as "options" -- modernism. </li>
<li>A further growth & migration reveals that these options do not pre-define our alternatives. They can (and ought) to be unpacked to reveal an indeterminate manifold of alternate options located between, within or off-to-the-side of the hegemonic menu.</li>
<li>Finally (sic) we peer down at all of this from a dizzying height and become struck with the need to re-establish the functional power of traditions on the basis on the alternative manifolds. </li>
</ul>
<p>Um, what?</p>
<ul>
<li>Traditional consciousness presumes a totalized core -- or "real nature" -- of a religion. Often this is associated with a book-dogma or particular famous passages therein. </li>
<li>Modern consciousness wants to know what these different <em>tradition-machines</em> do for different individuals. </li>
<li>Postmodern consciousness wants to include everything and thereby discovers a sliding scale of identities between all the normal and abnormal options. However this <span style="text-decoration: underline;">sliding scale</span> does not acknowledge the anchoring parameters which enable it to operate.</li>
<li>When those are enfolded a new set of structures appears as the justification of previous forms and suddenly we are required to <strong>re-group</strong> <strong>all the groups</strong> according to perspectival and enactive ingredients.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>THE SLIDING SCALE</strong></p>
<p>What do I mean by a "sliding scale" between alternatives? Consider the following two examples:</p>
<p>A cult of Medieval Buddhists practiced meditation in a very interesting fashion. They called upon a compassionate Buddha-of-Light by Name. He had once walked upon the historical earth but now lived in a heavenly afterworld. By getting right with this figure your soul could be reborn in this heaven. Here the grace of illumination is rapidly and easily attained. </p>
<p>Not only does this sound a lot like what we normally mean by "Christianity" it was also noted by Zen Master Hakuin that a profound, insight and hard-practicing Name-Praying Buddhist should be considered to be doing Zen.</p>
<p>The Christian monk named Eckhart prayed to the Virgin Mary in a special way. He made his mind still and empty like a virgin's womb so that an all-pervading and nameless wisdom-power would naturally flow in, impregnating him with a new self -- a "christ" who would feel, see and understand via the christ-mind. That sounds a lot like Zen Buddhism. </p>
<p>Very Buddhist Christianity. Very Christian Buddhism. </p>
<p>Our pluralist consciousness learns to situate people on a sliding scale of alternatives between these major blocs. But we must ask whether or not those blocs are sustainable? If these traditions are so various as to include each other in most practical ways then of what use are they as the reference-group at all? Why situate the sliding scale between them? Why not look for better grouping? Why not look as a zoologist would look -- and not a record-keeping of names would look.</p>
<p><strong>DHARMA & PRACTICE</strong></p>
<p>Nothing is lost when a post-traditionalist deconstructs and (except for pragmatic and respectful gestures) dispenses with the connection between religionized cultural sub-fields and received nominal religious typologies. Just as no magic is lost when we add a rational-technical understanding of the miracles of nature... although our pre-rational sentiments may contract uneasily in the face of such a shift... fearing to lose their bearings on what is most valuable. </p>
<p>So practices, which form the core (or, in some versions, the totality) of a religionized cultural sub-field, persist perfectly well without old-fashioned categorization. In fact they may themselves be the basis, when understood as perspectival and "developmental line" methods, of a superior classification system. </p>
<p>The dharma or logos is understood in traditional models as something like a fixed book of wisdom to be affirmed and ritually duplicated. At more complex levels we may view it as more akin to a bio-electronic conversation. A certain set of the potential algorithms of the universe correspond to the underlying maneuvres which are elaborated as the skills, probings and insights whose total pattern-attractor, including its potential for surprises, constitutes the spiritual and religious and "set". It can be engaged from within any local organismic, energetic or historical setting but, obviously, only in the degree to which those forms permit that generative conversation to occur. Initially some glimpses and experimental practices are more possible than others. Although as they produce depth, growth, coherence and divergence-convergence they tend to look more and more like the whole dharma. Given an unconstrained situation and indefinite time we can suppose that this fractal will eventually regenerate its basic attractor shape. However in contingent circumstances this only goes so far and therefore a great plethora of differences is apparent as the obvious fact. </p>
<p><strong>RELIGIONIZED CULTURAL SUB-FIELDS</strong></p>
<p>Spirituality is the work for personal coherence. Religion is the work for cultural coherence. It entangled, organizes and weds the various genres of social, biological and psychological collective activity in order to fulfill the intrinsically rewarding goal of production apotheotic "renaissance-like" degrees of surplus meaningful and aesthetically unique group empowerment. Because of its wholeness orientation (since we are looking at this phenomenon from a wholeness-level of understanding!) it is supposed to be a generic process working with the general background of civilization in any contemporary epoch. However in practice it appears first (and sometimes only) as sub-zones within the general condition of the culture -- and obviously we mean the total sapient culture of the planet and not the rather meager of local linguistic and thematic geographies. </p>
<p>So religionzed cultural sub-fields of intensified coherence, exhibiting the flavor of religiosity for the current civilization, arise by means of insightful and effortful compliance with whichever of the dharmic algorithms (practices!) can be instantiated effectively in its circumstance. These pools, insofar as they are operating with the same background civilization, are resonant with each other. They may therefore merge by "complement" or "progressive mutual approximation". </p>
<p><strong>ADDENDUM</strong></p>
<p>In addition to this striated vision of religious bubbles we must be aware that multiple types of bubbles may operate with largely overlapping sets of symbols and referents. This is because the actual activity of generative (en)closing, like that experience of a layer of consciousness, is anchored in the style of the context -- the holding -- and not exactly the content which is affirmed.</p>
<p>This is especially pertinent when it comes to social discussion. We have to make two critical distinctions: <strong>active vs. neutral</strong> (or even degenerative), <strong>sacred vs. topical</strong>.</p>
<p>1. The former implies that any communication (which reinforces a boundary by referencing it) might be vibrating with the freshness of new meaningfulness OR basically a mechanical reiteration. For example, the perpetuation of the signifier "Christ" may in one utterance operate to help continue the vitality of a particular religious bubble or it may be indifferent to such a function -- used without spirit in a manner whose effects are primarily (if not totally) inert relative to the establishment of the membrane around a field of cultural coherence.</p>
<p>The slogan "no one is neutral on a moving train" reminds us that non-progressive or non-resonant embodiments of zone-establishing signifiers quickly move from the status of placeholder to the status of underminer. Not carrying it forward frequently operates as if it were destructive. And yet it may use apparently the same symbols or rituals, etc.</p>
<p>2. Our second distinction requires that we tease apart the production of "talk bubbles" from "religious bubbles". Clearly there may be all kinds of overlap but it is not necessarily the case that a particular generative (en)closure is being established when it seems to be appearing in discussion and shared thinking. People frequently manipulate conversation TOPICS in order to discuss other topics which are urgent, titillating or nearby. </p>
<p>Just as any critical discussion of a thinker's positions may be quite valid while not actually pertaining to that person's ideas in any legitimate or comprehensive fashion, and just as the shadow of a celebrity can occupy a place in the politics of cyberspace which has little to do with their actual nature or positions (frequently unknown to the people discussing them) we can find this same pattern of "ghosts in the system" in the study of religious bubbles as well. </p>
<p>Therefore, at minimum, we need to make sure that we do not mistake the transactional economy of conversation -- whether populist, academic or apparently "devout" -- for the symbolic and cognitive processes which support the establishment of a generative (en)closure of the religious-group type. They may or may not be the same in any given instance. A great deal of hesitation is required in front of apparently obvious topics. Even those who appear supportive (and are therefore readily embraced and affirmed) may be supporting a phantom that simply bears an identical name in the discourse.</p>
<p>Hopefully this is all the beginning of a fruitful conversation...</p> The Postmodern Godtag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-09-04:5301756:Topic:580322014-09-04T18:05:28.802ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<p>Here are the notes from the Christmas Wiki's entry on <a href="http://doowikis.com/m/Ec2ImSHFms" target="_blank">Postmodern Religion</a> as a follow up to the thread on Modern Religion. It a little more sprawling and unruly as we might expect from a complexity-oriented and still-emerging form of social context and human consciousness.</p>
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<p><span style="font-family: Arial; color: purple; font-size: 12pt;"><strong>the postmodern god</strong></span></p>
<div><p><em>Any concept or…</em></p>
</div>
<p>Here are the notes from the Christmas Wiki's entry on <a href="http://doowikis.com/m/Ec2ImSHFms" target="_blank">Postmodern Religion</a> as a follow up to the thread on Modern Religion. It a little more sprawling and unruly as we might expect from a complexity-oriented and still-emerging form of social context and human consciousness.</p>
<p></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Arial; color: purple; font-size: 12pt;"><strong>the postmodern god</strong></span></p>
<div><p><em>Any concept or intuition of Deity appropriate to the Postmodern (pluralistic, or "meta-") cultural operating system.</em></p>
<p>The Postmodern God embodies an understanding of Divinity and Religion that expresses the characteristic sentiments and comprehension styles of postmodern individuals and communities. Such styles are commonly associated with the following concepts: <em>pluralism, "green meme" values, planetary multiculturalism, ecological & digital networks, multidimensionality, the "game-like" mutual creation of identity, deconstructionism, irony, virtual reality, psychoanalytic society, the linguistic turn in philosophy, relativity & complexity, etc. </em> Religionization of culture -- whether formal or informal -- is operative at this particular level when it is distinguished by some or all of the following elements:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Sacred Perspectival Diversity </strong>- The utility of multiple perspectives (and the unfathomed or apparently incommensurable space between them) exceeds rational pragmatism and begins a sacred principle. Therefore there is a tendency to treat monolithic truths as relatively unholy. <em>Interperspectival Context</em> functions as an invocational 'name of God'. </li>
<li><strong>Holy Vagueness </strong>- Although "almost religious" is already authentically religious at the Modern level of Society, the Postmodern view takes it one step further -- finding transcendental potency within the "almostness" itself. God-or-Whatever becomes one of the most common affirmed religious invocations. The generic, colloquial and virtual aspects of reality revealed by meta-cognition are progressively recognized as key facets of holiness. The <a href="http://doowikis.com/m/UVyt8dH27y">metaphysics of adjacency</a> begin to emerge. This growing awareness and valuation of the "nearly" is accompanied by "as if" beliefs. Religion becomes self-consciously flexible as its agents adapt to the "performative" holding of their enactment. At previously levels this ambiguity and incompletely would be experienced as insincerity or a diminished intensity but that is no longer the case at postmodern and higher. </li>
<li><strong>Re-Invention of the Self</strong> - shape-shifting, transformation, self-authoring, choosing your own "faith" and "identity".</li>
<li><strong>Archaic Revival - </strong>return of aboriginal, barbarian and paleolithic habits of religion -- tattooing, psychedelic, nature immersion, wilderness retreats, ancient diets, shagginess, shamanism, etc. </li>
<li><strong>Gender Rebalance</strong> - return of the feminine (including the body, sex, nature & the unconscious) as well as experimental and developmental play which remixes and reclarifies sexual roles.</li>
<li><strong>Organic Networks</strong> - expectation that both the universe and the organizations of religion should be more like electronic or biological networks than fixed mechanical or pyramidal structures. </li>
<li><strong>Groove Retrieval - </strong>the attempt by individuals to have their creative, trans-rational flow re-established.</li>
<li><strong>Acceleration</strong> -- the jump to light speed; sense of imminent transformation; evolution into incomprehensible light beings, etc.</li>
<li><strong>Evolving Truth-Epochs</strong> - paradigms; different dharmas for different phases of history; </li>
<li><strong>Ultimate Deity Teams</strong> - the chief gods & avatars are understood as a mutually supportive community of alternatives.</li>
<li><strong>Power of Belief itself </strong>- "It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you believe in SOMETHING" -- as well as the many doctrines of the reprogramming of reality through intention, expectation and the potency of belief. </li>
<li><strong>Open-endedness - </strong>the apparent incompleteness, incommensurabilty or indefinite status of reality applies even to the Ultimate Reality and its bio-cultural machinery of sacralization.</li>
<li><strong>Appreciation of Chaos and Complexity</strong> - fractal beautify and infinity more sacred than linear perfection or "tidy" notions.</li>
<li><strong>Multiplicity & Idiosyncracy </strong>- manyness becomes holy and roots itself in the peculiar authenticity-attempts of individuals.</li>
<li><strong>Syncretism </strong>- a retro, historically-savvy, multicultural environment necessarily is stylized by the interblending and re-appropriation of apparently diverse and exotic elements.</li>
<li><strong>Ecology & Ingredients</strong> - the broader background is anchored in the experience of seeing into the parts of things; cells and biospheres; health and vitamins; galaxies & quarks; deep time & tiny archeological particles.</li>
</ul>
<p>A normal response to the Postmodern Deity (which is to say: typical, level-appropriate postmodern religion whether sophisticated or informal) tends to embrace all sentient beings & systems within a sacred attempt to improve the sensitive, multidimensional health and pleasure of the World. It requires periodic psychological, physical and social forms of "therapeutic embrace" and bio-energetic arousal to the point of synchronicity. Also regular encounters with the mystery of the edge-of-thinkability. Any form of religion exhibiting these elements should be considered as Postmodern. And anyone embracing these must be considered as an active participant in modern-level religion. </p>
<p>It is common (but also quite superficial and premature) to view the Spirit of Postmodernity in opposition to the notion of DEFINITE religion and a SINGULAR God. However those are versions of religion applicable to mythic and to some degree <a href="http://doowikis.com/m/QE8aleycXT">modernist religion</a>. </p>
<strong>The 7 Limbs of Postmodernist Religion </strong><br />
<p>We may say that there are four main Modernist "religious perspectives". These are: <em>Neo-Paganism, New Age, Interfaith Monotheism, Entertainment Cults, "Western Buddhism", Sacred Ecology & Digital Transmutation Movements</em>. Once we have understood that these are forms of Religion (i.e. that none of them, regardless of their attitude toward mythic religiosity, constitutes an anti-religious stance) then we are empowered to inspect the basic religious characteristics of Postmodernity.</p>
<p>This general platform of religion became common in the 19th century but is not unique to the world formed by print literacy & international industry. In fact rational religious agents were central players in the history of faith from the Axial Age onward. There are many ways of describing and intuiting the rational, natural and absence-like power of the Chief Deity. Buddhists frequently discussed An-Atman (the non-present Great Spirit). Egyptian priests spoke of Osiris being vacant from his throne -- wandering unseen in the underworld. And Christianity has long been characterized by the motif of "God's Death" and the rolling away of the stone to reveal that Christ's tomb is mysteriously empty.</p>
<p>Such images feed into and describe a general layer of religion. It can be seen occurring almost interchangeably within the following common forms: </p>
<div><strong>1. Neo-Paganism</strong></div>
<p>Wicca, Neo-Shamanism, Reformed Druidism, Asatru; Geomancy; Forest Bathing; Wilderness Raves. Sacred Body Art. Orgiastic rites. Intoxication, sexuality and the holiness of natural locations become standard religious practices.</p>
<p><strong>2. The New Age</strong></p>
<p>Theosophical, psychic; metaphysical revival occasioned by preliminary East/West esoteric fusion. Often with a strong reliance on the pluralism-friendly, altered-states traditions of Vedic yoga & philosophy from India.</p>
<p><strong>3. Interfaith Monotheism</strong></p>
<p>Socially progressive & "inter-religiously friendly" versions of Christianity, Judaism, Islam. Also Baha'i, etc. </p>
<p><strong>4. Entertainment Cults</strong></p>
<p>Humor & Fantasy sects. The production of religious sentiments and rituals from the content of books, movies, etc. As well as humorous and reversal religions like the Discordians, The Church of Satan, The Church of the SubGenius, etc. It can be readily observed that "hollywood stars" and "internet celebrities" function like the pantheon of demi-gods in pagan civilizations. Into this group we must also put hobbyists who take their modern hobby (e.g. the sacred allure of classic cars) to the next level (e.g. building a replica out of butter, sending the car to the bottom of the ocean with a live camera on board. Postmodern religion is commonly characterized by informal and temporary circles of free-sharing and in the context of entertain cults this often takes the form of surrealistic open and the mutual affirmation of personally pleasing remixes, modification and transfigurations of a shared pools of content. It also includes sacred transformational symbolists -- i.e. figures like Madonna, Lady Gaga and others who publicly communicate charged content with little regard to its signification and who frequently manifest re-invention, costume change and self-transformation.</p>
<p><strong>5. "Western Buddhism"</strong></p>
<p>The combination of right-brain practices with capitalism-friendly form of private spirituality, zen for effectiveness, etc. Yoga for health and beauty. Increased creativity through neurological yogas. Stress-reduction. The aesthetics of color and energy. The aesthetic experience of "boggling" the mind with apparent paradox and counter-intuitive notions that extend reality indefinitely in mere potential. The holiness of "alpha waves" and other resting, self-aware, creative brain states. </p>
<p><strong>6. Sacred Ecology</strong></p>
<p>Gaia & eco-crusades. The Living Web. Organic prices and "green taxes" as a form of tithing. Symbolic social "recycling" rituals and the attempt to gain blessing through "conservation" and "minimization".</p>
<p><strong>7. Digital Transmutation Movements.<br/></strong></p>
<p>AI, cyber-immortality, being information, becoming-light, technological transmuation. Sacred "concerts" in which entheogenic chemicals are combined with patterns of digital sound to orient the nervous system into digital space and the sense of trans-bodily immortality.</p>
</div>