TODO: this transcribed pretty poorly and the synthesis was so-so
🤖 Synthesis
Your reflection touches on an important distinction between cognitive complexity, spiritual development, and the interplay between them, while also emphasizing the value of mapping spiritual growth and addressing shadows, such as systemic racism or inherited moral frameworks. Here’s a clearer summary of your main points:
Key Ideas:
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Cognitive Complexity vs. Spiritual Development:
These two aspects of growth are independent but intersect in certain individuals. A person can exhibit significant cognitive complexity (e.g., philosophical or abstract thinking) while lacking spiritual depth or interest, and vice versa. This highlights the need for distinct frameworks to address these dimensions. -
Mapping Spiritual Development:
Maps of spiritual development (such as Geoffrey Marshall’s work) aim to describe the "locations" or stages of spiritual growth in detail. These maps often provide valuable tools for understanding the progression of awakening, detachment, and integration. Marshall emphasizes that different stages are not inherently "better," but simply different, reflecting diverse ways of being. -
Integrating History and Science:
Modern approaches to mapping spiritual development incorporate historical perspectives while aiming for greater scientific rigor. This integration strengthens the frameworks and makes them more robust and actionable. -
Shadow Work in Spiritual Development:
A significant challenge in spiritual circles is addressing the shadow side—the unresolved aspects of our psyche or culture. For example:- Racism or systemic oppression persists within individuals and societies, even among those with moral or spiritual aspirations.
- Wilber and others highlight the importance of recognizing and integrating these shadows as part of genuine development, rather than assuming spiritual progress eradicates them automatically.
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Contextual Nature of Moral Development:
Moral views are deeply influenced by the societal and historical context in which they emerge. For example, historical attitudes about race or gender, now considered outdated, were normative in their time. Acknowledging this helps frame moral development as both personal and cultural. -
Static and Dynamic Aspects of Being:
Marshall and similar thinkers suggest that spiritual development involves recognizing both the static and dynamic aspects of our being. While certain "locations" of spiritual insight may feel static or eternal, growth involves dynamically navigating and integrating these realizations into life.
Would you like to explore specific aspects further, such as Geoffrey Marshall's framework or how cognitive and spiritual maps are developed?
Raw (hmmm)
Now, I want to talk about a different version of the concept of the mind. And I'm speaking of this one because it's, I think, the most plausibly independent or distinct from the concept of consciousness. And this is maps of waking up in the individual mindset, waking up, cleaning up, growing up, growing. And, as I said, I think it's most plausibly independent. It's quite clear, I think, that we think of people as being quite cognitively complex. They're not very spiritually interested or quite philosophical. And, to their thinking, they seem to be a lot enlightened, but that doesn't mean that they are deeply complex thinkers. Sometimes people are both, but it's clear that this is the case. So, we're going to talk a little bit more about that. And, I think the spiritual interest, at least for me, I think, along with thought, is very difficult to map, in general. Clearly, I'm just going to bring this up right now, is that, in recent times, I've been looking, particularly, mainly at quite a few maps of life. Because, after I've had the pictures, there are much more detailed pictures with descriptions of stages. I think I can recommend a lot to me that's been about this around in England. It's more of a modern kind of text that both integrates a bit of history with a bit of history, but with a modern scientific perspective, as well. So, it would be clear that maybe this is a bit of a remedy, actually, scientifically. It would be more difficult to look at this as a map that's been brought up by the experts, which is clear, but it's more amenable to the scientific perspective. Now, yes, as we'll see, I'm going to suggest that there's at least hope there. And, I think that's quite valuable, because it puts us in a much more robust position, if I say so, possibly, than maybe the most hopeful positions that allow us to secure. And, the other aspect, I think, is worth mentioning, is that this is one of the ones that doesn't get much of use. There are many assumptions around spiritual institutions, but the path necessarily involves, and it's only for the pure spiritual, it's the only spiritual path, it's also involves being very involved in other types of things, not having any emotional issues, not having any negativity, not having any racist, and we just need to imagine the reality of us as racist individuals. And yet, as we see, at least as we try to directly see racially, specifically, that's what's important, and I think this is the point that Wilbur made, at least fantastically, is that racism, for example, and cloning us out of the system, by giving us a shadow of racism, and I would even say, because it's designed that way, for example, a lot of our moral views are based on the hopeful views that we receive from that society. It's not really that clear what the views of that society are, but we can start to see that it's the same, that it's people, let's just remember, a lot of people's moral views were relatively personal in the era that we live in. You still have black people, you still have women in the same way, and I wish they were absolutely the same, like Jane, but I don't really care how much of it we get delivered through some of these moral methods, and seeing it in your own time, of course, is interesting, but again, it's not the same phenomenon that we live in the first century, I mean, at least as a minority, perhaps, as a group. Right, so what I'm going to say, what I'm going to set out to is this interesting map of spiritual development, I think it was Geoffrey Marshall who did it, and here we go, it's the slide there, it's a map, and what's interesting is that there are words by Marshall, like a real phenomenal example of Marshall, of the different locations. I also want to say that Marshall talks about locations, and it's very good, because he's quite wise, and it's not only better, being in a place is always better than being in a place you choose, it's different. There's a sense in that fundamentally our being as a whole is static, and is also in a way sexualized as well. Are you off this morning?