Unpacking Wisdom

“Wisdom is the capacity to judge developmental depth; so wisdom is the capacity to judge -ultimately depth times span; so a wise choice is one that follows the prime directive, which is to protect and promote the greatest depth for the greatest span.”

-Ken Wilber

In a paraphrase of this quote, wisdom is the capacity to judge developmental depth and breadth; which means that wisdom is best understood in the context of what is sometimes called the prime directive or the basic moral intuition, which holds that protecting and promoting the greatest depth for the greatest span is the essence of wisdom.

Ah, but the word is not the thing, the map is not the same as the territory.

One day i was walking a woodsy path that closely parallels a portion of the charming and grandmotherly Fox River. The opposite shore was clearly visible and i was reminded of those times in my surveying career when i was charged with taking measurements sufficient to develop cross-sections of various rivers; this is the process of gathering data at right angles to the thread of the stream, cutting as it were, cross-sections through it that could be used to generate flow rates at the locations measured. Obviously both depth and span (x and y axes) are critical to this calculation.

So there it was, staring me right in the face, a natural-world object lesson about wisdom and the prime directive, a scene that later inspired this haiku:

Hidden in the Open

Teaching as it goes:
Greatest depth for greatest span;
River as it flows.

This means that from wisdom’s view all necessary alternative views are considered, witness this little, but true story:

After dinner, Mary, mother of two young sons, was approached by the boys with a question, could they have some leftover pie from the kitchen counter that was tempting their young palettes? Mary, a wise and talented parent said immediately: “Danny (the elder) you cut the remaining pie in two pieces. Christopher (the younger) you get first choice.”

Here in the world of duality, wisdom needs a counter-part lest it be cold, calculating and distant. The countervailing quality that needs to grow in tandem with wisdom is compassion. Taken together this pair offers a path to the very highest of what humans are capable.

Two Kinds of Shadow

It may be useful to consider that there are two basic forms of shadow; those elements that we are born with and those that we currently acquire; they can be thought of as either lunar or solar, respectively.

Simply put solar shadow is that part of the psyche that acts as a repository of repressed elements, commonly known as the sub-conscious. Generally, when the contracted self comes across some element of its behavior that it considers not being able to stand the light of day, it tucks it away, hides it from view, and then does what it can to forget that it has done so. It's analogous perhaps to sweeping dirt under a rug. But as noted elsewhere it hasn't gone away, it makes itself known as we trip over something; over an occasion that has high emotive content.

Reversing the process is called de-repression; a procedure that can be described as a forensic science of the psyche. But let's be candid, de-repression is not always a pretty process, and to do so we must be willing to face whatever negativity it was that caused us to bury the contents in the first place.

Maybe a story will help illustrate the process. Many years ago when i first began to root around in the psyche i noticed something about my food prejudices; they all had something in common, a fact which indicated that they were not just random prejudices, but something tied them together. A common element was that all the foods i was prejudiced against were warm, white, and creamy.

But i had no conscious clue (after all i was dealing with repressed material) until i obtained the result of a divination ritual, which was the second and fifth lines changing in the 13th hexagram. At the time i was using Blofeld’s literal translation of the I Ching. The words of the second line hit me like a sledgehammer: His beloved (betrothed) is of the same clan as himself –trouble! Yikes! Suddenly i realized that i had been doing something that good little Christian boys were not supposed to do; desiring elicit contact with my mother! So culturally denigrated is such a notion that we have a special epithet to describe it. I won't mention it here but suffice to say that they're usually thought of as fighting words.

The effect on me was electric! I was so psychically charged that i couldn't sit still. It took me 40 minutes of walking around to calm down enough to be seated once again. And then i read the balance of the divination text. The fifth line holds: The lovers began by weeping and wailing, but they finish by laughing, as the crowd succeeds in bringing them together.

I won't belabor the issue with the finer points of integrating various elements of this particular bit of shadow; but the crowd in this case refers to those hardy investigators into the mechanics of the psyche, who have performed an extremely valuable service, offering a mental context for the defanging of many a tiger.

Lunar shadow on the other hand is stuff we are born with, and most likely represent the accumulated effects of more than one lifetime. Sometimes this is thought of as soul print, a sort of stamp that's placed on us as we enter into manifestation. It's partly in our DNA, partly in epi-genetics, and partly in the more subtle realms, which taken together give rise to our predispositions. It's a vast study. But if we are to become more integrally informed we need the freedom that comes from successfully dealing with two kinds of shadow.

Pride as Virtue

How did it happen that pride, once known as one of the seven least favored qualities present in human beings, became a virtue?

It was once thought that pride was at the root of the other six least favored qualities which -for the record-were envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, and sloth; in our time somehow this sorry bit of human mischief now holds a hallowed place in conventional thinking. Coaches, mentors, teachers, parents, and others revered for wisdom, express pride in those that they cherish, as if it was a developmental boon! From a cultural perspective it almost seems like bait and switch; how is this night-into-day transformation to be accounted for?

Somewhere conventionality got off track, confusion arose over something very basic to our existence. For those who have studied and know about these things it's often said that there are two kinds of truth, relative and Absolute. On the relative side of the street, the side of manifestation, where all phenomena are located, truth is relative, because seemingly all manifestation is a result of the play of the opposites; up down, right left, hot cold, night day, yin yang, good and bad, etc. On the other side of the street all opposites are subsumed and contained in the Absolute that is beyond limit.

With the advent of modernity, what hitherto had been considered to be a unity was differentiated into three main value spheres; where the good, the beautiful, and the true, were allowed to pursue their own ends without much regard for or mutual interference from the other. The true was taken to be only that which could be seen or measured, it not only limited itself to surfaces, but actually came to deny that interiors exist at all. Mind itself was denied in favor of the brain and its chemistry. A part was treated as a whole, rather than a fragment, when in fact it was only a single color instead of a spectrum.

Reason was extolled, and faith pooh-poohed; the evidence of contemplatives and mystics of all traditions were devalued and seen as nothing but the flotsam and jetsam of a bygone primitive age. There is hardly a clearer example of this than in the work of Ayn Rand, whose appeal was only to reason and whose bitterest scorn was heaped upon mystics and mysticism; completely ignoring the possibility that there is a science of the mind. The chief disciple and intellectual heir of Ayn Rand was Nathaniel Branden, who was one of the popularizers of the notion of self esteem. At this point the hook of bait and switch was swallowed by popular culture.

Now here is where we must be very clear, keeping in mind that on the Absolute side of the street the value of each human is equal to that of every other human, irrespective of their behaviors, nefarious or virtuous; this truth was conflated with the values systems on the relative side of the street where ranking is an every moment occurrence, if not a necessity.

Conventional wisdom in the form of a cultural narcissus looked at his/her own reflection and decided it was good and worthy of a high ranking without reference to any interior norms; the very idea of which had long since been discarded; and the cultural and personal liability known as pride was elevated to a status opposite its prior position and: pride became a virtue.

Three Score and Ten

Too young for the army draft to Korea and too old for Vietnam, we were blessed by accident of birth and avoided war.

After a hiatus of over 50 years a group of former high-school classmates meet for a breakfast reunion; all now in their 70’s, and all somewhat surprised that our lives have come this far.

Each one of these gents operating from a basic perspective as has been shaped by the choices made or refused in response to ever changing life conditions –whether they are aware of doing so or not. In every case with each man a certain sense of camaraderie, if not affection, bubbles just below the surface and serves to both define and sustain the group.

Three score and ten is a biblical number and its use harkens back to my earliest years which were spent in a web of Biblical fundamentalism spun by Mother, which in turn was based on her own limited perspective. Sad to say it appears to have been one based on fear.

And now at 70 it seems wise to take the occasion not to look back so much as to look forward. As a long time advocate of the notion that my outer life is but a reflection of my inner life and that if there is to be any change in the former it must take place in the latter. There is a ton of evidence that points to the idea that our inner life evolves or grows in stages; where a stage is a marked by more or less permanent acquisition -once you learn how read, for example, not only do you not forget how to do so but it's typically accessible at will.

For a good number of years my own inner/outer life often operates from a viewpoint that's usually called the Witness. It was a little startling when it first began to happen but gradually i got used to the experience. It's a little tricky to describe, but it is as if my consciousness is slightly behind and above my head and all phenomenon appear to be passing in front of me, sort of like images on a movie screen. As nearly as i can tell as marvelous as this witness perspective it's it also appears to be a barrier between the current and the next stage of development. Yikes! This next stage is even more difficult to describe; that's because it's said to transcend (but include) the subject-object phenomena. This means it's not enough to just transcend the play of the opposites; but to include them as well. Typically this is called the non-dual, meaning not just two, but not one also.

For a long time i've been operating under the notion that i could be content with things the way they are –simply witnessing, more or less at will. But last week a memory came back to me. It seemed so simple and ordinary and yet extraordinary that i never really thought too much about it until now. Here is what happened. I was a young married man working six days a week trying to support a wife and two small children, when one day i was taken sick, and did something rare; i went to see a doctor.

He had a very busy practice, one of those places with 4 or 5 examining rooms with some poor soul waiting in each. So there i sat, with my feet dangling off the end of an examining table scantily clad in one of those paper robes. Just a few feet away and directly in my line of vision was a sturdy wooden door that separated my little cubicle from the rest of the medical office. Well it turns out i've long been a wood lover and had crafted, since early adolescence, many objects from that wonderful substance. The door in front of me had a marvelous grain, intricate, subtle, unique, stoic, and surprisingly somehow permeable. Because just sitting there with my back more or less erect and no distractions at all i fell into what could be called a meditative state; but it was one in which, now as i look back on it, there was no subject or object rather my experience of it was it was if i inside the grain of the wood itself. It's not enough to say that the wood and i were one, which was true but just partially so, because i was also aware of a presence in it, a presence somehow associated with what is known as me.

So now at this three-score-and-ten juncture and armed with the memory of this experience i have now decided to set aside a time each day for a formal meditation practice. It’s kind of funny that it would take me so long to come to this point; but this is because for a long time i’ve clung to the notion that meditation is something that happens to you –rather than something that you do. But the way to get around this notion is not to think of it as meditation at all, but just sitting.

But changing the habit of a lifetime i think might not be quite so easy; so i was faced with the question of how do i get myself to just sit every day for a given period of time. I decided to use the same device that i use to get myself to do Tai Chi Chaun every day. It's a simple ploy really, i just make a rule that i'm not allow to do a fun (read self-indulgent) thing until i fulfill the obligations that i've set for myself. In other words i set up a system of rewards to condition my behaviors.

Some months ago i got busy and made a simple bench with a piece of exotic wood called padauk. It’s probably from Burma (Myanmar) and is used in a meditation pose developed by the monks of that country sometime ago. The Japanese call it seiza. One simply kneels to use it, avoiding the often awkward and sometimes painful folded-legs position of the lotus posture.

And to facilitate the this new procedure i also got online today and bought myself two related birthday presents. First is a thick hooded robe that i can sit in like a tent to keep me warm in the cold months ahead, and second is a simple little computer program that can be set to ring a chime at whatever interval i choose to end a given meditation session.

Who would have thought it would come to this!

Instinct and Intuition

At Ken Wilber.com/, where i often hang out the use of the signifiers I-I are common; typically they are meant to mean Integral Institute; but i suspect that behind this choice was an homage or subtle reference to the I-I of Ramana Maharshi.

They other day in a TV commercial for a local attorney i found reference to yet another pair of I words: Instinct and Intuition. In it she was offering her answer to the question, “How to pick an attorney?” Almost in the same breath she referred to both Instinct and Intuition as a means to answer her ‘straw man’ inquiry; i took this as an unwise and unwarranted conflation of terms.

But let's back up a little. Both of these I words represent means that inform us; i.e. they offer input to our mental body, to our rational minds. That's what these two I words have in common. However conflating them leads to all sorts of problems; and presents as yet another form of the pre-trans fallacy.

Instinct, through ‘body/feeling’ informs the mind from one direction; while Intuition informs the mind through ‘soul/spirit’ from a completely opposite direction.

Confusing or conflating these two has the sad and unfortunate tendency to either leave us condemned to a mythic based existence or stunted in our growth to the more subtle but powerful aspects of our humanity.

By way of contrast, instinct may prompt me to greet the first warm days of spring with a walk in the nearby woods, where i can soak up some fresh air and some vitamin D from sunlight; while walking (perhaps mindfully) intuition may prompt some insight or image into the human condition worthy of a post here.

One of the early problems i had in recognizing intuition had to do with its speed. It worked so fast that my suspicion was aroused. This was quelled only when i came to this analogy: consider how much faster it is possible to think than it is to speak; pick a number say 30,000 times, by extension suppose that intuition works 30,000 times faster than thought. This is why in popular culture, cartoon figures are shown with an electric light bulb flashing over head when they ‘get it’.

If i look at this form of I-I signifiers from an astrological perspective, Instinct is related to the Moon, to our roots, to the past. (It is worth noting that technically the moon is not in orbit around the earth; rather the earth and moon revolve around a common axis.) While Intuition is related to the planet Uranus, an orb with a unique characteristic; is the only planet in our system whose axis of revolution is not at right angles to the plane of it solar orbit; rather this axis lies on it’s side more or less subsided into the plane, symbolizing the unique and extraordinarily valuable role of intuition in our collective future. This perspective also suggests that any moment of emotional tension can be seen as an opportunity to de-construct any lingering conflation of Instinct with Intuition; freeing us of its constraints.

Instinct and Intuition

Things that look the same
Are not always so; sometimes
They are miles apart.

Here and Hereafter

Conventional wisdom holds several commonplace notions about the transition involved in death and dying. Quite common is the idea that during this process one's life flashes before one’s eyes; equally so, that after death there is a judgment.

Typically these notions are subject to widespread speculation and very little evidence; and while making no claim to be definitive i simply offer this encapsulated version of my experience.

First a little background; i was in my early 30s, and had been working on what amounted to a koan for 12 years; but nothing in my outer life prepared me for what was about to transpire. For example i had heard of a phenomenon called out-of-body-experience, but i had no real sense if such a thing was actually possible. This notion was shattered when one night i left my body. Yikes, this was not Kansas anymore! And while time was surely passing during the experience, my inner sense was that i was now in fact outside of time. I had entered the space where we go after we die and before we are born.

Early on, the transition from here to the hereafter was marked by a series of memories and concomitant revelations that flashed before my mind’s eye; all of which had a central theme. What was being revealed to me during this transition was why i did the things of my life; more specifically on the why and how i had been less than sincere in various moments of decision; of my own attempts at hiding actions, evasions, distortions, of my part in the miasma called samsara; all tricks of the contracted self.

Perhaps an example will illustrate; but it is just a description that takes many words and time to draw a picture of an understanding that happened instantaneously. It went like this: In those days i had a habit of twirling the ends of my moustache between thumb and fore-finger. As part of this process of transition i repeated that habit; and concurrently my motivations in doing so were made so transparent that there was no room for doubt about cause and effect; bringing light into a part of my psyche that hitherto had lived only in shadow. The fact made plain, that was being de-repressed, had to do with my masculinity as symbolized by the moustache; a quality i thought to be lacking in attractiveness; and tried to compensate for that supposed lack by drawing attention to it; much in the same way that a bikini bathing suit draws attention to that which it is designed to hide.

My other similar distortions were equally exposed, eventually leaving me with nary a fig leaf behind which to hide; all of which it seems, was prerequisite for what happened next. I had been primed for judgment; but here was a surprise: my typical waking consciousness had been supplanted, augmented, or transcended in the sense that i was my own judge, but now occupied a view that held in context the theme and experiences of more than one lifetime.

There was more to this experience but i was warned, “Beyond this point, you will not remember.”

What i do recall was re-entry into the body, and a return to a more typical state of consciousness, albeit one that was changed forever. My immediate concern was for my body, would it be able to operate as before? I answered this by a simple test, a visit to the bathroom, figuring that if my personal plumbing was still operable, that i could still more or less function in this world.

The shock of this experience was deep and profound. It was so stunning that i was unable to mention a single word of what had happened for several years, during which time i learned to speak anew, as any words tinged by my old habits of distortions or evasions quite literally stuck in my throat. And now, while words are never quite adequate to convey the real, at least i have learned something of the foolish consequences of adding to the problem by willful distortion.

<Then and Now

A foot in each of
Two worlds, confusing neither;
Not choosing either.

Confusion and Innocense

The notion that there is a possible linkage between confusion and innocence came to me with difficulty; but now i have come to see the role of innocence as being central to an integrated life. It took some time and doing but eventually this linkage morphed into a postulate: ‘confusion is the result of the loss of innocence.’

Tracing confusion (as an inner condition) back to its roots is not easy; as the connection is not readily apparent; alas, this adds to the miasma surrounding what i hold to be an important issue. Along the way i was forced to take a hard look at innocence, to try to figure out, in practical terms, its definition. Simply put innocence is the absence of motivation; motivation here is taken to mean our tendency to run toward or away from a situation, i.e. in terms of behavior to be motivated is to act from desire in the former case, and fear in the latter.

This movement out of the situation has effects, chief of which is a distortion, an altering of our impression of the situation. And when we act from this altered state we do so in an ‘out-of-touch’ condition, only to find, much to our consternation, unpleasant or unhappy results; in a word we are confused. We thought we knew what was going on, but did not.

We, acting as contracted-self, are continually busy, going from one pole to the other, protecting or attacking, wanting or fearing, as if we are inextricably astride some huge psychic pendulum. In this analogy the opportunity to be free of motivation happens when the pendulum is at maximum speed as it passes the balance point between opposites. Obviously this is a difficult moment to capture, to hold firm in consciousness, as experiments in simple meditation amply demonstrate.

The chief problem for the contracted self is that these swings tend to distort our impressions, i.e. fear and desire color what is experienced, leading to unexpected results and a sense of confusion: i.e. “Yikes, I thought this was going to be a good deal, and here I am with egg on my face! I am bewildered, let down by the known.”

Rarely are we ready to accept confusion as a sign that we have been speeding, and missing what is sometimes called ‘the still small voice’ that speaks from the center of being, where the opposites are known to be complementary and antagonism is nowhere to be found. To the extent that we refuse the bait, refuse to run to, or run from, we remain centered, poised, modest but confident and clear in the moment, and ready to smile or even act if need be; we are enabled, even energized by what Gandhi called satyagraha –truth force.