religion and spirituality - making love

[Peter Howie]

Dear Anath,

Your description of priests and sermons is a good one. It is quite  
evocative. So her role would be wide- eyed acolyte perhaps and the  
rest are the congregation. There are certainly elements of common  
assumptions - untested of course - but the group often made "aahhhh!"  
and "uh-hum" type comments, and clapping at different times. Certainly  
the video presents that human beings can act in concert as though they  
understand one an other.

Warmed up as I am to role theory at the moment - I would offer another  
picture and invite you and others to try out some really different  
ones. I though of her and the two men as lovers engaged in coy banter  
and subtle word play and playful relating. As I think of them from  
this perspective I feel good towards them all and somewhat sheepish  
for having observed it.

She could have easily said "I love what you are doing" which at a  
deeper level might be expressed more intimately as "I love you". They  
might have said "Thank you" and been receiving or they could have said  
"I love you".

Someone in the audience could easily have said "Get a room!"

What was flowing between them was not only words. There was a lot of  
mutuality in their relationship when looked at from this perspective.  
All parties were very superficial in their listening/hearing/ 
responding to one another's words. But they were very deep in  
responding to the movement towards each other. This is where I get the  
"coy banter" idea from.

Cheers for now


Peter in Brisbane


Peter Howie B.Sc, TEP
Managing Director
The Moreno Collegium for Human Centred Learning, Research and  
Development
0411 873 851
www.morenocollegium.com.au

On 10/01/2009, at 12:48 PM, thana ag wrote:

> Watching the video i had the same allergic reaction to Andrew  
> Cohen.less so to Ken Wilbur, as Adam,The whole idea of spirituality  
> - is  that it be  experiential.Had the two  led this very "warmed up  
> "woman through a Socratic  dialoque in which she would've come to    
> experience the "closed loop that the ego is"  -then BRAVO! . The  
> audience would 've learned too.  We  too would've been  a bit more  
> "enlightened". Otherwise this was not diferrent from  a sermon in a  
> church.,with the two self designated High Priests    (one even got  
> the right name for it...cohen...). talking at the woman . At least  
> Ken Wilber intervened  at some point to say "let her talk to us..".   
> But did she actually experienced being listened to? The minimum a  
> human being needs to feel the lowest degree of love? I don't think so.
> Warmly,
> anath
>
>
> From: ablatner at verizon.net
> To: sewell.2 at osu.edu; list at grouptalkweb.org
> Subject: Re: religion and spirituality
> Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2009 17:08:30 -0600
>
> Responding to your comments of January 7    Campbell also notes that  
> perhaps the problem with religions today is that they myths have not  
> caught up with the economic and social realities of the world in  
> which we live.
>        1. I am all for a re-thinking about new myths, and wrote  
> about this on my website : http://www.blatner.com/adam/psyntbk/creatmythmk.htm
>
>    2. RS  Perhaps what we need are new myths.  Oddly enough, some of  
> the new science and new religion is backing up what the Mary Baker  
> Eddy prosletyzed to her masses -- the power of prayer, of "energy"  
> and intention.
>       AB: You may be right, and I sort of wish you were, but I am  
> not sure that much good science has indeed backed up the power of  
> prayer. There's lots of not-so-good science going around, too.
>     3. youtube video   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTb2kp9Y4Is    
> Shows Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber, two new-age "teachers" responding  
> to an emotional woman who is speaking about her inner conflicts.
>     Regina wrote: I forced myself to watch it.  and I had to force  
> myself to watch it. I know that place of what Cynthia dubbed  
> spiritual hunger.  I know that place of resistance.  But we've  
> reframed resistance in our psychodrama world, no?  Haven't we  
> decided perhaps that resistance is just lack of warm up.  and might  
> there be valid reasons for lack of warm up?  Like we, or someone  
> else, is pushing us into a role that we don't want or that we don't  
> have adequate skills or tools to occupy, or we think we don't have  
> adequate skills or tools, but we try to do it anyway because we  
> think we "should" and then - to steal for Ellis - we end up  
> "shoulding all over ourselves."
>          AB: I agree and would add a few other comments:
>      a. Is it possible to eliminate sub-personalities, parts of self  
> that are regressive? I remember Ram Das saying that after 20 years  
> of meditation and spiritual effort (following his psychedelic  
> experiments), he hadn't "cured" a single neurotic complex. But, he  
> conceded, they were "smaller."
>           I might have answered that a person can have parts of  
> oneself that are little-kid I don't want to feelings and that  
> doesn't disqualify the more grown-up parts. I think it was Desmond  
> Tutu or someone famous noting that courage doesn't mean you're not  
> afraid; rather, it means that you are afraid and you go ahead anyway.
>
>      b. But what bothered me is the answer-giving behavior. I will  
> confess that these guys---more Andrew Cohen, but a bit of Ken  
> Wilber, too---though I like many aspects of his philosophical work,  
> but not all--- annoy me. Perhaps this helped explain it. (And I  
> admit there may be shadow elements here.) I might have refrain from  
> being so ready with answers, but engaged instead in something that  
> was more psychodramatic, or at least an inquiry. This doesn't fit so  
> neatly into a large class context, but this level of learning  
> perhaps should not be subject to that format.
>        For example, I can't speak for this person in the video, but  
> I have found that symptoms of self-hate often relate to a variety of  
> other issues not brought out into the open, and possibly not even  
> consciously related to the things at hand.
>       This woman was locating the distress in the dissonance between  
> her dedication to doing good in social action and the parts of her  
> that don't want to do good for others, or even be very grown-up.  
> Perhaps, but unless we deal with a general life review, we can't  
> know if this is really what the issue is. It may be unfinished  
> issues with a lover, guilt and shame over gullibility and sexuality  
> (quite common), lack of clarity in identity and vocational  
> commitment (also very common), lack of general map of faith, and so  
> on---many possibilities.
>        So I felt annoyed at what seemed to me to be grossly  
> unsophisticated psychological pseudo-therapy, with glib answers.
>
>      c. The other problem with Cohen, and to some degree Wilber,  
> too, in these videos, is the new age babble. It used to be called  
> psychobabble, but now it's spiritual-babble. Those are statements  
> that are essentially platitudes, cleverly disguised. Many recognized  
> teachers and televangelists and others are quite glib, perhaps quite  
> sincere, it all fits in their mind, an answer to every questions.
>
>  (Am I this way and projecting my annoyance on Cohen? Maybe, but  
> I'll be open to exploration of words, point by point. I don't think  
> he makes himself vulnerable in this way.)
>
>      Cohen and many other new age gurus make sweeping statements  
> that cannot be disproven. They're too vague. As you think, so your  
> life will be. Not really so obvious, because we all think so many  
> internally contradictory things. Make your mind pure?  Who has done  
> this, and where is the evidence that except for building a new-age  
> following, those who are designated by followers and by self as  
> enlightened actually lead more exemplary lives?
>
>        RS: So the political consequences of spirituality - or lack  
> there of - I think are dependent on the tenets or myths or  
> misunderstandings that one subscribes to.  Not just the leaders -  
> though they certainly have incredible power to shape social rhetoric  
> - but the peeps as well...  I personally lost at least $10,000 in a  
> break-up because a majority of people in Ohio felt moved by their  
> spiritual convictions to deny the rights of marriage to unmarried  
> people and denied marriage to same sex couples.
>        AB: This brings up the whole problem of spirituality and  
> religion, and the possibility that many people who pursue a variety  
> of current religious agendas (such as anti-homosexual political  
> policies) are bothering much with any personal spiritual endeavors.
>
>
>      So, back to trying to clean up email. Warmly, Adam
>
> Windows Live™ Hotmail®: Chat. Store. Share. Do more with mail. See  
> how it works. Grouptalk mailing list
> List at grouptalkweb.org
> http://grouptalkweb.org/mailman/listinfo/list_grouptalkweb.org

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://grouptalkweb.org/pipermail/list_grouptalkweb.org/attachments/20090110/ed8aede7/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: pastedGraphic.tiff
Type: image/tiff
Size: 30674 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://grouptalkweb.org/pipermail/list_grouptalkweb.org/attachments/20090110/ed8aede7/attachment-0001.tiff>