Integrating Rational Distinctions with Expansive Spirituality

To the end of unpacking my title a little here, I want to suggest a list of possibly useful distinctions:

1) Healthy hierarchy and pathological hierarchy are very different. Hierarchy (or holarchy) is everywhere - when it is healthy it keeps evolving deeper expressions and perceptions of truth, beauty and goodness. When it is unhealthy, distortions of truth, beauty and goodness arise.

2) Naming something as pathological is not a condemnation, nor is it necessarily a merely relative opinion. Understanding and identifying pathology is central to being a doctor, psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, physical therapist etc…It is how one is able to be of effective assistance.
Eg: Cancer is a pathological condition. So is PTSD. These are not mean-spirited or arbitrary “judgments,” nor is there any case in which this is not true. Period. Some things are just that way. (Now, PTSD is a response to trauma and has it's own intelligence etc - but it is a coping mechanism  gone awry and suffering will be reduced once it is effectively addressed and healed.)

3) Saying that a developmental process of human capacities (lines) like cognition, empathy, morals, spirituality etc moves through stages that progressively reveal more truth, beauty and goodness is not oppressive or biased - it is readily observable and documented and appears to be true in all cultures and times. the fact that this doesn't occur in a totally linear way doesn't mean that the stages are incorrect.

4) Recognizing that the stage at which we develop a rational worldview sets us free from earlier-stage superstition, naive belief in magic and a literal relationship to mythology is not the same as condemning or wanting to “amputate” any aspect or level of the developmental process.

5) Just because rational transcends and includes prerational does not mean that the rational perspective does not  accurately see through the previously limiting prerational perceptions. Rational is the next level and it brings more awareness to fill in the gaps that were before filled in by a fantasy relationship to reality that was less acurate. (Santa Claus actually never came down the chimney. Ever.)

6) Prioritizing accuracy in this way is not a diminshment or denial of the mystery, it is a passionate desire to be in closer contact with the mystery in all of it's complexity by piercing the veil of less accurate perceptions. It is at the heart of consciousness itself. (Holding out for the “possibility” of a  literal Santa Claus is not  open-ness to “the mystery” - contemplation of the love and creativity of parents in relationship to their developing child's tender psyche is!)

7) Transrational awareness is not defined by an absence of distinctions or the hypothetical realization that rational perceptions were actually incorrect - it is an augmenting of the rational with deeper symbolic awareness of our manifold nature as well as heightened states of consciousness in which ineffable insights into truth, beauty and goodness arise.

8) Transrational awareness is not prerational magical belief and mythic literalism dressed up in hip new (or ancient)  consoling clothes from other cultures. It may at times reveal the deeper truth that prerational was grasping for, but in a way that is not at all at odds with a rational perspective on reality.

9) Transrational awareness is  not proof of paranormal or psychic phenomena, nor is it proof of voodoo dolls, jesus' resurrection, or sai baba's siddhis. It is a lot more grounded than that and in it's healthy form integrates perfectly with healthy rational awareness. The movement form prerational to rational is quite different in many respects than the movement from rational to transrational. The reason for this is that rational is actually accurate about 90% of the time, while prerational is inaccurate 90% of the time. Rational awareness brings us into touch with reality in a way that prerational couldn't. As much as I love the Matrix movies -it is pure fantasy that transrational will reveal that from a transrational perspective rationality was just as incorrect about about reality as prerational appeared to be from rational. This is fallacious. I have watched people get seriously lost in this dangerously incorrect endeavor to prove that transrational spiritual awareness is really about going beyond the laws of cause and effect for example….

10) Non-dual awareness, mysticism, poetry, and altered states of consciousness are absolutely amazing, but they are never an argument against rationality and they are not proof for anything prerational, merely proof (when being used that way) of the need to believe. How we interpret these things will always be telling of where we are at in different lines of development and healing. Because this realm of experience is so emotionally convincing we can often come to erroneous conclusions about what it “proves.”


11) Some things really are unknown and at this point unknowable. This does not mean that we should suspend judgment on the things we do know. Until further evidence proves otherwise it is entirely reasonable to assume that the earth actually does go around the sun and the moon around the earth. Believing otherwise - or “possibly” otherwise - is not being open and spiritual it's just being silly, and doesn't go anywhere useful.

12) One can be a vibrant, expressive, emotionally engaged, juicily embodied, creative mystic traveler  and still make beautiful and true rational distinctions - in fact the integration of the two is  wonderful and necessary  thing!

Love distinctions…

I am curious if respondents would be interested in sticking to one of these points at a time in the interest of finding common ground and/or convincing refutations/elaborations?

Re: Integrating Rational Distinctions with Expansive Spirituality

I think these points can lead to some healthy debate, and I will return to them later.

For the moment just let me make a very tangential response to what you wrote about PTSD. Why would you see it as a coping mechanism and as having its own intelligence? PTSD is pure pathology leading to decreased function and it is a very good example of the point you're making about pathology. Stick to your guns :)

Re: Integrating Rational Distinctions with Expansive Spirituality

i appreciate the support pelle!

well what i mean is:

one develops certain adaptations as a way to deal with unbearrable trauma. this is an attempt to manage the experience and is hardwired into some very instinctive drives for self-preservation.

as such the coping mechanism has intrinsic value and intelligence, even though it is imperfect - but over time becomes a limiting factor and blocks all sorts of healthy expression and growth.

i wanted to use it as an example of a pathology because i see nothing condemnatory about naming it as pathology, while having compassion for it's traumatic genesis and for the PTSD as a physiological and psychological atttempt to cope with something unbearable.

in the heealing container, one would work as much if not more with the trauma itself and learning new ways to discharge/resource as one would with understanding and deactivating the syndrome.

PTSD is a perfect example of what i am talking about with regard to regressive spirituality as a coping  mechanism/defense against unbearable-seeming reality.

we also try to manage trauma with fantasies of supernatural/archetypal  aid when human/real world aid is not available… this also serves for the short term but becomes problematic later.

Re: Integrating Rational Distinctions with Expansive Spirituality

Julian, I have been reflecting on your points and plan on responding to several of them.  (I agree with a number of them and see no need to comment, but others raise some interesting questions for me…)  However, before I get to that, I want to come back to an issue we've been circling around.  Perhaps you've answered it and I've missed it, and if so, I'd appreciate it if you can direct me to it.  But I am still unclear on what you mean by trans-rational.  What does this stage actually add to rationality?  What does it involve, that goes beyond rationality?  Does it activate certain capacities not available at the rational level of cognition?  If something can be transcended, it means it has limitations of some sort – a limiting horizon.  Can you trace that horizon?

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: Integrating Rational Distinctions with Expansive Spirituality

absolutely my lucid and congenial friend balder….

i see transrational as beginning with high end formal operational abstraction: poetry, mythology, the intellectual exegesis and hermeneutic interpretation of art, meaning, philosophy etc….and progressing from there into the beautiful bittersweet paradoxes of heart opening and mind expansion that mere rationality cannot comprehend.

mature love and compassion.

deep meditative absorption that is distinct from dissociation.

artistic ecstasy.

high-end intuitive, creative expression of self that plays with forms as it's new language - meta-awareness and ability to synthesize systems of perception/perspective into higher levels of organization and effective interactivity…

 archetypal experiences.

non-dual meditative states.

Re: Integrating Rational Distinctions with Expansive Spirituality

1) Agreed, and I want to add one thing. Each new stage in the holarchy enfolds the previous one, ie transcend and include. Each new stage gives rise to a whole new worldspace that by definition cannot be seen by previous stages. If a turquoise person tries to convince a green person that healthy hierarchies (holarchies) exist, then the stupid one is not the green person but the turquoise person who should be able to understand/remember how the green worldspace looks.

2) Agreed, pathology exists. My definition is that pathology is something that prevents function within a certain stage and/or something that hinders further complexity+development.

May I humbly suggest that your view of PTSD as having intrinsic value and intelligence is pure speculation. As far as we know it is a pathology caused by severe trauma in a susceptible individual, and the end-result is no more of intrinsic value or intelligence than a broken leg.

3) Agreed. This does not mean that vertical develpment is all there is. Healthy translation and compassion within a certain stage is more important as soon as an individual has reached amber.

4) Yes and no. The rational sets us free from taking myths literally, whereas amber/mythic sets us free from believing in magic. When a child exits the magic stage and enters the mythic stage, he/she stops believing in Santa Claus.

5) Agreed. Healthy rational will include magic and mythic stuff as part of the culture, since every child still has to develop through each level. We read fables to children (magic), and later let them read biblical myths, or where I live Nordic myths as well (Thor and his buddies). Transcend and include means that society must provide stage-appropriate materials for individuals/children.

6) Now you are talking from a transrational/integral stage, looking down at rational. This is a very important distinction. You (Julian) want to keep the mystery, even though the prerational has been cleared out; whereas the rational stage denies any mystery whatsoever. Huge difference.

7) Sure, integral/transrational can make a lot of distinctions and this is fine. In fact we can make more distinctions and more accurate distinctions than the rational stage. We are no longer caught in the myth of the given, so as integralites we can include the green deconstruction of orange. So by definition we can say that some rational perceptions were incorrect, even though orange is far more accurate than magenta for example.

8) Transrational is not prerationality in new clothes, agreed. But transrationality/integralism is often at odds with the rational worldview. Integral science can and will rock the world of the orange worldspace - no doubt about it. Hypodeductive reasoning is an important tool at the integral level as well, but it will be used to test things that the orange worldspace does not understand or does not even see.

Re: Integrating Rational Distinctions with Expansive Spirituality

9) My opinion is that the existence of so called psychic and paranormal phenomena has been adequately proved. The only reason this is ignored is that the rational stage/worldspace is defending itself.

Terms such as paranormal are misleading though, since they are only paranormal according to orange's definition of normality. I believe that healing sounds and energies exist, and that this is purely due to resonance of the gross and subtle bodies to certain frequencies. No magic, only hardcore science that will be verified more and more as turquoise injunctions become mainstream among scientists (it will take a while, only 2% have an integral consciousness). Similarly I believe that physics will verify non-locality, more than already has been done because a lot of research is already pointing that way.

Pre-rational crap is easy to identify because there is never any preliminary science indicating that it is correct, nor does it appear to be correct to a group of turquoise peers discussing the subject.

10) I agree that  there are different states of consciousness, and we will interpret these states according to our current worldview. Most people will believe their own interpretation of the state, just like people walk around believing that they can experience reality directly. This is the myth of the given and Ken debunks it once and for all in Integral Spirituality.

11) This point is so obvious that I don't even know why you posted it. Does a single person on this pod question that the earth revolves around the sun?

Obviously, I too agree with this assertion.

12) Not only can we make rational distinctions, we can make integral distinctions, including calling orange on its shit when it perpetuates the myth of the given. Given that addition, I agree with what you say.


Pelle

Re: Integrating Rational Distinctions with Expansive Spirituality

Below is a quote from a letter Ken wrote to Albert Ellis, a staunch rationalist who had accused transrationalists of being more or less insane.
I am not suggesting that Julian or anyone else here is a rational absolutist, but the quote is still relevant to this discussion.

Pelle



http://www.kenwilber.com/editor/lnttp.pdf
……………………..

By “logical positivism” I mean the assumption that empirical data and their rational or logical relations alone are verifiable or falsifiable and therefore scientific (less technically, that the scientific method is the best approach to knowledge).

There are three important points we should note about logical positivism.  The first is that it is a very reductionistic and narrow worldview, since it explicitly excludes, from the realm of genuine knowledge, the worlds of literature, art, music, poetry, most philosophy and religion,  sociology, mythology, introspective psychology, and even history (as A.J. Ayer admitted), since none of these conform to strict empirical verification.  This is the arid worldview that Whitehead characterized as “quite unbelievable.”  

Further, if it wishes to be consistent, logical positivism has to exclude purpose, value, and meaning, since these also are non-empirical.  But that has led more than one psychologist to point out that such a worldview is technically insane.  “Such a view is crazy,” says psychiatrist Karl Stern. “And I do not at all mean crazy in the sense of slangy invective but rather in the technical meaning of psychotic. Indeed, such a view has much in common with certain aspects of schizophrenic thinking.”  Ellis doesn't succumb to psychosis simply because, as we will see, he doesn't come close to being logically consistent. But my point is that most scholars now agree that,
although it has a few very good points, the overall worldview of logical positivism is extremely narrow and limited, and relying predominantly or exclusively on it is a type of philosophical suicide or insanity.

The second point is that, as John Passmore put it, “Logical positivism, then, is dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes.”  The reason - in addition to its insane narrowness - is that, as a comprehensive worldview, it is a formal self-contradiction. It says, as Ellis does, that “Only propositions that can be empirically verified are true.”  Unfortunately, that proposition itself cannot be empirically verified. Thus, as Huston Smith summarizes it, “The contention that there are no truths save those of science is not itself a scientific truth, and thus in affirming it scientism [logical positivism] contradicts itself.”  

Logical positivism, then, taken in and by itself, is marginally insane and foundationally unscientific (unverifiable and self-contradictory).  And yet Albert Ellis is bold enough to offer it to the world!  He might not be much of a philosopher but the guy's got brass balls.

The third and strangest thing about logical positivism, taken as a worldview, is that it is a form of hidden absolutism.  It says, in effect, that there absolutely are no absolute truths.  As Schuon put it, positivism “sets out to reduce every element of absoluteness to a relativity, while making a quite illogical exception in favor of this reduction itself.”  Ellis says “Science abjures dogmas, certainties, ultimates, and absolutes.  It only has tentative and revisable hypotheses.  It never even views 'facts' as incontrovertible.”  But those statements are not tentative and uncertain.

He clearly means that they are always so in his version of science; in other words, he means it absolutely.  That is an absolute truth upon which Ellis rests his logical arse.  And it is this powerful but hidden absolutism or dogmatism that pumps Ellis with enough certainty and machismo to tell the entire world that if it followed his system of thinking then global salvation will have arrived.

Such grandiose conceit can only be supported by an equally grandiose dogmatism in this case, the naive but potent belief in scientism.  And Ellis's absolutism is all the more pernicious simply because it is hidden or unconscious.  He honestly thinks he is more or less free of major
irrationalisms, while the whole of his scientism rests squarely on a monumental illogic.

Ellis is very right about one important point, however: believers in absolutist systems tend to be fanatics, Ellis himself being no exception.

Re: Integrating Rational Distinctions with Expansive Spirituality

pelle - this looks great. i look forward to composing a more detailed response to your thoughtful and stimulating reflections when i am done with the Z-bate…

thanks so much!
~julian

Re: Integrating Rational Distinctions with Expansive Spirituality

Ah, wonderful. I've met some crazy “logical positivists” on a philosophy forum.
This sums it up very nicely.

Re: Integrating Rational Distinctions with Expansive Spirituality

I can't and don't do Integral speak. So bare with me if none of this makes sense.

I like to give my interpretation of Ayer's “Language, Truth, and Logic” stance on the whole “God exists, doesn't exist” validation as well as his stance on the arts. Although, Ayer thought the discussion of God's existence and what we can say about the arts is “meaningless”. He did point out something that is  relavant to speaking about such things as “God” and art.  From Ayer's point of view, it is unverifiable to make “truth” or “falsity” claims and propositions regarding such things as art/beauty. From my perspective this is clearly what a rational thinking person would conclude and it is a mode of thinking (pattern in reasoning) that is needed still to cut through some of the relative claims that people do make when they do make claims about God or art forms.

What Ayer fails to do is that he dismisses contemplating about such things as art or God because he is focused on empirical validity with an analytical approach. It's not possible to apply such patterns of reasoning to art or the nature of mysticism, yet I consider  rationality an asset in the discussion of the arts because it cuts through some of the more relative subject/object/it problems thus, opening it to another way of “seeing”.

I don't agree with Ayer in his stance that talking about the arts and God as “nonsense” or “meaningless”. I don't think he was able to figure out a way to talk about these things given his empirical and analytical stance and he was known to be dogmatic about it. Yet, from the empirical and analytical stance it makes complete sense that notions of God's existence is meaningless. Which tells me that that particular reasoning is not going to apply so, what other ways of knowing can we apply? This opened up for me possibilities of contemplation especially an inner dialogue. And I'm not about to tackle that one because what I just said probably opened up some can of worms.

Ayer made perfect sense to me at a time when I was grappling with the language surrounding “God”. I've discussed “God” with other philosphers and there was always the problem of discussing it because it was coming from a relative subject/object/it.  So, Ayer's “language, truth, and logic” at the time made perfect sense because we realized there has to be another way to talk about “what and how” we came to an understanding of “God” if we do have an understanding. And it wasn't through analytics or empiricism.

Re: Integrating Rational Distinctions with Expansive Spirituality

Hi, Julian,

I know you're busy with your Z-Bate (did the Battle Royale I mentioned inspire you?), so I don't expect a reply right away, but I'll toss a few thoughts out there anyway…

It seems your description of transrationality covers a wide range of phenomena and capacities.  I think Wilber uses it in a similarly broad way – covering everything from vision logic to causal or nondual awareness.  I don't think he includes high formop, though.

I was a little surprised by your inclusion of things like poetry, mythology, archetypal experiences, and artistic ecstasy as examples of transrational phenomena.  I definitely agree that these things can all manifest in a transrational worldspace, but I don't think they're limited to that, or that they're unique products of post-formop cognition.  I believe they can and do emerge and flower richly in more conventional contexts as well.

With regard to the general topic of this thread, I want to say simply that I see no problem at all with integrating rational distinctions with expansive spirituality.  I know that the dragons you are jousting here are not typically integral folk, who will agree with me and you about the value of rational distinctions, but I thought I'd state the obvious anyway.  However, I do think we still may have a difference here:  It seems to me that you come close to equating “rational distinctions” with a uniquely atheist/materialist worldview, and I don't think that “wedding” is warranted.  As I mentioned before, because rational cognition is employed does not mean that we will necessarily reach the same conclusions – and it is possible to rationally embrace and defend worldviews that run, in some ways at least, counter to the secular/atheist worldview of someone like Dawkins.

I do have more I want to say with regard to your opening post, but I'll save that for another installment.

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: Integrating Rational Distinctions with Expansive Spirituality

Hi, Julian,

I'm not sure if you're still interested in following this thread, but here's my response to one of your points.  I chose one of the more contentious ones for me, since I agree with many of your points…

9) Transrational awareness is  not proof of paranormal or psychic phenomena, nor is it proof of voodoo dolls, jesus' resurrection, or sai baba's siddhis. It is a lot more grounded than that and in it's healthy form integrates perfectly with healthy rational awareness. The movement form prerational to rational is quite different in many respects than the movement from rational to transrational. The reason for this is that rational is actually accurate about 90% of the time, while prerational is inaccurate 90% of the time. Rational awareness brings us into touch with reality in a way that prerational couldn't. As much as I love the Matrix movies -it is pure fantasy that transrational will reveal that from a transrational perspective rationality was just as incorrect about about reality as prerational appeared to be from rational. This is fallacious. I have watched people get seriously lost in this dangerously incorrect endeavor to prove that transrational spiritual awareness is really about going beyond the laws of cause and effect for example.

Can you define what you mean by “healthy rational awareness”?

I agree with you that transrational awareness is not necessarily proof of paranormal abilities.  However, it is well documented in many contemplative different traditions that heightened human capacities tend to emerge with the stabilization of transrational modes of consciousness.  I certainly think it is reasonable and healthily rational to critically examine these claims, rather than just accepting them on faith; but I do not think it is reasonable to reject them out of hand as prerational gibberish.

When you say that the rationality is 90% correct and prerationality is 90% incorrect, can you say something about what you are looking at to make this comparison?  Rational cognition emerged a couple thousand years ago, at least, and yet our worldviews have changed a great deal over that time.  Rational cognition may be better equipped to deliver reliable information than pre-rational thought, but this does not mean that rational processes will always deliver “truth.” 

Beyond this, I don't think it's reasonable, from my perspective, to think that transrational awareness and cognition will never deliver information which runs contrary to the presuppositions and conclusions of individuals who view the world through a rational lens. 
There is no such thing as a singular “rational worldview” – there are worldviews which are built upon largely rational processes, but which may differ because the founding presuppositions differ or philosophical underpinnings differ.  It's an unfolding process, and is context-dependent.  If you don't have transrational awareness and cognition available, your context is limited, and therefore the edifices you build with the tools of rationality will be too.

Best wishes,

Balder

Re: Integrating Rational Distinctions with Expansive Spirituality

hey balder

yea we agree on a great deal and i always enjoy your perspective.

you make good points here.

let me try and respond a little:

a) the whole 90% thing - not meant as a statistical fact - just a convention of speech.

i mean that the vast majority of predictions about reality that use cause and effect, scientific method, rational deduction, logical argumentation, etc will turn out to be accurate.

this is true in the empirical realm as much as in the literary, psychotherapeutic, sociological realms etc..

in contrast, the vast majority of predictions about reality that use magical thinking, spirit guides, angels, etc wil turn out to be inaccurate if held up to scrutiny.

i am using the word “rational” here in it's 4 quadrant, 3 strands of science, eyes of flesh, mind and spirit meaning as opposed to prerational used in it's magical thinking, wishful fantasy, mythic believing definition.

b) though various traditions associate paranormal phenomenon with transrational it is importasnt to realize that these traditions, while very sophisticated still have a lot of prerational belief woven through them - i thinkw e agree on this, but might disagree on where the lines are between the two.

nevertheless i think we agree that taking a good clear look at this to find out what is transrational in a way that we don't yet understand and what is prerational in the usual ubiquitous old world way.

i think you tend to lean more toward thinking that there might be some real magic etc in ancient traditions that we have yet to understand - ie: transrational that would look prerational to the rational gaze.

i think i tend to lean more toward thiking that if it waddles and clucks like a prerational chicken it is a prerational chicken and transrational does not include any magic or literalized myth….. though it is rich with archetype and luminous transcendent/immanenet awareness, insight and compassion…which i call the real magic - more impressive than uri geller bby a long shot.

so you might see me as a little narrow minded and caught in rational arrogance - i might see you as a little gullible and caught in the romanticizing of the ancient and exotic.

and yes(!) absolutely there are amazing physiological feats that are provable, proven and reliably demonstrated by monks and the like who have undergone decades of rigorous training - very cool shit, but nowhere near the paranormal fantasies that many project onto them, right?

c) hmmmm i think the idea that transrational will subvert the foundations of rationality is misguided.

ransrational is rational+, and it healthily manages the balance between the inner and outer worlds - transrational inner awareness is worthless (unhealthy and probably actually prerational)  if it dissociates us from a healthy relationship to self, other and kosoms, no?

d) what do i mean by healthy rational? rationl that is not dissociated from the other jungian functions, say, of intuition, feeling and sensation.

in other words what i mean by healthy ratiional is wilber's concept of “centauric” awareness.

Re: Integrating Rational Distinctions with Expansive Spirituality

Julian:
in other words what i mean by healthy ratiional is wilber's concept of “centauric” awareness.

I'm glad you finally spelled this out for us Julian, because it is what I have been suspecting for some time now and what I indirectly was trying to address in my posts above. You simply cannot equate the turquoise/centaur worldspace to healthy rational! Using the standard Wilber stages turquoise is two (or three) stages above orange/rational and they are far from the same thing. Even if you mean that rational thinking does not become a healthy tool until turquoise, it is still very confusing that you at times equate rational to transrational while at the same time using rational as the watershed between pre- and transrational.

I also get the impression that your definition of centaur/turquoise is some sort of fusion between orange and turquoise where you accept AQAL and the concept of depth/complexity as well as hypodeductive reasoning, but where you reject the relativism that green and turquoise will bring to worldviews as well as science. Balder's quote from Peirce is the minimum amount that turquoise will rock the rational worldview that most scientists subscribe to. Healthy relativism is a good thing, and we are not allowed to exclude it from the turquoise worldspace simply because we do not like it. Perpectives and co-creation are main characteristics of Wilber-V, and subtle rejection of these in the interior or exterior (“scientific”) domains leads us back to Wilber-IV.

Re: Integrating Rational Distinctions with Expansive Spirituality

ah! ok pelle that's helpful.

i may be using the centaur idea in a wilber iv way - i have been into his work for a long time and my sense of centaur was a kind of existential, mind-body integration (which takes a ot of personal work and is not particularly common) prior to transpersonal stages of development.

frankly i think most folks claiming second tier are still pretty caught up in green regressive spirituality, as evidenced by the sh*tstorm created by the pre/trans thread. one doesnt get to be second tier just by reading wilber/SD and deciding to self-identify that way…

now i am not saying this is true for you - but i think the integrl community has a battle on it's hands to avoid becoming new age/regressive green in drag, and part of how we deal withi this is by making better distinctions and encouraging healthy rational as a precursor to grounded transrational. part of this of course entails actual practices and therapies that are effective…

i think it is a big problem that the current integral jargon is so slanted toward SD - for the reasons that it often incorrectly merges collective and personal developmental stages and that it often overlooks the importance of psychology, trauma, pathology, as well as actual spiritual practice beyond just reading about “the framework” etc in favor of the simplistic color coding and pat relativism that SD can foster….

i read the pearce stuff and was not compelled.

nor am i compelled by much of wilber v so far - as i have said, i think the newer stuff in integral spirituality is beautiful and rich, but still a little undeveloped and open to massive misinterpretation.