Authentic Self

Back to Godwin's article..."We have all of these competing parts of ourselves, and if they're all brought together on the same page, by virtue of creating a more unitaary being, it automatically creates a depth in the universe.  The more unity you have within, the more deeply you see without....Yet the downside of Western individualism, of course, is narcissism, self-absorption, and the idea that everything can be fulfilled in the h orizontal.  All we get on TV is a steady diet of horizontality, which kills the vertical.  Now we hae the search for what is being called "authenticity".  SO the richest people are the biggest lowlifes, like Paris Hilton.  I call it downward mobility.  They how their authenticity by completely overturning any kind of authority, any hierarchy.  They're what I call the vertical barbarians....."

Bravo and Yippee!!

Now page back to Ken and Andrew's discussion of authentic self.  Andrew says that he's trying to get the self to be responsible for maintaining the higher perspective that it discerns during endogenous altered state experiences thru meditation, etc.  Andrew continues,
"As I've been saying, an unusual level of integrity is required"

Ken responds that in addition to the 5 elements of AQAL, there is the self in 1st person terms, and in 3rd person terms it is called the self- system..  Ken states that the self has several characteristics:
1--it is the seat of will, intention, integrity
2--it is responsible for integrating whatever parts of the 5 elements are present
3-- it has its own structure, pattern, characteristics
4--it is the source of identity and will
5--it is the source of our defense system, which in a healthy situation is like a healthy immune system
6--it is the seat of navigation of anything that's presented to you

But Ken cautions that all of this is only the precursor to a turnaround in the self-system before it can orient itself to moving forward on evolution's arrow for the health of the Kosmos, what Andrew calls "soul integrity".

They both continue by talking about soul authenticity, and here we go right back to Boomeritis Buddhism, which i've been listening to this morning.  Let me entwine Ken's comments on this with the topic of authenticity, into the situation with Integral education.

Studies indicate that 25% of the population is now at Green; Green denies there are stages, a stage that denies that there are stages. Most public schools center at Blue/Orange, and in my school, Green is an anomaly except in the guidance and special education programs, where the mantra is to reduce all/most problems in secondary school with the UR and thus the LR regs in adopting Green wisdom, have crafted  treatment modalities and procedures within the classroom that conflict with Orange in order to mollify the Green parents and laws.

Now the place for education to go would be Orange center of gravity (excellence) which NCLB attempts to do, but with Amber belief-systems supporting it, giving reductionist and faulty awards and punishments.  Many teachers are Green, and with proper nurturing, they might begin to pop into 2nd tier.  But having them clustered in education at the top, middle, or classroom, will only lead to Boomeritis Education.

Any developmental stage above and below Green will look similar.  Pre and post verbal can easily be confused.  Pre/post conventional look alike, since they are not conventional!

Egoic rationality vs. non-rational  spirituality will look wrong.  Attempts to include postrational teaching will be confused with prerational stuff, thus permitting the study of crystals and taarot cards to being confused with vajra Buddhanature, and thus labeled as spiritual progress. And today's TIME magazine herals that the Bible should be taught in school----THROUGH WHICH LENS??

Green Stage will take from Eastern philosophies and identify that with ultimate truth. So the future and further challenge will be to clear up these problems for the 20% of educators who are at Green, and they may even meditate!  But they will interpret their state thru their stage lens. Excellence, achievement=Orange; Green=everything is enmeshed and interrelated.  Yet Mutual interpenetration is a metaphor, and not a call to end holarchies or discernment or evolution or development!

What has this got to do with 14-17, 18-20 year olds?  Their very existential questions that they must resolve brefore moving into adulthood has to do with who they are.  And more and more find Paris Hilton worthy of emulation.  I myself am obsessed with "reality TV", with a steady diet of American Idol, Project Runway, Survivor, Top Designer, The Apprentice, just for the joy of seeing something even close to real people being real people.

And what precursors of the authentic self do we see operating throughout a student's schooling?  What nibblets, as Ken puts it, of the authentic self show themselves, and how do educators deal with it now?  How SHOULD they deal with it?  What does character education really teach?  What does early religious training  such as CCD classes, bar/bat mitzvah training, really offer to them?

"The soul is not itself developmental.  It gets fuller, it gets freerm it gets wider....you can have integrity at earlier levels of development as appropriate to those levels.  you can have integrity at amber or at orange, and earlier as well.  So if you have, in the self's development, going back to childhood, those conditions that help the self become integral ata those earlier stages, then by the time it hits second tier, it's going to be more likely able to awaken as ther authentic self".

And that, dear friends and colleagues, is what I have devoted my life to explore.