What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire

If you hear the song I sing,

You must understand

You hold the key to love and fear

All in your trembling hand

~The Youngbloods, Get Together

There was some great stuff going on in the seventies and eighties. I participated in some of it: marathon encounter groups, primal therapy, human relations and group development training, group treatment training for addressing addiction, “Scott Peck” community building workshops, twelve-step groups for families of dysfunctional families. I also saw several individual therapists over the years, and consulted with supervisors when I began my private practice. In recent years I took part in a wilderness encampment and a number of solo vision quests, and did some training in Non-violent Communication. I learned about and taught the process of formal dialogue to a couple of non-profit groups. Then Tim and I developed a workshop that was based on that, on Peck’s community building model, and on other practices that have proved helpful.Â

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For me a thread of meaning strings together the above. In all of those situations I discovered a pathway to my heart, and to others’. In those settings there were moments, minutes, and, on occasion, hours when I experienced transcendence: awareness of little or no ego in control, peaceful and tremendously alive, and in connection with others who were sharing a similar awareness.Â

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The experience of transcendence is healing and transforming by its very nature. As people discover through their own direct experience of transcendence that they are not, at their essence, the isolated ego they’ve mostly been identified with, when that discovery is taken seriously and integrated into one’s life, it proves revolutionary. A new sense of “self” or “essence”, apart from ego, emerges during those transcendent moments.Â

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I have had a handful of experiences on my own, outside a group setting or apart from an intimate exchange with a partner, when I have experienced that setting aside of ego. But the experiences I have had with groups have continued to summon me. Something  happens when a group of people simultaneously set ego aside: a sweet, peaceful, sometimes powerful connection or communion occurs. Compared to the mundane day-to-day ego-based operations of life and relationship embedded in Empire, something extraordinary awakens. That awakening is like a nourishing rain falling on a garden ready to burst forth.Â

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We’ve been waiting so long to find one another and ourselves!Â

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Moments of finding myself and others, such as I have been blessed with in these various settings, have been life-giving to me since the first marathon encounter group I attended in college. I was recruited to be a role model/peer/counselor-in-training for a community-based teenage substance abuse treatment program. During the two days and one night of the marathon I witnessed things absent from my life thus far: dogged honesty, unbounded compassion, unashamed tears. A gathering of forty people, quite young and also mature, committed to sit for many, many hours together in a strong psychological/spiritual container. The container proved strong even in the face of the full-blown and, for me, scary expression of a young man’s rage. That experience went inside me and reached a longing so deeply buried that I hadn’t any idea it was there until I found myself in that group. I have since taken that longing seriously, as a thread of purpose and direction for my whole adult life.

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Some people draw a distinction between psychological experience and spiritual experience. For me the distinction has become more and more meaningless. I have begun to see all psychological growth as spiritual and spiritual growth as intimately tied to psychological growth. So it was not a surprise to come across a spiritual teacher such as Eckhart Tolle writing and speaking about “ego,” a decidedly psychological term. More and more of that is happening with the authors I love who write about spiritual matters.

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To become free of the ego is not really a big job but a very small one. All you need to do is be aware of our thoughts and emotions—as they happen… When that shift happens, which is the shift from thinking to awareness, an intelligence far greater than the ego’s cleverness begins to operate in your life.

~Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

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Most spiritual practice is done individually, supported by study, by teachers and other students, sometimes in long, silent retreats where only the teacher speaks. As valid as those individual paths are, in my experience they have some real limitations.  And those limitations seem based on the individualism that has been inherent in non-indigenous religious systems such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, all of which grew up in the larger context of Empire. As such, those systems often reinforce the isolation of the dominant culture, and carry some of the other trappings of Empire: hierarchy, dogma, politics. Â

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The individual nature of spiritual practice can unwittingly reinforce the idea of a dominant, hierarchical power structure that comes from the culture of Empire. In this culture we’ve been programmed to “mind our own business.” We are taught that it is most effective, polite and political, to work quietly identifying and setting aside our own egos, in solitude, through meditation or prayer. By doing so we avoid overt conflict, the sharing and expression of difference, and the strong emotions that arise in the face of those. Meditating on a mountaintop has its place. Time alone to reconnect with the elements, with the non-human part of the family of life, can be precious and there is no doubt a place for that. Where is the place for transparent honesty and wholehearted compassion amongst people? Are these not the virtues of real spiritual practice? Can they be fully developed on one’s own, on the meditation cushion, in a hermitage, under a tarp in the woods, or on the mountaintop?Â

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I had a sense most of my adult life that there was something missing in individual spiritual practice, even though I have enjoyed and benefited from retreats devoted to such. What’s been missing for me in individual practice is precisely what arises when a group itself becomes the means for transcending ego. Once I dropped the distinction between psychological and spiritual practice, it became clear that there is something tremendously important here. I’ve felt called to create time and space for people to come together to do this kind of work.

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What IS dialogue?

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Very simply, dialogue may be defined as conversation that generates greater understanding. It’s been utilized in many settings, often in organizations for that purpose: greater understanding. However, this kind of practice has been developed far beyond that simple formulation. Inherent in this work is the view that conflicts arise naturally when people gather and begin to identify and disclose their thoughts, feelings, beliefs and values. As incarnate beings we have our limitations, unique ego structures, backgrounds and experiences. Inherent also is the conviction, based on practice, that conflict offers a unique opportunity for individuals and disparate groups to enlarge their understanding of both self and other, expand their limitations, move ego to the side, and thin the boundaries that define their sense of separateness.

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A group that creates a strong psychological and spiritual container becomes a virtual cauldron of personal and collective growth. That cauldron acts as an ideal classroom, both for individuals and for the group as a whole, to learn where ego-attachment to roles, beliefs, status, entitlement, etc., clash within oneself and with others in quite incoherent ways. It is a unique opportunity to become transparent about how one’s thoughts and emotions, habits, and programmed behavior affect one’s interactions and the functioning of the group. When we come together to explore the heretofore-unconscious devices of ego, we can learn to lighten up with ourselves, and with one another. We can see both the pain and the promise that lay beyond ego and persona. We may, with grace, enter moments, and even hours, of fulfilling and creative connection and interaction, with less ego and more essence and heart.

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My experience is that participation in such endeavors has changed me, or my idea of “me”. I’ve learned, with more ease and grace, to remember to sit and listen, rather than to react and close down or mount a defense, when confronted with opposing or conflicting ideas, values, or behaviors. I’ve found the cauldron to be an ideal place to practice what Eckhart Tolle suggests above, to “…be aware of our thoughts and emotions—as they happen.”Â

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It is so rare for people to gather with the intention to become aware, to awaken, through their interaction with one another. Only in such a contexts is there acknowledged support for honest, non-violent feedback, for deep self-reflective sharing, for clearer insights about self and other, and for exploration of options to the dictates of our ancient patterning and Empire-based programming.Â

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The process necessarily entails some discomfort, as we encounter those sticky egoic places. Learning to sit through discomfort may be of great value in these times. For those who have the courage and willingness to “keep their butts in the chair and their awareness in the room,” to allow diminishment of one’s ego, the rewards can be tremendous.

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A significant portion of the earth’s population will soon recognize, if they haven’t already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die. A still relatively small but rapidly growing percentage of humanity is already experiencing within themselves the breakup of the old egoic mind patterns and the emergences of a new dimension of consciousness.

~Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

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Not all are called to do the work in the context of a group. But some of us are. Those of us who stick with it will find a great sense of peace and purpose, as we go about this work at this most incredible time in the human story.

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 12:18 pm and is filed under Sally's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.