Enlightenment as Transformative Paradox

In this episode, Dr. Sally and Dr. Jen reimagine what enlightenment looks like in 2024, as well as the transformative nature of paradox. 

Transcript

0:18  Sally explains why episode 22 on Enlightenment is a Keystone for the entire podcast. Is enlightenment real even though people have been discussing it for 3000 years? The world is still in a big mess. This episode explores how enlightenment has been democratized over time. It’s not fake news. It evolved over time. We live in material duality, and at the same time, we live in immaterial non-duality. These two realities coexist, one of the greatest paradoxes. Duality is built on polarities, and binaries, but it's held within the Oneness. Science has also established the old Buddhist doctrine of two truths. Out of a quantum field, the material emerges. This scientific understanding is critical for today’s enlightenment. Early pre-modern teachings on enlightenment were about finding your “True self”, where you could merge with reality. That was the gift from the East, that you could meditate to find enlightenment. In modern times, 300 years ago, the Western enlightenment started realizing we're more than just a True self. We're also an individual self. This was a new idea – that we can think and individuate, as unique beings. We were not only ‘beings’, we were also ‘becomings’ through our rational minds. We could merge, and we could e-merge. These two truths are in constant movement: from binaries, to polarities, to paradox, to unity, a movement of developmental progression and that is our unique model of enlightenment to this podcast – Integral Taoism.

 12:19  Jen asks “What does Enlightenment look like for an ordinary individual in 2024?” It includes ALL the things we’ve talk about – healing, self awareness, conscious living, a deep sensitivity to our inner worlds and how those inner worlds are interacting with our outer worlds. We currently define enlightenment as consciously living on the edge of transformation - with a variety of traps and pitfalls, as well as opportunities. Enlightenment is a developmental trajectory over a lifetime and the healing that can happen on all levels of reality – hearts, minds, bodies, each other, and our Earth home. Jen cites Dr. Constance Jones and the ‘pair of ducks’ which have appeared in every single episode - two or more divergent truths, that are true at the same time. Jen gives an example from her childhood of binary thinking, where accountability and compassion weren’t able to co-exist. Society is not trauma informed, and it doesn't offer meaningful resources to people struggling with trauma. There's plenty of judgment, shame and stigma towards those who commit crimes. Rehabilitation and support services can shift hearts and minds, and voice complex cycles of violence and trauma. The more we deprogram binary thinking, the more paradoxes we start to see. Enlightenment is about switching perspectives, being nimble and being able to direct our attention well, so that we're comfortable with these paradoxical tensions. And these tensions open us up to new ways of thinking and connecting. 

24:01  Sally says the other great paradox of enlightenment is knowing when to have boundaries, and no boundaries – fluidly moving, when appropriate, in a meta oscillation. On this podcast we teach a capacity for progressive movement - from polarity, to paradox, to unity; and we hold that movement within the one beautiful wholeness of the Tao, which is about both shadow and light. Actually, it's everything. While sitting in a monastery and declining real life, we will find the ‘true self’ - Eckhart Tolle’s notion of “The Power of Now”, which is a gorgeous teaching of pre modern enlightenment. We’ve also spoken though about the new developments, about being in the past with your trauma story. And imagining the future through envisioning a new world. So we include Eckhart Tolle and other pre modern teachings, and we expand this, to include many more capacities. Pre modern enlightenment was about an absence of the personal ego. You were well attained if you dropped away from having any individuation. Perfectly true, but partial, because later we developed the Western Enlightenment, which started 300 years ago, with “I think, therefore I am”. We started realizing we can't just obliterate ego on the cushion. We can also develop it, actually evolve it and find agency. We become more rational and conceptual. So the new Western enlightenment acknowledged the ‘thinking’ being, (especially the left brain), in what we call modern enlightenment. Then about 60 years ago, we came into post modern enlightenment, which was a newer realization. If you have all these little individuals, then they each have their unique perspective. This was brand new. We fell into a kind of a subjective relativism with the understanding that the one field is looking through all our eyes, and experiencing multiple perspectives. A huge addition to the old Enlightenment story. And now we come into meta modern enlightenment, which is this - How do we bring all the gifts of the previous enlightenments together, which include 1) pre-modern meditative practices to drop out of the self; 2) modern science, and understandings of the quantum field - objective truths, our conceptual abilities and cognitive capacities; 3) postmodern subjectivity and relativism, into 4) meta modernism-  a more complex understanding of what it means to be enlightened. It includes past, present, and future. It includes true self and separate self. It includes subject and object. We describe this as the yin-yang metaphor, that includes all opposites, the being and the becoming, the dual and the non dual, in other words mergence and emergence, yin and yang, masculine and feminine, individual and community, agency and cooperation. This is a sophisticated enlightenment teaching, very different from the pre modern, modern, and postmodern. Meta modern enlightenment integrates all the opposites, brings parts into wholes. Thanks to teachers such as Arthur Koestler and his holonic reality, Jean Gebser with his ever present origin, Claire Graves, and his spiral dynamics. Now we can actually map how parts become more whole, how people evolve. John Wellwood came up with the “grow up and wake up” concept and Ken Wilber took that further. The Wake Up part was developed 3000 years ago in the east, and the grow up part, which is the therapeutic developmental aspect, is only about 100 years old, here in the West. So now integral enlightenment, or democratized enlightenment, does both, and is available to anybody, not just a guru. We understand  we are both personal and impersonal beings at the same time. Enlightenment is not perfection, or infallibility, because usually the brighter the light, the darker the shadow. The paradox doesn't disappear with enlightenment. We’ve all got to do a lot of work on ourselves. We no longer only sit in a cave, hiding from activism, and the need to alleviate suffering. We don’t avoid, or bypass. Barbara Marx Hubbard defined enlightenment as an identity, because we realize that ‘we are evolution in action’, that the non dual refracts through the dual - our bodies. Enlightenment is not perfection, it's an identity with dual citizenship – grounded in the material world.

35:09  Jen says we can all access enlightenment. That's the healing move. Joanna Macy calls it ‘the great turning’. She expands on leaning into paradox, which is vital for our survival as a species. Jen lists some of the great paradoxes: 1) Present moment timelessness, and time: present, past, and future. 2) Breakdown is woven into the breakthrough. 3) Our inner healing is healing the world at the same time. There's a fractal connection between our inner worlds and our outer worlds. 4) Heal and develop while knowing there's nothing you need to change about yourself. We are both perfect and imperfect. 5) The more you know, the more you realize you don't know. We need to move beyond our addiction to binaries and break free from the stagnation of reductionist thinking. Conscious living and enlightenment requires developing a tolerance for paradox. Jen explores how the Tao symbol holds paradox as a truth of the integration of opposites, a symbol for the new meta modern enlightenment. She cites Niels Bohr 

43:21  Sally agrees that as we transform, we transform the whole field. As we evolve and co create, so the universe evolves. For paradox, Sally cites one of her teachers, Baba Hari Das: “the embodied soul has two purposes to fulfill, experience the world and get liberation from all experiences.” To fully embody duality, while also discovering non duality, while you're about it. This is dual citizenship. Everything is evolving, including the idea of enlightenment. We've incorporated the doctrine of the two truths from Buddhism and science into this integral idea of paradoxes. Sally explains how we draw the best forward from previous epochs of pre-modern, modern and postmodern - to create meta-modern, but leave behind what doesn’t work. She cites Kant on modern enlightenment, Alan Watts on perennial truths, feelings and states, and the ‘separate self’ emerging from the whole. Sally explains how in meta-enlightenment the ‘true self’ and the ‘separate selves’ work together – as states of heightened consciousness, as well as stages of development, doing what Alfred North Whitehead called the relentlessly movement into novelty. We are creative beings, and non duality works through our duality - we are present to it all – darkness/light, suffering/pain and pleasure/bliss. John Wellwood called this ‘wake up and grow up’. Sally cites Jeff Brown on being fully present as enlightenment, no bypassing, and ‘en-realment’- or waking ‘down’. Sally says the true tantra is ‘its all in’ - wake down, wake up, wake out, wake in. Everything is included and transcended. She ends with a quote from Adyashanti - enlightenment as the destruction of illusion. 

55:02  Jen agrees that contemporary teachers of enlightenment wisdom are articulating new definitions of enlightenment. It's what we're doing here on the podcast and in our everyday lives - being present with whatever is - leaning into paradox and complexity, which lead us into new levels of awareness and understanding. We then engage creatively with ideas and each other, dancing with possibilities, holding uncertainty, not rushing to be first, or right, or intellectually or spiritually superior. We develop tolerance for uncertainty, the magic of paradox, heal trauma and become playful. Reality is more complex than our binary assumptions. And that's a pretty humbling realization. Jen cites Plato on this. Much of our unsustainable behaviour on this planet is driven by hyper-individualism, binary thought, and lack of tolerance for paradox. She quotes Joan Jett on Life being particles and waves, that co-exist together.