Changes

==INTRODUCTION==

==INTRODUCTION==

Twenty-two years ago I stumbled upon a life changing book.  It was “[http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/2219.htm Stages of Faith]” by James Fowler.  Fowler taught a form of developmental [[psychology]] to seminary students at [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emory_University Emory University]’s [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candler_School_of_Theology Candler School of Theology].  His [[vision]] was to train future pastors to recognize that any given congregation will include a variety of people with differing [[faith]]-[[structure]]s.  The [[idea]] was to equip the church to accommodate as well as challenge each type of faith.  Fowler’s academic work is based on meticulously categorized interviews with hundreds of people, each describing his or her own spiritual journey, and answering specific survey questions.  The result is that Fowler identifies six distinct stages of faith that are universally applicable, as it turns out, to any faith [[tradition]].   

Twenty-two years ago I stumbled upon a life changing book.  It was “[https://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/2219.htm Stages of Faith]” by James Fowler.  Fowler taught a form of developmental [[psychology]] to seminary students at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emory_University Emory University]’s [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candler_School_of_Theology Candler School of Theology].  His [[vision]] was to train future pastors to recognize that any given congregation will include a variety of people with differing [[faith]]-[[structure]]s.  The [[idea]] was to equip the church to accommodate as well as challenge each type of faith.  Fowler’s academic work is based on meticulously categorized interviews with hundreds of people, each describing his or her own spiritual journey, and answering specific survey questions.  The result is that Fowler identifies six distinct stages of faith that are universally applicable, as it turns out, to any faith [[tradition]].   

Here in America we prefer to choose our [[belief]]s from a menu, but the fact that faith develops in stages is not something you can simply choose to believe or not.  It’s one of those things like [[gravity]] that is not optional.  Anyone actively engaged in his or her own [[spiritual]] growth will inevitably grow upward through at least some of the six stages in a very specific order that will never vary.  And while the direction and order of the faith-stages are inviolable, one may not necessarily ever grow beyond a particular level.  Take a snapshot at any given church and you will find representatives of every stage.  Even a sample of people at the same point in life, say, all 40 year-olds, will represent different stages.  It was stunning to read the book because I was reading my own biography in a sense.  It was unequivocally clear to me at the time that I was in Fowler’s fifth stage.  I had experienced a number of “dark nights of the soul” on the way to that stage and for the first time I fully understood the underlying process.   

Here in America we prefer to choose our [[belief]]s from a menu, but the fact that faith develops in stages is not something you can simply choose to believe or not.  It’s one of those things like [[gravity]] that is not optional.  Anyone actively engaged in his or her own [[spiritual]] growth will inevitably grow upward through at least some of the six stages in a very specific order that will never vary.  And while the direction and order of the faith-stages are inviolable, one may not necessarily ever grow beyond a particular level.  Take a snapshot at any given church and you will find representatives of every stage.  Even a sample of people at the same point in life, say, all 40 year-olds, will represent different stages.  It was stunning to read the book because I was reading my own biography in a sense.  It was unequivocally clear to me at the time that I was in Fowler’s fifth stage.  I had experienced a number of “dark nights of the soul” on the way to that stage and for the first time I fully understood the underlying process.   

'''CRITICAL WILBER CONCEPT:'''  Here’s one way to consider reintegration between RH and LH:  in the previous example of monitoring subjects’ brains with electrodes during prayer, Wilber would say there is reality happening in every quadrant.  He holds that mind is real, and therefore some sort of genuine growth, change, or expansion of consciousness is happening in the context of prayer.  At the same time he also asserts that the body is real and so endorphins are indeed more active during prayer, and are possibly even the sole cause of our devout feelings of inner peace.  It’s simply built into reality that everything is a two sided coin (actually a four-sided coin!) and therefore it doesn’t really matter if scientists find dopamine or even pink elephants in the brain; neither constitutes evidence that consciousness isn’t real* or isn’t growing in the context of prayer.  Dopamine, serotonin, or other brain chemicals do not negate spiritual growth.  However, if we remain unaware (or in denial) of the reality of both RH & LH sides of our experience,  then we are forced to choose in a false dualism.  One choice is to hold the infantile prerational and prescientific view that our prayer caused our inner religious experience (sometimes leveraged into a proof that God exists).  The other choice is to accept the modern critical (RH) view that we live in a colorless, flat, and demystified world in which we are just a collection of neuron-charged chemicals that generate an illusion of free will (sometimes leveraged into a proof that God does not exist).  Wilber, by contrast, would maintain that Spirit is the ground of all being, and that includes brain chemicals as well as consciousness.  We could say that the inner experience and the corresponding body processes taken together constitute a “spirit-event.”

'''CRITICAL WILBER CONCEPT:'''  Here’s one way to consider reintegration between RH and LH:  in the previous example of monitoring subjects’ brains with electrodes during prayer, Wilber would say there is reality happening in every quadrant.  He holds that mind is real, and therefore some sort of genuine growth, change, or expansion of consciousness is happening in the context of prayer.  At the same time he also asserts that the body is real and so endorphins are indeed more active during prayer, and are possibly even the sole cause of our devout feelings of inner peace.  It’s simply built into reality that everything is a two sided coin (actually a four-sided coin!) and therefore it doesn’t really matter if scientists find dopamine or even pink elephants in the brain; neither constitutes evidence that consciousness isn’t real* or isn’t growing in the context of prayer.  Dopamine, serotonin, or other brain chemicals do not negate spiritual growth.  However, if we remain unaware (or in denial) of the reality of both RH & LH sides of our experience,  then we are forced to choose in a false dualism.  One choice is to hold the infantile prerational and prescientific view that our prayer caused our inner religious experience (sometimes leveraged into a proof that God exists).  The other choice is to accept the modern critical (RH) view that we live in a colorless, flat, and demystified world in which we are just a collection of neuron-charged chemicals that generate an illusion of free will (sometimes leveraged into a proof that God does not exist).  Wilber, by contrast, would maintain that Spirit is the ground of all being, and that includes brain chemicals as well as consciousness.  We could say that the inner experience and the corresponding body processes taken together constitute a “spirit-event.”

*[You may ask, what critic would suggest consciousness is not real?  I refer you to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson Edward Wilson], a Harvard biologist who argues that everything can be explained in terms of its smallest components.  Wilson says consciousness is simply the particle physics that ultimately underlie the molecules, cells, and neurons of the brain.  Consciousness is essentially a quantum field following natural laws, therefore it has no free will, it just generates the illusion of one.  Wilson claims we don’t know enough yet to explain the physics, but soon we will.  This begs the question…..who is this “we” that will soon understand how the illusion of consciousness is generated?  A quantum field that learns how to comprehend itself….isn’t that called….self-transcendence?!  It‘s hard to see how that‘s not the same thing as “real” consciousness.  We‘re obviously in the realm of semantics here. Click [https://nordan.daynal.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_Origins_Of_Religion_in_Universal_Consciousness this link] for more on consciousness and physics].

*[You may ask, what critic would suggest consciousness is not real?  I refer you to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson Edward Wilson], a Harvard biologist who argues that everything can be explained in terms of its smallest components.  Wilson says consciousness is simply the particle physics that ultimately underlie the molecules, cells, and neurons of the brain.  Consciousness is essentially a quantum field following natural laws, therefore it has no free will, it just generates the illusion of one.  Wilson claims we don’t know enough yet to explain the physics, but soon we will.  This begs the question…..who is this “we” that will soon understand how the illusion of consciousness is generated?  A quantum field that learns how to comprehend itself….isn’t that called….self-transcendence?!  It‘s hard to see how that‘s not the same thing as “real” consciousness.  We‘re obviously in the realm of semantics here. Click [https://nordan.daynal.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_Origins_Of_Religion_in_Universal_Consciousness this link] for more on consciousness and physics].