JIll Bolte Taylor and Some Spiritual Fallacies

Above is a video that is getting a lot of play in the spiritual community, I wrote this post when it originally aired on the TED channel, but as you may know this new blog is a place I am gradually uploading to from an archive on Gaia.com - which was recently shut down.

The video is inspiring, it's exciting, it's deeply personal, poignant, intelligent and funny - but ultimately I think the message and it's underlying assumptions are hugely problematic.

I am going to save my comments until this has been up for a little while, and let any readers make their own observations.

My suggestion: watch it once and take the emotional/altered state ride - its great! Then watch it again and pay more attention to the details...

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INTRODUCTION

OK - let's think this through a little, shall we?

* Let me say first of all, this is not intended in any way to be hostile toward Ms. Taylor. She is obviously a bright and sincere woman, who has recovered from and struggled to make sense of a very intense experience of brain injury. She is clearly in touch with a feeling of wanting to share a message that is positive with the world. Her talk is engaging, intelligent, self-revealing and impactful.

At the same time, she is unwittingly enacting a set of fallacies that a basic knowledge of transpersonal psychology, integral theory, philosophical reasoning and recent studies on meditation and neuroscience can enable us to see.

Why does this matter?

Well, the subjects she is touching on regarding the brain, altered states of consciousness, stagewise development and the future of humanity are important and meaningful ones - and they not only deserve to be addressed with more clarity, but when misrepresented as she is doing perpetuate misconceptions that do none of us any good, let alone the ideal of world peace and unity.

Now before you get all bent out of shape, let me acknowledge that yes, of course this is opening a door for many who might otherwise not link these subjects or be exposed to certain possibilities. At the same time I maintain, as I have done with The Secret, What The Bleep, Steve Pavlina's blog and other purveyors of these kinds of fallacies - that it is sometimes better to not be exposed to important ideas than to be exposed to distorted, poorly-reasoned, incorrect manglings of important ideas, dressed up as the next big thing...

For those who will say - ah but this is stage appropriate, don't be so mean to people who think this way, I have one statement: fallacious arguments are not the domain of any healthy stage, especially once one has developed the capacity to reason. There is a healthy version of the interaction between Ms. Taylor's experience and an interpretation that weaves together spirituality, science and philosophy that would represent what integral calls healthy Green - this however is not it.

Here's why:


ALTERED STATES & THEIR INTERPRETATION

1) The talk falls into the trap of conflating an altered state experience with an uncritical interpretation of that experience, without differentiating the two and creating a three strands of science set of well described links and hypotheses. Now, I know its a short talk, but this could be done in a more exciting, though grounded/conservative way, that would map out some very fertile territory for future inquiry, instead of jumping right into a very grandiose narrative about saving the world by choosing to be in your right brain as much as possible.

What i think is going on here is that Ms. Taylor has yet to integrate the experience of this radical altered state with her scientific/cognitive abilities. Understandable - it was a radically different state of mind than she had ever experienced. Furthermore, as the talk progresses it becomes apparent that Ms. Taylor is in a bit of an altered state on stage, this is captivating at first, but read as a little hysterical and manic on second viewing. again - no judgment or mean-ness here, this is just a subjective observation of her mental state. I mean the words "hysterical" and "manic" in their technical usage - not as some kind of ad hominem.

I have written at length here about the importance of recognizing the distance between altered state experiences and the conditioned interpretations that we are all prone to filter them through based on three factors:

1) The universal (with varying degrees of intensity) human proclivity toward not only experiencing altered states but also towards finding those altered states to some extent meaningful and significant.

2) The personal stage of development from which one
a) Interacts with or “co-creates “ the experience and
b) Interprets the experience – both based on one’s psychological profile.

3) The socio-cultural context within which the experience both
a) occurs in the first place and
b) Is then interpreted

You'll notice that Ms.Taylor does something that a lot of badly structured attempts at integrating science and mysticism do - she starts off with simple but good scientific information and then dives right into spiritual assertions without carrying over a similar kind of rigor or analysis. Notice the cadaverous human brain, the qualifications, the scientific background that make us take her seriously - but then as soon as she goes into the emotive, exciting, compelling and humorous discussion of her stroke experience, she starts using certain words without defining them via, unpacking them with, or linking them to, the brain science she is using as their support.

Unfortunately, the listener may get the impression that Ms Taylor's empirical objectivity carries over into her subjective and socially conditioned statements of interpretation and conclusion - lending them more than their deserved objective weight.

This means that even though she gives a very faithful and balanced account of her experience in the body of her talk - the inability to use her muscles, the inability to think, understand language, the presence of extreme pain and chaos etc - as well as the novelty, beauty, wonder, freedom of being in an expansive state, she still somehow manages to arrive at a conclusion in her talk that is unsatisfying.

That conclusion, that begins at around 15:30 is that we could "choose" to step to the right of the left hemispheres and live in peace and beauty. Observe how emotionally charged this idea is for her and how it becomes the central driving force toward her recovery.

Then, at around 16:50:

"So who are we? We are the life force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. Right here right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere where we are -- I am -- the life force power of the universe, and the life force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form. At one with all that is. Or I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere. where I become a single individual, a solid, separate from the flow, separate from you. "

Nirvana. Spirit. Energy. Surrender. Not the choreographer of my life. One with all that is. My moment of transition. Planes of reality. Life force power of the universe.

All of these are words that carry emotive power - and that's fine, they are descriptors of a experience, and they also exist within a context of meaning - but what would do her cause a better service and make the talk more than a cool story that seems to bolster somewhat superficial spiritual ideas, would be if she did more of a step-by-step linking of what integral theory labels the Upper Left (UL) and Upper Right (UR) quadrants. it would also help to step back a little and look at the socially constructed (LL) phrases used above and bear in mind that these are non-empirical observations - which is fine - but they should be identified as such! Instead it all kinda blurs together in an undifferentiated way that could be mistaken for integration or holism, but alas is more of a fun mess..

In other words, how about: I was experiencing something that felt to me like what I had heard called Nirvana. How interesting that a stroke that limited the function of certain aspects of brain function would induce a state of spaciousness, freedom from fears and pre-occupations, wonder at my connection to the universe. Perhaps this has to do with such and such structure in the brain that I know from my background deals with such and such processing, which makes me wonder what a healthy version of this pathological side-effect might be and what would make that possible.... This would ground her interpretation instead of sling-shotting it into speculative metaphysics and emotive argument that stumbles into several naive pitfalls.

This leads to my second point:


CHOICE AND BRAIN STATES

2) Again somehow Ms. Taylor comes to the conclusion that we can "choose" to be in the right brain, and that being in the right brain is the answer to our problems and the prescription for peaceful Nirvana.

Really, this is laden with two fallacies. One is that the left brain is 'the problem," the other has to do with an overstating of the possibility of choice regarding states of consciousness. (Stages too - but I'll get into that in a moment..) Bear in mind she was thrust into this expereince by a stroke - no choice there...

This plays too easily into the approach to spirituality that, rather than encouraging an integration of cognition, emotions, creativity, embodied experience - a real embrace of all that we are, pushes what I call the "self-attacking" position that something, whether it is sex, or 'the ego," or as in this case, the left brain, or materialism, or emotional attachments, something about what and who we are is in the way of being free and enlightened, and if we could just get rid of that, overcome it, choose something else that would be the key!

This is a dualistic oversimplification of any serious process of self-transformation and it does us two forms of dis-service. First: it feeds the fantasy that there is a simple answer, a utopian prescription that we could all just "choose."

Second: because of the previous heady misconception - it serves to keep people in an unfortunate cycle of failing at the impossible (just choosing to be in the right brain, transcending the ego altogether, not having sexual desires, completely controlling my emotions) but holding onto the idea that its their fault and they aren't trying hard enough, setting strong enough intentions, being disciplined enough, surrendering to the guru enough, choosing deliberately enough to be "in love" and so on.. This cycle is basically a dead-end, even though we all go dancing merrily down it with a gleaming hopeful eyes and well-intentioned hearts.


BRAIN PATHOLOGY = ENLIGHTENED AWARENESS

3) The third problem here is the most glaringly obvious: the talk conflates brain injury with enlightenment. It conflates disorganized pathology with integrated development and then draws conclusions from one based on the other, again without creating good links a la some kind of quadrant analysis.

This mistake shoots itself in the foot, because the quadrant reductionism and the variation on the Pre/Trans Fallacy being enacted here allow one to easily arrive at additional poor conclusions, thus: maybe spiritual experiences are just brain pathology, or maybe what we call the healthy brain is in the way of being more spiritual. This doesn't do brain science or any kind of viable spirituality any favors whatsoever!

While a reading of contemporary neuroscience and its study of meditative states (a la Newberg) gives a solid set of links between areas of the brain that serve particular functions and the experience one has as those areas are "turned on or off " by meditation, nowhere does one find the kind of conflating that suggests that states of mental illness are identical to states of meditative absorption.

Differentiating the qualitative value of various altered states and what they do and don't mean is a crucial responsibility that this kind of research needs to be engaging.

(It's also unfortunate that she mentions her brother's schizophrenia and then leaves that loose end dangling while making a case for her brain disorder as a doorway into Nirvana - the implications are obvious and unfortunate - again they do neither meditators nor mentally ill people any favors... and leave the rest of us giddily confused on the matter.)

To quote Meister Eckhart " The madman is drowning in the same waters in which the holy man is swimming."

(I have gone into some depth and detail about this in the Kundalini Dragon post you can find on this blog.)


STATES vs STAGES

4) Altered states of consciousness are one thing, stages of development are another. We learned through the 60's and 70's (and had mapped out by Transpersonal Psychology) that one could experience meditative rapture, psychedelic ego-death, darshan from the great master, and the euphoria of mass demonstration or celebration and still return relatively unchanged to one's existing stage of development.

This niggling reality forced theorists to make a distinction between states and stages and try to make sense of which states were useful glimpses of higher stages and how they could then be translated into a developmental process that would turn the altered state into a permanent trait.

What the research clearly shows, is that one does not develop stagewise by wishing it so, by believing, by choosing, by magical intervention, or by one-off altered state explosions - one progresses through stages of development at the higher end of the spectrum by hard work, practice, self-inquiry, process, healing, study etc...

As inspiring as an altered state - or someone else's account/interpretation of their altered state may be as fuel for transformation - leaving out a map that actually engages the process of transformation renders the inspiration somewhat empty and lacking in direction.


IN CLOSING

Let me end by saying that I am immensely sympathetic to the message, the emotional tone, the intentions of this talk, and I have immense compassion for Ms. Taylor and her experience. At the same time, i think that identifying the popular fallacies that limit the healthy and differentiated integration of mind-body, brain/spirituality, stages and stages, science and mysticism, empiricism and idealism - and offering alternative lenses, is an important, grounding and forward-looking task.

It is the passion I share with Ms. Taylor for the subject that inspires this critique. May it be of service!

Integrative Spirituality: Grounded Contemporary Perspectives

Surface and Depth

There is a famous quote from one of the early Transpersonal Psychologists, Jack Engler, "You have to be someone before you can be no-one."

This is a very simple and direct way of acknowledging a developmental process. In my workshop series and new 8 CD lecture and yoga class series Radical Transformation: A Map to Mind-Body Ecstasy, I use the chakra system as a way to talk about both the developmental process and the mind-body connection. So I'd like to start by using some of the core themes from those lectures as a way to make some distinctions that I think are important for integrative spirituality. I will briefly touch on: experience vs interpretation, conscious mind vs unconscious mind, ego strength vs ego defense, healthy anger vs toxic anger, compassion vs codependence, insight vs belief, literal vs symbolic and of course prerational vs transrational - for more please consult the CD lectures.

Now it might help to start off by defining what I mean by integrative spirituality. My sense of it is a spirituality that integrates attention to mind and body, integrates Eastern and Western approaches, and integrates psychological and spiritual techniques and frameworks.

This is what Transpersonal Psychology set out to do in the 70's, following on from Jung and Maslow and in the wake of the 60's psychedelic mind-expansion, fascination with Eastern myticism and the important work of people like Alan Watts and Joseph Campbell. This zeitgeist produced the extraordinary work of Ken Wilber, Stan Grof, Jack Kornfield, John Welwood, Jack Engler and other brilliant theorists, clinicians, and serious spiritual practitioners.

One of the key observations in this movement has been looked at from different angles that are all related to the above quote from Engler. Wilber's famous essay The Pre/Trans Fallacy, Welwood's concept of "spiritual bypassing," Stan Grof's observation about the "flight toward the light," and much of Kornfield's work points to the problem of non-integrative spirituality being used in the service of avoiding dealing with the necessary awareness work and emotional healing that continuing development and integration require. In other words, spirituality itself (especially spirituality based in magic, mythic and metaphysical beliefs) can become a defense against actual spiritual and psychological growth.

As far as working in an integrative way - I think of both mind and body as having surface and depth components. There is the (surface) conscious mind and the (depth) unconscious mind, each being home to the ego and the Self. The surface level has to do with mental focus, intentionality and ego-strength, as well as cognitive development, critical thinking, symbol interpretation. Goal-setting, Cognitive Reframing, Concentration and even Witnessing meditations are good here, as well as intellectual pursuits that refine critical and symbolic analysis.

Too little surface mind work and one can be very undisciplined, caught up in drama, chronically self-sabotaging etc..

The depth component of the mind invites us beneath the surface - Vipassana, Tonglen and Lovingkindness meditation, psychotherapy, Holotropic Breathwork, certain kinds of yoga, bodywork, and ecstatic dance, all can take us into that shamanic type space where the defenses come down and we go through an experiential process of working with repressed emotions, painful memories, insecurities and traumas held in the unconscious, as well as archetypal imagery, self-parenting and the arising of insight into our personal process and the universal human condition.

As is more often the case than not - too much surface mind work at the expense of depth mind work can create a kind of over-identification with beliefs, an overvaluing of the power of intention, an emphasis on controlling both reality and one's feelings through the mind, and - as should be obvious, a lack of depth in terms of the psyche/soul.

The less common problem has to do with too much destabilizing depth work and not enough of the grounding, calming, focusing ego-strength buiding of the surface work.

One corrolary to this is a kind of unboundaried overabundance of intuitive awareness with a lack of either the structure of ego-strength or the awareness of the depth work - such that the intuitive stream is often undifferentiated from one's shadow material, projections etc and ends up being overly literalized in a kind of superstitious way. Many sensitive and/or traumatized poeple drawn to spirituality take this route.

In Jungian terminology, this alchemical process is one of creating/strengthening the "ego/Self axis." Another way of saying this is that we open up more of a connection between the deep Self and the surface ego. Overall the healthy psychospiritual process creates a stronger channel of communication between the surface and depth, between our conditioned external self and our authentic inward experience, feelings, needs, thoughts and aspirations. It also frees up blocked energy from unresolved conflicts and allows both the developmental process along several lines to continue and the integrative resonance between those different lines to be more harmonious. When I use the word "lines" I am referring to the Integral concept and specifically for my purposes I am interested in the cognitive, emotional, spiritual, and kinesthetic lines of development.

Another doorway in is to talk about the relationship between intention and process. The intention (surface) creates a doorway into a process (depth) which in turn will re-shape the intention as well as the ego setting the intention through input from the Self. It's a feedbaclk loop.

The Self is constantly communicating with us through things like dreams, intuitions, projections, fantasies, emotions, psychosomatic symptoms. Think of the (deep) Self as being more authentically in touch with what is really going on under the surface of the defenses (rationalization, denial, magical thinking, projection etc) - the Self has a clearer picture of the whole of our experience and has acccess to the disowned shadow material of emotions, desires, experiences, resources and archetypes that our ego has not yet learned to tolerate, actualize, and integrate.

As to the body, I think of the body too as having a surface component in it's structural anatomy and a depth component in it's organ system, glandular and blood chemistry. The surface component of the body is well addressed by physical practices like yoga, other forms of exercise and various kinds of bodywork/massage. The depth component can be well addressed by organ cleansing, nutrition, supplement protocols and the benefits of detoxifying sweat and nervous and glandular system stimulation and modulation created by exercise - particularly in this case - yoga and ecstatic dance.

So in terms of addressing surface and depth in both mind and body - the integrative approach I apply is to synergize finely tuned physical practices that allow space for process with with nutritional cleansing/supplementation and various meditation techniques that train for different skills.

This combination of anatomical, spiritual and psychological approaches adds up to an energetic initiation that is quite profound - and a new heightened awareness of the mind-body connection/process.


Altered States, Kundalini, Unwinding

At their most essential level meditation, yoga, breathwork, psychotherapy and dance all are ways to access a revelatory experience of not just the mind-body connection, but a kind of dropped-in awareness field in which the innate intelligence of the bodymind can rebalance, unwind, spontaneously express and begin to awaken to it's deeper energetic and awareness capacities. Part of this revelatory process can include the arising of the altered state awakenings and psychophysical phenomena attributed in the East to Kundalini and in the West to the somato-psychic wave, somatic discharge, unwinding etc...

These states are accesible at any level of one's developmental process. For the purposes of this discussion let's say that these altered state/energetic processes can arise while one's "altitude" is centered in any of the chakras and can also be the result of an unresolved strand of experience (or even what Grof calls a Co-ex system) emerging from any of the chakras/developmental levels. To clarify, i should say that I think of the chakras as being a) anatomical structures: key "high-charge" muscles, glands, organs, nerve plexi, b) a way of talking about how the inward experience of the body in a particular physical area resonates emotions and energetic qualities, and c) a metaphorical/imaginal way of talking about mind-body matrix and it's developmental and healing processes.

Being Someone

So, to return to our starting point - if you have to be someone to be no-one, what does this mean? One has to have a strong, healthy ego, or sense of self, in order to healthily engage in any kind of transcendence of that ego or sense of self. In terms of my chakra model this means that the developmental process in chakras one through three has to be pretty solid in order to move forward to chakras four though seven in a healthy way. Now of course, chakras one through three have to do with several key issues: the right to exist, survival, taking pleasure in our physicality, emotional and sexual trust, gender identity/value, object relations, sense of self, boundaries, will, self-esteem, to name a few...

The difficulty of course comes in two forms: first, whether we realize it or not, most of us have fairly serious unresolved issues in these earlier chakra levels and second, many if not most people interested in spirituality have come to a spiritual path out of some kind of pain, suffering, longing for something that we do not have/feel. So spirituality actually is a bit of a magnet for wounded people. Now, if the kind of spirituality that is encountered is not integrative, it will likely perpetuate the very defenses (denial, rationalization, magical thinking) that are keeping the ego and the Self from being in an integrated fluid relationship. Often there is so much static because of the elaborate beliefs that people take on in the name of spirituality that it is almost impossible at first to be in touch with any real feelings, to enter into any authentic process of going beneath the surface and listening to the psyche, the body-intelligence, the heart wisdom. Intention is often held up as a supreme control mechanism instead of just step one of a process of going within and healing/growing. Intention is given a kind of literalized magic power to affect outer reality, instead of being understood as a way to focus the mind enough to go under the defensive omnipotent fantasies into the places of vulnerability wherein lies the true gift - our disowned aspects of self.

So in this sense "integrative" also means to integrate the aspects of our experience, feelings, needs, potentials that we have relegated to the unconscious because of various disturbances in healthy development in the first three chakras. It is in defense against dealing with this very primal and often painful material that a kind of prepersonal spirituality can spring up - one that dissociates from having to deal with these feelings and usually judges them as unspiritual, too attached, egoic etc - all as a kind of oversimplified misreading of outdated yogic/buddhist philosophy, and then also buys into various prerational metaphysical explanations for how reality works and how everything from your bank balance to your happiness is a function of your intention or will manifesting.

Distinctions

So let's talk a little about the third chakra in my system. I want to start by making a much-needed distinction between ego-strength and ego-defense. We have a social convention of saying that someone with a lot of bravado and conceit who needs to be the center of attention has a big ego. This is technically incorrect - they actually have a small ego - but a big ego-defense. Another way to say it is that they are lacking in ego-strength and are over compensating with an ego-defense. The last thing this person actually needs to do is have their ego cut down to size by more meditation and fierce diet of transcendence. Why? because you have to somone to be no-one. You need a healthy strong ego before you can drop your ego-defenses. How do you develop ego-strength? well, it comes own to internalizing the kinds of positive feedback that only a small number of people in your life can ever really give you. It has to do with a very vulnerable, very young part of us not having received love, acceptance and the kind of mirroring that allowed a strong sense of self to be internalized.

Now, if one is suffering from low self-esteem it is not enough, nor is it integrative, to simply try to set an intention to be more confident - even if it works it is still at some level just an act. Authentic confidence will develop over time from learning how to be present and loving with the insecure part of yourself. Lovingkindness meditation, certain approaches to practices like yoga and dance, and certain psychotherapeutic techniques (not to mention the healing relationship with a good practitioner) can support that process of that healing inner re-parenting.

Kohut is really the master here: We have a primary narcissism as children that is entirely appropriate and that is asking to be mirrored. We need to feel important, special, loved, accepted, admired etc... If this happens for us we relinquish the primary narcissism with an internalized positive sense of self that can tolerate the disappointments, unfairness and struggles of life as we continue growing. If this does not happen sufficiently and/or if there is abandonment or invasion trauma - then we deveop a secondary nasrcissism that is still attempting to get those needs met and that is part of the coping structure of a poorly developed sense of self (low ego strength) that has a hard time tolerating how unfair, disapppointing and out of my control reality actually is....

On to our second distinction: healthy anger vs toxic anger. i think of anger as a third chakra energy. Healthy anger sets boundaries, communicates violations, expresses moral outrage. Healthy anger can be channeled into hard work, creativity, passionate engagement. Healthy anger can create real intimacy - because it is honest and direct. Toxic anger is usually tied to some kind of repressive cycle such that it builds up and needs to be discharged either by out of proportion reactivity or passive agression. Healthy anger is a function of ego-strength. Toxic anger is usually part of an ego-defense.


Compassion vs Codependence

Now if we are "someone" - meaning if we have a healthy sense of self or ego strength, then we can develop compassion. Compassion in the sense of being able to imagine another's suffering - precisely because we can tolerate feeling our own suffering. Compassion is distinct from codependence. In codependence we imagine that we can fix the other person's suffering and then they will give us the love that we need or then they will admire us in the way that we need. Codependence can also be a kind of merging with another person, whereas from the healhty differentiation of ego-strength we can both imagine how someone's suffering feels and know that it is their suffering and not ours. Being able to imagine their feelings allows us to empathize, knowing where their feelings end and ours begin allows us to not be overwhelmed or burdened in such a way that we might shut down - or try to shut them down. Codependent dynamics based in an inability to tolerate the reality of suffering in ourselves and others are extremely common in non-integrative spirituality and give rise to all sorts of defensive beliefs that are the orthodox lingua franca in some circles.

As we engage in practices that allow development and healing to occur, insight arises. Insight is distinct from belief in one simple way: belief is an outside-in phenomenon. Insight is as the word suggests an inside-out phenomenon. In other words imposing a belief that one has decided is worthwhile, or that one has heard is spiritually correct is very different from going through a process that allows insight to emerge experientially.


Symbolic Thinking and Existential Initiation

As we continue to develop into the higher cognitive stages of what Piaget called formal operations and beyond to what theorists like Wilber and Gebser have called vision logic and integral cognition, we develop deepening abilities to understand systems of meaning, poetic and archetypal symbolism and spiritual metaphor. From these stages we are able to reclaim what the rational stage cast off from the literal mythic and magic stages of development and reinterpret it through the symbolic lens of our deeper more sophisticated capacities.

Personally I feel that the great initiation into genuine transpersonal spirituality has to do with integrating the hard-won development of cognitive, emotional and spiritual lines into an existential awakening to the mind-blowing miraculous sacredness of reality as it is in a way that redefines the old world ways of using those terms and finally understands that words like god and spirit actually refer to our own complete true nature and have been a way of trying to wake up to ourselves all along. In that moment the mysterious and the mundane are revealed as one and the same and any metaphysical construct that needs to somehow look outside of reality as it is is seen as a ghostly substitute for this one brutal, beautiful, unfair, magnificent, tragic, grace-filled ride through the inner and outer cosmos.

It doesn't interest me if there is one God or many gods.

I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned.

If you know despair or can see it in others.

I want to know if you are prepared to live in the world with its harsh need to change you. If you can look back with firm eyes saying this is where I stand.

I want to know if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living falling toward the center of your longing.

I want to know if you are willing to live, day by day, with the consequence of love and the bitter unwanted passion of sure defeat.

I have been told, in that fierce embrace, even the gods speak of God.

~David Whyte