__Open Source Integral Spirituality Definition 2.0__
Open Source Integral Spirituality is a dynamic new form of evolutionary panentheistic spirituality based upon the integrative method of "transcending yet including" the wisdom of all of the world’s religious traditions. It should have neither sacred founders, popes, or personalities, nor sacred revelations that might separate you from your own spiritual discernment and path, the great adventure of discovering for yourself the Divine essence of all authentic religion and spirituality, or your fellow spiritual journeyers.
It should be an “open source”
spiritual organization that is co-created from the wisdom from all written and oral spiritual traditions that is also congenial with current science, philosophy and art. Nothing quite like it has ever existed before, nor was it even possible before the emergence of a new Integral Worldview and the Internet.
For many of the estimated 30% of the population that calls itself spiritual, but not religious the very word religion creates an unpleasant and aversive reaction. One does not have to go far to see the excesses and abuses of religion today or remember the abuses of the past.
But, what if a group of spiritually mature individuals could in fact co-create a new form of integral spirituality that performed many of the vital social functions that healthy religions perform such as promoting service and unselfish fellowship; answering the ultimate questions of life; encouraging human friendship and all types of better relationships, conserving morality; promoting community welfare, promoting family life; providing wise counsel and spiritual guidance; encouraging group meditation and worship; socially demonstrating loyalty to the Divine; fostering attraction to the highest values; delivering tolerant religious education; magnifying the lures of truth, beauty, and goodness and facilitating the spread of the messages of spiritual hope, renewal and at-onement --- without devolving into the social pathologies of many past and current religions?
In its most essential form, almost all current religion is the organizationally prescribed practice of a single particular path leading to God, the Mystery, the Allness. Integral spirituality and religion is the integration of what is best from all religious paths leading to God, the Mystery, the Allness.
It even holds the potential to emerge, unveil or evolve completely new views of Divinity based upon the shared new empirical spiritual experiences of the members of all religions. It is a facilitating and integral channel for all personal spiritual paths with its main purpose being to expand, accelerate and support each individual’s unique spiritual unfolding (personal path) toward the Divine.
If you believe that there are as many unique spiritual paths to the Divine Mystery as there are unique people, and, that every individual has the right to find and choose their own best path from the wisdom of all paths, then humankind's combined spiritual wisdom heritage held within a new form of integral religion offers you unique advantages for enhancing your spiritual growth. If the possibilities above intrigue you, continue reading about the advantages to be gained as well as the religious pathologies to be avoided.
__The Natural Goals of an Integral Spirituality__
"__To Enhance Your Personal Spirituality by:"__
1.) Providing deeper, broader and more universal and inclusive answers to the ultimate spiritual questions of life, such as:
*Who and what is the Divine and what are his/her/its purposes?
*Who and what is the Divine and what are his/her/its purposes?
*What is the true origin and essence of the individual, humanity, the planet and the living and non living systems of life?
*What is the highest purpose and destiny of the individual, humanity, the planet and the living and non living systems of life?
*What is the purpose and meaning of the universe?
*How do we best live our lives with nature and our fellow beings?
*What is our spiritual responsibility in co-creating a better world in the here and now?
*How do we understand our relationships in relation to the dualities of life that so often seem to cause relational conflict?
*Is there an afterlife, and if so, how do we prepare for it?
2.) Collecting and providing all of the most universally applicable spiritual wisdom and processes from humankind’s vast spiritual heritage to help individuals achieve:
http://universespirit.org/node/1565?page=306 of the Divine,
successful lives and
co-creation of a better world.
3.) Re-integrating and re-balancing feminine spirituality (the Divine Feminine) with masculine spirituality (the Divine Masculine)and then spiritually including, but transcending these qualities as well.
4.) Integrating
art and beauty back into its vital role within
spirituality and religion.
5.) Re-integrating the life-affirming values and wisdom of spirituality with the facts of science and the beauty of philosophical inquiry.
6.) Integrating the highest spiritual wisdom of the West and East with the facts of science to expand direct spiritual experience(s) with each and all of the paradoxical Divine co-absolutes of the Oneness. The tripartite of Divine co-absolutes within the Oneness are sometimes called the "I" co-absolute of God, the "We" co-absolute of God and the "It" co-absolute of God. They are also more commonly known as: :
*The Personal Absolute (the God/Goddess as offered by spirituality. This would also include our direct personal relation to this Personal Absolute),
*The Evolutionary Absolute (God/Goddess evolving through and in the universe with us as partners. This form of Deity is both science-revealed and humanly co-evolved in time. This co-absolute form contains both personal and impersonal aspects) and,
*The Impersonal Absolute (Concepts such as the non-personal Buddhist Emptiness, Brahman, the Tao or the “I am witness” as offered by many forms of eastern spirituality.)
Many integral community members hold that for one's spiritual life to grow to its fullest heights and the world to flourish in the most life-affirming ways, one's spiritual path is most optimally served by regular and balanced direct spiritual experiences with each and all of the Personal, Impersonal and Evolutionary co-absolutes of Divine Oneness.
7.) Offering new integrally-informed perspectives on spiritual ethics and morality.
8.) Presenting the collected spiritual wisdom of humankind in such a way that it is coherent and internally consistent.
9.) Creating integrally-informed spiritual metaphors, rituals, ceremonies and sacraments, and a new story that embrace all humankind and life.
10.) Promoting the critical importance of spiritual work along with psychological shadow-work to facilitate the historic peer community proof of authentic spiritual growth and practice by the balanced living of the classical, postmodern and integral
virtues
11.) Seeking a greater understanding of all the spiritually classic, scientific and yet unknown aspects of the afterlife.
12.) Teaching that there is no wrong form of spirituality or religion because every human being must grow level by level from birth through the entire spiral of developmental levels of consciousness. Authentic Divinity and spiritual expression will always look significantly different from each human developmental level. Additionally, everyone has a right to be and remain at any developmental level for as long as they wish. No developmental level holds intrinsic or natural authority or superiority over any other.
13.) Teaching and integrating the spiritual wisdom found within humankind’s developmental levels of consciousness (archaic, magic, mythic, rational, pluralistic, integral, and super-integral) and then being an effective spiraling platform for educational and experiential progression through those developmental levels.
14.) Assisting other religions in integralizingtheir faiths, i.e., assisting in the evolution of integral Judaism, integral Christianity, integral Islam, integral Buddhism, integral Hinduism, etc., we can thus facilitate the growth of billions of individuals through the spiraling developmental levels of consciousness to create a more tolerant and life-affirming world for all.
15.) Presenting the collected spiritual wisdom of humankind in such a way that it can easily be assimilated at every level of consciousness in every
domain, level, line, and stage of human development
and by any personality type, learning style, culture, race or ethnicity.
16.) Honoring relationship as an end in itself and growing spiritual communities globally that are aligned with our goals.
17.) Promoting service to community and society that is informed by the integral worldview.
18.) Expanding the global integral commons (that is the integral worldview and movement as a whole, so as to help spread the ideas of integral spirituality.
19.) Being a fertile spiritual incubator for the emergence of empowering new leaders who will inspire by example and lead the world toward more life-affirming evolution in all areas and walks of life.
20.) And finally, by asking for your help and ideas. If you do not see any goal above that you think should be a part of the goals of an integral and integrative spirituality, we invite you to tell us about them.
__How an Integral Spirituality would attempt to reach those goals:__
1.) While many religious orthodoxies proclaim that they are the only way and complete truth, an Integral Spirituality and religion would be a gracious organization. Its educational attitude would be, “Yes, you’re currently right and that is always true, but it is partial rightness in an evolving universe. And, there is more wisdom available to increase the current wisdom rightness of your life.”
2.) Be a both/and unity and solution-creating organization versus an either/or duality creating organization.
3.) Stay humble by not forgetting that our perceptions of any given spiritual reality are also conceptions that are at least partially constructed and created by us. At a particular time they can be good and useful interpretations or metaphors, but as we evolve, and as deeper and broader structure is uncovered, those perceptions will evolve too.
4.) Doing everything possible to educate its members about the many pathologies and abuses of past religions and the critical spiritual safeguards that are necessary to prevent them from occurring in this new integral spirituality and religion. Some, but by no means all of the pathologies of institutionalized religion have been: fixation of beliefs; establishment of oppressive ecclesiastical authority; religious fundamentalism; tendency to standardize and fossilize truth; diversion of religion from the service of God to the service of the church; fund raising focus in place of a humble spiritual service focus; creating discriminatory religious castes; becoming an intolerant judge of orthodoxy; creation of the aristocratic "chosen-people" attitude; sexual and financial abuse of members, undue psycho/spiritual influence or coercive influence over members negating or debilitating their ability to exercise spiritual free will; fostering of false and exaggerated ideas of sacredness; routinizing of religion; accepting religious symbols and ceremonies in place of authentic direct spiritual experience of and with the Divine, using blind or absolutist faith to override proper faith balance with rationality or scientific facts; preventing or slowing members progressing through
Fowler’s natural stages of spiritual growth; tendency to form sects and competitive divisions; petrification of meditation/worship; venerating the past while ignoring present demands; failure to make up-to-date interpretations of religion’s messages; entanglement with functions of secular institutions; inclination of leaders to become administrators instead of ministers; accumulation of vested interests toward increased secularization; failing to hold the interest of adventurous youth and losing the hope renewing wisdom from ongoing personal direct spiritual experience with the Divine. Click here
to learn more about our spiritual safeguards against other religious pathologies and abuses.
5.) Have most of its spiritual education materials, organizational policy and operational direction be co-created by a spiritually mature community of self-organizing individuals operating from an integral informed worldview to the best of our ability.
6.) For a lot more of the details about the spiritual and administrative principles for reaching the goals above click here
__An invitation to join the adventure of the new Integral Spirituality__
We invite you of help us co-create a new form of evolutionary, integrally-informed spirituality and join our growing global spiritual community if you feel that:
your current spiritual or religious practice could be deepened, broadened or revitalized by new spiritual wisdom, or
you have substantially outgrown your current spiritual or religious practice and feel that it no longer reflects enough of your present spiritual or intellectual development, or
you might like to be a pioneer in the first evolutionary spiritual organization and community that is dynamically co-creating “open source” integral spirituality. Open Source simply means that we are open to having anyone or any organization add to or help refine our open access collections of humanity’s spiritual wisdom heritage. This term originally came from the software world where anyone could alter the software code as long as they also made it freely available to others to modify as we also do with our spiritual wisdom collections.
Integral Spirituality is a vehicle where your evolving personal spirituality can potentially benefit every other member of the integral community. It is also a place to potentially learn from the personal spirituality of every other member of the community as well as from humankind’s vast heritage of spiritual wisdom.
__What do you think about the above?__
Is it possible and or even desirable to birth a new integral spirituality? This is a bold idea. So, if you will, please join us in a very practical inquiry into the how and what of a co-created integral spirituality. Even now, we are in the process of implementing our version 2.0; we intend to learn as we go and we invite you to come along if you feel the call to this spiritual adventure. If you are excited or intrigued about what you have read so far, we invite you to click this What's next
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