Descartes, and the dynamic of separation

Descartes

I blame Descartes. Well not really blame, rather point to the moment in intellectual/philosophical history that truly solidified the insanity of our current state of ration dis-integrated from spirit… He did not so much as invent this break, but rather declared clearly what to do in the face of the war that had been raging for over 12,000 years, where the original cause really lies.

Descartes lived in the 17^th Century when philosophers were beginning to be respected as a separate voice from Church dominance over thoughts and ideas.  He lived in a period of the reformation when Europe was tearing itself apart with wars over religion and emerging scientific ideas.  The world was round, fully proved; and the earth was no longer at the center of the universe, fully proven.  Thus he struggled to find a way between hell and well …. Hell.

He stated “I think therefor I am.” This solidified that thought is a very powerful tool for our transformation. He developed the Cartesian coordinates that we use in math, x, y, z axis and more.  But what really solidified the modern approach to the world was stating that science and rational thought could be handled in a completely separate way/world and discipline than the religious and the spiritual,  that they lived side by side and not really touching. Thus he gave everyone the words to justify a great split in the world of awareness.  The two camps could thus grow to stand side by side without every actually resolving anything.  And slowly the wars died out in favor of other things to fight over, like nation building.

Cartesian Coordinates

Essentially he created a world awareness that would support the statement, “I am not a physical person having a spiritual experience, but rather a spiritual person having a physical experience.” The physical was left to the sciences and treated like a clock, while the spiritual spun away in favor of all sorts of unprovable things, but damn we felt comfortable, because we did not have to give up our conception of god in the process.  Off they went for the past 400 years in totally separate camps.

But deeper than this, his treatise allowed for the development of levels of specialization that led to what we know of today as the disciplines. You could become a biologist without every worrying about anything else because that is your passion.  And you don’t have to give up gods and faith because Descartes provides justification for global schizophrenia.  Each of the disciplines went running off in their own direction, and we have benefited quiet a lot from the engines of ingenuity creating all this modern stuff.

But now we live in a fractured world of separate specialists and idealists with absolutely no one trying to have a global view or an integral view. Ken Wilber, a very deep philosopher and spiritual man, has tried to rectify this with his integral philosophy and writings.  But it’s difficult for the average person to enter a war that has been stalemated for so many years.  So it is no wonder that we can’t see the forest for the trees or global warming for the politics and games.  We have lost an essential and fundamental metaphysical truth….

“We are spiritual, mental, physical, emotional beings having a spiritual, mental, physical and emotional experience at all times everywhere and most importantly in the infinity of the now.”

Thus not one, not one single method way or situation is superior over any other. We need to re-discover that the mind is in every cell of our bodies.  That the spiritual has no superior status for the direction of our lives, that all quadrants of being are integrated and work together.

Thus it is that I claim that wellness requires all parts of our being to participate in the process of transformation and creation. We have spent far too much time dividing up the onion down to its correlative parts so we can sell it off or make money on all the pieces, that we have forgotten the necessity of the integrated whole working towards fully operational success.

And of course it is difficult, when we are confronted with any crisis not to be consumed by the details and all the experts, who from their corners of reality, are so correct in their findings and yet so wrong in their total solution.

Platonic Solid #5

As a warrior, a person of awareness, a man of knowledge, a being of infinity having a fully physical, emotional, mental and physical experience all the time, it is difficult to engage with the parts when the whole is not considered. Thus I challenge the warriors of awareness, Toltecs or not, to look deeper.  The predator wants us to split these elements of our lives into pieces and chose one over the other!!!  It’s job for the past 12,900 years has been to train us to divide and conquer so we remain weak and supple for our own demise.

Bringing it all together is the only way for us to survive as a species of awareness in this band of awareness and to evolve… we have to take it all with us, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual awareness of the whole so we can boost to the next phase.  Beware of any path that falls short of the totality of integrity and being… and especially be aware of how many snake oil salesman and bizarre stories there are out there in all the disciplines to separate us into thinking we win when one camp wins alone.

Everything is coming together, though. I am optimistic in the extreme. I see good things in the world in many corners and many pathways that are opening up to a greater more integrated approach.  These explorers are blazing a trail of integration which will eventually lead to a reunion as David Spangler noted in his Findhorn Foundational work in the 60’s.  We are on the verge.  The deep alignment with the rift of the galaxy for 80 years is beaconing us to deeper journeys of amazing awareness and knowledge.  We are directionally correct.  It’s time to say no to those who would separate us into pieces, lay us flat and eat us for lunch.