Evolutionary Christianity

[minsocal]

Brian,

 

What you wrote makes a great deal of sense. Sometimes it is difficult to find the right words and express how they all fit together. This is part of a matrix of evolved survival strategies assembled by Dr. Paul Valent. They are what biological evolution has given us. The matrix shows how empathy, love and reverence for life transform our understanding along a path that leads to growth, renewal, and regeneration. I havn't quite figured out how to get a table to format properly so it is a little scrambled.

 

The basic strategies

 

Appraisal........................... Strategy

 

1. Must rescue others............... rescue, protect, provide

2. Must be rescued by others........ attachment, protected, provided

 

3. Must achieve goals............... assertiveness, combat, work

4. Must surrender goals............. adapting, accepting, grieving

 

5. Must remove danger............... fight, defend, rid

6. Must move from danger............ flight, run, hide, save oneself

 

7. Must obtain scarce essentials.... competition, dominance, acquisition

8. Must create scarce essentials.... cooperation, trust, mutual gain

 

Adaptive Forms of the above:

 

Psychological Response................ Social Response......................... Judgments of Worth

 

1. care, empathy, devotion............ responsibility, nurture, preservation... responsible, giving, altruistic

2. held, nurtured, looked-after....... close, secure, content, union........... worthy, deserving, lovable

 

3. strength, control, potency......... will, high morale, success.............. strong, capable, successful

4. acceptance, sadness, grief, hope... yielding, mourning, turning to new...... pitiful, sympathy, tribute

 

5. threat, revenge, frighten.......... deterrence, wounding, riddance.......... brave, noble, heroic

6. retreat, flight, escape............ fear, terror, deliverance............... pitiable, vulnerable, refugee

 

7. winning, status, power............. contest, hierarchy, possession.......... superior, respected, honored

8. mutuality, generosity, love........ integration, reciprocity, creativity.... tender, poignant, beautiful

 

All of your words are there.

 

Myron

[minsocal]

At this point, I would like to add my own interpretation of the matrix presented in my prior post. If we were to take the pairs of survival strategies and construct motifs out of them and then add them together we would end up with a "grand narrative" of life. But that has already been done. It's called the Bible. It seems to me that the Bible passes through all of these in one form or another, with demonstrations of success and failure, good and evil outcomes. The story reaches its peak with the message of Jesus. Yes, this is where we've been and here is where we should go. A history and a new goal.

 

When driving on the pathway of life it is a good idea to check your rearview mirror now and then, taking care that it gives you a clear reflection.

 

Myron

[minsocal]

Oh, and don't press on the accelerator too hard, you might end up "nearer my God to Thee", but not quite the way you imagined.

[glintofpewter]

I've long intuited that it is in the nature of nature to nurture and that our evolution into an empathetic creature with the intelligence and ingenuity to become co-creative with the evolutionary process is purposeful, although the route taken has been random. Is our consciousness something new or did is it merely a new expression of that which has always been in the energies of the universe?

 

This takes me back to my earlier suggestion that love is at the heart of the creative process and that this love is totally committed to non-violence. Thus progress has to be on the basis of 'what can be will be' - it is both purposeful and random - the Greeks call it 'stochastic'. That's why I find the message of Matthew 5, the Bhagavad Gita and the Tao Teh Ching so important for today. Nature's creative method is overwhelmingly (though maybe not totally) non-violent. The only way we can become co-creators is by choosing to control our mammalian and reptilian instincts and choosing the path of love.

 

This is wonderfully concise. Thanks You.

 

Dutch

[Brian Holley]

Brian,

 

What you wrote makes a great deal of sense. Sometimes it is difficult to find the right words and express how they all fit together. This is part of a matrix of evolved survival strategies assembled by Dr. Paul Valent. They are what biological evolution has given us. The matrix shows how empathy, love and reverence for life transform our understanding along a path that leads to growth, renewal, and regeneration. I havn't quite figured out how to get a table to format properly so it is a little scrambled.

 

 

Thanks Myron. Such analysis always interest me, perhaps because of my background in careers counselling and personal development. They trouble me too. I just wonder if we can actually analyse our way to 'the One' (Enabling Love). I find myself being drawn to the poetic and intuitive more than to the intellectual and analytical these days. Having said that, I found some of Michael Dowd's stuff on the natural outcomes of our evolution useful in understanding my own responses to things. It looks like the matrix can also be understood in that context. The degree to which I find myself on the continuum between the extremes may be a measure of my spiritual progress toward detachment from ego desire - then, of course, I have to ask myself if measuring my progress is actually an ego activity! I'm currently re-reading the Bhagavad Gita, comparing three translations and delving into the allegorical references of some of the names. Fascinating and heart warming. It's getting beyond desire and fear I'm working on. Just when I think I'm making progress something happens to show me I've still a way to go.

[minsocal]

Brian,

 

Good thoughts to have. And,yes, there is a disturbing side to understanding human evolution. I only showed the adaptive part of the matix. The maladaptive and trauma sections are very difficult. The goal of Dr. Valent's work is to help people who have experienced severe trauma recover. Like Jung, what Dr. Valent discovered is that those who recover more often than not end up on their own spritual path. It was Jung who said that he never met a person in the second half of life whose problems were not spiritual.

 

Myron

[JenellYB]

I think ego is sometimes seen as something of a hinderance, something to be overcome, detached from, or transcended, in seeking the spiritual path.

 

Ego is not a 'bad' thing, ego is actually very neccessary in any event. Ego discerns among and orchestrates between different pressures of our successful state of being in our environment.

 

Freud's model of Ego as arbiter between ID, primitive animal desires, and Superego, the internalized standards of one's environment that must be observed and obeyed if we are to get our needs met in ways acceptable to society, is good as far as it goes. However, Freud's most promising pupil, in whom he had placed his hopes of a successor to his own work, broke with him over the point of there being also a spiritual component at work in human nature and behavior.

 

That pupil, Carl Jung, posited a spiritual component be added to Freud's 3-part model, to make it a 4-part model. Without that 4th component, Jung posited, it would be all too easy for clever Ego to find ways of satisfying ID's desires, that might violate Superego's principles in nature, yet satisfied Ego's task of keeping us out serious trouble. In this, Ego could reason, well, I can still commit acts Superego and society prohibit, as long as I don't get caught, or can devise some clever legal way around it.

 

Jung's model positions conscience into the spiritual component. It is this spiritual component that informs Ego in its task of balancing demands of Ego and Superego, sometimes even giving it a position of authority above that of superego. Ie, while a certain act or thing may be approved and legal in present society, the Spiritual element can still over ride superego's approval, and say, no, it may be legal, it may be allowed, but it still isn't right. And of course, it is the presence of this 4th component at work when a person finds merely statisfying ID and Superego's demands isn't enough, iniating ego into the role of seeker of something more.

 

In seeking toward the spiritual path, Ego is not discarded, suppressed, overcome, or transcended...Ego is rather now re-focused, no longer content to limit it's task to negotiating between ID and superego's desires.

 

Coming to this stage of development requires not a broken, subserviant Ego, but a fully mature and strong Ego. As spiritual growth progresses, part of that process is to help Ego continue toward maturity, not anhilation. In this model, Ego is then mediating between three other components...its task of mediating between ID and Superego isn't negated, but rather now also being informed by the spiritual component.

 

Jenell

[minsocal]

In a personal correspondence Jung wrote "I do not believe God exists, I know God exists." Jung was an Introverted Type with a well developed Intuitive Function. The "I know God exists" comes from intuition. Imagine how much restraint it must have taken to resist commenting on the existence of God in his emprical writings.

 

Myron

[JenellYB]

I expect Jung was well aware of the God identity problem, that if he actually referenced "God" and the existance of "God" every person would supply their own understanding of "God". I think Jung did quite well at presenting ideas of a existant God without naming it as God.

 

Jenell

[Brian Holley]

I think ego is sometimes seen as something of a hinderance, something to be overcome, detached from, or transcended, in seeking the spiritual path.

 

Ego is not a 'bad' thing, ego is actually very neccessary in any event. Ego discerns among and orchestrates between different pressures of our successful state of being in our environment. . .

 

Jenell

 

Thanks for that insight, Jenell. You obviously have a much better understanding of psychological theories than I do. I tend to base my thoughts about Ego on the Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads more than anything else these days. These certainly confirm your assertion that the Ego is not all bad for the two birds of the Mundaka Upanishad (the ego and the Self) are 'intimate friends' according to Easwaran's translation. In trying to reconcile psychological theory and the vedic teaching about ego with my own experience, I find that my ego seems to be a function which operates in the field of pairs of opposites. It makes judgements and chooses but in doing so it is strongly influenced by my experiences, my past responses to my experiences and by my instincts (from the reptilian and mamalian brains). So although the ego should be a positive aspect of my mind, often it is a negative because of these influences. The Upanishads teach that the ego represents the 'False Self'. As Richard Rohr emphasises, that doesn't mean it's a bad self, just not the real thing because its judgements are so warped by my desires and fears and my attachment to them. As Rohr says, I am not my ego any more than I'm my big toe. But just as I need to control every aspect of my physical being, so I need to bring my ego under control of my True Self. In another Upanishad (I can't remember which) the relationship between the Self and the ego are compared to that of the Lord of the chariot and the chariot driver. The chariot is the body, the reins are the mind and the horses are the senses. In Juan Mascaro's translation of the BG there's a reference to the body and senses being a servant of the soul. So for my ego to be at peace it needs to be directed by my Self and no longer attached to desires and fears.

 

I guess I do view my ego somewhat negatively, though, I hope with compassion too. Although it should be a function of mind for good, it has been a function for bad too much in my life and in the evolution of humanity as a whole, it seems to me. What I need to do, it seems to me, is gain control of my ego through the realisation of my True Self.

 

I wonder how this relates to standard psychological theory. (I don't trust Freud, I'm afraid).

[JenellYB]

Hmmmm... Brian, a lot here to touch upon...the first and most major is trying to mix and match different models, from different paradigms.....as you are doing here in more than one case.

 

Now, any word is of course only a symbol, to which we attribute content, that content may vary. That is very much the situation here. The term "Ego" has very different content's of meaning when used in reference to Freud's model, in psychological concepts, from that within sociology in such as Symbolic Interactionsism, or any one of many areas of 'spiritual' such as in English translations of the eastern texts you mention. Ego used in psychology varies even between different paradigms within psychology, and very defintely from as used in religious or spiritual writings. Let me just say that the "ego" as used in the Eastern texts you mention is not even close to how Ego is defined in several areas of psychology.

Also, your use of the terms 'self', 'false self' 'true self', are not really terms used in any of the different paradigms within Psychology or Sociology as I've studed. These terms seem to turn up most often, in my experience, in what is often called "Pop Psych" or "Pop Pseudo Psych".

 

We need to be careful trying to carry things across lines of different models and paradigms, because it easily becomes confused because the different models may not actually be modeling the same thing at all. Such is the case here in attemtping to carry terms such as ego and self into how they are used within psychology and sociology. Now, also keep in mind, neither the Baghad veda (sp?) nor the Upannishads had so much as a single mention of these terms 'ego' and 'self', for these are english words that do not appear in the orginal languages. So, the crux point right here is that it was TRANSLATORS that provided those words, Ego and Self, from whatever words/concepts existed inthe orgininal texts. Now let's draw this into something of a loop that will give you insight into what those terms mean in you "Englishized" study of those texts. Above, I explained how the terms self, false self, true self, are actually originating out of the Pop Pseudo Psych talk, or commonly referred to as psycho-babble?

What you will find is that in these 'Englishized', especially Americanized translations and literature pertaining to the eastern tradtions considered her, the "common language" tends to be shared with that of pop pseudo psych. That's easy enough to verify for yourself, if you do a bit of looking around and see how many books, websites, etc, that are much about one of these, usually uses a lot of the other as well.

 

As far as not trusting Freud or anyone/thing else, we should never place our trust blindly in any person or source. I can understand and accept the validity of some particular idea Freud articulated, because it makes sense tome, without having to trust the person. No person is all right or all wrong about everything.

 

 

 

Btw, as to psychological theories, yes, probably so...I have a BS degree, major/minor in Psychology/Religious Studies. Might give me an unfair advantage, lol.

[Brian Holley]

Hmmmm... Brian, a lot here to touch upon...the first and most major is trying to mix and match different models, from different paradigms.....as you are doing here in more than one case.

 

 

Thank you so much for this interesting reply Jennel. I'm about to depart for week on the west coast of Wales but I've downloaded your reply to my laptop so I can take it with me and think about it while I'm away. I'll get in touch when I get back.

[JenellYB]

Brian, that's great! As you do so, write down any questions or points you may think of, if you like,and when you get back, I'd love to discuss them further in more detail.

Have a great trip!

 

Jenell

[rivanna]

Looking back at something Brian Holley said earlier, three texts whose message he felt was so important for today -- Matthew 5 (the Beatitudes etc), the Bhagavad Gita, and the Tao Te Ching. This combination reminds me of Ken Wilber, author of many philosophical books and founder of the Integral Institute. I’m only slightly acquainted with his work – maybe others are more familiar with it - but it seems to relate well to evolutionary Christianity.

 

“I have one major rule: everybody — including me — has some important pieces of truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate whole.

 

We are part and parcel of a single and all-encompassing evolutionary current that is itself Spirit-in-action, the mode and manner of Spirit's creation, and thus is always going beyond what went before--that leaps, not crawls, to new plateaus of truth, only to leap again, dying and being reborn with each new quantum lurch, often stumbling and bruising its metaphysical knees, yet always getting right back up and jumping yet again.”