I agree with your observation Julie. I had forgotten that about Scott Peck - a great author. Ken Wilber also does a good job summarizing the perspectives of many others - from around the world - on stages of spiritual development. (A Theory of Everything is a good place to start.) The worldview/ place of spirit from which we are used to responding will no longer serve. It is too small. And yet to move forward, we need to honour both the wisdom and the limitations of that perspective. And to do that with force but without anger or violence - no small challenge!
Thanks Meg Salter MegaSpace Consulting 416/486-6660 meg.sal...@sympatico.ca www.megaspaceconsulting.com ----- Original Message ----- From: Julie Smith To: osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu Sent: Friday, October 05, 2001 2:29 PM Subject: another peel of the onion Greetings All, The organization I work with sponsored a public forum this week concerning recent world events. The purpose was to enter into a dialogue about what happened and what our response should be. I found myself silenced by the way in which the panel and the audience defined the issues. (This was not an OST event.) We focused most of our two hours on the distinction between war and crime, leaving us with the options of retaliation and punishment for response. Afterward, I learned that those present with different views felt this level of discussion was a necessary precondition to moving to the discussion they would like to have. For that reason, many of us chose silence at that first community meeting. As I was silently sitting and watching and thinking, I found myself thinking of all these events in a new way. In some ways, it helped me think about the discussion we are having on this list from a different perspective. For that reason, I want to share my thoughts with you. Several years ago I happened upon the book A Different Drum by M. Scott Peck. That book is memorable to me because it introduced me to the concept of stages of spiritual development. My recollection of those stages as described by Peck is this: Stage 1 is the stage of chaos. People at this stage don't have rules to guide their lives or behavior. Life is chaotic and uncertain. Survival depends on taking from the world what is required to maintain life. When we decide there must be a different and better way, we move to Stage 2. Stage 2 is the stage of rules. The yearning for those just emerging from Stage 1 is for order and certainty. The natural place to find order and certainty is in rules. Some people find meaningful rules in prison or in the military. Others find meaningful rules in religious orders. The common characteristic is a seeking for rules by which life can be ordered and understood. This makes perfect sense when the only available alternative is a return to chaos. After a time, however, rules become unsatisfying. We learn that rules are shells empty of meaning. The strict application of rules often violates our sense of humanity. Rules too often hurt someone. Many see that even religious rules hurt. As disillusion with rules matures, we move to Stage 3. Stage 3 is the stage of skepticism. The skeptic rejects the rules of religious orders and most anything that cannot be verified in the physical world. Skeptics often embrace science as a meaningful way to understand the world. Most skeptics shudder at the words God, religion, and spirituality because they view all those words as embracing concepts they find naive and immature. They have a hard time believing anyone still thinks that way anymore. And yet...... over time skeptics find people they respect and like who use these words passionately, and they find they have moments when they wonder what other meanings the world might have. Some begin moving toward Stage 4. Stage 4 is the stage of the mystic. The mystic embraces the essence of religion and spirituality. Unlike the religious fundamentalist who might talk in terms of rules, the mystic will most often talk in terms of principles. Love and all of its manifestations is the principle common to all mystics I am aware of. So...... as I was sitting with my community talking about war and crime and retaliation and punishment, trying to absorb the deeper meaning the conversation had for so many in the room, it suddenly occurred to me that this was a conversation the Skeptic was having with itself. And moving just a bit deeper, I realized that much of the strength of the United States lies in its many skeptics. The scientific achievements of our many skeptics has created a world undreamed of even a century ago. As a culture, I think we are probably predominantly skeptics. Our primary collective identity, I think, is that of the skeptic. And then...... I saw how sheltered we all have been. We have had the opportunity to maintain ourselves as a people in the stage of skepticism because for the most part we have not been challenged to respond to gripping tragedy in our own backyard. We have perhaps been guilty of acts of Omission (not seeing the pain in other's lives, not responding to what we did see, isolating ourselves from others much less physically fortunate than ourselves, maintaining a willingness to be a "have" in the world of "haves" and "have-nots"), but we have not had so many times when we were faced with Comission of harm to others. (I know in some ways that statement rings false, but in some ways it also rings true.) I began to wonder whether another way to see all of this is as a challenge to the Skeptic. Maybe the ante just got upped. Maybe the old question was whether the skeptic can maintain that place (that stage of development) when not faced with the hard life and death questions. When the hardest moral and ethical questions have to do with our professions, not with who will live and who will die. When we never have to face ourselves and ask, "for what am I willing to kill?" And under what authority? So the new question to the skeptic is exactly that: when is killing justified, and under what authority? When are we justified in committing or supporting the deliberate destruction of another being? Now that we are facing the prospect of massive killing in all directions, do we need to rethink our ideas about killing? I think the framing of the question of what is happening as "is it war or is it a crime" is an attempt to understand what is happening within a construct that cannot hold the question. The framing is too narrow, incomplete. And that is why we all keep talking. We know there is something happening here we haven't quite grasped yet. And we know it is important. I'm beginning to wonder whether as a people we are being forced to move off our place of skepticism. Are we being forced to move backward to the place of rules or forward to the place of the mystic? Or is it something else that is going on? I feel that all that I have said here is incomplete, and that I'm simply scratching at a surface I don't understand. The value to me in giving it to all of you is that if there is dialogue, all of our understanding might deepen. Julie
