無 / 有 – Sungwon Peter Choe Online

Integral Spiritual Experience Year 1: Day 1

(update: Jan. 21, 2010)

Integral Spiritual Experience Year 1

The Personal Spiritual Journey: Your Unique Self

Wednesday, December 30th

This conference was a profound experience for me. I wish to document it here to work through what I learned and felt.

3:00-6:00pm Registration

I’d spent a week with my sister and nephew in Hawaii, basking in the sun, eating delicious and recovering from a cold. The overnight flight landed me in SFO before 7am with only a few hours of sleep. I took the Monterey AirBus to Asilomar, thinking that I could check-in early and rest. No such luck. With 4 hours before check-in I fell asleep sitting up trying to read Neal Stephenson’s new novel Anathem until more and more people arrived around me crescendoing into a rush of activity.

I stepped into line to register for ISE, re-opening my book. A voice behind me, “You must have amazing concentration.” This was Thomas. A retired mailman who had made it big selling cell phone frequencies to large carriers. We engaged in light conversation. Gray (but not white)-haired and bearded, he was a masculine but friendly character, like a calm and caring shop teacher. He was a reassuring presence (not that reassurance was needed during this unique event) as I passed him from time to time over the next few days.

I checked in to my accommodations, something between a hotel and summer camp lodge. Mark burst in the door as soon as I’d settled in. He was immediately dialoging me in Integral Theory, throwing out jargon like a sailor spewing profanity. “This guy is a total integral nerd,” I remarked to myself, ignorant of the spiritual and emotional depth my soon-to-be friend was capable of.

Mark had mentioned his friend Wesley was right behind him, but minutes passed without sight or sound of this mysterious fellow. “I was looking for my key,” he said when he finally appeared. Yep, he’d lost his key before even getting to his room. Wesley was in many ways the complete opposite of his good friend Mark, The Organized, but he also brought a depth of knowledge and experience that would later surprise and educate me. We all headed to dinner, throwing out jokes as we got used to each other’s sense of humor.

Actually found a photo of me standing in line for registration (photo by Mathias Weitbrecht)

7:30-8:00 Keynote / Brother David Steindl-Rast

But Brother David was unable to attend the event. I was disappointed as I had been looking forward to hearing from him. Rabbi Marc Gafni filled in and gave a speech on showing up completely for this experience. I took it to heart and opened myself up to committing to the next few days despite my initial reservations about Rabbi Gafni’s speaking style which was strangely reminiscent of a Christian Televangelist. This guy’s a Rabbi?? I would soon come to respect him deeply, flamboyant presence included.

8:15-10:30 Kirtan / Krishna Das

Looking at the schedule before coming to ISE, I had started to have some reservations about the seemingly hippy-ish aspects of the conference, such as the chanting sessions that was about to begin (these reservations quickly dissipated as I realized the intelligence and the depth of this conference). These were led by Krishna Das, who, between the very long chant pieces, would recant these engaging, hilarious stories. He looked and sounded a little like Jeffrey Tambor (George Bluth, Sr. on Arrested Development).

Krishna Das and band

After two long chants of call and response, I figured I’d more or less gotten the point. However, I had promised myself I would commit to the whole experience and resisted leaving with the trickle of crowd that edged its way to the door. As the chants went on and on, the music got better and I relaxed more into the experience, letting it to take me over. I felt connected to my fellow chanters and began to let myself surrender to God in the 2nd person. By the time I found myself chanting “Hare Krishna”, I was completely free of the negative cultural associations I had for this particular chant (despite a Hare Krishna giving me a book when I was 13 being the impetus for me becoming a vege… err.. pescetarian) and was able to enjoy it simply for what it was.

When we got back to the room, we met our new roommate Jun. The four of us would soon become dear friends.

My reservations of what awaited me the next couple days was replaced with an excitement as if we were rounding the top of a hill, catching the first few glimpses of the luscious green of the valley about to explode into view.

We Are The Stories We Tell Ourselves

“I can’t dance.”

“I only date older men.”

“I can’t seem to wake up early these days.”

“I’m a morning person.”

“I can’t start my day until I’ve had my coffee.”

“I can’t sing.”

“I’m a visual person.”

“Life is unfair.”

“I’m just an amateur.”

“Why do girls always like assholes?”

“Life is an adventure.”

“I must be getting old.”

“I’ve always been lucky.”

“I can eat whatever I want and never gain weight.”

“I’m addicted to chocolate.”

We all tell little stories about ourselves, to ourselves and to others. Sometimes we don’t even really “know” something about ourselves until we say it out loud. Usually, we tell these stories when we notice a pattern of experience. We might test out an observation in conversation or thought.

“Hmm, girls with family problems seem attracted to and comfortable around me.”

Then we draw a conclusion from it.

“Spiritual practice must be paying off for me. Chicks must be sensing my peaceful vibe. [pats self on back]“

This in turn, can shape how you experience reality.

“I must be more attractive now to girls who are seeking masculine calm and stability. See? If I smile at this girl, she smiles back.”

Beliefs Form Experience Form Beliefs

We form beliefs derived from observing our own experiences in the environment. This is another interpretation of our individual => socio-cultural environment feedback loop. For our purposes here, let’s think of it as the belief => experience feedback loop.

Now the experiences we observe and the patterns we draw from them are largely colored by our emotional state and deeply held core beliefs about ourselves and reality in general. There’s rarely anything objective about it. Our individual experiences are decidedly not a good representation of the experiences of the population at large.

For example, I go to a restaurant twice in a row and happen to get bad service both times. “Oh, that place sucks,” I tell my friends. But of course, my experience is not statistically significant in the least (you’d need a sample of certain number of people, at least 30 or so, I think). We cannot yet say with any reasonable degree of certainty if any other person there would be more or less likely to experience good service (this is a scientific 3rd person perspective). I also cannot say whether this your reality without asking you (2nd person).

Note that it doesn’t mean my experience is not valid. Far from it, it colors my unique perspective of reality. To me, that the restaurant offers bad service is near-fact in my unique vision of reality. But we must not confuse this 1st perspective reality by generalizing it to then say it is true for 2nd and 3rd person perspectives as well.

Stories Color Our Reality

To look at the first example again, I could just as easily interpret my meeting girls with family problems in a different way if I was in a more negative mood and had core beliefs consistent with lower self-worth or a more cynical outlook.

“Man, why do I always meet psychos with family problems?”

I would then have expectations of the next girl I meet to have some kind of emotional problems, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy as I look for them. (Note even the more positive conclusions drawn above are generalizations based more on my beliefs than a rational understanding of my experiences.)

Of course, we can never have perfect information (it might not even exist! that would mean there was an objective, i.e. trans-perspective not 3rd person, reality and I really ain’t sure about that). We must necessarily draw hasty and illogical conclusions formed into our stories to get on with our lives, hell, even to have personalities!

Then why should we care about the beliefs about and colors of our experiences? Well, there’s no reason to care if you’re content with the experiences you have. But becoming aware of these stories we tell ourselves, we can become masters of our own fates, directing our own narrative rather than having it direct us.

A master storyteller creates her own reality.

“I create my own reality.”

I like that story.