Today we’re diving right in, talking about true awakening and assessing our spiritual progress. Not in a way where we “grade” ourselves, but focusing on the more subtle and complex aspects of waking up, which are often messy, and oftentimes uncomfortable.
I find Ken Wilber’s Levels of Awakening particularly useful as we begin to understand the complexity of awakening. He breaks down our different areas of awareness into four categories: the gross, subtle, causal and nodal awareness realms. Our awakening happens on all these levels, and I dive into those more on in the episode.
Here I want to expand on what I think helps us appreciate the complexity of awaking and how it isn’t a purely linear process. Wilber points out that we develop across multiple lines of intelligence – our growth areas. These are:
- Cognitive – having an intellectual understanding (which doesn’t necessarily mean you fully grasp the concept 😉
- Emotional intelligence – managing our feelings and empathizing with others
- Moral- our ethics and integrity
- Interpersonal – how we relate to others
- Aesthetic – our ability to appreciate and create beauty, seeing it in all things
- Psychosexual – this is a healthy integration of sexuality and spirituality
- Self-Identity – how we define who we are over time and our worldview
- Spiritual – the development of awareness of the transcendent, the sacred, and the ultimate nature of reality
The important thing to grasp here is that just because we’re advanced in one area doesn’t mean we’re equally developed in the other areas. They all develop at different rates for each person!
Someone may be highly developed spiritually but struggle emotionally or ethically, for example.
I’m sure you’ve met someone who radiates calm during mediation but can’t hold a healthy conversation with their partner (talking about myself here 😉
Now, the goal isn’t perfection in all areas, so don’t get too stressed about this. I actually find this complexity somewhat of a relief because it means I don’t have to be perfect in all areas AND I could still be making progress. There’s a freedom in knowing that just because I still suck in some areas or making slower progress, I can still be advanced in others.
It’s more about honesty with ourselves in our progress, taking a more holistic approach and looking at all these areas, and aiming for eventual integration of them.
Where it gets really dangerous is when someone confuses awakening in one area with mastery in ALL areas. It can create a false sense of authority for themselves and others, and it’s often at the root of many spiritual scandals.
A teacher might have a genuine awakening to the nondual realm and teach profound truths, but if they’re stuck in immature emotional or ethical areas, that awakening won’t automatically translate into wisdom or compassion. There can preach unity consciousness while exploiting their students at the same time.
As students, if we ignore the evidence of these blind spots, we risk enabling harm.
Of course, we all carry the potential for these blind spots, so what’s the antidote to all this complexity and levels of awakening?
Humility.
When we recognize the partial and complex nature of awakening, it keeps us honest with others AND ourselves.
We aren’t “done” just because we had a peak experience or grasped a profound teaching in a meditation, retreat, or journey. Instead, we are a constant work in progress, learning to integrate those awakenings into the messy, beautiful, tenderly painful wholeness of being human.
One way we can stay tapped into that humility is to be radically honest with ourselves and explore if we’re nurturing emotional growth, ethical integrity, and relational skills alongside our spiritual practice.
We can also seek feedback from trusted spiritual friends and challenge ourselves to see if we’re spiritually bypassing.
We also need to decentralize authority. This is one of the reasons I started this podcast. I saw too many people putting all their trust into spiritual teachers vs trusting their own experiences, which the Buddha always told us to do first and foremost – ehipassiko. See for yourself.
Ken Wilber offers other practical calls to action that he calls Waking Up, Growing Up, Cleaning Up and Showing Up. (Be sure to listen to the full episode to hear more about those). We can apply these antidotes to different areas depending on where we’re at. It’s super cool – so be sure to check it out in the pod.
Remember, all of this isn’t about checking off these levels of awakening like achievements on some cosmic scorecard. It’s not about being perfect in all areas, but about being radically honest with ourselves and committing to the next step in our evolution.
It’s a lifelong, multidimensional dance of learning, growing, and even stumbling onto our faces at times. But when we approach it with humility, we create space for both our wisdom AND our blind spots to coexist.
We step into the paradox of being both infinite and flawed, luminous and messy.
And maybe that’s the real awakening—embracing the whole of who we are, the entirety of who we are, without pretense or denial.
Because the world doesn’t need more perfect teachers, more perfect people. It needs more humble humans willing to grow and make awakening real in the world.
You will learn:
// The dangers of thinking insight and realization in one area means progress in ALL areas
// The importance of radical honesty with ourselves about our progress and coupling that with self-compassion
// What Ken Wilber’s Levels of Awakening and areas of integration are
// How false assessment of progress can be harmful to ourselves and others
// The ways we can avoid enabling harm with our un-awakened areas through humility and practice
Resources:
// Episode 73: How to Be Your Own Guru
// Episode 122: Come See for Yourself – Ehipassiko
// Episode 162: Lessons from Ram Dass – Walking Each Other Home
// Episode 188: Connected in Our Grief and Wonder
// Episode 193: Lessons in Trust and Interdependence
// Episode 238: If You Know and Don’t DO, You Don’t KNOW
// If you’re new to the squad, grab the Rebel Buddhist Toolkit I created at RebelBuddhist.com. It has all you need to start creating a life of more freedom, adventure, and purpose. You’ll also get access to the Rebel Buddhist private group, and tune in every Wednesday as I go live with new inspiration and topics.
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