Diversi-TEA party Soul Salon
The dictionary definition of diversity: the condition of having or being composed of differing elements : VARIETY. The state of being diverse. The practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds, cultures, races, with different genders and sexual orientations etc. in a group or organization. Spiritually speaking diversity speaks to the appearance of multiplicity, to the endless variations that arise from Oneness. There is not a spiritual tradition that doesn’t embrace the concept of one Source that has infinite names. Even science holds that life arose from a singular event “the Big Bang” out of which all of the diversity of life emerged. Let’s look through the largest lens and mapping possible at the Oneness that spiritually holds all diversity. The philosopher Ken Wilbur identified what he believed were the three stages of psycho-spiritual development, the evolutionary stepping stones culminating in non-dual spiritual realization. (Please listen carefully to these three categories!) At the psychic level of transpersonal experience, consciousness expands beyond physical reality into non physical or spiritual reality, still constrained by conditioning that carries over from our space-time experience. At the subtle level of consciousness, the conditioning of
physical reality is more deeply eclipsed and we begin to open to the deeper architecture of life. Here we begin to be drawn into the larger realities and more fundamental structures that our individual lives are part of. Here we may experience the collective consciousness of our species and other species or even the archetypal forces that create space-time and all it contains. At this level, the personal soul of our present life may open to the larger Soul of our reincarnating self. One is still experiencing a world divided into parts, but the parts are larger and more basic than at the psychic level. At the causal level of consciousness, the world of separate parts begins to yield to an experience of the Universe moving as a single entity. Here we experience Oneness, transparency and all encompassing wholeness.
There is no reference point outside this Oneness from which to get a perspective on it, as it is the whole of existence. ‘Everything breathes together, as Sri Aurobindo described it. In this vision of things the Universe reveals itself in its unity and totality as a manifestation of a single Being, Nature as its power of manifestation, evolution as its process of gradual self-revelation in matter.’ This model of reality gives the broadest overview of what our apparent diversity is spiritually evolving into.
Question: In this description of spiritual experience what level of expansion has your
journey led you to experiencing: the psychic level, the subtle level or the causal level of non-dual consciousness? Can you describe an experience you personally had of this
spiritual expansion? Now with that spiritual overview in place, let’s take a look at a more up close and personal view of diversity. As human beings, to feel less vulnerable, we often tend to “hang out” in groups with those other beings with whom we feel safe, familiar and comfortable, who are often of similar ethnic or social backgrounds or spiritual traditions. We have all been culturally conditioned in this way. It has been unavoidable. However, as we grow in awareness and expand spiritually we begin to experience a natural desire to include, rather than to exclude or separate into these smaller more confining and limited configurations based singularly on exterior qualities, but rather to choose our friendships based on inner qualities such as empathy, compassion, kindness, consciousness, sense of humor, joyousness, intelligence, wakefulness. etc. Oftentimes we choose friends with similar hobby’s or interests that we can enjoy and share together.
Q: We have all been enculturated to view reality in limited, culturally biased and unfair ways. Whether we were consciously aware of it at the time or not, we were programmed to value persons of one race or religion over another. What can YOU honestly and vulnerably own about how you were programmed by culture concerning this divisive, hurtful and unfair valuing?
Q: What are the inner qualities that you are attracted to when you are choosing friends or are making an invitation to someone new?
Q:How do you demonstrate that you value diversity in your relationships?
Q: Do you make an effort or stretch to include others in social invitations whom you may not be as familiar or potentially comfortable with?
I have made the journey into Nothing.
I have lit the lamp that needs no oil.
I have cried great streams
Of emerald crystals
On my scarred knees, begging love
To never again let me hear from
Any world
The sound of my own name,
Even from the voice of divine thought
Or see that pen you gave me, Goddess
In the sun’s or sky’s skillful hand
Writing
Anything other than the word..
One.
I have made the journey into Nothing
I have become that flame that needs
No fuel.
Beloved, Now what need is there to ever
Call for me?
For if you did,
I would just step out of
You!
Hafiz
