Wilber on Devotion: The "I" Bows and Surrenders to the Great Thou

I love this, from pages 160–161 of Integral Spirituality:
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In today's America, the repression of the Great Thou often goes hand in hand with boomeritis. By emphasizing either a 3rd-person conception of Spirit as a great Web of Life, or a 1st-person conception of Spirit as Big Mind or Big Self, there is nothing before which the "I" must bow and surrender. The ego can actually hide out in 1st- and 3rd-person approaches. I simply go from
I to I-I, never having to surrender to You.

Spirit in 2nd-person is the great devotional leveler, the great ego killer, that before which the ego is humbled into Emptiness. Vipassana, Zen, shikan-taza, Vedanta, TM, and so on, simply do not confront my interior with something greater than me, only higher levels of me. But without higher levels of Thou as well -- the quadrants go all the way up! -- then one remains subtly or not-so-subtly fixated to variations on I-ness and 1st-person.* That is why the merely 1st-person approaches often retain a deep-seated arrogance.

It's understandable why so many individuals abandoned the mythic-amber God, usually when they reached college and switched to orange and green world views. Abandon the mythic God they should -- but not abandon Spirit in 2nd-person! Find, instead, the turquoise God, the indigo God, all the way up to the ultraviolet God, which is the Great Thou that is the 2nd-person face of Spirit alongside the ultraviolet I-I and the Great It of the Dharmadhatu (or realm of Reality). These are the 3 dimensions of your own formless primordial Spirit as it manifests in the world of Form, and repressing any of them is repressing your own deepest realities.

The connection of this repression with boomeritis is borne out by many commentaries, such as the following from Tulku Thondup. He points out that Tibetan Buddhism actually has a central place for devotion. And yet Western Buddhists balk. They accept the aspects of Buddhism that point to Spirit as Big Mind (1st) and Spirit as Dharma Gaia (3rd), but not devotional Spirit. "So when some Westerners become interested in Buddhism, they could be disappointed to learn about the practice of devotion. They say something like: ‘This is what we wanted to leave behind, praying to a higher authority outside ourselves.' What a funny situation, to run away from devotion, only to find belief and prayer waiting around the next corner!"

It's very simple: the point about the 3 faces of Spirit is that all 3 of them are vitally important, as dimensions of this very moment, or Spirit in 4 quadrants, all the way up, all the way down.

(At Integral Institute, we have developed a series of guided meditations -- called The 1-2-3 of God -- designed to help people move through all 3 dimensions of their own deepest Spirit. If you are interested, please check out http://www.integraltraining.com/, ILP Starter Kit. You can also see The One Two Three of God CD set from Sounds True.)


* Let me point out that this categorically is not referring to Genpo Roshi (and his Big Mind Process), a valued member of I-I who is working with us to help overcome this problem in American Buddhism.

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Cheers!
~ Tom

crossposted at the Integral Institute pod