Living Reality From The Roots Up
Living Reality From The Roots Up.
Radical Reality is a revolutionary personal and social project of emancipation. It is a project that aims to demolish the ideologies standing in the way of human freedom, which takes its impetus for revolution from the philosophical writing and praxis of Wilber and Bhaskar.
Radical Reality recognises that there is a level of truth in which when we talk about truth of something we are talking about the reality which grounds, explains or causes it.
Radical Reality challenges the traditional beliefs about what is real. Radical Reality is being part of reality from the roots up; this begins by freeing our selves of and the removing of the anthropocentric ideology that as human beings we are separate from reality. We achieve this dismantling of the anthropocentric hegemonic ideas by giving space for the ecological embodied self: the self that directly encounters alterity within reality.
The ecological embodied self engages with reality as a flowing Integral Ontological Moment, being aware of the multiple rhythmical mediated perspectives that can be taken on real objects. The ecological embodied self recognises that we encounter realty through metaphor and as such by situating and acting mindfully upon the immediate physical environment learns what is sufficient and necessary to mind the gap between what is real, what our experience is of what is, and how we judge our experience through the metaphors we use to describe reality.
This is a procedure known as referential detachment, which enables the ecological embodied self to recognise things not as we symbolically think of them but how they really are, the ecological embodied self develops mindful non-identity towards ideas about things.
To be an embodied element of radical reality we have to let go of the out-dated neoliberal notions that we are independent. We are not, although we are an historical embodied personality, having a unique flowing rhythmic dance with self, nature, culture, and society. Yet at the root of reality, radically is the alethic truth that as human beings we all act the same, because we are all the same, this axial rationality, and universal solidarity is the radical reality revolutionary cry.
It is this alethic truth that is both the reason and cause for transforming our ideologies that place constraints on self-emancipation, and by absenting the constraints we liberate our causal powers to flourish, which can only be fully realised in a society founded on the principle of identity over difference – unity over split.
The alethic natural necessity of being human is to be free, to be unchained from the belief that we are separate, to awaken to the re-enchantment of reality that we are not apart from reality we are radically part of reality.
Knowing what we need to be free from requires an investigation into the core of our being. Uncovering the demi-reality we have been forced to live. The false selves we have created as survival selves in an increasing dualist reality. The cognitive basis we have developed, and live by, and our shadow elements, that we have repressed so that we can function in the demi-reality were power is used to enslave humanity. To keep the master-slave ideology un-fretted.
To fully radical engage with the process of liberation we need to examine the reasons for our unfreedom, this process takes the form of a critique of the explanations that self, culture, and society have offered for the maintaining of unfreedom structure.
The first stage of the core investigation of Radical Reality is Re-Solution this is the process by which an unfreedom is broken into it component parts, with the aim of creating some clarity around the structures of our unfreedom. It is important when in the re-solution phase that we explore the type of perceptive being used rather than exploring what is being perceived. The process is to identify the ontological mechanisms at play rather then deepen the connection to the metaphors being used as reference. This would be the Integral Ontological Moment.
Once we feel/think that we have discovered the under-labouring ontological mechanism that maintain our unfreedom, we can move into the process of Re-Introduction, this is the stage where our newly discovered awareness of structure of oppression are checked to see if all the data generated so far supports a new understanding of what we need to absent for liberation to take form and also it helps in noticing what we acknowledge we are still absent of for our liberation. We during this stage take the opportunity of the Elimination of thoughts, feelings, actions, behaviours that block liberation. At this stage it is not about just doing “something different.” it is about engaging fully in Radical Real Change – See
The final stage of our explanatory of the is that of Identification and Correction. With identification we share and check with others that what we believe to be strategies for liberation are not just in the interest of my own liberation but in the interests of the liberation for all; if we find our strategies wanting we apply correction. Remembering that freedom is a pulse, a pulse of freedom, which ranges from our your power as tacit knowledge to create and act anew, to the freedom of all to flourish.
However, to be free we have to have a practice that sees being as a product in the process of becoming, in which we work towards the right action of an emancipatory intention for freedom.
The stages above then begin the process of Radical Reality, which is the disarming of the ego’s dualist separateness, discovering the deeper nature of the ecological embodied self which at the ground state of consciousness reveals the transcendentally real embodied self that enfolds all possibility and through the act of recounting our alethic nature we unfolded into a new way of being. This Radical Reality inquiry process is dialectic; which leads to the life long practice of emancipation and liberation.
Let’s move on then and explore the 7 dialectical Moments of Radical Reality, before final exploring the deeper implication of Radical Reality as the transcendental transcendent of the demi-real.
The fist of Radical Reality, as a metaphor, stands in the place of two ideas. That of the silent universal revolution of self realisation, and that of the solidarity of the self realisation of I as a condition of the self realisation of you.
7 Dialectical Moments that form the Praxis of Radical Reality
Freedom – We begin with the moment of becoming free, which is to practice non-identity; we are called to engage in the world not lead by bias and identifying things based on that bias, but to be free to inquire into the true nature of the other that we are encountering.
Creativity – Moving to the creation of our practice, or exploring the edge of working toward the everyday creativity of letting go of that, which holds back our freedom.
Love – With love we bind ourselves to the totality of a new level of being as our practice begins to open up a deeper relationship to freedom.
Right Action – As our practice deepens we become a transformative agent, and express freedom as the domain of right action.
Awakening – To the understanding that to be fully free means that we have to expand out intention for freedom to all, and that our being free is a condition of the freedom of all. This allows our practice to become a practice of spiritual emancipation.
Re-enchanted – With freedom as our emancipatory practice for all, we able see reality as re-enchanted.
Non Dual – Our
practice now bring us to our ground state as we express freedom as the zone of
the non dual where we encounter unity over split – identify over difference.
An Example of the 7 Moments of Radical Reality in Action
As an example of how these 7 moments come together let’s look at how anger can be turned into a dominating ideology and the true nature of anger lost.
To know our true anger we begin by stepping back from our experience or the object that we believed is the cause of our anger, notice the gap between what is and what is being experienced. Making this movement is a challenge and therefore we need to act as if it was our calling to notice the gap. To inquire in the nature of out anger we are called to practice non-identity.
To maintain the call of non-identity we have to move beyond the edge of what you know about the world and recognise that we have to develop the mental and embodied creativity to work at both absenting things from our experience to fully know reality, and recognise that within our experience we are absent of fully knowing reality. That although we may think we have absented what holds us back from realising freedom, we have in fact just repressed it.
A way of putting this might be, if we take the Jungian idea of the shadow, things we do not what in our experience we absent into the shadow, in the hope that we can forget about them but they have not been fully absented and at times we can reconnect to the thing we have absented through projection. What we need to do is to enter a deeper creative layer of absenting. We need to take that which is in the Shadow and absent the ideological tendency, which meant that we put anger in the Shadow in the first place.
Let’s say your primary care giver, or society told you anger was bad and so you placed anger in the Shadow. Now you think that anger is absented, but all you have done is become more identified with anger as you project your anger on to objects out side of yourself. You say this thing, or that thing, or that person made me angry.
Because you have created anger as a metaphor for bad action, you have now lost the right action aspect of anger you have no relationship with your anger because you do not see anger is other than you. Anger is something you can be made to experience, you are never truly radical angry.
You have to creatively practice, if you want to be free of the egos illusion, you have to find a deep reason to can to change and to begin the process of dis- identification with you anger, so that you are able to mental step back and see your anger not as a metaphor for bad action to as a tool for personal and social change.
This leads to the next stage as you begin to create a new level of becoming. Through Love and Compassion you can now begin to see the whole scope of anger and it’s importance within your life, you see that anger can have a transformative quality, it’s the same quality that Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mandela, had, and as you see anger as a transformative power you create a new way of being of a new totality that is still open to the possibility of deeper change and transformation.
And as the full scope of anger opens up and you build the connection to the natural necessity to have anger as part of your life, you discover a new dimension of right action in the making of who you are. A greater power flows through you as you connect to your pulse of freedom, and you ask of yourself within this new dimension of self how will I act.
With the new dimension opening up for you there is the awakening that you have access to a greater degree of awareness to who you are and your place in the world, you can begin to reconnect to your embodied personality as it engages with the natural world, the material world, the social world and your own personality, at this point in awareness, we you can radically…
…Re-enchant the world, allowing more space for Spirit to show up, and as we allow more space for Spirit we…
…enter into the Zone of the non-dual, in which we discover there is the 1st Moment of the freedom of non-identity in which we discover there is more to realty than we thought.
Drawing all that has been said about Radical Reality it is possible to propose five practices in which we can transcend the demi-real, by radically engaging with the transcendental as the ground state of Radical Reality
Transcending the demi-real
Transcendental Retreat, this is a sense in which we step back from objectivity and notice how we notice the world through a mediated subjective experience along with noticing the metaphors we use to describe our perceptions. A great gestalt exercise here is to ask, what do I see, what do I notice, what do I feel, what do I know, what do I not know. This process at first acknowledges the gap between seer and seen, which enables the possibly of being free from cognitive metaphorical bias and see the world without constraint. It also allows for a further retreating and closing of the gap as we notice that we are all one – this is the expression of the ultimate subjective of the non-dual. Transcendental Retreat keeps faith with Freedom and Creativity.
Transcendental Identification in Consciousness, as we move fully into the object or thing, noticing our connection, we become part of a new level or totality of connectedness, we begin to see the prevailing power of Love as a gravitational forced that binds reality together, this can be simply experience when we look at a flower, a sunset, or a beautiful painting, there is no longer a gap.
Transcendental Agency, this is when we are completely active within the act, it is both being mindful and mindless, our agency is focused, it is alive, and it is free. We are in flow, not concerned with how we are experiencing, we are just allowing for experience. This can be seen as the basic practice of the ecological embodied personality.
Transcendental Holism, this is the moment when you and I work mindfully, when there appears to be one mind at work, although we have different rhythms and mediation, we are able to transcend them, escape the pull of the egoic demi-real, and expand the group unity of identity over difference, unity over Both Transcendental Agency and Holism keep faith with Right Action.
Finally, we arrive at most vital element of Radial Reality.
The Principle of Co-presence – The theory of co-presence is built on reciprocity, we work towards the Good, the Beautiful, the True, because just as they are the under-labouring stage of my freedom, they also are the under -labouring state of your freedom. Co-presence says “the starry heavens” are above you, but they are also within you, enfolded within you, just as they are in me, like everything else in the universe. We contain the totality.
Just as consciousness is enfolded in all being, all beings are implicitly enfolded within your consciousness and therefore within my being. The theory of co-presence enables the possibility of a eudaimonistic society and the practice of universal self-realisation. However, this universal silent revolution cannot take place so long as beings in the universe are chained to the self and societal ideologies and heteronomy metaphors.
By working on the unchaining of myself; I have to work on the unchaining of yourself. That is to say, we – you and I – are enfolded within the self-realisation of the universe; I cannot be free of constraint and thus free until every other being in the universe is free from constraint and thus free.
The whole day seemed to have a natural/coherent flow and this was because of Gary’s presence and response to what was emerging throughout the workshop. I was inspired by his passion for the material and his enthusiasm and commitment to modelling an Integral approach. Given that normally one of the “shadows” of the integral philosophy is often that engagement happens primarily through the intellect, it was delightful and satisfying to be able to have an embodied experience of the “theory”.
If you would like to read a little more about the philosophers and their ideas, and how they link into Radical Reality then please read on.
The alethic natural necessity of being Human is to be free. Our freedom can be seen as a pulse which ranges from our own power to create and act anew, to the freedom of all to flourish. However, to be free we have to both know what we need to be free from and what we want to be free. Our desire for freedom begins with questioning what we see or know as REAL.
There are two successful philosophies that when viewed as maps of liberation can help to navigate your own personal liberation: the philosophy of Ken Wilber and Roy Bhaskar. Wilber’s philosophy known as Integral Theory has drawn together an elegant and simple framework known as AQAL, (All Quadrants, All Levels). The simplicity of the framework allows Integral Theory to expand into a practical application for transformation and emancipation called Integral Life Practice (ILP).
“We need to be gentle with ourselves, it is true; but we also need to be firm. Treat yourself with real compassion, not idiot compassion, and therefore begin to challenge yourself, engage yourself, push yourself: begin to practice. . . . The point is simple: If you are interested in genuine transformative spirituality, find an authentic spiritual teacher and begin practice. Without practice, you will never move beyond the phases of belief, faith, and random peak experiences. You will never evolve into plateau experiences, nor from there into permanent adaptation. You will remain, at best, a brief visitor in the territory of your own higher estate, a tourist in your own true Self.” Ken Wilber
First suggested by Wilber in his book One Taste, ILP, [to learn more about ILP visit here] has become a strong influence in many areas of personal transformation, along with helping to maintain the need for Integral Theory to be a philosophy that is simplicity in complexity, therefore transformation is a process of the practice of becoming. However, this also means a letting go or an absenting of the egoic blocks, which frustrate your liberation. This process of undoing towards a doing is exemplified in ILP, offering a set of practices that when used in collaboration aim to connect you to your transformative power, to use your intentional will as a creative drive that is expressed as love, allowing you to live life as an expression of right action, exemplified as a re-enchantment of your reality, awakening you to the spiritual dimension of being, at the heart of which lies the zone of non-duality.
The position that Bhaskar’s Critical Realism [see here for more on Critical Realism] takes on emancipation/personal freedom is as a condition of the freedom of all. This pulse of freedom, Bhaskar argues, is the true alethic desire to live as your embodied personality free of the shackling desires of the ego.
Alethic truth, as optimally grounding reason, can be the rational cause of transformative negating agency in absenting constraints on self-emancipation, that is, on the liberation of our causal powers to flourish. For to exist is to be able to become, which is to possess the capacity for self-development, a capacity that can be fully realised only in a society founded on the principle of universal concretely singularised human autonomy in nature. This process is dialectic; and it is the pulse of freedom. Roy Bhaskar
To achieve this liberation you must “work out”, working with the physical body. And you must “work in”, working with the spiritual/emotional body, developing the moral and ethical right action to ensure the freedom of all: that then becomes the metaPractice aim of Integral Theory and Critical Realism. This metaPractice leads to the recognising of the direct co-presenting of the world as an expression of the non-dual. To achieve this goal requires not just a philosophical appreciation such as Integral Theory and Critical Realism but a practical way of enchanting and awakening to the non-dual, so that we can all live in a legitimate and authentic way.