Questions about IDL
Which is more important for IDL, healing, balance or transformation? Interviewed characters are generally of the opinion that promoting aliveness is superior to promoting spirituality and transformation. Transformation occurs in almost every interview, to the extent the student is willing to adopt the perspective of the interviewed emerging potential. Although IDL interviewing often provides genuine and ongoing transformation of a specific and more relevant sort than is generally provided by drugs, altar calls, sex, religious rituals, or even mystical experiences, IDL does not emphasize transformation as its goal or purpose. Transformation is taken for granted. If you are working with the dream yoga curriculum, you are probably getting more than enough transformation all the time. You will probably also be experiencing life healing as you apply recommendations made by interviewed characters in your everyday life.
This is something of a difference from many approaches to spiritual development and even meditation, where transformation is the expected payoff. Instead, IDL emphasizes balance and stabilization in order to have your life flow in the here and now so that the maintenance of a higher order transformation is possible. A sufficiently broad and strong platform is necessary to sustain transformation, and so most attention, most energy, must be spent on the building of such a platform. To use Wilber’s terminology, this is an emphasis on “translation” over transformation.
IDL also emphasizes multiple ongoing transformations that arise from becoming characters at particular times during waking activities, meditation, dreaming, and sleep, as well as from following mundane recommendations, day by day. This replaces the relatively impractical process of accessing perfectionistic states that cannot be maintained, whether mystical, hypnotic, trance or drug-induced. To attempt to do so often generates acute reminders of the chasm between where we. are and where we wish we were but are not. This is no favor but rather a curse, because it takes us out of living fully in this moment. Something like this commonly happens for many near death experiencers, and it can create an insurmountable gulf between the sacred and the secular, in which everyday life is relatively meaningless and a constant reminder of where one is not.
A similar problem can arise with IDL. When you become a perspective that scores all tens in the six core qualities, the implication is that there exists a large experiential chasm between your world view and that of the interviewed character. If there are no concrete recommendations to be followed that provide a way to bridge that gap, the interview is of little practical use and is generally quickly forgotten, along with the perspective it promotes. The gap between your world view and that of the perspective is simply too great to be realistically integrated. This is a major reason why IDL is primarily a yoga rather than a philosophy or a teaching.
Why is there little use of “spiritual” and the language of spirituality by IDL? This expansion of world view is disclosed by IDL experientially, rather than as a spiritual, religious, or even therapeutic teaching. Interviewed emerging potentials generally do not present their perspectives in such terms. If the student thinks in terms of God, soul, spiritual, or therapy, then these will indeed show up in the language of interviewed emerging potentials. This is because they include your own perspective because they are a part of you. However, their perspectives will tend to transcend yours because they are more than you. So you will always see parts of yourself in these perspectives and you will always discover that they disclose ways of looking at yourself, others, and your life challenges that are not typical for you.
How can I test Integral Deep Listening? To test this theory about the language we project into our interviewed characters, look at interviews that don’t use “spiritual” language. Are they less powerful? Less useful? Less meaningful for the student? If they are as powerful, useful, and meaningful as interviews which use such language, if not more so, that strongly implies that the language is not intrinsic to IDL but is instead a projection of the world view of the student. To test IDL itself, pick out one or two recommendations from an interview, operationalize them, and practice them for a time period recommended by the interviewed character itself.
Why don’t interviewed characters speak more about spirituality or spiritual development? They are more centered on waking up than on spirituality. This indicates an emphasis on getting out of your way and out of the way of life, so life can use your life as a way to wake up to itself. From the perspective of life, this is not a “spiritual” process. This is a life process of negentropy that is seen at every stage of evolution. It has nothing to do with spirituality, unless you want to frame the ability of a bivalve to better filter its lunch as a spiritual process, or the ability of a pliosaurus to attack and kill its prey more effectively as a spiritual process.
Is IDL a moral or ethical world view? Another major way that the world view of IDL is a radical departure from spiritual world views, such as that of Buddhism, is that it is largely amoral. This is a very frightening concept to most people, since the teaching of morality and ethics is central to religion, parenting, and spirituality. If you don’t teach morality, isn’t anything justified? No. Still, this is not an easy concept to understand. For example, empathy is one of the six core qualities of IDL, and it is understood as identification with the identity and point of view of another. The assumption is that higher scores in empathy are “better” than low ones, which are equated with selfishness and actions that are therefore immoral and unethical. However, many, perhaps most, interviewed emerging potentials score themselves very low in compassion. Why? They do not explain this as a statement of selfishness, but generally in terms of an inability or unwillingness to relate to life in terms of morality or ethics. Instead of low scores representing selfishness or immorality, as might be expected, they generally represent a general detachment from questions of self-based action.
For instance, if you interview the sun, it is likely to be indifferent to whether its heat kills animals or people. Functionally, the sun doesn’t care if you live or die. It cannot die or be hurt in any scale that humans experience. It isn’t going to develop sun spots because you get mad or humans kill humans. If it were to care, that compassion would interfere with its ability to be itself and do what it does: generate relatively unlimited amounts of energy, some of which is captured and used for evolution, most of it goes unused and some of it causes death. To care would condition its life and base its function on petty dramas. To do its job, to be itself, the sun has to transcend all that. From one perspective that approach looks both uncaring and heartless; from another it generates a completely selfless definition of empathy. But most people do not relate to selfless definitions of empathy; the very nature of the sun is to be selfless in intention and service. But these interviewed emerging potentials do not need to be selfless or strive for selflessness like you and I do, because it is already their intrinsic nature. Again, they have no self. This way of thinking is alien to most people, because it does not involve ethics, morality, or spirituality. The sun does not shine for any of those reasons. It shines because it is alive! The consequence is not immorality or a lack of ethics, but the development of a world view that is not built around morality or ethics. Interviewed emerging potentials do not treat you as they wish that you would treat them; what they say to you and what they recommend is based on the perspective that is intrinsic to their world view. While that may be a moral world view, it does not have to be. There is nothing about IDL interviewing that forces interviewed emerging potentials to be ethical or moral. The point is that high scores in compassion or other core qualities are not always beneficial. Therefore, the objective is not to access high scoring perspectives and identify with them but to access balanced perspectives, that reflect an authentic mixture of the core qualities and to identify with them.
Intrasocial groups are also different from human societies in that the former require somewhat of a different understanding of what morality is and is not. Humans require social norms and laws to regulate their relationships; emerging potentials do not. When we listen deeply, in an integral way, to a waffle iron, we are showing it respect. When we take seriously its recommendations and test them, we are demonstrating reciprocity in our relationship with it. To do so establishes trust in whatever the waffle iron’s perspective and worldview view is. Through our identification with the waffle iron we are demonstrating empathy. We are therefore not only building the basic components of morality but doing so within ourselves, toward ourselves, and toward our own unique emerging potentials.
Why don’t interviewed characters care more? Why do they tend to be detached? Interviewed characters aren’t selves in any permanent sense. They cannot die because they are not alive in a material sense. They are what we call “imaginary,” generally implying not only non-reality but worthlessness, which is a foolish and incorrect assumption. Because they cannot die, interviewed characters are intrinsically selfless. There are exceptions; you will meet perspectives that insist that they are selves and that they are real. However, even these selves are not alive in a material sense, and therefore cannot die in the same way that you and I can die. Their self-sense is not anchored in rules and norms that serve to maintain survival, which is basically what morality and ethics provide. Rules of the game are designed to enhance survival and improve adaptability. But interviewed emerging potentials do not need to survive or adapt.
Don’t the six core qualities imply an ethic or morality? Yes, they do. They represent a best guess at lasting, impersonal values based on the nature of the cycle of breathing, not on ideology, religion, or spirituality. However, interviewed emerging potentials are not requested or required to respond to those qualities in any particular way. As we have seen, low scores in empathy are common. It is not unusual for interviewed characters to score themselves high on some of the qualities and low on others. Does this mean they are mature and morally advanced in some ways and immature and immoral in others? Judge for yourself, but viewing these preferences through a moral lens or from an ethical perspective generally seems to be a projection of our waking conceptions of value rather than an intrinsic characteristic of the world views of most interviewed emerging potentials.
What value seems to be most important to interviewed perspectives? There is, however, one understanding of morality that does indeed appear to apply to the intrasocial universe of interviewed characters and that is respect. Providing every interviewed character with the respect you desire is not so much a moral as a rational choice, because to the extent that they represent aspects of yourself, you are merely respecting yourself. Most people would agree this is a wise choice, regardless of its morality.
Is there one right or best world view? I try on other world views regularly, every time I do an interview of a dream character or a life issue of my own, or with someone else. There is no one right or best world view. If there was, the world would be a stagnant place. However, some world views transcend and include other world views. Some world views are more adequate to the process of waking up than other ones. Your world view largely will determine how much you can grow, how awake you will become before you die.
Wisdom and empathy involve the ability to see, shift into, and use the appropriate world view for the particular task or situation. This is not the same as shifting into this or that role; it is about shifting into the world view that any particular perspective embodies, and staying away from those that do not support an internal consensus for your developmental path.
My world view at the age of seventy-five is about incorporating seven octaves of awakening, associated with the round of breathing, into my everyday experience, and to do it in a balanced, effective way. It is about living an integral lifestyle that attempts to respect macrocosmic, microscopic and intrasocial sources of authority and weigh them using whatever degree of common sense I possess. It is about smiling at the drama of my thoughts and emotions and of not taking anything personally. It is about appreciating the amazing abundance of life. It is about working hard to get out of my own way so I can hear others more clearly and be more alive in the present moment. I see worries about other people, money, health and sex as not only a waste of time, but pretty funny, with the joke on myself. No one else cares and none of it matters in a cosmic sense, although it matters quite a bit in terms of maintaining a stable foundation for functioning in the world. The challenge is to get over myself and enjoy today so I can be someone and something that benefits others.
At the same time I have become increasingly less concerned with self development and more concerned about collective development, both social and intrasocial. My concern about social development involves justice and the sort of world our children and grandchildren will inherit. They need us to define lasting, foundational values and practices that will stand the tests of time. My concern about intrasocial development involves teaching future generations how to access their emerging potentials and align with their own unique life compass. Those who do so will free themselves from toxic aspects of their scripting, emotional dramas, and cultural groupthink. This will enable them to act in alignment with the greatest good for the greatest number, regardless of what their parents, friends, employers, or politicians think about it.
How can I expand my world view? You can support and encourage the expansion and transformation of your world view by interviewing your dream characters and the personifications of your life issues, many of which have world views that transcend and include your own. If you do, over time, you will evolve a broader world view than the one you presently possess, one that is uniquely yours and uniquely appropriate for who you are in the world and what you have to give to the world. This is what is amazing and relatively unique about the world view of IDL. It is multi-perspectival, which means that it incorporates any and all world views. As such, it can be considered a meta world-view, or a world view that transcends and includes other world views, in that it acknowledges and respects them all, yet offers something more than the totality of all world views. However, it is not, as Adlai Stevenson stated, a “one true faith or path.” On the contrary, IDL is an antidote to the authoritarianism of world views.
As I expand my wold view, what is likely to happen to my beliefs? I have become increasingly aware that when I do interviews the perspectives I access tend to have very few beliefs. That has caused me to wonder, “How many of my beliefs, assumptions, and expectations do I really need? When I access these perspectives I don’t seem to need many of my beliefs! Is that true? How many of them can I live without?” The result has been a conscious effort to become aware of my beliefs and to wonder if this or that one is necessary or not. These beliefs could be anything, from a desire to eat, to a need to speak or to keep silent, or a need to not believe in something. This is an ongoing experiment; the result so far is a continuing experience of lightness and expansion and an increasing ease at thought stopping and clearing my mind when I want to. None of this implies not having beliefs that are good and helpful, such as the belief that wearing a coat out when it is cold or obeying traffic rules when driving. It is more a movement to an awareness that beliefs are optional rather than necessary or required, but that in order to move to that position I first have to bring into awareness all sorts of beliefs that are assumptions of my life. That is an ongoing process.
