I have many opportunities each day to interact with my kids (the eighteen patients on the Adolescent Chemical Dependency Unit) in ways that are, hopefully, mutually enriching. In particular, I sit down with them every evening for a one-hour discussion group. Last night, the topic was “beliefs” — how they influence our attitudes and actions in the world and how, if at all, they change in response to the continual influx of life experience. I’ve been into Sam Harris as of late, so I’ve been fascinated by the notion that all our beliefs have natural consequences, and that if we look deeply into our behavior and attitudes, we can infer what our core beliefs really are (our explicit life-philosophies notwithstanding).
So, the 9-11 hijackers acted in perfect accordance with their beliefs, just as most of the drug-ravaged kids I work with have certain beliefs about drug use and life in general that play out in their self-destructive behavior. This week the kids and I are going to unpack this idea and see if we can come up with anything useful to help us discover a better way to live. Should be interesting at the very least.
My friend Georg wrote in his blog yesterday about his struggle to justify and maintain a consistent meditation practice. I can whole-heartedly sympathize, as I too have been an on-again/off-again meditator for years. The bottom line, it seems, is that we’re just not convinced that meditation is the “Royal Road to Enlightenment” that Ken Wilber [pictured above] says it is. If we truly believed it, we’d be meditating our asses off. Now, Ken Wilber undoubtedly does believe this, as is evidenced by decades of highly disciplined meditation. He believes it because, unlike Georg and I, he has experienced the results first-hand. And because Wilber states his case so eloquently, along with the fact that so many others have experienced similar results, it seems that both Georg and I are still open to the idea enough to give daily meditation further consideration.
Ken Wilber is certainly a man who acts in full accordance with his core beliefs. Consider this statement, recently posted on his blog:
“This is truly the beginning of the Integral Age, which has all the signs of being one of the five or six major transformations in the history of the human race. It is a rare opportunity indeed to be living in such extraordinary times, with all the promise and peril therein. We all know the aspects of today’s world that are horrifying—from ecological despoliation and its aesthetic insult to the Kosmos, to terrorism of every imaginable variety (including political, cultural, and academic), to natural resource depletion, which might reduce human civilization to a new Middle Ages. But alongside all of those negatives, there are the extraordinary boons and benefits of a new rising culture, that of the Integral Age, of which each and every one of you here [at an Integral Institute-sponsored seminar] is a charter member.”
Sounds pretty grandiose, huh. Well, consider the fact that this guy is getting up at 12:30am every day, writing for five or six hours, then beginning a long, hyper-productive day heading his Integral Institute. Clearly, this cat believes he’s engaged in something extremely important. He actions make that very clear. Me, I’m not sure what I believe, but I have always envied people who have strong convictions and live by them. This blog is, in part, an attempt to explore and examine my beliefs, both explicit and implicit, and to hold them up in the light of an honest account of my day to day thoughts and actions. I’m digging it so far. Who knows what I will “come to believe,” as they say in Alcoholics Anonymous.
This was a longer rant than I anticipated, which is cool because I have an eighteen-hour day at work tomorrow and, unlike Ken Wilber, I will not be getting up in the middle of the night for any reason other than to pee.