The spiritual journey takes many forms, from paths marked by gradual evolution to crises requiring cataclysmic upheavals. Integral theory says that faith changes over time from prerational to rational and transrational perspectives. But much as I hate to question the spiritual path of others whose journeys have been more consistent or more gradual in their shifts of perspective, I find little to recommend in taking the path of least resistance.

I say: be bold in your belief, and even bolder in your unbelief. In my book, the transition from prerational to transrational faith is best accomplished with an extended period of denial, doubt, despair, and disillusionment. In any case, that’s the only way that worked for me. I had to doubt and deny for many years before I ultimately found a form of belief that was completely natural, totally sincere, and — I believe — ultimately true.
When the shift from pre- to trans- is complete, it may be the case that a believer’s preference of terminology has changed. Or perhaps not. The believer may yet utter the same words to the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, Allah, or Shiva. But it’s not the terminology that matters, but the meaning bestowed on the acts of devotion.

Julian Walker worries that for believers who say their belief is transrational, it may be problematic to keep the same terminology as believers with a simpler faith. He writes in “Contemporary Theology: A Wide Spectrum with a Common Premise?”:

For me the ideas of both “transcend and include” and “differentiate to integrate” are useful here. What are we transcending and what are we including? How do we differentiate transrational ideas from prerational ideas if we continue to use the same terminology?

Speaking for myself, I would say that it usually matters very little to declare one’s own faith superior in rationality to that of others. A personal faith seems to beget a certain respect for, and sometimes admiration of, the faith of others. It’s usually of no importance whatsoever to wall off “transrational” faith and set it apart from the beliefs of the lesser educated, and those whose spiritual station of life is more conventional.

But let’s grant Julian that in some contexts it’s important to conceptually differentiate the pre- from the trans-. Doing so is not so much a matter of separating “prerational ideas” from “transrational ideas” (per Julian, emphasis mine), as separating those whose faith is fundamentally not an affair of ideas from those who have subjected their instinctively felt, emotionally charged, and unconsciously held beliefs to the cooling, tempering, and sobering demands of reason. A prerational Christian loves God because she has been taught that doing so is the proper thing to do, and because it feels right. The same person may evolve a rational love for God following appropriate education, choosing to believe that the love of God is a natural affair, human beings having been inborn with a need to find a source for meaning and a common direction for their moral compasses.

Julian continues:

If sophisticated theologians, literalist believers and non-dual mystics the world over all use the same terms from different points of view might we not do better to find specific terminology for what we really mean - so as to be clear about what we don’t reallly mean?

Perhaps this is so, but I’m skeptical that it will solve much over time. Disagreements over the meaning of God will simply become disagreements over the nature of mystical experience, Nothingness, Being, Spirit, Higher Power, etc. In this debate, it’s worth observing that if the more spiritually subtle thinkers all abandoned the use of the word “God”, then they will allow the most irresponsible of thinkers to control the most powerful and enduring idea in the history of human thought. That can’t be all good.

Julian continues:

I wonder if this kind of exploration of the terms we use and what we do and don’t mean might reveal that we are more sentimentally and superstitiously attached to prerational formulations of spirituality than we’d like to admit.

It’s obvious that emotional attachment to childhood beliefs plays a huge role in adult spirituality, and this is problematic in important ways, so I don’t have much to debate here. But the same point should be stressed about all manner of beliefs, not merely religious beliefs. Beliefs in moral principles, political affinities, gender roles, sexuality, and so forth, are all subject to evolution from lesser to more mature expressions. What strikes me is that nobody feels it’s particularly clever to argue that an adult’s attitude towards his parents is “more sentimentally and superstitiously attached to prerational formulations” of parental roles and powers “than we’d like to admit”. Nobody speaks about the process of maturation as if it were possible to eliminate belief in mother and father altogether, let alone eliminate the “terminology” of mother and father, yet in discussions of religion it is often presumed otherwise.

Julian continues:

For me, contemporary transrational spirituality has to do with meditative expansion, mind-body integration, energetic initiation and dedicated development of the spiritual gifts of intellect, contemplation, intuitive creativity, embodied experience and the raw emotional honesty of our existential condition…

And so it is worth responding that perhaps the best argument for keeping alive the transrational notion of God — say, as a panentheistic vision of Ultimate Reality, as I do — is that this approach is the most meditatively expansive, most integrative of mind and body, most initiatory of energetic flow, and most valuable for developing an honest understanding of “our existential condition”. Making such an argument in full, of course, is beyond the scope of this blog post, so I don’t want to drag this discussion too far afield. But it strikes me as enormously intuitive that the reality of God extends far beyond our concepts of the divine and into the realm of our bodies and unconscious associations.

God is embodied within our holistic being(s), and the path of progress from body to mind to spirit cannot skip over any part of the self or collective. For most of us, the content of belief changes as an individual matures, but the sentiment of the believer — oriented to living with hope rather than fear, trust rather than mistrust, and love rather than selfishness — remains a powerful attractor to religion. Where some understandably see this faith as sentimentalism, it can also be seen as a personal style (i.e., an existential option) alive with both emotion and reason. God, embodied within our holistic being, reveals its eternal consistency as a force of liberation in a changing self alive in an evolving world.

Technorati Tags: faith, God, panentheism, spirituality, theology, Walker

Whole Writing is a form of directed stream of consciousness writing that is intended to expand awareness of the self and its worldspace. The product of the practice is a Write, a piece of writing following a formal six-step technique of (1) inquiry, (2) response, (3) cue, (4) engagement, (5) return, and (6) reflection.

Topic: Hiatus.

Avoiding? What do I know about avoiding hiatus? It’s a contradiction in terms. Avoiding hiatus means working, getting over procrastination, getting past blocks, overcoming obstacles, getting back on track. Getting back into my Whole Writing practice. … Avoiding?

What do I know about my Whole Writing practice and avoiding? It’s easy to avoid something that seems difficult, that makes me remember, try to remember, try to do something right. There are wrong ways to do a Whole Write. Rules to follow. Problems to avoid. I don’t want to subject myself to the pressure. I don’t want to encounter resistance, to feel anxious.
I want to be able … free … Avoiding?

What do I know about able? I am worried about being able to do the Writes like I used to do. Funny, how it strikes me now. I don’t feel at my best. I worry about the result. I worry about showing the world my writing when it sucks. I worry about reaction, rejection, failing to meet standards, expectations, worried about disappointing others. Being worthy. Avoiding?

What do I mean by worthy? Worthy to shine, worthy to be, worthy to be recognized, to be affirmed. What do I know about affirmed? Praised. Loved. Cared for. Recognized. To be told: you matter, you make a difference, your life isn’t a mistake, your life isn’t a tragedy, isn’t a hard luck story without redemption. Avoiding?

Redemption. What do I know about redemption? I don’t feel particularly redeemed at this moment. I want to be free, I want to … what do I want? Avoiding?

What do I know about wanting? Wanting … wanting to be empty. Wanting to be free. Wanting to be … longing, desiring, noticing the attachment, feeling the clinginess, the burn, the drift, the de-centering, the heavy breathing, the sighing, the stretch of tight muscles in my chest and abdomen. Wanting, wanting, wanting… What do I know about wanting?

I … I think of [something I heard on the TV today about] Brad Pitt. Angelina Jolie said everything he wants, he gets. Sometimes I feel like that’s how I operate my life. Much of the time, too much. I give in, I satisfy, I take, I grasp, I reach out, I stress out, I max out, I consume, I tear, I stretch. I don’t want to be this way. Avoiding?

What do I know about being this way? I don’t feel redeemed. I want to be redeemed. “As a Christian.” As a Christian, I know I am “already redeemed”. But when you don’t feel that way, what do you do, what do I do, what do I do when I don’t feel redeemed? When I don’t feel worthy? When I don’t feel justified? Like I matter. Like I am loved by God. I … I … Avoiding?

What do I know about God? God … Love, connection, being One, knowing my Union, knowing my partness. Partness. What do I mean by partness? Part of a whole. Not a whole. Desiring, wanting, clinging. To be always a part, always a whole. To be a paradox.

Technorati Tags: God, spirituality

In BeliefNet’s “Integral Spirituality in Real Life”, Ken Wilber praises my first book, Soulfully Gay: How Harvard, Sex, Drugs, and Integral Philosophy Drove Me Crazy and Brought Me Back to God (Integral Books/Shambhala, 2007)?

“I am in the awkward situation of writing a foreword to a book by a gay person. This is an awkward situation not because Joe Perez is gay, but because I have to point it out. I feel the same damn irritation as having to refer to, say, Edmund White as a “gay writer.” Nobody has to point out that I am heterosexual, although now I hear that I am not a heterosexual but a metrosexual, although, in fact, I have never had sex with a metro in my life. But I’m sure it is a wonderful experience.

“Nevertheless, because I have to include that information-culture today demands it, from those both for and against homosexuals-then let me say this. Joe Perez’s book is perhaps the most astonishing, brilliant, and courageous look at the interface between individual belief and cultural values that has been written in our times. By a homosexual, or a heterosexual, or any other sexual I am aware of.

“As it happens, this rather extraordinary chronicle unfolds around several conflict-inducing facts, one of which is that Joe is indeed gay; another of which is that Joe was raised Roman (homophobic) Catholic; another is that he often has authentic mystical states; and yet another is that Joe is, but only occasionally, clinically psychotic. It is the jolting collision of those items, held together by Joe’s courage in the face of all of them, that makes this chronicle so extraordinary in so many ways.

“The last item-the occasional trip into realms labeled madness-can mean, especially if you are a writer, that you are given to telling the unvarnished, brutal, searing truth, whether society likes it or not. And not the Sylvia Plath look-at-me kinds of truth, but the spiritual-seer and mad-shaman types of truth, the truths that really hurt, the truths that get into society’s craw and stick there, causing festering metaphysical sores indicative of social cancers or worse-but also the types of truth that speak to you deeply, authentically, radiantly, if you have the courage to listen.

“As it turns out, Joe is a writer, a rip-roaring wonder of a writer, and he had the courage to tell those truths, to endure them, to have them tear him apart, hospitalize him, brutalize him, kill and reassemble him, in one of the most astonishing tales of death and resurrection you are likely to find in today’s literature.

Of course, Soulfully Gay is “technically” a memoir. It contains a day-by-day journey of fourtheen months in my life. Fourteen months of soul searching, philosophizing, ruminating, and discovering repressed memories and hidden secrets. It reveals the high price I paid for the mystical connection with Agape and Thanatos, a journey that disrupted every aspect of my life and sent me to the psychiatric wards.

But it’s also the book where I lay out the case, step by step, analytically and pragmatically, why God is gay. Or, to say the same thing in a more nuanced way, why the principle of “gayness” or self-immanence is the underlying principle for understanding how homosexuality manifests in all realms of our evolving world.

In this reading (sorry for the poor production values, I’m a webcam newbie), I discuss the following passage from Soulfully Gay, and succintly answer the question: what does it mean to say “God is gay?”

God made some men gay, because He made them in His image. God made gay men to love in gay ways, because God loves in gay ways. The beauty of gay men reflects the beauty of God. The beauty of gay ways of loving reflects the beauty of God’s gay ways of loving. When someone fears and hates a gay man, he or she fears and hates God.

Audio (MP3): joeperez_sg1

Video (WMV):

You can purchase or learn more about Soulfully Gay at the Website of its publisher, Shambhala, or buy it today at Amazon.com…

Technorati Tags: Gay, God, homophilia, Soulfully Gay

Originally posted May 12, 2007.

A few words about the Christian notion of the “preferential option for the poor,” a central concept in much Latin American liberation theology. This theological method assumes that God favors the poor and marginalized in history, and “God is on their side” in very real power struggles on earth. Theology is done from the margins; practice is emphasized over theory; “base communities” (small gatherings of believers) complement the institutional church as a place for discussing the Bible. According to Wikipedia, there are 80,000 base communities operating in Brazil alone.

As I see it, the “preferential option for the poor” simply doesn’t jive with Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory. Evolutionary theology is thought produced by the cultural elites; thinking done from the margins–the poor, the oppressed, the illiterate–is reduced to lower levels of theological discourse. Liberation theology is acceptable to Integral theory on the basis that it’s a reflection of red and green altitude perspective whose claim on evolutionary theory must be included and transcended as merely a step in an ongoing process.

In Soulfully Gay, I tell a story that partly bridges the gap between liberation theology and mysticism. My central theological claim is that feminine and homophilic types have been marginalized by contemporary perspectives, and that a proper understanding of God will restore the balance created by the currently out-of-whack perspective that emphasizes agentic and homophobic modes of relating. If communal modes of theology are out of balance, homophilic modes are neglected even more so. (Communal and homophilic perspectives are even more neglected. However, not being a lesbian I feel rather unqualified to discuss this topic in depth.) So in my estimation, doing theology from the point of view of disenfranchised or underrepresented voices is critical to forming adequate conceptions of the relationship of God and Creation.

And yet as I see it today, my remarks in Soulfully Gay are only the beginning of a more comprehensive critique of Integral religious thought. As a Christian, I intuit the necessity to give greater value to perspectives of the least, the poorest, the most simple, feeble, and meek. This is the proclamation of the Gospel of Christ. To not be faithful to the notion “Blessed are the poor…” is not a viable option.

And so my perspective on evolution is more or less the opposite of the approach taken by Integral religious thought (specifically the most rigid and elitist varieties). Their approach tends to favor the perspectives of the most highly sophisticated, evolved, and elite. In my blogs (particularly those posts related to Kronology), I have suggested a way beyond the deadlock. To bring the “preferential option for the poor” into Integral theology is to take an additional perspective not already included within mainstream Integral theory.

Consider Ken Wilber’s three fundamental perspectives on value–Absolute (the absolute value of an object for God), Intrinsic (the value of an object in itself), and Relative (the value of an object for others). I suggest that the “preferential option for the poor” demands at least a fourth perspective: Relatively Absolute (the relative value of an object for God). This perspective involves seeing the world through the prism of involution, not evolution (generally defined esp. as “regressive changes” and a “function which is its own inverse”). We must trace God’s footprints in history by positing the involutionary footprint that accompanies every evolutionary development.

Assume hypothetically that there are 10 stages of development–say: 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, 6x, 7x, 8x, 9x, 10x. Then the Absolute perspective is 0. The equation for solving the Absolute perspective is, e.g., 1x = 0. x = 0/1 or x = 0. The Absolute perspective is solved by dividing the stage by the Absolute perspective. The result is always 0 (x = 0); hence it is accurate to say that in the absolute perspective all stages are equal in God’s eyes (0/1 = 0/2, etc.). The involutionary footprint acknowledges the validity that in God’s eyes all are equal, because it understands the leveling and equalizing power of 0 in the equation of life. Before 0, all relative value distinctions are obliterated.

However, there are other ways to solve for x=0. For it’s true that 1x = 0, but it’s also true that 1x + (-1x) = 0. The involutionary footprint is the negative value added to the evolutionary stage in order for the sum to result in x = 0. Thus, 2x + (-2x) = 0, 3x + (-3x) = 0, etc. The positive value represents a stage of development in an outward or other-centered direction (Eros); the negative value represents a stage in vertical development in an inner or immanent direction (Agape). Or to use the biased language of evolutionists, Agape is regression. By analogy, for every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction.

The implications of seeing an invisible trail of Agape as a footprint in evolution are enormous. It only scratches the surface to note that evolution is not merely a march forward to greater progress. It is accompanied at every stage of growth by increasing involution. The higher we appear to ascend, the deeper God appears to fall. The lower we appear to ascend, the less God seems to decline. From God’s relative point of view at 0, evolution and involution are equivalent, merely twin sides of the coin. Not only is one level of development not greater than any other, but the greater the apparent value the deeper the descent of God. By analogy, the negative numbers closest to 0 are prized, just as the poorest of the poor are the closest to God.

Thus, we can begin to understand the “preferential option for the poor” as something like a “preferential option for the underdeveloped, the lesser evolved”. From God’s relative point of view, the least feeble and weakest among the creatures are those who are less in “need” of God’s help, guidance, and comfort. They get more from God because they have less. God’s preference, God’s leveling and balancing act in History, is to give more and more of God’s self in self-sacrificial love (Agape) to the porrest, the meekest, and the least evolved. Relatively speaking, God’s love for the marginalized is greater than God’s love for the sophisticates and the realizers. It’s not fair, but this is part of the proclamation of Jesus’ teachings of the Reign of Heaven.

The involutionary insight of Christian theology can be appreciated from an Integral lense, but only by turning the scales of evolution upside down, and reimagining the universe from God’s point of view. God is not neutral in the conflict between the sophisticated elites and the marginalized poor. God is on the side of the lesser developed. It’s not an easy truth; it’s not fair (to our eyes most likely), but it’s the nature of the Reign of Heaven.

Technorati Tags: Christianity, God, liberation theology