Transitioning from Self to Soul to Spirit

“In the archeology of the Self, we are at the point where the soul has emerged from the interior depths of the mind and pointed the way to a greater tomorrow.  But, like Moses, the soul can see from afar, but never actually enter, the Promised Land.  As Teresa would say, after the butterfly (soul) emerged from the death of the chrysalis (ego), so now the little butterfly must die.  When the soul itself grows quiet, and rests from its own weariness; when the witness releases its final hold, and dissolves into its ever-present ground; when the last layer of the Self is peeled in the purest emptiness; when the final form of the self-contraction unfolds in the infinity of all space; then Spirit itself, as ever-present awareness, stands free of its own accord, never really lost, and therefore never really found.  With a shock of the utterly obvious, the world continues to arise, just as it always has.

In the deepest within, the most infinite beyond.  In ever-present awareness, your soul expands to embrace the entire Kosmos, so that Spirit alone remains, as the simple world of what is.   The rain no longer falls on you, but within you; the sun shines from inside your heart and radiates out into the world, blessing it with grace; supernovas swirl in your consciousness, the thunder is the sound of your own exhilarated heart; the oceans and rivers are nothing but your blood pulsing to the rhythm of your soul.  Infinitely ascended worlds of light dance in the interior your brain; infinitely descended worlds of night cascade around your feet; the clouds crawl across the sky of your own unfettered mind, while the wind blows through the empty space where your self once used to be.  The sound of the rain falling on the roof is the only self you can find, here in the obvious world, where inner and outer are silly fictions and self and other are obscene lies, and ever-present simplicity is the sound of one hand clapping madly for all eternity.  In the greatest depth, the simplest what is, and the journey ends, as it always does, exactly where it began.”

--From Integral Psychology:  Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy by Ken Wilber, pg 108

Quite lovely.  Please excuse me now as I go sublimate into ether and actuate my Oneness with the Source. 

If only it were that easy . . .

But I am in full mystical mode right now, typing this at a remote Colorado cabin with nothing to do but read, write, hang out with my boy Grant, ride four-wheelers, and think deep thoughts.  (And with the way the wind is gusting at the cabin, I just may blow into the Kosmos somewhere.)

I'm sharing this, because I find this book to be so empowering, and this paradigm of human psychological/spiritual development to be so resonant.  In the context of what Wilber is describing, the crimes of psychiatry begin to look even more dehumanizing, because first we are labeling symptoms and development stages/crises as disease, explicitly subdividing the self from itself and worsening the dissociation with ultimate Oneness; and second, we are numbing--or worse, obliterating--self's and the soul's spiritual sensitivities, which exist in order to gently guide us back towards that Ultimate Oneness, where the journey both begins and ends . . . and begins again.