The Second Face of God - Part 2

The Postmodern Predicament

Part 2 of The Second Face of God, a dialogue between Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber, published in EnlightenNext.

In Part 1 Cohen and Wilber introduced us to the three faces of God (as Self, as Other, and as the Cosmic Process itself) and laid the groundwork for our exploration into the often overlooked significance of the second aspect, God as Other. They talked about how, despite the many spiritual practices we can engage in, unless we can allow the existence of something beyond, and higher than, our individual selves and cultivate a genuine relationship with that, we will remain imprisoned within the cocoon of our self-centered egos.

In this section they provide a context in which this self-contraction develops and how it can become, as Cohen puts it, "the most fundamental obstacle to higher development."
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Cohen: I think this applies particularly to our generation and our generation's children who have grown up in the Western world in the last half-century. For many years I have been saying that the postmodern narcissistic separate self-sense is the most fundamental obstacle to higher development. Many people thought that I basically didn't get it, that this was an outmoded way of looking at things. But you only really discover what an enormous problem the narcissistic self-contraction is in relationship to how profound your interest is in transcending it. If you have no interest in transcending it, it doesn't seem to be a big problem. But if you authentically want to try to get on the other side of it, you discover that it's actually quite significant.

This is a delicate subject because the postmodern variation of the ego is, on one hand, a great gift to the evolutionary process, but on the other hand, it's a significant obstacle. In a positive sense, our ego, our capacity for individuality, is what makes it possible to become an integrally informed, evolutionarily enlightened human being. The more profound our individuation, the more powerfully Spirit can shine through us. So being profoundly individuated is not a bad thing. It's a gift of evolution, a gift of God, if you want to put it in theological terms. It's just that our narcissistic identification with the separate self, outside of any higher context, creates a big problem. The ego begins to see itself as the center of the universe, and the whole process inverts upon itself. Everything turns upside down.

When speaking about this problem, I always try to put it in this context and to make it clear that it's nobody's fault, because culturally we have been conditioned to be narcissists. I grew up in a secular family where there was no higher context for my or anyone else's existence. The basic message my parents and teachers repeatedly gave me was, "Sweetheart, you should do whatever is going to make you happy." So I was conditioned to see life as a vehicle for my pleasure, my happiness and my success - well-trained to be an absolutely self-centered human being. And I am not the only one. There are millions of us.

Wilber: That's right - the "me" generation. The downside of the [postmodern] relativistic, pluralistic stage is that it doesn't allow any truths outside of my own egoic truth. Postmodernity says, "What's true for me is true for me, and you have no right to challenge it." So the ego is supreme in its castle of "what is true for me."

Now this perspective has a certain relative truth to it, but it also has a magnificent falsehood to it ... the downside is that if nobody can say what is truth, then nobody can correct my egoic disposition. There is simply nothing that's going to let me grow, that's going to help me get over myself, that's going to point to a higher, truer, or more valuable stance than whatever I just happen to hold by whim. And this has been a problem in philosophy, in sociology and in spirituality.

Cohen: We are at a very interesting point in the evolution of culture. On one hand, Spirit has the capacity to shine through us in ways that may be unprecedented because of how highly integrated and sophisticated our individual self-sense has become. But the big problem is that our awareness has gotten stuck on and overidentified with this separate self and lost in its own separate world of extreme narcissism. The reason this is so tragic is that it makes it impossible for us to participate in life in the deepest and most profound way. To make a cultural revolution happen, awareness has to be liberated from narcissistic self-fixation so that it can overflow and discover who it really is as the Ground of Being and as the evolutionary impulse.

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Watch this space for Part 3 - The Evolution of Spirit
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If you like this thread and where it's going, here are some related RoadKill posts you might enjoy:

Sept. 9 - The Second Face of God - Part 1
July 24 - The Faces of Spirit
June 22 - Spirit is Higher
June 17 - Evolutionary Enlightenment 101
June 3 - Freedom in the Face of Fear
March 23 - Redefining Enlightenment For Our Time
March 21 - Whatever Happened to Truth?

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love to infinity and find me there
love to eternity and I will be there
love to the boundless corners of the Kosmos
and all will be shown to you
- Ken Wilber
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