www.alethic-coaching.org

Gary Hawke

Connecting to the Pulse of

Freedom: The Work-ins of

metaReality and Integral Life

Practice.

Creating a metaPractice of

Transformation and Emancipation.Gary Hawke

Critical Realism Reading Group London 2015

Overview

• Back ground on Dramatherapy in relationship to Critical Realism

• Integral Life Practice

• A view of Practice

• The Work ins of metaReality

• Using metaReality and Integral Theory

The Therapeutics Encounter or the research of the interior

The four dramaturgists that influence dramatherapy and how their work might relate

to Critical Realism.

The question, then, for the theater, is to create a metaphysics of speech, gesture, and expression, in order to rescue it from its servitude to psychology and "human interest." But all this can be of no use unless behind such an effort there is some kind of real metaphysical inclination, an appeal to certain unhabitual ideas, which by their very nature cannot be limited or even formally depicted. These ideas which touch on Creation, Becoming, and Chaos, are all of a cosmic order and furnish a primary notion of a domain from which the theater is now entirely alien.

Artaud A 1958: pp 90, The Theatre and Its Double, Grove Press, Inc.

Antonin Artaud

Jerzy Grotowski

…the question is: what do you want to do with your life; and so – do you want to hide, or to reveal yourself? There is a word which, in many languages, has a double meaning: the word discover/ uncover. To discover oneself means to find oneself, at the same time uncover what has been covered: to unveil. If we want to discover ourselves […], we have to uncover ourselves (unveil, reveal ourselves). “Find out – unveil”. There is something exceptionally precise about this double meaning.

(Cited in) Schiecher R 2013: pp 219 The Grotowski Sourcebook, London, Routledge

Hegel asserted that the character is free, that is, that the inner movements of his soul must always be capable of being exteriorised, without hindrance. But to be free did not mean that the character could be capricious and do whatever he wished: freedom is the consciousness of ethical necessity. He must not, however, exercise his freedom with regard to the purely accidental or episodical but only regarding situations and values common to all mankind or to nationality – eternal powers, moral truths such as love, fi lial love, patriotism, etc.

Boal A 2008: pp 63, Theatre of the Oppressed, London, Pluto Press

Augusto Boal

http://www.theartsdesk.com/theatre/interview-director-peter-brook

“We have to stage the visible, and through it, show the

invisible.”

Peter Brook

The Dramatherapy Interventions

RitualDr

ama

Gam

es

Masks

Puppets

Performance

Forum Theatre

Play

back

The

atre

Role PlayImpro

visati

on

Embodim

ent

Art

Myth

Cons

tella

tion

Let us begin with Integral Life Practice

“ILP integrates our basic human aspirations. ILP does not view the impulse to grow (to become all that you can be) as if it is separate from the impulse to contribute (to make a difference, to be of service to others and our world.) We cannot live a fully self-actualized life without making contributions to others and our world. We cannot make our fullest contributions to others and our world without growing and waking up and actualizing our potentials” (Terry Patten 2009)

Patten T, What is Integral Life Practice? http://www.integralspiritualpractice.com

“The universal starting point for ILP is the 4 Core Modules. That’s because they relate to four primary dimensions of your individual being: body, mind, spirit, and shadow. They don’t require anything or anyone else but you. So you can, if you wish, work on them by yourself. If you consistently engage practices in each of these four areas, you’ll empower and turbocharge your overall development.”

Excerpt From: “Integral Life Practice: A 21st-Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening.” p 61

Nonexclusion - guides us in accepting the valid truth claims of each practice but only insofar as they make statements about the existence of their own axiology, and not when they make statements about the existence of phenomena enacted by other practices.

Enfoldment - suggests that all practices are in themselves true and adequate; but some practices can be more encompassing, more inclusive, more holistic than others.

Enactment - suggests that one practice will bring forth a particular set of experiences and, accordingly, one practice does not give “the correct practice” and therefore it cannot be used as if it did, in order to negate, criticize, or exclude other experiences brought forth by other practices.

Integral Life Practice makes use of Integral Theories Integral Methodological Pluralism

Suppose one distinguishes:

pactice1 , as the transformative capacity analytic to the concept of agency, or that when we practice we are increasing our relationship to an intrinsic aspect within our dialectic of the desire for freedom.

practice2 is practice as a structure of domination, exploitation, subjugation and control, in which I see my practice as the only thing that can being me freedom, leading to freedom not as a transformative capacity but something that is given to me.

The Two Version of Practice

And moving on to The Philosophy of metaReality

“Meta-reality presupposes that accessing the ground state identifies the transcendental real self, which is our domain of non-duality where our ‘capacity for the right action’ can be achieved (Bhaskar 2002b: 38). However, the ground state is usually obscured by a combination of our ego and our complex embodied personality, which are the product of our contemporary social settings.”

Haji-Abdi. A 2014 pp 182 (iBook) “Critical Realism, Somalia and the Diaspora Community, Routledge.

The shedding of the contradiction of the ego allows for a greater expression of the transcendental real self.

Or to uses Roy’s words

We can, must and will be re-united, as embodied personalities, with our transcendentally real selves which are our ground-states and our self-alienation terminated.

Bhaskar, R 2012: pp 39 The Philosophy of MetaReality: Creativity, Love and Freedom Routledge

Bhaskar, R 2012: pp 280 The Philosophy of MetaReality: Creativity, Love and Freedom Routledge

When we understand reality as not just constituted by four-planar social being, but as constituted by n-dimensionally generalised four-planar social being, that is all these planes understood as incorporating also an emotional, mental and in principle intervening and further levels, ultimately grounded by the cosmicenvelope, then we see the full scale of the task of self-realisation or freedom for any and therefore all human beings.

The aim of practice1 is to absent the conflict and contraction at the demi real or the world of dualism, creating a self reflectively consolation at the actual or dual world, and allow a re-enchantment of the meta Real at the level of the non dual.

“… traditional forms of Non-Dualism are, in actuality, founded in the efforts to exclude conditionally manifest reality and (therefore) seclude oneself in the Bliss of contemplating the Transcendental “Self”. Thus, such traditional forms of Non Dualism are “non-dual” only by virtue of excluding or intentionally ignoring the conditional aspects of reality. Such traditional forms of Non-dualism are, in fact, still “built” on an essentially dualistic conception of existence – a conception that pits “self” against “not-self” and attempts to resolve resulting conflict by focusing entirely on the “inner world“ of the self and exclude involvement in the “outer” world of “not-self”.” (Adi Da Samraj: The Aletheon 2009, pp 2070n5)

As we practice we need to be mindful of escaping into the bliss of the non dual as an escape from the dualistic world of contractions. However the more we express our desire for freedom through practice, the more we are able to create a deeper relation to the four plains of the constellation of the world of dualism and embody a re-enchanted reality as the non dual.

Of course the mutual entailment of inner and outer implied by the theory of co-presence means that whenever we are working on ourselves, we are not only immediately working on the world (obviously insofar as we are part of the world) but working on that aspect of being which is enfolded within all other like beings too. In this perspective from the theory of co-presence there is actually no such thing as solitary or individual action. We are always, even in our most private moments, affecting (or potentially, that is tendentionally) a momentous change in the world. We are never alone when we are all one. When we are whole, that is

free, then we are at one with the cosmic totality. (Roy Bhaskar 2012 pp 152 n25)

Bhaskar, R 2012 The Philosophy of MetaReality: Creativity, Love and Freedom Routledge

Practice1 is a process in which we work on ourselves, the world, and all beings.

1) Concentration, single-pointedness, mindfulness and the power of attention.

2) Exercises in the motility and universality of consciousness. Exercises in identity consciousness, transcendental identification and co-presence.

3) The creative power of thought, including visualisations.

4) Koans and ways of subverting the egoic mind.

5) Practicing watchfulness; just observing.

6) Witnessing. (Bhaskar R 2012 pp 174)

And to support the process of self realisation the philosophy of metaReality offers a set of practices that just as we work out in the gym we can work in the realism of the non dual.

Bhaskar, R 2012 The Philosophy of MetaReality: Creativity, Love and Freedom Routledge

“…I see the whole process of self-realization and emancipation as necessarily coming from within.” Bhaskar, R and Hartwig, M. 2012. Beyond East and West. In: Harwig, M. and Morgan, J ed. Critical Realism and Spirituality, Routledage, pp. 221.

1

23

1M - Begins with the moment of calling to practice as a desire or will to become free.

Our practice as being in movement

2E - Moving to the creation of our practice, or exploring the edge of working toward the letting go of that which holds back our freedom.

3L – With love we bind ourselves to the totally of a new level of being as our practice begins to open up a deeper relationship to freedom.

4D – As our practice deepens we become a transformative agent, and express freedom as the domain of right action.

5A – Awakening to the understanding that to be fully free means that we have to expand out intention for freedom to all, and that our being free is a condition of the freedom of all. This allows out practice to become a practice of spiritual emancipation.

6R – With freedom as our emancipatory practice for all, we able see reality as re-enchanted.

7Z – Our practice now bring us to our ground state as we express freedom as the zone of the non dual.

Bringing together

Integral life practice offers a flexible frame

work in which to set our practice.

The Philosophy of metaReality provides

the levels of being that we want to

practice in.

Bhaskar, R 2012: pp 309/310 The Philosophy of MetaReality: Creativity, Love and Freedom Routledge

“Ultimately to be a reflexive being you must be able to adopt the first-person standpoint for every being in creation, that is to say you must overcome every egocentricity, every binary oppositionality within and between yourself, your class, your caste, your occupation and the rest of the world, and you must overcome the binary opposition between god and yourself or the rest of the world. So the ideal of reflexivity is something to be striven for in practice and not just theory.”

Why is practice important if we want to understand how someone encounters , experiences and

embodied their world.

Emancipation can be seen as a trialectic of being, in which we create a new perspective, which leads to a new action, which leads to a new being.

Integral Life Practice aims to develop and expand the legitimacy and authenticity of the agent’s perspective, through developmental growth.

Critical Realism exposes the importance of maintaining nonidentity and absence as an exposition of the unblocking of oblivion, leading to the agent as an open totality expressing their causal intentionality as right action on all 4 plains of the social being.

And through Philosophy of metaReality’s Workins, the agent is able to begin the process of re-enchantment of the world as identity over difference from the inside out, as their pulse of freedom.

Where next

If it is embodied intentionality which earths social life, (Bhaskar 2008 p164) then practice is the process in which we work towards the right action of an emancipatory intention for freedom at all four plains of the social being.

Bhaskar, R, 2008 Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom Routledge

Chris Smith 2010 pp 18

Conclusion

Humans are profoundly finite creatures, in both body and mind. The tensions arising between human capacities and human limits—between the vastly capable and severely finite in human life—give rise through emergence to creativepatterns of lived practice that often solidify into what we call social structures.

Smith C (2010) What is a Person, The University of Chicago Press

www.alethic-coaching.org

Gary Hawke