The following is a meditation from Jack Kornfield's A Path with Heart. 

"Just as every community has a shadow, every set of teachings will also have areas of shadow, aspects of life they do not illuminate wisely.  Every style of teaching will also produce its near enemy, the way that particular teaching can be most easily misused or misunderstood.  It can be useful to take some time to reflect on the strengths and limitations of the practice you have chosen to follow.  You can then consider to what extent these are issues in your own spiritual life.  The following examples hint at the possible shadows you may encounter.

Insight Meditation and similar Buddhist practices can lead to quietude, to withdrawal from and fear of the world.  The emptiness taught in Zen and nondualist Vedanta can lead to a related problem, to being disconnected and ungrounded.  Any form of idealistic, otherworldly teaching that sees life on earth as a dream or focuses on higher realms can lead one to live with complacency, amorality, and indifference.  Physical practices such as hatha yoga can lead to bodily perfection instead of awakening the heart.  Kundalini yoga can lead students to become experience junkies in search of exciting sensations of body and mind rather than liberation.  Those such as Krishnamurti and others who teach against any discipline or method of practice can lead people to remain intellectual about spiritual life without providing any deep inner experience.  Practices that involve a great deal of study can do the same.  Moralistic practices with strong rules about what is pure and what is not can reinforce low self-esteem or lead to rigidity and self-righteousness.  Practices of tantra can become an excuse to act out desires as a pseudo form of spiritual practice.  Devotional practices can leave clarity and discriminating wisdom undeveloped.  Powerful gurus can make us think we can't do it ourselves.  Practices of joy and celebration such as Sufi dancing may leave students lacking an understanding of the inevitable loss and sorrows of life.  Practices that emphasize suffering can miss the joy of life.

As you reflect on these shadows, consider your own spiritual path and tradition.  Let yourself sense its strengths and weaknesses, its gifts and the ways it can be misused.  Notice where you may be caught and what more you might need.  Remember that there is nothing wrong with any of these practices per se.  They are simply tools for opening and awakening.  Each can be used skillfully or unknowingly misused.  As you mature in your own spiritual life, you can take responsibility for your own practice and reflect wisely on where you are entangled and what can awaken you to freedom in every realm."

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May the boundless knowledge that time presents and space allows illuminate the native perspectives of your original face.

cool, balder ! that makes an excellent case for integral life practice 

Perfect, Fairyfaye!  That's exactly the direction I wanted to go with this:  this meditation highlights the strengths of an approach such as ILP, calling as it does for you to acknowledge and develop multiple dimensions of your being (not to mention work with your shadow material).

However, in the spirit of this meditation, I'd also like to ask you (or others) if even an approach such as ILP might also have "shadow" that it casts.  What might it be?

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May the boundless knowledge that time presents and space allows illuminate the native perspectives of your original face.

can't think of any offhand, balder .. but if one came up, it would be integrated as the intention is to practice all aspects of our being

is there anything u can think of that u care to put forth ?

we're all ears !!

 

Well, the point about shadow is that it doesn't tend to "come up" -- it remains tucked away, not in a condition of absolute inaccessibility, but nevertheless as an ongoing point of not-knowing generated by the very approach or perspective one is taking.  I share your confidence that, if something was revealed, the overall orientation of integrative spirituality ideally would encourage one to work with it in some way.  So, I'm not starting this thread because I have some "fault" to find with ILP. 

But I admit I do grow a bit suspicious when someone suggests, "Nope, my approach doesn't have any shadows.  It's complete.  And if there is something that, by chance, it hasn't integrated yet, there is still nothing that it couldn't integrate."

One shadow that such a perspective could cast is something I touched on in my "Integral and Inclusivism" thread:  a type of complacency in which one assumes that, because one has access to a map for everything, one occupies a position which transcends and includes more than it really does (at least in terms of practical, lived understanding).  One's "knowledge" might thus generate a kind of not-knowing that is the shadow side of a position which assumes one already "has it all accounted for" (and therefore stops looking outside of its own supposedly all-encompassing context).

A very simple "shadow" (or gap, really) that people have commented on is the absence of a "heart" module in the official ILP, which emphasizes body, mind and spirit dimensions.  I do not think this is a serious problem or necessarily a shadow in the sense described above, since one can easily include "heart" practices in one's personal ILP (either by creating a separate module, or by assuming that the "mind" module essentially covers "heartmind" and working accordingly).  But it should be acknowledged.

A possible "shadow" or unseen consequence of a modular, practice-oriented approach to spirituality is that it may reinforce an instrumental mode of knowledge, possibly at the expense of other modes, and may lead one to conceive of "knowledge" and "realization" as something outside of oneself -- a product of some sort, for instance. 

Related to this, the modular, practice-oriented approach may encourage a sort of spiritual materialism -- a fascination with technologies, an ego-driven compulsion to adorn oneself with an impressive array of spiritual "ornaments" and "instruments."  Wilber has commented on this potential in some of his talks and writings.

There may be other possible shadows or "dark spots" that we could benefit from highlighting, but this is what comes to mind for the moment.  I invite others to share their thoughts and reflections on this question -- to engage in the meditation that Kornfield has offered.

Best wishes,

B.

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May the boundless knowledge that time presents and space allows illuminate the native perspectives of your original face.

have you encountered people who confidently state that their practice doesn't have any shadows ?

i don't think practice is a static thing .. it moves and changes and adapts to life circumstances .. i also love what sally kempton said that there is no "one size fits all" practice .. that there are so very many to chose from

and of course, what diane hamilton says .. that life itself is practice ..

it's an interesting concept you bring up balder .. that a practice could have a shadow

 

 

have you encountered people who confidently state that their practice doesn't have any shadows ?

On my blog, where I also posted Kornfield's meditation, one person has commented that she believes Dzogchen practice is wholly without shadow.

In your response to me above, you also said that you didn't think ILP had any shadows, though you didn't say that nearly as rigidly or confidently as the person on my blog did.  :-)

I don't think Kornfield's meditation is intended to indict or find fault with any particular practice, but to encourage sensitivity to the potential for any frame -- and systemic approach -- to have biases and gaps.

Best wishes,

Balder

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May the boundless knowledge that time presents and space allows illuminate the native perspectives of your original face.

Balder, I appreciate and agree with Kornfield's perspective, which I think is a mature perspective that accords with observation and, given enough time, with experience.  One might say that any practice, perspective or even life is but a partial angle or approach, and that that partiality necessarily implies: biases, gaps, unseen elements.  One might further say that Kornfield's perspective is likewise necessarily implied within a tier two view, ie, that one important, difficult thing learned in tier two is the partiality of my previous (tier one) way of being.  It is IMO that very partiality which, not seen as such, becomes the basis for tier one culture wars: "you're not seeing my universality, so here it is!"

: )

But that very same partiality, when appreciated for what it is, becomes a potent motivator for really listening to another.

B, regarding what could be a shadow of modular ILP practice, I wonder if it biases one toward premapped planning, thereby excluding a more natural, spontaneous person-specific unfolding?  Of course, an inhibitory imposing of ideas upon one's unfolding would not be unique to ILP, but ILP could be more prone to it.

Hi, Serengeti,

Yes, I agree that is another potential shadow area.  On my blog, where I'm exploring Kornfield's meditation in relation to ILP, I made a similar observation:  "...the emphasis on practice, wedded to a model which attempts to 'cover all the bases,' might tend to reinforce a control-oriented approach -- a fixation on self-mastery and development which overlooks those aspects of one's being which are not subject to control, or which seeks to subject all spontaneous arisings to the same paradigm of control, or which inhibits surrender and retreats from the insecurity of not-knowing."

Best wishes,

Balder

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May the boundless knowledge that time presents and space allows illuminate the native perspectives of your original face.

Yes, well put.  Where one's little personhood wants to go is perhaps where one's personhood wants to go, maybe even down some narrow corridor for reasons perhaps now not easily perceptible.  When I look at my own personality, I see how I in early life perceived my strengths relative to others and thereby raced and fought for and found my niche.  But that niche is highly related (even in respects determined) by who others are and are not (reminds me of Bohm's saying that each one is as all the others are), the implication being that that niche, my "perspective," might have its own demands within a larger ecological movement, if you will, which demands might be seen by me-and-my-ILP-idea as "too small, too narrow."  I'm speculating here, of course, but it does seem germane.

Tom

I remember asking myself this very question, I chose Centering Prayer as my practice.  I knew their were many other ways but this one fit my tradition and ultimately my disposition.  That in fact implies the many shadows that I had to overcome and still do.  I think choosing a particular path we could pretty much guarentee a certain array of undigested junk that would be unique to that path, almost predictable.  It is only the beginning, unfortunately most of us never look at it from the outside.  I-I has the tools needed to do this but we still have a tendency to run in the same circles.  I looked at the Insight Meditation and can go down the list and find characteristics that I still carry.  What is the cure?  Probably being aware is a huge chunck, being willing and diligent is another.  Sometimes it can seem like you are so far out of your comfort range that you want to call the whole thing off.  One of the things I like best about Centering Prayer is that I was always given this kind of -check-check-, it probably had a lot to do with the teacher- Fr. Thomas, but humility plays a rather large role.  That actually says more about me than it does Centering Prayer. 
At this point on the spiritual journey I would have to say that their are two major functions, the first is to absorb the Tradition with all the dos and don't, process and purification, the second part is what I am currently looking at.  Here I need to experience everything else, I need to see how others do it.  I need to know those things that I take for granted may not be assumed here.  Some things that I struggle with are centered around where I come from, how does it fit and where do I belong in this mix.  It seems to me that these forums hint at what may be starting to happen.  I have a basic idealized view of where each of you are coming from - I believe we are all looking for Truth, each one gets a piece of it, the person that collects this data ie. reading all your posts, clarifying some unresolved issues - that person can really reap the benefit.

Anne

balder, am still trying to grasp the concept of a practice or series of practices having a shadow .. especially when one's practice includes shadow work

does practice have the consciousness required to have shadow ? or are u referring to flaws .. as in .. can practice have flaws ? or inadequacies ?

one of the blockages in practice is to get the individual to show up at all and commit to practice

ff, one's practice, whatever it may be, integral or otherwise, is essentially a definition of what's "in."  In implies out.  The out is the shadow.

People in spiritual traditions tend to cast their perceptions in reference to some or another form of light, whether the light of consciousness, the light of God, etc.  Light, or at least any light I've seen, creates shadows.  Just part of the dualism of "things."

Taken more generally, you could say every word implies its opposite, and leave the matter there.

Maybe a truly ILP is to go into the dark and love the dark as dark.  I mean, lots of interesting things happen in the dark.  Depending on the person, can be very interesting.  : )  Roots thrive in the dark.  Shade is a beautiful thing, valleys, dense growth in dark forests, the space that holds our beautiful sun, nine months in a womb ....

But j'digress.  One shadow of ILP is perhaps the notion of better.  Others are mentioned above.

btw, one of the keynote speakers for this week's biennial conference, roger walsh, will be talking about integral shadows. it seems likely he will be focusing more on practice than theory.

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