Essential Wholeness

Spirit and Matter There is form and there is formlessness, otherwise known as matter and spirit. We call ourselves human beings. Our humanity is the world of form, of things coming into existence and going out of existence. Our body comes and goes, our activities come and go and our thoughts and feelings come and go. All the comings and goings of our lives happen in the pregnant space of existence—sometimes referred to as emptiness. In Sanskrit, it is called Shunyata and in other traditions: Presence, Spirit or Being. It is the ground of awareness. It’s not personal, it is universal. Gregory Bateson described Mind as being immanent, not located in individual; rather individual consciousness is located in an intelligent self-organizing field. In Buddhism emptiness is not a void in the sense of being nothingness. It is the infinite, it is the field of infinite possibilities out of which all form arises and dissolves into. Just as the outer world has arisen out of emptiness with the Big Bang, so also do our inner worlds of thoughts, feelings, imaginings, and so forth arise out of and dissolve back into the empty space of being. There is no essential difference between inner space and outer space. It is all the same beingness. If the wholeness of being is like the ocean, then waves—like our separate sense of self—arise on the surface of the ocean before dissolving back into the ocean, but at no time are they separate from the ocean. Human beings, like all other forms of the universe, are constantly coming into form. We “play around” for a while before dissolving, dying or disintegrating. All forms are impermanent and always changing, evolving or falling into decay. Whereas the space in which all happens remains unchanged. We have a sense of this on a personal level when we open our eyes in the morning. There is a sense that whatever is looking out through our eyes, listening through our ears and sensing through all our senses is the same when we were young. Even if the eyes or ears, for example, aren’t as effective as they once were or the world we see all around us has changed. In ACT this is referred to as “self-as-context” or “transcendent sense of self.” Psychiatrist and interpersonal neurobiologist, Dan Siegel refers to it as “the hub of mind, which offers a ground of being”. It would appear that the essence of the emptiness of being in human form and the essence of the universe as a whole have inherent qualities. As the great Tibetan Buddhist lama, the late 16th Karmapa said, “Every atom vibrates with joy and is held together by love.” The universe has a self-organizing wisdom that is inherently playful and caring. It looks after itself in ways that are loving, lovely and wondrous. In Christian terms this same statement would be that God is love and is everywhere and in everything. Body, Mind, Soul and Spirit Essential Wholeness is the sum total of what it is to be a human being. We are human and we are being. Our Essential Wholeness includes body, mind, soul and spirit. What is changing and what is unchanging. What is changing is like an ecosystem. As human animals we are imbedded in and dependent on the rest of nature. Our wellbeing as humans is dependent on living in harmony with our own nature, which is at one with all of nature. We are also Being. Our deepest nature is spirit or pure awareness. There is only one spirit, which is the unified field of energy and information out of which all of creation arises and disappears back into. The bridge between spirit and body is soul. Soul allows us to experience the connection spirit and the rest of creation is soul. It is soul that awakens to its true spiritual nature while manifesting full creative potential through the human mind and body. Mahayana Buddhism refers to these three aspects as dharmakaya as the Absolute; the unified and unmanifested essence of the universe. Sambhogakaya (soul) is what is in the process of realising enlightenment through spiritual practice. In Eastern traditions, it is what reincarnates for lifetime to lifetime. Nirmanakaya is the body that appears in the world. Dharmakaya (spirit) is like the atmosphere, sambhogakaya (soul) is like clouds, and nirmanakaya (body) is like rain. Clouds are a manifestation of atmosphere that enables rain. These dimensions are sometimes referred to as causal, subtle and gross. They are present in deep, dreamless sleep and silent meditation (dharmakaya), dreaming, imagination and trance (sambhokaya) and ordinary waking consciousness (nirmanakaya). The unified field of these dimensions is referred to as svabhavikakaya. I like to refer to that as Essential Wholeness. The self-concept or ego is identified with the body and its primary focus is on our survival by satisfying our instinctual drives. The Enneagram system traditionally recognizes three basic human instincts: self-preservation, social and sexual. In other words, focussing on survival of the body with food, shelter, etc., survival of and within society (we cannot survive without the clan), and survival of the species through procreation. The ego is a collection of habitual beliefs and behaviours that dictate how one survives by acquiring things, our place in the group and sex. Healthy egos, thanks to prompting from the soul, evolve over time and coincide with changes in how we relate to our survival. A healthy ego is going to have different concerns at eighty years old than it did at fifteen. The development of healthy egos has historically been the focus of most psychotherapy. Symptoms usually arise in our lives when our egoic self-concept is more concerned about its survival than even the survival, let alone thriving of the body. For example, if I identify with being the kind of person that thinks my career and money are the most important things for my survival, and consequently use most of my social relationships merely to further my career; I may find myself in the therapist’s office wondering why I’m depressed. In the process of therapy, I will understand that I’ve been ignoring my developmental needs for friendship and sexual fulfilment. The soul is the realm of the unconscious and what Jung referred to as the collective unconscious. It is the realm of archetypes and myths that inform and organize our human existence. At the most basic level we can think of soul as the universal laws that govern a self-organising universe. Biochemist Rupert Sheldrake coined the term “morphic field” as that which organizes the characteristic structure and pattern of activity of systems and their members. Soul manifests at different levels. There is the individual soul, the soul of a family, a soul of an organization, a soul of a nation and the soul of the planet. There are in essence individual souls nested in collective souls. This mirrors the ways life is organised with cells within bodies, bodies within communities within ecosystems, etcetera.