Ken Wilber – The Future of Spirituality

Ken Wilber – The Future of SpiritualityDescription:If the Buddha, Saint Theresa, or an enlightened shaman walked into the room today, would they find themselves in need of some serious spiritual catching up to do? The answer, says Ken Wilber, is yes. In this video teaching series, viewers explore the profound ways that spirituality is evolving today, and why it matters to all of us.Integral evolutionary thinkers today are seeing a burst of accelerating shifts in human consciousness: in our emotional and cognitive lines of intelligence, our creative and moral capacities, our sense of self, and more. And as this landscape of knowledge grows, so does the potential of our own spiritual lives—in ways that even meditation and other inward practices alone cannot provide.What is the evidence for this upward spiral in our spiritual intelligence? And if it’s true, how do we experience these shifts directly, within ourselves?The Future of Spirituality explores these emerging possibilities to help you discover their profound influences in your own life and in the world around you.This candid, heart-to-heart conversation between Ken Wilber and host Tami Simon turns the spotlight to the ways that spirituality is evolving right now, and why it matters to all of us on a meditative or contemplative spiritual path.Join Ken Wilber in these intimate and lively video sessions as he delves deeply into many compelling topics, including:The core of integral spirituality: “Spirit wants to evolve”Waking up and growing up—two distinct and essential processesFreedom and fullness, the two dimensions of spiritual emergenceHow our place in history and culture shapes our deepest inner experiencesHow science and Western psychology are transforming spiritualityDo all paths really lead to the same destination?Five states of consciousness: gross, subtle, casual, witness, non-dualIf the Divine is formless and infinite, who needs levels and hierarchies?Enlightenment as a stage of development, not an eventOn reincarnation and life after deathThe shape of things to come: stages of spirituality yet to emerge“The enlightened person of today and of 2,000 years ago are equally free,” says Wilber. But now, for the first time in human history, we have the potential for a far more expansive, fuller spiritual experience than ever before possible. This is the territory that you are invited to explore, with The Future of Spirituality.What’s Inside?Session 1: The Two Truths: Emptiness and the Evolutionary Unfolding of FormThe series begins with an introduction to the two truths. Absolute truth, the realm of formless emptiness and oneness with the divine, was discovered by the great mystics over 2,000 years ago. Relative truth, our understanding of our minds and world, has accelerated only recently, in the past 200 years. In this session, Ken proposes that a complete spirituality requires the full embrace of both absolute and relative truth.Session 2: Waking Up and Growing UpFrom the integral evolutionary view, all spiritual paths have two dimensions: waking up and growing up. Here, Ken describes both. First, he addresses how we awaken into ever-deepening levels of consciousness (the gross, subtle, causal, witness, non-dual states) and leads us in a pointing out of these five states. Then he discusses the stages of growth that occur in the persistent, structural domains of our spiritual development.Session 3: The Freedom and Fullness of EnlightenmentKen provides here an integral definition of enlightenment. Drawing parallels to the process of becoming educated, he shows how the two concepts of waking up and growing up are reflected in the process of awakening: in the expanding freedom experienced as we move through the major states of consciousness, and in the increasing fullness we experience as we develop new stages of structure. Ken also explains the way that our stage development deeply shapes the way we interpret the mystical states that we experience in meditative and contemplative practice.Session 4: Is Enlightenment All It Is Cracked Up to Be?In this session, Ken describes how our understanding of intelligence itself has expanding beyond the early notion of a single IQ to one of multiple intelligences: emotional, moral, kinesthetic, musical, mathematical, spiritual, and more. Each of these lines opens the potential for areas of growth exclusive to each other—and uniquely shapes our spiritual unfolding.Session 5: What Is of Ultimate Concern?Our spiritual intelligence serves to answer the biggest of the Big Questions: What is of ultimate concern? In this session, Ken and Tami explore: why first-person experience is so essential to spiritual intelligence, how our individuality continues even as we touch the absolute and formless ground of pure being, and what mysteries human consciousness may never know. Here, Ken also shares his personal reflections on what happens when we die and the case for reincarnation.Session 6: The Future of SpiritualityIn this final dialog, Ken and Tami bring together the far-ranging topics of discussion covered in the series, with an emphasis on how to bring our rapid expansion of exterior knowledge and scientific understanding into practical use on our own spiritual paths. Ken describes the advantages of being a dual citizen of spirituality: practicing within a time-tested spiritual tradition while at the same time staying attuned to emerging insights.