Thursday, October 28, 2010

Robert Augustus Masters Speaks with Ken Wilber on Spiritual Bypassing

Robert Augustus Masters new book, Spiritual Bypassing (see my review), is destined to become a touchstone for spiritual practice just as has Chogyam Trungpa's Spiritual Materialism - it's that important. In this talk from Integral Life, Robert and Ken Wilber talk about how we define spiritual bypassing.

This is the first of three talks, the next two require IL membership (free for the first month).

When Spirituality Disconnects Us From What Really Matters











Spiritual Bypassing
Robert Augustus Masters and Ken Wilber

Have you ever:

  • Used spirituality as a sort of escape from reality, or as a way to avoid some painful aspect of your life?
  • Let yourself get taken advantage of or walked all over in the name of blind compassion?
  • Allowed your understanding of ultimate reality to help you avoid or push away your anger, believing such negative emotions to be "lower" or "less spiritual" than your enlightened ideals?
  • Used spiritual (or integral) terminology to relabel your own shadows, using spiritual ideas to pave over the potholes in your own personality?

If you are being completely honest with yourself, odds are you would answer "yes" to one or more of these questions. It might be difficult to admit—in fact, spiritual bypassing is often so subtle and so insidious it can be difficult to even see. But don't worry: you are not alone. In fact, we would be hard pressed to name a single teacher or practitioner who hasn't fallen into similar traps at one time or another. Fortunately, we have people like Robert Augustus Masters and Ken Wilber to help us recognize, confront, and embrace these flickering shadows of spiritual development—offering us a path from from self-deception to self-liberation, from idiot compassion to enlightened action, from effete escapism to the moment-to-moment enactment of infinite and boundless love.

[+listen]

Part 1: What Is Spiritual Bypassing? (Free!)

Right click to download mp3

Right click to download m4b AudioBook

Duration: 20 minutes


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