Sustainability and Contemplative Civilization Conference ... with a postscript...

A paper presentation

I had the honor of presenting a paper at the recent conference titled Sustainability and Contemplative Civilization: The Integral Vision of Sri Aurobindo which was held at the California Institute of Integral Studies where I teach and study.

The abstract of my paper is as follows and the recording of my presentation is posted. I have also written a postscript of some thoughts after the conference….

Paper title:

Accept Your Divinity: A Synthesis of Integral Yoga Psychology Sri Aurobindo & Leslie Temple-Thurston By Kathy Stanley

The interconnectedness of the world and how human beings individually and collectively can contribute to the overall strength and health of our planetary future represent primary concerns addressed by the Integral Yoga Psychology of Sri Aurobindo, the Mother and by the teachings of spiritual teacher Leslie Temple-Thurston. In this paper I examine two texts for insights into Integral Yoga Psychology: Seven Quartets of Becoming: A Transformative Yoga Psychology Based on the Diaries of Sri Aurobindo by Professor Banerji and Returning to Oneness: The Seven Keys of Ascension by Leslie Temple-Thurston with whom I studied for many years.  Leslie was greatly influenced by the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother and what she taught is a method of spiritual psychology rooted in Integral Yoga Psychology. The accessible practicality of Leslie’s teachings and her methods for releasing shadow states of consciousness allows for the easier and gradual realization of those states of Unity Consciousness spoken about and yet hard to grasp on an embodied level.  Her teachings represent a practical application of Integral Yoga Psychology. Sri Aurobindo, the Mother and Leslie Temple-Thurston gift humanity with the vison and scope to achieve a more balanced ascended state of world consciousness and a regenerative world future where we can achieve the Oneness heralded by many mystics and nondual teachers.  

Presentation Recording:

Accept Your Divinity Paper Presentation by Kathy Stanley

Postscript:

Dear Sri Aurobindo,

If you have any influence over there on the other side, can you please help us avert WW 3? I want to trust that there is support from the invisible realms...

Things are so different now on Planet Earth from when you left us back in 1950 and yet some things remain the same. You knew all about working towards independence from colonizing forces in your work for Indian independence from Britain.  Today, would you believe that we still have colonizing dictators who can’t bear being without their bygone empires, who continue to stage useless wars and destabilize the planet, at a time when we may not even survive the escalating threats from the climate tipping points that demonstrate weekly now in fires, floods, heatwaves and the like that Gaia may be getting ready to put an end to the human experiment.   Maybe She wants a good long rest from us. I wouldn’t blame Her.

 You wrote that man was a ‘transitional being.’ You were pointing to an increase in consciousness that would lead to a more advanced type of human.  Well, we may well be transitional in more ways than that…

Ater a week of celebrating your ideas and teachings on the 150^th anniversary of your birth, there’s a lot to unpack and reflect on.  The conference had the inviting title of Sustainability and Contemplative Civilization: The Integral Vision of Sri Aurobindo.   In one of the book talks in the conference last week Professor Banerji and others were pointing out that no one reads Sri Aurobindo anymore and he stated that there is a need to build bridges from Sri Aurobindo’s thought to modern times.  It was a great introduction for me the next day to lead into my talk on a synthesis of Integral Yoga Psychology from Sri Aurobindo’s Seven Quartets of Becoming to Leslie Temple-Thurston’s Seven Keys of Ascension.  Leslie’s thoughts about processing our egoic and habitual states of mind towards more unified and less polarized states of consciousness are really useful for the modern mind.

These days the modern mind is very connected to our devices that do almost everything for us. Our phones help us to be connected to each other instantly even if we’re halfway across the world from each other physically. The conference last week had people speaking in person in San Francisco, people who spoke from India each day and others like me in other cities.  Distance is of no consequence anymore. 

These days I watch tv with a group of friends I’ve never met physically. Some of them I don’t even know their name or where they live, but we share common political views, we care about the wellbeing of the planet and each in our way is participating in this move towards a regenerative sustainable civilization.

These days my family is spread out across the world like many families are, so we gather monthly via zoom. These days I work remotely like many people do.  And information is at our fingertips with our devices. As I sat on my deck in the fall sunshine yesterday watching the birds at my bird feeder, my device recorded the bird sounds and identified about 13 different species of wild birds in my yard, some of which I could not even see but it was pleasurable to know they were there. 

The devices do everything now except physically cook us dinner and that may be coming. I was in a restaurant a couple months ago that had a robot waiter that delivered our steaming bowls of soup to us.

So all of this interconnectedness and bringing together of people of like mind who want the best for the world is good.  And yet there is still backwardness, horrific terrorist acts, ridiculous useless wars, existing and wannabe dictators, and the fragility of the planet as the scientist Michael Mann puts it.

I was also reflecting on the synchronicity of how at the end of the conference week, a great statesperson from the city of San Francisco where the conference was being held in person passed away on the cusp of a very powerful full moon.  One of the people I follow on social media made a delightful, erudite summation that I, as a longtime women’s spirituality scholar, couldn’t stop thinking of for several days… the writer said: “She died as she lived, with the testicles of mediocre white men in her handbag.”   Rest in Peace Senator Dianne Feinstein.  

Liberation and enjoyment. The two aims of an integral consciousness right there.

I’m also thinking of something President Biden said visiting Israel when he recalled something Golda Meir said to him 50 years ago. She told the then Senator Biden to “Don’t’ worry, Israel isn’t going anywhere.”  I’d like to extend that thought to all of us … all peoples trying to live peacefully together on a small planet. We’re not going anywhere. We can do better.

I am also reflecting on a significant spiritual pilgrimage to Egypt in August 1999 that I was able to be a part of with Leslie Temple-Thurston and I touched on it in my presentation at the conference.

Kathy Stanley, Mohammed Nazmy & Leslie Temple-Thurston

We spent many hours engaged in energy work with the Nilotic Meridian, the planetary ley line that runs through the entire African continent, processing collective shadow states such as the polarities of victim/ tyrant, shame/blame.  Leslie wrote an essay about the pilgrimage and the significance of and need for individual and group shadow clearing referencing the bombing of the World Trade Center in 2001 as a turning point in humanity’s evolution: 

“Two years after the trip to Giza - on September 11, 2001 – the bombing of the World Trade Towers plunged the U.S. and the world into a new phase of humanity’s evolution. This was a major milestone marking the beginning of a most significant phase of the global, shadow-clearing process. This is the process that is preparing everyone for a global transformation into a higher vibration. The shadow-clearing phase and the awakening that is to follow are events that will continue on into the future. These changes are destined to happen. The birth of a more balanced consciousness, with the power to lift humanity up beyond the old good/evil, right/wrong polarizations of this human world and into a permanently peaceful and unified state, is undoubtedly in humanity’s future. But first there must be a cleaning out of negative unconscious ego issues.” (Temple-Thurston, L. in Faddoul & Nazmy, 2009, The Modern Day Alchemist from the Land of the Pharaohs: Secrets of Manifestation Revealed to Awaken the Alchemist Within, p. 66)

Sri Aurobindo, help us from the invisible realms…  help us to evolve our consciousness to where we can view the ego impersonally, move out of the ancient archetypal polarities that keep us stuck and rotating through dynamics of victim, tyrant, rebel and savior…  help us to forgive all betrayals…  to not believe in loss or gain…  to accept our death and to also finally accept our divinity…. help us to hold the vison of unity… to hold space for each other, to liberate ourselves and each other so we can be happy…  together…work on fixing our relationship to the planet and to each other, trusting that we live in a supportive universe that is waiting for us to remember our connection to the Universal Mind…