Participatory Spirituality: Difference between revisions
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=John Heron's critique on the relation between participatory and [[Relational Spirituality]]= | =John Heron's critique on the relation between participatory and [[Relational Spirituality]]= | ||
''' | '''Ferrer's account of participatory spirituality - in the passage quoted above – fails, from my point of view, to bring out the centrality of co-creative/collaborative relations between persons as central to the meaning and the practice of participatory spirituality.''' If you read the whole passage very carefully you will find that this is indeed the case. Thus, and crucially, person-to-person collaboration is absent from his account of "some central elements of spiritual participatory events". Elsewhere he refers to "self and world", and nowhere to self and other selves. I think he would argue that person-to-person co-operation is implicit in phrases like "other forms of participation" and "responsible action", but, if so, this buries it in unstated implications and makes it appear very subsidiary - instead of central. A few pages earlier in his book he writes of transpersonal events as multilocal, including the interpersonal and the communal, yet makes no explicit reference to any of this when he comes on to the passage quoted above." | ||
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Participatory spirituality involves a co-creative, enactive, transformative relation between persons and the divine, a relation which transcends and includes: the relations between multiple ways of knowing within the person, centrally the relations between persons and other persons, and the relations between persons and their worlds. | Participatory spirituality involves a co-creative, enactive, transformative relation between persons and the divine, a relation which transcends and includes: the relations between multiple ways of knowing within the person, centrally the relations between persons and other persons, and the relations between persons and their worlds. | ||
=John Heron's expanded definition= | =John Heron's expanded definition= | ||
Revision as of 04:50, 17 April 2006
Overview
See also Relational Spirituality
Definition by Jorge Ferrer
As defined by Jorge Ferrer: Spiritual knowing is a participatory process. What do I mean by "participatory"? First, "participatory" alludes to the fact that spiritual knowing is not objective, neutral, or merely cognitive. On the contrary, spiritual knowing engages us in a connected, often passionate, activity that can involve not only the opening of the mind, but also of the body, the heart, and the soul. Although particular spiritual events may involve only certain dimensions of our nature, all of them can potentially come into play in the act of spiritual knowing, from somatic transfiguration to the awakening of the heart, from erotic communion to visionary co-creation, and from contemplative knowing to moral insight, to mention only a few (see also Ferrer, 2000a, 2002).
Second, the participatory nature of spiritual knowing refers to the role that our individual consciousness plays during most spiritual and transpersonal events. This relation is not one of appropriation, possession, or passive representation of knowledge, but of communion and co-creative participation.
Finally, "participatory" also refers to the fundamental ontological predicament of human beings in relation to spiritual energies and realities. Human beings are - whether we know it or not - always participating in the self-disclosure of Spirit. This participatory predicament is not only the ontological foundation of the other forms of participation, but also the epistemic anchor of spiritual knowledge claims and the moral source of responsible action.
Spiritual phenomena involve participatory ways of knowing that are presential, enactive, and transformative:
1. Spiritual knowing is presential: Spiritual knowing is knowing by presence or by identity. In other words, in most spiritual events, knowing occurs by virtue of being. Spiritual knowing can be lived as the emergence of an embodied presence pregnant with meaning that transforms both self and world. Subject and object, knowing and being, epistemology and ontology are brought together in the very act of spiritual knowing.
2. Spiritual knowing is enactive: Following the groundbreaking work of Varela, Thompson, and Rosch (1991), my understanding of spiritual knowing embraces an enactive paradigm of cognition: Spiritual knowing is not a mental representation of pregiven, independent spiritual objects, but an enaction, the bringing forth of a world or domain of distinctions co-created by the different elements involved in the participatory event. Some central elements of spiritual participatory events include individual intentions and dispositions; cultural, religious, and historical horizons; archetypal and subtle energies; and, most importantly, a dynamic and indeterminate spiritual power of inexhaustible creativity.
3. Spiritual knowing is transformative: Participatory knowing is transformative at least in the following two senses. First, the participation in a spiritual event brings forth the transformation of self and world. Second, a transformation of self is usually necessary to be able to participate in spiritual knowing, and this knowing, in turn, draws forth the self through its transformative process in order to make possible this participation.
(http://www.datadiwan.de/SciMedNet/library/articlesN81+/N83Ferrer_part.htm)
John Heron's critique on the relation between participatory and Relational Spirituality
Ferrer's account of participatory spirituality - in the passage quoted above – fails, from my point of view, to bring out the centrality of co-creative/collaborative relations between persons as central to the meaning and the practice of participatory spirituality. If you read the whole passage very carefully you will find that this is indeed the case. Thus, and crucially, person-to-person collaboration is absent from his account of "some central elements of spiritual participatory events". Elsewhere he refers to "self and world", and nowhere to self and other selves. I think he would argue that person-to-person co-operation is implicit in phrases like "other forms of participation" and "responsible action", but, if so, this buries it in unstated implications and makes it appear very subsidiary - instead of central. A few pages earlier in his book he writes of transpersonal events as multilocal, including the interpersonal and the communal, yet makes no explicit reference to any of this when he comes on to the passage quoted above."
The simplest provisional account I can give of the relation between participatory spirituality and relational spirituality is as follows.
Participatory spirituality is inherently relational in four ways:
1. It involves a co-creative, enactive, transformative relation between persons and the divine.
2. This relation transcends and includes the relations between multiple ways of knowing within the person.
3. And centrally the relations between persons and other persons.
4. And the relations between persons and their worlds.
In one sentence:
Participatory spirituality involves a co-creative, enactive, transformative relation between persons and the divine, a relation which transcends and includes: the relations between multiple ways of knowing within the person, centrally the relations between persons and other persons, and the relations between persons and their worlds.
John Heron's expanded definition
Definition:
The parties involved in a co-creative, enactive, transformative relation reciprocally and dynamically shape and reshape - in and through the process of meeting – how they understand each other, the regard they have for each other, and how they act and interact in relation with each other.
This definition is framed to apply to the central person-to-person relations. It can, with appropriate modifications, be applied to relations between ways of knowing, to relations between persons and their worlds, and, including and transcending all these, to the relation between persons and the divine.
Person-to-person relations are central because they are a precondition for setting the scene for divine self-disclosure and for persons to participate in it. In previous epochs this precondition was met by teacher-disciple hierarchical relations. Today divine self-disclosure can manifest through person-to-person peer relations, serviced by temporary hierarchical initiatives rotating among the peers.
Spiritual practice: A primary ground for the practice of participatory-relational spirituality can be cultivated by collaborative peer-to-peer relations between persons engaged in fully embodied, multidimensional, transformative flourishing in and with their worlds.
More Information
Information on the author:
Jorge Ferrer is the author of Revisioning Transpersonal Theory: A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality (SUNY Press 2002), a landmark book that established the new epistemological requirements needed to develop an open and participative spirituality. Within the specific tradition of transpersonal psychology, this book is an argument to go beyond the dominating influence of Ken Wilber.
Ferrer is part of the core faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies and is currently co-editing (with Jacob Sherman] an anthology of original writings on participatory spirituality, The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, Religious Studies. He is also the editor of a monograph of the journal ReVision on "New Horizons in Contemporary Spirituality" (Fall 2001). In 2000 he received the Fetzer Institute’s Presidential Award for his seminal work on consciousness studies. He is on the editorial board of Journal of Transpersonal Psychology: A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation.
External links
- review of Revisioning Transpersonal Theory by Richard Tarnas
- [1], An introduction to Participatory Spirituality
- [2], Essay on "Integral Transformative Practice: A Participatory Perspective" (Journal of Transpersonal Psychology)
- [3]
Essay on "Embodied Participation in the Mystery: Implications for the Individual, Interpersonal Relationships, and Society" (ReVision)
- [4] Blog entry introducing Jorge Ferrer and the topic of participatory spirituality
- [5] John Heron's critique, from the point of view of Relational Spirituality, of Ken Wilber's Integral Theory