marie baribeau's List: Leadership

• anything that is beyond  the empirical data and observation of analysis. All intuitive knowledge, all experience outside of scientific measurement  and factual construction is rejected, as the Greek frame of mind of intellectual analysis is favored and the Hindu  frame of mind, that of the essence of inexpressible "being," and "existence," is rejected as  fallacious. A perfect example is that of Alfred Jules Ayer in his 1936 book entitled, Language, Truth & Logic. Here Ayer concludes:

   

   

  "We conclude, therefore, that the argument from religious experience  is altogether fallacious. The fact that people have religious experiences is interesting from the psychological  point of view, but it does not in any way imply that there is such a thing as religious knowledge, any m ore than  our having moral experiences implies that there is such a thing as moral knowledge. The theist, like the moralist,  may believe that his experiences are cognitive experiences, but, unless he can formulate his "knowledge"  in propositions that are empirically verifiable, we may be sure that he is deceiving himself. It follows that these  philosophers who fill their books with assertions that they intuitively "know" this or that moral or  religious "truth" are merely providing material for the psycho-analyst. For no act of intuition can be  said to reveal a truth about any matter of fact unless it issues in verifiable propositions. And all such propositions  are to be incorporated in the system of empirical propositions which constitutes science." (1)
• In my experience the most dramatic example of this possibility occurred  in a relatively small community-building group I led several years ago. To this two-day group of twenty-five there  came ten fundamentalist, Stage II Christians, five Stage III atheists with their own guru - a brilliant, highly rational trial lawyer - and  ten Stage IV  mystical Christians. There were moments I despaired that we would never make it into community. The fundamentalists  were furious that I, their supposed leader, smoked and drank and vigorously attempted to heal me of my hypocrisy  and addiction. The mystics equally vigorously challenged the fundamentalists sexism intolerance and other forms  of rigidity. Both of course were utterly dedicated to converting the atheists. The atheists in turn, sneered at  the arrogance of us Christians in even daring to think that we had gotten hold of some kind of truth. Nonetheless,  after approximately twelve hours of the most intense struggle together to empty ourselves of our intolerances,  we became able to let one another be, each in his or her own stage. And we became a community. But we could not  have done so without the cognitive awareness of the different stages of spiritual development and the realization  that we were not all "in the same place," and that that was literally all right.
• book Mister  God, This Is Anna,
• One of the greatest challenges, in fact, facing  the Church, is how to facilitate the conversion of its members from Stage  II to Stage  IV without them having to spend a whole adult lifetime in Stage III.
• a challenge  that the Church has historically avoided
• nor should skip over questioning in our  development.
• only through the process of questioning that we begin  to become even dimly aware
• we are all pilgrims
• characterized  to pretense
• threatened by anyone who thinks differently  from them,
• a  phase of questioning
• stuck in Stage III precisely because they do not doubt deeply enough
• to doubt even their own doubt.
• the acceptance of one another as being in different stages
• different places  spiritually.
• out of love and community to the whole, virtually all of us are capable of transcending  our backgrounds and limitations
• Stage I to Stage II
• from Stage I to Stage II
• from Stage I to Stage II
• leap of socialization or enculturation
• a leap of socialization or enculturation
• Stage III begin to question  the religious doctrines
• question  the religious doctrines
• Stage  IV, t
• belonging  to a planetary culture.
• transcending culture
• transcended  -- those human differences that are cultural.

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