Of course in integral Christianity, just as in recovery, practice is first. So it's not just about coming together and singing hymns doing that…that's very good, that's even kind of a practice. But there has to be an interior practice also, and then the body has to be brought back into religion. So you have to bring all these things, and by using the integral map, that we've only discussed a small portion of thus far, you can start seeing, "Oh, this needs to be added, this is very obvious," bam, bam, and then we're going to have a healthier body of believers, a thing that is really not just as John Lennon said, "We're starting to become part of the solution and not just more of the problem." That's the promise of looking at Christianity in an integral way.
Erik: That's great. Thank you for explaining that to folks, and if we can just bring it back to recovery, we know that you have your own spiritual practice. So when you're inviting folks in your recovery groups to connect with their own spiritual practices, is there a way to provide them with an opportunity to connect with Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism?
John: Absolutely.
Erik: And how would that look?
John: Yeah, well I've worked with students a lot, and we get a group of students in, and if they're dealing with addiction, most of them are just really pissed off at God and anything religious. So we're using the brain entrainment technology that we've been working on for the last five years at iAwake Technologies, and before as people who have been working probably the last 30 years or so in this. So that immediately takes brain into deep meditative contemplative states that before were only accessible by occasional dumb luck or by many, many years of monastic daily, hours and hours of practice, which most of us don't have the discipline, or the support, or the structures to do that.
So my students would put on the headphones and begin to meditate and very soon, they're into these deep, deep levels of states of consciousness where lots of really deep work can happen, working through traumas, releasing somatically issues that have been holding one and keeping one going back to drugs and tapping into the deep mystery that is inside of each of one of us inside of everything really. But we find it deeply inside of ourselves, and at that point you can begin to feel called, "Well, I want to rediscover my Judaism," or, "I feel called to go back into Catholicism," or, "I'm just an independent Christian," or, "I'm just kind of a transcendent agnostic," or whatever, or Muslim or whatever it might be. That's really the individual soul, the individual calling, and that's something that one has to determine for itself.
Erik: That's great. Thank you for explaining that to folks, and if we can just bring it back to recovery, we know that you have your own spiritual practice. So when you're inviting folks in your recovery groups to connect with their own spiritual practices, is there a way to provide them with an opportunity to connect with Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism?
John: Absolutely.
Erik: And how would that look?
John: Yeah, well I've worked with students a lot, and we get a group of students in, and if they're dealing with addiction, most of them are just really pissed off at God and anything religious. So we're using the brain entrainment technology that we've been working on for the last five years at iAwake Technologies, and before as people who have been working probably the last 30 years or so in this. So that immediately takes brain into deep meditative contemplative states that before were only accessible by occasional dumb luck or by many, many years of monastic daily, hours and hours of practice, which most of us don't have the discipline, or the support, or the structures to do that.
So my students would put on the headphones and begin to meditate and very soon, they're into these deep, deep levels of states of consciousness where lots of really deep work can happen, working through traumas, releasing somatically issues that have been holding one and keeping one going back to drugs and tapping into the deep mystery that is inside of each of one of us inside of everything really. But we find it deeply inside of ourselves, and at that point you can begin to feel called, "Well, I want to rediscover my Judaism," or, "I feel called to go back into Catholicism," or, "I'm just an independent Christian," or, "I'm just kind of a transcendent agnostic," or whatever, or Muslim or whatever it might be. That's really the individual soul, the individual calling, and that's something that one has to determine for itself.
