The 3 Foundational Practices
Temple Kenosis (TK) has plenty of content, techniques, and practices. Like any tradition we recognize the value of providing at least a basic suggestion about how to proceed in the world. What makes a well lived life, why should I do anything in the world, and does what I do make any difference, do I have an impact?
In answering this call, TK has established the 5 Pillars as our prime domains of resource and investigation, the 3 Phases of Transformation as guideposts to anyone who takes up practice, and the 3 Foundational Practices as our fundamental, non-negotiable practices.
The 3 Foundational Practices (FP) are Witness Consciousness Meditation (WCM), Voice Work, and Selfless Service. We declare these as non-negotiable practices because they are such potent vehicles of transformation. Transformation is a combination of discovery, new ways of framing and translating those discoveries, and surrendering to how this changes us and allows for novelty to thrive in our life. To simply do one of these misses the mark. These non-negotiables are the yeast in our dough that allows for the bread to rise and imparts a full depth and breadth of flavor and dynamism. We also recognize that life is not only about transformation (Doing Voice dominated life). We need these practices, these life practices to support our practice time (Doing time) and we must also know when to put them down and simply enjoy (Being time). We’ll talk more about this balance of Doing & Being here.
We do the 3FP because we all have seen -and may have been at times- a person that wears spirituality well but doesn’t seem to actually embody what they are wearing. I can attest to the fact that I have been guilty of -while attempting to live a spiritual life- walking in an unauthentic way. Examples like, me condemning people’s paths -like a zealot- while claiming that all peoples should be able to find their own way. Or being possessed by my Victim voice and asking everyone to use exactly the right terms and phrases so as not to offend me or ‘pull my triggers’ thus, not allowing folks the permission to translate reality and spiritual phenomena in their own terms. Or this “ole’ chestnut,” confusing enlightenment with a fixed condition rather than a constantly moving target that evaporates from my grasp as soon as I (or anyone else) proclaim enlightenment. It seems to be adorably human to not quite know the robust sacrifice that often comes from living a spiritual life. For our take on what a spiritual life is in TK terms click here.
The FP’s
Voice work
Voice work (also referred to as shadow work) is the practice -and in my opinion, art- of connecting with and learning to love and live with our many voices and disowned parts of ourselves. Our prime technique here is Voice Dialogue created by Sidra and Hal Stone, a pair of psychoanalysts and the 321 Process popularized by Ken Wilber and company.
So let's start with the basics. ‘Voices’ is a term used to talk about what some of us refer to as a part of us or ‘a side of myself’ -as in, “one side of me says I should, another says definitely not, and yet another part seems numb to doing it.” Sound familiar? There are several different voices within us; some responsible for protection, some playful, some skeptical, some sensual, some warrior-like, some parental. As humans grow up within a family and culture we learn that certain voices get us power, love, beaten up, or ignored. The ones that don’t seem to work in our family or culture usually get forgotten, pushed out of our attention, or locked in the downstairs closet. The voices that get us good stuff or allow us to ‘fit in’ are called Primary voices and the ones that don’t are called Disowned voices. This FP is all about learning the stories of our Primary and Disowned voices, becoming independent of them, and creating a healthy relationship with them. As we learn to do this great work, we start to function from a place of awareness, not the Primary or Disowned voices. This place of awareness is a balanced place in the middle of all these voices called the Aware Ego.
Witness Consciousness Meditation (WCM)
WCM is a very specific style of meditation. It is a heart centered, focused attention, awareness practice. As my Mondo Zen Roshi Jun Po used to say, “it's the sit down and shut up practice -it’s dog training. So sit down and shut up.” This style exists in every major religious/spiritual tradition around the world and Jun Po wasn’t my first teacher of it. We include it in TK for some very specific reasons.
WCM is very efficient at getting its practitioners to slowly, sometimes gruelingly, to separate from their obsession with only inhabiting their primary self. It allows us real and tangible ability and strength to not be overwhelmed and hijacked by disowned voices. The more we practice the more we come to find that our true identity, our Essential Nature is not any of the voices that come with this human body/mind. Our Essential Nature is ‘something’ else.
WCM gives us a place to reside as we go through the process of realizing that the voices are like tools in a toolbox that we can become artists with. And having a place to reside decreases the ‘madness’ of sifting through the depth and breadth of the human body/mind wondering “who am I and how should I proceed in this great adventure called being alive?”
WCM also gives us a life long practice that pays off remarkably. The last paragraph speaks to the therapeutic, trauma integration, ego dismantling value of WCM in partnership with Voice work. But the origin of WCM in every tradition wasn’t only thinking in a therapeutic way, they were thinking in a very ‘union with higher power, union with all that is arising, emptying of the self, practice of self-less-ness/no-self.’ This is something that can get lost with many westerners when it comes to WCM (and it’s variety’s) since we live in a ‘Doing dominated’ world. We forget that our world sages asked us to do this because it effortlessly awakened us to our Soul, our Union with All Things, guided us to surrender into just Being.
Lastly, WCM as we teach it, includes work with Zen koan’s (pronounced co- as in coat, and -on as in ‘turn on the lights’). Koan’s are enigmatic questions that originate from when a Roshi (fancy pants zen teacher/master) was asked a question and their answer caused a major realization/enlightenment for the student. There are many and take a few different forms. A student correctly answers a koan when the student not only understands the philosophical portions of the question but also has worked to embody the answer. I was trained in these koans by the MondoZen community and by Doshin Roshi of Integral Zen, have submitted to the process 100’s of times, and have facilitated the process 100’s of times. I pass on my expertise and experience to TK Fools during their seminary education.
Selfless Service
This last non-negotiable is one that brings us from a heretofore mostly interior set of practices to a much more external, engage with the world type of practice. Don’t get me wrong though, we still bring it interiorly (more on that later).
I am reminded of the last illustrated plate in the 10 Ox Herding Pictures steps to enlightenment found in Zen. It illustrates a fundamental fact that the student who wishes to be BFF’s with the world, who has sat so long in a cave or beneath the bodhi tree to attain their enlightenment MUST return to the people, to the world and rejoice in relationship and share their realizations. Relationship is where the rubber meets the road when it comes to embodying what we’ve studied, practiced, and sat meditating so long for. Service to The People takes the other two FP’s to new levels of insight and fertility. When we perform acts of service it is an act of decentralizing our own needs, pain, suffering, and struggles. This decentralizing supports several goals. It can decrease our entanglement with a voice so we can create better boundaries with our inner counsel of voices. It often exposes other disowned voices that may only speak up when we are relating to people who inspire/irritate/are different from us. Service asks us to communicate and translate ourselves and others in new and diverse ways. Service brings us into direct contact with ways to actually ease the suffering and struggle of living things around us. Service is direct evidence of our impact in the world. In TK we deem it a fact that we all contribute to how evolution and reality unfold. No frivolous mysticism here, only the stark reality that we all carry power to change the world in some form or another. We must choose how we use, abuse, or misuse our power and impact.
TK also asks us to include group reflective circles to nurture our insights and realizations sprouting from our service experiences. These circles allow us to unpack our triggers, how we used our power, communication experiences, and how we were changed by our service. Service is powerful; service and a circle of reflection squares it: power^2
Why should we?
The 3 FP’s are foundational because they serve our great goal: to be deeply intimate (open, honest, and vulnerable) with all that is arising (inner and outer). AQAL Intimacy isn’t a given; it must be cultivated, nurtured, and protected. The 3 FP’s reveal our behavior, training, story’s, and lack of education about Love(ing). Love for ourselves, for others, for our planet, for our systems, for those we struggle with, and for our journey. Love as experience, as action, as practice, as celebration. Centralizing Love can sound whimsical and superficially soft to some. Though, we that practice find this to be far from basic or simple. It is clear that the vast majority of us are raised by people and systems that centralize recklessness, shaming, domination, greed motivated manipulation, and reactive behavior. So when we are asked to practice the opposite, to live our value of Loving as a daily practice, we find ourselves in a deep struggle against those shortcomings in ourselves, our families, and the systems we reside within. To be Loving (to exercise care and concern, compassion, fairness, openness) in these common circumstances demands a deep commitment, lots of energy, permission to fail, a reapplication of practice, messing up, and trying again. Persistent practice in the face of opposition and personal mistakes/failure, while witnessing the tragedies of our world is a worthy and relevant -anything but whimsical- soul commitment.
The 3 FP’s also bring us into deep intimacy with the 2 primary forces in Life: death and birth. Each of the 3 FP’s teach us about the constantly changing nature of day to day life as a living Being. We are surrounded by birth and death -literally and figuratively. We are consistently being challenged by existence to give, to surrender, to let go, to harvest, to protect, to bury, and to welcome some new unfolding or diminishing all across/through the Integral map. This is the relevance of the 3 FP’s and why they are central to a spiritual life. By submitting to them we consistently find unreasonable awe while engaging and participating in existence.