From what is real to what is truly Real

From what is real to what is truly real.

Roy Bhaskar’s Philosophy of metaReality, is one of the most accurate and clear understanding of how we access Nonduality as the basics of all social interaction.

In 2012 and 2013 I delivered a number of retreats that were informed by Roy Bhaskar’s Philosophy of metaReality, along with the practice model on Integral Theory, Integral Life Practice, as The Philosophy of metaReality can be seen as quite a complex model, I wanted to offer you  a very quick overview of how I used metaReality within the retreats.

This section is very brief and has been adapted from the outline I sent to the retreat participant, but I think it still gives a flavour of the Alethic Truth of metaReality.

metaReality a very quick overview

metaReality offers that Alethic means the “undoing of oblivion” and is therefore the TRUTH of things as opposite to the proposition or interpretation of things. So when we use Alethic Truth we are in fact saying TRUTH truth. I am reminded here of Christ being called the Lord of Lords, and the King of Kings. An Alethic Truth then is a truth that stands for its self.

We can then apply Alethic to the three realms of Reality

Absolute

Relative

Demi

Within each Reality there are claims about what is true.

In Absolute Reality truth, claims are intransitive, yet constant, eternal, and unchanging.

In Relative Reality truth claims are changing, transitive, and relative to what we know, or understand about the universe.

They emerge out of the absolute, but are changing truth claims in an evolving universe, but a universe that is enfolded within the absolute constant of the Absolute Reality.

Demi Reality truth claims are created by the ego, and are changing, false and yet we take them to be intransitive absolute truths.

Alethic Truth

Absolute  – Alethic Truth (Nondual)

Relative – Alethic Truth (Speed of Light)

Demi – Alethic Truth (The separate self)

The aim then of metaRealitiy is to re-enchant the world by bringing more awareness to what is true.

An application to Self

metaReality suggests that we are an embodied personality that can be seen as a four-planar social being, our material transactions with nature; our social interactions, the social structure proper; and the stratification (development of self) of the embodied personality.

The embodied personality has access to the three alethic truth claims but due to blocks or occlusions, finds that it is only able to enact with the false and changing truth claims of the demi-real.

We forget our True Self, we forget our Ground State. The aim of the Philosophy of metaRealty (PMR) is to re-awaken  us to our Ground State, to a re-enchanted world that is a pure manifestation of Spirit.

The Alethic Integral Retreat was created as an opportunity to investigate how we can recognise that there is More (1M) to our being and that through working with what is unknown (Shadow) we move towards the Edge (2E) of what we know of ourselves.

Leading to a deeper understanding of becoming and with Love (3L) and gratitude, we are able to let go of illusions, and create a new doing (4D) or action of freedom for self and others, and realise the Absolute Alethic Truth.

A metaReality Life Practice

The retreat then explored the Alethic Truth of Self and to achieve this we followed 6 movements or Work Ins as described by metaReality.

  1. Concentration and the Power of Attention
  2. The physicality and universality of Consciousness
  3. The creative power of thought
  4. Koans
  5. Practicing Watchfulness
  6. Witnessing

To help underpin the retreat, and to provide a framework, I used the Critical Realism mnemonic MELD or (1)M – (2)E – (3)L  – (4)D


+ PMR adds further stadia, which begin to open up the philosophy to the realm of the nondual.

metaReality +PMR

 

If we take the additional stadia offered in PMR, we can then reframe MELD to stand for

Within the retreat I created four lab sessions with each lab taking a moments of MELD as its basic structure.

In looking at the structure of each Lab I used the Integral Life Practice Model to overarch the work, this helps as I could link MELD to the four core modules of ILP

The Friday opening circle explored “The Embodied Personality”.

The four labs over Saturday and Sunday explored:

1M – Body  – working with the body to develop non-dual awareness

2E – Shadow – working with blocks that bind us to the demi-real

3L – Spirit – recognising forgiveness, gratitude and love

4D – Mind – defining personal and social practice through the creation of a new ontology

For the final Sunday closing circle I used 5A – or reflection

In each lab, we focused on one aspect of MELD through the application of ILP, the intention of each lab was to bring a great awareness to the Re-enchantment of reality (6R), through awakening to the presence of non-dual reality (7A), which ultimately leads to the realisation of being fully awaken to our ground state, and to make a connection to the cosmic envelope, metaRealty defines this as the Zone.

Thus the final moment of metaReality can be seen as both an Awakening (7A), and the Zone of Awakening (7Z).

I am of course cutting corners and making a complex philosophy very simple, and in some way I apologies for this, and yet, it is only in the simple recognition of 7A/Z that we, and everyone can be free.