Enlightenment and Evolution

Enlightenment and Evolution! It's another angle on an Emptiness and Form conversation.

I think a distinction David Deida makes between what he calls Function, Flow and Glow is relevant here. Function is about getting healthy in mind, body, emotion and spirit for the sake of being relatively productive in the context you find yourself in. Flow is about polishing the dirt off of the lens of your form so that the Light of Formless can shine through. Glow is, basically, the ultimate reality of Enlightenment, that "you" is a story, all there is and ever was is pure Light.

These distinctions are useful on a few levels.

* They can be seen as stages in life, like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. First we must learn to Function - to walk, speak, read, write, hold a job, to operate in society. When we have our base, we can relax a bit and learn to Flow, to let Love and Art shine through us. Ultimately we are graced with Glow when we discover the reality of our True Nature through Awakening.

* They can be used to tease out the braid of various spiritual practices or approaches that are available in any moment. For example, therapy, healing, exercise tend to fall into Function. Yogic practices, inner alchemy and also true Art are Flow. And again, Glow is the timeless ever-present reality accessible through Grace alone; a happy accident that no technique can ensure. (Adyashanti tirelessly points to This.)

* An extension of this is to think of Function, Flow and Glow as independent lines of development. This can be useful to explain how various, sometimes strange and unexpected combinations of skillfullness can occur. For example, you can be a Yogic genius, and have Light just pouring through you into the world and be totally fucked up on a Functional level, even to the point of being a destructive personality --- this goes back to your Osho thread, and to your dilemna with deranged gurus in general. Same could apply to someone who has realized Glow. It's not a secret that Ramana Maharshi, one of the most brilliant examples of Glow in the last hundred years, was basically bathed and fed by his devotees. If he were born in America, without a support network like exists in India for dysfunctional sages, he might have become the local filthy, traumatized homeless man with the bright eyes sleeping under the bridge.

To tie this more directly into enlightenment and evolution, another way to look at Function, Flow and Glow is as representing the three major life orientations or spiritual thrusts:

Function is Pagan, unity with Earth, grounding, downward and horizontal consciousness. Flow is Transcendental, unity with Heaven, uplifting, upward and vertical consciousness. Glow is Nondual, the unity of Heaven and Earth, circular, spiralling, three dimensional consciousness, the unity of transcendental Emptiness and immanent Form, of Enlightenment and Evolution. This is where I believe the possibility of evolutionary enlightenment and incarnational nonduality exists. I have more thoughts on this but I have to rest for now.

References:
A Seminar on Sexual Yoga, with David Deida
Evolutionary Spirituality. Part 1. Incarnational Nonduality, with Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber