Growth, Paradox, and Mysticism

Sometimes a situation arises in which the way we understand our life conditions conflicts with itself. We can say two things, each of which seems true. Yet either one of our two statements about the world would imply that the other is false. This is a paradox: two conflicting "truths."

Are the higher memes more paradoxical than the lower memes? Is an acceptance of paradox a sign of growth? Yes and no. ;)

[More below]Let's start with yes. My experience does not contradict itself, but my sense-making apparatus is perfectly capable of doing so. A paradox represents a place where a particular set of conceptual forms (e.g. a meme) has begun to fail to make sense of our experience. If the paradox is sufficiently troublesome, this may be enough to shift someone from the confident alpha phase of a particular meme to the doubting beta phase, or, if the paradox is really powerful, to despairing gamma. "Dear lord," you may be saying to yourself. "Why is that a good thing and why would we want to simply accept it?"

Can you think of any sort of practice in which a breakdown of thinking is considered a good thing? Like, say...Zen? Or even meditation in general? In that sense, an acceptance of paradox could be considered a sign of growth -- spiritual growth. That's the 'yes,' but it isn't unqualified. It comes with the rider that we ought to ask ourselves "What kind of growth are we talking about?"

And that brings us around to the 'no':

If you look at Basseches' list of moves in post-formal (i.e. post-orange) dialectical thought, item #17 may catch your eye: "Understanding the resolution of disequilibrium or contradiction in terms of a notion of transformation in [a] developmental direction." That's exactly what Spiral Dynamics would indicate as well -- that as thinking and life conditions no longer mesh well, increasing disequilibrium within the system of thought pushes people from the confident alpha phase through doubting beta, despairing gamma, and driven delta, culminating with a developmental transformation into the alpha phase of a new and more complex way of thinking. An acceptance of paradox within the current thought framework may mean an acceptance of the beta phase, the end of the search for solutions (at least for now.) From this point of view, contradictions and paradoxes are invitations to cognitive growth, and to accept contradiction and paradox is to decline to grow.

So, is an acceptance of paradox a sign of growth? Yes and no. "Wait, isn't the answer itself paradoxical?" you might ask. This time, I'll just say no. Why not? Well, it to do with the other question I posed: "Aren't the higher memes more paradoxical?" Consider how the memes might view paradox and contradiction.

From a blue point of view, which is conceptually structured on the notion of distinct, opposing categories, something is either right or wrong. If two statements contradict (i.e. oppose) each other, then one of them is true and one of them is false. If both seem to be true, then a paradox results, and blue thinking breaks down.

From an orange point of view, which is conceptually structured on continuous spectra, something can be 'sort of right' -- it can have a little rightness and a little wrongness, placing it somewhere in the middle of the spectrum between right and wrong. If two statements contradict, then perhaps they are not 100% truthful, but they each contain a little bit or a piece of the truth. Already, even moving forward a single meme from blue, the paradoxical has become somewhat less paradoxical.

From a green point of view, which is conceptually structured on multiple irresolvable contexts and perspectives, there is no universal truth or privileged perspective. Nothing is either right or wrong, since any statement may appear true in a particular context yet false in others. If two statements seem to contradict, then perhaps they each appear true from a particular point of view. Since there's no way to tell whose point of view is 'better,' there is no one truth of the situation -- and without assuming there is one truth, the whole notion of contradiction and paradox becomes meaningless. Different and mutually exclusive statements are no longer problematic, because there's no longer a reason to try to find a singular true statement. Multiplicity rules the day -- which, of course, is the conceptual foundation of pluralism.

Having explored how some of the memes look at contradictions, the idea of paradox is coming into sharper focus. Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction tells us that "One cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time." Except, of course, that you can -- if you can think about spectra of qualities, or about multiple perspectives! As one goes farther and farther past the blue meme, paradox doesn't become more accepted; it becomes easier to resolve and therefore less paradoxical. As more complex conceptual forms come into play, their increasing nuance removes apparent contradictions, resolving them and rendering them non-paradoxical.

Applying this to the question at hand, we can see how "yes and no" is a non-paradoxical answer. In the context of spiritual growth, an acceptance of paradox may be a sign of growth, but in another context, the context of cognitive growth, an acceptance of paradox is more likely to be a sign of stagnation. There is no contradiction there, so yes and no (each within certain contexts) is a perfectly reasonable and non-paradoxical answer within a green (or higher) framework.

If we now take our consideration of cognitive and spiritual growth a step farther and consider the relationships and interactions between these contexts and perspectives, it has interesting implications for both cognition and spirituality. Imagine someone in the alpha phase of a meme, who then has a mystical experience and interprets it through their alpha lens. What do you suppose the chances are that the experience will catalyze cognitive growth? I'd estimate it at slim to none. I think it's far more likely that the mystical experience will only lend legitimacy to the framework through which it is interpreted. Spiritual experiences lend credence to ideas of enlightenment, talking to God, evolutionary spirituality, unity-in-diversity, and so on. These are all cognitive ideas rather than non-conceptual insights. To use Wilber's terms, if a particular tradition has mystical authenticity that will tend to confer conceptual legitimacy.

This highlights the distinction between times when meditation and contemplation will serve as a catalyst to cognitive growth and the times when they will instead tend to reinforce current thinking. Given the pre-existing doubt in the present conceptual framework, the beta and gamma phases may provide more fertile ground for meditative and contemplative practice than alpha.

So we have some interesting feedback loops here. For one, broken thinking can enable greater spiritual realization, and spiritual realization can lead to further cognitive breakdowns. Yet also, spiritual realization interpreted through well-adapted conceptual forms can entrench those forms very stably -- resiliently enough to be maintained long past the point where they are well-adapted, and deeply enough that they may then create a barrier to further cognitive breakdown and spiritual realization.

Drawing a connection between breakdowns in the ability of certain conceptual forms to handle increasing complexity and the ease of dis-identifying with a particular way of thinking (or thinking altogether) also seems to give the lie to the ideas that higher memes are either more paradoxical or more spiritual. They certainly may appear more paradoxical, when viewed through a lens that can't help but create paradox (i.e. blue and its distinct opposites), but this doesn't necessarily imply that they are more paradoxical. And, just as orange technology appears magical to purple thinkers, yellow and turquoise thinking may appear spiritual to those looking up the spiral and seeking to make sense of more complexity than their conceptual frameworks can handle. In these cases, the process of trying to squeeze big ideas into a small box produces paradoxes that may cause cognitive breakdowns and spiritual realization. This does not, however, imply that yellow and turquoise are more spiritual -- even though they appear that way to some.

So it seems there is an intricate interplay between meditative and contemplative states and cognitive growth. To my eyes, the issue is far more complex than the integral community's standard "meditate and your thinking will grow" line would lead one to believe.

Where does this leave us in regard to paradox and other sources of memetic disequilibrium? They can be a source of cognitive growth, if they are taken as a sign that something isn't working and growth is required. If instead they are accepted, they become stable yet confusing features of a landscape we no longer seek to adequately map. Paralleling the idea of the gamma trap, one might such an acceptance of disequilibrium 'the beta trap.' Yet the beta trap is not necessarily a bad place to be, if spirituality rather than cognition forms the basis of your quest. Holding oneself in a position where the absurdity of present conceptualizations is readily apparent yet there is no move toward more adequate conceptualizations may ease the transition into non-conceptual states.