TRANSCEND AND EXCLUDE

COHEN: Even though, as we agreed before, the complete picture of evolutionary development includes both transcending and including and transcending and excluding—including is going to have a slightly different emphasis than excluding. For example, when Jesus said, “Let the dead bury the dead,” that to me was a clear expression of “transcend and exclude” that was passionate, ferocious, uncompromising—an unrestrained expression of the evolutionary impulse that cares not for the past but is only interested in creating the unknown future right now and in every moment.

WILBER: Yes, to me it's like saying, let this old worldview die; let ethnocentric die. It's supposed to die. The exclusivity is supposed to die.

COHEN: And it's significant that for many of us twenty-first-century, postmodern, extreme narcissists, our ego—or our highly developed sensitive self-sense—is far more threatened by the notion of exclusion than it would be by the notion of inclusion.

WILBER: Yes, I agree.

COHEN: Because it implies that we have to be ready and willing to die now for the future to be born in all its glory.

WILBER: Indeed, and it also implies that there are things that in a strong sense are not to be included. And the things that are not to be included are those things that exclude in the bad sense of restricting and attaching. That's sort of the paradox. When you're exclusively identified with chakra one, then you're really at moral stage one, which is “what's right is what I feel, so f—- you.” That's supposed to die when you move to moral stage two. That's what's excluded. That's what's supposed to be negated and let that dead bury that dead. Because you can't get more inclusive structures without excluding less inclusive structures.

COHEN: Exactly.

WILBER: The postmodern sensitive self does have trouble with the fact that a lot of those things have to be let go of. And so egocentric and ethnocentric very much have to die.

COHEN: The big challenge is that the liberated passion behind the statement, “let the dead bury the dead,” is very—

WILBER:—ruthless.

COHEN: Yes, ruthless and uncompromising.

WILBER: Any of us who are growing are being ruthless with our lesser selves. And if we're not, then we're not really loving our higher self. They go together.

COHEN: Yes. And we have to be ruthless with ourselves so we can reconfigure all of our old and familiar ways of relating to the lower chakras and everything that they represent. It's recontextualizing how we relate to everything that's come before in order to become a living manifestation of a really new stage of development. It's a Herculean task.

WILBER: It is Herculean. And given where the mass of human consciousness is today, it's really staggering we've come this far. But there's obviously still quite a ways to go.

COHEN: I always feel like we're just getting started.

WILBER: I know! You know that politically incorrect joke that I use, which is, “The pioneer is the guy with all the arrows in his back.”

COHEN: That phrase is more than familiar to me! (laughter)

WILBER: It's true for all of us though. It's true for human beings for the last fifty thousand years. We all have arrows in our back if we're pushing at all against the envelope.

COHEN: That's right.

WILBER: And we counterbalance that with the Great Perfection, as you well know. Everything is radically perfect in its own condition as it's arising moment to moment—but that's on the nirvana side. On the samsara side, it's a f—-ing mess. So I'm sometimes amazed that we're moving as far as we are.

COHEN: But as we've agreed in the past, we want to balance the nirvana side with the evolutionary impulse that is always striving to manifest that Great Perfection in the manifest realm . . . at higher and higher levels of development.

WILBER: Exactly. And the great Plotinus was very much aware of the two different types of development we've been speaking about—the include and exclude, or the preserve and the negate. So therefore when I'm fully awakened, my first chakra is functioning in the material world but is not egocentrically contracted; my emotional, sexual energies are functioning but they're not egocentrically contracted; my intentionality and my heart and my throat and my brain are all functioning, still present, but they're not egocentrically contracted and they're not a vehicle for my egoic aggrandizement.

COHEN: That's the ultimate challenge.

WILBER: The ultimate challenge. And so what we're trying to do is to remain functional at all of our levels, with all those basic capacities, but not egoically contracted. And that's where ruthless tough love has to come in because we have to die to those attachments.

TOUGH LOVE

WILBER: Another way of understanding tough love is to negate and to preserve: to negate means to get tough; to preserve means to still love. In other words, as we've been saying, it's a ruthless kind of love that holds on to the crucial components of consciousness—all the seven chakras are included. But the self that's identified exclusively with them is ruthlessly killed. It's slain. That's the job of the teacher or the higher self in yourself. It's the ultimate ruthless love.

COHEN: Yes, that higher self is what I call the authentic self. The authentic self is the awakened evolutionary impulse, and it cares only for the evolution of consciousness itself—it literally does not recognize the fears and desires of the ego. It's the heart of the guru, the awakened mind of the true teacher, and the fearless passion of our own already liberated Self. And as we identify less and less with the ego, we are able to experience the living glory of it, the liberated passion of the authentic self coursing through our very own veins. And its nature is always too much—as you said, ruthless.

WILBER: Sometimes people can really misunderstand the ruthless part of the tough love.

COHEN: Right, and they often do.

WILBER: But it's a pure expression of a love that has to negate the lesser in order for the greater to shine. And I think that that sort of tough love can be misunderstood.

COHEN: And often is.

WILBER: And even though none of us is perfect, I think at good moments in your teaching, at good moments in my own writing, at good moments in Mike Murphy's work, and that of any of the integral people, there's a kind of ruthlessness that, when it's done well, is really a sort of lovingkindness.

COHEN: When it's authentic, it's speaking directly from a revelation or a clear seeing of a higher level and it's imploring . . . it's imploring everybody to come.

WILBER: That's a good way to put it. It is imploring.

COHEN: Yes, literally.

WILBER: There's always a very strong footnote that says, “Check it out yourself and see.” We're not trying to impose this on anybody. But there is a bigger space. And it's calling us to have a look from this bigger space because there's so much more room—

COHEN: Oh, yes. And that's where the glorious future lies.