OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2008
Borders of Our Perception
Peter Wells
We Are Hard-Wired to Care and Connect
David Korten
Seeing Red, Feeling Blue in Purple America
David Sirota
Electric Cars Are the Key to Energy Independence
David Morris
We Can't Drill Our Way Our of Our Energy Problems
Van Jones
The Next Bull Market
Glenn Hurowitz
Sustainable Spirituality, A Natural Evolution
A Conversation with Saniel Bonder
Pamela Melton
The Countless Laughter of the Waves
Peter Moore
Emotional Freedom and Radiant health
Deborah Fox
Defending Democracy in Humboldt County
Hanna Clapsadle
Cosmic Calendar
Salina Rain
Sustainable Spirituality, A Natural Evolution
A Conversation with Saniel Bonder
By Pamela Melton
Somewhere in each of us is a seed waiting to sprout and grow into the unique human being we each know we are here to be. Since the early 1990s, Saniel Bonder has devoted himself to helping people to soften and open these seeds, enabling them to take root in our lives and flower into stable unity with the transcendent mystery of spirit within our daily concerns and activities. “Waking Down in Mutuality” is the democratically organized work Saniel founded to serve this awakening. He and his wife Linda Groves-Bonder are among its senior leaders. Through this work everyday people around the US and abroad have also entered into sustainable, deeply embodied self-realization and liberation into creative living.
Pamela Melton: What is Sustainable Spirituality?
Saniel Bonder: Sustainable Spirituality is a way of integrating the spiritual dimension of existence with the rest of our lives, so that the two are a seamless unity. This integration takes place on every level: material, energetic, emotional, mental, and psychic. This occurs not only in our inner life but also in our relationships with each other, other creatures, the entire earth, and ultimately the universe. Sustainable Spirituality has to be practical and grounded, it can’t be pie-in-the-sky idealism or escapism. We have to make it real in daily life.
For clarification, will you describe what spirituality is?
We’re intentionally using the word spirituality in a broad sense here. Spirituality is participation in practices, teachings, communities, or ways of conducting oneself in life in order to attune to the spiritual core or essence of existence. It’s a very personal approach to deepening trust in your essential self and the greater reality of all of life.
While you were speaking I was reminded of a phrase you use, “the spirit/matter split.” Would you explain what this is?
Yes. It’s a disjunction in us, a chasm in many people, between our material nature and concerns and our spiritual connection and values. Because we’re always reacting to this unconscious split in our being, people typically gravitate to one side of the split or the other—spiritual types often can’t get fully grounded, don’t feel at home in this world, and the more materially oriented people often have only a vague connection with spirit at best. We’re either “spirit-siders” or “matter-siders.”
This spirit/matter split is, frankly, an epidemic. Even the most awakened and apparently integrated people are at root still coming from one side of the split or the other. They still perpetuate a conflictual tension in the core of their own hearts—and therefore, throughout their lives and relationships. Most seekers’ spiritual practice is a pitched battle to overcome the apparent anti-spirituality of their material body or ego-mind. In the long run that kind of life is not, by any reasonable criteria, what I would call sustainable.
How did you come to this perspective?
Mainly through the nature of my awakening itself, followed by all the work I’ve done since with an ever-growing community of people, hundreds of whom have similarly awakened.
In late 1992, after twenty-two years of intense spiritual seeking, I experienced a radical shift. Along with a transcendent liberation from my ego-mind, like Eckhart Tolle’s “Now” presence, my awareness was also grounded and embodied. There was a primal feeling sense of being the ocean of everything and at the same time being that much more myself, Saniel the person. I experienced a sudden, vast oneness with all being, and also a landing in my body as that deeply felt oneness and as the more local “me.” Both/and. I had not exterminated or even harnessed my ego or mind in ways my training had convinced me would be necessary. The shift was undeniable and unshakable.
This fundamental healing unified the cosmic, transcendent dimension of being and my local, personal self, Saniel. I was still that guy and even more so. I continued to have issues, problems, desires and reactions, attachments and aversions. Yet none of those had power any more to prevent or obscure the 100 percent obvious, spiritual awakeness and no further seeking or meditating was required for that realization to be stable. It was the new given of my whole life.
In the moment of awakening, the word “seamless” came to me immediately. There was no fundamental dividing line any more between the apparent opposites of spirit and matter, consciousness and phenomena, God and me.
Since that day I have been deepening, refining, and integrating all the parts of my own being and my total life, including relationships. Living this embodied unity is an ongoing challenge, to put it mildly!
Is this embodied awakening a potential driving force towards Sustainable Spirituality?
Yes, because truly Sustainable Spirituality is either moving directly into that rock-solid unity of spirit and matter or is already established in it. This unity holds no residual prejudices against matter, the body, desires, reactions, and ego-mind, even our darkest “shadow” issues and perspectives. Unsustainable spirituality often retains those prejudices, which reinforce inner confusion and sabotage outer practices of sustainability.
A strong current of philosophy, practice, and realization has flowed in many cultures for millennia, perpetuating this spirit/matter split. In these views, the true purpose of life is to live so that, after you die, you go to heaven or attain liberation from “the wheel of birth and death,” that is, this karmic human predicament. If that is your fundamental goal, you’ll only give yourself so much permission to get embodied, to be here without inner conflict about all your apparently unspiritual parts.
At first I felt pretty isolated with this embodied approach, but things have been changing. In his 2005 book The Translucent Revolution, Arjuna Ardagh interviewed hundreds of teachers and leaders. He found that thousands, maybe millions of people now feel compelled to integrate their spirituality with their careers, relationships, diet, health, family, and everything else. They don’t crave mystical escape. They want their spiritual awareness grounded. This movement is immense. It includes the work of Ken Wilber and the Integral communities to unite spiritual practice and awakening with every legitimate field of human science, art, and culture. The meeting of science and spirituality is also explored at the Institute of Noetic Sciences as well as in many other organizations and systems.
All of this expresses a primal drive toward Sustainable Spirituality. Even though we may revere certain teachings and orientations to go beyond, many people now find they have to bring the beyond back here. The urgent realities of life today call us to reorient our spirituality so that it fully values each other, matter, the earth, and life on this planet.
We can no longer live with even a subtle prejudice toward spirit. With the fate of their souls apparently depending on it, most spiritually sensitive people have historically favored the spirit side of the split. Now the fate of all of us and the biosphere depends on our healing the spirit/matter split.
Are you proposing that healing the spirit/matter split is the very essence of Sustainable Spirituality?
Yes. When I began working with the concept of Sustainable Spirituality, I knew that many dynamic leaders of green sustainability aren’t spiritually sensitive, or if they are they keep their spiritual life separate from their more practical work. Today in the green movement, including green capitalism, you rarely hear a peep about spirituality as a key to sustainable human living.
An online search led me, happily, to a bold statement that exceeded my hopes: “Five Core Principles of Sustainability,” by Michael Ben-Eli of the Buckminster Fuller Institute in New York.
Ben-Eli’s principles address five domains: 1) the material, 2) the economic, 3) the domain of life, the biosphere, 4) the social, and 5) the spiritual. The principle of sustainability in each domain has its own definition and specific implications for policy and operations. Ben-Eli asserts that the spiritual principle “identifies the necessary attitudinal orientation that provides the basis for a universal code of ethics.” Defining that fifth, spiritual principle Ben-Eli says we must: “Recognize the seamless, dynamic continuum of mystery, wisdom, love, energy, and matter that links the outer reaches of the cosmos with our solar system, our planet and its biosphere including all humans, with our internal metabolic systems and their externalized technology extensions—embody this recognition in a universal ethics for guiding human actions.” (See http://bfiinternal.org/sustainability/principles).
In his conclusion, “The Five Principles as an Integrated Whole,” Ben-Eli highlights this fifth one: “[t]he spiritual principle … is fundamental to the quality and coherence of the whole.” This principle is not conventional religion but rather “soul-based integration of mind and heart in realization of the essential oneness at the center of being.” By “anchoring the essence of human motivation and intention,” this principle “acts at the causal root which sets the tone for the whole” and “drives the integration of the other four principles.”
Here’s a brilliant practitioner of global resources management and systems, laying down an uncommon bottom line: “Lacking the ethical principle implied by the spiritual principle, considerations of questions related to the four other domains, no matter how elaborately expressed, are reduced to mere technicalities.”
There’s a potentially tragic irony here: In order to anchor, integrate, and inspire all four other domains of sustainability as Ben-Eli says it should, our spirituality first must become truly sustainable itself. Otherwise all sustainability enterprises will forever be teetering on a foundation of sand. We’ll continually suffer the consequences but never understand why. We have to realize spirituality as the center and heart of bodily life here on earth, and not as an ultimate ticket out of life!
The spirit/matter split is so endemic, so universal, that it’s keeping us off balance. It prevents communications with one another that may be urgent to solving massive challenges like global warming. We need spiritual realization of the kind Ben-Eli describes in order to create an ethics for holistic (whole-being and whole-biosphere) sustainability.
I really appreciate the ethical and moral anchor you’re speaking of—as we one by one become embodied individually, society becomes embodied through this moral and ethical action.
That’s right, and it puts a spotlight on spirituality. We’ve had decades of moral and ethical catastrophes involving trusted religious and spiritual leaders. Such people have been exposed again and again as being untrue to principles they preach. This is forcing us to arrive at agreements about trust and ethics that help us keep our spirituality sustainable. More people today insist that leaders walk the talk of integrity, accountability, and transparency in their teaching relationships. Trust is the bottom line here, and it has to reach the parts of people that really do lose not just trust, but also hope. This kind of trust can’t be mandated by “thou shalt’s.” It’s got to be real, alive, something people work through together.
Is there evidence of how someone can trust their own deepening trust in themselves, in today’s society?
Linda and I provide a free course online where we talk about this very issue. To learn to trust ourselves better—even to trust our deepening self-trust—we have to grapple with vast shifts taking place around us that have changed the conditions under which trust is even possible.
Each individual begins to develop an inner sounding board or plumb-line, so you can feel, “I’m right on line here with trust; I can trust myself in this situation; I can trust the other person.” By taking steps to consciously reckon with these world-changing shifts, we develop sustainable trust in self, trust in others, trust in nature, and trust in the greater spiritual mystery—God, the ultimate reality.
Is there one thing we can each do to step into Sustainable Spirituality? Perhaps it’s not a doing, but a being? Is there an entry that might be accessible to each of us?
We feel people need to find the most effective ways possible to explore and heal their own spirit/matter splits. That includes:
• First, discover that you even have a spirit/matter split which is not necessarily easy to do.
• See how it’s functioning in you specifically, which side of the split you typically fall on and how you live it out.
• Find resources to help you really make the transition to Sustainable Spirituality.
What’s the transition? I propose it’s no longer about just getting disciplined with a good, rounded daily practice that includes meditation, good health practices, energy work, and so on. All of that is useful, yes, but this transition is about undergoing a fundamental healing and becoming whole in two ways:
• Realizing that spiritual, “essential oneness at the center of being” so deeply it’s just obvious, with no further seeking required.
• Integrating it so that it permeates every part of your daily life, bringing the spiritual and the mundane into a natural sync.
You have to find your own unique ways of doing these things. As Linda likes to say, “It’s not a cookie cutter process.” That’s true even if you’re practicing standard, traditional meditations. You’re you, this is now, and this moment of your practice and growth is unique. And, in due course, you encounter and integrate your lowest lows as well as your highest highs. No part is left out of your seamless unity.
One of the practices in your work, a divine practice that’s been with us since ancient times among Sufis and other mystics and philosophers, is gazing. I’m wondering what the significance of gazing is for Sustainable Spirituality.
Gazing, or making prolonged, gentle eye contact, is an instinctual way people sustain one another. It’s so natural; with the right people, we love gazing into each other’s eyes and sharing a loving, compassionate, and honoring space.
When a mother gazes into her child’s eyes, she literally beams a bio-spiritual current of energy, emotion, and spirit to her little one. The child does the same with its mother, though not so deliberately. They are sustaining one another. Husbands and wives, dear friends, lovers of whatever gender and description, often gaze spontaneously. We gaze with our pets and sometimes other creatures too, even in the wild.
Under the right circumstances, with someone you trust to participate in a loving, kind way, gazing is a natural pleasure. This spontaneous ritual increases qualities of heart and soul we treasure most: love, joy, trust, wellness of being, delight, serenity, and peace.
You reference spiritual traditions where gazing has been prominent. Among Hindu spiritual masters gazing has long been understood as a primary means teachers can use to transmit awakening energy, often called shaktipat. Other traditional means include touch, speech, thought, and mere presence.
Linda and I use gazing to impart spiritual transmission. It’s also used by all authorized teachers of Waking Down in Mutuality who have received intensive training in its practice. In our era we can post photos and streaming video on the internet to make transmission by gazing available to anyone anywhere who can get online.
What we call HEARTgazing™ is more than just gazing, as we explain in our free online course it is a practice, a process, a resource center, and also an emergent worldwide community of kindred spirits. In the four audio sessions we explain why and how it works and the unique energetics in our adept gazing and Heart-transmission that help heal the spirit/matter split. Several brief guided meditations give you a direct experience of gazing with us and help you deal with difficult emotions and consciously manifest your heart’s desires.
Even a few minutes of gazing with us daily, while continuing in other ways to cultivate a practice of Sustainable Spirituality, can make a great difference. Mutual gazing with spiritual friends is also quite profound. It helps you stabilize this deeper trust in self, trust in others, trust in nature, and trust in the divine. Gazing thus becomes a cherished cultural ritual. It’s a key contribution, we feel, to Sustainable Spirituality.
This divinely human meeting through gazing is further exercised in other ways of practicing what we call “mutuality.”
Yes, relationship can be the ultimate fertile ground for growth allowing the divinity of each being to simultaneously rest and express. How would you describe mutuality?
It draws on that essential quality of our spiritual nature. In the mutual meeting of gazing, we encounter one another in a primal, mysterious way. We spontaneously go beyond thinking about or being distracted from one another into a much more direct meeting. One of the ways I defined mutuality early on in my work is “being as true as you can be to your own true and total self while cooperating with others who are doing the same.” A baseline is established in meeting one another that is distinctly nonjudgmental—you honor and mutually acknowledge one another as unique human beings, including each other’s differences. This takes place not only in silent situations such as gazing, but also sometimes in verbal encounters dominated by conflict or misunderstanding.
People practice mutuality by working through whatever difficult material may be present. When we can’t immediately get to a profound yes feeling together, we work through the issues, staying present and communicating. It doesn’t always come to a new harmony, but most often, we are able to keep releasing the waste material of relationship itself—the psychological and emotional stuff that gets in the way of sustainably allowing a deeper knowing of each other and ourselves.
Mutuality also enhances joyous, ecstatic recognitions of one another. It’s not just about clearing painful issues. Going back to Ben-Eli’s five principles, you might say that mutuality is a spiritually conscious application of the social principle, a way of practicing sustainability socially that then becomes the leverage point for our greatest potential application of all the other principles of sustainability.
Saniel Bonder’s spiritual training embraced Western and Eastern traditions and discipleship under profoundly awakened adepts. He’s the founder of the international Waking Down in Mutuality transformational work and author of nine books including Healing the Spirit/Matter Split, Great Relief, and The Conscious Principle. He is a founding member of Ken Wilber’s Integral Institute, a charter member of the Integral Spiritual Center, a member of the Advisory Board of American Zen master Genpo Roshi’s Big Mind trainings, and is a regular columnist on “The Spirit/Money Split” at Good Business International (www.good-b.com). Pamela Melton, a graduate of the Coaches Training Institute, is a Waking Down in Mutuality mentor and a Whole Life Coach and Business Consultant with a Masters Degree in Public/Nonprofit Administration. Visit Pamela’s website, www.wakingthrough.com, for more information. Saniel Bonder and Linda Groves Bonder will present a workshop on “Living the Conscious Principle” in Ashland, Oregon on November 7, 8 & 9. Please contact Pamela Melton at (541) 488-7490 for information. Contact Saniel at 1-877-783-3873, info@heartgazing.com, www.sanielandlinda.com, or www.heartgazing.com for the free online course. © Saniel Bonder & Pamela Melton 2008. All rights reserved.
Pamela Melton
Saniel Bonder & Linda Groves Bonder 