Full Spectrum Mindfulness - Many Questions Regarding The Course

Dojo
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Hey there,

I wanted to ask a bunch of questions regarding the online course full spectrum mindfulness, especially people who already finished the course. I am now in week 4 of the course and wanted to ask. About the instructions in week 4 even when reading and listening/watching the videos/transcript again, they seem unclear to me (the structure seems unclear to me).

Am I supposed to practice only the non-dual headless state for one week ? For example and hold all of the stage of growing up in awarness ? Yet this time with a non-dual headless approach, instead of witnessing ?

Or are there technically more weeks instead of only the “final” week 4 ? The other practice instructions are explained clearer and more coherent. In the final week of the course the practice instruction video only mentions to practice the headless non-dual state/approach. Nothing about wholness or the turquoise stage is mentioned in the practice instruction video. Only in the video about stage turquoise the practice instructions are mentioned for stage turquoise ( to witness basically everything that is whole). Fundamentally every holon I am capeable of thinking about, so thinking in wholes with an AQAL appraoch and alternating between this and the witness. But further on…

Only one alternative for practicing further on is mentioned. In the other weeks the practice instructions clearly explained to work basically with two stages for one week, alternating stages each day. In the final video of week 4 the practice instructions for stage turquoise is completely left out ! Only one alternative is mentioned to practice further on.

Am I the only one who noticed this ? For the people who finished the course how did you work around this or did I misunderstand something entirely ? Did you just practice the headless state exercise or did you include the exercise mentioned in the stage turqouise video ?

I am unsure how to continue with the course. Can I practice stage turquoise for one entire week and then move to the headless (unity) practice and do that for one week ? As well as additionally do the alternative or suggested practice approaches mentioned by Wilber ?

I know this is not about time and tbh I have a lot more questions that relate to time where I would need some perspective on. In order to determine how to approach integral practice. I listend to integral meditation as an audiobook, yet I can’t remember a lot from it besides that I did some exercises while listening to it.

I will leave it at that and potentially ask some questions later on. I really dislike this about online courses that it is very hard to ask questions and receive clarification. I would appreciate help with this because it is a lot of content and even though I don’t have any problems understanding or doing the practice. It bothers me that there is no clear practice instruction in terms of total amount of time spent or how I can integrate this in my life and embody the practice. Like I said I could be missunderstanding some instructions or recommendations because the course is quite content dense.

Some form of recommendation would be great to clarify how I can integrate this into my life. For instance a normal meditation practice can suffice in order to grow in waking up and growing up. When combined with having sufficient knowledge about the subject of stages of growing up and what to look out for in daily life and contemplate the structure stages. In short - reading and knowing the integral map and doing meditation as a daily practice will lead to growth in both growing up and waking up.

Or another example to take the exercises out of the course and apply them daily doing a 15-40 min practice session daily for basically… the rest of one’s life. I find this example unfeasible to some degree because I take meditation quite seriously and it will be very difficult to find retreats that will enforce or accelerate this specific approach. So, I often find the most prudent and pratical approach to have a daily meditation practice and do retreats at traditional meditation centers or more generally practice centers. As well as ocassionaly or in longer bursts to do meditation exercises or generally exercises that revolve around integral or are from the integral plattform (for e.g 1 month focus on stage orange characteristics).

This is what I mean with it is unclear for me how much time I am supposed to spend on each of these practices, I am unsure if I should do them in short bursts spending a week, a month a couple of months etc. on the pratices mentioned inside the course. Or if this is more a daily practice thing. Because in the next section of the course named full body mindfulness there seems to be no specific time frame mentioned IIRC. I watched a couple of videos in advance to see what it is about. I like the content, yet I am unsure how I can integrate it into my own life and there seem to be no recommendations for that.

As well as in the full spectrum mindfulness course there is no recommendation for daily practice. For sure I can take the ideas and apply them, yet then I won’t have any comparision to what has worked for others and what is recommended in general. It is also fine if there would be some sort of clarification saying that we will practice this for X amount of time and you can apply this again whenever needed. Of course I get the feeling or hint that this is what is meant ? Yet, still I am unsure when it is not explicitly stated, but the structure seems to hint at this approach … sort of. Maybe this is my own cultural bias wanting clarification and instructions.

Would really appreciate help since this is bothering me quite a bit and there should be at least a couple of people on the forum who finished the course.

How did you integrate it into your daily life ? Or did you use it as an accelerator and did the exercises for the recommended time, yet left out integration into daily life after the course ?
How long did you do full body mindfulness ? Or any other tips or recommendations ?
How did you handle week 4 ? Did you not notice there are no instructions for stage turquoise in the final video ?

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Thank you for asking these questions! I look forward to a response, especially from Corey or some of the other more experienced community members. I have been hesitant to sign up for this course because you cannot actually find a lot of feedback on it.

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These are some really great questions! And ultimately the answer seems to be, “it depends on your kosmic address!”

My suggestion would be to go through the entire course, spending maybe one week per level as you say. That seems like a really nice pace. And as you go, you can take note of the various obstacles/challenges/feelings of “stuckness” that may arise for you as you move through each stage.

The nice thing is, as you move from stage to stage, you may experience different contents arising and fading in your awareness. But that effortless awareness itself is what is really being trained here, that ongoing capacity to make subject into object, as well as developing more discernment around the various phenomena you might be feeling from stage to stage, whether comforting or painful.

Once you complete the circuit, you can then return to any of the stages where you feel you need more support. This is why the “self-directed” aspect of this is so important – each of us comes with a unique self with unique needs, and there is no way to predict who needs what practices for what reason.

So to me, it’s kind of like shadow work. You carve out specific moments to do the practice explicitly, and you do that until you are basically ALWAYS doing the practice implicitly. How long does it take to internalize the practice and make it a natural part of your conscious substrate? Depends on your kosmic address! Your current center of gravity, your typology, your shadows, your familiarity with various states of consciousness – all of this will inform how each of us uniquely enacts this teaching. But the general idea is to give you a set of brand new tools that you can use any time you want to, while sitting on a cushion, being in a relationship, or just going about your day to day life.

Same thing for the Body Mindfulness practices. Think of it like an exercise or nutrition regimen. We have to bring more awareness to a deliberate practice at the beginning, and it takes a bit of extra effort to begin developing these new habits. But ideally, these become lifelong habits! The idea is to find new routines that actually last far longer than the routines themselves. The routines and practices are there to help “reformat” your lifestyle and create a container where old habits can be replaced with new, healthier habits.

How long does it take to reformat a hard drive? Depends on how fragmented that hard drive is! :slight_smile: (Okay not exactly, but it’s a cute metaphor.)

Just a few reflections that I hope are helpful!

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Thank you corey ! I was scared that nobody would respond. I was going through some rough times because a member of my family died. Yet, I understand the name of the game now ! As far as I can recall from reading the feedback provided by you. I have a problem, with making peoples subject to objects, because I often see many mistakes, yet lack the expertise to fix them. So, I am always unsure if my comments somehow offend people.

I will try to be aware of my kosmic adress. I am an INFJ ennegram type 4w5 with a lot of 7, so I tried to learn a lot from you even looking at body language … including wilbers !!

I am still trying to integrate a lot of the fragmented stuff, that lie within my psyche, yet I am a bit scared. I am working with a psychologist and often times I am scared that I am being diagonsed with something that is not entirely true. Yet, I noticed I have to update my hard drive and include more concepts in order to function fully, at level X. So, I am very scared that I am being misunderstood.

I can become very intolerant in a sense, after a meditation retreat, I tend to have kriya experiences or gross body purifications. In case any of these concepts are correctly used. As well as it is difficult to say what I mean, based on language barrier. Because I am “bi-racial/other” etc. I often feel a lot of pressure to fix things.

Also, a lot of the stuff that is happening in the u.s is very weird and the news channel in my home country do not even cover this. I ordered a book called “Nile Valley Contributions to Civilization” and it shocked me how much of history has been apparently attributed to western accomplishment.

TBH ! I am scared of the book so much, that I can’t read it and I could not contain my laughter today when I see how self-assured people are based on their knowledge base. I feel like darth vader and can’t contain my laugther about the “evil”, or I feel my own level of fragility/vulnerability being threatend… Just based on the fact that I looked at a couple of pages in the book and integrated that into my knowledge base… Basically, I am having cognitive dissonances.

It would be great/awesome/cool if integral would cover this. I am quiet scared of my personality, because I am loosing a lot of friends for speaking the “truth”, as well as winning some back. I am thankful for integral and especially, also to you Corey and Ken. Simply because of the fact, that my life story seems somehow similar to yours. Hopefully, I can partake in the programs offered by integral and I can meet some of the people. Because community is one of the things that legit scares me the most …

Thank you again for taking the time to write a response ! I am trying to learn as much as possible, yet I truely lack a community that endorses the fact, that hetereogenity takes place at a social releam also. But, that situation has now improved… It would be great to see an integral approach on how to handle social activities on all levels. I obviously might be asking to much, because I seem to only care about my own integration. I tried to convince a lot of people in my friend circles, yet nobody seemed to even like the theory fully, especially everything concerning, stage blue and ethnocentrism. I don’t know if there can be a comprehensive overview for something like this, yet that would be great.

I wanted to take the time and write a thoughtful response, based on your reply. Yet, the reply really clicked for me now, after I finished my medtiation retreat and had some sort of “lunacy” attack.