THE VALUE OF EXPERIENCE or
THE LEADERSHIP OF THE HEART
(Colin Bigelow in Spain)
My name is Raquel Torrent, a Spanish woman that has been introducing and
developing Integral Consciousness in Spain since 2003, thanks to my work as a
psychologist, Integral counselor and teacher.
On top of that I am a clear example of a dream come true.
To explain such a statement, I have already shared part of my story with
the readers of the Integral Leadership Review in previous issues, but for those
that have not read it, I will just give you a short summary. After having been touched by the grace of Ken
Wilber’s books, I wanted to know him in person –as many other people in the
world – to just thank him, embrace him and honor his clarity of mind, depth of
heart and broad intuitive consciousness.
After many years of trials and efforts, I finally did it in 2005 and
what is was a dream, became a reality, moreover so than what I would have ever
thought possible. And I say this for two
main reasons, one being that the relationship with Ken developed to be stronger
and nicer each year and also because during that trip I met Colin Bigelow, his
personal assistant that has shared with us his own view of what it means to
meet Ken Wilber:
“Often, people have an
extraordinarily positive experience when first encountering Ken’s work.
It truly is an “awakening” to an authentically holistic, integrative, and
integral way of understanding the Kosmos, and many people experience tremendous
joy at this discovery and realization. The natural impulse is to then go
try and transform every aspect of your life to fit this stunning Integral
Vision! At some point, most people then run into “the real world,” and
when they cannot make their job, their family, their education, their
government, expand into more integral ways of being, it is easy to become
discouraged and even depressed. Because Integral thought is so
wonderfully comprehensive in nature, you can all of a sudden feel utterly
overwhelmed by just how clearly you can see the partial, fractured, broken
aspects of life all around you. Where the Integral Vision first
revealed glorious wholeness everywhere you looked, that same Integral
lens can then reveal a world of fragmentation and discord in all
directions! How am I supposed to be excited about Integral ideas when my
actual worldly reality is economic agony, political vitriol, and environmental
disaster?”
For those of you who do not know Colin’s story, he was just 15 years
old, when his mother gave him a book from someone named Ken Wilber to finally
pacify his on-going mind over so deep philosophical and spiritual matters. His mother could not give him the so many
responses that he was demanding and thought that such an author will calm him down,
give him answers and help him place the so many questions he had in a
comprehensive map within his reality. And she was right¡ In fact, when Colin became 19 years old, he
was ready for the biggest and deepest encounter of his life. He met Ken Wilber
himself and became his own right hand. Since
then, he has learnt tremendously in all senses as Ken has been like a master, a
friend, a mentor, even a father, and therefore the greatest inspiration for his
already developed soul. He’s a member of the Integral Institute Board of
Directors since 2005, and was centrally involved in the creation of Integral
Naked, Integral Spiritual Center, the I-I Multiplex, and Integral University.
When Ken became so ill, with his first seizure, several years ago, Colin
entered in a terrible shock, as the love for Ken was so grand and the illness
so grave that he was devastated. He then prayed God for help and Ken became
better. But the following year he had
his second seizure even worse than the first.
He lost his faith, he felt separate from spirituality and he was broken
as the doctors feared for his life. On his own words:
“After Ken suffered
several life-threatening medical events in 2006/2007, I experienced four years
of constant, debilitating physical, emotional, and spiritual suffering. I
wanted many things to be different than they were, and I suffered intensely as
a result. Every single effort I made to “make things better,” made things
much, much worse. I had been familiar with non-dual “Great Perfection”
teachings up to that point, but that was in no way what I was
experiencing. The only thing I could do was give up, surrender, and have
absolute faith in Reality itself. Because of the extraordinary support I
received from my partner Andrea, my fellow assistants Brian and Mike, and of
course Ken himself, the fruit of this transformation is now shining
brightly”
When I met Colin, just one year before this, he touched my mother’s
heart like if it would be my own spiritual son.
A beautiful relationship grew among us.
Since that “special encounter”, I offered Colin to come to Spain,
firstly just for visiting and afterwards for teaching, as I was seeing him over
the years become fuller and wiser. Those
invitations kept on being presented to him during 8 straight years until again
the dream became true at the beginning of December 2012.
With the occasion of the course created by Ken Wilber “The five reasons
why you’re not enlightened”, and taking the advantage that he was going to come
to Europe to teach it, I invited him over to hit Spain first. I wanted to offer him some “rehearsal ground”
before his teaching in Moscow and it ended up being a real full seminar in
Madrid with 33 people from the Integral Community.
Colin was tender, direct and clear, authentic and deeply spiritual in
his first teaching ever. He was very
content that it was in Madrid and with me.
We really found this such a great opportunity and also meaningful as
Madrid could be understood as “madre”
(mother). He was surely giving birth to something new in his life and in the
experience of all of us. He introduced
Ken’s ideas about the reasons why we are not enlightened and also gave us one
more reason (the 6th), as follows:
1) Conceptualization
(As we try to classify the
experience of God. Put attributes)
2)
Objectivity (Experience of being separated – Duality. Seeing things as objects)
3)
Differentiation (Non recognition of sameness – Lack of Unity)
4)
Looking for the Spirit (We think we don’t have it, if we look for It)
5)
Conditional Love (We are unable to love unconditionally. I chose who to love)
6)
Faith/Trust (We contract with fear and lack of faith to act freely, full of trust)
Everyone loved him and was very touched by his capacity of maintaining
the flowing energy of the room in a clear third tier space. He said that he
didn’t want to give us technical teachings about Integral Theory as we could
see details of that in Ken’s books. Instead, he was coming to share his own
experience of having been with Ken Wilber for more than 10 years now. In many occasions he showed examples of his
own personal life and was transparent and blunt with his shadow. This showed the people in the room that
enlightenment does not have to do with absence of shadow but with the
knowledge, relationship and management of it.
His almost permanent smile (not only in his mouth but in his heart) made
easier to fly over the 12 hours of the course, leaving an “I want more”
experiences in the hearts of all the attendees. One thing is for sure, his
teaching was from and for the heart and soul. The presence of body and mind
were more for astonishment and amazement than for intellectual or physical
exercises. As he puts it:
“In my life and in my
teaching, I focus on cultivating a state in which “nothing need be done.”
There is nothing to do within the Great Perfection, because there is nothing
that need be accomplished. Supreme Enlightened awareness is always-already
entirely complete, achieved, ensured, and spontaneously present. This is
the context in which we will explore Ken’s extraordinary AQAL Integral model
together. This is the state in which every activity of Integral awareness
is the perfect expression of Awakened identity. Just because nothing need be done, doesn’t mean you don’t
do anything. Just the opposite. You are finally Free to meet the
needs and challenges of life, because you are no longer trapped within
it. Action, activity, connection, and responsibility flow naturally from
that infinite Source that cannot be exhausted”
For me, personally the experience of being with Colin has been very
rewarding in all senses of the word. I
could not ask for anything better. It was perfect. Every minute of it. I have
really had the experience of LOVE with capital letters, as I would say that
Colin is the manifestation of individual and collective act of love for the
mere fact of being there: His presence
is uplifting and enlightened. What it doesn’t mean that his shadow doesn’t ever
appear. It does. What I love is that it is an enlightened
shadow, if Ken permits to call it so. Embodied Integral Spirituality has landed
in Spain, as the book was published in 2007 and Ken unfortunately cannot
travel. Thank you, Colin.
To end, I live you with Colin’s own words as a farewell:
“As Ken often says,
“It’s better to light one Integral candle than to curse the darkness.”
Yes indeed. What Ken also says, just as often, is that one should
endeavor to discover one’s own True Nature as radiant, eternal, infinite
Spirit—and then, with wisdom
and compassion, dignity and grace, work to transform this suffering world with
the power of Integral awareness”
Raquel Torrent
Integral Psychologist and Teacher
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