Full Spectrum Mindfulness by Ken Wilber

In this teaching, Ken leads us through a waking up practice. He begins with asking you to describe yourself from an objective view. After you complete this assignment, Ken points out that there are actually two parts to your experience. 

Sit back, relax your mind, and right now become aware of what you feel is yourself. Just very simply, be aware of what you call yourself. 

Then briefly describe it to yourself. You might say, “I am this many years old, I weigh this many pounds, I’m this tall, I went to this college, I have this degree, I work at this job, I’m in this relationship with a person whose name is such and such, I enjoy being on the computer, I like movies and all kinds of music, next week is my birthday,” and so on. 

Go ahead and do this at least briefly. It’s important that you get a good, general, “objective” view and awareness of your general self as you see it and feel it right now. The following introduction to your True Self will work much better the more you do this preliminary, so take at least a few minutes and ponder this self of yours....

The first self Ken introduced is your ability to describe yourself, while the second is the “witnessing” state that allows you to see your true self but cannot itself be seen. As you relax into this state of the witness you will experience true freedom and openness.

In this bonus offering, Ken goes into greater detail about the path of waking up described by the great meditation traditions around the world. Ken summarizes these maps that contain the four or five states of waking up and describes how they are different from the qualities of growing up.

In this bonus video, Ken describes the first three states of waking up: gross, subtle and causal in more detail.

In this bonus video, Ken describes the fourth and fifth states of waking up: the witness and non-dual in more detail.

In this teaching video, Ken describes the second dimension of development, Growing Up. He summarizes the scientific perspectives during the last hundred years that revealed the stages of growing up common to all human beings. He points out that whatever stage of development we are currently at, shapes your experience of all aspects of your life. Until you become aware of the qualities of these stages of development, you may not understand how these qualities shape everything about the way you relate to the world. And none of the world’s meditative traditions include these stages of development because they can’t be seen by looking within.

In this bonus video, Ken takes us into a deeper consideration of the path of Growing Up. He describes the variety of multiple intelligences that humans have. Much more than just cognitive intelligence (IQ), these other intelligences include things like moral intelligence and spiritual intelligence. The fact that we have multiple intelligences explains how an individual who may be very high in spiritual development can still be very low in moral development. This can result in potentially damaging behavior by the teacher towards their students.

In this teaching, Ken explains how you can apply Full Spectrum Mindfulness to subjects of stages of development. In this first introductory experience, Ken leads us in exploring our relationship to food. He describes the process of “videotaping” this subject and turning it into an object of your awareness.

In this teaching video, Ken takes us into part 1 of the complete Full Spectrum Mindfulness practice concerning the subject of the desire to eat. This stage of development covers the first eighteen months of human life. A baby is simply all mouth looking for food to help it survive, fused with the mother in a single associated state. It is possible at this stage to unintentionally develop an “oral” addition or allergy. Ken describes how this can happen and how it can continue to play out in your life as you grow up to being an adult. Ken also describes for the first time the Integral concept of “transcend and include” and how this concept is in play as a human goes through each stage of development as they “grow up.”

In this teaching video, Ken takes us into part 2 of the Full Spectrum Mindfulness practice of food. He addresses how food fixations can result in you being overweight. He describes how to videotape these eating desires that may seem to run you and move them to an objective view without judgement where you can address them. At the other extreme, if your dis-identifying with hunger drive goes too far you can develop a food allergy. This can result in conditions like bulimia. Ken describes the mirroring process that can help relieve the issues that can come up around the hunger drive.

In this teaching video, Ken takes us into part 1 of applying Full Spectrum Mindfulness to the subject of the second stage of development; Impulsiveness and obsession. Any desire that arises, wants to be fulfilled immediately. In this stage, there can be a “magical” orientation to why things are happening.  This stage develops in infants at one to three years of age. It was also the highest human stage of development that existed as humans made their way out of Africa and began populating the planet.

In this teaching video Ken takes us into part 2 of the Full Spectrum Mindfulness practice concerning the subject of impulsiveness and obsession. He describes the magical thinking that can bring the focus of your attention to how special you are as a person. He suggests how you can look at these beliefs and holding them up to direct awareness turn them into objects through the videotaping process. You can also look at any of your desires that cry out for immediate gratification and observe their qualities.

In this teaching video, Ken takes us into our direct experience of Full Spectrum Mindfulness concerning the subject of food/hunger. Ken describes the process of alternating between level 1 and level 2 practices in the course of your inquiry. Journal what arises for you in each practice session.

In this teaching video, Ken takes us into our direct experience of Full Spectrum Mindfulness concerning the subject of impulsiveness/obsession. Journal what arises for you in each practice session.