Headed Toward Omega. Part 1: Omega Institute, the Seeker's Guide, and the Return of the Feminine

Elizabeth Lesser and Ken Wilber

Written by Corey W. deVos

Elizabeth Lesser, co-founder and senior adviser of Omega Institute, speaks with Ken Wilber about some of the exciting projects Omega is currently involved with.  They then discuss Elizabeth’s influential book The Seekers Guide, while suggesting ways to help American spirituality move beyond its preoccupation with eclecticism, and toward a deeper relationship with spiritual practice.  Finally, Elizabeth and Ken discuss their hopes for a new kind of leadership emerging within the Obama administration, one that is able to balance both masculine and feminine approaches to the complexity of the world.

For your convenience, this talk has been broken down into three separate pieces, which you can stream individually.  Or, of course, you can stream/download the entire dialogue.

Omega Institute: Past, Present, and Future

Founded in 1977, Omega Institute for Holistic Studies is the nation's most trusted source for wellness and personal growth. As a nonprofit organization, Omega offers diverse and innovative educational experiences that inspire an integrated approach to personal and social change. Located on 195 acres in the beautiful Hudson Valley, Omega welcomes thousands of people to its workshops, conferences and retreats in Rhinebeck, New York, and at exceptional locations around the world.

Here Elizabeth offers a fascinating update of some of Omega's more exciting projects, including the Omega Center for Sustainable Living and the cutting-edge water treatment facility that is being built for the center—projects that continue Omega's 30-year legacy of putting the ideas and ideals behind the green movement into action, and offering an exemplary path toward personal and global transformation.

They also discuss the extraordinary influence the late Sufi teacher Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan has had (and continues to have) upon the Omega community, and upon Elizabeth's own spiritual arrival.  Pir Vilayat was an internationally known meditation master, world religion scholar, lecturer, author, and head of the Sufi Order International, whose vision of a holistic education center was the impetus to start Omega Institute almost 30 years ago.  For more information on this extraordinary teacher, please see below.

The Seeker's Guide: Beyond Eclecticism

Ken and Elizabeth then go on to discuss Elizabeth’s popular book The Seeker’s Guide (formerly titled The New American Spirituality), which offers the spiritual novice some valuable tips to help navigate his or her path toward a fuller life.  Like most of today’s truly pioneering spiritual works, The Seekers Guide stands in the confluence of several different streams of human potential, both East and West, conventional and post-conventional, ordinary and super-ordinary.  (To read an excerpt from The Seeker’s Guide, see below.)

“Chase two rabbits; catch none,” the ancient proverb reminds us.  When it comes to spiritual practice, we are often told that if we wish to reach the springs of enlightenment that lay beneath the sediments of habitual mind, it is better to dig a single hole deeply than it is to dig many shallow ones—meaning it is usually a good idea to find a single tradition or set of practices that we are comfortable with and stick with them, rather than cherry-picking from as many traditions as possible or cycling through a thousand different practices without fully committing to any in particular. 

Of course, once we have found a spiritual path that suits us, we should certainly allow ourselves to further enrich our relationship with the divine by taking advantage of the massive influx of cultural, historical, and spiritual perspectives that are now available to us, exposing ourselves to as many other interpretations of spiritual reality as we can.  While the flavors, methods, and interpretations of spiritual practice vary enormously from tradition to tradition, there are nonetheless certain universal patterns underlying all our experiences, both human and spiritual, that can often only be seen by taking a comprehensive view of all the world’s great religions—no longer chasing a hundred different rabbits in a hundred different directions, but increasing our chances of catching a single rabbit by studying the nature of rabbits everywhere.

But this is a far cry from the cafeteria-style eclecticism we so often find in today’s New Age spirituality, which, when left to its own devices, often succeeds only in replacing one illusion with another—trembling alone in the periphery of mind, we chase ephemeral mirages through the desert without ever coming any closer to our own Supreme Identity.  We need the guidance and the wisdom of the great spiritual lineages, whether Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Sufi, Hindu, shamanic, or otherwise, even as we find new ways to translate these timeless teachings for the 21st century. 

A Different Voice for America: Obama and the Return of the Feminine

Here Elizabeth shares her hopes for the future of America and its role in history’s unfolding, with particular emphasis upon what she sees as a restoration of masculine and feminine balance within the Obama administration.  While the masculine tends to privilege qualities such as force, progress, and reason, the feminine represents the intuitive, empathetic, and compassionate dimensions of human experience—traits that have become more and more necessary as together we create a new zeitgeist of 21st-century leadership.

But it is not enough to say “we need more femininity in leadership”—after all, what kind of feminine are we talking about?  This cuts to the core of so much of the confusion that exists around human development in general, and feminine development specifically.  It is a common observation that the feminine mind is non-hierarchical—meaning it does not naturally make distinctions such as higher/lower or better/worse, but is instead a much more relational intelligence, seeking to connect with the world around it, rather than organizing and ranking the world according to various systems of conceptual categorization.

But the feminine mind, while largely non-hierarchical in itself, nonetheless continues to develop hierarchically, just as the masculine mind does.  What we see here are akin to levels of empathy, connection, and love—that is, the feminine mind may have a natural bend toward compassion, but who or what is actually included in that field of compassion depends entirely upon hierarchical growth through a succession of developmental stages. 

Additional Notes

I: Who is Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan?

Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, whose vision of a holistic education center was the impetus to start Omega Institute almost 30 years ago, died June 17, 2004 at his home in Suresnes (just outside Paris, France), two days before his 88th birthday. He was an internationally known meditation master, world religion scholar, lecturer, author, and head of the Sufi Order International.

Pir Vilayat, born in London in 1916, was the spiritual successor of his father, the pioneer Sufi teacher Hazrat Inayat Khan, who had been a celebrated musician in India.

Pir Vilayat became a musician himself, playing cello and studying composition with Nadia Boulanger. He took a degree in psychology from the Sorbonne. During the Second World War he and his older sister Noor served the British war effort. Noor, known as Madeleine, was a heroine of the Resistance, executed at Dachau. Pir Vilayat served on a minesweeper that was torpedoed in the D-Day invasion in Normandy.

In the 1950s, Pir Vilayat began teaching through the Sufi Order, and particularly in America he drew a large number of people. More than 100 local centers for the study of Sufism exist in the United States, as well as many in Germany and in many other countries around the world.  In 1975, he founded, in upstate New York, a spiritual community, the Abode of the Message, and also Omega Institute, a flourishing learning center embracing many teaching approaches.

In 1974 he published Toward the One, a highly successful introduction to spiritual traditions and practices. He followed that up with A Message in Our Time, 1978, a study of the life and teachings of his father. After that he published a series of books on various aspects of meditation and realization: The Call of the Dervish (1981), Introducing Spirituality into Counseling and Psychotherapy (1982), That Which Transpires Through That Which Appears (1994), Awakening (1999), and finally, in 2003, In Search of the Hidden Treasure, a wide-ranging exploration of Sufi teachings in the form of an imagined congress of Sufis through the ages.

Pir Vilayat traveled very widely, and spent much time in India, learning meditation techniques from teachers of different traditions. He taught his students techniques of meditation drawn from yoga, Buddhism, and Jewish and Christian traditions, as well as established Sufi methods.

Since 1965, Pir Vilayat assembled every spring a Congress of Religions in or near Paris, where representatives of various traditions met together to discuss and understand each others’ viewpoints.

He also took a keen interest in new developments in science, and often spoke at symposia dedicated to dialogue between scientists and spiritual teachers. He regularly incorporated the latest scientific thought into the discourses he delivered with great flair at seminars and meditation camps. Every summer, he conducted a camp in the Swiss Alps and in the United States, attended by thousands of people.

He is survived by his wife of more than 50 years, Mary Walls, his younger brother Hidayat and sister Claire Harper; by a daughter, Maria, and two sons, Zia of New York, who has been designated his spiritual successor, and Mirza of California, and two grandchildren.

II: Excerpt from The Seeker’s Guide

The New Spirituality

We are witnessing the birth of a wisdom tradition that is uniquely American. Within traditional organized religion, as well as in the hybrid creations of our times, the stamp of American thinking is plain. We see the American spirit in the proliferation of nonaffiliated Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, and Islamic churches, and also in the profound changes within sanctioned denominations. This spirit values independence from religious hierarchy. It crosses religious and social boundaries, telling the tale of a diverse people, gathered in close proximity, and absorbing each other's ways of worshipping, ritualizing, and mythologizing the great mysteries of life. It contains the nature-scented traditions of the original peoples of the Americas. It is part science, which has underscored, for most of the twentieth century, our unspoken collective philosophy. It respects both a mistrust of heavy-handed authority and the willing surrender to a greater power. It draws from the religious teachings of the past: from the biblical traditions; from the spiritual roots of Africa; from the meditative schools of Asia; and from other diverse mythic and religious worldviews. And it draws from our own times, from the wisdom of psychology, democracy, and feminism.

The following lists are a somewhat oversimplified outline of how spirituality is changing in America. In the spirit of transcendence and inclusion, the "old" list notes those aspects of spirituality that we have outgrown. The "new" list leans in the direction of the most positive aspects of the emerging spiritual traditions. What is missing is the best of the old that we must safeguard, and the worst of the new that we can be aware of and work to overcome. Both of these are explained later.

Old Spirituality

• Who Has Authority? The hierarchy has the authority. Church authorities tell you how to worship in church and how to behave outside of church.

• What Is Spirituality? God, and the path to worship Him, have already been defined. All you need to do is follow the directions.

• What Is the Path to God? There is only one path. It is the right way and all other ways are wrong.

• What Is Sacred? Parts of yourself—like the body, or ego, or emotions—are evil. Deny or transcend or sublimate them or they will lead you astray.

• What Is the Truth? The truth is like a rock. Your understanding of it should never waver. Therefore ask the same questions and receive the same answers at all stages of life.

New Spirituality

• Who Has Authority? You are your own best authority. As you work to know and love yourself, you discover how to live a spiritual life.

• What Is Spirituality? You listen within for your own definition of spirituality. Your deeper longings are your compass on the search.

• What Is the Path to God? Many paths lead to spiritual freedom and peace. You have a rich array of gems from which to draw illumination: the world's religious traditions; mythology; philosophy; psychology; healing methods; scientific wisdom; your own experience. String a necklace all your own.

• What Is Sacred? Everything is sacred—your body, mind, psyche, heart, and soul. The world is sacred, too, with all of its light and darkness. Bring the exiled and unloved parts of yourself back into the fold.

• What Is the Truth? The truth is like the horizon—forever ahead of you, forever changing its shape and color. Let your spiritual path change and diverge as you journey toward it. You live many lives in one lifetime. The truth accommodates your growth.

What was needed to uphold the old spirituality and to educate its followers is quite different from what we need now to guide us on a spiritual path. To forge our own way through life's deeper terrain requires different perceptions and skills than what it took to follow someone else's directives. To pursue personal happiness here on earth, and to sanctify the human body, is a different sort of quest than the search for redemption in an afterlife. And to understand and heal the troublesome parts of our own self and the world, as opposed to punishing or repressing the darker parts of human nature, asks us to do something for which few of us have been trained.

While the new spirituality traverses much of the same territory that spiritual pilgrims have crossed throughout the ages, it also brings us into uncharted lands and presents each of us with disturbing paradoxes: If I focus too much of the self, won't I end up drowning in Narcissus' pool? But if I neglect myself, what will I really have of value to give to others? If I turn my attention to my body, what will keep me from becoming vain, or materialistic, or obsessed with the body's inevitable demise? But isn't the body the temple of the soul? If I work on opening my heart, what's to stop me from becoming an emotional mess? Conversely, won't I dry up if I concentrate exclusively on spirit? With so many ways to worship, seek, and heal, what will prevent me from flitting like a butterfly from fad to fad to fad, never landing long enough to settle into wisdom and health?

It's important to swing back and forth between these questions. Somewhere, in the middle, between the old homogenized, autocratic ways, and the new diverse and individualistic ways, is a clear path through the paradoxes. The goal, as we move from the old ways to the new, is not to replace one set of "isms" with another. Rather, the goal is to become more and more genuine, fearless, and free. Therefore, one of the most valuable skills we can develop as we travel the spiritual path is the ability to known the difference between genuine spirituality and "spiritual materialism," a phrase coined by the Tibetan scholar and meditation teacher Chögyam Trungpa.  

Click here to purchase The Seeker's Guide.