Author Ken Wilber has identified a crucial distinction between two types of spiritual teaching and practice. This distinction has been very helpful for me and for many of my colleagues in clearing up confusion about various spiritual teachings. Many teachings seem to contradict one another, and they sometimes appear to contradict themselves. The distinction between translational and transformational spirituality can resolve many of these apparent contradictions.
Translational Spirituality designed to help individuals find more meaning, comfort and security in their life. It’s a spirituality that allows one to see life from a different perspective. It often involves a change in attitude, belief or thinking. We might say it provides a different narrative for our life conditions and experiences. Norman Vincent Peale’s gospel of Positive Thinking is an example of a translational Spirituality, as is the book and teaching labelled The Secret.
Translational Spirituality does not radically question our sense of identity or our perception of reality. We are encouraged to shift our perspective on life, but for the most part we still experience living in the same fundamental reality, albeit we may have a new and improved self-image.
Transformational Spirituality, on the other hand, replaces virtually every perception of self and reality that we have embraced. It is a spiritualty that seems to turn our whole world upside down and inside out; it radically changes every aspect of our life experience.
Transformation reveals a reality that makes our previous life seem like nothing but a dream. This experience cannot be conveyed in words or concepts, although it’s sometimes alluded to in poetic form. William Blake’s poetry is an example:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
Translational spirituality can be understood by the conventional mind; transformational spirituality cannot, therefore it sometimes sounds like madness! For this reason most teachers of a transformational form of spirituality don’t try to describe the experience but rather try to help those so inclined to discover it for themselves.
Translational teachings are helpful to many people. They can help to make life work better; they may help us to develop better relationships, better health, and prosperity. And for some, they provide a source of comfort and consolation amidst the difficulties of life.
But for others, self-improvement and consolation are not enough. More than comfort and consolation they want complete freedom, unconditional peace of mind, and the experience of a deeper reality. For these individuals our everyday reality is seen as a dream state and they seek to awaken from that dream, rather than improve upon it.
Translational teachings strive to make the ego more comfortable and feel more in control. But transformational teachings challenge the arrogance and the delusions of the ego; they turn its world upside down and inside out! One well-known Buddhist teacher would often say “From the perspective of the ego, this journey is just ‘one insult after another’!” Such is the nature of transformation.
Yet many of us would rather be insulted by the truth than comforted by our delusions. Having experienced the ego-centric life and found it wanting, we prefer truth to comfort, reality to consolation. Finding the former icons of comfort and security to be very hollow we may feel guided by an internal longing for the unnamed and the unknown. It would seem something in us has shifted. We don’t know why, how, or where it will lead us- but we are willing to follow it.
That which calls us may be named the ever-present origin, the ground of being, true nature, higher power or a variety of similar names. Whatever we call it, it is infinitely more real than the egoic self. Although it makes no promises, we can sense that it beckons us to a new life: to a new reality latent at our core. This beckoning is the call to transformation. It can become very strong and insistent; yet we always have a choice in how we respond. We are never coerced; but once we discover this “pearl of great price” we are never the same!