Gaia: The Integral Pod - Embodiment

Re: Eucalyptus, Love and Just Too Much Going On

http://voyager.gaia.com — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 04:53:41 GMT

Tramslucent is of course an inspiring process.

I agree however with Steve McIntosh et al that there wull be no single shift from so called evolutioanreies and cultural creatives. See his blog entry from August 2008.

The book about the translucent revolution has many teachers as authors. Great.

I am missing people from the corporate world, politicians, scientist and businessmen and -women.

Cindy Gigglewworth has just written a powerful report about the Conscious Capitalism Conference in Texas for the London Integral Circle. In powerful, straightforward language. About real CEO`s talking to other real `CEOs. About agentic orange AND green. And lots more.

This is relvant for me.

And how to deal with pre blue rouble spots around the globe.

A dynamic pragmatism is needed here. The more translucent momentum can touch, shape and, if neessary, confront all these impulses, the more impact will happen.

Hard truths before fresh perspectives can be initiated.

Best,
Albert

Re: Eucalyptus, Love and Just Too Much Going On

http://ADLIAC.gaia.com — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 04:31:45 GMT

I am thrilled too, Albert. All of the manifestations of "The Translucent Revolution" into our New Earth, are thrilling. I profoundly appreciate all you are doing in this.

Blessings, OM

Re: Eucalyptus, Love and Just Too Much Going On

http://voyager.gaia.com — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 17:43:57 GMT

Yes, we should start to implement multilingual options here at Gaia.:):)
Regarding Germany:
There are terrific tensions and frictions when it comes to clolective change. I have treid to communicae the historic reasons for this here on Gaia repeatedly.
So the chaqllenge isnt a technical one.

Its about the biggest possible umbrella for convening minds and hearts. For roundabout 100 Milion German speaking people in Switzerland, Austria and Germany. And the additional 80 Million people worldwide who speak and understand German.

This will be a historic premiere. As it was never done before. Of course, far more than doing a NIng group is intended. its about a European Integration process too perspectively. And tough leadership, collective intelligence, European collaboration, balance of individual and coll tive change and lots more is required.

All in all one flagship project for global integral too. Creating and communicating win-win win solutions and devlopment maps for big parts of European Society over all branches, ages and other social criteria.

I am thrilled. Lot of work is waiting and already done.

Albert

Re: Eucalyptus, Love and Just Too Much Going On

http://ADLIAC.gaia.com — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 17:30:25 GMT

Yeah, Ning would be good platform. Surprised that hadn't been done yet.

In my ideal world, everyone knows pretty well two other languages besides their native language. One preferably kinda similar, and the other very different, like an ancient or aboriginal language, or one from a different continent/language base. Not just for greater ease of global communication/global family (imagine, given the 6-degrees of separation phenomenon, how easy it would be to find in one's circle of friends someone who could translate just about any language you are trying to communicate with) but also for the mind-expansion of getting inside differing experiential worlds, one different even though similar, and one very different. There is something to be learned from encountering differences in something similar which cannot be learned by going to something radically different, something about expectations, I guess, and also there is a lot to learn by getting your head inside a world that's very different, where you don't even have expectations of similarity.

Blessings, OM Bastet

Re: Eucalyptus, Love and Just Too Much Going On

http://voyager.gaia.com — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 09:36:18 GMT

Doug,

my pleasure.

In near future the first German speaking Ning Group wil be launched. SDi related and primarily to the culture of German speaking countreies. I will co-moderate it and especially take care:):) for building bridges to the English speaking orbits. We know from the TED forums how important multi-lingual contributions are.

The same can be learned from the MUltilingual Pod here at Gaia.

And from experiences at Integral Leadership Review or/and Kosmos JOurnal. In fact from any communication medium which targets global audiences.

Very best, from Berlin,
Albert

Re: Eucalyptus, Love and Just Too Much Going On

http://DouglasRWallack.gaia.com — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:34:00 GMT

Hello Albert,

Thanks for the resource.

Cheers,
Doug

Eucalyptus, Love and Just Too Much Going On

http://voyager.gaia.com — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 06:15:19 GMT

Gary Hawke, from London ILP Group, is blogging about Integral Leadership in Action Conference in Austin:

Eucalyptus, Love and Just Too Much Going On

More on:

www.wholelifewholeworld.com

Best,
Albert

Re: Integral Communication

http://RLtruthseeker-artist.gaia.com — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:26:51 GMT

         Thank you Irmeli,
        Although we can try and be as incluse as possible, sometimes we have to honor our own holons...our own spaces, in order to operate effectively. In order to preserve the integrity of the system.

         There has been for me some "psychic vampires" that always drained my energy. What I mean by that, is that these people, whenever I was around them, always brought me down. Gradually, I moved away from these friends...and found other interests. It's not that we're not friends...it's just that we move around in different circles (holons). I would not be honoring my deepest truths if I had decided to stay.

        Just because you love someone doesn't mean you have to like their behavior. It just means you include them in your Being. They are a part of you...even if you are not around them. I think you can accept a person, while not accepting their behavior.That to me is an important distinction (and Spirit accepts everyone in Reality). Clearly some approaches don't work.

This I think is good for a communication theory too. There will always be people you can't reach...but that doesn't mean that they won't eventually find their way. I'm glad that you were able to make that connection.
       Clearly your love and courage has shown through.

Sincerely,  RL.

Re: Integral Communication

http://co-mason.gaia.com — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 10:59:20 GMT

RL, thank you for your appreciative response.

I also am still pretty cautious with narcissistic people. I avoid them, and don't easily push their buttons. And I don't generally have easy to tune into the world space of red meme. Amber, orange and green meme are mostly relatively easy to tune in for me.

My mother was a special case as she was so close to me and my family. Things wound up step by step towards the final big confrontation with her.

It was preceded also by a eight year long psychoanalytical psychotherapy. This confrontation I could not have done successfully without it.

When I finished my therapy in 2001, my therapist gave me the advice to keep only very little contact to my mother. According to her almost every time my mother opened her mouth she caused some trauma to people around.

I think there was some exaggeration in that statement. But the fact was that my mother's behavior had got worse during the last years. It was possibly because of the stress caused by my father's illness.

Pretty soon after I had finished the therapy my father's condition with cancer started to get worse. My mother became his carer at home between his hospital visits. However occasionally her care taking took forms that resembled cruel torture. My father asked help from me and my sister. And we tried intervene the best we could. You can probably guess already how a narcissist reacts to that.
Our relationship to her became badly inflamed. She tried to get a revenge. My sister and I are pretty tough cases. It is not easily done to us. So she started to attack her grandchildren. And that was a weak spot in us.

The result was that my husband broke all contacts with her, as did some of her grandchildren. My son got married during that time. A big wedding got arranged with a lot of people invited, but not my mother. And from many other smaller family gatherings she got excluded.

After my father's death my sister and I also started to consider breaking all our connections with her. That felt however as a rather cruel solution, but as inevitable. I was already very close to that point. When my mother called me, I mostly did not answer. If I answered, and I did not like the tone of her voice, I immediately cut off without saying a word.

At that point my sister, who is group therapist, suggested me that we go to meet her, and give her our final ultimatums. There we went, and after having been listening to my mother's complaints for an hour, it all started to pour out from me.
Afterwards I thought that the episode would make her to also want to break all contact to us. Her efforts to call us became fewer, but when she did the tone in her voice and her approach was clearly different.

Gradually real warmth, that had never before been there, appeared between me and my mother.

Irmeli

Re: Integral Communication

http://RLtruthseeker-artist.gaia.com — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 19:05:10 GMT

Irmeli,
I feel unable to respond to such a poignant and emotional experience. Therefore I won't touch upon it. I can only thank you for sharing such a heartfelt response. I often know that mothers often live vicariously through their daughters, and the tensions between the two. You've touched upon a topic that I'm still learning to deal with with...namely narcissistic personalities.

       For example, one of my anthropology professors was an extreme narcissist, who always took pleasure in "pissing in other people's cheerios," if I may use the phrase. He saw no reason why the world wasn't ugly and horrible, and took it upon himself to always try and teach us that. I could see that he himself was living in fear of the world, and didn't have anything to hope for, or was able to trust anyone (because I think he secretly didn't trust himself)

       I'm still learning not to push narcissistic people away, or to get angry with them. Rather as you said "they need compassion." But you also said that we can be a little forceful with them, in order to curtail their abuses. Narcissitic people, I think, as you said, think of empathy as a weakness, and don't see it as a strength. They only respect strength, because they think that's the only way they can survive. They see their own supposed guilt, and rather than dealing with it, project it out unto the world...a place where they can never get rid of it. Thus they become "a suffering martyr."

       Thank you for this insight...I can only try and use your method... and to show that those people who are narcissistic that I totally accept them for who they are...and maybe awaken something that they may have forgotten in themselves.

     Hope, and trust. The ability to move forward in life. In my encounters, narcissistic people see the lining in every cloud, even when there's one cloud in the sky. These people are good at pointing out potential problems, but often not good at finding solutions and dealing with those problems. (Or even accepting things, and with acceptance, finding out that they are not problems.)

   Just let it be known that I appreciate you and your responses...
and that happiness is appreciation.

http://rltruthseeker-artist.gaia.com/blog/2009/7/happiness-is-appreciation#comments

RL.   :)

Re: Integral Communication

http://co-mason.gaia.com — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:15:18 GMT

RL: I've found that it's not about trying to get people to agree with me, but about speaking to the truth within an individual.

This I find to be important. Here I describe some of the personal learning on how I came to this conclusion.

My mother was a great teacher to me in this regard. She was a narcissist.

For really many years my emphasis was in being in good terms with her, to understand her problems, to show her empathy while simultaneously intensely working with my shadow issues originating from my childhood. And this phase was important to me. I developed a good relationship to my mother during these years. I became a person she could trust no matter what. But basically this did not change her as a person not an inch. Instead a lot of healing appeared in me through my shadow work.

At that time I had the assumption that people can learn new behavior through how they themselves are treated. In my mother’s case that did not work. What she learned was imitating empathy, and using this skill to control others.
Gradually I started to realize, that actually deep inside she perceived empathy as a weakness in people that she took advantage of . By not being allured to this weakness herself, made her actually feel superior to others.
Actually her lack of empathy, and her imitation of it, led her continuously in conflict in her relationships, but she saw the fault to be in the others. It is also possible that she understood some of the problems to arise from her own behavior, but this was just something she accepted as a side effect of her superiority, and something that could justify her perception of herself as a suffering martyr.

I got real results with her only after I got the courage myself to consciously act from the level of red meme with her. In that phase I had long ago completely given up all hopes that she could develop as a person. My sole purpose was to set strong enough limits to her abusing of other people. I let her know among other things that now I am the chief devil and she is only a minor devil, and I also strongly showed I meant it. I also made her feel, she was accepted by me as she was. No scheming and plotting was needed with me. I accepted her totally as she was. I behaved in many ways as she did. I only did it totally openly without any hidden plotting. And from there we slowly made together some steps forward me being the boss, with no room for her to feel superior.

After this change in my approach quite amazing things started to happen in her. She stopped drinking. At that time she had been an alcoholic for over 30 years. Also her tendency to try to control and abuse others declined significantly through this change in my behavior. She started to show capacity to truly appreciate others and their work. Gradually also weak signs of genuine empathy appeared. And all this emerged, when she was already over 70 years old.

I have started to think that the model where the student tunes in to the behavior of the teacher works only if the student has in herself already some of the structure the teacher represents. Otherwise she cannot capture that structure correctly. She can only imitate it.

Irmeli

Re: Integral Communication

http://ADLIAC.gaia.com — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:20:43 GMT

I tend excessively toward yang/fixing, so this last exchange has strengthened my movement into this other style. Thank you both, profoundly!!!!!

Hugs, OM Bastet

Re: Integral Communication

http://RLtruthseeker-artist.gaia.com — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:24:28 GMT

   Yes, Irmili. I like the way you say, "At best a new understanding appears in the other as his very own insight. My role has been here to function as an unobservd facilitator." I like this very much.
      This for me is what I'm trying to do. Sharing the same worldspace as a felt connection. I'm getting better at it, though. Sometimes when we see the cracks, we only want to try and fix the wall, and we lose patience. If we focus only on the problems, then we start seeing the other person as an object, and not as a person. I've found that it's not about trying to get people to agree with me, but about speaking to the truth within an individual. Sometimes "the wisdom from above" aspect of it comes out though.
Irmeli: Even then my communication is silently being coordinated from higher structures.
I also like this very much. Not being in charge of this process, (the claims of the "I"), but allowing it flow from this higher structure of truth, perhaps spontaneously and authentically.

Thank you Irmeli, you've given me some things to think about.
Thanks for being (un)observed facilitator.

rl.

Re: Integral Communication

http://serengeti.gaia.com — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:08:46 GMT

Nicely put, Irmeli.

Re: Integral Communication

http://co-mason.gaia.com — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:27:42 GMT

RL: For me, if I could just get inside a person's holon, get them to understand that I'm with them, and not against them, and understand where their coming from, not just intellectually, but also their being, and if I can enter into their circle (hermenuetics?), then I can help them push their circle outward.

This is how I have also often observed myself to operate spontaneously. I functioned this way long before I knew anything about integral theory. Because of this phenomenon I often perceived myself as a chameleon, as I seemed to change colour depending on people I was communicating with.

Through integral theory I can now explain this phenomenon better. When higher more advanced structures are established, this new structure embraces and uses as tools the lower structures.

The chameleon phenomenon in my case mean that I intuitively sense the worldspace the other person inhabits, and tune in my communication to that space. Even then my communication is silently being coordinated from higher structures. This can mean that, when I detect a crack in the other's understanding or perception, I start to introduce softly new and wider perspectives. At best a new understanding appears in the other as his very own insight. My role has been here to function as an unobserved facilitator.

This way of functioning does not feel like sharing wisdom from above. It is based on sharing the same world space, and figuring out things together. No sense of superiority is present in me in those occasions.

Irmeli

Re: Integral Communication

http://RLtruthseeker-artist.gaia.com — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 16:29:31 GMT

Thanks for the info, OM. I appreciate it. :)

Re: Integral Communication

http://ADLIAC.gaia.com — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 06:16:09 GMT

This is an interesting conversation and I wish I could participate more.

About NLP and sources re it, my involvement was over 25 years ago, and NLP has evolved since then. I am partial to the old sources, like the books that existed back then, and to John Grinder, but co-founder Richard Bandler has some brilliant things to say and teach, as well as some stuff I don't resonate with. There is a new generation of teachers, possibly two generations by now, and I don't really know any of them well, and some significant new techniques. I don't even know what websites exist.

So you'll have to do your own research. I'm sure your inner wisdom can guide you to the best resources for your own learning. But I'm glad you are interested. It's good stuff, IMO, even though it can be mis-used by less mature (stage) folks.

Blessings, OM Bastet

Re: Integral Communication

http://RLtruthseeker-artist.gaia.com — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 21:39:51 GMT

You can see how these views affect and reverberate through all four quadrants. They affect and color our View of Others, View of Self, Our Feelings, and how we View the World.

Re: Integral Communication

http://RLtruthseeker-artist.gaia.com — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 21:35:46 GMT

There are no "better" people, just better worldviews.

Re: Integral Communication

http://RLtruthseeker-artist.gaia.com — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 21:33:36 GMT

These diagrams are from the Anatomy of Peace by the Arbinger Institute.
I only redid them in Photoshop, but they are the same. The only changes I made was that i moved the Feelings Box and the View of Others Box because they weren't in the right place. These viewpoints, the "I'm better than others" view, the "I'm worse than others" view, and "I'm entitled" to such and such because the world "owes me" box show how these viewpoints affect our view of the world, and how we "justify" our actions. (I'm convinced someone who knows about Integral theory is working at the Arbinger Institute.)
Anyway, I thought I'd share these.