Gaia: The Integral Pod - Chapel Perspicacious - Second Tier? Get Over Yourself. A Brief Righteous Vent....

Re: Second Tier? Get Over Yourself. A Brief Righteous Vent....

http://julianwalkeryoga.gaia.com — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 02:03:38 GMT

right on simon - thanks for your contribution. i appreciate it.

Re: Second Tier? Get Over Yourself. A Brief Righteous Vent....

http://GreenDolphinStreet.gaia.com — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 22:27:39 GMT

Hi folks,
I'm new to this pod so may be jumping into a puddle that isn't really there. ;-)

Julian's original post, IMO, points out an aspect of a perspective that seems to me to be regularly unacknowledged in our world. We celebrate the "we" space both in our expression of feeling and in our intellectual forms as the miracle of intersubjectivity (whether local and/or non-local) and the locus of much of the growing tip of integral consciousness.

The responses to Julian's post seem to indicate that we seem to have little to no space in our models and metaphors for the we-space as the locus of the mob, the gang & Lord of the Flies. By leaving this gap, we rob ourselves of the ability to try to predict, to feel into, what second-tier/turquoise/whatever manifestations of that bit of the spiral may look like, should it arise. Should it arise? We will continue to be human and, though someone out there (sorry, mate, I can't remember who and I'm not courageous enough to tempt the browser gods to go BACK and look) is confident that no-one in this pod could revert to pre-rational, my hunch is that it will manifest, not in pre-rational violence, but in a more realised, self-aware form of the social, drawing room savagery of the early 20th century salons.

This gap, or related issues, seems to me to be near the heart of the I-I dysfunction and is a bit of shadow that we haven't yet seriously acknowledged the possibility of.

I was struck by the similarities in the tone and style (which I think pelle pointed out) in Julian's post to a family member kicking around at restrictions that are not acknowledged or named by their family system and the tone of several responses seemed to me consistent with that of the rest of the family prodding him back into line, and avoiding the issue underneath the emotion.

Love to you all.
Simon

Re: Second Tier? Get Over Yourself. A Brief Righteous Vent....

http://noahispaal.gaia.com — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 01:16:22 GMT

Hey julian and all.

Just wanted to say that I resonated well with your 'vent'. In fact, I quit Integral Naked around a year ago because of more or less the exact issues you mentioned. I haven't read the thread you're referring to, so I can't speak to that. (and don't want to.... puh, they let you have it!... ; ) )But i recognize the concerns.

It was especially the SDi lingo that got under my skin, before i left IN. Tho, as some of you have mentioned here, noone is actually going around thinking they're great big evolved superhumans, even tho they use SD concepts amongst themselves on forums. I don't doubt that. For ones own personal use, SD generalizations aren't that problematic. But when it's used in various media, like IN, to generalize about heaps of people, I think it gets weird. An example is an audio at Integral Naked. It's called "2012, aquarian conspiracy" or something like that. In it, Wilber talks about his fear that sometime in the future we might have a bunch of "greens" that will create a World Federation, built on a one-person-one-vote deomcracy, which will inevitably lead to disaster, since 70 % of the worlds population is blue (is it "amber" now?) and below. He calls these 70 % "nazis", (I understand he's sort of kidding, and making a rhetorical point n'all, but still..) and they will crave the killing of the enemies.

Now, to me, this just seems way, way oversimplified. First of all, I just don't recognize this intensely naive green meme. (and how does it relate to the "mean" one) I've had this suspicion that Wilbers idea of "naive-green" is basically based on new-agers from California, - cuz that's what it sounds like. But what about academic "green", activist "green", political "green" and , I don't know, Intelligent "green"? What I recognize as "green" in Europe, seems much more down to earth, pragmatic and realistic than this "everybody's allright" green, that Wilber and co are referring to. And what of those below? Are they really so crazy that, given the chance and power, they'll become instant nazis?

I think this is what co-creator of SD Chris Cowan, and others, have such a problem with I-I about. This reduction of the Vmemes to one specific trait - like "naive" or "fundamentalist" - without having the linguistic courtesy to nuance it a bit. I understand the need to popularize and package it so not only wordheads get the drift, but there should be a limit. I think Terence Mckenna once said; "Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler."

So at least that part of I-I, in my view, needs some revisioning.

Re: Second Tier? Get Over Yourself. A Brief Righteous Vent....

http://maryw.gaia.com — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 23:43:42 GMT

Hey everyone --

A few times here people have created a different title in their response-posts. Then, when someone responds directly to your post, it ends up changing the title of the thread as it appears in the forum.

Please do not do this. It can make it difficult for people to keep track of which thread is which. Stick with the title provided by the originator of the thread.

To correct this problem here, I'm going to change all the titles back to Julian's original title.

Thanks much,

Mary

Re: Second Tier? Get Over Yourself. A Brief Righteous Vent ...

http://kinay.gaia.com — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 22:54:42 GMT

I have been doing some alignment work with my hara line and healing my denials -boy do i feel the shift so strong today . My magnetism is like I have a huge becon signal within me and drawing all those things to me that are part of the foundation for the new world about to be created.Can you feel it? It is like a bird that must migrate it is within me and it is current of a swift stream that I am riding .Can you feel it? It is the same urge that is in the salmon to spawn. Can you feel it? It is more than just survival of our species it goes to creating a new species that is what it feels like.Can you feel it? It is so clear that i see nothing else. Can you feel it? It is stronger than ever before- like xmas eve- there is a big urgency that feel it makes my stomach sick like i have been turned upside down and inside out.Can you feel it? It this overwhelming desire for love, to be love, to teach love, to live love, to create the blue print for all future world. Can you feel it? to live to embody the bio chemical blueprint my entire energetic make up is shifting.Can you feel it?

Re: Second Tier? Get Over Yourself. A Brief Righteous Vent....

http://riversong.gaia.com — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 16:09:38 GMT

I have been enjoying reading all of this stuff about the Secret, Oprah, the Law of Attraction, 'ask, believe, receive'. I love Oprah, and still the hokeyness seems all too apparent. In my understanding, the mechanics of the "law of attraction" are not linear cause and effect as The Secret claims. The notion that I create the world around me with my thoughts is 'cause and effect' rationality, even though it irrationally leaps over the natural Newtonian laws of physics(f=ma, and you can't push a rope). Rather, the law of attraction functions in the non-local and quantum domain, and as such a set of "non linear rules" apply. These rules are predicated by 'fearless living'---living without fear, no matter what we are called to experience and no matter what we are forced to witness. This fearlessness is contrary to 'survival' in every rational sense, and most of us cannot help but quake in abhorance at the notion. The thought of living fearlessly will send most of us into a spiral of existential anxiety from which we will arrive at the very state of the egoic contraction, sadly, that we are in anyway. Most of us do not live fearless lives. Even the thought of being fearless frightens us. Most of us believe that our fear keeps us safe, and that acting from a fear-based position is the one with the most security. In these strange times, it turns out that the opposite appears to be true. (As I am writing this, I am suddenly thinking of the plethora of 'suicide bombers'.....in some way, they must be fearless. Pre-rational and deluded granted, but fearless all the same. This is a very powerful place to be in, though it is especially scary when achieved in the pre-ratiional realm! another paradox!) In my estimation, some of the ' non-linear rules' in the law of attraction are: 1. I am not in control. I must let go of any outcome. 'Thy will be done.' 2. It is not up to me to balance the scales. 3. I must become vigilantly aware of my own 'intention', exposing all of my shadows,continuously mining all of my motivations for my deepest truth in any given moment. 4. I must choose to live according to my deepest truth with my highest integrity even though any outcome is entirely uncertain, moment to moment 5. I am impermanent. Paradoxically, I am not impermanent. 6. The only constant(apart from the universal constants) is change. 7. Anybody has the right to reject me at any time. 8. In any given moment, I must accept 'what is'. I must open my heart fearlessly to love what is. 9. I must open my heart to all of the consequences of my behaviour and alter my behaviour accordingly to bring my 'intention' into alignment with unconditional love. 10. I am important. 11. The medium in which we live, the divine millieu, the ocean of our experience is a bio-spiritual reality. Considering further, the Law of Attraction is a description of how I interact with God. (my favourite definition of God is Meister Eckhart's: 'God is the newest thing there is.') It is a description of how I let energy flow in and out of my life. Am I contracted, rigid, open, flowing, constipated, dancing, expansive, controlling, frivolous, greedy, generous, conscious, dull? How do I have my 'energy plugs' plugged into the world? Am I sucking energy out of the world? Is the world sucking energy out of me? Am I in balance? Am I free? Am I frightened? Am I loving? "Freedom is the ability to have or not have what I want and still keep my heart open." How I interact with God is for the most part dependent on how much of me I am prepared to bring to this dance floor. This in turn is dependent on how much of my own shadow work I have been able to address on a given day, or in a given moment. Am I able to be 'I am'....or am I a list of qualities or achievements that I am compelled to identify with to prop us some illusionary sense of my own ego? In truth, I woke up with a start in the middle of last night having dreamt that the roof of my house had fallen in. I was contracted and anxious. I lay in the dark considered how many other people are feeling exactly the same way this moment all over the world, and how many have felt this way since the experience of the human emerged into the Kosmos. As I was considering all this, as if on cue, my dog, Rosie, suddenly hoped up on my bed and snuggled in beside me, licking my face,(eee!) demanding to be stroked, not taking 'no' for an answer. I laughed. How many of us really just want to crawl under somebody's arm, demand to be loved unconditionally, and not take 'no' for an answer. All of us? I wonder what that would look like! Ahh, the dreamed possibilities of fearless Love.

Re: Second Tier? Get Over Yourself. A Brief Righteous Vent....

http://maryw.gaia.com — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 06:50:03 GMT

Goshiliciousness!!! You are all amazing!

Mary

!

Re: Second Tier? Get Over Yourself. A Brief Righteous Vent....

http://mqs.gaia.com — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 06:37:42 GMT

attaboy. Big hug to you too Julian.

best,
Michael

Re: Second Tier? Get Over Yourself. A Brief Righteous Vent....

http://mqs.gaia.com — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 00:46:07 GMT

Julian,

Mmmmmm . . . hence my vigorous response to your post. I think this moment right now is a gift from the "Thusness", when intentional "groping" towards the truth, when a "turning too" each other strives for authentic selflessness, that the "thusness" steps in to close the curtains on the scene while the performers prepare for the second act.

I hope that you can now truly appreciate the gentility expressed towards you by others than me before this last was revealed. I sure don't know about their assumptions, but mine was that you had read the thread. If you haven't, please do. I, for one, would love to hear what you think/feel of it from this now, truly amazing perspective.

Namaste,
Michael

Re: Second Tier? Get Over Yourself. A Brief Righteous Vent....

http://julianwalkeryoga.gaia.com — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 00:19:29 GMT

warmth to all of y'all for being willing to dance.

BOW<

Re: Second Tier? Get Over Yourself. A Brief Righteous Vent....

http://julianwalkeryoga.gaia.com — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 00:17:50 GMT

oh my goodness no i am embarassed - i had no idea that thread had been emotionally meaningful - i was just reacting to the title.....

apolgies to any who had their heart opened by it only to have me seem to scorn that.... this is not where i was coming from.

Re: Second Tier? Get Over Yourself. A Brief Righteous Vent....

http://mqs.gaia.com — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 23:51:43 GMT

Liz,

Thanks. That feels good. I've been in and out of tears all day while bouncing in the wake of that rascal Julian's post. It's time for a hot bath.

big hug to you too,
Michael

Re: Second Tier? Get Over Yourself. A Brief Righteous Vent....

http://transcend-include.gaia.com — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:48:50 GMT

Sure do, Patrick. The IN forum taught me well to copy and paste...but you can sometimes retrieve what you've written if you hit the back button a few times to get to your original post.

Liz

P.S. Michael: (big hug)

Re: Second Tier? Get Over Yourself. A Brief Righteous Vent....

http://mqs.gaia.com — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:41:38 GMT

Julian,

Amen to that Julian, amen to all of that. I think your distinction between the professional demeanor or "wa" as the Japanese might say, and the speculative, "Balderian" (sorry Bruce, I just could not hold it in any longer) wa of the I-I complex of perspectives, is a great point. The shift must be made when traveling from one to the other or we will risk appearing wimpish and uncertain professionally, and stentorian or imperative in the I-I space.

There was a moment in the parallel unfolding of Liz's Turquoise Shadow, and Balder's Flower's and Trees threads, when a genuine (to me) and somewhat sustained "moment" occurred. Liz put her finger on it when she said,

"Deep bow to all of you. I feel a bit of the sanga that we used to have at IN resurfacing...with new faces and a new dedication to awakening forming. Bless you all for being. . . Mary, you nailed it. Ripley's tired. I felt tears welling up when you gave her permission to rest. She is so tired of being strong. She deserves a rest."

I suspect this welling of tears to which Liz referred was running all through the sangha - I certainly felt it. As I have thought about it since, I wonder if the experience of "we" that came from as-honest-as-can-be sharing of both intimations of "greatness" and experiences with the "doubt" shadow, had manifest a monad of pure joy as we all might have identified with the "permission" to rest from the struggle between confidence and doubt - that both were ok, both were welcome, both were fruitful.

Ironically, there lies the very potential of "pitfall" that you addressed in your original post and outlined most recently as the void space between east/west, psyche/soma, universal/personal.

How can we continually hold these polarities as welcome, how can we honor them both while "suffering" in the dichotomous void, how can we at the same time protect this treasure of "we" space while at the same time admitting for consideration what might be threats to it?

Well, I don't know the "how" of it, that I know for sure, but I do think that rigorous, searching honesty, and a willingness to share it, will attract the "how" to show itself when needed.

Best,

Michael

Re: Second Tier? Get Over Yourself. A Brief Righteous Vent ...

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:38:05 GMT

grrrrr!

Wrote a f.... long post that got lost. That really annoys me. You know that feeling?

Guess the cyber spaced angels didn't want me to write it!

Grrrr.

Patrick

Re: Second Tier? Get Over Yourself. A Brief Righteous Vent....

http://julianwalkeryoga.gaia.com — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 20:49:35 GMT

no need for any apology michael - i liked what you had to say and i came to party looking to get into it and see if it would be productive!

i want to make a distinction between: a) skillful means in the rest of the world, which i exercise everyday as a teacher and a healer - i am very caurious to hold a respectful space for where people are at and the importance of honoring and having compassion for their defenses or developmental levels etc

and b) being par tof what i think of as an integral think-tank where we throw around ideas of what works and doesnt work, what the pitfalls might be, what we are jazzed about and how to make the best contribution to the outside world.

in the think tank mode (and my lets change the world zaadz presence) i am all for debate, getting my hands dirty, trying to make sharp distinctions and calling bullshit when i hear new age stuff in drag as integral and notice a superficiality in the way jargon starts to lose it's grounding/meaning..... i think that these things can potentiallly (as you correctly interpreted) hamstring not only integral but any sincere attamept at a next level adult integration of east/west, psyche/soma, universal/personal.

seeing as i dont know anyone here personally i would assume that it is a given that nothing i could possibly say would be personal in nature - even though it is about things we all have personal feelings about - but i will emphasize that from time to time.....

i did not feel any resentment in this thread at all - but thanks for your compassionate concern.

all the best
~julian

Re: Second Tier? Get Over Yourself. A Brief Righteous Vent....

http://mqs.gaia.com — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 18:35:17 GMT

Julian,

I will admit that my "observation of "Atheism" could be dead wrong and I agree with you that "thusness" may be just as prevalent in the agnostic state as it is in the Deist. Also, I appreciate your good sportsmanship, and welcome the same sort of "take down" when I get out of line.

I feel I owe you an apology - not for what I said, as I strove to be as honest, authentic, and compassionate as I can be at this time in my life. No, not for that. But if it were me on the receiving end, I know that I would have experienced some significant emotions, maybe even a powerful resentful reaction or two, or three.

So, in that event, it is that for which I apologize. I apologize for the consequences of me being me in your life.

The irony here is that the first post I submitted to the I-I forum was similar to your, er, screed. I was antagonized by the relentless rip-job that the admittedly misleading film the Secret, took in that thread you started. I read the thread from beginning to end and then just let fly. My post followed the same pattern as yours, was just as villifying in the beginning, rationalized my objections in the same way, and reached the same level of moderation in the end.

As I compare the two of us from the vantage point of having tried on your perspective after posting my reply yesterday, I have come to consider that we may have more in common than I thought. I have struggled with a nasty temper most of my life. I know that when I let it out I am essentially blackmailing my audience emotionally. I can see that quality still lurking in that initial post of mine, and for that, I deeply apologize to this forum as well.

Sail on Julian. I really liked what Guest had to say about bringing your gifts to the party rather than requiring the party to come to you.

Namaste,
Michael

Re: Second Tier? Get Over Yourself. A Brief Righteous Vent....

http://julianwalkeryoga.gaia.com — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 16:27:24 GMT

delicious and nutritous pelle. gracias...

Re: Second Tier? Get Over Yourself. A Brief Righteous Vent....

http://universalaikidojo.gaia.com — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 15:55:33 GMT

I enjoy so much what you all write and though I don't know the Integral or SD language bar the little I picked up here and what I learned via andrew Cohens teachings, I wish to partake. I am aware that I might have annoyed certain individuals here through my not so consistant reasoning, and I apologize, and see that I have a lot to learn from you all.

I thought all day about this post and its responses. I can relate to much of what is discussed, but I was interested to see if we could take it forward. I can relate to Julians frustration as I (and supposedly, at times, many of us) can share his concern. All the responses to him are lucid and clear and they reveal a lot and I am amazed at the clarity many of you display.

I was wondering though? Is there a justification for this frustration? Sometimes it seems so to me. I think I understand the throw-back-onto-yourself-replies and they ring true, but I am interested in exploring this frustration and not to "come back" to peace in oneself, letting everything just be as it is. Accepting, or learning to live with the present situation is I believe fundamental to our sanity, but I do think to push our boundaries is good, even if it comes out of frustration.

Let me venture out to risk saying that Julians brilliant "rant" was a call for higher integration among us? That is unknown and unchartered territory I think (as it would be at any time we would attempt something new), and we will have to leave our comfort zone and try to see if we can create something together.

Many times I ponder my own integration but more often than not it seems to take me to a place where I by myself is not enough any more, and in order to proceed I need to join others to "evolve" into something more, bigger, fuller. This, I believe is the source of our frustration sometimes: that we yearn for something beyond ourselves, beyond our personality and private situation. Personally I find a lot of joy and satisfaction through my Aikido training and that is I believe mainly because it is a social event, involving many people trying to harmonize together. Isn't this a step up from soley existing a private individual? Because all the knowledge in the world will not satisfy Julian unless he's able to share that very information with others.

So is our purpose then here, and always, to comprehend eachother, to build up, and to strike upwards to something more. To go beyond, together?

But also, seeing all your beautiful responses here, that is what you guys are already up to?

Re: Second Tier? Get Over Yourself. A Brief Righteous Vent....

http://pelle.gaia.com — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 13:11:34 GMT

Julian:
i must say - when i got interested in wilber and his stage models it was from the place of thinking about psychospiritual development and the therapies and practices that helped to heal certain wounds, resolve certain issues and untangle certain energy blocks so that growth could continue. the reason that i use the centaur example is that i took this idea of the centaur very seriously as representing the integration of mind and body, a certain amount of serious shadow work and an initiation into existential reality that allowed one to forego prerational spiritual fantasies - all this as preparation for grounded adult transrational spirituality.

This is why I got interested in Wilber as well, and the bulk of the work I do on myself is still targeted towards this area. To me healing the shadow and integrating body/mind is far more important than ego transcendence - whatever that means.

Julian:
do you see in that context how someone merely reading a book or an article and liking the idea of being ready for “higher level” spirituality so self-identifying as centauric would be a complete missing of the point?- which is that the map describes territory that we all have to travel in order to develop certain capacities in a healthy way…

To me Wilber-IV was hugely problematic and I would actuallly hesitate to recommend pre-Wilber-V books to a friend. What Ken was doing at that time is that he first listed a nice progression of levels up to Centaur, and then proceed to stack psychic, subtle, causal and non-dual on top of that. Talk about a magnet for confused green spirituality! Oh, let's see, I'm having subtle experiences on and off, that must mean that I'm way past the Centaur! It was truly a theoretical disaster and you can't really blame Ken's readers for being confused.
Luckily Wilber-V corrected all this, and as far as I'm concerned Wilber-V inspires humillity instead of pride.

Julian:
as to the non-dual stuff, well, i feel like it is a hugely problematic aspect of integral and i feel like it is represenative of the problem i am sugesting might be at play, namely the intellectualization of certain experiential insights in a way that gives people conceptual language for someting that is beyond concepts - which sets them up to imagine that non-duality is proof of something it has nothing to do with.

Yotam wrote a brilliant post about this over at the Multiplex. Here is a quote:

"Ken's work certainly accounts for vision logic. And you need vision logic to really understand what some of the concepts he uses are (the lower quadrants, for instance, aperspectival madness, or vision-logic itself). But the way he connects the various conceptual elements of his theory seems kinda formal operational. What he's really talking about are rules, not systems. [They're just sometimes the rules that govern or arise from systems.]

This is in no way meant to be a criticism of him. It's still pretty friggin' brilliant. But the AQAL map is basically just the rules under which things operate, and it's described in terms of one object at a time.

When I thought this up, it was in terms of analogy to "hard" science. Conop science is cooking. It's saying "when you put these things together in this way, that happens." It can only really predict that what happened last time will happen again. Formop science is Gallileo and Newton and such. It gets to the laws which govern what happens, and is better able to extrapolate into the future. Vision-logic science is modern systems theory, neuroscience, meteorology, evolutionary biology, chaos theory, etc. It gets into what happens when the circumstances are too complicated for the rules to be easy to understand, what the limits are of predictability, and what patters will govern the unpredictable. Vision logic science takes a closer look at the stuff that makes formop scientists shrug and say "That stuff is basically the same principles at work, it's just messier," and they discover that there are new principles in the mess.

So for a long time you have con-op consciousness studies. "If you do this, you'll have this experience" kinda stuff. Then some people start integrating various traditions and get at some of the rules at work. Ken is probably the greatest of these, and AQAL seems very comparable to Newton's three laws - simple, clean, and absolutely fundamental to explaining a whole lot of worldy phenomena. And then someday there might be folks looking at the messy parts of consciousness studies and finding patterns in the mess. I think the big messy area left for Integral theory is how the surface structure arises out of the deep structure that Ken describes. How do the orienting generalizations manifest in actual stuff? How do particular myths arise out of the framework of mythic thinking? How does the next rung of the ladder find solutions to the problems of this rung? How do individual consciousnesses combine to create a dominant mode of discourse? What actually causes growth in a given line? So far, the answer seems to be "well, they just do," which is exactly the standard form-op response to a vis-log question."

Julian:
ummmmm your reference to the beneath the surface non-local stuff i am missing here was so left field dude - please use your substantial intelligence to fill me in on what you mean! - or is this just further proof of my lack of second tier open-ness? :O)

What I meant to say is that obviously you as well are participating non-locally, you just don't know it ;)

Julian:
lastly - i humbly apologize for misquoting you - it was late and i was being sloppy.

No problem man, I just had to counter-vent.

Pelle