Gaia: The Integral Pod - Changing the World - Sacred Valley Healing Center

Re: Sacred Valley Healing Center

http://aqalicious.gaia.com — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:56:00 GMT

The Sacred Valley Sangha is looking into having a private forum to help people stay connected and coordinate activities, and may create a public forum as well - so we need to choose a social networking host. At this point I favor Gaia, but Ning has also been strongly suggested as a possibility.

My current task is to evaluate the pluses and minuses of each site (in terms of social and technical factors), and report on my findings; subsequently a decision will be made as to which site to use.

Who would like to volunteer to help me explore and evaluate Ning, and compare and contrast it with Gaia for the purposes of hosting a virtual community to support Sacred Valley Sangha?

My goal is to create an unbiased - or at least "transparent" bias - evaluation. As I said I favor Gaia, but the decision will not be solely up to me, and if there are compelling reasons to go with Ning I will be honest about that.

Regardless of what choice is made, the exploration itself will give a different perspective on Gaia, and may generate insight into how an already great site may be made even better!

So who wants to join the Away Team? :) I'll create an exploratory Ning node shortly and post a link.

spiral out,
Arthur

Re: Sacred Valley Healing Center

http://aqalicious.gaia.com — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:24:15 GMT

In a parallel integral universe (well, forum anyway), in a thread eerily similar to this one, someone shared the following:

Castel:
this is interesting. with some good to and fro in the comments from those skeptical and disenchanted with the scene, and others in support :

http://www.realitysandwich.com/ayahuasca_monologues

I've only skimmed some of the comments so far, but Castel's assessment appears to be accurate. I notice someone there linked to video material from the first Ayahuasca conference as well.

It's great that Integral Naked guest Alex Grey will be at the 2nd Ayahuasca Monologues conference. I have enjoyed his dialogs and other material at Integral Naked, and I loved the book he co-edited with Alan Hunt Badiner, Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics - it's full of stunning artwork and a well-balanced array of essays, interviews etc. on the topic. He would be a fantastic person to get involved with the Sacred Valley Healing Center.

It'll be next week sometime before I have a chance to really check this material out, but I'm looking forward to it.

cheers,
Arthur

Sacred Valley Healing Center

http://aqalicious.gaia.com — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:21:36 GMT

In 2003 I went to Peru to experience the shamanic plant medicine Ayahuasca; around the same time I discovered Integral Naked and got seriously interested in the integral worldview. I know from my own experience that Ayahuasca is a powerful, sacred medicine with great potential for shadow work, spiritual awakening, and deep healing - and that an integral approach is needed to properly contextualize it and bring out its full potential. For the past five years I've wanted to help bring those two worlds together.

Well, now it's happening.

The man who led the ceremonies in 2003, Diego Palma, is creating a healing center in Peru which will take an integral approach to healing and spirituality: Sacred Valley Healing Center will offer "a living synthesis of shamanic plant medicines with eastern spirituality and western therapeutic techniques." Several people involved in the project are enthusiastic about Ken Wilber's work, and the project overview explicitly mentions Ken and an integral approach.

The four elements of the center are:

Addiction rehabilitation program for women
Spiritual retreat center
Psychotropic medicine plant research facilities
Community living near the center

My wife Liz and I contacted the healing center as soon as we heard about it and joined the volunteer staff.

If you'd like to know more, please visit the Sacred Valley Healing Center website. The project is still in the early stages but things are progressing rapidly and you are invited to help create this unique integral healing center.

To anticipate a question that's likely to come up at some point: the two sacred medicines that will be used there - San Pedro and Ayahuasca - have a long, venerable history in that part of the world, and are unambiguously legal to use in spiritual and healing contexts in Peru.

namaste,

Arthur