Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

I'm sure some of you have already received the following announcement via email. You must have if I did, as I thought I was long ago purged from I-I electronic records. Nonetheless, this might be of interest to residents here given the content. And it's FREE! I might even check it out.

Terry Patten said:

Hello,

I was delighted to recently receive an invitation from my colleague Craig Hamilton to participate in what I see as a leading-edge endeavor to evolve our understanding of spirituality in the 21st century.

The Great Integral Awakening: Pioneering a New Spiritual Path is a FREE online teleseminar series where you can interact with today’s leading Integral visionaries—including Ken Wilber, Diane Hamilton, Andrew Cohen, Marc Gafni, Don Beck, Michael Murphy, Genpo Roshi, and, of course, yours truly—in an in-depth exploration of the next stage in humanity’s spiritual development.

Over the next three months, a group will gather each week online and by conference call to explore the burning questions facing all of us who aspire to live an authentic, integrally informed spiritual life in our increasingly chaotic, fast-paced world.

Questions like:

• How does the spiritual path need to evolve to meet the evolutionary challenges and opportunities of our time?

• How can we make sure our own spiritual path and practice is “integral” and informed by both the timeless wisdom of Spirit and an up-to-date understanding of the human condition?

• What does it mean to live a life of passionate evolutionary engagement that integrates our deep longing for spiritual transformation and our desire to improve the world?

• How can we come together with other evolutionaries to begin to create microcosms of evolutionary culture?

• How can we engage our spiritual practice not just as a path to personal growth but as a contribution to the further evolution of humanity, life, and consciousness?

• What can we do to help accelerate the emergence of integral consciousness on Earth?

Each event will explore this set of questions from a unique angle. The discovery of evolution is giving birth to an entirely new spiritual impulse—as well as a new framework for engaging in spiritual practice. Some interviews will ask how the great traditions of the past can be brought up to date and kept relevant to a rapidly changing, increasingly complex world. Some will explore some of the new, integral forms that spirituality is taking, from the emergence of new paths of self-inquiry to the birth of collective enlightenment. These conversations will consider the vital role each of us can now play in creating a more integral—and more enlightened—future for humanity.

There is no charge to participate. All of us who are participating have volunteered our time so that as many of us as possible can come together for this FREE online conversation at the leading edge of Integral consciousness.

CLICK HERE to learn more and register today.

To our evolution,

Terry Patten
www.integralheart.com

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

My invitation was a slightly modified version from Robb The CEO at Integral+Life. I'm a little weathered over this a.m. and bored so I made a thorough investigation of the matter…followed all the links available re: hosts and sponsors etc. It appears that the original came out of Craig Hamilton of host Integral Enlightenment and that all the old Integral/Evolutionary Spirituality hands are donating an hour of one of their regular routines (with Q&A of course) to help launch Hamilton's new endeavor; maybe help energize I+Life (the other host) as well. The sponsors are the usual crew and their interlocking directorates and advisory boards. If these were for-profit corporations the FTC would not be pleased with the high degree of incestuousness here in the Integral Province. However there is no such thing as anti-trust in the manufacturing and retailing of The Spiritual Path.

As opposed to I+Life, Hamilton's new site at Integral Enlightenment is very slick with all kinds of moving parts and interactive chotchkas. He even has a 20 minute guided meditation which is less of a meditation and more of a not very expert download of his dogma–the meditation itself is preceded by 16 minutes of conceptual set-up that made my head hurt. Hamilton is out of Cohen's stable and everyone who signs up for the 14 Great Awakening events gets a free back issue of EnlighteNext, and free e-newsletters from everyone around…and I can hardly wait.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Yes, I see that it is indeed the I-I and Cohen crowd, which I mostly ignore these days. But perhaps I can learn something still from them, perhaps they've changed, grown. We'll see.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Edward,

I admire your open spirit to learn something new from that crowd. However, Steven gets more at the essence of what they're really about. Bruce is posting many interesting things too about language constructs & first-order logic.

In addition to this, Bruce also has responsibilities of welcoming new members and making sure that they feel welcome in their new home here. He still has to earn a living too.

But he, nor anyone else I've observed here lets that need interfere with their extraordinary high-levels of contributing. That is why I consider this space he's created for us via Gaia to be of the first-order.

Many others appear to be flaunting their product as window dressings in the red light district of humanity. Or a pack of wolves, or a wily coyote…

…but they'll never catch the energizer bunny.

[Edit: 6/28/09 9:35PST] Embedded video removed Edward.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Mark, please disembed this video and provide a link instead. I return to work tomorrow and I'd like to access this thread. Thanks.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Y'all cannot believe the satisfaction it brings to see the inbox start to fill already with messages of neo-Darwinian Spiritual transcatagorical Post and Beamish Pre-traditional Good News just because I punched the “yes” link on an invite from Robb The CEO.

I've just got a communique from Cohen that tells me I have a moral obligation to evolve.

God, things will never be the same.

P.S. Thanks, Mark, for the 'toon. Even though its not Sat. a.m. I stayed tuned (so to speak) for a couple of Rocky and Bullwinkle clips. Second season…it doesn't get any better than that…and Dudley too. He's good for more laughs than Cohen.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

gee what would we do? where would we be? without the (good'ol amurcan) hype-meisters and hucksters of mystical wares.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

I sure needed the humor that you guys provided. It felt great to have some hardy laughs too! :-)

Yeah, the hucksters helped us to get here, but they sure as hell aren't goin' global under the current infrastructure. Is there such a thing as an honest huckster? If so, does it matter? I'm totally clueless.

Well, I'm broke and I have to back to my job search again.

P.S. I lost a 'best friend' today but gained a bunch of new ones in here…

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

I received this email and hadn't responded to it yet, but after reading your posts here, I started feeling jealous of all your fab e-missives, so I've signed up as well.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Just this morning I received the numbers and access codes for the first event along with the glad tidings that the Great Awakening has metastasized into Facebook!

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Steven,

I signed up at the last minute for these Great Events or whatever they're billed as, and within a few minutes of perusing the various links that began to come into my inbox I began unsubscribing. But I kept open my ability to tune into the live Sat. events, though they conflict with my listening to live opera broadcasts on the BBC. Today the choice was between Murphy and a double-bill of Purcell's Dido & Aeneas and Handel's Acis & Galatea, and for me that's not even a choice and I thoroughly enjoyed the music.

We get grass fires here given all the field - from my back door to the horizon they're there's nothing but field - and we're allowed here in rural western KY to burn piles (branches and brush, etc.) on our land, with few restrictions. I had a real dumb neighbor a couple of years ago who lit up his burn pile on a windy day despite his wife's protests (or maybe because of them) and I ended up hauling water with him and breathing smoke until the volunteer fire department arrived, which was literally two hillbillies in an old pickup truck in the bed of which was a 55 gallon drum of water and a hand pump. 

Hope the smoke inhalation ain't bad, doesn't sound like it is from your tone.

~ Jim

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

I didn't listen live but went to the site later for a replay. Just hearing it my first response is the following. I'm in agreement that we need to update the spiritual traditions, perhaps even create a new tradition. But there was nothing offered in that light.

What was offered instead was that we need to have an integral practice, one that includes not just meditation but that develops our bodies, emotional lives, civic engagement, etc. Yet we are cautioned not to pick and choose menu style from a variety of practices, yet that's pretty much exactly what ITP is. Although ITP groups typically meet socially one must create one's own ITP from a menu of those practices from the various quadrants that one is most suited or drawn to.

When it comes to the UL quadrant though, for example, what is usually suggested is to pick a mediation tradition and stick with it, do what it says to the letter. Otherwise we water it down and don't get “authentic, radical transformation.” That's where the menu criticism comes in, not to put together a little bit of Buddhism, a little Kabbalah, etc. Yet this was the first criticism of the broadcast, that to imbibe any tradition wholesale, given its limitations, isn't going to do the trick. Since we have to update and even create a new spiritual or meditative tradition that prescription isn't going to work. And each of us might indeed have to pick and choose whatever elements of so-called spiritual practice work for us even if that means a variety of sources.

Another aspect of what Murphy said regarding what is “authentic” is the drill Sargeant mentality of particular folks in any group. They are the ones that say “no, that's not right, you have to do it this way or that.” And that's exactly where this whole notion of “authentic” practice comes in, especially with the Cohenites. Who are they to tell us what is an authentic practice and whether it leads one to transformation? Yet that's an underlying sense I get about this whole event. That it's all these self-described experts at the “leading” edge that are the ones that will create this new evolutonary tradition and that we, to be authentic, will have to pay their exorbitant fees to gain authenticity. Yes, this online event is free, but like any free offer it's a hook to rake in the subscription fees thereafter.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Ken Wilber online this Saturday, details below:

Access Instructions  

To listen live by phone, dial 712-432-8900
Access code: 59618
 
To listen live online, click here.
 
To download the audio after the teleseminar is complete, click here.

*Note: there will be a limited number of spaces on the conference call, so we encourage you to listen online if possible. If you want to make sure you can get through by phone, we encourage you to dial in early.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

I just listened to Wilber's presentation on the teleseminar and therein he reiterated the duality of Absolute and relative realms. There is no question that his interpretation of the two truths comes from that tradition that I've recently mentioned in my last two posts in the “spirituality without faith” thread. I sent in an online question early in the presentation but it was ignored, which question goes something like this:

If there is an Absolute realm that we can know directly via a meditative state, a realm and experience beyond time and conditions, and if on the relative side we interpret state experiences via structures of consciousness, then isn't such an interpretation of the absolute what you call the “myth of the given?”

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Here's the 1st link and here's the 2nd link that Edward referred to.

Wilber has a closed loop system and won't let inputs in (unless it matches the world according to Wilber). My take is that it will impede on his financial profitability.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

However, Robb actively solicits feedback therefore he has an open loop system.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Yes, he does, but if it doesn't fit with his preconceived Wilberoidegral right view then it's ignored.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Everyone changes Edward when facts are presented. Robb isn't an ostrich.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

I tuned out of Wilber's live presentation at the 44 minute mark but may listen to the rest later.

Thanks to Mark for providing links to the two posts you refer to. In the 44 minutes I heard, Wilber certainly sounded, based on his choice of language, like he belongs to what in the first of your posts that Mark links to you refer to as the monist camp. And I agree with you when in that post you say “that in our attempts to go postmetaphysical there is legitimate debate to be worked through on such key issues as the two truths, and which interpretations are more in line with a postmetaphysics and which still cling to subtle, yet nonetheless metaphysical, tenets.”

It's too bad your question wasn't presented for it is a good one. However, I think Wilber might respond to it by saying something like what he says in note 15 to “Excerpt C” at his Shambhala site:

For Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka (the basis of all Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism), the “ultimate,” or “absolutely real,” or “Spirit” cannot be known using that type of knowledge, philosophical reasoning, or any other sort of assertions arising within phenomenological space, whether those assertions are relativistic, pluralistic, or absolutistic. Rather, the ultimate or nondual can only be accessed in a state/stage of consciousness known as nondual (e.g., satori), which itself cannot then be made the basis of any sort of assertion within the phenomenal world. The most we can say is that the ultimate is shunya (or empty) of all qualities– including that one.


In other words, the nondual is a realization that is engaged, enacted, and brought forth by a paradigm or practice of meditation that moves in dimensions not captured by mental paradigms, and when the result of such spiritual paradigms are filtered through the lens of mental paradigms, the result is paradox, regress, absurdity.


Thus, when I say there is “one Subject” grounding all intersubjectivity, that is not a philosophical statement, nor is it an assertion. There is not a “single” Subjectivity or consciousness, not literally, because “single” only makes sense when contrasted with “plural,” and the nondual is neither (nor both, nor this, nor that, indefinitely….)


Why, then, do I even use the notion of “ultimate Subject”? Because those who have engaged the causal-nondual paradigms have found that the realizations brought forth by those paradigms decisively contribute to otherwise insoluble issues such as the mind-body problem and intersubjectivity, and therefore I use such shorthand statements as “consciousness is singular of which the plural is unknown” as a type of constant reminder that other paradigms need to be brought to bear on these issues. Although the “conclusions” of these other paradigms cannot be seen by mental paradigms, they can be seen by integral individuals, who can then directly contemplate their relevance for these issues.


By saying that what he says here is neither a philosophical statement nor an assertion, Wilber makes it impossible to treat it as a topic “of legitimate debate to be worked through.” The end result is that he gets to use all the metaphysical-sounding language he likes while simultaneously asserting that he is post-metaphysical.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

The end result is that he gets to use all the metaphysical-sounding language he likes while simultaneously asserting that he is post-metaphysical.

What is inherently wrong with this? He has tried to include all the disparate voices at the table. How can he privelege one against all others? I don't see him priveleging his own even though he is strong in his opinions like everyone here. In a Sounds True interview he even admitted he could be wrong about all this i.e. his AQAL theory.
PS Re: Buzzcock tunes and Bachelors poetic translation. :-)

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

e,

What is inherently wrong with this? He has tried to include all the disparate voices at the table.

I wouldn't say there's something inherently wrong with Wilber using metaphysical language while simultaneously positioning himself as being “post-metaphysical.” I just find it annoying.

In a response to me below in this thread, Balder observes that Wilber “clearly criticizes other models for their metaphysical commitments and their pre-postmodern formulations, and yet he is putting forward a model which arguably is as 'metaphysical' as those he is critiquing.” I agree with that.

As for Wilber trying to include all the disparate voices at the table, I think there's one sense in which Wilber's inclusivist and another in which he's exclusivist.

He does try to include as much as possible on his map. But he is quite exclusivist and unapologetically elitist (e.g., see his defense of elitism in One Taste) regarding where he locates various individuals, ideas, movements, theories, teachings, and groups, etc., on his map.

I don't have a problem with elitism as Wilber defines it, which is simply as a matter of acknowledging excellence. Nor do I have a problem with ranking per se. But ranking itself can and should be ranked, for not all ranking is equal. Some tomato sorters do a better job sorting tomatoes than others. Someone who tosses perfectly good tomatoes on the compost heap while including a few rotting tomatoes among the good ones is off in their judgment or not paying attention. I would like to know why they tossed a tomato that looks perfectly good to me onto the heap while putting one that appears to me to be rotting among the good ones.

With Wilber, no one gets to ask about his ranking judgments, and if one tries, he changes the subject by insinuating that anyone who questions his ranking judgments must be a “green” who has a pathological aversion to “ranking.” But what is often in question is not ranking itself, but Wilber's judgment. Why, specifically, is this “integral” while this other thing is “merely green,” “merely rational,” “flatland,” or “infected with boomeritis”? What's the criteria? How you feel about something?

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Hey Jim,


I wouldn't say there's something inherently wrong with Wilber using metaphysical language while simultaneously positioning himself as being “post-metaphysical.” I just find it annoying.

In a response to me below in this thread, Balder observes that Wilber “clearly criticizes other models for their metaphysical commitments and their pre-postmodern formulations, and yet he is putting forward a model which arguably is as 'metaphysical' as those he is critiquing.” I agree with that.
 
In another thread you mentioned the leave the raft behind metaphor. Is Wilber still talking in a metaphysical vernacular to those who have not built their raft yet or are still on their journey and in his post-metaphysical lingo talking to those who have crossed to the other shore or close to the shore? How would we know? I think he shook a lot of the metaphysics out with the lattice and some of his recent writings in Integral Spirituality. So is he chronicling his own journey thru his writing or as some here feel, full of hot air?



With Wilber, no one gets to ask about his ranking judgments, and if one tries, he changes the subject by insinuating that anyone who questions his ranking judgments must be a “green” who has a pathological aversion to “ranking.” But what is often in question is not ranking itself, but Wilber's judgment. Why, specifically, is this “integral” while this other thing is “merely green,” “merely rational,” “flatland,” or “infected with boomeritis”? What's the criteria? How you feel about something?


Yeah I really don’t know. I don’t listen to his online chats much to have an opinion about that.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Hey e,

In another thread you mentioned the leave the raft behind metaphor. Is Wilber still talking in a metaphysical vernacular to those who have not built their raft yet or are still on their journey and in his post-metaphysical lingo talking to those who have crossed to the other shore or close to the shore? How would we know? I think he shook a lot of the metaphysics out with the lattice and some of his recent writings in Integral Spirituality. So is he chronicling his own journey thru his writing or as some here feel, full of hot air?


I think you're onto something here. Paul Tillich once said that he spoke in “mythic” religious terms when addressing audiences that hadn't gone beyond a mythic stage, while speaking in post-mythic religious terms when addressing audiences that had. Now imagine if Tillich criticized other theologians for being “mythic” because they sometimes addressed certain audiences in mythic religious terms. And imagine that whenever anyone criticized Tillich for speaking in mythic religious terms, he said that he's not mythic but is simply being inclusive by reaching out to the less developed.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Hey Jim,

Again I am not privy to how all the personalities react to each other etc. I don’t follow them that closely. But I see your point about how that would be annoying.
take it easy

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

And yet in Integral Spirituality he says the following, From Chapter 8, Monological Imperialism and the Myth of the Given:

[The MOG is] “the belief that reality is simply given to me, or that there is a single pregiven world that consciousness delivers to me more or less as it is, instead of a world that is con-structured in various ways before it ever reaches my empirical or phenomenal awareness.

“So consciousness itself is deficient- whether personal or transpersonal, whether pure or not pure, essential or relative, high or low, big mind or small mind, vipassana, bare attention, centering prayer, contemplative awareness-none of them can see these other truths, and that is why Habermas and the postmodernists extensively criticize 'the philosophy of consciousness.'”

So is not the claim that there is a given, unchanging Absolute realm that we directly perceive not in itself an example of this myth? If we include the likes of Habermas and intersubjective, postmetaphysical interpretation, then how do we recontextualize such meditative states? Will their absolute status not be called into question?

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Ha ha, you're right on the money there. Which is why, I think, KW hates it when people de-construct his own POV - which he seems incapable of appreciating.

As long as he keeps insisting, no matter who brings it up to him, that emptiness is really a something, (Brahman in other words, he's stuck in this endless battle.

He hasn't figured out that he's really a Vedantist and not a Buddhist, in the traditional sense.

I would go on the say that “empty” is not something that can be seen in meditation, no matter what the Dali Lama might say.  And if it's experienced, it's not empty.

I wonder what Ken thinks impermanence means? Especially when it is one of Nagarjuna's basic intentions.

The idea that philosophical problems are solved by meditation is a contradiction in terms, in my opinion.  It's the wrong tool for this particular job.

But emptiness pulls the rug out from under Ken and he fights against this like any true believer. And becomes like a mean greenie in the process. Some what like telling a Moslem Imam that God doesn't exsit.

Oh well, what can you do?

Gaddy    

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Short quote from Hayek;

The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess. The economic problem of society is thus not merely a problem of how to allocate “given” resources—if “given” is taken to mean given to a single mind which deliberately solves the problem set by these “data.” It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only these individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality.  Gaddy

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Gaddy, yes, the Brahman-in-Itself.  And don't you know emptiness is absolutely permanent?

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

This is why Wilber, in referencing those traditions from which he gets this absolute-relative duality, mentions Vedanta and Vajrayana. He is not explicit but if we trace his personal Buddhist lineage it is in Nyingma and Sakya through Trungpa. And those traditions, with ample evidence provided by Thakchoe in The Two Truths Debate, are definitely on the Gorampa side of the debate which is truly akin to Vedanta.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

I've been hanging out here for a little over a year and the only thread that comes close to what I have wanted to say…Spirituality without Faith, and as far as I am concerned we can ditch the Spirituality and just stay with “……… without faith.”

For the life of me I have yet to figure out why Jim and I and rarely another tell stories that would show to all that what y'all call spirituality (and while I'd just as soon grind that word to dust under my heel I'll play along and keep it in play) operates like gravity…24 hours a day. If it is not infused within the entire life, if there is any crack within a life into which it disappears, like work, like a relationship, like an addiction, then it isn't worth a dime, it is just show and talk and entertainment between feedings.

Too few tell stories on this pod and that makes it just what I call “poof!” A single, expelled breath. There is nothing much to that.

So what is there? Right now Harris is singing Haggard and Billy Joe Shaver on iTunes. There is a soft tropical thunderstorm coming in from the east, there is a tortoise shell kitten taking a bath on the corner of my desk, M is down the hall doing yoga, there is Carupano rum in the glass. Why would anyone want more? When Harris finishes, I'll click on the Gypsy Kings's La Doña, the ultimate samba…

In 1976 a girl friend gave me a copy of Lawrence LeShan's How to Meditate.

Since the time I was 8 I had an aloof disdain for anything religious or spiritual, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, or all the crap that India had pushed into the world; my old man, who was a cowboy and a known outlaw and who once had been given a license to kill for the county,  put me in charge of his ranch when I was 13 so I  could tell men five times my age what to do.  Somewhere contingency has to find a base, it has to go to ground or it is worthless. There was something within that irrational trust, a true trust, that later made me know the truth of a transmission.

Edward writes: ” So is not the claim that there is a given, unchanging Absolute realm that we directly perceive not in itself an example of this myth? If we include the likes of Habermas and intersubjective, postmetaphysical interpretation, then how do we recontextualize such meditative states? Will their absolute status not be called into question?”

When I learned to meditate there was no metaphysical crap succubus to the process. It was all flesh and blood, here and now. And for the life of me I cannot see why that still cannot hold solidly across the board.

“… how do we recontextualize…”

Why not throw all of it out? We all know nothing is absolute. Why should the neurosis of a spoiled, traumatized, aristocrat from five or six ages back, from one of the most dysfunctional cultures this world has ever seen, determine anything we would consider today?

The first poem I ever memorized had Carl Sandburg telling me that the past was a bucket of ashes. Tradition was a bucket of ashes. We've had its wisdom. It was nothing.

If you cannot create your own, what good are you?

Baez now sings Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. She came in here like a goddess.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Steven,

Sandburg was good for that, “…even the best books / throw 'em at the moon.”

Boiling down “spirituality” through it's early roots, I tend to religate the term to that-which-is-most-in-common (however that happens to be defined by the person speaking), as the early metaphors went: air, breath. Whereas, the psychological, mental worlds of culture(s) break down that one air into the local and personal vernaculars of relational functioning and understanding.  

And 'worship', Sandburg might have agreed, is pretty much just the giving of attention. Religion; what 'binds' you in relational context, whatever that is in your own functioning.

So, with these broad strokes, these clouds of category, I tend to see (you)Steven, and others, who self define beyond the conventional definitions of 'the faithfull' as glaringly spiritual people, basically in touch with the context(s) of their every situated breath.

Traditions only live in people, even if it's only a single generation long.

K

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Steven now sings the Joy of the Highlands. He came in here like a god. Geez, he swings like Christ!

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

“These hammers are held like a small bird—with just sufficient tension to keep them from flying away. They bounce, levitate on their own—boost the lift, stretch up with it, sense the apex, pause there. Throw the hammers down, try not to miss. Hammers of this weight in learned hands are always thrown at the work; softly guided there. They are never swung. The blow, steel against steel, generates power again into the core and that sense could be the entire reason to be right here. Care for the body—that is all there is—keep it straight, tranquil, upright and healthy so it can always feel this sublime and real, this close to the ground and a shout for delight and this fantasy of living forever that is spun up from the source.”
~ Kabiri - Forge Welding - Steven

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Starting work–the first pair of tongs…tools to make tools to make all of the rest.
~ Kabiri Forge Tour - Steven

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

The first poem I ever memorized had Carl Sandburg telling me that the past was a bucket of ashes. Tradition was a bucket of ashes. We've had its wisdom. It was nothing.

If you cannot create your own, what good are you?

I was looking for a mission statement and now we have one.

Thanks Padre Steven!

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Much as I'm loathe to admit it, I am in agreement with Steven on much of this. Maintaining this animal called “spirituality” only reinforces the dichotomy and duality of metaphysical thinking and we should do away with it altogether. I don't think we can recontextualize or redeem Buddhism or any other ism. Given our progression into formal operations and beyond our personal autonomy requires us to create our own individual ways. Granted this makes the task of living together under “civilization” all the harder, as we have to coordinate not just systems and generalizations, and not just local but idiosyncratic differences. But that is the challenge inherent in our development, that things get more complex and challenging, and as individuals we have to be up to that challenge and do it ourselves.

This is where I do think meditation or similar practice helps in this task. It takes us back to our more primitive bodies and feelings and connects us to those things we all have in common, our humanity and not our divinity. And in so doing we are more apt to be open to allowing for individual expression within this commonality. Yes, we each work within brush and canvas (or anvil and metal, or dance and floor) but we each create our own personal, artistic expression within those common parameters. No two of us are exactly alike, nor are we exactly different. Which of course is yet another expression of the mutual, intertwining, “postmetaphysical” relation of the two truths.

You'll note how Hamilton though calls such personal responsibility the boomeritis smorgasboard approach, as he promotes the “let's fix the traditional” approvach within this new integral context. That's because the traditional approach still gives the power to the guru, the leader, who decides what is the true, absolute and authentic,  transformative experience. Which is still being interpreted by Wilber, Cohen and Hamilton in this dualistic, metaphysical way. They want to be the forfront of human evolution, the deciders of what is Real and True to control the rest of us, and to charge the rest of us outrageous fees to get it. It really is the same old “isms” that want power and control to feed giant egos. So ironic, that this absolute experience is supposed to be beyond ego when it really is ego gone wild.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Edward,
That was one of the finest posts you have written on this pod. I would think that even if we were in our usual state of disagreement.

S.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Steven, Edward…
These last two posts are why i keep 'touching' into this virtual community. Eloquent, ribald, sounds-true-to my-mental-ear and simply down right human. Thanks! 

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

I agree with you Edward & Steven.
Your posts reminded me of…

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Yes, great posts, Edward and Steven.

I haven't thought of myself as “spiritual” for some time. I don't think of myself as a “spiritual anarchist” (or any other kind of “ist”) either, because that still involves an application of the label “spiritual” to oneself. I don't consider myself “unspiritual” either. Like Popeye, I yam what I yam.

Steven writes: “It was all flesh and blood, here and now. And for the life of me I cannot see why that still cannot hold solidly across the board.”

Amen.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

I address this to Steven and to you all, good people in this thread.

Honorable Steven says: ´´ Since the time I was 8 I had an aloof disdain for anything religious or spiritual, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, or all the crap that India had pushed into the world´´.

Well, objection you honor!  The spiritual and religious, rivers of humanity which you mention above,  have value - as well as crap.  The crap floats round concepts and dictates often used to frighten citizens and little children into flock behavior and social cohesion.

Example: As you know, I swore that I would not return to India after my last visit there, half a dozen years ago or so,  when in the Ayurvedic clinic where I was staying, wives in families that had accompanied someone having treatment, had to stand behind their fully-abled mother-in-law (who has just come along  for the ride) so as to cut the food in her plate into bite-size pieces and stood there till she was done with her meal.  Then do a similar service standing behind the husband.  My objections to such methodic submissiveness were  answered with: it´s the dharma, righteous behavior, religion.  Widows were told that if they re-married they would be re-born as lepers.  My own welcome to Indian homes was withdrawn when it was known that I had asked for a divorce from my then husband – tainted for life I was - through their veils.  I have been in Yoga for 33 years now and to more Ashrams than I have fingers.   I still do rituals of worship, hatha yoga and chanting.  They work for me.  Because I have found, as have countless others, that  underneath all the garbage piled on these ´dharmas´-  lie treasures to be harvested.  Techniques for quieting the mind so as to sense what´s there behind the chatter.  Making the body supple and alive with right exercise, food, thoughts (known to those cultures at least 4000 years before ´Integral´C.D.´s were packaged for sale), worshiping archetypal forces externally, so as to enliven them within etc.

 Not all of us were graced with growing up under the boundless skies of Wyoming to sense the possibility off our inner bounty in our infancy, dear one.  Most of us have had to wade our way through stinky flotsam so as to let some beneficial moisture in.  But of course, in my opinion, once we sip the good drops in any of these waters, it´s urgent to get away from them before the rest sickens us for good.

You also say, ´Why should the neurosis of a spoiled, traumatized, aristocrat from five or six ages back, from one of the most dysfunctional cultures this world has ever seen, determine anything we would consider today?´

I´ve often told you my own take on Buddha´s predicament.  Imagine: a prince trapped into following his father´s destiny of luxurious confinement within palatial walls, trailed by inane chatter and brown-nosing of court-hangers-on.  A bride chosen for him and a baby born.  His shackles got so tight that finally one night (and good for him) he jumps over the palace walls and is gone.  His shield against attacks and retrievals from such escape was beautiful and often used by those trapped in impossible destinies:  the spiritual call!  the  search for the end of human suffering for the benefit of all sentient beings!  the life of an ascetic in free open jungles!  Anything could be better than clown about in the silks and crowns of that suffocating little palace.  Prince Charles wishes he had the guts to do something like that to Buckingham! It is most likely that once young prince Siddhartha, the Buddha, started on his ascetic path, his inner experiences became deep and led to some of his treasured teachings. He started out by escaping his dysfunctional culture in an act of will and search for freedom.   His luminosity would darken if he knew that his teachings were used for yet another dysfunctional culture. 

As I said, this is my take.  Aside from shredding here any possible visas to  India, Tibet or  invitations to dinner with members of this good Gaia group,  I want to make clear  that  on saddles free of  all spiritual and religious baggage– or no saddles at all – I´d ride off with you under any starry skies above.

Anyone here staying fenced in?    

M.     

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

A bow to you, honorable Lionza.

In the teleseminar yesterday KW insisted that the three absolute requirements were The Buddha, the sangha, and the Dharma.

This morning over coffee you said, “He was right, you do need The Buddha, the sangha, and the Dharma…until you don't.”

Wise woman.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

“……… without faith.”
 
It's only a word Steven. Steven do you see any irony in the fact that you define yourself mostly in terms of being against others views?  That is you wish to deny others their personal ontological beliefs and in so doing solidify your own rather large one. And then talking as if that actually means something. I am not attacking you but I thought you considered yourself a nihilist? Guess you still have a ways to go.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Guess you still have a ways to go…
e

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Sorry Mark, you won’t see me twittering every half baked thought I have ever had onto the internet. I have no interest in making a name for myself. Anonymity suits me just fine.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

e,

That is you wish to deny others their personal ontological beliefs…

You are free to believe what you want, I would never deny anyone that right.

and in so doing solidify your own rather large one.

I am interested to know what you think that one is.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Steven please…tell me you are not a legend in your own mind.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Sorry Mark, you won’t see me twittering every half baked thought I have ever had onto the internet. I have no interest in making a name for myself. Anonymity suits me just fine.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

e, you wrote:

Steven please…tell me you are not a legend in your own mind.

très cute, très cute…for an engineer. Do you ever write anything original?

Steven please…tell me you are not a legend in your own mind.

no more than you, no more than anyone else…

Steven please…tell me you are not a legend in your own mind.

dont' fuck with me, answer the question or or crawl under the porch.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Steven: dont' fuck with me, answer the question or or crawl under the porch.
 
 
Look grandpa…relax. I am just pointing out the obvious to you. You claim to be this great nihilist from way back when you rode horses with John Wayne but you still are enamored with the reflection staring back at you in the mirror.  So sorry to have tried to wake you. Here’s your blanket and Jack. I’ll leave you to nap on the porch. Shhh….that’s it….your a great big man Steven….shhh….

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

e,
I figured you were headed in this direction…I've looked at what you show and what you hide.

So this circles me back to what I was interested to know before: you see, “but you still are enamored with the reflection staring back at you in the mirror” does not necessarily follow with any meaning at all from “You claim to be this great nihilist from way back” unless there is a given thrown in between the two. And you seem to think the reader should know what it is. What are you hiding behind the “but”?

I know how I come across. It is in part cultivated because passions for living hard are so scarce in the Integral Province it gives the entire integral territory an aura of anemia that might be fatal to it. I know by what you hide that you recognize the qualities of theater that are steeped through and through a public forum like this. I am sure you are familiar with the artistic term “negative space,” that which is not shown. For example most of the titles around Gaia are both positive space and positive theater, they have a forthright significance that helps to define a role. On the other hand 'e' is neutral, it is close to negative space, but it isn't negative theater. Negative space is as defining of the object, the person, the role as positive space.

e is your role.

Those who voluntarily assume a role and actively participate in a forum like this generally want to be remembered. If they do not care about standing out in public then we never know who they are (were). We, however, know you are here, you are remembered. You are a self-defined legend in your own right. And that is why I wrote before, ”no more than you, no more than anyone else.”

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

I've been enjoying this discussion as well.

I have missed both teleconferences so far, but I've listened to portions of them afterwards.  While this is perhaps attributable to the fact that this is a popular, introductory event, Wilber's discussion was largely repetitious of material already presented in dozens of other places, and, IMO, did not seem to reflect the sort of 'postmetaphysical' understanding that he called for in Integral Spirituality. 

Regarding the 'smorgasbord' approach, I do think that it can be problematic – there is a rather indulgent, flighty, pick-and-choose sort of practice-fetishism in New Age spirituality.  In my case, after a rejection of tradition and an independent, self-directed search for many years, I found there was something limited in my self-reliance and came to see that there was value in tradition and spiritual community.  I did not return to these things as a 'follower' or 'believer,' in a conventional sense; but I came to respect them, at least, as repositories and (in some cases) living currents of collective human inquiry and practical wisdom. 

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Hi Balder.

While this is perhaps attributable to the fact that this is a popular, introductory event, Wilber's discussion was largely repetitious of material already presented in dozens of other places, and, IMO, did not seem to reflect the sort of 'postmetaphysical' understanding that he called for in Integral Spirituality.


Having read “popular, introductory” material by Stephen Batchelor and Owen Flanagan that reflected a post-metaphysical understanding, I wonder why Wilber couldn't do the same in a popular, introductory event. My guess is that despite his call for a post-metaphysical understanding, he has some metaphysical commitments, and I see nothing wrong with that. Based on things he's said about evolution and the hard problem over the years, Wilber clearly has metaphysical commitments, and I see no reason why he shouldn't. (I don't see why anyone should make an ideal out of being post-metaphysical if being post-metaphysical means having no opinions on any metaphysical questions at all, such as questions about causation, ontology, free will, possibility and necessity, etc. I think we need to think metaphysically to some degree in order to inform certain ethical medical choices, such as abortion and the removal of people in persistent vegetative states from life support.)

Regarding the smorgasbord approach and tradition, I think that we can find some pretty individuated, awake people in traditional and non-traditional spiritual communities, as well as on independent, self-directed paths who are not limited by their present “spiritual choices,” and we can find people in those places who may be limited by their choices in the sense in which you found something limited in your self-reliance at one point.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Jim,

Having read “popular, introductory” material by Stephen Batchelor and Owen Flanagan that reflected a post-metaphysical understanding, I wonder why Wilber couldn't do the same in a popular, introductory event.

I don't see why he couldn't either.  I can see a couple reasons why he would take the approach he did:  1) as an attempt to recruit more members, a metaphysical approach, initially, will be more generally appealing to people (who are interested in spirituality); 2) he actually does have a number of metaphysical commitments that he is unwilling to surrender or call into question.

My guess is that despite his call for a post-metaphysical understanding, he has some metaphysical commitments, and I see nothing wrong with that.

I don't have a problem with the fact that he might have certain metaphysical commitments, in itself.  My concern is more with the apparent conflict between his rhetoric and his beliefs, since he clearly criticizes other models for their metaphysical commitments and their pre-postmodern formulations, and yet he is putting forward a model which arguably is as “metaphysical” as those he is critiquing.

I don't see why anyone should make an ideal out of being post-metaphysical if being post-metaphysical means having no opinions on any metaphysical questions at all, such as questions about causation, ontology, free will, possibility and necessity, etc. I think we need to think metaphysically to some degree in order to inform certain ethical medical choices, such as abortion and the removal of people in persistent vegetative states from life support.

Well, we've debated and discussed just what 'postmetaphysical' means in a number of different threads, and it is clear there are a number of different readings of the term.  I also do not have a problem with having an opinion about metaphysical questions (ontology, free will, etc); my concern is with how we hold and represent these opinions – whether we exempt certain elements of our systems from historicity and represent them as timelessly established facts, for instance.

Regarding the smorgasbord approach and tradition, I think that we can find some pretty individuated, awake people in traditional and non-traditional spiritual communities, as well as on independent, self-directed paths who are not limited by their present “spiritual choices,” and we can find people in those places who may be limited by their choices in the sense in which you found something limited in your self-reliance at one point.

Yeah, my point is simply that I don't see this as an either/or thing.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

“I don't see why he couldn't either.  I can see a couple reasons why he would take the approach he did:  1) as an attempt to recruit more members, a metaphysical approach, initially, will be more generally appealing to people (who are interested in spirituality); 2) he actually does have a number of metaphysical commitments that he is unwilling to surrender or call into question.”

Right Bruce.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

I am once again lost for words after reading through a thread in this group, but as I always read through, it is such a colorful experience that maybe I'll try to scrape together some of my trailing thoughts.

I don't know if I really understand the whole doing away with spirituality lingo… is that really possible?  I only really wonder this because I usually refer to myself as spiritual but not religious.  I don't affiliate myself with any group or belief… I kind of just think of spirituality, for me, as transforming consciously.  Awareness!

Which anyway leads me to my second point.  In this group I come across a really good grounded sense of criticism toward the integral camp, criticism that I have had and often still share.  But I think something that is often missed, and probably not agreed upon, is the primal intention behind Wilber's model.  I personally think it has something to do with ending people's suffering.. or at least help with their and the world's suffering as oppose to an intention based on an inflated ego syndrome.  Not saying there isn't any inflated ego syndrome going around in the shadows, but yeah not as the basis of the model and its promotion.

Anyway this thread was about the teleseminar.  I took in the, Wilber, convo this passed saturday…. same old same old.  Definitely nothing new.  I was hoping for a good question answer period…something… nope!!  Understandable though…

YOu all Have a good day!

Seth

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

“In this group I come across a really good grounded sense of criticism toward the integral camp, criticism that I have had and often still share.  But I think something that is often missed, and probably not agreed upon, is the primal intention behind Wilber's model.”

…primal intention behind Wilber's model.

Thank you Coach Seth! You gave us exactly what we needed!

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Hi, Seth,

I'm not sure if it's necessary or helpful to do away with the term, 'spirituality,' in general, but I've been looking at my own relationship to the term recently and thinking about alternatives that are maybe closer to my current views.  To the extent that 'spirituality' implies metaphysical entities, like a disembodied 'spirit,' I think it is of questionable value in a postmetaphysical approach; but there are other ways the term may be used, as you suggested.  For some, 'spirit' refers more to flowing, responsive 'meaning' – as when we speak of the spirit rather than the letter of the law.  That might be a more useful reading. 

In thinking about these questions, while I have also identified myself generally as 'spiritual,' I see I am just as comfortable thinking of my approach simply as an approach, a way of life, a vision or view.  The word 'spiritual' isn't a necessary modifier.

You said:   In this group I come across a really good grounded sense of criticism toward the integral camp, criticism that I have had and often still share.  But I think something that is often missed, and probably not agreed upon, is the primal intention behind Wilber's model.  I personally think it has something to do with ending people's suffering.. or at least help with their and the world's suffering as oppose to an intention based on an inflated ego syndrome.  Not saying there isn't any inflated ego syndrome going around in the shadows, but yeah not as the basis of the model and its promotion.
A lot of the posts on this forum do present criticisms of Wilber's work in one way or another.  While sometimes I think some of the discussions here get close to Wilber-bashing, which I do not support, I agree with a lot of the criticisms that are expressed here, and of course I have expressed my own.  On the other hand, though, this forum was and is inspired, in large part (though not exclusively), by Wilber's work.  I still see value in his project, and I agree that there is much more to it than shadowy ego-inflation and self-promotion.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

I appreciate the reply, Bruce.

Inwardly I am the same.  I have no qualms with seeing the way I am as simply an approach or way of life.  Ok, so none of you want to extinguish the term “spirituality” a.k.a. “spiritual” from existence.  I just misread what, Steven, was saying in one of his posts above.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Mike Jay said something interesting in the Yahoo Adult Development forum, in response to everyone talking about the efficacy of their models, that I think is relevant to this thread: 
 
Working around the world as I do with executives for more than 21 years and being someone who knows a little about cognitive development, I've witnessed far fewer executives make these leaps stratum to stratum with any kind of intervention, or not…and so much of what I read here portends that with some kind of special “grail”* that each of us is selling, that people will develop through these levels of cognition.
 
After playing on that train for a number of years, i am much less certain that any intervention, until (a student with special attributes) the student isn't ready is at all helpful and in most cases, I see their espoused (newly developed) theories writing checks they can't cash in reality.
 
I do know something for certain…and that is I am not certain. 
 
* [I liked the grail reference in light of my own spelling change of integral to intergraal in this thread.]

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

“…writing checks they can't cash in reality.”

All the money I have in the world is in my checking account.
Balance: $50.22

I have 20 resumes submitted where virtually all the hiring managers ask the wrong questions in their job postings.  Nobody asks what I can really do for them. As Bruce points out, they use the wrong language for determining a candidate's qualifications. Or perhaps their working environment is a prison, and if so, their language is correct.

So I am going to see if I can get some minimum wage job. The stress on my wife is almost intolerable (On Paralyzing Fear & Platonic love…). She suggested that I call Express Employment Professionals and I'm going to follow her advice.

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

I responded to Corey's post “Thanks!”, with this title, ”The Future of Spirituality”.

In the body, I posted this,

“I would be extremely embarrassed and ashamed to make such a statement.”

My post was deleted within seconds by someone at IL. It's not easy cleaning up after kids…

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

They obviously don't want me to clean at their school:

Re: Great Integral Awakening, free online teleseminar

I received this update in the email today:

“The series continues this Saturday with spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen discussing “Evolutionary Enlightenment: Transformative Spirituality for the 21st Century.” Andrew is the founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning EnlightenNext magazine, and guiding visionary of the global EnlightenNext organization. He is one of today's true spiritual pioneers who has given birth to an authentic, original spiritual teaching that seamlessly integrates the timeless wisdom of enlightenment with our newfound understanding of evolution. In this teleseminar, we'll be looking at how enlightenment itself is evolving along with the rest of the cosmos, and how we can bring our lives into alignment with what he calls “the evolutionary impulse.” 
 

Join us July 18th for

Evolutionary Enlightenment:  Transformative Spirituality for the 21st Century

With Andrew Cohen



How does profound development at the level of consciousness directly relate to genuine transformation at a cultural level? How has enlightenment evolved along with everything else? Andrew Cohen is a spiritual and cultural pioneer who has been charting the terrain of the “new enlightenment” for over two decades. In this teleseminar, through his engaged approach to spiritual inquiry, Cohen will illuminate how our very understanding of nondual awakening evolves over time as we do, and how its significance takes on new dimensions and import as the conditions of our world become ever more complex. Originator of Evolutionary Enlightenment, a contemporary spiritual and philosophical teaching, Cohen has mapped a comprehensive framework for the development of our higher human potentials. Central to this teaching is our awakening to an understanding and experiential recognition of the evolutionary impulse as the animating life-force within us. By becoming ever more conscious of this force, and aligning ourselves to it, we can become powerful instruments for human transformation, starting at the most fundamental level–the level of consciousness itself.”