In any movement, however loosely defined, there is always an orthodoxy and a fringe. The problem is that the orthodoxy needs the fringe to stay alive, to bring in new ideas; but the fringe is a jumbled mess of paranoia and delusion, creativity and insight. It is so hard to differentiate that the orthodox either cannot or will not do it, consciously disavowing it, or unonsciously rejecting it.

It is my contention that integralism isn't what it claims to be: the quintessential manifestation of an actual new wave of human consciousness. Rather, it is that new wave of consciousness--what I prefer to call planetary consciousness--as expressed through a certain mentality, a character type if you will: one that is systemic, analytic, rational-intellectual, and generally masculine-oriented. The problem, of course, is when this character type--while perhaps giving lip service to other types (other spiritual streams, even)--cannot see beyond its own purview, and therefore reduces anything Other into its own system. This is especially endemic with integralism as it tends towards analytic, systemic thinking. The emphasis on integration is itself a kind of philosophical-psychological colonialism, as if one can integrate what is Other without stripping it of its essential character. There is a sense of dis-honoring; an implication that "I can be you," I can integrate the best parts of you, while transcending that which is undesirable. This sort of mechanistic approach is only furthered by computer operating system analogies, or linear formulas of development such as "transcend and include." Or to put it another way, Prepare to be assimilated! Thus spoke the Borg.

There is another element to this, which goes beyond types and my emphasis on honoring different spiritual streams as valid, without being subsumed into the rubric of one, uber-stream (integralism). Lest I be accused of vile relativism, let me make a value judgment. That is the need to evolve cognition, to evolve thinking itself. Integral vision-logic is essentially a furthering of rationalism, yet it still relates with solid mental forms; it plays with them, differentiates and integrates, yet it does not enter into the mental forms and become them, because it views them as static. Where mythic literalism is a static approach to static forms, rationalism is a dynamic approach to static forms, and vision-logic is a more dynamic approach to static forms, but it is not yet a dynamic approach to dynamic forms.  To become this it not only needs a basis in healthy relativism, but it needs to move beyond systemization into what Rudolf Steiner calls Imagination, or imaginative thinking. It needs to move beyond History and into post-historical Myth. This is not to be confused with mythic literalism, but rather mythopoeic, imaginal consciousness-culture. A consciousness space of fluidity, multidimensionality, and vitality--where thinking itself is not static, not a matter of understanding or manipulating solid, static forms, but imaginative, flowing, and living.

2012 is a reality. We might idealize it and see it in the image of our own hopes and fears, a New Age version of the rapture; or we might be cynical and call it a hokey New Age myth, a Boomer re-creation of a "barbaric" Mayan superstition. But the reality of the situation is that 2012 represents a turning point in human history, no, in the history of life on Earth, and thus Earth itself.

There are a lot of good books written on the 2012 phenomena, from Sounds True's anthology, The Mystery of 2012, to Geoff Stray's encyclopedic Beyond 2012, to Daniel Pinchbeck's philosophic-psychedelic 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, to Ervin Laszlo's integral analysis Chaos Point. There are many ways to view "The Mystery of 2012," yet it is virtually undeniable that this time, the years leading up to and around the year 2012, are a catharsis, a breakdown/breakthrough trial of humanity: Are we going to break-through into a new state of being, a holistic consciousness embodying planetary civilization? Or are we going to break-down through doing nothing, through continuing as we have--absorbed in our narcissistic immortality projects (whether of "The American Dream" or "Enlightenment")--and therefore not taking the steps that are required of us to emerge from the human chrysalis?

To quote Kenneth Nash from Joe Henderson's amazing 1973 jazz album, The Elements, "The time is now, the time is only now." Yet the time really is now.

2012 cannot be refuted or denied. One can refute specific interpretations, but one cannot refute what is happening in the world, where we are as a people, culture, civilization, and planet.

I'm a couple years behind, but I just watched Crude Impact which, in my view, is an absolute must to watch. The peak oil crisis is in full-swing now and it is astonishing--and horrifying--that most of us still don't know anything about it.

After watching a sequence about the impact Texaco has had on Ecuador and Shell on Nigeria, my wife and I discussed how people simply don't know, that Americans, by and large, aren't "bad" people--we're just ignorant (like everyone else). We don't realize the impact our way of life has on the world.

I was also struck by what a waste of time most of what passes as "news" is. Even my favored MSBNC, aka "The Obama Station." The focus that is placed on inanities, the glitz and the glare that misdirects--perhaps intentionally, at least on some level--us from the real problems, from the global crisis that is undeniable.

(As I write this, Bill Moyers is on Democracy Now! elegantly crusading for free speech in the media...what a class act).

Anyway, here is the clip for the movie. It doesn't do it justice, but gives you an idea what it is about:

After another round with Gaia's resident anti-New Age crusader, Julian Walker, I thought I'd clarify my view on the veracity of New Age beliefs, in particular the core--and much maligned (and adored)--tenet that "we create our own reality" and its cousin "the law of attraction."

In this context there are two extreme views that are prevalent: One is the stereotypical New Age one that Julian so vociferously attacks (and with a large degree of validity, in my opinion); the other is the more strident materialist one, which is still the dominant worldview (whether implicitly or explicitly), that of Scientific Materialism.

The basic critique of Wilber and other integralists (such as Julian Walker) on the New Age is that it confuses pre-rational narcissistic wish fulfillment with trans-rational realization in a strange hybrid of quantum physics, "power of positive thinking" and delusional visualization, as well as an unhealthy dose of skewed Eastern mysticism. The common adage of "I create my own reality" is held by integralists to be narcissistic and misguided, bordering on the solipsistic.

Now obviously *I* cannot create your reality. I cannot make you want to give me the contents of your wallet (or underpants, for that matter). And as I said to an acquaintance, if The Secret works, how come more New Agers haven't won the lottery? The rationalization would be because they don't truly believe that the money will be theirs, that they aren't evolved enough to truly know and be able to use The Secret (or perhaps they are able to, but choose not to). And so it goes.

(Actually, my main problem with the movie The Secret--aside from its superificality, banality, and the sheer boredom it inspired--was its excessive emphasis on material gain, but that is another matter).

Now the core ideo-cosmological premises of the New Age and Scientific Materialism are very different. We are all familiar with that of Scientific Materialism: We live in a (purely) material universe; there is no deeper purpose, meaning, or metaphysical reality underlying the physical realm; we all live and die and create meaning for ourselves in-between. Mind is epiphenomenal to the brain; anything we experience can be reduced to the bio-physical. And so forth.

The New Age is a smorgasbordian syncretism, so it is hard to pinpoint a single core metaphysic, but there is still a common, mainstream ideology (which is what Julian and Ken Wilber are critical of, seemingly unaware of the vast diversity that is within the umbrella of the New Age--including their own work, in some people's minds).  The New Age view is that, as the bumper-sticker goes, "we are spiritual beings having a human experience." We are spirit beings, reincarnating from life to life, learning lessons, with a higher, deeper purpose. The universe is energetic and primarily of consciousness or spirit; the reality that we can see and touch is an image, or gross manifestation, of a more perfect, spiritual realm.

Now when it comes to things more practical and earthly, the view of Scientific Materialism holds to chance and chaos. If you have cancer, there may be causes, but they are generally out of your control and entirely bio-physical. The view of the New Age is that the cancer is a physical manifestation of a psychospiritual cause, or dis-ease, whether repressed anger, karma from a past life, or demonic beings warring in your soul.

We are faced with a Scylla and Charybdis: Scientific Materialistic chance and chaos, or New Age deterministic metaphysics. In the practical realm, such as in terms of working with disease, is there no alternative? Must we either buy into Scientific Materialism and thereby take the approach of modern science and medicine, or believe that only a shift in our beliefs and conscious intentions can truly heal us?

The most obvious answer when faced with these two extremes, is--in my view--the correct one. As Ken Wilber would say, both are true, both are partial. Our intention has some impact--to what degree, varies--in our life, our "personal reality." But it is not absolute. I cannot control you--I cannot even really control myself. What, I think, folks react against with this New Age ideology are some of its rather unkind implications (see Wilber's Grace and Grit): that because we (supposedly) create our reality, we also create our cancer, we create our suffering, even if seems to be caused by the dictatorship that rules the country we live in or abherent weather patterns.

This is ballyhoo. If I have cancer and I cannot cure it with my mind, it does not (necessarily) mean that I am not evolved enough, not spiritual enough, that I need to experience the cancer to fulfill some past-life requirement or karma. Nor does it mean that I am completely powerless and must submit to the guidance of the Priesthood of Scientific Materialism: the medical doctors. Nor does it mean that my choices and consciousness had no bearing on the causation of my cancer, that my intentions have no bearing on my healing or wellbeing.

(I don't have cancer, by the way).

Where are we left? Well, our intentions matter. The law of attraction has some veracity--how much really depends, and at this point we don't know in any definitive way. But who can deny that the energy that we put out into the world has some impact on what sort of energy we receive in kind? That stress has a major impact on health? That visualization can positively effect our lives? The main problem with the New Age adherents to such beliefs is that they hold them too tightly. The make them into rigid, absolute laws--as if all you have to do is follow the formula and, voila, Ed McMahon comes knocking at your door with a six-foot-long check in hand. We do not, cannot--and probably never will be able to--fully control our reality. Thank the gods for that! (Can you imagine how boring life would be?!). Thankfully more recent waves of the New Age have amended the core tenet slightly to "we co-create our reality," which is too obvious to need to argue.

World culture is a co-creation. The world situation is a co-created reality. It may even be that weather patterns are impacted by forces that we have no idea about, whether collective consciousness, pollution, or the nightmares of the Gaia being.

Yet, yet, yet...we must be practical. We must live our lives based upon what we actually experience, not merely our speculations. But, and this is the key: it isn't an either/or. We cannot live within our speculations and pretend that they are reality, nor can we accept the "hard truth of reality-as-it-is" because that is based on the false assumption that reality-as-it-is is knowable.

To put it another way, it isn't reality or imagination, but both.

Is Olbermann over-reacting? At first I thought so and then I really thought about it. No, he is not over-reacting. Hillary's comment was--even if unintentional--abominable. At first I thought she was just being her usual tactless self; then I realized what the implication was, as Olbermann said: that she was waiting around on the off-chance that something terrible happened, such as an assassination.

Did she really mean it? I honestly don't know. I would hope that she didn't intentionally, consciously mean it. But I am not sure about her subconscious level. She has been campaigning at break-neck speed for months now, probably without a day off. I would think that she is truly, utterly exhausted. What happens when we are exhausted? We start letting stuff out, sometimes stuff that we didn't even realize we thought.

So yeah, the cat is out of the bag. Hillary Clinton's subconscious let us all know why she is still in the race: she is waiting around to see if something terrible happens to Barack Obama.

Here's Olbermann's rant:

Last night I was watching Dan Abrams' show on MSNBC (the "Obama station," as my brother likes to call it), when he read a letter that said something to the effect that it is too bad that so many women are voting for Hillary Clinton simply because she is a woman, that this a sort of "flip-side sexism" (my term) that isn't being talked about. By the way, the letter was written by a woman.

Sure, Hillary has had a raw deal with numerous instances of sexism throughout the campaign. But I know few--if any--women below a certain age that want to see her be president over Obama. She seems to appeal to a very specific (female) demographic: Over 50 and white, Boomers raised in a gender climate that no longer applies, at least not to the same degree. All of the women of my generation and younger (say, 40 and below) that I have spoken with about this are for Obama. They don't feel like Hillary embodies or represents their own experience and vision of femininity and feminism. In David Deida's terms, Hillary is a classic "stage 2" woman: she has transcended the traditional roles of stage 1, yet has not yet re-embraced more archetypal, dare I say "spiritual", feminine energies. She is still struggling to make it in a man's world.

Now certainly all women--and men, I would argue--have benefited from "stage 2 feminism", and without the Hillary Clintons and Geraldine Ferraros we would be much worse off than we are; but isn't it time for something new? Isn't it time for a woman to take the political podium and not need to wear pant suits? Be able to express softer, gentler, forms of femininity? The sad thing is that I'm not sure the American people are quite ready for a more dynamic woman, one who embodies not only Clinton-esque Kali forces, but also softer, compassionate Quan Yin energies. Too many people still associate strength with aggression, which is why Hillary feels like she needs to be able to play ball like the big boys (and has, really, become one herself).

This is only one aspect of why I feel Obama is such a better candidate than Hillary Clinton: he is the 21st century, while she is the latter half of the 20th (and, it could be argued, McCain is the first half). Both Clinton and McCain bear the scars of their eras, their generations, and their cultural milieus. But it is not time to work out the kinks, the traumas and dramas, of the 20th century. It is time to move forward; it is time to explore and embody what it means to live in the 21st century.

We're seeing a quantum leap with Obama and, from what I can tell, his wife. A new consciousness, one that is more planetary, more embracing, and yes, more integral.

In the history of ideas a new idea is often first picked up by a crazy person, then elaborated by an artist who is more interested in its imaginative possibilities than in its literal truth; then it is picked up by a scholar or scientist who has become familiar with the idea through the work of the artist; the savant [scholar or scientist] makes the hitherto crazy idea perfectly acceptable to the multitude, until finally the idea rests as a certainty in the hands of a bureaucracy of pedants. As Thomas Huxley said: "It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions." If we look at the history of the idea of evolution, we see this process at work. First the eccentric lunatic Lord Monboddo claimed that we were all descended from monkeys and that it was only a crafty conspiracy of plucky midwives who cut off all the tails at birth that hid this fact from us. Next the idea of evolution was expressed in a poem by Erasmus Darwin. Then his grandson Charles marshaled the scientific evidence, and now today an army of pedants all over the world works on the bits and pieces of the idea. But when an idea has become so routinized with the pedants, there is a "ricorso" back to stage one and a new generation of crazies shocks us by talking of extra-terrestrial intervention in human evolution. Thus we see a four-stage process: (1) Crazies; (2) Artists; (3) Savants; and (4) Pedants.

~ William Irwin Thompson, from Passages About Earth (1973)

I post this quote because it quite effectively describes my view on what we are seeing with the proliferation of Wilberian Integral Theory: a pedantic routinization by an army who are working on the "bits and pieces of the idea." Wilber, in the above process, would obviously be the savant: He has synthesized the visions and philosophies of numerous "artists" into a relatively palatable and acceptable system, and now we are seeing his followers work out the details with "Integral This" and "Integral That."

I question whether anything new or authentic or living can come out of this (or rather, to what degree anything living can come out of this). This enantiodromia seems like an unavoidability of any kind of movement. Yet the question becomes: Is it possible to lessen, or even bypass, this enantiodromia? To build upon the work Wilber has done without simply reifying and recycling it through Integralization?

I think the key is basically in totally letting go of the Wilberian map, relegating it to one perspective among many others--and thus a sub-perspective of one's own uber-perspective, or "self-perspective gestalt." And thus the emphasis on finding one's own way, creating one's own map or myth. To put it another way, to make it an element within a greater Myth, but not the Myth itself, never the Myth itself.

The Myth itself is the story of humanity. We make it into different forms, as representative and enacting of a specific timespace location within the Myth's unfolding--myths of the Great Myth; a participation and expression of itself. We are all inherently myth-makers, creators in our own right; why would we be satisfied with merely propagating the myth of another?

Myth is not an early level of human development, but an imaginative description of reality in which the known is related to the unknown through a system of correspondences in which mind and matter, self, society, and cosmos are integrally expressed in an esoteric language of poetry and number which is itself a performance of the reality it seeks to describe. Myth expresses the deep correspondence between "the universal grammar" of the mind and the universal grammar of events in spacetime. A hunk of words does not create a language, and a hunk of matter does not create a cosmos. The structures by which and through which man realizes the intellectual resonance between himself and the universe of which he is a part are his mathematical, musical, and verbal creations. Mediating between Nous and Cosmos is the Logos.

~ William Irwin Thompson, from At the Edge of History (1971)

   

After what seems like ages my friend Anand, aka AVG, finally decided to join Gaia, replying to my post What is Spirituality? Here is a response to his comments.

ME: in my mind, spirituality–as used by modern spiritual practitioners–has to do with living deliberately, that is living consciously and intentionally.

ANAND: (Semi Humorously): It seems for modern spiritual practitioners that spirituality implies an endless intellectual debate on what spirituality is. But…
I am curious about  your use of the term consciousness in this context. As a human being in waking consciousness, we are naturally conscious of day to day externalized activities, of some of our thoughts and emotitions. To become 'more' conscious implies a receeding of the consciousness from identification with external aspects of selfhood (I will assume a general belief here in some greater aspect of consciousness than neuronal, as to me spirituality implies such a faith or, more importantly, realization) and a movement into some kind of more internalized awareness without (or with lesser) formation, which would give rise to a greater consciousness, or capacity to watch (and thereby possess greater control) of externalized aspects of selfhood (small s intentional). Is this what you mean in this context? If not, please elaborate.

The basic idea behind my post was to find a kind of "bottom line" to the question of what the word "spirituality" means, especially in the context of 21st century Western civilization. On one hand "spirituality" could mean whatever one wants it to mean, but to differentiate from "normal living," it seems that some degree of intentionality is required. This was the base level I came to: that spirituality is a conscious and deliberate approach to life, with some kind of ethos (now what that ethos is, depends upon the specific form of spirituality). Thus my use of the word "consciously" refers to living with some degree of intentionality and awareness; that is, deciding how one lives, making conscious lifestyle choices, beliefs, etc.

I don't disagree with the gist of what you are saying--that of a movement towards greater consciousness--but neither do I think it is a requirement of spirituality, for it implies directionality and development. A spirituality need not be oriented towards development, a goal of "greater consciousness", "more internalized awareness" etc. Now I personally believe that a 21st century spirituality is almost entirely synonymous with development, with what Andrew Cohen called "evolutionary enlightenment." But I'm not (quite) willing to throw out any iteration of spirituality that doesn't emphasize development.

(Now it could be argued that even "pathless" spiritualities are not with goals, even if it is that--to quote Chogyam Trungpa--"the path is the goal." But my point is that a spirituality does not require a specific goal-oriented mentality, a movement from A to B; it could be focused on simply being A fully and consciously, although this would still be a movement of sorts, from a to A, so to speak).

ANAND: Now, 'living deliberately'…
As my thoughts unfold, the question of freedom arises, as to live truely deliberately would by nature require an essential freedom. The modern (particularly western) idea of freedom seems to me an almost humorous quagmire of deeply immersed identification with certain aspects of existence (body, mind, emotions, etc.). To live deliberately would mean, again, stepping out of this egoic attachment and identification with the ephemeral (not the unreal), and a movement into the essential nature of being. From this True vantage point, a true mastery and control would become possible, but not before. It seems that what people often hope for (hope… I'll save that one for another time) is to remain attached to small egoic identifications and be free simultaneously - clearly an oxymoron, and clearly moronic. So, this 'deliberate intentionality', I feel, is quite a postmodern 'spirituality' (more a selfish (not to be taken in a demeaning sense) egotistic identification with externalized aspects of self), a play and fulfilment of dimly lit aspects of consciousness, and not a true mastery based on transcendence.

Certainly I see the problem with "living deliberately" from an egoic standpoint. Yet you seem to be implying that anything less than this "True vantage point" is inherently egoistic and "moronic." This begs the question: Is life only worth living from this "True vantage point"? And who, exactly, lives fully and entirely from this hypothetical place? An over-emphasis on this "True vantage point" sets up a rather nasty duality, whereas not having some kind of "higher truth" leaves us rutting in our muck. So we're left looking for a balance of transcendence and immanence, ascent and descent.

You also imply that the goal of spirituality is "true mastery and control" which is an assumption that I will not make. I am not saying that self-mastery is not an important aspect of spiritual development--I agree that it is--but that it is secondary, even symptomatic, of spiritual maturation.

As for "living deliberately" I am taking that directly from Thoreau, who used the term in a not dissimilar fashion to your "stepping out of...egoic attachment...into the essential nature of being." Yet Thoreau's emphasis was not (only) on transcendence, but more of an immanent embrace of life--yet with as much consciousness and fullness as was possible. The quote from Walden goes thusly:

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and pubish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion." ~Henry David Thoreau

In a sense is this antithetical to the traditional Eastern approach of transcendental ascent. Thoreau speaks nothing of transcendence of lower aspects of self, of leaving behind suffering, but living fully and whole-heartedly and discovering the truth of life, be it "mean" or "sublime." This emphasis on truth is echoed by these beautiful words of Meister Eckhart:

"What is truth? Truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it, I could keep to the truth and let God go." ~ Meister Eckhart

In other words, to Meister Eckhart, truth is God, and what we know of as "God" is an ideal we have of truth, but not Truth itself.

I think Thoreau is saying something similar when he speaks of "living deliberately." It is living in such a way that one follows truth, no matter what (images of) God one must let go of.  

 

We are one in the noosphere. An older model of consciousness is that "I" am "in here" and "the world" is "out there," including "your thoughts." This has numerous problems with it, namely that it is dualistic, fracturing a totality into, to quote the great modern folk singer Sean Hayes, a thousand tiny pieces.

It is through our thoughts and ideas that we are one. Our emotions are our own, at least our body-based ones. But our thoughts exist in a realm that is shared.

A hallmark of the dawning "Integral Age" is a further habitation of the noosphere. Certainly, it could be said that "all thoughts have already been thought, there is nothing new under the sun." I don't really believe this, but it isn't a matter of "newness," but a greater degree of depth and intimacy within the noosphere. The further we get into the 21st century and beyond, the more we will relize how our disagreements are ideologically-based, that the "Great War" is in the noosphere. Steiner spoke of a time in the future that he called the War of All Against All, that I think is a culmination of this noospheric inhabitation.

It is very important, at the beginning of the Integral Age, to not limit what is possible, and moreso, to not reduce all possible worldviews into One True View, a kind of New Canon. On a very small scale this is what I see as happening with integralism--not only from Wilber and the Integral Institutionalized, but the branch-offs, the side projects, the allies and friends of Wilber and Company. When something like the pre/trans fallacy becomes fact, we've got problems.

It would be an interesting project to gather together a host of integral authors, thinkers, feelers, artists, hooligans, and miscreants, and try to come to some consensus on what "integral" means--on how it differs from formal rationalism or pluralistic relativism; that is, what is new about integralism? And what can we agree upon?

Perhaps one commonality would be that integral consciousness is both open and discriminating. Some might emphasize one over the other; the problem being when the two aren't in balance--we end up falling back into the Scylla and Charybdis of pluralism and rationalism, respectively. That is, without enough openness we fall back into rationalism and judgmentalism; without enough discrimination we fall back into pluralism and wishy-washy-ness.

On a deeper level, openness means being open to the Mystery that already is. It means recognizing that our formal beliefs and thoughts are "empty"; they are like water brushmarks on a chalkboard that fade away quickly. Discrimination means recognizing levels of truth and value, be it contextual or even universal.

Yet the Integral Age is more than that. It is also, like all previous ages that came before--at least within recent historical memory--and furthering of individuation, at least in potential. It is an age of greater autonomy, and thus of greater community--for the more autonomous we become, the more in-communion we can be, consciously and lovingly. Our greater autonomy entails greater Freedom; greater community entails fuller Love. Without both--without Freedom or Love--the Integral Age will be aborted, or perhaps even worse, a stillborn mockery of what it could be.