Gaia Community: MrTeacup's Blog

Integral Conference Update

http://mrteacup.gaia.com — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:00:18 GMT

A couple of things came up in yesterday's opening ceremony:

The new book Integral Life Practice will be available in the JFKU bookstore, a month before it shows up in stores!
Robb will be talking about integrallife.com tonight - and probably demoing it? I got a chance to meet with Robb and see a demo, and I'm impressed with it. As a way of educating people about AQAL and Integral Theory, it's head and shoulders above IN and ISC. It is missing some of the deep community features that I know some people are hoping for, at least in it's initial release. It has some unique features to ecourage self-reflection and engagement with the material, and it will be interested in seeing how that plays out.
Even if you couldn't make it to the conference, you'll be able to buy MP3 recordings, I think they said next Thursday. $150 for 130 hours of lectures, and they will be shipping them out in 4 weeks.
That's good for me because I arrived late and I'm missing Terry Patten's Integral Life Practice: The Tantric Harmonics of the Four Core Modules :(. Instead, I'm sitting outside the room blogging, and waiting for Steve McIntosh's The Project for Integral World Government: Integral Politics and Democratic Global Law.

~MrTC

Tags: itc

On Synchronicity

http://mrteacup.gaia.com — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:44:43 GMT

Reading "The Power of Coincidence" from Psychology Today:

One thing that always strikes me about claims of synchronicity is how content-free they are. From the article, Elizabeth Targ died at 11:11pm, 111 days after she was diagnosed. I have a friend who sees the sequence 0-1-2-3 everywhere she goes. Accepting for a moment that any of these examples are more than just coincidences, that they are meaningful: what, in the end, do they mean?

Jung believed the existence of synchronicity demonstrated the validity of the collective unconscious, but it could be used to support virtually any spiritual, religious, metaphysical or psychological theory - UFOs, law of attraction, I Ching, faith healing, etc. Since we still need other methods to validate our theories, its hard to see what synchronicity offers here.

On a more personal level, it's claimed that synchronicity is a signpost that indicates when one's actions are aligned with God's plan - a kind of cosmic seal of approval. If so, I would expect people who frequently experience synchronicity to be more successful, more effective, more creative, more world-changing and more spiritual (however you define that) than most people. A person like this might even be a modern-day prophet and I would think that these individuals would be able to make enormous strides in solving the many crises that our world faces today.

As far as I can tell, this is not the case. In the end, if synchronicity is real, the thing that's most extraordinary is how much like the rest of us its adherents are.

Tags: synchronicity

God is a DJ

http://mrteacup.gaia.com — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:15:05 GMT

I always wondered what all those extra arms were for.

Tags:

Stealing God

http://mrteacup.gaia.com — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 23:47:33 GMT

We build our churches on the holy sites of other cultures and install our own gods. Notre Dame sits on a holy Druid site. "Ours is the true God," we say by doing so. But this usurpation is also a kind of acknowledgement, a perverse honoring of the more ancient culture: a holy site is a holy site, just as a holy day is a holy day. In the same way, our scientific view of the origins of life overlies ancient creation myths. That is why I feel we must use the God word, for my hope is to honorably steal its aura to authorize the sacredness of the creativity in nature. May we find the creativity in nature sacred whether we are atheists or believers in a God who breathed life into this universe of ceaseless creativity.

- Stuart Kauffman, Reinventing the Sacred

Tags: science, religion, atheism, sacredness

Freedom vs Community

http://mrteacup.gaia.com — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 03:50:47 GMT

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tags: quotes, emerson

Integral Review

http://mrteacup.gaia.com — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 22:04:15 GMT

A new edition of Integral Review is out. Highlights:

A reflection on a retreat with Adyashanti - the author has some critical things to say about Adyashanti, but the piece is positive overall. My favorite part is when Adyashanti says that his retreats tripled in size when he changed his name from Steven Gray!
A review of the novel The Seeker Academy by L.D. Gussin. The story follows Grace Hudson, spiritual seeker, on her journey through various New Age retreats and workshops, encountering "narcissism, spiritual elitism and emotional dysfunction". Gussin also gets into some of the pre-rational beliefs, and advocates a return to reason and critical thinking in spirituality. This is not something you hear often enough, so it's going on my reading list. The book is not just a slam against New Age though: "despite these and other shortcomings, this seeking can be of value, that there is truth to be found."

One thing about the book that is fascinating and also kind of sad is that the author sent review copies to a bunch of spiritual magazines and only one printed a review. The author addresses this on his blog in a three part series - yes, three parts complaining about a lack of reviews. On one hand, this seems excessive and a bit whiny - there's so many books out there now, it's hard to get noticed, it's not a conspiracy to supress your genius, etc. But on the other hand, it would not surprise me that this also speaks to an unwillingness on the part of spiritual leaders to accept this very valid critique.

Tags: spirituality, integral, retreats, adyashanti, integral review

Mass Media Death Watch

http://mrteacup.gaia.com — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:54:48 GMT

In 1993, Michael Crichton predicted the death of the mass media. It looks like his prediction is coming true.

Tags: blogs, media

What is Reductionism Anyway?

http://mrteacup.gaia.com — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 07:50:41 GMT

If you've ever wondered what people mean when they say reductionism, read this interview with Stuart Kauffman in New Scientist.

Perhaps the purest and simplest version of reductionism was voiced in the early 19th century by the mathematician Simon Pierre Laplace. He envisioned a "demon" - an intelligence which, if supplied with all the current positions and velocities of all the particles in the universe, could, using Newton's laws, compute the entire future and past of the universe.

Tags: reductionism, science

Beyond Reductionism

http://mrteacup.gaia.com — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 07:46:54 GMT

Stuart Kauffman on Beyond Reductionism

Tags: atheism, religion, complexity

Fear and Shame in Buddhism

http://mrteacup.gaia.com — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 05:23:43 GMT

Shame plays a huge role in our psyche, and it's a major area of concern in therapy. It seems like I'm constantly hearing about how our Western culture plays a huge role in making us feel shame and guilt, and I guess the unspoken suggestion is that Eastern cultures or Buddhist cultures don't have this, or at least not as much. There's an element of truth to this. Its true that some parts of our culture - the religious, traditional part - emphasizes sin and morality, guilt and shame. But we'd have to have an absurdly romanticized and distorted view of Buddhism to say that the same is not true in those cultures too.

In general, Buddhism seems to take a generally positive few of shame, seeing it as the basis for morality and right conduct. The sutras speak of Hiri (shame) and Ottappa (fear), and the Buddha says that these two states protect the world.

"Hiri has a direct connection one’s own virtues and integrity, while ottappa is also linked to the virtues and good name of one’s parents, teachers, relatives and friends."

This is a profoundly perspective than the modern, secular Western viewpoint, and has much more in common with traditional Christians such as Mormons and Southern Baptists. It's easy to whitewash Buddhist teachings and say "Well, they couldn't have meant the same thing as Christians!" But I think they did. Consider this:

The texts give the example of two iron balls. One is smeared with excrement and the other is red hot. A person offered these two iron balls refused the first because it is disgusting and rejects the second out of fear of being burned. Not taking the ball smeared with excrement is like the quality of hiri or shame in one’s mind. One finds immorality disgusting when one compares it with integrity. Not taking the hot ball is like ottappa, the fear of committing an unwholesome act out of fear of the kammic consequences. One knows that one might end up in hell or in states of misery. Thus one avoids the ten types of unwholesome behavior as if they were these two iron balls.

Of course, the Buddha did not think that all shame and guilt was good. He listed 4 areas where shame was not good: one should not feel shame in working at a job; in learning from a teacher; in eating food; or having sex with one's husband or wife. But the important point here is that these are considered "imitation shame", unlike the genuine article which is considered not only good, but absolutely essentially to the Noble Eightfold Path.

Out of these simple observations, we find a few important ideas:

We shouldn't whitewash traditional Buddhist teachings. Eastern cultures in general place an extremely high value on shame and guilt, and there is no doubt that many in Eastern cultures regard Western liberation from shame as obscene.
Perhaps they have a point. It may well be the case that shame for one's immoral actions is a good thing, and we are too quick to discard it. Truth, integrity, morality and character might be important parts of spiritual life.
On the other hand, the kind of shame that Buddhism recommends seems debilitating. In our individualistic culture, we only have our self-esteem to fall back on. We can't rely on family and community to give us a sense of identity and belonging; it is something we must create for ourselves.
Western Buddhism should be able to integrate the valid insights from traditional culture and modern psychotherapy. The middle way is a constantly evolving path, as new extremes become apparent, and new, more creative ways of resolving tensions present themselves.

---

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

Tags: shame, guilt, buddhism, psychology

When Philanthropy Breeds Misanthropy

http://mrteacup.gaia.com — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 08:12:50 GMT

We fight against injustices which cry out to heaven for vengeance. We are moved by a flaming indignation against these: racism, oppression, sexism, or leftist attacks on the family or Christian faith. This indignation comes to be fuelled by hatred for those who support and connive with these injustices; and this in turn is fed by our sense of superiority that we are not like these instruments and accomplices of evil. Soon we are blinded to the havoc we wreak around us. Our picture of the world has safely located all evil outside of us. The very energy and hatred with which we combat evil proves its exteriority to us. We must never relent, but on the contrary double our energy, vie with each other in indignation and denunciation. This is the dialectic of sacred killing..

Another tragic irony nests here. The stronger the sense of (often correctly identified) injustice, the more powerfully this pattern can become entrenched. We become centres of hatred, generators of new modes of injustice on a greater scale, but we started with the most exquisite sense of wrong, the greatest passion for justice and equality and peace.

A Buddhist acquantaince of mine from Thailand briefly visited the German Greens. He confessed to utter bewilderment. He thought he understood the goals of the party: peace between human beings, and a stance of respect and friendship by humans towards nature. But what astonished him was all the anger, the tone of denunciation, of hatred toward the established parties. These people didn't seem to see that the first step towards their goal would have to involve stilling the anger and agression in themselves. He couldn't understand what they were up to.

...

Nothing gave Nietzsche greater satisfaction than showing how morality or spirituality is really powered by its direct opposite; e.g. that the Christian aspiration to love is really motivated by the hatred of the weak for the strong. Whatever one thinks of his judgment on Christianity, it is clear that modern humanism is full of potential for such disconcerting reversals: from dedication to others to self-indulgent, feel-good responses, from a lofty sense of human dignity to control powered by contempt and hatred, from absolute freedom to absolute despotism, from a flaming desire to help the oppressed to an incandescent hatred for all those who stand in the way. And the higher the flight, the greater the potential fall.

– Charles Taylor, A Secular Age

Tags: philanthropy, anger, contempt

The Genesis of Now

http://mrteacup.gaia.com — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 00:19:47 GMT

The John Templeton Foundation asks "Does the Universe have purpose?" Several answers are given, but the whole project suffers because everyone has a different understanding of purpose.

On one hand, there is transcendent purpose: that there some benevolent being or force standing outside of the universe (and sometimes reaching in) which created it and guides it; a larger something in which our own consciousness is reflected. On the other hand, there is immanent purpose: that there are features of human experience which are profoundly important and positive which we can get behind.

One thing you notice about transcendent meaning is that people never get around to telling us what God's purpose or plan actually is. In fact, many people say we will never truly understand God's purpose, even while they insist that there definitely is one and we just need to have faith. Our inability to know the plan is taken as a reason to engage in spiritual or religious practice, with the understanding that by submitting ourselves to God's will, he will align us with his purposes.

There's something very unusual about this move. The problem with the modern, scientific, disenchanted world is supposed to be the absence of purpose, but purpose is also absent in the religious worldview! It has to be absent, because if we could discover it on our own, what need would there be for God?

If religion doesn't provide purpose, what does it provide? What need in humanity is met when we are told there is a Plan which we are all part of? It uplifts us, fills our lives with cosmic significance, and provides the possibility of ennobling some of everyday actions. But perhaps this problem of purpose only comes up because of certain assumptions about our relationship to God. If we assume that we were created by God in the Garden of Eden thousands of years in the past, we are left struggling to account for the future. What was God's intention in creating us, in those ancient times?

I want to claim that the anxiety over the "meaningless" scientific worldview is not as it is advertised. We are not anxious because we feel no purpose, but because we believe that there is purpose, but science seems to cut us off from it. This is an outcome of our belief that the sacredness in our lives comes from our genesis, but we are cut off from its true significance, so we turn to God the author.

The interesting thing about evolution is that it is understood to mean that our existence is an accident, and that means God could not exist, but these two things are not connected. We could easily take the fact of evolution to imply that God created the universe without knowing in advance what would happen -- we might say that the universe exists because God wants to find out what happens next. This seems reasonable to me, but there seems to be something deeply unsettling about this idea from the religious perspective. What is the point of a God who doesn't have a Plan?

But this objection seems to come from not truly understanding that evolution does not imply that our creation was accidental, but that creation (as a single event) didn't happen at all! There was no sacred genesis that demands a sacred Plan to give it meaning. Or to put it a different way, we find instead an uncountable number of tiny Creations that have occured in every moment, from the universe's first to this one right now. In grasping this idea, we become aware that we are witnessing our own sacred birth in every moment. The creation of the universe occurs in us and all around us, so we are unavoidably implicated in the numinous of the now, rather than cut off from an ancient Genesis whose significance we struggle to recover.

Tags: evolution, spirituality, atheism, religion, genesis

Does Andrew Cohen understand Integral?

http://mrteacup.gaia.com — Sat, 31 May 2008 20:52:50 GMT

On Big Think, the question is asked "What would it take to shift society from materialism?". Cohen's answer is spiritual realization or failing that, global catastrophe. This is pretty shocking coming from someone who advertises himself as Integral.

Materialism can mean many things -- it could mean Orange values, or it could refer to Maslow's deficiency needs (physiological, safety, social, esteem needs) as a whole - everything between Magenta and Green. Either way you define it, its impossible to eliminate and an Integral perspective understands that materialism has its place.

In the end, we have to recognize Cohen's perspective for what it is - Green values. Predictably, Green often has an adversarial relationship to Orange, critiquing it and pointing out how it fails, sometimes obsessively. The joy of rising to a higher level is sometimes accompanied by disdain for the previous level and the perception that it is an oppressive force, but it seems profoundly narcissistic to take those tensions that one encounters in one's personal growth, and project them on to a cosmic scale, where the fate of the entire human race depends on overcoming the previous level of development.

Tags: andrew cohen, integral, spiral dynamics, green, orange

The Infinte Self

http://mrteacup.gaia.com — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 04:23:54 GMT

Distance ages and remote regions of space are as real to it as what is present and near. In thought, it rises above the life of the senses, seeking always what is general and open to all men. In desire and will, it aims simply at the good, without regarding the good as mine or yours. In feeling, it gives love to all, not only to those who further the purposes of the self. Unlike the finite self, it is impartial; its impartiality leads to truth in thought, justice in action, and universal love in action

- Betrand Russell, famous atheist.

Tags:

Devout Humanism

http://mrteacup.gaia.com — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 03:33:55 GMT

It seems that there is a common misconception that Orange is atheistic, as opposed to Amber or Green or Teal spirituality. I've been reading Charles Taylor's A Secular Age, and it appears that not only is this not the case, but that Green and Teal spirituality have far more in common with Orange than with Amber:

The early modern period was rich in the development of devotional practices. It was a continuation of this greater flowering of inward practices which marks the end of the Middle Ages. Discipline, method, the new sense of human agency was turned to account by Ignatius Loyola in the form of spiritual exercises which were intended to open us to God. The "devout humanism" of early seventeeth century France... explored the ways of achieving a "theocentrism" of one's life. It supposes, and at the same time intensifies, a high degree of reflectiveness about one's own orientation, a consciousness of the distraction and self-absorption that currently dominates, and proposes ways to nourish a dedication to and a love of God which will take us beyond these. In these practices of prayer and devotion, and in the reflections, say, of St. François de Sales, in his Traité de l'Amour de Dieu, God's presence in the world, however narrowed in the theories of theologians, is still very much felt.

But devout humanism supposes that we can find within us that élan towards God on which we can build, the seed which we can nourish. Now this falls afoul of the strand of hyper-Augustinian spirituality which was so powerful in that age. If our nature is really quite depraved, then the hope of finding this élan within us can be a snare and a delusion, a figment of our own pride. Recognizing our distance from God, we can only throw ourselves on his mercy, hoping that he will heal our ruined nature. We must obey his commandments from a distance in fear, rather than presume to approach him in love.

- A Secular Age, p. 229

Tags:

John Burroughs

http://mrteacup.gaia.com — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 02:24:58 GMT

It jars upon our sensibilities and disturbs our preconceived notions to be told that the spiritual has its root in the carnal and is as truly its product as the flower is the product of the roots and the stalk of the plant. The conception does not cheapen or degrade the spiritual, it elevates the carnal, the material. To regard the soul and body as one, or to ascribe to consciousness a physiological origin, is not detracting from its divinity, it is rather conferring divinity upon the body. One thing is inevitably linked with another, the higher forms with the lower forms, the butterfly with the grub, the flower with the root, the food we eat with the thought we think, the poem we write, or the picture we paint, with the processes of digestion and nutrition. How science has enlarged and ennobled and purified our conception of the universe; how it has cleaned out the evil spirits that have so long terrified mankind, and justified the verdict of the Creator: "and behold it was good." With its indestructibility of matter, its conservation of energy, its violability of cause and effect, its unity of force and elements throughout sidereal space, it has prepared the way for a conception of man, his origin, his development, and in a measure his destiny, that at last makes him at home in the universe.

Tags: science, john burroughs

Does Writing on Gaia Suck?

http://mrteacup.gaia.com — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:56:25 GMT

Frustrated that Gaia lost your writings? Do what I do, write everything in Google Docs, and copy and paste it into Gaia. Here are just a few things that Gaia will lose that Google Docs will keep:

Ageless wisdom
Trenchant insight
Theoretical expositions
Heart-breakingly beautiful poetry
Whimsy

Copying and pasting from Google Docs even preserves (most of) your formatting.

Tags: the s is for sucks

Paradoxes...

http://mrteacup.gaia.com — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 21:20:44 GMT

The Paradox Of Partying

Heh

http://mrteacup.gaia.com — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 02:41:58 GMT

Server: nginx/0.6.4
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 02:40:13 GMT
Content-Type: text/javascript; charset=utf-8
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Connection: keep-alive
Set-Cookie: _session_id=; domain=.zaadz.com; path=/
Status: 200 OK
X-Powered-By: Zaadz
Cache-Control: no-cache
X-Mantra: Om Mani Padme Hum
Content-Encoding: gzip

Tags:

This Binary Universe

http://mrteacup.gaia.com — Sun, 27 May 2007 06:37:52 GMT

BT - 1.618 (Music Video)

Tags: bt, music