Is Barack Obama’s thought process an enigma, at least to some conservatives? It seems so, if Ross Douthat, has it right:

It’s true that Obama’s policy positions have been no more fungible than McCain’s (though no less fungible as well, as evidenced by his recent maneuverings), and in many respects they’ve been considerably more detailed. But there remains, I think, a striking opacity to Obama - the deep structures that inform his thinking aren’t out in the open for anyone to see, the way they are with McCain, and in certain ways I feel like I know less about Obama the man than I did when he had just started running for President. This has been reflected across his life and political career: I don’t agree with the entire Steve Sailer take on Obama, but Sailer is on to something when he writes that the Democratic nominee seems to have “spent his life trying on different personalities,” while his core has remained something of a mystery - perhaps even to himself.

Which somehow reminds me of Perez’s Law #13: The integrated mind is always misunderstood by persons whose psychic structures are less integrated. The less integrated, the more mysterious its inner workings will inevitably seem.

Feel free to discuss.

Technorati Tags: consciousness, integral, Obama, Perez's law

I know too much about unusual, prolonged itching sensations that don’t respond to seemingly exhaustive medical treatment. I’ve had itching take control of my life to the point of hopelessness, despair, and suicidal thoughts. That’s why upon discovering this article my eyes practically bulged out of my skull and my eyes traced the lines on the page as fast as lightning.

I’ve experienced a few pain sensations in my life that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy (acute pancreatitis probably the worst), but itching is not pain. Itching can be worse than pain, far worse, and far less susceptible to treatment. The experience of being “itch free” — which happened for me as recently as nine or ten months ago — is the greatest feeling in the world. Here’s another person’s experience with itching (and hers makes my problem seem like a walk in the park) …

It was still shocking to M. how much a few wrong turns could change your life. She had graduated from Boston College with a degree in psychology, married at twenty-five, and had two children, a son and a daughter. She and her family settled in a town on Massachusetts’ southern shore. She worked for thirteen years in health care, becoming the director of a residence program for men who’d suffered severe head injuries. But she and her husband began fighting. There were betrayals. By the time she was thirty-two, her marriage had disintegrated. In the divorce, she lost possession of their home, and, amid her financial and psychological struggles, she saw that she was losing her children, too. Within a few years, she was drinking. She began dating someone, and they drank together. After a while, he brought some drugs home, and she tried them. The drugs got harder. Eventually, they were doing heroin, which turned out to be readily available from a street dealer a block away from her apartment.

One day, she went to see a doctor because she wasn’t feeling well, and learned that she had contracted H.I.V. from a contaminated needle. She had to leave her job. She lost visiting rights with her children. And she developed complications from the H.I.V., including shingles, which caused painful, blistering sores across her scalp and forehead. With treatment, though, her H.I.V. was brought under control. At thirty-six, she entered rehab, dropped the boyfriend, and kicked the drugs. She had two good, quiet years in which she began rebuilding her life. Then she got the itch.

It was right after a shingles episode. The blisters and the pain responded, as they usually did, to acyclovir, an antiviral medication. But this time the area of the scalp that was involved became numb, and the pain was replaced by a constant, relentless itch. She felt it mainly on the right side of her head. It crawled along her scalp, and no matter how much she scratched it would not go away. “I felt like my inner self, like my brain itself, was itching,” she says. And it took over her life just as she was starting to get it back.

There’s much more to say about this article, but I’ll have to return to the topic another time. Meanwhile, read the whole thing here. And blessings to Andrew Sullivan for the link.

Technorati Tags: brain, consciousness, itching, pain, perception

“You can’t say you’re a maverick, and say a straight talker, because it’s the frame of reference that comes from being engaged with and using the technology and tools that’s moving our entire world forward. It’s powering a global economy and bringing about massive change…”

Technorati Tags: consciousness, Internet, John McCain, technology

How does consciousness change as it shifts from green to teal and turquoise and indigo altitudes? Consciousness researches often say that the mode of cognition becomes more oriented to “vision logic”. While searching online today, I found this 1999 e-mail by Thomas Jordan helpfully summarizing Ken Wilber’s thought like so:

In the Atman Project (ch 7), Wilber doesn’t use the word “vision-logic”, but talks quite extensively about “high fantasy” or “vision-image.” He talks about it as integration of the primary and the secondary processes (non-verbal imagination and verbal thinking). The authors he cites are a different set in relation to authors cited in later works. After Atman Project, Wilber seems to have oriented the concept “vision-logic” away from imagination and towards the perspectives developed in cognitive-developmental literature. This literature talks about postformal development in terms of dialectical and systematic reasoning (formal operations=rational thinking; postformal operations=beyond rational thinking)…

An example I’ve heard Ken Wilber use is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous speech “I have a dream…” Simply put, King saw the world in a different way from most people. He saw possibilities, he inspired change, he visioned the arising tensions presaging future reconciliations in the world order. Vision logic is when a dream is not just a dream, but a profound grasping of the world as it truly is, a more harmonious and unified whole than meets the average person’s eye.

Today I also stumbled upon a fantastic example of vision logic insight. In “Brazil: The Black President Before Obama” , Jose Murilo Junior describes the uncanny visions of a 1928 Brazilian science-fiction writer. Here are a few of the stunning visions …

The sweeping Obama phenomenon has caught Brazil, and it comes as no surprise in the country with the world’s largest population of African descendants. Blogs are commenting on all things Obama, from his stand on ethanol to the ‘rumors‘ of his appraisal of Brazil’s free software policies. An especially notable thread is the one reporting on the resurgence of a weirdly interesting 1928 Brazilian sci-fi novel — ‘The Black President’ — that predicted a US election matching a black, a feminist, and a conservative candidate in the then remote year of 2228….

‘The Black President’ is a scary book. Frightening in many ways. Firstly, by the prescient character of the piece. In 1926, Lobato forecasts the invention of a kind of data radio transmission that would make it possible for human beings to accomplish their tasks from their home, without having to relocate to work. He also anticipates the disappearance of the printing press, for the news will be “radiated” directly to the houses of the individuals and will appear in bright letters on a screen — exactly how it is happening with whoever is reading this very text. [It is] in one modern word — the Internet. But the premonitions don’t stop there. By the time he was moving to the US as commercial attaché at the Brazilian embassy, Monteiro Lobato foresaw the election of a black president in the US. The specific political moment in the year of 2228 that bore such a situation would be due to the split that occurred in the white race, between a candidate from the Masculine Party (Kerlog) and a candidate from the Feminine Party (Evelyn Astor). The neo-feminist Evelyn Astor has the victory almost guaranteed, but then the black leader Jim Roy surges and ends up being elected President. The Black President. A Scary Book - Acerto de Contas

Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan.

Technorati Tags: Brazil, cognition, consciousness, indigo, integral, Ken Wilber, Obama, politics, prophecy, sci-fi, teal, turquoise, vision-logic

In “The Wilber-Combs Lattice and the Pre/Trans Fallacy”, Bruce Alderman discusses developments in the more recent work of Ken Wilber on consciousness, and how it helps us to understand spiritual experience and development. Here’s Bruce’s conclusion:

As a stage of cognitive development or epistemology, the transrational involves the establishment of an abiding mode of interacting with the world, ordering experience, and acquiring or generating knowledge. As such, it should not be confused with discrete altered state experiences which, in themselves, are questionable in terms of their capacity to deliver propositional knowledge. Rather, it represents the evolution and integration of sophisticated human capacities for meaning-making, perspective-taking, and broad state access, with relevance to human well being functioning far beyond having access to transitory “mystical experiences.”

Most of Bruce’s discussion seems exactly right to me. Where I think it gets a little fast is in Bruce’s assumption, I think, that transrational stages of consciousness deliver an epistemology whereas states do not. Technically, epistemology refers to a branch of philosophy concerned with the theory of knowledge. In other words, its concern is how we know what we know, the nature of truth, and how beliefs are justified.

Bruce calls this “propositional knowledge”, whereas I don’t think I would say that transrational stages (like mystical states) deliver a theory of knowledge or propositional knowledge of any kind. What they deliver, I think, is a formal knowledge, not content of principles or propositions. Thus, if a person is at a transrational stage of development, they will have knowledge in a certain form, not of certain things. They will take, say, a 5th-person perspective on the existence of angels. But two persons each employing a genuine 5th-person perspective may come to different beliefs about whether or not angels exist.

Technorati Tags: beliefs, consciousness, integral, pre/trans fallacy

You know that same-sex couples have begun to marry in California. At Spirit Under Transsexual Cover, Colin writes:

Remarkably, transgender people also win this week. The National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) reported today that the American Medical Association passed a resolution [PDF] calling for the removal of exclusions to health insurance that unfairly target the transgender population. Such exclusions prevent people from receiving medical care related to “Gender Identity Disorder,” the beloved moniker assigned by the American Psychiatrists Association in the DSM…

These are small victories that seem to affect only a small percentage of the population; what we see here, though, is an example of the continued evolution of human consciousness.

Technorati Tags: consciousness, Gay, GLBT, transgender

Originally posted April 17, 2007.

I enjoyed this KW.com post “Holons Critique: Are Pavlina and Schwyzer Integral?” by Colin Bigelow. Thanks, Colin. Well stated. I intend these remarks as my own take on the concerns you raise (coming from somebody not being affiliated with Holons except as a reader).

Judging from my experience, Colin’s post will likely be controversial in the blogosphere. Many bloggers with an interest in Integral Theory refuse to use altitude markers, color labels, or other indications of stages of development. How integral is that?! I also have some qualms and have written on the subject previously.

At the moment, I am choosing to mainly move beyond the two particular bloggers (Pavlina and Schwyzer) … and even beyond the issue of differences between “orange-green with an intense masculine-mastery type” or “healthy green”, “teal”, and “turquoise”. As I see it, the core issue boils down to this: How do you distinguish between different levels of altitude within the context of blogging or similar types of cultural writing? Let’s say the context is: I don’t know you; I haven’t performed a psychographical analysis; I haven’t analyzed your responses to numerous psychological questionnaires; I haven’t read your memoir or journal; I may only have read a few items you’ve ever written in your entire life. Given that, when reading a blog, do I judge the blogger’s structure-stage, vMEME, altitude, or Kronology station?

Yellow-green and lower says: no, what’s the point (for a variety of reasons, most commonly, they’re just not interested in either the question or the answer).

Green says: no, it’s rude and mean and you might hurt somebody’s feelings. Besides, it might burn a few bridges or be perceived as so undiplomatic. And getting people to co-exist peacefully is, of course, the summit of all endeavours.

Blue-green says: that’s an interesting question, but almost certainly unanswerable. In light of the impenetrable mystery of the universe and the many textures of the soul, it’s probably best to remain quiet on such matters. Who am I, in the grand scheme of existence, to make pronouncements of altitude? I shall judge not, lest I be judged.

Blue says: yes, you need to judge altitude as part of an integral analysis, and you should do the best job you can even though it’s not an ideal context (given the relative lack of information), and then qualify your comments appropriately. Altitude or stage or vMEME or station of life is an essential aspect in any truly comprehensive analysis, and therefore needs to be included, implicitly at least.

Just to be clear, I’m responding to this question from a perspective that I believe to be blue. I may be mistaken about that, but that’s where I think I’m coming from. Got those Kosmic Coordinates?

My answer, therefore, to the concern over whether yours are valid criticisms of Holons is maybe-BUT. The BUT: How qualified is the judgment call made in Holons? How clear is the background context, given the audience? How appropriate is the expression of judgment relative to the medium? How explicitly must the color label match a judgment of altitude with the appropriate stages and modes defined precisely according to a specified integral theorist or psychological researcher?

I see Holons’s color coding as merely a suggestion, a starting point for further discussion … and to get the conversation moving beyond the content of any particular bloggers towards a conversation about altitude. I consider it most relevant that Holons’s audience is the integrally informed community, mostly supporters of the mission of Integral Institute. I also consider it relevant that the assumed familiarity of the readership with the AQAL model creates the opening for writing with fewer qualifications and BUTs than would be possible if the piece were written for a more mainstream (i.e., first tier) audience. Therefore, I’m quite comfortable with Holons attaching color labels to reflect the altitude at a given mode (in the case with Pavlina or Schwyzer, the Cultural/worldviews mode).

That said, I can now address the concerns expressed in your post regarding the labeling of Pavlina’s and Schwyzer’s blogs with an altitude marker. After considering what I know about the two blogs as a reader (and fan of both), I would be inclined to express a bit more DOUBT about my own ability to make a judgment of altitude.

Is Pavlina’s blog “orange-green with an intense masculine-mastery type”? Quite possibly. It’s also possible that the blogger is blue altitude on the cognitive line or overall with a strong concern mode fixed at orange-green and an agentic type. By “concern mode fixed at orange-green” I simply mean a person who is very interested in such things as healthy capitalism, personal success, achievement, maximizing individual personal potential, etc. Perhaps there are other possibilities worth considering as well.

Is Schwyzer’s blog “healthy green, critical of the mean green meme”? Quite possibly. It’s also possible that the blogger is blue altitude on the cognitive line or overall with a strong concern mode fixed at green and a communal type. By “concern mode fixed at green” I simply mean a person who is very interested in such things as the cultural construction of values, gender/sexual liberation issues, spirituality and harmony, etc. Maybe or maybe not.

In both cases, I’m inclined to think that the bloggers themselves are probably blue overall, or at the very least reaching into this area (best guess); however, the concerns that they are fixed upon in their blogs are (in Wilber’s color scheme) orange-green and green respectively.

Depending on whether one is focused on the blogger or the blog content, one could arrive at different judgments regarding the best color label or altitude marker. With blogs, it’s a very, very hard call. Much harder than with a magazine, newspaper, or mainstream media reportage. The blog is personal; the person and the blog are intertwined more so than any other medium. Judging altitude in the blogosphere should be different than other sorts of judgments one might make.

Therefore, I would be inclined to say that if Schwyzer were the editor-in-chief of a magazine called Gender and Culture Talk, the magazine itself would likely be green. However, Hugo himself would be (and could very well be in actuality) turquoise. Similarly, if Pavlina were to start a Personal Empowerment Institute, the organization would likely be orange. However, Steve himself might be turquoise.

That’s my take on why Holons is possibly correct in labeling Schwyzer and Pavlina turquoise, though it does seem that you and KW might disagree. In my opinion, assessing a blog must be done differently than assessing a magazine or newspaper op-ed. It’s harder to separate the person from the medium. Moreover, a single person may have different associated media that could be color coded differently.

I’m still working on the best way to add color codes to blogs for my own blog. I’ve been leaning towards an approach that separates the color marker from a strict identity with the altitude marker. The color marker may represent the stage, or it may represent something like a type, experience, angle, or mode.

For Until, I happen to list both Pavlina’s and Schwyzer’s blogs on my blogroll. I list them with a blue color label (for the station of life) like so:

Steve Pavlina
Hugo Schwyzer

However, this is shorthand. It’s vague. Intentionally so. The band of colors themselves, a suitable analogy, is also vague. Where does orange meld into yellow melding into yellow-green melding into green melding into turquoise melding into blue melding into indigo???? Vagueness, I think, is appropriate in this situation (not to mention diplomatic, which suits my green sensibilities just fine).

In the context of speaking about the major concerns of their blogs, however, I would color tag like this:

Steve Pavlina
Hugo Schwyzer

Furthermore, if I needed to be very precise, I would specify two different colors, say, one for the cognitive and the other for the concern/spiritual mode.

Steve Pavlina^S138 Steve Pavlina^S135
Hugo Schwyzer^S138 Hugo Schwyzer^S137

Pretty soon effective communion leads to markup of one kind or another such as Wilber’s “integral math” (tags) or its spawn, Whole Writing (tags). If precision in discourse is necessary, the conversation shifts entirely away from the subject matter at hand into a more meta discussion. Unfortunately, markup lingo is still in the process of evolving, with various standards and implementations arising in our midst. (Wilber: “Certain issues of terminology, especially in the math, are still being decided.”)

The contrast between precision and vagueness of color label is a typically blue(i.e., turquoise) concern, and at blue-violet (i.e., indigo) what was once seen as vagueness or fuzziness of thought may be perceived as a deeper union and communal harmony that allows for a level of theoretical disagreement (”a generous orthodoxy”). At a certain point, we just have to say “good enough” and allow for a little less theoretical precision and a little more disagreement, I think.

Technorati Tags: altitude, consciousness, dialogue, integral, Ken Wilber

Originally posted April 18, 2007.

Update on the topic of my previous post “How to Talk about Altitude…”: In “Holons Comes Through Big,” Julian expresses his agreement with the comment by Colin. After a brief exchange, Julian comes to this point regarding Pavlina’s blog:

by definition, someone actually authentically at turquoise (in terms of the cognitive, psychological, or spiritual lines) would never endorse the [S]ecret, sell it on their site or make the kinds of bad arguments in defense of it that pavlina made

I think Julian and I may be talking right past each other, so let me take another shot at making myself clear. Let’s say that you have Person X writing at Blog Y about Issue Z. Then Person X takes a stand that is (beyond dispute) consistent with the magical or purple (say, by endorsing the Secret) altitude along the spiritual line. How do you judge Person X? How do you judge Blog Y?

Julian says, if I’m reading him correctly, that you conclude that no Person X at turquoise would ever take an unquestionably purple stand; therefore, we may conclude that judging Blog Y should avoid turquoise labels and instead endorse a lower altitude marker (say, magenta). Read the entire comment by Julian here.

My point is in disagreement with Julian’s. Actually, two points.

First, I take it for granted that the vast majority of persons have subpersonalities (in the psychoanalytic shadow work sense) within each line; such subpersonalities actually represent arrested parts of our development at various stages. There are actually subpersonalities in shadow (our internal self-contradictions that we are totally unaware of and cannot see on our own) plus subpersonalities that are conscious (hence, our internal self-contradictions that we are able to consciously express).

Therefore Person X may be at turquoise at the spiritual line, but also may have arrested subpersonalities at magenta, amber, orange, or green. Therefore Person X may make a clearly magenta-altitude statement and yet not be speaking from the whole person or the overall level of consciousness. A turquoise person can do magenta things. A turquoise person may do such things out of a magenta subpersonality in shadow. In my view, that’s why it’s so difficult to pronounce judgments on Person X. We ALL have subpersonalities at various arrested levels of development. Therefore I express DOUBT about my ability to make a judgment as to whether Person X is or is not turquoise because I do not know if the person is speaking from the fullest capacities and embodying the fullest, most comprehensive range of subpersonalities and speaking out of a place of integrity with all that they truly are.

What’s the alternative to judgment? Doubt. Mere DOUBT? Well, that would be fine at the blue-green station of life (blue-green is a color, I will note, encompasses both teal and turquoise in the spectrum of visible light) No. Instead, how about holistic inquiry? Rather than judge, I would take the stance of a person seeking more information. I would ask Person X, “What’s your self-image? Is it orange, green, teal, turquoise, or what? … Isn’t your endorsement of The Secret consistnt with a magenta altitude expression? … If you disagree with that, on what grounds do you do so?” Only through a process of dialogue with the individual in question could I make a judgment as to whether the person is speaking through his average level of consciousness, highest capacity, or a regressed subpersonality. Personally, I would find it quite useful to ask those persons who dismiss The Secret, what’s true about The Secret? How does mind impact matter? How does setting a conscious intention have an impact on reality? In what reasonable, transrational way is it possible to say that “we create our own reality”? Or is it always unreasonable to say “we create our own reality” even when speaking in shorthand with lots of disclaimers to a popular audience?

But let’s not digress. I hope I have explained my reasonable, rational grounds for DOUBT that I can make a solid judgment call to say that a person who endorses The Secret is necessarily, “by definition” prerational. Do you agree or disagree? Or have I not made myself clear?

There is a second point which is very relevant in this context. In the presence of DOUBT, and in a given context such as the Holons newsletter, I propose that a Blog Y should be judged as if the blogger were a communal entity, not an individual. Even if the blog is by an individual and not a group blog. Therefore, I would express the blog’s attitude not by picking one altitude marker, but by specifying a range of values, and then I would take an average over that range and specify the current upper boundary, plus attach additional labels to the subpersonalities of the blog. In my opinion, and I’m open to being wrong about this, Pavlina’s upper boundary is turquoise and therefore the blog should be categorized accordingly in some contexts. However, Pavlina’s average can dip to orange easily, and the concerns of the blog resonate with many people at that level. Also, if it is true that Pavlina has endorsed and sold The Secret on his blog, this could be taken as the expression of a magenta (for endorsing) and/or orange (for selling) subpersonality. (I haven’t read the posts in question, so I can’t say.)

That is REALLY a mouthful. And the best, most honest way to judge a blog’s altitude, in my opinion. However, speaking as a writer with some familiarity at writing op-ed and blog commentary pieces of 800 words or less, it is simply too complex and unwieldy to gain traction or the reader’s mindset. If we held writers to the standard that they must always use the “true” altitude of their object, there would be lots of ink split on jargon and terminology and theoretical disputes and very little ink spilt talking about … everything else. And then who would read such commentary, anyways?

To conclude, let’s return to the main question as I see it: should Holons categorize blogs according to some limited portion of the fullest answer? In other words, instead of specifying an average, plus a high/low range of values over which Blog Y trends, should writers simply pick a reasonable color scheme and go with it? I think the answer is yes.

And therefore when I read the Holons newsletter the blog’s judgment calls on Pavlina and Schwyzer resonated with me. Not merely because I translated turquoise into my own preferred color scheme (where turquoise shifts higher towards blue). But because I feel the color labels were express the greatest potential and upper boundary for that blog in a way that is useful, appropriate, and correct for a given context. But in a different context, OR with more information about the authors, I would be comfortable with a narrower band of acceptable color labels.

Update: Steve Pavlina responds:

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Subpersonalities, shadow, and The Secret
Update on the topic of my previous post “How to Talk about Altitude…”: In “Holons Comes Through Big,” Julian expresses his agreement with the comment by Colin. After a brief exchange, Julian comes to this point regarding Pavlina’s blog:
by definition, someone actually authentically at turquoise (in terms of the cognitive, psychological, or spiritual lines) would never endorse the [S]ecret, sell it on their site or make the kinds of bad arguments in defense of it that pavlina madeI think Julian and I may be talking right past each other, so let me take another shot at making myself clear. Let’s say that you have Person X writing at Blog Y about Issue Z. Then Person X takes a stand that is (beyond dispute) consistent with the magical or purple (say, by endorsing the Secret) altitude along the spiritual line. How do you judge Person X? How do you judge Blog Y?Julian says, if I’m reading him correctly, that you conclude that no Person X at turquoise would ever take an unquestionably purple stand; therefore, we may conclude that judging Blog Y should avoid turquoise labels and instead endorse a lower altitude marker (say, magenta). Read the entire comment by Julian here.My point is in disagreement with Julian’s. Actually, two points.First, I take it for granted that the vast majority of persons have subpersonalities (in the psychoanalytic shadow work sense) within each line; such subpersonalities actually represent arrested parts of our development at various stages. There are actually subpersonalities in shadow (our internal self-contradictions that we are totally unaware of and cannot see on our own) plus subpersonalities that are conscious (hence, our internal self-contradictions that we are able to consciously express).Therefore Person X may be at turquoise at the spiritual line, but also may have arrested subpersonalities at magenta, amber, orange, or green. Therefore Person X may make a clearly magenta-altitude statement and yet not be speaking from the whole person or the overall level of consciousness. A turquoise person can do magenta things. A turquoise person may do such things out of a magenta subpersonality in shadow. In my view, that’s why it’s so difficult to pronounce judgments on Person X. We ALL have subpersonalities at various arrested levels of development. Therefore I express DOUBT about my ability to make a judgment as to whether Person X is or is not turquoise because I do not know if the person is speaking from the fullest capacities and embodying the fullest, most comprehensive range of subpersonalities and speaking out of a place of integrity with all that they truly are.What’s the alternative to judgment? Doubt. Mere DOUBT? Well, that would be fine at the blue-green station of life (blue-green is a color, I will note, encompasses both teal and turquoise in the spectrum of visible light) No. Instead, how about holistic inquiry? Rather than judge, I would take the stance of a person seeking more information. I would ask Person X, “What’s your self-image? Is it orange, green, teal, turquoise, or what? … Isn’t your endorsement of The Secret consistnt with a magenta altitude expression? … If you disagree with that, on what grounds do you do so?” Only through a process of dialogue with the individual in question could I make a judgment as to whether the person is speaking through his average level of consciousness, highest capacity, or a regressed subpersonality. Personally, I would find it quite useful to ask those persons who dismiss The Secret, what’s true about The Secret? How does mind impact matter? How does setting a conscious intention have an impact on reality? In what reasonable, transrational way is it possible to say that “we create our own reality”? Or is it always unreasonable to say “we create our own reality” even when speaking in shorthand with lots of disclaimers to a popular audience?But let’s not digress. I hope I have explained my reasonable, rational grounds for DOUBT that I can make a solid judgment call to say that a person who endorses The Secret is necessarily, “by definition” prerational. Do you agree or disagree? Or have I not made myself clear?There is a second point which is very relevant in this context. In the presence of DOUBT, and in a given context such as the Holons newsletter, I propose that a Blog Y should be judged as if the blogger were a communal entity, not an individual. Even if the blog is by an individual and not a group blog. Therefore, I would express the blog’s attitude not by picking one altitude marker, but by specifying a range of values, and then I would take an average over that range and specify the current upper boundary, plus attach additional labels to the subpersonalities of the blog. In my opinion, and I’m open to being wrong about this, Pavlina’s upper boundary is turquoise and therefore the blog should be categorized accordingly in some contexts. However, Pavlina’s average can dip to orange easily, and the concerns of the blog resonate with many people at that level. Also, if it is true that Pavlina has endorsed and sold The Secret on his blog, this could be taken as the expression of a magenta (for endorsing) and/or orange (for selling) subpersonality. (I haven’t read the posts in question, so I can’t say.)That is REALLY a mouthful. And the best, most honest way to judge a blog’s altitude, in my opinion. However, speaking as a writer with some familiarity at writing op-ed and blog commentary pieces of 800 words or less, it is simply too complex and unwieldy to gain traction or the reader’s mindset. If we held writers to the standard that they must always use the “true” altitude of their object, there would be lots of ink split on jargon and terminology and theoretical disputes and very little ink spilt talking about … everything else. And then who would read such commentary, anyways?To conclude, let’s return to the main question as I see it: should Holons categorize blogs according to some limited portion of the fullest answer? In other words, instead of specifying an average, plus a high/low range of values over which Blog Y trends, should writers simply pick a reasonable color scheme and go with it? I think the answer is yes.And therefore when I read the Holons newsletter the blog’s judgment calls on Pavlina and Schwyzer resonated with me. Not merely because I translated turquoise into my own preferred color scheme (where turquoise shifts higher towards blue). But because I feel the color labels were express the greatest potential and upper boundary for that blog in a way that is useful, appropriate, and correct for a given context. But in a different context, OR with more information about the authors, I would be comfortable with a narrower band of acceptable color labels.

Update: Pavlina responds.

This is Steve Pavlina. Boo!You seem to be overanalyzing.Why hasn’t anyone involved in this debate simply dropped me an email to ask my motivations for actions that appear confusing? People in the integral community are taking a valiant third-person stab at it, but wouldn’t be more intelligent to simply ask me? Direct communication would give you a lot more insight than distanced speculating. Last time I checked, I was still breathing. :)Understand that my website gets about 2 million visitors a month — with people at all different stages of development. That’s very different than talking to a room of 50 integrally minded people.If I write only for the highest stages, which I could do, I’ll help only a small fraction of my audience. I believe that would be an enormously suboptimal strategy if the conscious development and expansion of all is our goal. For most people it will be way over their heads — no impact whatsoever.

At best it will only make them aware that there is something out there they aren’t ready for yet. But why not assist people where they are?Consequently, I do not hold to the perspective of a fixed stage when I write articles or recommend products. I intentionally shift between different frequencies of the integral spectrum when I write. Sometimes I’ll even blend the viewpoints of different stages into the same article, which is probably why people have such trouble classifying me from my articles. A 5-minute face-to-face conversation would be much more enlightening. The reason I write from different stages is because it’s far more effective than writing from a single stage. I can assist a lot more people this way, not just those who are very close to me in their path of development.When I’m one-on-one with someone, I adapt to their level of awareness. A blog, however, is a one-to-many communication medium and doesn’t give me that option. The size and diversity of my audience is a mixed blessing. Some of my readers are incredibly aware, while others are on the verge of suicide. Do you think a depressed person is helped by telling them about concepts like states, lines, and stages? Not remotely. But an article about how to get out of bed in the morning can do wonders for them, and it will get them started on a path of conscious growth. I cast a wide net with a variety of different articles to bring more people into the fold. I see it as being a “fisher of men.”My audience is also very young. 60% of my readers are in their 20s or younger. Very few people are ready for integrally-minded thinking when they’re fresh out of college.What do you expect would happen if you started speaking about the most evolved integral philosophy to an audience of a couple million 20-somethings? I can tell you that most will zone out, some will complain vehemently, but a small percentage will be ready for it and will be helped.

When I return to writing about business or entrepreneurship or self-discipline, I capture more new readers, and again there’s the chance to help some of them grow in awareness.Now why would I recommend a product like The Secret? Obviously it’s not the most brilliant and aware creation out there. However, for many of my readers, learning about the LoA is the next step they need to take. Those for whom it’s a step backwards will simply disregard/dismiss it as fluffy nonsense, as many people in the integral community have already done.There are very few integrally-minded products of sufficient quality for me to recommend.

I’ve evaluated much integral material, including ILP in a box, but I don’t think it will be effective for my audience. Too much of the material is overintellectualized, especially when I consider my readership and their concerns.Show me an integrally-minded product of decent quality and appeal for a global audience of 20-somethings, and I’ll be happy to check it out. In the meantime, I’ll continue recommending products and creating content across the whole spectrum of integral development. I do that very intentionally and deliberately. I believe this is an optimal strategy if we are to have the greatest positive impact in the evolution of human consciousness. We have to meet people where they are, not merely where we are. Becoming overly attached to your particular stage is just another form of navel-staring.So as far as classifying the precise color of my blog is concerned, it wouldn’t make sense to assign it a single color. You’d have to assign it a much broader spectral range. A single color is boring anyway when you have access the entire spectrum. It’s not that hard to write for a variety of stages with a little practice. I often visualize in my mind a person who’s at a particular stage and write an article for him/her. At my highest level of content creation, I write for God.FYI my contact info can be found here:http://www.stevepavlina.com/contact-info.htm. I don’t usually bite.

Technorati Tags: consciousness, shadow, The Secret

Originally posted May 3, 2007.

I’ve been attempting to discern in very concrete terms how shadow retrieval functions at post-conventional levels of consciousness. A common impression of some folks is that the green altitude, aperspectival awareness, is where shadow work is focused. However, I have seen people at all levels of consciousness benefit from shadow work. Rather than associating shadow work with any particular level, I see it as a function of self-immanence operating in each of the levels of consciousness. Let me unpack that a bit. Jesus’ teaching to love your enemy is, in essence, prescribing a radical form of shadow work: embrace the “enemy within” with Love and thereby heal your relationships with the “enemy without.” Nietzsche never understood shadow, and didn’t understand Jesus on the value of loving your enemy. Yes, it’s an impossible commandment. And yet it is, paradoxically, the heart of Christian spirituality.

As we embrace our shadow within, our growth through the stages is accelerated (at least this is true in my own experience). As we ascend through the stages of development, our shadow gets progressively lighter. Robert Bly speaks of “eating” the shadow. The shadow lightens, but remains ever present. A person at a red altitude of emotional development may repress anger, forcing it into shadow. Once that shadow work is healed, at that level, the load is lightened. However, if that same person is now at turquoise in emotional development, then that which is repressed is now transpersonal shadow. (The person still gets angry, jealous, or passes through states of fear. Those are emotions, not shadows. The integrally developed person gets angry at every level of awareness. Only if anger is disassociated does the shadow come into play).

The nature of shadow is quite different at transpersonal levels. The person at, say, indigo, may be unconscious of suffering (or Bliss) on the level of the World Soul/Kosmic Soul. The Universe bleeds, but the person happily bobbing along at indigo is in denial of the pain or joy in her or his own soul, which in truth is not separate from all beings.

Therefore, shadow work at transpersonal levels means you’re not so much reliving family traumas (that’s only necessary if your shadow is split off at lower levels within your psyche) but living (or reliving) transpersonal wounds and delights–the Christ crucifixion and the resurrection, karmic law, the Buddha returning to the realm of samsara in a quest to help all beings realize their own already awakened state.

I think there is still a 3-2-1 process of shadow work accessible at transpersonal levels of development. There is still an “I” (World Soul), a “We” (the World Soul and the self), and an “It/Its” (the World Soul’s shadow reincorporated into the self). Now that I put that in writing, I’m still not sure that I’ve got it down correctly. I need to keep working to wrap my mind around this issue.

If something like the 3-2-1 shadow work process can be done from the voice of the World Soul (and I believe it can), then that’s the path of moving from self to Self, moving from a narrow identification with the ego towards worldcentric and kosmocentric perspectives. However, I don’t have much practice in using 3-2-1 in this way. My own preference being for more psychodramatic performance as a way of walking through the transpersonal shadow, and opportunities for doing that sort of work are few. I’ll need to do more practice work before coming to more solid ground.

Technorati Tags: consciousness, integral, shadow, stages

Originally posted May 3, 2007.

Thinking about hypnagogia. I suspect it’s a 100% universal human state, closely related to the psychic (indigo) state; however, the strong habit of most people is to ignore and deny hypnagogic experiences. Now THIS is interesting…

According to a study in the book Hypnagogia by Andreas Mavromatis, the occurance was around 70-80% of adults have had hypnogogic experiences. They assumed the occurance was probably higher (possibly 100%) but many people either didn’t take note of what was actually happening or they were hesitant to admit to hearing things like voices as it’s generally considered a sign of being crazy.

I’m not sure how many people are capable of doing this, but with enough years of practice, it’s possible to have hypnogogic visual experiences (objects moving position, shadows shifting at will, witnessing of “impossible” events, etc.) almost at will in the waking state. It helps if the lighting conditions are just right. It doesn’t hurt either if you’re nearsighted and you are able to see light reflecting off the surface of a metallic object.

In a controlled environment, it’s possible to actually see the minute details of each hair on your eyelashes and to feel their movement as a distinct sensation. At least according to my own experience in recent years, as described to an opthamologist as I observed hypnagogic phenomena in his examining room.

“Are they delusions? Optical illusions? I mean, I’m actually seeing my eyelashes projected onto the pattern of refracting light coming off the surface of that doorknob. I can count each one, and practically measure their thickness.”

“No, it’s not an illusion. It’s an optical disturbance. It’s completely normal and healthy. There would be something wrong with you if you were attune to what you’re attune to and you DIDN’T see something. You’re just aware of things that most people ignore or don’t think of as important.”

The eye doctor went on to describe several common hypnagogic phenomena, such as the sensation you would get if you’re riding in the back of a truck, watching the scenery move behind you. The truck stops, and you get out. And for a moment, you are still but the world rushes to meet you! You see it. You feel its movement. The experience is real. It would be delusion or hallucination if you DIDN’T see the world rushing at you. The world really does move in your visual field.

An optical disturbance! Pupils dilated in a darkened room, my eyes turned into a freaking magnifying glass. Head tilted just so, eyelashes pointed downwards just so, an entire world of sensoria opens up. A world that usually only opens up to me in the late night or early morning hours of falling asleep and waking.

I think I just heard a voice. I saw a face in the window. I heard a strange sound.

It helps to experience these sensoria if you’re not concerned in the least that if you describe what you’re hearing or seeing people will think you’re crazy. It’s also more than a little unsettling. If you’re not careful, you could find yourself losing touch with reality…

Technorati Tags: consciousness, hypnagogia, sleep, states