“So, how’s Green treating you?”

Thanks to Robb for the link.

Technorati Tags: humor, Ken Wilber

“In Buddhism it’s like this: Whatever we think about, that’s what we become. Why are we so angry? That’s because we are always thinking something horrible, something nasty, something painful, something distressing. If we learn to think something that’s positive, life-generating, instead of self-destructive, then we are also going to behave that way.”

Technorati Tags: Buddhism, Ken Wilber, psychology

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

Originally posted August 3, 2007.

Have you noticed that Integral thinkers who choose a label for themselves call themselves Integral? And it’s usually the loudest, shrillest, most incessently repetitive critics who use the label Wilberian (an obvious effort to link thinkers to a particular personality, not to a movement, ideas, or intellectual approach). I will not do so, nor will I call myself Wilberian. I consider myself a friend to and admirer of Ken Wilber, not a follower or disciple. In my opinion, Wilber is the foremost Integral theorist writing today, and that gives him a special role as a pacesetter and touchstone, not a pope, dictator, or guru. Don’t label me by any one person’s personality or you might just incur my retaliation by coining a phrase based on your own name and attaching it in unflattering ways to your writings and everyone who happens to enjoy your work … and I might just do so like a pesky wasp until you get the point. You are warned.

Technorati Tags: integral, Ken Wilber

I was so nervous the morning of my dialogue with Ken Wilber that it was hard to calm my nerves. We were slated to discuss my book Soulfully Gay: How Harvard, Sex, Drugs, and Integral Philosophy Drove Me Crazy and Brought Me Back to God (Integral Books/Shambhala, 2007).

Nothing that a screwdriver wouldn’t help me get through. But once it was time for my telephone chat with Ken, I found it rather enjoyable. He’s a great conversation partner and really brought out a wide variety of different angles on my story that I wouldn’t have predicted. Pretty cool experience overall!

Here’s how Integral Naked introduced my talk:

The author of one of the most searing, courageous personal memoirs of our time shares how an Integral Approach helped him reconcile a life of fierce inner struggles with what it means to be a gay man in today’s culture, the difference between genuine spiritual experiences and psychotic episodes, and the thorny intersection of homosexuality and Christianity.

In the foreword to Soulfully Gay, Ken Wilber writes: “Joe Perez’s book is perhaps the most astonishing, brilliant, and courageous look at the interface between individual belief and cultural values that has been written in our time. By a homosexual, or a heterosexual, or any other sexual I am aware of.” Ken wrote this foreword without even having met Joe—probably one of the strongest complements one writer can give to another—and Soulfully Gay is the second offering from our Integral Books imprint at Shambhala Publications.

Joe Perez - Soulfully Gay. Part 1. Out of the Closet, Into an Integral Embrace.
(click here for free sample)

Joe Perez - Soulfully Gay. Part 2. The Power of Integral Reconciliation.

Technorati Tags: Gay, integral, Ken Wilber, Soulfully Gay

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 June 4, 2007.

A Ken Wilber fan writes:

In Atlanta - here studying at the Center For Disease Control for another week long intensive (The Institute for HIV Prevention Leadership).

Riding in an SUV with a local friend (I’m a Maui resident) just to get out and about. We’re riding in the car and I begin explaining Ken Wilber and Integral “Life”, how it’s the first time I thought about getting another Master’s Degree - now that courses are being offered, etc (like many - he’s never heard of it)

I ask him to stop at “Outwrite” - a gay bookstore/coffee shop at 10pm. We walk in and right before our eyes, in full display is your book. We both reach for it at the same time (seeing the word “integral”). I love it when shit like that happens… (my friend finds it spooky/wierd)

Your book is making it hard for me to continue my studies for the week - I just want to immerse myself in it - like diving into Maui’s waters. (So glad you had “integral” on the cover - normally a rainbow cross would have made me just roll my eyes,………….hmm “May I speak to the sarcastic self” hehe)

Just a reminder, folks. I am not responsible for either the book’s subtitle (which includes the word integral) or the graphic on the front cover or the book’s wonderful rainbow-colored spine. All kudos or boos are due to the publisher, Integral Books/Shambhala.

Although I considered various titles during the writing process (including, at one point, “Queer Eye of Spirit” and at another point, “God is Gay”), by the time I submitted the manuscript to Ken Wilber it had the title “Soulfully Gay” which stuck the whole way through.

Technorati Tags: Ken Wilber, Soulfully Gay

I. Reality comprises things or processes,
wholes within wholes, each a unique holon.

II. A thing’s drive to preserve itself
is called agency: the masculine principle.

III. A thing’s drive to adapt itself
is called communion: the feminine principle.

IV. A thing’s drive to transcend itself
is called heterophilia: telos of evolution.

V. A thing’s drive to dissolve itself
is called homophilia: telos of involution.

VI. Occasions arise; such moments of time
are emergent potentials of all holons.

VII. Things emerge in holarchies; they’re occasions
that include but transcend their previous.

VIII. Lower things set possibilities; the higher sets
achievable potentials of the lower.

IX. Higher levels include greater numbers of levels
within the holarchy: its depth.

X. The number of things on any level
of holarchy defines its span.

XI. Successive levels of evolution produce
greater depth of Omega and less span.

XII. Greater depth of a thing implies a greater
degree of its consciousness.

XIII. Destroy any thing, and destroy all things
above it and nothing below.

XIV. Evolution is not purely random. Telos, life’s
goal, gives reality its directionality.

XV. Evolution becomes ever more sophisticated.
It reveals the further reaches of complexity.

XVI. Evolution becomes more diverse. It reveals further
layers of differentiation and integration.

XVII. Evolution becomes more defined and structured.
It reveals further dynamics of organization.

XVIII. The purpose of evolution becomes increasingly
clear, complex, and subtle: the Omega.

XIX. Every thing knows implicitly the incompleteness
or uncertainty (IOU) of all things.

XX. The indeterminacy and partiality of every thing
is redeemed by its Everyness.

XXI. Involution is not purely random. Telos gives
Everyness its hidden, paradoxical directionality.

XXII. Involution becomes more fundamental. It reveals
new modes of simplicity and fullness.

XXIII. Involution becomes more unified and corporate.
It shows increasing undifferentiation and indistiction.

XXIV. Involution becomes more nuanced and subtle.
It increases its texture and sensitivity.

XXV. The purpose of involution becomes increasingly
mysterious and unfathomable: the Alpha.

XXVI. All things receive a receipt for IOU
from the Alpha and Omega.

XXVII. All things arise in the occasion
of acknowledging their receipt for IOU.

XXVIII. Destroy any thing and add to the
increasing telos Alpha and Omega.

IXXX. The greater span of a thing,
the greater its degree of Alpha.

XXX. In time, the unity of Alpha and Omega
is greater than Everyness.

Technorati Tags: Christianity, holons, integral, Joe Perez, Ken Wilber, poetry, theory