A stream of consciousness meditation …

I sat down and ate.

Avoiding?

Eating. And Spirit. What do I know about eating and Spirit? Spirit eats the world. Spirit consumes all, a monster making atoms and electrons into a feast, trillions of tiny particles like so much what germ, so many grape nuts, so many grains of wheat, so many — I see a meal composed entirely of tiny grains of sand — like oatmeal, llike cream of wheat, the world is the grain in the bread of the mill of time, and Spirit the eater of the fantastic meal of the universe. Stars for lunch, the galaxies for dinner, and the universes as a bedtime snack. Not just a billion stars, or a trillion galaxies, or trillion trillion universes, but the total of all stars that ever were, and the trillions that are yet to be, the galaxies birthed countless eons ago and galaxies to be born egos from now.

The universe offers itself to Spirit as a sacrifice. Take me, it says. Feed on my flesh, for then we shall live once more in you.

Avoiding?

I am not who I think I am. I am every thing that I have ever ever eaten. So much soda pop and candy, so many chickens, so many cows, so many ears of corn, so much Gaia, so much world. So much, it’s beyond my reckoning. Though I say that it is knowable. The number of things that I have consumed to make me what I am, an eating machine, a consuming machine that eats to live, and also simply to have my pleasure. The rodents that are cut by the blade of the tractor that cut the corn that made the biofuel that runs the bus that I will ride today. If we could see a record — a toll of all that we have killed, all the death — if we could see what we have done…

Mass murderers are more than honest than us. The ones who collect trophies from their victims. The soldiers who add a notch to their belts for every enemy soldier they have slain. They are the honest ones. They know that they are killers. That is who they are. They kill, everything kills, everything hurts, everything dies, and in this arising time … could we stop killing for just one moment?

Could we run into a cave? Could we waste away? Could we refuse food, medicine? Could we? Could we make ourselves pure? Could we run away from the killing that we do, from the dying that we do, from the pain of existence?

Even then, locked alone in a cave, eating not, wearing no animal fur for a blanket, shivering in the cold. Even then, we kill. Even then, we die. We kill Time. We kill our future, our possibility, our ability to transform the world into a better place.

Or is that wish only illusion? That is a very old paradox.

Avoiding?

If we starved ourselves in a cave, killing nothing, do we kill the future? Do we kill the possibility of a more liberated world? Do we do nothing … or do what? What we can? Everything we can?

Avoiding?

The answer is yes. We are killers who do not … who are not … it is not “I” who kills … It is not the “I” who dies. I do not kill the future. No choice I can make Now can possibly kill the future. I am the Future, Now. And I will be, am, and have already been, eaten, redeemed, million billion trillion times over. We are all Eucharists now, though not all who are the Body see, not all who are Christ know, not all believe.

Technorati Tags: death, Eucharist, food, Spirit, spirituality, Time, violence

The Guardian’s last word on the late Senator Jesse Helms:

Senator Jesse Helms, member of the US Senate’s foreign relations committee for two decades and its chairman from 1995 to 2001, has died at the age of 86. To echo this newspaper’s memorable comment on the death of William Randolph Hearst, it is hard even now to think of him with charity. From his earliest years, Helms’s attitudes recalled those of an earlier southern bigot, Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi, who so outraged his Senate colleagues, that they eventually refused even to let him take his seat.

There was never a comparable risk for Helms, who maintained an old-world courtesy in his personal contacts. But that was only on the surface. He became one of the most powerful and baleful influences on American foreign policy, repeatedly preventing his country paying its UN contributions, voting against virtually all arms control measures, opposing international aid programmes as “pouring money down foreign rat holes”, and avidly supporting military juntas in Latin America and minority white regimes in Southern Africa.

In domestic politics he denounced the 1964 Civil Rights Act as “the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress”, voted against a supreme court justice because she was “likely to uphold the homosexual agenda”, acted for years as spokesman for the large tobacco companies, was reprimanded by the justice department and the federal election commission for electoral malpractice, and compiled a dismal personal record as a slum landlord.

The link is from Chris at Americablog, who predictably calls Helms “despicable”. Rather than dwell on my judgments of a dead man, I prefer to reflect on the beauty of a changing world, one death at a time.

Technorati Tags: conservatism, Helms, Spirit

Natalia Antanova writes “I Obectify Men” on Feministe:

I know this doesn’t sound terribly progressive of me, but I think some objectification is healthy, whether one is male or female. I believe that both male and female desire should have a place in our discourse - which is why so much of my professional work is dedicated to football and footballers and footballers’ legs. It is all quite serious. Stop smirking.

I do think that because of power differentials, objectification of women more readily becomes a springboard for abuse, and worse. But I do think that there is a genuinely OK way of expressing one’s appreciation for someone else’s physical body and/or persona (and hell, a beautiful mind can be just as sexy). And I want more women to be comfortable with expressing their views on men and women that they find attractive, and even be superficial about it.

These conversations can be dangerous. Desire can be dangerous. But a world in which we do not have these conversations would be too sterile for my taste. Too many times, I run up against the notion that it is somehow “undignified” for a woman to participate, to be too sexual, and too frank, or allow herself a moment of shallowness; I hear people say that she is merely “lowering herself” to the status of men (I’ve seen that on feminist blogs as well as other types of blogs). But I disagree wholeheartedly. I think it all depends on context.

I’m interested to know what you all think about this.

What do I think of this? She’s right. She doesn’t sound very “progressive” at all. Thank goodness. Progressivism’s overly simplistic, inhumane, moralistic victimology makes it an embarrassing ideology at times, and it’s a good thing that many actual progressives don’t actually hold rigidly to the strict ideals. What Natlia sounds like, actually, is something like a progressive who realizes that her own feminism seems to contradict her own intuitions, a deeply felt sense of goodness regarding one’s own pleasure and desire, and a recognition that sexual hunger seems paradoxically both uplifting (”okay”) and debasing (”superficial”). In short, this writer expresses a longing for a post-feminist affirmation of bodily desire and a yearning for freedom from the subjugation of desire to political correctness … and a longing for a post-postmodern affirmation of both superficiality and depth. She sounds like a proto-Integralist.

I share Natalia’s desire for a discourse that boldly proclaims that it’s okay to be human, and to have both shallowness and depth. And I wish that more women and men who call themselves progressive would recognize that their ideology seems so constraining because it is so constraining, so disconnected from the body and its undemocratic nature, disconnected also from Spirit and its holarchies.

Affirm footballers’ legs! And affirm footballers’ athletic grace and fierce determination in pursuit of human excellence! And affirm their beauty as subjects-in-themselves and objects-for-us … and as the subject/objects beyond subect/object distinction, perfect mirrors of Spirit in this moment, this kick, this jump, this little prick of awakening to the arising moment.

Technorati Tags: feminism, gender, postmodernism, sexuality, Spirit, sports

As my readers are aware, I’ve completely redone my Web presence this month, merging my previously separate home page, the Until blog, and the Whole Writing blog. Some of this work is still in progress, including an update to my blogrolls (links to other blogs and frequently updated news and opinion sites). My lists contain links that I like to monitor. I read my favorites every day. I try to check in on the others once or twice a week.

I would love to have your help in suggesting new additions to the blogrolls for my next update in July. The blogs don’t all have to be “integrally informed”, and opinions range from fundamentalist to new age, conservative to progressive, friend and foe. Why don’t you suggest a link or two in the comments of this thread or by dropping me a line? By all means, feel free to nominate your own site if I’ve missed it. (And if you have a site and would rather that I linked to a different URL, please give me the update.)

Here are the lists as they currently stand:

Buddhist

• Buddhist Geeks
• Hokai
• Integral Options

Christian

• Crunchy Con
• Daily Episcopalian
• Father Jake
• GetReligion
• Hugo Schwyzer
• Indistinct Union
• Monastic Mumblings
• The Interior Life
• The Lead

Gay

• Best Gay Blogs
• Bloghungry
• Boi from Troy
• Gay Spirituality
• Greta Christina
• Independent Gay Forum
• Manhattan Offender
• Pam’s House Blend
• Petrelis Files
• Scott-o-Rama
• Soup Cans

Jewish

• Tikkun Ger

News

• AMERICAblog
• Andrew Sullivan
• BeliefNet
• CNN
• Crunchy Con
• Five Thirty Eight
• GetReligion
• Glen Greenwald
• Glenn Greenwald
• Huffington Post
• Marc Ambinder
• Matthew Yglesias
• MSNBC
• New York Times
• Political Animal
• Seattle Times
• Slate
• Slog (Dan Savage et al)
• Spiked
• Talking Points Memo
• The Corner
• The Onion
• The Revealer

Sex

• ErosBlog: The Sex Blog
• Slog (Dan Savage et al)

Spirit

• Act Awake
• Andrew Cohen
• Breeze Debris
• Bruce Alderman
• C4Chaos
• Craig Photography
• Daily Dickenson
• Durwin Foster
• For the Turnstiles
• Frozen Truth
• Gary Stamper
• Gay Spirituality
• Hokai
• Holons
• Illumined Views
• Indistinct Union
• Integral Awakening
• Integral Options
• Integral Practice
• Integral Transformation
• Julian Walker
• Ken Wilber
• Lucid Nutrition
• Mystery of Existence
• Mystic Saint
• NPR: My Cancer
• Open Integral
• Republic of T.
• Robb Smith
• Ross Douthat
• Stand Firm
• Steve Pavlina
• The Bilerico Project
• The Woodshed
• TimBomb
• Undercover Transsexual
• Wilber Watch
• Zoosphere

Technorati Tags: blogs, Spirit

Attributed to Georg W. F. Hegel, the German philosopher:

It is the same with all great historical individuals: their own particular purposes contain the substantial will of the World Spirit. They must be called “heroes,” insofar as they have derived their purpose and vocation not from the calm, regular course of things, sanctioned by the existing order, but from a secret source whose content is still hidden and has not yet broken through into existence. The source of their actions is the inner spirit, still hidden beneath the surface but already knocking against the outer world as against a shell, in order, finally, to burst forth and break it into pieces; for it is a kernel different from that which belongs to the shell. They are men, therefore, who appear to draw the impulses of their lives from themselves. Their deeds have produced a condition of things and a complex of historical relations that appear to be their own interest and their own work. Such individuals have no consciousness of the Idea as such. They are practical and political men. But at the same time they are thinkers with insight into what is needed and timely. They see the very truth of their age and their world, the next genus, so to speak, which is already formed in the womb of time. It is theirs to know this new universal, the necessary next stage of their world, to make it their own aim and put all their energy into it. The world-historical persons, the heroes of their age, must therefore be recognized as its seers – their words and deeds are the best of the age. Great men have worked for their own satisfaction and not that of others. Whatever prudent designs and well-meant counsels they might have gotten from others would have been limited and inappropriate under the circumstances. For it is they who knew best and from whom the others eventually learned and with whom they agreed or, at least, complied. For Spirit, in taking this new historical step, is the innermost soul of all individuals – but in a state of unconsciousness, which the great men arouse to consciousness. For this reason their fellow men follow these soul-leaders, they stream to their banner. For they feel the irresistible power of their own spirit embodied in them.

Technorati Tags: Hegel, idealism, leadership, philosophy, politics, Spirit

Originally posted July 28, 2007.

Caring for the soul is the topic of “Soul in Integral Theory,” a post by Bill. Theology feeds the mind, not the soul. It’s silly to try to get nourishment from theology. Theology will not give us a sense of being grounded and alive to the harmonious rhythms that unite our bodies and nature. But the silliness of the enterprise doesn’t mean it’s not tempting. Bill helpfully teases out the map coordinates of that which Ken Wilber calls “the aspect of self that adapts to the psychic/subtle realm” and relates it to that which Thomas Moore calls “the soul” (pretty much the same thing if you ask me, except Moore’s use of soul demonstrates a fuzzy pre/trans fallacy, mixing the psychic and subtle with the prerational freely).

Bill finds Moore’s fuzziness appealing, and I have to admit to finding Moore’s careful attention to the psychic realm and its demand for concern to be very helpful and Moore’s fuzziness to be not particularly problematic. From the psychic/subtle realm’s perspective, distinctions such as those between lower body and higher mind are simply irrelevant. The soul defeats attempts to break it down into modules and transcend its messier aspects with the neatness and purity of spirit. So let the soul defeat us. But let us not wander forever in the realms of the psychic/subtle, for this is not territory that most of us will want to spend the rest of our lives traversing! Let us come to the fullest possible understanding of our true nature, a sense of identity that enfolds the soul, but one that allows us to choose whether we allow ourselves to descend into the soul’s muddy waters or whether we choose to live from a wider sense of identity. I believe in the great “I AMness” that we are, the great Everyness of each moment, there is a self-recognition of Spirit. There is possible the realization of our highest and widest identity in the unborn spirit, existing outside of Time yet one with all levels of our individual and collective beings. I believe proper caring for the soul can mean giving our psychic/subtle self a rest, and not always placing the entire burden of our existence on so fragile a peg. So let us choose carefully how we engage our spirits and souls, for this passion play of a world very much needs us to bring all of who we are to the drama.

Technorati Tags: integral, soul, Spirit, theology