Chaos is the song of nature; all that cannot be contained;
growing wild like the Tao.

Now as civilization grows wild and chaotic, we find that
culture is an expression too, of nature; within city walls grows the Tao.

“Reversal is the movement of the Tao,” and so our pyramids and city walls
become the template for a latent spring.

Oil creeps up in our seas, the air grows thick; consumed by
the shadows we created, our underbelly becomes a new forest bed.

We sought to walk far from Nature’s wild hands, to escape her
vines; yet now we speak in rhizomes and our Kings are legends passed.

Like the valley, all our movements away have led us back to her.
And civilization is a movement of the Tao. Never separate.

Where do you walk, in New York Streets or hidden groves far from
roads? The way runs rivers of humanity, as it does fish in the sea.

If we do not see that nature is culture, in these days, how can we
hear what Lao Tzu had to say? How can we recognize true knowing?

New empires become old in a day, a triumph of centuries collapsed
in one turning of the Earth. Does time now become reaper or angel?

This basin attractor; Teilhard’s “omega,” and Taoist valley – she
beckons all that rises to return.

In the larger stretches of time, greater orders beyond the paintings
of cathedrals or spinning of a spiders web, come into being and pass.

This is not up to us to decide, but it is up to us how we wish to
participate, in the “turning of the age,” that ancients intuited.

The force behind the movement of the stars, heavens and cycles,
is not ancient, or new; it is a brimming over of the eternal.

We have forgotten to turn our inward eyes toward’s Eliade’s “eternal
return.” But it doesn’t mean that too isn’t part of the way of things.

We toss in our sleep and often forget the act of world creation we
participate in; and there is wisdom in that too we can’t contain.

Winter landscapes of amnesia; to some, just as brilliant as the
summer.

For me, I think it is time to remember these things. They may come
to aid us, like a long forgotten knowledge of who we truly are.

We “recollect” before the dawn; to participate with this larger
Imagination in creating a world beyond civilization.

What a spring this will be,
in the stars
I feel it
What vast expanse
What transformations await?

I come again to the place of unknowing,
with boundaries uncertain
and territories vast

in this time, empires deflate
and new dreams are born.

Where do these dreams come from,
and where do they go?

Ask Sumer
as it whispers
Ask falling Empires as
they watch their shadows rise.

I hear my own shadow rising,
in the whispers of my solitude
“Bear me
through this dark night,
so you might hear the song of songs.”

The shadow rises; “bear me in your slumber,
your deepened hearts,
I come now at the edge of night,
where the stars have gone to hiding.”

“You have sought to climb
the highest peak,
but have crawled in a pit of
magnificence
You, great cities,
who have built empires of doom

like the pyramids were built
for the pharaoh,
you construct magnificence
only to cross over.
Yet you do not know it.

Take your cities, your civilizations,
Take your world and be it a tomb.
You have forgotten the price
of transformation is death.

To those who fear me, I am Lilith
Maya,
I am Kali
Destroyer of all that is False;
I dance upon the Pyramid sands.

To those who have passed in and out of the lifetimes,
I am the bringer of change and the revelation
of all that is True.”

All this my shadow whispered to me,
as I reached into the quiet place,
where no stars sign
closer even, to the unseen dawn.

Contemplative practice is not being silent for the sake of a quiet mind. It is seeing through, like a dart piecing beyond the veil. Gnosis is the “spiritual intellect.” A knowing, a being-in-truth. It’s important to remember this is at the heart of contemplation. Be you East or West in tradition, contemplation brings one to the edge of human perception and in contact with the Eternal. Many cultures have awakened to this “Original Mind,” or “Christ.” Perhaps our modern, secular civilization will awaken to it as well.

From the perspective of this larger Mind, which is not human or god, Western culture’s deep sleep is also the seed of profound awakening. For “Original Mind” to be pierced through, despite our deep slumber, could usher in another contemplative age for a planetary culture. Perhaps as our industrial, economic-driven civilization starts fraying at the seams, it will come in contact with the mystery, that same Mysterious eternal that all cultures are born from, and return to.

For at death time rolls over into timeless being, like the in-and-out breath that generates the world and all phenomenon. Gebser said that either modern humanity will be fulfilled in time (our demise), or fulfill time; the ever-present origin. So perhaps coming in contact with the true nature of time, the Ever-Present, will be the code of our culture’s release and transformation.

Remember that Dogen himself said that “being” and “time” are not separate. We say that “all things are one,” yet “all times are one” also.

In love there is no true separation, but don’t mistake that for no-distinction. It is this love which allows all things to exist. This love, this time consummates all ages and eras, including our secular age and times that have “come and gone,” are each and all redeemed.

While I’m at Goddard I will be focusing my studies on contemplative practices, mystical experiences, and transformations in consciousness (both individual and cultural). The thesis will definitely evolve, but I think what I’m looking for in this is a way to further understand what I’m already passionate about writing. Another dimension of my studies will be learning how to make some rather esoteric and obscure ideas more accessible without “dumbing” them down, or mis-representing them. If the world is in the midst of a transformation, or as Thompson puts it, a shift from one cultural mentality to another, how can we both explore and present such a shift in human society in a way that is both accessible to a larger audience and challenging enough not to be dismissed? Do we develop sophisticated lingo, akin to what Wilber and his Integral-Institute have done (Spiral Dynamics, etc), or can we ground our language in less abstraction and more (to put it as Gebser did) concretion?

I’ll be looking at a number of different perspectives on how a transformation of consciousness occurs. To name a few that are on the list: Owen Barfield, Jean Gebser, Sri Aurobindo, and William Irwin Thompson. I’m wary of using Ken Wilber’s works, mainly because after having read so many alternatives, or even his own sources (Gebser, etc), I am doubtful about the integrity of his “theory of everything.”

To put it in an analogy, Wilber’s AQAL theory is something like the Dewey-decimal system of consciousness. It may have a place for everything, but that may be beside the point. I’ll still be referencing him, but not as a central authority, or even a base-line. For that you have to go deeper and read the challenging works, like The Life Divine or Ever Present Origin. Even if this is the case (I might be wrong about Wilber), does it mean that the potential for these ideas is forever-lost to obscurity? Or can we go back, unearth some of the forgotten and essential pieces of the puzzle and present them in a way that others can more easily access them? This is going to the subject of an article on Evolutionary Landscapes.

Sitting alone in peace before these cliffs
the full moon is heaven’s beacon
the ten thousand things are all reflections
the moon originally has no light
wide open the spirit of itself is pure
hold fast to the void realize its subtle mystery
look at the moon like this
this moon that is the heart’s pivot

Al Qaeda just announced they’re going to use Wikileaks to exploit security weaknesses to kill innocent people. Nice. Assange is a terrorist. His defenders will argue he’s preserving freedom. Not in the real world he’s not. He’s merely a criminal aiding other criminals. Man this is dying for an integral breakdown, wish I had more time.

He went on to have a more detailed explanation:

In a world with a lot of folks who will leverage another’s capabilities to do harm, Assange’s efforts and those of his allies will have serious consequences. I believe that I have to take full responsibility at every step for my ethics and my capabilities. Though I know many of the effects of these leaks will be unpredictably positive, others might be devastating. Just watching how these hackers are now using this interaction as an excuse to try to bring down global retailers, I ask myself: really, is this helpful? Is this humane? So now thug-like rioting in the streets and anarchy-like behavior is what we get? Mark my words, regular folks just trying to go about their day are going to get hurt before this is done. These are the effects that an ethical and mature world citizen would have accounted for. You don’t just shit all over civilization and the rule of law because you can. What an integral view calls for is a massively deep sensitivity to the power we wield and a deep humility at the outsize effects our actions can have.

My gut reaction was much like c4chaos: Really!? And I’m still feeling that way. I’d like to try to describe why I think this Smith’s more “conservative” outlook is really missing the bigger picture. While it sounds nice, and calls for humility and empathy for people who are just trying to live their lives, I sense there is a profound absence of historical understanding about these “thugs” and “rioters.” There is a line between what one might consider a divisive rioter and those who “doth protest,” or “think otherwise.” Political activism has never been a totally passive affair, and in the history of monarchies that have been toppled in favor of more democratic governments, not every revolution is bound to become Paris, 1789. But let’s look at France’s history for a moment…

As a society changes and new forms of social order emerge, they often cause a conflict between the established power and the emerging, often more complex system of rule. Not only is there a conflict, but often the “Old Rule” can no longer viably sustain itself and has gone into a deficient mode; Constitutional Monarchies become “Let Them Eat Cake” mentalities, and the sheer pressure to change in the face of great strife often pushes a people to conflict, civil war and in France’s case, the guillotine.

For better or worse, change often comes like a storm. The ruling power is unable to handle the complexities of a new social order, yet unwilling to yield its control. In the case of France, extreme decadence, stratification and famine preceded the Revolution. The Ancien Regime, which once had been a more benign form of holding society together, had now become a rotting tomb over the whole culture, and yes, people were mad. This doesn’t justify the mass slaughter that followed in the French Revolution. Instead I think it changes the way we perceive our situation today: in the face of an increasingly deficient social order that is unable and unwilling to deal with its limitations, how do we react? Political activism is now not only in the form of physical protests, but also a new kind of internet activism that appears like a nightmare to some and an ushering in of a new order to others. This new emerging “mentality” is characteristically described as “transparent” and “participatory.” It has no need for closed borders and secrets, for it thrives on an open and interdependent ecology. Like the democratic systems that erupted in Europe following the the “Age of Reason,” spreading like wildfire and bringing revolution and chaos to some nations, the internet and modern communication technology is a new kind of planetary flood. It has spread even more rapidly than the shift from what Weber called “Traditional” to “Legal Rational” authority. Now we are moving from a Legal-Rational age to an Age of Participation. It will emerge in ways vastly more complex than historical systems, and we can expect the previous power structures to buckle and resist.

Weber’s 3 Kinds of authority & the potential new 4th:

1. Charismatic: Despots, Benign Kings, Dictatorship, Tyranny, etc.
2. Traditional: Hierarchy, Monarchy, Class Rule, Ancien Regime, Divine Rule, etc.
3. Legal Rational: Hierarchy, Representation, legal authority, property and economy
4. Participatory: Decentralized, Participation, Information, Open-Source and Ecology.

We do not know how or in what ways this new social order will truly emerge, but what is beginning with a terrifying exposure of secrets might end with a totally new way to organize society; without the need for representation, or even governments as we know them. This may be centuries away, but we are seeing the beginning of it now. With the deficiency of the current system to respond appropriately to Wikileaks and other pushes for decentralization (Corporate attempts to centralize the internet, Government attempts at a “kill-switch), the “new” order of things will push back to establish itself. Which is really another way of saying that Corporations and Military-Industrial states have every reason to fear this new transparency. Robb Smith’s views are understandable, because this really is a chaotic “overturning” of a social order as it collapses on itself, but Julian Assange, the Pirate Bay and Anonymous are not the only ones to “blame,” a great deal of the problems we are in are a direct result of the secrecy, corruption and deception of those who currently hold the power, and this is exactly what these new activists are reacting to. I am sure that King Louis XVI’s sympathizers held a similar view to many Wiki-leaks protestors, in that they wished to assist somehow in change but didn’t see any reason to overturn the established social order.

From a planetary perspective, we should not limit ourselves to what we feel is morally right, but also to understand the forces of change. Good and evil do a dance, especially in a transitional period between one society and another.

Evil often announces the next world order. The Atlantic Civilization began with the Viking Invasion, mirroring future European conquests in the Americas. Now global corporations use governments to do their bidding and have a “hold” over the people in the same way the Viking Terror had over the serfs of Europe. Today, the Serfs are not necessarily the American people, but the majority of the Third World where corporations outsource their labor, transforming entire nations to serfdoms. Although their power holds strong, they have set the seeds for change to come again; now the terror comes in the form of a catastrophe, literally a “turning over” and a revelation of the underside of civilization. It is an ugly thing, but perhaps this is exactly what we need: in rendering the darkness to light, we now have an opportunity to transmute the sludge, prima material, into a divine and participatory openness. Just as the Vikings paved the way for modern Europe, perhaps the Dark Age of Corporate Globalization and the Military-Industrial Complex have set the stage for the new Planetary Civilization—and the first structure we are witnessing is this new global commons.

Can we create a new society that, while not being a utopia, at last allows for an ecology both human and non-human, to thrive? Can we develop a non-oppressive form of civilization? That has never existed before, and for any “integral” theorist or thinker, this should be the central question: what is the nature of transformation? What can be gleaned from the chaos today and of yesterday, so that even the rioters can be understood as ushering in a new participatory social order.

Haste is replaced by silence and the capacity for silence;

goal-oriented, purposive thought is replaced by unintentionalness;

the pursuit of of power is replaced by the genuine capacity for love;

quantitative idle motion is replaced by qualitative spiritual process;

manipulation is replaced by the patient acceptance of the providential powers;

mechanistic classification and organization is replaced by the “being-in-order;”

prejudice is replaced by the renunciation of value judgments, that is to say, the emotional short-circuit is replaced by unsentimental tolerance;

action is replaced by poise;

homo faber is replaced by homo integer

the divided human being is replaced by the whole human being;

the emptiness of the limited world is replaced by the open expanse of the open world.

Feuerstein follows up a few pages later with another list:

self-consciousness—mind transcending freedom
ego-fulfillment—ego transcendence
search for perfection—present happiness
self-opacity—self transparency
space fixity—space freedom
obsession with and fear of time—time freedom
past or future orientedness—presentiation
now-orientedness—living in the full continuum of time
boundness, maskedness—openness
rigidity, defensiveness—fluency, availability
intolerance/toleration—playful tolerance
control—letting be
hesistancy—immediacy
anxiety—enjoyment
alienation—participatory freedom
internalized responsibility—personal responsiveness
emotional dependence/independence—freedom of feeling
observer consciousness—participatory consciousness
forced action—responsive doing
purposive orientation—humorous participation
categorization—-name transcendence
abstraction, obsession with thinking—bodily presence
knowledge—understanding, wisdom
dogmatism—acknowledgement of the multivalency of life
fear of intimacy—freedom for intimacy
doubt—reverence for life
guilt—freedom from the superego
ennui—equanimity
exploitative orientation—service
falling in or out of love—being love

How do current authors and writers on “consciousness” compare? Are they similar, dis-similar? I consider this list to be a guidepost along the meandering Way, especially with the sheer number of books, followings and organizations that all claim they are embodiments or expressions of some new consciousness. At any rate, hope you enjoy it!

“To believe in Him under any particular form is not enough. Accept Him in His numberless forms, shapes and modes of being, in everything that exists. Aim at the whole and all your actions will be whole.” –Anandamayi Ma

• The podcasts appear to be taken down. Not sure if this is permanent or not. In the mean time here is the site for the full Spring 2010 retreat: “Live from Phuket!”
• The Wiki page on Shamatha.