Mon 08 Apr 2002 20:01
Ken Wilber
Theory of everything
p35 -- on what motivates development?
On the other hand, if the person has tasted a stage and become fairly full, then he or she is open to transformation. In order for this to occur, some sort of dissonance generally has to set in. The new wave is struggling to emerge, the old wave is struggling to hang on, and the individual feels torn, feels dissonance, feels pulled in several directions. But in any event there has to be some sort of profound dissatisfaction with the present level; one has to be agitated, annoyed, frustrated with it, so that a deep and conflicted dissonance insistently arises.

In any event, one has to be willing to let go of--or die to--the present level. Perhaps one has run up against its inherent limitations or contradictions (as Hegel would say), or one is beginning to disidentify with it (as Assagioli explained), or perhaps one has just gotten tired of it. At this point, some sort of insight into the situation--insight into what one actually wants, and insight into what reality actually offers--usually helps the individual to move forward. Affirmation, volition, and the intention to change can aall be parts of insight into the situation, helping drive consciousness forward. This insight can be facilitated by introspection, by conversations with friends, by therapy, by meditation, or--more often than not, and in ways that absolutely nobody understands--by simply living.

[not the answer I was looking for!]

Finally, if all of those factors fall into place,then an opening to the next wave of consciousness--deeper, higher, wider, more encompassing--becomes possible.

p36
an integral vision and integral practice needed to progress from green.

p39 G Spencer Brown in _Laws of Form_ : new knowledge comes when you simply bear in mind what you need to know. Keep holding the problem in mind, and it will yield. Could take a millenium... but. An individual runs into a problem, and simply obsesses about the problem until she or he solves it.

I believe that any competent person is capable of bearing problems in mind until they yield their secrets; what not everybody possesses is the requisite will, passion, or insane obsession that will let them hold the problem long enough or fiercely enough.

I, at any rate, was insane enough for this particular problem

p41, if the world is whole, why do so many people see it as broken? And why, in a sense, is the world broken, fragmented, alienated, divided?

p80, in response to criticism of _Sense and Soul_ for not providing a place for 'narrow religion.'
Two, the real core of religion is deep religion or deep spirituality, which tends to relax and lessen narrow-religion zeal, and thus, to the extent you are alive to your own higher potentials, you will find narrow religion less and less appealing. (see note 17)
p79
The average believer, the critics said, would never give up the myths and stories that constitute perhaps 95 percent of most forms of spirituality.

"What, no resurrection of Jesus? No Moses and the covenant? No facing Mecca each day in prayer? This isn't my religion." And so on.

Most religions will continue to offer sacraments, solace, and myths (and other translative or horizontal consolations), in addition to the genuinely transformative practices of vertical contemplation.

(1) if narrow religion makes empirical claims, then those claims must be put to the test of empirical (narrow) science.

p80 In my model, those types of mental beliefs refer to the magic, mythic, rational, or vision-logic levels of development.

p80 Spirituality and Liberalism
The last point I would like to discuss briefly on this topic is simple: Religion and science will never get along until religion and liberalism kiss and make up.

p81
Liberalism maintained, on the contrary, that the state should not promote any particular version of the good life, but rather should let individuals decide for themselves (the separation of church and state). To this day, liberalism tends to be extremely suspicious of religion, simply because many religious believers do try to impose their values on others.

[I don't really wish to tell her about this because I don't want her to change from how she is(?) I don't want her to be like the rest of us. But if she could somehow incorporate both these views and the other beliefs so important to her, I could learn from that...(?)]

I value so much the dreams of the mythic, the stories of the devil, and mysterey... and so on, which in a way are lost. I like to hear others tell me of those stories, but on my own, I spend my time more with the realms Wilber emphasizes-- perhaps, though probably not--one seems more exciting but not tenable, the other -- why not as exciting(?)

p81 The traditional religion that the Enlightenment questioned was blue religion, with its ethnocentric myths and absolutisms (believe in its mythic God, and you are saved; all disbelievers are eternally damned).

p81 But they were deeply confused when they thought that all of traditional religion was nothing but Santa Claus myths. For every major wisdom tradition contains, at its core, a series of contemplative practices, and, at their best, these contemplative practices disclose the transrational and transpersonal waves of consciousness.


p82 My point is that both of them need to relax their narrow, shallow zealotry and open themselves to the good science and the deep spirituality of the higher waves of existence, where they both can find a deepening accord.

This would be a postconservative, postliberal spirituality. It would build on the gains of the worldcentric Enlightenment, and not retreat to merely mythic-membership pronouncements and prescriptive morality. That is to say, this is a spirituality that is not preliberal and reactionary, but progressive and evolutionary. It does not seek to impose its belief structures on others, but invites each and all to develop their own potentials, therein to discover their own deep spirituality, radiant to infinity, glowing in the dark, happy for all time, this simple stunning discovery of your own Original Face, your divine soul and spirit, shining even now.

--it does not seek to impose its belief structures on others, but invites each and all to develop their own potentials....

I guess the difference is that that scenario has room for the mythic and itself, whereas the mythic only has room for itself.

p83 Integral Politics
I have been working with Drexel Sprecher, Lawrence Chickering, Don Beck, Jack Crittenden.
clinton's Vital Center
Compassionate Conservatism
Schroeder's Neue Mitte
Blair's Third way
Thabo Mbeki's African Renaissance
all quadrant, all-level

p86 Voltaire's "Remember the cruelties"--the suffering inflicted by the Church on millions of people in the name of a mythic dog.

p88 So here is the truly odd political choice that we are given today: a sick version of a higher level versus a healthy version of a lower level--liberalism versus conservatism. (?)

p89 don beck, christopher cowan, clare graves

p89 Integral Governance
In all of this, we are looking for hints as to what a second-tier or integral approach to governance might look like.

p90 The Constitution itself thus became a pacer of transformation, gently encouraging every activity within its reach to stand within a worldcentric, postconventional, non-ethnocentric moral atmosphere. The brilliance of this document and its framers is hard to overstate.

The U.S. Constitution was the culmination of first-tier governance philosophy. Even though its framers were often using second-tier thinking, the realities that they were addressing were still almost entirely first-tier, particularly the formation and relation of the corporate states that evolved out of feudal empires and ancient nations.

But now global systems and integral meshworks are evolving out of corporate states and value communities (see fig. 3-1). These interdependent systems require governance capable of integrating (not dominating) nations and communities over the entire spiral of interior and exterior development. What the world needs now is the first genuinely second-tier form of political philosoph and governance. I believe of course, that it will be all-quadrant, all-level political theory and practice, deeply integral in its structures and patterns. This will in no way replace the U.S. Constitution (or that of any other nation), but will simply situate it in global meshworks that facilitate mutual unfolding and enhancement--an integral and holonic politics.

The question remains: exactly how will this be conceived, understood, embraced, and practiced? What precise details, what actual specifics, where and how and when? this is the great and exhilarating call of global politics at the millennium. We are awakening the new global founding Fathers and Mothers who will fram an integral system of governance that will call us to our more encompassing future, that will act as a gentle pacer of transformation for the entire spiral of human development, honoring each and very wave as it unfolds, yet kindly inviting each and all to even greater depth.

p93 integral institute wilber kabat zinn, ken pelletier, mm, gl, schlitz, borysenko,achterberg

physical, emotional, spiritual waves

Integral Education p96
most of these typical holistic approaches overlook the prime directive, which is that it is the health of the overall spiral, and not any one level, that is the central ethical imperative.

A truly integral education does simply impose the green meme on everybody from day one, but rather understands that development unfolds in phase-specific waves of increasing inclusiveness. (?) To use Gebser's version, consciousness fluidly flows from archaic to magit to mythic to rational to integral waves, and a genuinely integral education would emphasize, not jus the last wave, but all of them as they appropriately unfold.

rather thin soup.


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