I recently watched a historical documentation about the generation of the sixties called “1968 – Myth and Truth” (ZDF- German television).

Two things immediately came to my mind in regard to the title: Firstly, that the “summer of love” is now already 40 years old and by virtue of this fact worth of a historical review – a fact that should deeply hurt the narcissistic attitude of the young-at-hearts. Secondly, that the title “Myth and Truth” was chosen wisely with regard to the many peculiarities, that came along under the banner of the first revolutionary rise of the green vMeme in order to create a new world – a great number of black sheep with a “Fuck You, I won’t do what you tell me!”-attitude among the truly worldcentric and liberating values of the civil rights movement, the feminist and ecological movements. Or was the ratio even vice versa? Only a few post-conventional, green spokesmen and a huge red mob of pre-conventional protesters – both of them being happily united against the blue conventionalism? Wilbers analysis in “Boomeritis” let this ratio appear more accurate. 

But enough of history. “Bad air! Bad air!” as Nietzsche would say. Every generation has its cosmic creativity and its cosmic karma in all four quadrants. 40 years later we still feed on the sedimented values of the Boomer generation that permeate numerous societal subsystems. Good and well indeed, thanks Boomers. Yawn! What’s new?

Fucking integral is new! 40 years later we need nothing less but a massive eruption of integral values causing a furor around the entire globe! In 2048 we must be able to look back and state with a glow in our eyes: “I was a part of the 2008 generation, back then in the famous ‘Summer of Transcendence and Inclusion’”.

Pipe dreams. But the phenomenon Barack Obama is clearly demonstrating it – people are hungry for positive Visions of a better life – that the world may grow together, that we fight poverty, that we cope with climate change, that we pacify religious fanatism, that we channel capitalism in a healthy way, that the darn human race finally becomes sane and stops degrading itself to being the most ridiculous laughing stock of the entire universe – a species so primitive that it holds American idol shows and digital gadgets to be the greatest thing since sliced bread, while parts of it slaughter each other entirely senselessly and other parts of this human race devastate its one only environment. You almost feel a strange sympathy with these funny creatures that have such a dazzlingly complex nervous system and such self-destructive habits. Too cute.

“Bad air! Bad air!” With Nietzsche I wait for the arrival of the “Übermensch” – integral, of course -  something I would like to interpret in a way that this superhuman being is no longer exclusively identified with his human but rather with his true nature, the cosmic ground of being. Has somebody seen something of the like in this part of our tiny solar system? Meager, meagre is the outcome of such a search. There are rumors heard about two or three percent of the population –in democratic industrialized nations only, of course – another rule of thumb says “70 percent of the world’s population are Nazis – or lower”. A depressing fact the brings you directly to the question: radical negation or radical affirmation of the will for life?

For an integral-nondual-evolutionary spirituality there is no other answer to this question but a resolute “Yes! Both.” Negation / transcendence and affirmation / inclusion of the will for life enable each other like left and right, up and down enable each other.

This new generation must be a living koan answer! A koan is not answered by choosing one dualistic alternative but by courageously demonstrating an answer that transcends the level of the question itself. Once they will ask this generation of the integral Übermensch: “Politically liberal or conservative, joyful consumer-life or environmental protection,  autonomy or communion, this-wordly or other-wordly, work or vocation, tradition or progress, peace and love or military intervention, spiritual or secular, male or female, children or career, hermitage or marketplace, state or structure, extraordinary or nothing special?” The integral Übermensch will simply roar and laugh…

From here on it is fun to speculate. What will be the nature of this “integral (r)evolution”? Will it be a noisy mess? Will we see stones flying and cars burning? Will there be strangers that lie in each other arms in a rush of drugs and loud music? Will we put flowers in each others hairs?

None of the above is totally off the table due to the fact that with the emergence of the integral structure the individual is able to express all of the behaviour patterns of the previous structures as a kind of register, if necessary. But there is some kind of indication that this integral revolution will be relatively silent revolution – despite or rather because of this it will be a more powerful change at the leading edge of humanity.

People with an integral view grasp either intuitively or explicitly the different stations of life and the evolutionary unfolding of the human being. They will therefore be aware of the fact that it is pointless trying to change the people that act from a certain level. Instead they will communicate with people of this level in a certain way that can be heard and inspires them to act in a way that fosters or at least does no harm to the sake of the whole. This revolution takes place in the interiors of the individual – no use trying to elevate the rest of humanity to a certain level of consciousness at once (as other structures have tried before).

Instead: integral aikido in the background, a soft change in the leading positions, social acupuncture and individual expressions of the new integral values will be the non-obvious indicators of a silent revolution that will lead to a significant rise of  positive news.

What will be the life-circumstances that give birth to this new evolutionary step? Undoubtedly the global problems that humanity is now beginning to face: climate change, terrorism, war, hunger, AIDS, water, oil, globalization, financial crisis, etc. All of them highly complex clusters of problems that yearn, scream, groan and moan for an integral-transdisciplinary, world-centric approach.

I think we are wasting too much time waiting for others, instead of being the source of inspiration ourselves. The only thing that is stopping us are we ourselves!

 

So come on and join in this summer! 2008 – THE SUMMER OF TRANSCENDENCE AND INCLUSION.

 

ILP in the streets, meditation in the shopping mall, Holosync in manager circles, Spiral Dynamics featured in “Psychology Today”, Ken Wilber addressing the United Nations, Bill Clinton and Al Gore featured on Integral Naked, the founding of the “UIP” (the United Integral Party), holacratic structures all over NGO’s, Integral Spirituality being discussed at major church conventions, schools applying practices of integral education, addiction recovery treatment is being revolutionized through the use of ILP and AQAL, breakthroughs in subtle energy research, consumers steering the economy via transparency and conscious capitalism, the “Bright Green” movement of combining technological progress and environmental protection is gaining momentum, “Grace and Grit” starring Jennifer Aniston wins an academy award, the pre-trans-fallacy is being discussed in psychological faculties, students demand meditation rooms for universities, Father Thomas Keating is discussing the opening of Christianity with Oprah Winfrey, postmodern faculties get replaced by faculties for integral theory and practice, scientists work within the framework of integral methodological pluralism, the works of Jean Gebser, Teihard de Chardin, and Sri Aurobindo and the German Idealist are being revived,  customers demand organic food and boycott conventional products, you name it…

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” –Karl Marx

I say: The Marxists have messed around with the world pretty badly; the point is not only to change it with the help an integral philosophy as an appropriate map of reality, but to realize yourself as the most urgent project of the r/evolution!

 

Spread the word!

Coming soon: 2008 – THE SUMMER OF TRANSCENDENCE AND INCLUSION.

Dieser Eintrag auf Deutsch: -->hier klicken<--

-Dennis Wittrock

dennis.wittrock@yahoo.de

www.fundamentalintegral.blogspot.com

What should be the name of the forthcoming "Integral Life" sub-organizations?

take the poll

go to  http://www.polldaddy.com/p.asp?p=72920

Hey friends,

just a quick note that I was invited to join the last ISC call on chapter 7 of Integral Spirituality, "A Miracle called 'We'". That it was, indeed...

check out the ISC call announcements in the coming months for a posting of a downloadable version of my Q&A session with Ken. It was really cool.



My questions were concerned with the vertical dimension of the zones, quite technichal, but if you are an integral-theory-nerd then you might happen to find them stimulating anyway.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
---Ludwig Wittgenstein

Intrinsically dead, I live. Intrinsically nonexistent, I AM. I come home to my Centre here, only to find it exploding into infinite space. I come home to my Centre now, only to find it exploding into infinite time.
............................................................. D.E. Harding

I am dead in me, my friend is alive in me, my God is deathless in me... Our dying is the graduated reversal of our belief that is we who live and the universe that is dead.
............................................................. D.E. Harding


What I have in place of a head is mortal animals and mortal men, mortal stars and mortal galaxies, and the immortal Whole.
............................................................. D.E. Harding


Douglas Harding, the contemporary mystic and seer is dead.

In his work he was concerned with the question of death, especially with asking and looking for WHAT dies. This bag of skin filled with bones will perish, that's for sure. But is this WHO YOU ARE, really ?

Douglas Harding investigated this question and found that he was the only one who has no head. This brilliant clarity , this empty capicity (where others see only a closed, discrete meatball), this I AMness is who we truly are at our core. From this point we are the space in which the whole of manifest existence arises, dances and passes away again.

He shared this experience of seeing by designing experiments so that everybody who is interested in their true nature can take a look for themselves. Check out htttp://www.headless.org 

He deeply touched my life, inspired my spiritual path and provided the ultimate pointing-out instructions for SEEING / the witness. Try out the experiments. They are misleadingly simple but infinitely profound. Just the way I imagined ultimate truth to be...

Douglas Harding is dead. May his work live on and the spark of seeing be transmitted in the future.

Douglas, I know that who you really are is right here, this brilliant spaciousness that others perceive as being my head. It has no features of its own, mine is as empty as yours, in fact it IS yours. This presence never moves. Where should it go? It is here!

Who dies anyway?

The Voice of the Tradition on Death & Resurrection:

If you know yourself without existence or ceasing to be, then you know God.
............................................................. Ibn ‘Arabi

The profit of the knowledge of the soul is, that you understand and are sure that your existence is neither existent nor non-existent, and that you are not, were not, and never will be.
............................................................. Ibn ‘Arabi

When you abide in the Unborn, you abide at the source of all the Buddhas; so it's something wonderfully precious. There's no question of perishing here, so when you abide in the Unborn, it's superfluous to speak about the Imperishable. What isn't created can't be destroyed.
............................................................. Bankei

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
............................................................. Jesus

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death into life.
............................................................. Jesus

While alive, be a dead man, thoroughly dead.
............................................................. Bunan

Owing to the I-am-the-body notion, death is feared as being the loss of Oneself. Birth and death pertain to the body only but they are superimposed on the Self.
............................................................. Ramana Maharshi

There is no death of anyone but only in appearance, even as there is no birth of anyone but only in appearance.
............................................... ......... Apollonius of Tyana

I say, there is no death.
If every hour I die,
Each time a better life
has come to me thereby
............................................................. Angelus Silesius

He that beholds his own Face - his light is greater than the light of the creatures. Though he die, his sight is everlasting, because his sight is the sight of the Creator.
............................................................. Rumi

If your bonds be not broken whilst living, what hope of deliverance in death? It is but an empty dream that the soul shall have union with Him because it has passed from the body; If He is found now, He is found then. If not, we do but go to dwell in the City of Death.
............................................................. Kabir

He who dwells on the unreal universe is destroyed.
............................................................. Shankara

The universe dissolves into me. Wonderful am I! Adoration to Myself! For when the world, from its highest god to its least blade of grass, dissolves, that destruction is not mine. ............................................................. Ashtavakra Gita

The Universe is merely a mode of the mind. Those liberated beings are surely immortal who are identified with Reality - which is self-luminous, and which needs no support for Its existence, but which cognizes both existence and non-existence. ............................................................. Ashtavakra Gita

God made the senses turn outwards, man therefore looks outwards, not into himself. But occasionally a daring soul, desiring immortality, has looked back and found himself.
............................................................. Katha Upanishad

The contemplation of eternity maketh the soul immortal, whose glory it is, that it can see before and after its existence into endless spaces. Its sight is its presence.
............................................................. Traherne

We feel an inkling of the perfection and stability of eternity, for there is neither time nor space, neither before nor after, but everything present in one new, fresh-springing now where millenniums last no longer than the twinkling of an eye.
............................................................. Meister Eckhart

Consider that your life is a perpetual perishing.
............................................................. J.J. Olier

Watchfulness is the path to immortality, and thoughtlessness the path to death. The watchful do not die, but the thoughtless are already dead.
............................................................. Dhammapada

Who sees the supreme Lord dwelling alike in all beings, and never perishing when they perish, he sees indeed.
............................................................. Bhagavad Gita

He who knows the soundless, odourless, tasteless, intangible, formless, deathless, supernatural, undecaying, beginningless, endless, unchangeable Reality, springs out of the mouth of Death.
............................................................. Katha Upanishad

Nisargadatta: You can judge the strength of this will to live by the universal horror of death.
Questioner: Quite often people die willingly
Nisargadatta: Only when the alternative is worse than death. But such readiness to die flows from the same source as the will to live, a source deeper even than life itself. To be a living being is not the ultimate state: there is something beyond, much more wonderful, which is neither being nor non-being, neither living nor not-living. It is a state of pure awareness, beyond the limitations of space and time. Once the illusion that the body-mind is oneself is abandoned, death loses its terror, it becomes a part of living.

The heavens will fold and the earth before your eyes but he who lives from the Living One will experience neither death nor fear. ..........................................Gospel According to Thomas

Long before he saw us we were able to identify the bare head of a young Bushman working energetically at something in the grass. When he heard us, he shot upright like an arrow out of the grass and grabbed his spear, but already Dabe was calling out loudly the ancient Bushman greeting: "Good day. I saw you from afar and I am dying of hunger".

The young man stuck his spear in the sand and with his right hand raised, palm open and fingers up, walked shyly towards us, saying in a tone I had never heard before: "Good day! I have been dead but now that you have come, I live again".
...........Laurens van der Post, "The Lost World of the Kalahari"

All that exists anywhere in the world, be it trees and plants, insects, reptiles, or any other living thing - their birth is indeed your birth, and their death your death.
............................................................. Ananda Mayi Ma

When a man is awakened he melts and perishes.
............................................................. Rumi

To die but not to perish is to be eternally present.
............................................................. Lao-Tzu

The final experience is the annihilation of our human self, of its good qualities as well as its evil; it is ‘dying daily' until even the best of humanhood is gone, and spiritual identity is revealed.
............................................................. Joel Goldsmith

To comprehend and to understand God above all similitudes, as He is in Himself, is to be God with God, without intermediary, and without any otherness that can become a hindrance or an intermediary. Whosoever wishes to understand this must have died to himself, and must live in God, and must turn his gaze to the eternal light in the ground of his spirit, where the Hidden Truth reveals Itself without means.
............................................................. Ruysbroek

Examine closely what sort of being you are. Know your nature - that your body is mortal, but your soul immortal; that our life has two denotations, so to speak: one relating to the flesh, and this life is quickly over, the other relating to the soul, life without limit. "Give heed to thyself" - cling not to the mortal as if it were eternal; disdain not that which is eternal as if it were temporal. ............................................................. Basil the Great

Being admonished to return to myself, I entered into the secret chamber of my soul... And I beheld with the eye of my soul the Light unchangeable... He who knows that Light knows eternity. ............................................................. St. Augustine

He that beholds his own Face - his light is greater than the light of the creatures. Though he die, his sight is everlasting, because his sight is the sight of the Creator.
............................................................. Rumi

I am unborn, and in the manner in which I am unborn I can never die. In my unborn manner I have been eternally, and am now, and shall eternally remain. What I am in the order of having been born, that will die and perish, for it is mortal, and so it must in time suffer corruption.
............................................................. Meister Eckhart

It's this self-originated Clear Light, eternally unborn, the parentless babe of Wisdom.
............................................................. Padma Sambhava

The originally existing Unborn - all of you, be sure you don't conceal it from yourselves! This Unborn is like a great ball of fire: touch it and you'll be burned.
............................................................. Bankei

German language only - sorry guys!  But check it out anyway- it's hot: at least if you've always wanted to hear me mumble in my native language...

Big thanks to André Klein, the producer of this clip! Keep up the good work of  "Teelanovela", " the tea for TV".

Gary Stamper from the Integral Salon in Seattle raises some important questions about the directionality of growth for Integral Salons.

 watch the video on You Tube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILrr-MpiyCY

In Germany you can find a strong bottom-up growth of local salons resulting in the formation of the "Integrales Forum".

Holacracy / Sociocracy may be a good way  of dealing with these questions of organizational growth.

http://www.headless.org

These days I feel stuck.

Stuck with my university stuff - I'm looking for an appropriate topic to write about in my "Magister"-work (about 80-100 pages) in philosophy. It'll probably be about integral, that's for sure, but at the moment I'm having a hard time hammering out the details and making it digestable for my professor. Don't put too much on the spoon - never more than they can swallow...

I'm stuck with my Zen practice. I meditate twice daily and I feel like it's getting nowhere specifically at the moment. Not deeper, not clearer, not more blissful, yadda, yadda, yadda... Damn- I guess this is just my greedy ego complaining here.

I feel stuck with my career situation. Soon (in a year, hopefully) I will be done with my studies and have just very vague ideas about earning my living. I like writing for "integrale perspektiven" the german magazine of the http://www.IntegralesForum.org . But this is unpaid work at the moment. I wonder if this will change in the near future, but I have my doubts about it.  I speculated on "Integral" becoming the next big wave of avantgarde-anything - as Ken does publicly, too. I still think that the promised land is near, so to speak, but it may take anything from 2-20 years for an explosion of the demand for what I am good at and have specialised myself in: integral or AQAL.

Ironically I am already teaching AQAL at Oldenburg university (together with Stefanie and Peter Gottwald from the Jean Gebser Society), but this is not really paid work neither. It is a great chance for me, but somehow there is some resistance among the participants against the more theoretical aspects of the integral model I am trying to represent there. This contributes to my frustration.

I feel stuck with my soccer team. Although I am scoring not too bad here and there we are constantly losing. Our coach is behaving childishly and sulks whenever we lose. Boy, can you please grow up...

I feel stuck with integral by and large. Does it matter? Does anybody care at all? Meanwhile I'm giving myself an overdose on integral activities: a congress here, a workshop there, next week a seminar. I feel saturated with integral stuff. But still,... somehow I cling to it, because it still seems the best thing to do here.

right- this is where I feel stuck, too. The question: " What am I here for?"  It feels like a REAL KOAN Question - not one of this easy-peasy  that I answer while sleepwalking in the Dokusan-Room with my Koan-Autopilot switched on. No way, dude. This is the real stuff -something that cries out from the heart center. Screaming up towards the sky in pain. "What am I here for??". Alright, I'm gonna sit with THIS.

It's getting better. Thank you for reading this. I am thankful for writing about it.

*blessings*

Hi friends,

I am already blogging a lot actually, and this is another blog extra - oh dear...

But this one I will keep in English language (mostly), I promise.

I am doing this especially for all the friends of me and Stefanie that we got to know in the first quarter of the year while living in Boulder and volunteering for Integral Institute.

I want to let all of you dear souls know what's going on in Germany and stay in touch with you.

It's been a wonderful time with you.

much love an hugs,

Dennis