Dangers of a Cornered George Bush - Coleen Rowley

In an earlier blog yesterday I suggested we send "ping pong" balls to Congress and the Senate to help them stand up to this administration. I also argued for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney lest they do even more damage than they've already done, claiming that just starting the process would force mobilzation and awareness that the legislative branch is now able to ignore....at our peril.

On the Huffington Post, Coleen Rowley writes about the Dangers of a Cornered George Bush. The possible scenarios again scream for the necessity of impeachment to begin.

"If the constitutional process of impeachment is under way when President Bush orders our military to begin a war against Iran, there is a good chance that, rather than salute like automatons and start World War III, our senior military would find a way to prevent more carnage until such time as the representatives of the people in the House have spoken. This administration's capacity for mischief would not end until conviction in the Senate. But initiating the impeachment process appears to be the only way to launch a shot across the bow of this particular ship of state. For it is captained by a president with a psychological makeup likely to lead to new misadventures likely to end in a ship wreck unless the Constitution is brought alongside and a new pilot boarded."

"George W. Bush is without conscience, and it would require a lengthy series of clinical sessions to find out what happened to it. By identifying himself as all good and on the side of right, he has been able to vanquish any guilt, any sense of doing wrong."

Read the full article here

The Search For A New Worldview

From the Big Bang to Big Brain, here is a modern creation story, an inspirational starting point for embracing conscious participation in the evolutionary partnership of our time. At the comtemporary edge of human consciousness, we must be co-evolutionary partners.

The scientific revolution of the past century has brought about nothing less than a new perception of our reality, a new worldview. This means all of us are at some stage of changing the way we look at, think about and understand business, politics, nature, religion, values, health care, education, families, communities and everyday life. It’s a big change in a very short time. Books like “Dark Age Ahead” and “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” all ask what our response to this will be. Will we fight it all the way with possible dire consequences? Or will we embrace this change of fundamental perspective, and in so doing create the future we want and need?

Such scale of change can be met proactively or blind-side us. The challenge ahead is to reinvent ourselves, our economies, our institutions, our communities as ecologically sustainable, economically viable, equitable and inclusive. There are people already working for this in every community. But their numbers are not yet enough to tip the public will. The number who recognize the need is not too small. But those acting upon it are a minority.
An idea emerged . . . Universarium Fair.

View the video.

If you have higher bandwidth, view the large size version.

Send Some Balls to Congress

While listening to Big Ed Schulz on Air America radio this afternoon, a caller offered a brilliant idea on how to get Congress to stand up to this administration: shame and humiliation (I love it). Nothing else has worked.....

Go down to a sporting goods store and buy four sets of two ping pong balls, one set for your Representative in Congress, one set for your Senator, one set for Senator Chuck Schumer, and one set for Nancy Pelosi. Stick two of 'em in a 5-7 padded mailing pouch, and send them off to these people with a note reading: "Since you seem to have lost your balls, I thought you could use these. Time to stand up to this administration and say 'no more' ."

I have not been a fan of impeachment as I thought it would do more harm to the country than good. I've changed my mind. The potential harm this administration could do by it's "F*** you" attitude to us and the world could be much, much worse.

If you laugh this off, do I need to send you a set, too?

Something You Can Do....Right Now

A hundred years from now, school children will read about Al Gore and his leadership to address global climate change.

No one has worked harder or inspired more Americans to tackle the greatest threat the world has ever faced. Now it's time to add your name to the history books.

Stand with Al and pledge to live a life that will protect our environment for generations to come. Don't do it because you're a Dmocrat. Don't not do it because you're a Republican.

Do it because it's the moral and ethical thing to do.

Do it here.

Moving Forward

(Click on image to see it full size)

I'm not blogging enough, and I know it. Life. Life is in the way. I've got so much going on that someting has to give a bit, and yet, I know how important blogging anfd writing is to my practices....my integral practices. So what's been in the way?

Well, regular readers know about Big Love Integral, the Workshop on Conscious Romantic Relationship that I'm continuing to put together, and present as I go. I also moved this past weekend. Yes, I moved twice last year, and I loved the apartment I've been in for the past year, but an oppoprtunity came up (shall I say manifested?) to rent/sit a great house for a friend at a great price. In the Magnolia neighborhood, it boasts a view of Elliott Bay, the waterfront, the city, the Space Needle, and even Mt. Rainier on a clear day, and is only a 3-minute drive to my regular job. But moving, as I wrote last year, is a bitch, and it's taken three weeks to do that.

In addition, my lady Anyaa and I are buying an investment property, and I've been putting that deal together and we're making an offer this week. We've also started an online travel business, called World Ventures, where people can find the lowest fares, dream vacations, become a travel agent themselves with all the discounts and perks afforded travel agents, and allows us to write off all our travel and vacations.

Then there's the iboutique, my free lance design , the seminars and trips to expand my consciousness, putting together a new Breathwork Group in Seattle, SeattleIntegral, and my long distance relationship with my Beloved, Anyaa.

Phew....I've got to find some time to do some more blogging!

More Love, Less Suffering

MY BELOVED left Seattle this afternoon after spending 30 days here with me. For those of you who haven't read of Anyaa in this blog before (you must really be new!), she lives in North Carolina, and we've been in serious face-to-face relationship for 9 months, and began speaking on the phone for hours at a time 2 months before that.

This has been made possible because Anyaa facilitates The Shamanic Priestess Process (TM) all over the country and was just beginning a 9-month circle in Portland when she called me in, and I found her, thanks to an online dating site. We'll officially be at one year on August 30th. A milestone. She's now beginning a Seattle circle which will keep her coming back to Seattle for that period of time, maybe more.

What an amazing journey this has been with this amazingly conscious woman. I've never been in a relationship like this before, and she feels the same. The things we've manifested together during this 11 month period, starting with each other, are a wonder, and continue to unfold almost daily.

Already awakening in my own path, this relationship has kicked my consciousness into high gear, challenging me, calling me on my stuff - sometimes lovingly, sometimes brutally, read David Deida's The Way of the Superior Man - teaching me to compassionately receive not only love, but criticism, all the while keeping my heart open with having to defend myself or become defensive.

It continues to teach me about all the things I talk about in Big Love Integral: engulfment, abandonment, core wounds, opening - and to keep opening - my heart, all the relationship practices, expressing and releasing, how it all fits within an integral context, and much, much More.

I know....the title of this post, More Love, Less Suffering, is easy when things are going great, and much harder when it's not happening. But what that's about is, as Anyaa left this afternoon, I found myself not suffering, even though she won't be back for three weeks, when we'll get to spend another 10 days together, deepening once more. I'm not suffering because, as our love continues to deepen and keeps going to new unimaginable levels, I don't doubt.

Perfect....my own relationship inspires me to deeper and deeper levels with my Big Love workshop. Pure manifestation. This is my intent. This is my reality.

Big Love Integral: Module....er....Workshop 3

This last Saturday I presented Module 3 of Big Love Integral, the Workshop on Conscious Romantic Relationship in an Integral Context....except I no longer want to call them modules, as suggested by my friend Kent Layden, in Portland: A "Module" implies that you need the other modules to understand the current one. Not true. Each is an "event" unto itself.

Nowhere was that more obvious than this weekend's event, aptly titled, "Open Heart Practices: Getting ready for Big Love." This was such a powerful module/event that it truly could stand on its own as an all-day workshop. The entire day was about all these amazing practices that lay one's heart wide open.

The guided practices I'm teaching, which include my own meditation called Big Love, the Relationship Meditation (no surprise, huh?), involves discovering the truth about your relationship, and how you know this other soul. I also include Tonglen, the Buddhist compassion meditation, guided imagery, Focusing and Felt Sense, and Soul Linking.

I'm focusing on these practices because I believe that the development of empathy and compassion is the single most important step in developing conscious relationship. In the upper left quadrants, one of the reasons we meditate and engage in spiritual practices is to increase the chances of interior development (necessary, but not sufficient)...in the lower left quadrant, the practice is to develop empathy (again, necessary but not sufficient).

Empathy is not an emotional activity: it's an intellectual activity (the cognitive leads). The cognitive is necessary for the ability to take multiple perspectives, and until we can do that, we can't develop empathy across the board. In other words, I have to be able to to think what it's like to to be you! Once I can do that, my emotions, and my empathy, will follow.

The miracle of Conscious Relationship can only happen if we both empathize with each other, and unless it flows both ways, there can be no conscious intimacy.

One realization I've had around relationship is that you will only get the relationship you're ready for. If you haven't done your work, and really understand who you are (in other words, not fully conscious and awake), you're only going to call in a relationship that reflects your current consciousness, stage, or altitude. Someone who is at later stage consciousness is not going to be challenged by you, and you're going to be bored with someone who doesn't meet you where you're at.

We can only call in what we're ready to receive.

Some comments from the weekend:

"I felt powerful connection with spirit both in vertical and horizontal dimensions."

"I liked the experiential quality. After you've talked about what an apple tastes like, it's good to eat an apple."

"I feel like I have some tools for personal growth around relationship." "

This process facilitated the shift I was ready to make, was very moving, and helped change my life patterns to fall in to a higher resonance."

Thank you all for showing up, not only for the workshop, but for yourselves.

Is Your Ego Your Enemy or Your Friend?

The dialogue between Ken Wilber and Andrew Cohen on Women's Enlightenment in the latest issue of What is Enlightenment, and my and Anyaa's take on it, has stirred a lot of conversation on the SeattleIntegral list. With about even support and disagreement on our postings, it's good that a discussion has ensued, for there have been a lot of really excellent points from both perspectives.

Anyaa and I are sticking to our perspectives, but opting out of the discussions for the most part, as we've said most of what we want to say on the subject....except to make one last point that goes beyond the WIE article and what I think is its masculine perspective at the exclusion of the Divine Feminine.

Isn't it interesting that people who would never think of killing anything else think that killing the ego is so important?

And why is it important to kill the ego? Isn't killing the ego an act of ego? There are many traditions that recommend killing the ego, but to me it sometimes looks as if those who are calling the loudest for the ego to die, have the biggest egos, suggesting it's your ego that needs to die, mine's just fine, thank you.

The laughable part of this is that you can't kill the ego. It's impossible.

My new friends and teachers, Diamond and River Jameson, from the Total Integration Institute, have a better idea: Make friends with your ego. It's a valuable tool that, when befriended, allows us to be more fully integrated in our felt sense body experiences during this existence, rather than living the masculine approach of Eros without the integrated being of the feminine Agape.

This is the really important stuff: Each of us, male or female, BGLT, whatever, can only live a fully integrated life if we learn to embody both the Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine in our being. Enlightenment is not masculine. Nor is it feminine. It's not emptiness. It's not fullness.

It's all of the above, integrated into our human experience as fully and complete as humanly possible. It is "multi-dimensional whole being and Integration."

Image source Google, credit unknown

Who's Reading Me, Now?

I was commenting half jokingly tonight to Anyaa that it wasn't necessary that she send a letter to the Editor of What is Enlightenment magazine: Her blog (and mine) would be on their desks within a couple of days. I was wrong. Both were apparently reviewed heavily this afternoon by someone at WIE.

How do I know? Site meter told me.

Right after I posted this blog earlier today, someone from WIE spent about 35 minutes at my blog and viewed six pages, and then out-linked to Anyaa's blog, apparently to read what she had written.

No surprise. My hope is that this will spark a conversation that will ultimately lead to a deeper understanding of what is enlightenment.

On another note:

I'll be gone for a few days. Anyaa and I are headed for Zion, Utah to spend four days doing a Total Integration Institute seminar, with Diamond and River Jameson, on Whole Being Conscious Evolution, another approach to living an integral life (my words).

Is George Bush Crazy?

Bill at Integral Options Cafe offers a funny video suggesting just that!

A "What is Enlightenment" Catastrophe

In the latest issue of "What is Enlightenment," Andrew Cohen and Ken talk about enlightenment for women and how they have to get past and give up their sexual (feminine) power in order to become enlightened.

Andrew's approach is a total disaster, replete with an unbelievable reductionist view and total confusion and lack of understanding in the difference between "woman" and "the Feminine," and disappointingly, Ken does not correct him, but merely places what Andrew is saying into an integral context (to his credit, he does this very well).

Andrew totally fails to recognize any understanding that there might be different approaches to enlightenment. Before you protest, he's basically saying that the only approach is the masculine, that a feminine approach doesn't work, and that women have to drop the feminine in order to become enlightened. He does not ask that men drop the masculine to do the same.

He also claims to have been working on breaking through with this approach for 12 years and that he has finally cracked the code. Could that have anything to do with the fact that he's a man? Perhaps not in every case, but in this one, my answer is a definite "yes."

Women have been successfully doing this work for over thirty years. Too bad Andrew's ego wouldn't allow him to work with some of them as a student, instead of doing a spiritual bypasss himself, having his women students do the same, not by integrating the feminine, but by transcending and excluding it. This is like "enlightened" fundamantalism.

I'm talking to a lot of conscious women who are outraged by Andrew's audacity and I share that outrage. What a shame!

See my partner Anyaa McAndrew's blog on the same subject.

For Anyaa.....

There is only emptiness without you

you bring form to my world

you manifest your being

and therefore manifest mine

It's not that you complete me

You are me

and I am you

I breathe in the knowledge

that you have changed me

and my life....

Module 3, Big Love Integral

Greetings, fellow Conscious Lovers!

Did you know you don't have to be in a relationship to be a Conscious Lover? It's true! By opening your heart to the world and the universe, you invite in conscious love, and with intention, perhaps even a future beloved (I've done this!)

And in the third Big Love Integral workshop module coming up on Saturday, July 14th (click the attached image or go to www.bigloveintegral.com), we're going to explore several practices that can help you open your heart to the possibilities found in conscious relationship.

Whether you want to invite love into your life, improve an existing relationship, either with yourself or another, or just (just?) learn how to feel deeper compassion and empathy, you won't want to miss this module. We'll be diving deeply into states of non-ordinary consciousness through guided imagery, Tonglen, and other practices, including one I've developed around Big Love.

It's only $75 per person for the all day event (we're still at introductory prices), so invite a friend and plan on attending. Attendance at prior modules not required, but helpful, and as always, RSVPs are appreciated (prepay and get a 15% discount!)
You know you've been wanting to attend!

BIG LOVE INTEGRAL
Module Three:

OPEN HEART PRACTICES

Saturday, July 14th, 10am - 5pm

Nordby Conference Center, Fishermen's Terminal, Ballard

(at the south end of the Ballard Bridge, close to Chinooks)

Call Gary at 206.779.5870 for more info or to RSVP

(where comfortable casual clothing and bring a cushion or backjack for meditation.

See you there!

Gary

Oh, yeah.....please feel free to forward this to others you think might be interested or benefit!
Oh, and one more thing...I'm presenting Module TWO in Portland on Sunday, July 15th.