Friday, March 14, 2008

Stepping into the Void

At the last Seattle Men's Group I facilitated two weeks ago, we used the Men's Challenge Deck as a tool for being authentic. I drew a card that required me to take 5 minutes to compose a poem about the challenges in my life. The other men then judge your authenticity, keeping you real and in integrity.

Here's the result of my 5 minute poem:

Laughing,
free.....
"Thank God, Almighty,
Free at last!"
Leaving,
smiling,
complete,
integrity intact.
leaving no ends untied
but leaving still,
I step out of the old,
into the new,
smiling,
joyfully,
into the next phase of my life.
Fearlessly...
Purposefully...
Fully.
I won't tell you the men in the group perceived my attempt. That is for you to decide from your own perspective.

I leave a week from today.

Sunday, March 09, 2008

A new Name, a New Direction,....sort of....

Well, as you can see, I've changed the name of "Integral in Seattle".....My dear friend Kari came up with it at my SeattleIntegral going away party. Less than two weeks away from leaving Seattle, but I will be coming back. More on that in a future blog. I've been reading Ken Wilber for over 6 years - a paltry amount of time compared to some - and there's no doubt that Ken's writings have had a profound shift in my thinking. Actually, I'd say his writing created the space that allowed me to focus my thinking, articulate thoughts and causations that were bubbling under the surface, not quite coming out in the open, leaving me with a sense of incompletion.
 
And now a major move across country to be with my Beloved, and to continue this journey with the new name. The new name isn't a potshot at the mainstream Integral Movement as defined within a Wilberian context. Quite the contrary, while I haven't always agreed with Everything Ken, I hold a deep respect, and even awe, at what he's done and continues to do. he remains one of my teachers. I do, however, think it's desirable, and necessary, to start looking at other maps, like the ones found at Integral Praxis, Open Integral, and Frank Visser

It's important and appropriate for the post-wilberian community to develop a broader range of discourse. So while the theme of this blog will basically remain the same, that is, a personal journey of one man's trek of increasing complexity and integrity within an integral framework, I also hope to go a bit further in embodying those qualities in a way that goes beyond integral. The problem is, honestly, I don't even know what that means. I suspect it means that even the mainstream integral movement begins to smack of dogmatic fundamentalism. 

As M. Alex Kaslev says in his essay, Redefining Integral, "integral consciousness means going beyond words, and going beyond mental perspectives." I, too, and looking for the Integral Divine, and most of the mainstream integral movement is absorbed in theory. So Beyond Integral it is. I'll be trying to define what that means as I go, because it's a journey of more self-discovery.