Applying Integral Consciousness to Occupy

There seems to be increasing awareness around moving integral theory from the map into the territory. Not that it wasn't being done by some---see Terry Patten and Marco Morelli's excellent article "Occupy Integral" on the online magazine Beams and Struts---but when you log on to sites like Integral Life, there seems to be a huge disconnect between the reality of what's happening in the world and "feel good" articles that promote the meta-theories on integral. It's as if there's a sort of spiritual bypass that's going on in the mainstream integral community, or what Terry and Marco refer to as "integral inaction."

For me, Terry and Marco's article---they call it a "manifesto"---is a call to action for us to get up off and out of our arrogance and complacency and into the world. In other words, become the Sacred Activists that are called for at this point in mankind's evolution.

So what might that look like in the real world? Terry and Marco call for us all to "Occupy Integral," and I call for us to occupy Occupy.

Bringing the Map to Occupy

I'm an occupier. I work with the local OccupyWNC group where I live. I'm there because that's where the action is and if we're going to be able to successfully navigate (whatever that means) the coming chaos, then we must first get out of denial and into acceptance that it's happening. Denial could kill you. This requires that we pay attention to what is actually happening in all four quadrants, in the interior, exterior, individual, and collective quadrants. I speak to this in earlier blogs here and here.

But this article isn't about why we should get involved with the Occupy movement, it's an article about how we bring integral consciousness to an awakening phenomenon whose participants span the traditional, modern, postmodern, and post-post modern worldviews. And when you get all these people in the same room, trying to solve problems, there are bound to be conflicts.

First, I think it's important to note that I am not in a "big city" Occupy group. I'm in Western North Carolina, and for those of us living in the rural mountains, Asheville is a big city, never mind New York City or Washington, DC! The tactics of a small town Occupy group and how OccupyWNC interacts with our community is very different from how a big city occupy would interact. People with very different worldviews are our neighbors, not faceless masses.

One of the first things I did when I joined OccupyWNC was to propose a Visioning Work Group that would attempt to provide a small city vision of how we connect with our non-occupy neighbors. I framed the invitation in a way that spoke to post and post-postmodern consciousness so that the people who needed to be there would come. I also spoke of how, in a small town environment, we could build bridges across the local political spectrum rather than dividing the community, and told them I would be showing them a system that revealed how to reach across and communicate with people who had radically different worldviews.

About ten people showed up and I introduced them to Spiral Dynamics integral. Much to my pleasure, they all got it! For the next four hours we talked, discussed, and honed their understanding of how SDi could help them, not only in the community, but within the occupy group itself. I reminded them that these are not people within systems, but complex multifaceted systems within people, and then stressed the importance of not labeling people as one element of that system and showed them why. I've done this presentation many times through my men's groups, the Integral Warrior.

This has proved to be extremely useful in our meetings and our continuing Visioning Work Group, which will probably now morph into a Strategic Planning Group. The following part of this article will demonstrate how this has been valuable.

Competing Worldviews

In the last couple of weeks one of our members proposed that we begin each General Assembly (GA) meeting by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag to show our loyalty to our country. This suggestion triggered some of our members, and a passionate discussion ensued, after which a consensus was asked for to adopt the pledge resolution, which, in turn, was "blocked" by another member. In the consensus model of governance used by Occupy, everybody must agree or the resolution fails. Well, this, in turn, triggered the person who proposed it, and we ran out time to discuss it so it was tabled to the next GA meeting a week later.

The following week the discussion continued, with passion rising once more, even though a majority of the members were calling for compromise. With not much practice at using SDi in context, the group was, once again, at a bypass. At the end of the discussion, I had an opportunity to briefly speak to what a compromise would look like and why it was in the best interest of the entire group, and wrapped it up with a promise to write up a deeper exploration and suggestion on how to compromise so that everyone got what they wanted. Here is a partial transcript of my email:

The single most powerful thing we have is each other, this community. But there is no prototypical model of what the OccupyWNC member looks like. We are the 99%, and that encompasses a lot of different opinions, beliefs, and worldviews. It's not just the 1% who are different than you. It's all of us, and that is also our strength.


There are two primary opposing worldviews at play here (there four generally at play in the US).

Worldviews are composed of values and universal beliefs. Values are perceptual filters minds use to determine (“evaluate”) what is important in any given situation. Universal beliefs are broad-based beliefs about self, others, and system (how the world is perceived to work). I wish the two members who are carrying those opposing worldviews most profoundly would have been there last night, so I'm going to muddle on without the benefit of their comments.

Neither of  these two worldviews are wrong, and, in fact, they are both right...to an extent. The worldviews I'm talking about are traditional and postmodernism. The traditional worldview wants to honor the flag, while the postmodern view wants nothing to do with it. They are both right, for their own reasons.

So now I'm going to ask everyone, including anyone at odds with someone else around this issue, to pretend you have a jetpack strapped to your back (indulge me) and you are suddenly able to leave the horizontal viewpoint of standing where you are, and suddenly jet up to about 50,000 feet where you can get a glimpse of the larger picture, not just what's in front of you.

What we can now see is that the 99% includes those with traditional values (I love the flag and all that it stands for) and that if we don't include and honor (we don't have to agree) those values, we are not inclusive and can't claim that we are the 99% because we just excluded someone, and that's just not right!

Likewise, we can also see that the 99% includes those with postmodern values (I resent the flag and all that it stands for), and that if we don't include and honor them, again, we can't claim that we are the 99% because we also just excluded someone.

If we are to be successful with this movement, if we are to ever to build bridges between us and those with whom we have more in common with than differences, we must learn how to honor everyone's beliefs, no matter how wrong they may seem to us.

So how do we do that? How do we make room for different worldviews without compromising our own belief systems? How can we honor differing perspectives without dishonoring our own?

First and foremost, we must never force our worldviews on others. Everyone has the right to be who they are. I don't want to force my worldview around this upon you, but hope that you're open enough to hear what I'm saying and to find your piece of truth within my words.

So if we have someone who wants to stand up and say the pledge at the beginning of the meeting, even though we may not want to do that, let them do that. I suggest that we stand with them (that we stand together in the largest sense of the word), and honor their wish to do this, standing silent if we need to, not to honor what we may resent about how we are individually triggered by it, but to honor the person.

And if we have some among us who cannot say the words because of their worldview, that we honor them standing in silence, honoring whatever experiences they have had that brought them to where they are, and that we know they are honoring us by standing with us (again, in the largest sense of the word) and thereby we also stand with them.

It's about connecting across belief systems and differing worldviews, and it's great practice for building empathy and compassion for each other. And in a world of compassion and true empathy, there is no 99% and 1%.....there is only 100%.

If we are to succeed, we must do it together, 100%.

Invite them in, one and all.

Gary

The response has been extremely positive with the caveat that the two people who were triggered at opposite ends of the worldview spectrum have not yet responded. I assume there are wrestling with letting go of what needs to be let go of, and we shall see if they are able to do that.

Occupy Occupy.

Worldview graphic from http://integralthinkers.com/featured/new-and-improved-worldview-lenses/

Whose Fear Is It, Anyway?

I've been accused, more than once, of being in fear.

Wikipedia defines fear as a distressing emotion induced by a perceived threat. It is a basic survival mechanism occurring in response to a specific stimulus, such as pain or the threat of danger. In short, fear is the ability to recognize danger and flee from it or confront it, also known as the Fight or Flight response. Fear is a distressing emotion induced by a perceived threat. It is a basic survival mechanism occurring in response to a specific stimulus, such as pain or the threat of danger. In short, fear is the ability to recognize danger and flee from it or confront it, also known as the Fight or Flight response.

Fear is a 200,000 year-old finely honed gift of evolution, and when we experience fear, we need to pay attention. Fear can be related to future events, such as a worsening of a situation that is unacceptable, or an instant reaction to something presently happening.

There two types of fear: External fear caused by something outside of you which you are strongly motivated to avoid - like spiders or heights - and internal fear, such as fear developed out of low self esteem.

I've been accused, more than once, of living in fear....and I think it's an unfair accusation. I am also unapologetic. Let me explain.

The accusations of fear directed toward me are in response to all of the events of the world, what appears to be a perfect storm of conditions, mostly induced by ourselves, humanity, all bearing down on us at the same time. I've written and reported about those conditions on this blog several times (here and here).

Here's what I do fear, some of which is already happening: Massive population die-off due to starvation, the collapse of what America could have been, instead of just another nation-state-empire, deepening economic collapse, continued global warming, water, oil, and food wars, and much, much more. It is an external fear.

But even as I own my fear and that I am in fear, I am not fearful.* From an earlier blog:

I struggle for balance in the face of all the negativity thrust upon us as a result of increased awareness through being able to hold the "unholdable" perspective, and as a result, being more conscious than the average comatose individuals who have been intentionally lulled to sleep (the average people I know don't have a clue about what's going on or are in denial).

I look at these events with a belief that these are not random, meaningless events, but, rather, are occurring for the distinct purpose of waking us up, to stretch us into new territories of awareness. For me, that waking up is the profound realization that what we are now doing, as Americans, and as humanity, is simply not sustainable, and that there will be a shift, and things will be very different than they are now.

Things are going to change, and I hold that they will change for the better...but not at first. I believe things are going to get much worse before they get better, and that it's possible that "better" may be decades, or possibly centuries, away, mere specks in time. I don't believe that some magical shift is going to occur and suddenly everything and everyone is going to be "conscious," and that those of us who are able to hold the higher vibration will survive while others will not. That feels like a"new age" version of mythic religion's "end-times," or "rapture." Look up "End Time" on Wikipedia and see how how ingrained these themes are in our collective consciousness.

The term "higher vibration" will be interpreted at the level of conscious of the person using it, and will obviously mean different things to people at different levels of consciousness. For me, that "higher vibration" means being aware and conscious enough to see what is coming, to step out of denial, and to be as prepared as is possible, also knowing that you can't possibly prepare for everything.

When I hear people saying to me that, when I talk of these things, they hear a message of fear, what I believe they are experiencing is not my fear, but their own fear in response to what I'm saying. Where I'm at today is a place of getting as ready as possible by getting out of the city and being as self-sustainable as possible.

Once I've recognized the possibilities and done as much as I can do, I surrender and step out of fear, knowing that whatever happens, I've done what I can do. And surrendering is the key to freedom, regardless of how things unfold. What's coming is an ending...and a beginning, and no one knows what it will look like.

*'Fearful' in its original sense means full of fear in the particular sense of being afraid to do something wrong, almost in a sense of respect. Imagine a situation where you have to be careful about what you say, what words you use because if you say the wrong word, you will be in trouble. This describes the state of being 'fearful' as in: He was fearful of saying the wrong thing and as a result upsetting her.

image credit

The Integral Warrior Men's Introductory Weekend

Are women really better at almost everything than men? Dan Abrams seems to think so.

"The evidence here will show, however, that women are living longer and evolving better than men.” It takes a lot for a man to admit his own weaknesses (there’s a chapter on how women tolerate pain better), so we wondered why Abrams would make the case for women. Turns out, it’s a man’s job.

So what does this have to do with men's work? It shows that we've got a lot of work to do, and I challenge you to step into that work!

I have two introductory weekends coming up in the next month: One at Isis Cove on March 19-20, and one in Cincinnati on April 2-3. It's possible these could be the last introductory weekends of the Integral Warrior/Shamanic Priest Process this year. These circles will extend into September and in October, Anyaa and I are going to be touring with Andrew Harvey, author of The Hope.

The introductory weekend gives men a chance to experience the process, to find out more about how it can benefit them, and to decide if they want to continue the other five weekends spread out over 5 months. Read what one man had to say about the intro weekend I just did in North Carolina: 

 "I have worked with archetypes before and done shadow work but never worked with the two together, releasing one while embracing the other. I feel this is very powerful work and just what I need at this point in my life. I feel that when we complete this series of workshops that I will finally become the man I was meant to be. Thanks again and I look forward to this journey with you and my new found male friends." - John

We are all intensely aware that we are in the midst of the global shift humankind has been waiting for. At the very time this huge Global Awakening is going on, we're also in the midst of our darker side trying to gain control. It's why everything is breaking down. It's the oldest battle on the planet, and why it's more important now than ever for men to step up and embody the New Masculine as Integral Warriors following the path of Sacred Activism.

So I have two questions for you:

What's getting in your way and preventing you from living your purpose and your passion and being the man you know you can and want to be? 

What would you give to shift from your present level of consciousness into an entirely NEW WAY OF THINKING in just a few months time?*

I know....that's a huge claim for anyone to make. Normally, moving from one stage to the next is a five year process, and with intense practices and focused meditation, it might take two. But don't believe me....read here (almost at the bottom of the page) what men (and even a wife!) are saying about THE INTEGRAL WARRIOR men's process.

And more! Read what an initiated Mankind Project man from Cincinnati has to say about the process! Here and here!

I'm inviting you to take action to break through whatever might be holding you back in your personal, professional, spiritual, and planetary evolution.

Join me and other conscious men in Sacred Space as we explore the inner and outer workings of our being for the benefit of ourselves, our loved ones, and the planet!

Attend the first weekend and then decide if you want to complete the entire process.

For more information, visit The Integral Warrior website or email me at garystamper@yahoo.com or, call me at 206-779-5870 with any questions you might have.

Bodacious Blessings and Joy,

Gary

*The Integral Warrior is a proven process that moves men toward later stage consciousness and assists in our ability to hold ourselves as embodying the New Masculine. Using a cutting-edge Integral and developmental approach combined with the Wisdom of the Shaman (altered-states consciousness), Jungian Archetypes, Initiation and Ritual, we create a new paradigm of learning that greatly accelerates our growth.

Click on the flier to see a full-sized image.

Men Are Hurting

It was my distinct honor this weekend to emerge a group of men from the Integral Warrior Men's Process. I was asked by the men and by their friends and family to furnish them a copy of the welcome speech I gave before the men self-initiated men themselves as Integral Warriors and Shamanic Priests.


Here is the text of my presentation.

There is no renewal in the universe without a preceding loss. Even the sun is dying every moment. If anyone tells you that you can be reborn, saved, go to heaven, or be born again,  and does not first speak to you very honestly about dying, do not believe them. You cannot be reborn to the new if you aren’t willing to die to the old first. There is no such thing as a “prosperity gospel.” Death and life are an eternal embrace, two sides of the same coin. It is the one common theme in every initiatory process, in every initiation rite. Any initiation process that does not teach this mystery is not an initiation at all.

There's an old blues song by William Bell called, “You don’t miss your water until your well runs dry”…Unless a man has been involved in the human struggle, he probably won't know what is missing in his life, because we can only miss what we have experienced. Not only is classic mens' initiation sadly missing from modern and postmodern life, but postmodernism has completely deconstructed the initiation process.

Even our animal brothers make it clear that juniors need elders ….Humans and animals are imitative and mimetic. Several Years ago National geographic did a special on elephants, focusing on at a pack where all the elder bull elephants had been killed. The younger bulls, who had not developed tusks, began acting out, crushing cars, knocking down fences and huts, damaging crops, and more. The solution? Older bull elephants were helicoptered in to the herd, and because they would charge the younger elephants, trumpeting and bluffing, the younger bulls stopped acting out.

In the human realm, using archetypal terminology, if there are no kings, warriors become brutal, magicians behave as charlatans, and lovers are soon addicts.

Young men do not become responsible men without boundaries and identity.

We are not a healthy culture for boys or men. Not the only reason, but surely one reason, is that we no longer have a culture of elders who know how to pass on wisdom, identities and boundaries to the next generation. Most men are under-fathered and over-mothered – now even more in an age of single parents. We are a society without fathers.

We’ve created boys who never grow up and want to marry mothers instead of wives, and girls who want securing and affirming daddies instead of risk-taking partners.

The current older generation of men in the United States has, to a great extent, not been mentored by their own fathers. They were usually given necessary messages either in quick male style or translated through the experience of women. Women have been training boys to be their version of men, or men who have not been mentored have been modeling at a teenage level of development. Neither is what we need.

Men can only pass on what they themselves know. They can only lead their sons and daughters as far as they have gone. Men who lost their fathers at an early age may do fine with their own sons up to that age, and then often lose self-confidence in their parenting abilities.

The patterns of failure in young men are staggering and frightening: Level of depression, suicides, drug abuse, alcoholism, and violence are all exponentially rising. 94% of all inmates are male. Men live an average of 7 years less than women, suffer far more from ulcers and stress-related disease than women, and are more likely than women to die from the 15 leading causes of death.

Over 80% of all suicides are men. In the 20-24 age bracket, males commit suicide six times as often as females, and over the age of 85, men are fourteen times as likely to commit suicide as women.

Men are hurting.

For the past twenty years we’ve been told our education system favors and is based on success of boys, but the results appear to be exactly opposite. Women are surpassing men in leadership positions, valedictorian addresses, graduation rates, jobs after graduation, and now, even saleries.

In his book, “The Biology of Transcendence: A Blueprint of the Human Spirit” – Joseph Chilton Pearce say we have 5 brains altogether and that they build on one another at years 1, 4, 7, 11, and 14-17. at each of these milestones, there occur brain surges where all past experiences are stored and secured, or myelinated. He reasons we transcend each brain stage by being around models of higher brain functions, and if there is no modeling, neural pruning occurs and millions of brain cells die off. This is what’s happening to boys of all stages who don't have the next developmental stage modeled for them.

Despite postmodernism's search for unisex everything, feminist denials, anger at maleness in the past few decades, and even men’s doubts about themselves, the grand nature of the male soul is self evident. We like it, hate it, we fear it, we disseminate it, we push against it, we take it for granted.

So many people are so angry at Patriarchy, or false male power, and rightly so, that it makes them afraid to recognize the good power and the good passion of men. We have all found love at the male banquet. Maleness is half of the mystery, and if we do not enjoy it, we are missing half of who we are, whether we are a man or a woman.

Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette have found that the characters in male myth, legend, and story – the universal images that attract men – invariably circle around four constellating images, which some call archetypes or ruling images. Images of a king, a warrior, a lover, and a magician or wise man, seems to be four parts of every man, our primary fascinations, the major quadrants of our souls…..they challenge us, they fascinate us, threaten us, and yet we are unable to totally ignore them. When we do, or when we over identify with one or the other, they invariably take on dark and compulsive sides. But the mature man honors and integrates all parts of his soul. They seem to naturally balance and regulate one another, and they make a man whole and Holy. It has been called the very shape of masculine holiness.

Each of the men that have gone through the Integral Warrior Mens' Process have completed the four initiations, called in and claimed their king, their warrior, their lover, and their magician, so that none of them dominates the others, but rather, balance each other in perfect masculine harmony.

This is a remarkable achievement in that, historically, most cultures only affirmed one or two parts of a man - usually the Warrior or the Magician. Our job today, as Integral Warriors and Shamanic Priests, is much more difficult because we must affirm, educate, and validate all four archetypes, letting them simmer and grow together to create a full man. Now we need enlightened and transformed magicians, lovers of life and beauty, and strong non-violent warriors to produce truly big-picture men - or kings.

In the Emergence weekend, men who complete the Integral Warrior Men's Process, will self-initiate one more time, proclaiming their gift, as men in service, to the world: they will emerge from the process in front of their family and their friends, as Integral Warriors and Shamanic Priests, and claim the big-picture masculine that is every man’s birthright who is willing to die to the old and be reborn to the new as these men will have done.

Note: Much of the information, and even some phrases were taken directly from Richard Rohr's book, Adam's Return: The Five promises of Male Initiation. Get a copy. It's excellent!

Change is the Only Constant in the Universe

I first heard the title of this post in the 1980's when I was recruited into a network marketing business. I jumped into it passionately and was making pretty good money when the company folded unexpectedly, leaving me and about 200 of my down line hanging out there. Change.....

This blog is undergoing another change. I first started writing here several years ago with the blog title "Integtral in Seattle." I was, at the time, the founder and leader of what has grown into one of the largest integral salons and communities in the world. When I moved to North Carolina a couple of years ago, I changed the name of the blog to " Beyond Integral," a reference to what felt as,  and still does, a shift from the cognitive aspects of Ken Wilber's Integral Framework, into a broader, more expansive view of the the Integral Model.

I'm changing the title of the blog again. For those of you who have followed my writing for the past few years, you can see it represents another shift: in what I'm doing and and how I'm writing about it. The title, "The Spiraling Universe," represents how I see human consciousness, and the universe, unfolding.

For instance, much of my writing has been about integral philosophy and how it has impacted my life. Now I'm moving into bringing more of my work into the world, work that I believe is necessary. That work, of course, will always be informed by the integral model and Spiral Dynamics Integral, but is no longer the focus of my workshops and writing, but rather, an integral part of the larger picture which is all about how and why people shift in ever-increasing expanding circles of evolutionary consciousness and complexity.

The main focus of my work is with mens consciousness because the vast majority of men in this country at stuck at David Deida's first stage masculine, with about 20-25% at second stage, and maybe 1-2% of men are emerging into third stage masculine (read about the model here). Until we can reach the tipping point of approximately 10% of the population at third stage, the patriarchy will continue to dominate the planet. I do this work by combining and integrating the ancient wisdom of the Shaman, death and rebirth cycles, altered states, and new sciences of integral and developmental systems, creating a new paradigm of teaching and learning.

But the reason men should do this work that prepares them to transform into third stage masculine is because it empowers us. Not in a patriarchal sense, but from the perspective of our own freedom.

Welcome to "The Spiraling Universe."