The Next Wave of Men’s Work: From Mythopoetic to The Transpersonal

As I’ve begun my book tour for Awakening the New Masculine: The Path of the Integral Warrior, one of the benefits I’m seeing for myself is to be once again immersed in integral community. I knew I was missing the “we” space of SeattleIntegral, the salon I helped found and moderated for five years, I just didn’t realize how much.

Over the last few weeks I’ve done a book talk with the combined  Atlanta and Roswell, Georgia Integral Salons, I’ve just returned from doing talks with DC Integral Emergence and Integral New York City Meetups, and I’m getting ready to head out to the west coast with a series of book talks for book stores, salons, meetups, and workshops  in the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle.

It’s very different talking with integral groups as opposed to book stores and Mankind Project I-Groups. When I’m talking with a group  that hasn’t been exposed to Integral Theory or Spiral Dynamics, I have to give a different talk, and make vague references to “integral and developmental systems theory” as part of a larger picture of what I do in the Integral Warrior Men’s Process. There’s a learning curve around language that begins the first weekend of the workshop that sets the context around both these systems sometimes, if not presented in a way that minimizes the appearance of hierarchy that can turn men off.

Part of this is because my target audience of men are, in Spiral Dynamics terms, “green” emergent to “yellow,” and green level of consciousness generally rejects hierarchy, not yet understanding the difference between natural and dominator hierarchies.

But when I’m talking with an audience who already gets “integral” and Spiral Dynamics, there’s something that happens with everyone firing on all cylinders, mutual capacities, and a common language that just makes everything connected and we all get to fall in love. With men and the integral Warrior Process, one of the goals is to create that same kind of connection as quickly as possible so that a new awareness and consciousness can emerge within the group, and the way to get there as quickly as possible is to practice with individual and group meditations.

Integral groups ask really good questions and one of the questions I was recently asked at the DC Integral Emergence meetup was, "How is your work different from the men’s movement of the 80s?"

The first and obvious answer is that the mythopoetic men’s movement does not include integral and developmental systems theory. Nor does it include the Sacred Activist as described by Andrew Harvey in his book, The Hope.

The "men's movement" of the 80's was, and continues to this day, to be what I'm calling the first wave" of men’s work, which is, as Wilber says, “necessary, but not sufficient.” It relies heavily on the mythopoetic, using mythology and analytical psychology, and consists mostly of psychological self-help groups which tend to stay away from explicit stances around psychospiritual and sociopolitical issues, or Sacred Activism, which the Integral Warrior dives right in to, as would be necessitated by taking an integral approach.  This requires being able to take and hold multiple, bigger, and sometimes paradoxical perspectives. 

Another way to describe this is that the Integral Warrior requires the Monk to come out of his cave and to be involved in the world.  Simply retreating inward is not sufficient with the global problems we face today. The Integral Warrior workshop and the book allows men to transcend (and include) mythology into the transpersonal, and to then allow that to inform their Sacred Purpose. 

Transpersonal  development includes both rational and transrational faculties, as well as a sense of oneself as an individual organism, while simultaneously expanding to embrace all phenomena, including a larger “we.” 

It is, quite simply, the move from 2nd stage masculine to 3rd stage masculine: the shift from the mythopoetic to Integral, and Integral is the bridge to the next level of consciousness.

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See where Gary is appearing on his national book tour link

How the Masculine Grows

Tonight, at our 6th meeting of the SeattleIntegral Integral Warriors Mens Group, we're going to be talking about Living our Deepest Realization. That realization is different at every stage, but for Stage 3 men, part of what it's about is being willing to die each day to the person you think you are, to hand the wave back to the ocean. Awakening is not a single event in time; it is a river endlessly flowing in this moment now. It is coming home to yourself as the prelude to all else.

Adapted from Intimate Communion By David Deida.

The essential Masculine style of search is that of the warrior, the hero, or the visionary. The Masculine force is one-pointed, directional, and guided by a vision of freedom. Masculine energy cuts through any obstacles that are in its path. Nothing deters the Masculine from its goal of freedom. However, not every man uses his Masculine energy to search for freedom in the same way.

The way a man searches for freedom depends on his particular needs, which typically change through his life in three stages.

First-stage needs are about gaining something, like food, money, sex, power, or fame. A first-stage man tends to form a Dependence Relationship with his woman.

Second-stage needs are about self-improvement, authenticity, being in touch with your inner wisdom, and creating a Garden of Eden on earth. A second-stage man is interested in forming a 50/50 Relationship with his woman.

Third-stage needs are about letting go of self-definition, relaxing your endless search for completion, feeling through the tension of this present moment, and surrendering your limits on openness, as each moment arises and dissolves in love. A third-stage man enjoys a relationship with his woman based on the practice of Intimate Communion.

The Masculine force looks different depending on which type of need is most important to a man. For instance, a first-stage man is searching for freedom by trying to get something. Since his search is an effort to gain something, he is offended when someone asserts that he doesn't have something, whether brains, bucks, or babes. The first-stage man is an acquisitional man. He sees freedom as something to get. He is a car mechanic dreaming of his own garage. He is a predator on wall street. He is a doctor with a Mercedes and a mistress. He is a man whose goal is somewhere outside of his body, outside of this moment, and he is going to get it. First-stage victory involves acquiring the sacred object--the cash, the car, the country--that is out there to be had. The first-stage man is a man of acquisition, of gain, and of enlarged self-image.

A second-stage man looks quite different from a first-stage man. The second-stage man is not out to conquer his enemies; he is out to conquer his own limitations. He is not looking to gain more of something; he is looking to improve who he is. He doesn't want more, he wants better. He seeks freedom by transforming himself and his world, not by overpowering and acquiring things and others.

The second-stage man battles his own demons and emerges victoriously whole, balanced, a hero of self-integration. If he is afraid of heights, he learns to sky-dive. If he is shy of intimacy, he uses therapy to help him grow beyond blocks he developed in childhood. He seeks to transform his self-understanding through the study of philosophy or esoteric spirituality. He wants to transform the outer world from a battleground into a Garden of Eden. Whereas the first-stage man tries to become a hero of acquisition, the second-stage man tries to be a hero of transformation.

The first-stage hero stands victorious atop his mound of wealth, slain enemies, and respectful subordinates. The second-stage hero stands victorious atop his mound of self-control, internal mastery, and impeccable action. He has won--he is completely his own master, authentic and whole, fully responsible for his own happiness. He is free to go where he wants, when he wants. He is free to love who he wants, perhaps a woman or two, or maybe just himself. The second-stage man is a free spirit, a Renaissance man of the new age, a man of inner evolution and outer adventure--an adventure not of gaining personal wealth, but of creating a more utopian way of life.

The second-stage man is also singularly deluded. At least the first-stage man is up front with his wants: He wants big bucks and big breasts. The second-stage man often hides his own emptiness, and his own needs, even from himself. He has practiced meditation for ten years, traveled all over Asia and India, is a certified Aikido master and psychotherapist, and, essentially, nothing fundamental has changed. He still feels unfinished.

Things are a little easier than they used to be, but still, he is not free. He is still locked in his own fears. He is still bound by the fear of death, the fear of separation, the fear of failure. Furthermore, he is older now, and he doesn't have the energy or determination he once had. He has created a comfortable place for himself in the world, and although he is embarrassed to admit it, he doesn't want to risk losing too much. But he has no choice. His evolving Masculine energy moves him to take a good look at his life and face the consequences of truth.

Suddenly, the second-stage man opens his eyes and sees his life as he has settled for it. He feels his own dullness, his own fear, his own mediocrity, and he begins to burn inside. His precious self, which he has worked so hard to master, feels like a clench. His life which once seemed so easy now seems like a tedious burden. His relationships and career weight him with false obligations. He is afraid to let go of it all, but the constant knot in his gut is becoming too much to bear.
It is a helpless situation. He is absolutely unsatisfied. The breakdown of hope and the recognition of futility has brought him to the edge, and he has no real choice: He releases into the abyss. He succumbs to a crisis. His self-sufficiency and self-worth fall to zero.

If he stays in place without adding consolation to his suffering, if he remains an open-hearted warrior even at zero, then a miracle will manifest. Because he knows he can depend on nothing, he has freed himself from all false support. Because he has outgrown the first-stage need to depend on something outside of himself, as well as the second-stage need to depend on something inside of himself, he is vulnerable to grace. His reduction to nothing has rendered him helpless, but not without help.

Without looking, without trying, a spontaneous force of life begins to become obvious. It is the same mysterious force which beats his heart, moves his thoughts, and illuminates his dreams at night.

Since he has felt the futility of letting his life be dictated by others as well as by his own endless thoughts, he is open to being lived by another force, the force of truth, the force which has always lived him and is living him now. Whatever he may call this force, it is the force of existence itself, the direct and unmediated flow and feeling of being.

Today's third stage man has fallen in love with the present moment and
the possibilities of living right now as a gift of love, as a work of art. They
live for now, and now, and now.

It is who he is, even when his friends and concepts fail him. It is the one who witnesses his dreams at night and his thoughts and actions during the day. It is the force of being or consciousness that is constant throughout all of his experiences. It is who he is, always, but it controls nothing.

In the crises of futility, he realizes that his inside world and his outside world are obviously beyond his control, and that death is inevitable. So he does the only thing he can do. He surrenders, sacrificing all experiences, inner and outer, into the one force that creates, sustains, and dissolves all of his experiences.

The third-stage man is rested in the fullness of this force. He is lived by this force, as this force. Thus, his actions are spontaneous truth. His home is the fullness of love or non-separation.
When the third-stage man forgets his home, and temporarily wanders in search, he always wakes up to the same moment: this living moment, now, spontaneously arising, luminous as the objects within it, and conscious as the witness of itself. He realizes that this living moment is always appearing to itself. This moment is neither dependent on him nor independent of him, but arises, spontaneously and consciously, inclusive of him.

His search is always dissolved in this intuition of non-separation, of pleasurable unity, of love. He stands as the free consciousness in which this moment arises. The fully mature third-stage man recognizes that his nature is freedom itself, always transcending, witnessing, and including that which arises.

Enjoy Every Sandwich: An Account of a Personal Shamanic Journey Through Breathwork

This is the very personal and courageous story of one man's journey through a day long Shamanic Breathwork that recently took place here in Seattle with our Shamanic Breathwork Group, which meets approximately once a month. I offer it here with the author's permission with no comment, except for this powerful process, and the journeyer, who asked not to be identified, to speak for itself. - Gary

10-13-2007:

Today I attended a shamanic breathwork workshop at Gary Stamper’s house, facilitated by Jeff Burger. The first thing Jeff did as we were gathering for the workshop was to invite each of us to pick a tarot card from where he had them spread out in a circle. One card was directly in front of me, a corner pointing directly at me, so I picked it – The Knight of Wands. This was from the Crowley Tarot and the knight was on a horse rampant, facing left. His cloak spread out behind the horse to where it looked like flames under and behind the horse. In his left hand he was thrusting forward with a wand that was a burning firebrand.

Jeff had a way of explaining the Tarot that was so much more clear and intelligible than anything I’ve read and I wish I could remember everything he said about the Knight of Wands. What I do remember: The wands are creative, masculine, fire energy and the knight of wands is the manifestation of the mature masculine. He has come through the fire and is now able to take that creative fire energy out into the world and wield it for good – or something to that effect. This spoke to me of wisdom, skillful means and the ability to manifest my passion in the "real world" in a creative and meaningful way and I said, “Well that’s certainly where I’d like to be!”

The breathwork technique is pretty simply, deep, belly breathing at a slightly rapid rate that induces a bit of hyperventilation. I started out breathing deeply and felt my hands starting to tingle and sweat. At some point I was working at it and thought, “this is too much work, why is nothing happening?” At that thought I backed off and just went on breathing more normally. This did not produce any “results” so I started breathing deeply again thinking, “I’m not quitting, I’m not giving up on this.” I kept going but still nothing was happening and I began feeling a little disappointment. I remember thinking that if nothing happened I certainly would not be coming back for any more of these workshops. I backed off yet again and started breathing more normally, then gathered my resolve once more and began breathing the technique again.

As I kept up the breathing I started feeling really hungry, to the point of distraction, and had a vision of the pastrami on rye sandwich I’d brought for my lunch. I became completely preoccupied with this and found myself wishing this whole thing were done so that I could eat my sandwich. I felt frustration that I was preoccupied with eating lunch and then it struck me as really odd that I had come here for this experience and the only thing I wanted was to quit and go eat my pastrami on rye sandwich.

At that point my hands were getting numb and were cramping from the hyperventilation. This didn’t bother me as I knew what it was and I knew it would go away on its own. I had a sense that I was experiencing the torticollis in my hands rather than in my neck and I was able to kind of “play” with this feeling. I realized at that moment that my neck was not bothering me at all, it had transitioned to my hands, and I felt tickled by this, I chuckled just a bit. The sandwich was still in my mind however and I began to see a dark tunnel before my vision, the shamanic tunnel to the underworld, but there was this giant, luminous pastrami on rye sandwich hovering just inside the entrance to the tunnel. This again struck me as both odd, and frustrating. I knew without a doubt that I was on the very verge of slipping into the altered state of consciousness and launching into the shamanic journey I had come here fore, but I was still preoccupied with this damned pastrami on rye sandwich. And then something switched on in my mind and I realized I was “there.” I wasn’t distracted by the pastrami on rye, the pastrami on rye was the message – or more precisely, the symbol of the message, and I suddenly had this expansive sense of both the grand humor and comedic irony of life. I began to laugh. I laughed and laughed, a deep belly laugh. And that part of me in the back of my mind that stayed conscious realized that this was the trigger and I was now fully into the journey.

Then as I was laughing, still seeing this pastrami on rye sandwich hovering within the tunnel to the underworld, the words came to me; “Eat every sandwich,” and I instantly had this sense of both grief and admiration for Warren Zevon and all of those who, like him, had died a heroic death;* that, and by implication the loss of all loved ones, and shining stars; but also of the loss of life one experiences, and more precisely that I have experienced, when we go through life not “eating every sandwich,” not living life fully. And then I began to cry. I cried for a long time, cried deeply, and that kind of general, all inclusive grief turned to very specific grief for the loss of my Dad twenty years ago now, and I began crying even deeper. I remember feeling like I was reaching into the tunnel, which was still present, like I was trying to reach across the threshold and embrace my Dad. Pull him back. I kept half sobbing his name, but I was still self-conscious enough not to do so completely out loud (unfortunately)

There was a profound sense of the loss of my Dad and a feeling of, “I’m not ready for this.” I’m not ready for dad to be gone, I’m not ready for the responsibility, I’m not ready to be a man, I’m not ready to be a father, a husband, a (profession deleted), etc., etc. And there was a sense of having never fully lived up to all of these responsibilities because of my lack of ability to “Enjoy every sandwich” to be fully present and comfortable in my own skin at any given moment in time. And I cried for a long time, and even when the crying was done and I lay there relaxed and spent, I still dwelt in this space and kept these things in mind. This was a gift. I remembered what Mac Hall had told me in preparation for the Native American Church ceremony he had invited me too so many years ago, “At some point during the night the medicine [Peyote] will speak to you” – and he was right. Here I felt the same thing; The medicine had spoken to me, given me a gift. The gift was the message, certainly, but more profoundly, it was the experiencing of having, for the very first time in my life, reached down and touched that place of deep grief which I have known for long that I must open up, but have never known how to get there.

Hmmm, I wonder what would have transpired if I hadn’t stopped into the Safeway in the morning and bought that Pastrami on rye.

* I recalled the quote here as “Eat every sandwich”, but the actual quote was “Enjoy every sandwich.” This was Warren Zevon’s response when David Letterman asked him what advice he had for folks as he, Zevon, was facing immanent death from terminal cancer. “Enjoy every sandwich” was Zevon’s irreverent way of saying live life fully so that there will be no reason for regret at the end. Despite my “misquote” during the breathwork, it was the meaning of the quote that affected me regardless.

After not having visited a doctor in 20 years, Zevon was diagnosed with inoperable mesothelioma in 2002. Rather than wallow in self pity, Zevon boldly took responsibility for the hard “rock and roll” life he had lived; booze, drugs, smoking, etc., and accepted his impending death openly. Zevon chose to eschew treatment for the cancer so that he could record a final album with many of his friends; knowing all the while that the treatment may have extended his life, but would otherwise be incapacitating and would have negatively affected his ability to complete his final project. On September 7th, 2003, Warren Zevon died in his sleep shortly after laying down to take a nap. I had been a fan of Zevon’s work for many years and the manner in which he faced his death is a great inspiration to me and makes him, in my eyes, a giant among men – a true hero.

Shamanic Breathwork(TM) Process Revisited

Regular readers will remember my earlier blog on why I believe Shamanic Breathwork (TM) is an Integral Process. In fact, in my opinion, it's one the best Integral practices out there.

Today, in Seattle, we held the third regular meeting of the newly-formed SeattleIntegral Shamanic Breathwork(TM) group. We had six men and two women participating in this powerful process.

Since what happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas (and confidential breathwork groups, as well), I can only tell you about my experience.

Led by the skilled SBW facilitator Jeff Berger, who is also a transpersonal Psychiatrist, we dived deep into our individual subconscious minds, producing breakthroughs and realizations that would usually take six months of therapy to uncover. That's one of the beauties of SBW: It's ability to bring up exactly what needs to come up, whether we recognize it or not.

This is my 10th breathwork, and while no expert, I'm not new to it, either. Each experience has been different for me. Today, as I began the controlled breath process and to the loud music designed to touch all of the energy fields of the body, the acid trip-like qualities of the breathwork began to kick in.....It took a while, and I soon realized I needed resistance to kick it in for me. I had my co-journeyer (someone who protects and takes care of us while in this altered state) apply pressure to my stomach that I could push against. That was the beginning of what was to become a rebirth experience, and eventually a state of bliss and non-dual realization through the rest of the process.

Once again, if you have the opportunity, this is a practice that can change your life.

Graphic by Gary; click to enlarge

Integral Warriors: Embodying the New Masculine, a men's group, Part two

This is a very different blog than I expected to write today. Judging by the early lack of enthusiasm around the concept of a SeattleIntegral men's group, I expected three, maybe four, men to show up at the first meeting last night. We had nine men show up and they seem to be exactly the right men.

Nine men! Nine brave men who all have powerful personal stories. Some came with a purpose, or mission, and some are not sure why they came, but feel called. I won't go into any personal stories, other than my own, if I feel it's relevant to a teaching or of possible value to others, and I won't mention the names of those who've shown up.

Some of the issues that came up are about purpose, addictions, relationship, money, forgiveness, self love, accountability, fear, trust, and what's holding us back?

For me, I know I need to be in the company of men. I need to hear the brutal truth about who I am and what I do, or don't do, from a masculine perspective. Like many men, I bathe and luxuriate in feminine energy, especially with my beloved (I've never met a woman who tells the truth so fearlessly and so compassionately as she). However, I also recognize that I've not paid enough attention to the polarity of the masculine in the company of men, and that's perspective I need to embrace. However good I might be at holding the Divine Masculine on my own, there's always a way to go deeper.

While aware of Jung's four archetypes used in other men's groups - the king, the magician, the warrior, the lover - and paying attention to the integration of all, the focus of those group will be David Deida's work, particularly around his book "The Way of the Superior Man."

I am also delighted at the chance to step deeper into my role as a spiritual teacher, and sharing the wisdom I've gained with other men, and learning from them as well. This is also not a free group. There is a small fee for each of the meetings. That's part of my commitment to be paid for the work I do, as well as the men's commitment to the value received for the time and effort I put in to facilitate and lead the group: part of my personal work around conscious abundance, as well.

Last Day, Shamanic Breathwork Intensive

"It's a good day to die....."

That came up time and time again during this 8-day Shamanic Breathwork (TM) intensive I've just gone through. This process is all about death and rebirth.... Dying to ourselves and being reborn.... Dying to find salvation....Creating a major disorienting dilema, pushing through it, reintegrating, and being reborn with new awareness about who we are.

"How you doin', Gary?"

"Fine, thanks."

Of course, "fine" is just an acronym for "fucked-up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional."

I am fucked up, but I got a little better this week. because I know a couple of the places where I've been wounded, and even how I carry generations of the wounds of my family in my DNA. I'm going to be processing what happened to me this week for a while...maybe a long while, and it means consciously making changes in my life. It also means having much more compassion and love for those who have wounded me, and for my own responsibility around those wounds.

Even as I'm writing this, I feel it all coming up, and the processing continues.

Shamanic Breathwork (TM) breaks you down, and forces the surrender of ego. And it's only when we drop to our knees, only when we totally surrender, and only when we can willingly ask for help, that we can can be reborn anew. "Help" is the most profound prayer we can express.

I don't know that Shamanic Breathwork (TM) takes us vertically to the next level of consciousness, or if it heals us horizontally so we just get better at where we are, and I suppose it can do both.

What I do know is that in order to transform the world, we have to first transform ourselves. This is truly amazing, healing work.

After I get back, I'm going to start laying out this process in the AQAL framework so you can see how this fits he model. I've been doing that all week and have confirmed what I believed before I got here, and one of the reasons I did this intensive: In my opinion, this is a complete Integral practice/process, and I'll show you why, with charts.

SeattleIntegral is bringing Shamanic Breathwork to Seattle in June.

Image: www.dreamingheart.com

Day 5, Shamanic Breathwork Intensive: Breathing again

"The music came up, and for awhile, nothing happened as I continued my deep, circular breathing....then I added some movement, and all hell started to break loose.....I began by forcefully clearing everyone else's energies out of my field, making room for my work to begin...."

Where Thursday's Breathwork was (for me....every one's experience is different) about showing me places that I hadn't finished healing from earlier wounds and about showing me where I had not stepped up into my full masculine power, yesterday's breathwork was about healing and reclamation. I believe I re-birthed, not once, but twice, fighting my way from the floor to standing erect, taking two men (floorwalkers) with me who were trying to hold me down and provide resistance. There was no way they could stop me. Other floorwalkers and my co-journeyer, moved to the side, afraid they'd get caught up in this powerful struggle. Sweating, screaming, crying, laughing, this was all about standing in my masculine strength, allowing it to surface to its full potential.

"I pushed through the weight of the men restraining me...they were powerless before me. But rather than throwing them off of me, I carried them with me in fearless compassion, as I stood erect, my strength unstoppable...it was as if I were a giant lingham, standing hard and erect, but as a skilled lover who knows when to be strong and when to be soft, as they are different sides of the same coin..."

There is no doubt in my mind that this second, very different, breathwork was completing the first as a direct result of the reintegration process of Shamanic Breathwork(TM). This powerful reintegration piece one of the pieces that separates Shamanic Breathwork(TM) from earlier versions, including Stan Grof's Holotropic Breathing. Without well integrating our processes, we're just left with wondering what the hell happened. It would be similar to experiencing an LSD trip (that's what it's like, without the drugs) and walking away with no understanding: not a path to greater awareness.

"Bursting out of the chaos of the black hole for the second time, I found peace in the vast expanse of the Kosmos, and the huge hands of Spirit held themselves open and loving to all...and they morphed into my hands, strong enough to hold all, but compassionate enough to know when and how to also let go..."

I want to stress that the experience is a highly altered state of consciousness, again, similar to an acid trip without the acid. This is, quite simply, the most powerful transformational work I've ever seen or experienced and highly recommend this process for anyone who is serious about transformation of themselves and the planet.

My Spirit name is Kosmic LionHeart, and I'm bringing the Shamanic Breathwork(TM) Process to Seattle in June.

Digtial image by Gary Stamper

Sex. Passion, and Enlightenment: The Infomercial

There were some noticeably nervous men walking in the door at the beginning of the the free all day Warrior Sage workshop yesterday: many they had been dragged, threatened, cajoled, or sweet-talked into attending something they might not ordinarily and willingly attended without the threat or no sex for a year or impending alimony and child support payments.

And although I could almost hear them thinking, "WTF am I doing here?", almost all of them were singing a different tune at the end of the day.

But before I get into what I really liked about this workshop. let me touch on what I didn't. As I expressed in my previous entry, I was turned off by what I felt was a pretty tasteless web presentation that could have been geared to hawking Viagra tablets. The presentation was similar in that I couldn't get away from the sense that I was sitting in infomercial hell (If you act now, that price is only....).

The second thing was that Satyen Raja, the man I went to see, was no where to be seen. In fairness, the infomercials never said he would be, but they sure implied it! The workshop was facilitated by Gary and Deborah, a charming couple with lots of presence and energy, but I felt let down by not seeing Raja.

Now to the good stuff. The best part of the day was when some actual work began. The men and women were separated and off to do their own work. When the men were in their "cave" (actually a medium sized hotel meeting room with no chairs), Gary's tone noticeably shifted to a hyper-masculine mode. After talking a bit, Gary had us do a couple of exercises that helped the men both get in touch with their softer sides toward other men, and to define and challenge each other's purpose, with other's giving feedback. Pretty powerful stuff, designed to allow us to take ourselves off the relativistic cross the we've allowed ourselves to bear, through culture and our own confusion about what it means to be a 3rd stage man.

The women had been doing their own work, and when we came back together in a set up procession, the polarity between the men and women was incredibly high. The men were stronger, more capable of meeting these women on their own terms. empty, ready to be filled, and the women, more juicy and full than when we had left, and both, literally, melted into each others masculine and feminine with an almost indescribable richness. This is really good stuff!

My friend Brian, who also attended and is a member of SeattleIntegral's Core Group, and I talked later about how important we thought a men's group would be for SeattleIntegral. Warrior Sage has a local men's group, but you have to go through their actual 3-day workshop before you can join it, and we want to offer this work to the men of SI as soon as possible. 3rd stage/second tier men need to have other men meeting them, challenging them in a loving manner, and holding each other accountable.

An example of how you can lovingly hold your male friend accountable: "Dude, I love you you, but you need to get your ass off the couch and into the gym...."

You could never say that to your woman, but you could say, "God, it really turns me on when you come back from the gym and you're just glowing...."

So to all my men friends, in and out of SeattleIntegral, in spite of a pretty cheesy marketing program (which apparently works because there were over a hundred people there): "Dudes....get your ass to a Warrior Sage workshop and learn how to fully meet your woman or to call that woman into your life and stop screwing around in the dark around your relationships."

Besides.......there are some really juicy women there!

And to my female friends, if you're single, these guys that attend are doing the work...and if you're already in relationship, this will greatly improve that relationship.

Two thumbs up to Warrior Sage for doing great and really important work.

Why No ILP or ITP?

At our ITP/ILP meeting (Integral Transformative Practice and Integral Life Practice) last night, we had about 10 people attend. Our reservation for a room had been messed up, so we retired to a small meeting room to meditate and dialogue.

SeattleIntegral, the second-largest integral salon in the world (I know....you've heard it before...), has hit a milestone of 150 members this week, and yet, we only have 10 people show up for the ITP/ILP group.

I've been pondering why, out of a group this large, we only have 10-12 members show up on a regular basis. Does this mean that only a small group of people actually have an ITP/ILP? Well, I think it depends on how you define those practices. By Integral Institute's current measurement, the ILP Home Study Kit is the embodiement of the highest practive available anywhere on the planet.*

Can you truly claim to live an integral life, or embody integral, if you're not doing Integral practices that touch on each quadrant? If, like me, you favor one quadrant, and most people do, there's a tendency to remain "stuck" in the safety of that quadrant. One of the things an integral practice should do, is balance you out. It doesn't mean you have to be a superb weightlifter (upper right quadrant activity) for example, but that you're doing something in that quadrant to balance out the tendency to be too much in your head (okay, I gave away my favorite quadrant).

Now, in fairness, we have several other smaller sub-groups of SeattleIntegral that meet specific needs: Couple of study groups, and spiritual, leadership, psychology, and Meetup. groups....but....read what Ken Wilber says in Integral Spirituality, "The Myth of the Given Lives On," appendix III, page 300:

"Not supplementing is no longer something that is without its effects and consequences. Not supplementing - not making one's spiritual practice into an integral spiritual practice - can slowly kill you, more or less literally, or worse: figuratively, because what kills you is the the soul struggling to be reborn into today's integral age, struggling to be born into it's own highest estate of Freedom and Fullness,** struggling to acknoweldge the the Spirit that that embraces the the entire Kosmos whole, with love and charity, valor and compassion, care and consciousness, interiority and identity, radiance and luminosity, ecstacy and clarity, all at once, and once and for all."

What Wilber is talking about, spirit, could easily be any other, and all other, practices.....and without balancing those practices, heart, mind, body, and spirit, you have to stop and ask yourself, "is it integral, or am I not quite there, yet?

*That's too bad, because , as good as it is, and it is very, very good, it is by definition, a solitary practice. i.e., "Home Study Kit." Murphy and Leonard's ITP is, at this point, and in my opinion, more integral than the I-I's ILP. Why? Because ITP does include group practices. There's an entire chapter called "The Magic of Community," something sorely lacking in the ILP Home Study Kit.....so far. It's not that the ILP creators aren't aware of the lower left community aspect, so it's hard to understand why they left the lower right structures out. I think they may have just run out of time. New ILP study groups, like SeattleIntegral, are exploring the community aspects of an ILP.

**"Freedom and Fullness" are the elements of enlightenment: see pg 243, Integral Spirituality, Integral Post-Metaphysics.

Logo image by Gary Stamper