done with integrity

I liked this talk and could follow it - it was close enough to my speed. There is something about Nathaniel's tidiness of knowing 'where he's at' and adhering to that place of the moment that I find reassuring. I haven't always been a fan of his when I've heard him speak in person or on tape. I can hear him this time.

I appreciated how Ken stayed, respected and honored what Nathaniel's developmental story was to get him where he is now. Naturally Ken zoomed ahead a bit and framed larger spiritual traditions in waxing eloquence here and there, and he returned to Nathaniel. Nathaniel's clarity of language to articulated his conscious limits is impressive and I can relate to that - perhaps it is a sign as well of our stuckness to qualify so carefully almost as apologia, perhaps - and perhaps I'm mainly projecting here. Ken was able to give credit to a transpersonal Self, a more integral s(S)elf in action, when Nathaniel would speak in quite objective ways about psychology and philosophy.

I think this was maybe useful to me in understanding  more fully the dancing back and forth between objective and subjective, sometimes with greater inclusion and perspective - which apparently is development. Whereas Nathaniel seems very grounded in self-knowing, up to the place that he can clearly say he knows, I am not so grounded, I seem to dance and flutter more. And this talk and this post isn't entirely about me.

I want to say more about the finely integrating way that it seems Nathaniel is living. He doesn't try to fly 'ahead'. He seems unabashedly to speak of his secular and his psychological, now cum philosophical, approach. And he seems a bit lightened and grateful for the feedback from Ken here and bits of it from others of late, that speaks of his glow, that speaks of some transcendence, which can be co-called the realm of spirit.

Nathaniel and Ken are so different in their self-presentations, but Ken and he could share the apparent self/Self connection as they made their ways/Way through the interview.

I was prompted to this video clip by Jonathan Cobbs post on God and atheism, and I'm glad for that. Thanks Jonathan. And interestingly I was tapping into, emphasizing in myself a very different part of the story.

In moments I share a similar conclusion about life and its apparent sibling (or parent, I don't know), death. I pretty often feel grateful for what has been experienced and given thus far. I don't think I feel with quite the throughout-all-cells unqualified quality of integration of that conclusion as Nathaniel, but I nod to it. Yeah.

I find myself addressing again that Nathaniel's valuing of applying to everyday life the reaches of his consciousness, not getting ahead of himself, resonated with me. The solid integrity that I get from him leaves me with an image or a feeling of him as a precious or striking semi-precious stone, crystaline-like, sans lucunae, maybe growing as through gradual acretion and other invisble and finely subtle processes. Thanks, ambo