Lebron James and Ken Wilber

I'll be honest. I skipped all the text that rehashes "The Model". Rehash is beginning to get on my nerves. It happens all too often around these parts. That's one of the reasons I want the Core Integral material. I'm way past ready to cut to it.

---oOo---

At any rate, one of the things that just became clear to me while reading this bit,

"And no longer an anti-food stance, or in general, no longer anti-food as religious crusade: even meat, and alcohol, and other "untouchables" were entirely appropriate if entered with empty awareness (and they were ritually used in just that manner, as an indication that all aspects of samsara were an expression of the Divine and thus not to be despised)."

is that I do believe I have an allergy to intentional Ascending practice. When I adopt a practice that expresses a particular aspect of piety that I value, I IMMEDIATELY feel in my body a resistance. A visceral, "Hey! Don't reject me! I'm not bad! I'm just drawn that way!" kind of thing. It is instantaneous.

However, there are some things I do which I'm not just "religious" about, not merely stuck up about, but feel literally "not okay" if I'm not allowed to do them. I want it to be my God-given human right to recycle and compost and buy organic. I went thru a massive melt-down last year when I was audited by HUD and was afraid they were going to adjust my rent in such a way that I would no longer be able to afford to buy organic food. No. Not just afraid. TERRIFIED!!! wft?

This is not the reaction of someone who wants to be just "intentional". This is the reaction of someone who fears for her life. I remember giving up on the project of buying only non-toxic and sustainable non-food items such as paper products and soaps. It was horrible. Nearly had a panic attack when I had to buy more stuff from Walmart. I had previously been able to reduce my Walmart shopping list down to 2-3 items per month and I was beyond proud of that. Way beyond! Now I have to buy the paper-towels and toilet paper there again and the shampoo and toothpaste. The depth of shame that I try not to feel when I go in there is beyond what I can describe.

I'm tempted to write "LOL" because it's obviously so absurd, but it's actually not funny. The amount of suffering I'm experiencing is no laughing matter. It is tapping into a primal Death Terror.

---oOo---

Yeah. KW nailed me here (sort of):

"(At the same time, we don't want to go to the other extreme; too many women's spirituality movements end up being a merely Descending Path, emphasizing nothing but the body and the biosphere and Agape and compassion—without a clue as to real Eros and transcendence and Emptiness—and thus they end up endlessly emoting and parading a personalistic and egoic series of unending feelings, preferably on a full moon night, as if that were liberation)"

This is helpful to me. This neatly articulates my pathology. In fact, I'm doing it right now. LOL And that is funny! Pulling the Self out and away from the vMeme that "I" had previously been Embedded in and have been trying to get away from for years tickles. WOO-HOO!! I'M NAKED!

Ken names two mistakes:

1. The ascending rejection of all things material
2. The descending indulgence in all things material

It is now much more clear wtf happened to me. I was raised with the opposite mistake:

• The ascending rejection of all things spiritual

And therefore developed the reactionary pathology:

• The descending indulgence in all things spiritual

The confusion for me has been that we all usually ass-u-me that material is a descsending path and spiritual is an ascending path. It literally goes without saying. But my Egg-Donor was a Randian Objectivist who saw the acquisition of material goods and human dominion over matter was the ascending path and anything spiritual was descending and belonged to the Dark Ages. I refuse to call her the "M-word" for - NOW - obvious reasons.

So, my understandable resistance to her path put me in a situation where I literally felt exposed and unprotected by her if I didn't comply and compete against other people for resources and material gain, but neither did I feel safe in complying because that exposed me to the aggression of others. Like a calf born in a migrating herd of wildebeest, if I didn't get up and start running within 20 minutes of birth, I would likely be caught by predators and any maternal attempt to protect me would endanger the entire herd. But like a human infant, if I didn't get a sense that my Mother would do whatever was necessary to protect me while I learned how to live well, the entire material world would be felt, on a visceral level, as a threat to my survival. It was literally the Operating System programmed into my hardware upon booting up for the first time.

The whole world is so confusing for me. I literally do not understand it. I do not know how to navigate in it and I feel terror when I try to learn.

I don't know how much of this is going to be possible for me to overcome. But getting a better view of the problem is helpful - in a way. At least I can experience the tickle sensation when I realize that I am not that. But when I try to embody the solution...   I'm instantly catapulted into Death Terror.

What to do?

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