Can Integral Life please be aware of its image?

way to much esoterica and New Age looking spiritual mumbo jumbo. Total turnoff to the mainstream audience. I've got some very intelligent friends who I know would dig a lot of this Integral stuff, but I have to warn them to ignore the reaction they're going to have to all the New Age looking stuff. It doesn't mean what they think it means in this context.

Maybe the forthcoming version of integrallife.com will have portals for people who want to talk about esoterica and 3rd tier states/stages.

In a talk I listed to recently Ken was saying that in the future there would probably be different integral events and presentations geared towards differt kinds of people at different levels.

I am comfortable with the range of topics of interest to our comunity but would also be comfortable with various different sub groups forming with more limited interests like body building, ecconomics, politics, or whatever. We can learn to tolerate diversity.

Right now however, I am feeling less and less inclined to recommend checking out the integral framework. Ken's books are obviously still fine, but what if they Google it and come across Integral Life. What will they find, but a site with an almost New Age, Green flavour, with gorgeous and juicy and love and UFOs and Ken's pink shirt, aqua jacket and "blue steel" look and turning and running, potentially rejecting the usefulness of the whole integral model.

I'd guess if you asked Robb the CEO, he'd say they're aware of this and may have stuff on the way to help.

In the meantime, you can steer them to the solid and authoritative material.

Most every field has its junky entertainment-trash side.  Is someone was interested in science, you might steer them away from New Scientist and towards something more serious and practical.

Rather than Integral Life, maybe steer them towards the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice.  Then even if they do come across the junk, they can see in JITP that there's a serious and diverse group of people using this stuff.

I suppose one likes the idea that those around them and that which they strive for in their searches for truth, beauty and goodness to the highest degree expect that the next higher degree of exposure to those sublime conditions is to supposed to look and feel a certain way. Welcome to en cultured perception!  I have found a simple mantra that has some value that goes a bit like this." Let me know the truth that frees me from beliefs and thought systems that obscure the ever present Truth. Sometimes I find my expectations are fogging my spiritual facing windows.

Just another muttering from another being in the local cubic kilo parscec.

Warner

Hi Campbell

in my experience there are a variety of problems here. Everyone I know has some sort of center of gravity in the near-by micro culture surrounding them. Usually people in orange surroundings have a problem with the lack of orange here, people with green cog around them have problems with the lack of green.

And generally I would say, green and orange fixations are the big problems here. So many people still are not Integral while thinking they are, and If you combine that with problems going along with a gentile persuasion marketing of Integral, that makes up a scene where a lot of people are not what they think are.

If all of Integral were Integral, the problem of alack of integration of orange or green or whatever would not be the problem. The problem is that to many orange and green people misunderstanding there own altitude undermine the project.

To state this a little clearer: the problem is not the lack of orange. If we go more on orange, what do we get? more orange people. Not more integral people, which is what we need. The run on integral solutions leaving aside the structure of consciousness has turned problematic. Fools with solutions for today will be unable to face the results of these solutions tomorrow

I think the whole gentil persuasion thing was wrong. It was the right thing to think back in the days, but now it has proven false. We are only swaying between persuading orange or green people, and the second tier ones are mostly left out of the game. I at least feel really bored, I am holding on only because I know and believe the thing generally is good, similar to what you said. I see why there is so much entrance material, but by now I am frustrated with having to lower myself within THIS scene, the one part of the world where I feel at home most,  to the level of newcomers all of the time.

Thats why I am part of EnlightenNext as well. If the sophistication of Integral Philosophy and the motivation of EN could be combined, that would be it. Integral Embrace and Evolutionary Impulse working together must be the idea.