Please Log in to Vote.

8 out of 8 members found this useful.

Dear Integral: (official request!)

Posted March 9th, 2010 by Jennifer Grove

I need some help. Actually, we all do here. So, I'll speak up for whoever else is having the same issue, which I 'spect will be quite a few.

As I proceed in my mission to gracefully "bring up the rear" in Integral studies, I am experiencing a frustrating gap. It is between what I see "out there" and knowing what to do about it. I'm talking about Skillful Means. I can see what behaviors are not Skillful. I can see that pretty clearly now. But I cannot intuit yet what is Skillful. I hear lots of talk around this but very little content is coming from Integral that deals with the issue directly. This is not meeting my needs for being empowered to move out into my world with compassion and love and skill. Would you be willing to make some content regarding this? Alot of content? Video and/or audio?

I 'spect that Integral would prefer to not teach this because it wants it to unfold in an authentic way. Teaching it would almost be oxymoronic in a way. If you see Skillful Means walking down the road - kill it!! However, in the Mystery traditions there is a way to use this experience of having skills demanded of you that you must completely fail at in order to advance the student. Can you do this? Methinks this would be somewhat of a Skillful Means itself, no?

Please consider my request. I am currently unable to apply my Voice into situations which are in dire need of help because the skillful way to do it has not emerged yet.

Thank you.

Please Log in to Vote.

4 out of 4 members found this useful.

Great question!

Posted March 9th, 2010 by Corey deVos

Such an important question Jennifer--one that will largely determine the future viability of the Integral vision in the world, and one that i am sure every single one of us is trying to figure out every day.  I think you are correct to point out the oxymoronic nature of teaching something like "skillful means" as if it were a pat methodology or color-by-number solution--and yet, it is certainly something that we can practice and "get better at" as we go. 

The truth is, there is no simple algorithm to predict how people are going to respond to a particular piece of information coming from a particular blend of altitudes.  Our Kosmic Addresses seem to determine both what we can hear and what can be said, and i suppose we can offer some convenient generalizations to help make sense of the overall terrain of interpersonal relations (e.g. green likes this, orange likes that, amber hates the other thing, etc.)--but really it's a bit of a crap shoot, since we each possess such a unique alchemy of levels, lines, perspectives, states, types, etc.

In this spirit, here's a suggested exercise for those familiar with Integral theory, which may or may not waste your time:

a) Take a piece of paper, and create a grid with six rows (marked magenta, red, amber, orange, green, teal/turquoise) and with four columns (marked UL, UR, LL, LR), yielding 24 total cells.

b) Choose a particular message you would like to communicate (e.g. "Science and Spirituality can co-exist").

c) Break your message down into each of the categories--how would you frame your statement for a green UL-orienter?  For an Amber LL orienter?  Etc.

d) Notice any tactics or strategies you may employ while reframing your communication for each perspective, as well as any resistances or aversions that may come up.

Now again, we are still working on the level of stereotype here.  We all know there really isn't such a thing as a "green UL orienter"--it's just shorthand for an extremely complex psychograph that shifts and undulates every day.  These are just probability fields, after all.  However, i think a practice like this can still help a great deal, sort of like learning your scales before you can pull off a live jazz improvisation.

I am trying to envision what sort of audio or video content could address this issue, and i admit i am drawing a blank.  Perhaps this is not a question for Integral Life to answer, but maybe we can help create a space where members can explore this question together more intimately, sharing our own personal experiences with "skillful means in the world".  If you guys think it would be a good idea, i can create an Inquiry that asks something like this:

 

How do you exercise "skillful means" in your relationships and your communication?  What has worked for you, and what hasn't?

"Skillful means" can be described simply as "knowing who you are talking to."  Take, for example, Integral theory.  You may have noticed that discussing the integral vision with your fundamentalist grandmother is a lot different than discussing it with your Wall Street dad, which is a lot different than discussing it with your liberal-minded hippie cousin.  Using the Integral map as your framework, describe what has worked for you and what hasn't, as integral thinkers and practitioners trying to figure out how to interface with the rest of the world.

 

--

Corey W deVos
(dj rekluse)

Writer, Content Producer, and Webmaster
Integral Life, Integral Naked
Managing Editor, KenWilber.com

"Include the Values, Negate the View!"

Please Log in to Vote.

2 out of 2 members found this useful.

Unconditional Love Equals World Peace

Posted March 9th, 2010 by Billy Guilfoyle

Jennier Grove, the women, the myth, the legend,

 

It is a pleasure to see in you experiencing the very same drive I see in all of today's generations, which is simply a desire for oneness, a desire to see all of us on the very same page. And I'm happy to report that we all are already on the same page in that we all want to be loved unconditionally and accepted. As you know already, I can tell.

So awakening others to this one and undeniable already present reality is quite challenging. Because most people would prefer to cling to ideasa ABOUT what would eventually bring them ultimate satisfaction. This is the truth. And these ideas are exclusionary, and thus there is already an unacceptance existing within those who would say, "This should not exist, and therefore I am against this." We who say these things are already feeling that we have something about us that is non-acceptable. By saying, "This is bad," is essentially, at the same time, saying that we ourselves are "good." We consider ourselves to be the 'good' only because what we want, to the very deepest core of our hearts, is to be accepted, loved, okay, totally content and in the perfect bliss of being loved. 

Let me stop here and say this: I could be wrong about all of this. I could be wrong that all we all want is love and acceptance. I could be wrong that each and every person on the globe is only wanting to be accepted as we are and therefore enjoined into an embrace of the bliss of total and complete disappearance into the feeling of already arrived perfection. I could be wrong entirely. 

But, in my studies of the worst atrocities that human beings have enacted, such as the holocaust, serial killing, and also rape and torture, it appears that even these "evil" people were merely operating out of the one and only true desire to merely be loved and accepted. For instance, John Wayne Gayce, a noted serial killer, was beaten as a child by his father for having long hair. His mother would make him grow long hair and refused to cut it. His father would get drunk, call him a sissy and a queer, and beat him bloody nightly, simply for having long hair. Gayce's biggest fear as a child was clowns. When he grew up, he would dress-up as a clown and go out and look for men who looked gay and kidnap them, torture them, and kill them. 

It is obvious that he was unconsciously trying to destroy, in his perception, whatever it is in the outward world that his own father could not accept within his son. Gayce was obviously unconsciously only trying to please his own father by ridding the world of what his father hated most, which means that he was trying to GAIN his father's love and acceptance. We can see how terribly far the denial of love can reach by John Wayne Gayce's example. The denial of love when we are young really does have a major impact on what we hate or rally against in life. It goes so far beyond our conscious awareness that we rarely even know why we are doing what we are doing. And it takes such an extreme example of this projection tendency to awaken ourselves to this tendency within ourselves, in my opinion. 

Hitler himself was a Jew. You cannot hate what it is you in fact are not. He was the most powerful man in Germany and made sure to destroy all evidence. But the man was Jewish, and he experienced anti-semitism at a very young age. And he, like all of us, only wanted to be loved and accepted. And we can see, by way of the examples of all serial killers (including Hitler), that the main attribute of those who wish to end or destroy anything in the "outward world" is only and simply a desire to be loved and accepted. And so what is learned to be unacceptable becomes a dissociated aspect of self projected onto the outer world and then there is only actions that seek to destroy these outward resemblances that remind us of the truth that only lies within. 

If it is true freedom that we desire for ourselves or for our world, we must firstly admit this truth. Only then can we work to become any sort of light for the world beyond our own shadows. And again, this is only my opinion. 

 

Much love,

Billy

 

--

 Love,     Billy     everyoneisgoingconscious@gmail.com