Values and Change

What do I (think I) value most? What values do I express by the way I live my life? One way to answer the later is to look at what we invest (spend) our time, energy and money in. If this does not live up to the former we can consider making some changes. Paul Ray's research shows that in Western Europe, Japan, and the U.S.A. about one third of the population are either traditional, modern, or cultural creative.

At first Stan just assumed that the way we grow from level to level would be to be led with our thoughts and beliefs but upon reflection this change might be led with our actions and affected by the company we keep. Let's take a fictional example. Fictional Stan starts out as a content barbarian, a member in good standing of a 1% M.C. with a good reputation (among fellow outlaw motorcycle  clubs). His girl friend drags him,, kicking and screaming to a church and they start hanging with some traditional people. Eventually Stan begins to like these folks. They hardly ever hit him over his head with hard beer bottles like his biker friends did and Stan grows to traditonal. He goes to college to study to be a doctor and associates with modern intellectuals. What they say makes sense to him. He wants to offer healing to the World and not just his church brothers in Kansas.  Stan grows to modern.

He joins a cool group of people in a planetary concern group and finds these people and their lives a lot more juicy than his dry intellectual friends.  Stan grows to cultural creative. Then he starts hanging out with the good people at Boulder Intergral who could actually accomplish something if they wantrd to and so it goes.

Paul did not discuss the living habits of the integral community but Stan would guess that we tend to go back and reembrace some of the habits we thought we outgrew in our earlier levels but in a more conscious way.

Wisdom verses folly.Wisdom is taking a larger perspective, for example thinking more globally and in longer periods of time. Folly is trusting our leadership to a few corrupt top down robber baron leaders.

May we learn to participate in the planetary rite of passage,  ride the avalanche of change, and contribute to the invention of the new World culture. If not us than who?

Totally Unrelated Notes

Lion in Oz

I could be almost human if I only had a heart

Movie "Mi Vida Loca"

In Echo Park we take life as it comes and learn that what goes around comes around.