“I think that living an integral life — it means exactly that, it means living a fully, comprehensively integral life, which means you are bringing these perspectives to everything that you experience — whether it’s watching Sharknado or it’s watching a film like Grace and Grit, or it’s losing yourself in a fantasy series like Lord of the Rings — whatever it is, there’s an opportunity for us to bring more consciousness and more awareness. And we can notice how integral ideas and perspectives actually open up new channels of meaning within a particular artwork.”Corey deVos

The Art of Conscious Recreation

n this episode, Corey deVos and Ryan Oelke explore how to more fully inhabit our art and entertainment. We tend to think of “recreation” as a passive activity, but we actually share an active symbiotic relationship with our art and entertainment, both personally and culturally. We create art, which in turn re-creates us. We are constantly taking in the symbolism and themes and ideas from our surrounding cultural artifacts and reconstructing them as reference points for our own thinking, which then shapes the way we interpret and make sense of the world, whether consciously or unconsciously.

We are re-creating ourselves time and time again every time we engage with our favorite films, music, books, television shows, etc. The goal here is to escape the cynically critical inertias of a culture that tends to define its tastes in negative space, and find a way to bring this ongoing cycle of re-creation into consciousness as much as we can — the art of conscious recreation.

After all, who among us doesn’t have both an inner Tiger King and an inner Ted Lasso living somewhere inside us?

Art is not inert, and our enjoyment of art is anything but passive. We have a deeply psychoactive relationship with our art and entertainment, often revealing territories within us that we never knew were there, and these psychoactive qualities largely depend on the kosmic address of both the artist and the observer. In this episode we hope to make some of these psychoactive properties a bit more noticeable, and demonstrate how integral perspectives can radically increase our enjoyment and appreciation of art and culture. It’s not just about enjoying integral art, but enjoying art integrally.

Topics include:

0:00 — The Art of Conscious Recreation
21:39 — Why Are We Talking About Entertainment?
29:31 — Grace and Grit: An Integral Appreciation
44:52 — Integral Art vs. Enacting Art Integrally
49:23 — The Spiritual Awakening of Nine Inch Nails
1:01:22 — Cutting Through Cynicism: Ted Lasso, Life Coach
1:05:50 — Looking Forward

Written by Corey deVos
Music by Justin Miles and Stuart Davis