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21st century spirituality
October 2009 
Symposium Addendum: Further Thoughts on Enactivism
Balder
Z4 Symposium week has passed, but it isn't over yet! Conversations are continuing in the comments sections of each of the contributions, a couple Gaia members have added complementary pieces on their own blogs (see Ashramdiarist's excellent commentaries here and here; see Starlight's poetic reflections here, here, and here), and I believe Erin, who had to drop out because of computer problems, will soon be adding a contribution of her own.
Of the three topics we intended to explore together in this symposium, enactivism has received the most attention. I think this is appropriate. It was an unfamiliar concept to several of the participants, so a significant part of this exercise was just to explore the concept in more detail and to trace out its implications. This "tracing" is still ongoing, and I feel it's a bit premature for me to offer any conclusions about the outcome of this symposium yet, but I would at least like to offer a few thoughts on why I find the approach to be compelling.
In my own philosophical study and spiritual practice, I have not considered myself an "enactivist." Rather, Varela and Maturana's enactive approach was one of a number of related perspectives that have informed (and which continue to challenge and refine) my understanding: Buddhist notions of co-dependent origination and emptiness; the deeply process-oriented thought that comprises aspects of Dzogchen teachings (which Herbert Guenther has explicated in some depth); the process philosophy of Whitehead; David Bohm's dynamic cognitive, linguistic, and cosmic models (Thought as a System, the rheomode, soma-significance); General Systems Theory; structuralist and post-structuralist thought; the Time-Space-Knowledge vision (TSK); Raimon Panikkar's cosmotheandric vision and his integral dialogical model; Jorge Ferrer's participatory spirituality; and Wilber's re-translation of enactivism in AQAL terms, among others.
These perspectives are certainly not identical, but they do broadly reinforce a vision of reality as dynamically interdependent and deeply participatory - an understanding which, if only for the purposes of this symposium, I am happy to summarize with the label, enactive*.
In his contribution to this symposium, Adam listed a number of reasons why he found the enactive perspective to be beneficial and compelling. Because his reasons are so clearly expressed and so closely resemble my own reactions to this approach when I first began to explore it, I will copy his list here and then will add a few of my own thoughts below:
- it encouraged me to see more that nature and environment is not just something out there - we are part of it, and that we influence our physical world just as our physical world influences us.
- it brought extra dimensions to the understanding of conceptual consciousness
- it highlighted life as unfolding process
- it encouraged deeper insight into assumptions
- it increased my feeling of environmental responsibility
- it heightened my awareness of the different elements of cognition as they happen
- it reminded me that the falling tree in the empty forest doesn't make a sound ; )
- in some ways, it didn't contradict my existing worldview, it helped bring it to life...
- i related strongly to the 2-way process of evolution, how organisms affect and are affected by their environment
- it coincided with a conversation i was having with a friend a few weeks ago about the difference between insecurity and uncertainty, and my embracing uncertainty as the most rational approach to engaging with present awareness! spooky huh?
- it also coincided with deeper recognition of life as flow/process that's been going on of late
And to this, I would add:
- It encourages a deeper appreciation for the body and a deepened sense of participatory intimacy with the world (which has affective, moral, and cognitive consequences)
- Its "middle way" approach offers us a way to begin to relate to the world's multiple spiritual traditions as objectively rounded creative enactments, neither attempting to reduce them all to an overarching (and reductive) ideological inclusivism, nor settling for an easy but unsatisfactory flatland relativism.
- It opens a concrete, practical way to begin to integrate, and encourage relationships of inquiry between, scientific and contemplative practices and perspectives, which promises to further human knowledge.
- It reminds us just how deeply we are related; how Me and Other are co-implicated, co-creating
- Deeply appreciated, it transforms our sense of both time and space - a shift which impacts the fabric of our experience, our embodiment, and our sense of self.
I do not intend with this list to over-idealistically inflate this notion. It is not "the answer," and I am not holding it out as such. But I have found it to be a powerful way to look at things which has opened the door for me, in many spheres, to a deeper appreciation for what is and a greater sense of what is possible.
To close, I will describe a handful of practices which I have found helpful for exploring the meaning of, and more fully embodying, an enactive sensibility. Several years ago, I worked on a project exploring connections between Wilber's Integral Theory and the Time, Space, Knowledge vision. In that project, I suggested a number of TSK exercises that I believed would be helpful for exploring and deepening insight into several key Integral concepts, including enactivism, perspectives, and post-metaphysics. I'll mention a few here.
Among all of the TSK practices, perhaps some of the most well known are those that deal with the Giant Body. In these exercises, you are asked to visualize a giant human form, male or female, suspended in the space or the sky before you. Adopting the perspective of a proportionately tiny observer, you approach the body and begin to explore it in intimate detail, first observing its surface features and then entering into it to travel through its internal spaces, systems, and structures. Over a series of six exercises, as you conduct this exploration at increasing levels of detail and finer levels of magnitude, you are encouraged to move into, "open up," and transparentize the boundaries of the nested structures and systems that comprise the human body, with the aim of developing intimacy with space and embodiment. In the beginning, space may appear first simply as the space between boundaries that make up and allow for the "shapes" of given organs, cells, or molecules, and then become more pervasive as boundaries are opened and the transparentized body is experienced as an intricate world of "interactions and shining outlines." Carried out intensively, however, these exercises allow you to develop a subtler experience and understanding of space which, at these deeper levels, challenges not only objective distinctions but subject-object distinctions, as you come to experience the inseparability and dynamic co-enactment of perspective, form, and space in the lived body (Leib) -- a relationship which obtains even in our normal experience of the body as solid and opaque.
In a series of practices which immediately follow the Giant Body exercises (Body-Mind-Thought Interplay; The Translucent Person; Participation as Observer/Participation as Embodied Person; Participation and Space), the student begins to attend to the interaction of body, mind, thought, and emotion in a variety of situations and settings. In these practices, the student explores the dynamics of this interplay in light of her more spacious and open sense of embodiment, opening up boundaries and partitions in experience in subtler ways, and paying particular attention to the emergent presence of the observer in the overall constellation of experience (the factors that contribute to the concrescence of a sense of "you" in a given situation). These exercises are valuable on many levels, constituting an integral approach to exploring embodiment, but I will comment on just one aspect here. Having been led to an experience of space as an unqualified openness, the student is enabled to more clearly perceive the co-emergence and co-constitutive nature of subject and object poles of experience. As Tarthang Tulku writes, "Following concerted practice of Exercise 9, it may be possible to see the emergence of objects and of the ordinary ‘knower' as a tendency toward ‘freezing' what is actually a completely open dimension." Here and elsewhere, Tarthang Tulku leads us in an exploration of the emergence of subject-object perspectives as a never-fully-consolidated freezing tendency that I believe gives us a visceral understanding of the process Wilber notates in his integral calculus as 123/p, and which he describes as a momentary stopping or "freeze frame" in the "cascading flow of infinite perspectives" that allows us to apprehend objects in a world. Importantly, the power of these practices is in the conceptual and phenomenological shifts they are intended to encourage; they are not, Tarthang Tulku explicitly states, intended to be taken as metaphysical propositions.
The TSK vision includes over 130 exercises, a number of which are relevant to our present concerns, but I'll mention just one other - an analytical inquiry practice to complement the imaginative visualizations of the Giant Body exercises and the active, situational mindfulness practices of the second set of meditations I described. This practice is entitled Lineage of Appearances, and essentially involves sustained inquiry into the objective, subjective, and intersubjective "lineages" that contribute to the "appearance" of any given object of experience. "For example," Tarthang Tulku writes, "an object can be traced to its component elements; alternatively, it can be traced to the whole of which it forms a part. There could be tracing in the direction of greater subtlety or underlying energies; tracing in new dimensions, both visible and invisible; tracing of associated sensory and mental operations (including those involved in tracing); tracing of historical conditions and causes. Lineages can be investigated in various domains: structural, chemical, biological, mathematical, philosophical, therapeutic, linguistic, cultural. Experiment with different ways of opening experience and appearances through tracing lineages. You may find that the further you go, the more character and meaning change. The common-sense emphasis on substance can no longer be contained; there is a move toward process that opens new perspectives."
Another practice I wanted to mention is one I am not very familiar with, but it seems interesting and promising enough to me to mention here. At the recent Integral Theory Conference, I attended a session on a new perspective-taking practice that is being developed by several members of Integral Institute: the Meta-Practice. It is based, in theory, on Wilber's integral (perspective-based) math; but in practice, it involves a number of different elements, from the grounding factors of concentration and mindfulness, to method acting, improvisation, Meisner's repetition technique, gestalt, ongoing positive regard, encounter work, and affective therapy. The practice is fairly intensive and typically takes five or more hours to complete. Practitioners sit in a circle (with one or several observers situated outside the circle), and the facilitator slowly guides them through a range of exercises designed to deepen subjective and intersubjective awareness and to exercise perspective-taking capacity (from 1st person out to 6th person levels of complexity).
I watched a group of individuals demonstrate this practice, but I haven't had a chance yet to try it myself. I mention it here because the carefully guided interactions did seem to provide a powerful way to expand awareness of the enactive power of perspectives.
Many other practices could be mentioned. Deep engagement with daily life itself is enough, of course, but sometimes directed or intentional practices, by running counter to the currents of our habits and expectations, can open spaces that we might not otherwise have the opportunity to enjoy or appreciate. If you know of any practices that would be complementary to the topics explored in this symposium, I invite you to share them below.
* Technically, of course, this term applies primarily to Varela's model, and more loosely to at least two which have borrowed it and reframed it - Wilber's tetra-enactivism and Ferrer's participatory spirituality
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bruce, this was wonderful to read…while i was reading through the exercises, i actually felt the sense of opening up…your poetic side touched me through this…it also had a calming effect on me…it flowed…lol…i was able to experience what you were speaking about, to a degree…you are a jewel…always, star…
Thank you so much, Star. I am happy to hear that.
Peace (and goodnight for now!),
B.
I don't have the time to read it all the way through at the moment, but I read the first half. Its a good summarization of what you personally see valuable within enactivism and how it relates to other subjects you've studied.
Its funny that after this whole symposium I'm still uncertain precisely what enactivism is and isn't. I'd have a hard time giving anything more than a brief definition. It connects to such a broad spectrum of similar ideas that it gets confusing. I'll try to get hold of one of Varela's books to get a better sense, but first I'm going to read through this whole symposium again.
I am printing this off and taking it with me to the little diner down the road :) Be back tonight to start commenting all over the place! Oh, getting back online is wonderful.
what i see…is that Bruce has taken spirituality, which has long been in the cages of this or that religion…including buddhist, zen, etc…, and he has humanized it…
now it's a given…he has not only drawn on his own experiences, but has added the experiences of others…and also drawn on many truths…without confusing those truths with foundational attachments…
imho…this is clearly progress…it mixes science with spirituality…forming something that could very easily give birth to something helpful to all…regardless of their religious beliefs or lack there of…*****
Ben, thank you for visiting. To really get a good sense of Varela's enactivism, yes, I think it's a good idea to read one of his books, or else some of the essays on the website Matt linked to earlier. But a book may be easier going. If you have access to the book, The Psychology of Awakening, one of the essays in it is by Varela and that ought to give you a good sense of his approach.
Erin, it's great to have you back online and back with us at the symposium. I look forward to your comments and to your own piece as well!
Star, thanks for your comments. I am definitely aiming for what you have described, and I think some of the other participants here are as well, each in his own way. We each have our own influences, with a few things in common (Integral, enactivism, humanistic psychology, etc). Julian has probably done the most towards articulating such an approach … which he calls 21st century spirituality. Adam, as I understand, is working on something he calls Konnektivism. I don't have a unique name for what I'm doing, though if you read my “Goals” on this website, and my scattered writings online, you'll see I sometimes refer to it as Integral TSK or, after Wilber, postmetaphysical spirituality. For me, names doesn't matter – at least not at this point, when I don't have anything to sell! What matters to me are the sorts of exchanges we're having here – and how these exchanges can help seed the work we're doing, in our own ways, to flower as human beings and to help others do the same.
Warm wishes,
Balder
yum!
thanks brude…
loved the TSK practice descriptions and the meta-practice sounds right up my alley too!
Hi, Julian, I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for stopping by…
B.
Hey Bruce,
Thanks for the heads up about this post. I enjoyed it, especially the latter half about developing our understanding on an experiential level. Experience is, of course, what enactivism is trying to draw our attention back to, as often we become lost in our ideas and conceptualizations of reality, so much so that we mistake them for the reality (Whitehead's fallacy). I think a good example of such conceptual confusion is to think that subject and object really are indepenently existing substances or perspectives, when it is quite obvious on an experiential level than everything we are, and everything we do, takes place somewhere between these two abstractions. We ought to be weary of quadrant confusions, but we also need to keep in mind that there is no solid y-axis separating interior from exterior in the real world. This blurriness has nothing to do with legitimating the idea that, if I think hard enough, I can make a $100 bill appear on the sidewalk around the corner. This is just as much a misplacement of concreteness as reductive materialism.
I've been studying Whitehead a bit over the last week or so, and in his writings he discusses how a particular fact is not true based on some immediate, empirical state of affairs independent of interpretation, but rather, a fact is true based only on a whole set of implicit beliefs and assumptions about the nature of reality. This becomes clear when we consider how a neuroscientist might say it is a fact that the brain causes consciousness, while a psychotherapist might say that it is a fact that people have free will. They can't both be right… but the point is they are each coming from a different set of background assumptions that generate different sets of facts.
Thanks for your thoughts, Bruce, and I hope these discussions continue.
-Matt
The way you write is wonderfully inviting, no matter what you're writing about. And here I am - finally - contentedly reading and commenting during the quietest hours of the night…
”I do not intend with this list to over-idealistically inflate this notion. It is not “the answer,” and I am not holding it out as such. But I have found it to be a powerful way to look at things which has opened the door for me, in many spheres, to a deeper appreciation for what is and a greater sense of what is possible.”
Yes! Exploring a variety of theories and practices does not mean one is adopting one of those theories or practices. Rather, examining them, turning them over and looking at each in-depth, is leading me through a greater and deeper appreciation for what is possible, too. I like the way you write, also, because you present sometimes complex concepts clearly and with an aesthetic touch, enhancing the experience of discovery.
The Giant Body exercise seems similar to what the Lakota taught me on the mountain. There were a number of experiences that month that I do not perceive to be as primitive nor mystical as some might at first consider categorizing. In fact, the elders resent those who take these experiences and modernize them into something “magic” or “cool.”
For example, one night the elder asked if I would like to walk along the mountain to the peak. The land is very dry and there are no trails in that wild country. Walking in the dark is a part of becoming aware of one's environment even when one cannot see. At the time, I considered this was similar to an exercise in mindfulness, which amused him.
May I add that there were plenty of bear, a resident mountain lion, jack rabbits, rattlesnakes and antelope. We made our way in silence. My heart was pounding as the mountain lion had already visited outside my tent on a previous night. I started to ask how would I know the path, how would I know where the animals were to avoid, what was I supposed to be learning. He did not speak but motioned me to lead the way.
I stopped to calm my pounding heart. I closed my eyes and breathed slower and slower feeling the air and listening to the small sounds of the night. Realizing I was afraid and applying logic that if I panicked I would sense nothing and lose my way. When I opened my eyes the darkness seemed less black. I listened to the sounds under my feet to locate where to take each step. When there was a rustle ahead I stopped and waited to hear was it a loud rustle - bear - or a scampering rustle - jackrabbit or ground squirrel.
We came to the peak in about two hours. I was both surprised and not surprised to have arrived there leading the way through country I'd never walked before. He motioned me to a large, flat rock and we sat in silence under a night sky so filled with stars I don't know how I could have thought it was too dark to see when we'd set out. He asked, Do you hear the water, do you smell the water? I closed my eyes to focus…and smelled the water before I heard it. Then he told me a story from their oral traditions about the water.
The story wasn't meant to be a mythology or instill a belief into any water spirits. It was a gift of his people's traditions. The story was a gift for learning to feel the connectivity of all things in the night, without sight. I felt it was a beautiful exercise in awareness of one's own intial feelings of entering into such an experience and overcoming them into beauty.
There were many other experiences on that mountain that month that seem similar in practice, exercise, deep learning and awareness that I experienced without any pathological magical beliefs being imposed or impressed upon me or within the group. I learned to face and overcome my former phobia of heat. I learned to see in the night without needing my eyes. I learned to feel each feeling so very acutely and manage it.
Nothing I'd been told about the “primitive” or “mythologies” was realized. Instead, I found a greater similarity to much of what is taught and practiced within meditations, mindfulness, some forms of yoga, and more… The Great Body exercise reminded me of the exeperience I described above because of the awareness it evoked… Rather than a Great Body, I felt, saw, heard my body, the mountain, the night sky over the wild valley below on a molecular , cellular level, natural, physics level. In an amazing “unwoven rainbow” way.
I could “see: and feel the very blood coursing through my heart, feel my heart start to pump more slowly as I controlled my breath into calmness, see my lungs rising and falling with each quiet breath…I felt the movement of the creatures on the mountain through the night, smelled the sweet water hundreds of feet away… Like the Li Po poem on my last blog entry…the mountain and me until it seemed only the mountain remained…
We talked many times about the concepts of time, and space and knowledge. Maybe I'm way off base here, but that walk from 8,000 to 12,000 feet in the dark…was a beautiful, intentional, pure practice into expanding awareness and opening new perspectives.
Of course if I'm off the mark, you'll let me know!
Erin :)
Hey, Matt,
You said: Experience is, of course, what enactivism is trying to draw our attention back to, as often we become lost in our ideas and conceptualizations of reality, so much so that we mistake them for the reality (Whitehead's fallacy)… I've been studying Whitehead a bit over the last week or so, and in his writings he discusses how a particular fact is not true based on some immediate, empirical state of affairs independent of interpretation, but rather, a fact is true based only on a whole set of implicit beliefs and assumptions about the nature of reality.
Yes, it's a bit ironic, really, that when people encounter ideas like this, they sometimes react to it as “heady” or “abstract” – when, in fact, it is trying to point to the ab-straction of those concepts we take to be most concrete, and to draw attention back to the living flux, the ongoing enactments, “out” of which these anchoring concepts have been extracted.
That's why I think this experiential component is also important – why inquiries and practices like this can be especially helpful in deepening understanding and increasing one's capacity to consciously embody it.
If you have anything in this area you'd like to add – your own practices or experiences that have helped open this up for you – I'd welcome hearing about them here, or on your own blog.
Best wishes,
Bruce
Erin!!!!!!! what a beautiful contribution…full of HEART EXPERIENCE…i cannot wait to read your presentation…*****
Erin, thank you for your comments about my writing – and for this lovely night journey! You evoked that space beautifully, the dance between body and world as they were enacted anew in that landscape free of the anchors of the familiar. I felt as if I was there with you, senses quivering and expanding in the dark, fear swallowed by wonder, the ancient story evoking, echoing, and inviting you to connect with the world that the night journey had just helped to introduce.
I have taken such walks – in the desert night; in an icy forest under a crystal moon; in the black jungles of Indonesia, slithering with menace. Without well-worn paths or roads readily visible, you are called to shift from the habitual positions of knowledge to the nimble flow of knowing that laps our islands of certainty, and sometimes overwhelms them. You learn to use your senses anew, to acknowledge the edge of the unknown. (I am reminded of another TSK practice, which simply asks you to explore the boundaries of your senses, and see if you can find new ways to use them.)
Have you read The Spell of the Sensuous? I am thinking of it now, as I contemplate your post. I do not agree with all of Abram's conclusions about language and its relationship to our experience and perception – he argues the alphabet has cut us adrift from the world, and I don't think that's inevitable or universally the case – but his exploration of the dance of body, language, and place in the enactment of worlds is very relevant to our symposium and worth checking out if you aren't familiar with it.
But you also have the breathtaking world right at your doorstep. It sounds, from your writings, as if you are still able to step out into the wild in ways that aren't available to me right now. I miss that deeply – and thank you for taking me there with your words.
Warm wishes,
Balder
Erin - Nice description!
Bruce - I don't have much time to comment right now, but I wanted to point out one thing. I was glad to see that you mentioned The Spell of the Sensuous. I don't have his book with me and so I'm working from memory.
As far as I remember, Abram didn't clump all languages together. Written language in general may tend to create a separation between our consciousness and our direct experience, but there are important distinctions between languages. The one distinction that Abram mentioned was that the Asian languages use a script that retains its roots in concrete imagery, and so most of his conclusions about language were specifically about Indo-European languages. Of course, the Asian countries have been massively influenced by Western culture, but they do still retain their own languages.
I don't know what solution Abram sees for our culture. I doubt he is suggesting we should all start using Asian scripts. I think Abram brought up Merleau-Ponty because he was someone who experimented with language in trying to connect it back with direct experience.
Its been a long time since I read his book, and so I'm not sure to what degree I agree with him. For my symposium presentation, I only skimmed the relevant passages for what I wanted to communicate. As I remember his book, I suspect he falls into romanticism somewhat. I'm not sure if he overgeneralizes his message, but it wouldn't surprise me as he is speaking about largescale cultural trends. I don't know if its fair to even clump all the Indo-European languages together as there are important distinctions within that category.
Thank you, Ben. I enjoyed your comment referencing Abram mentioning 'Asian languages use a script that retains its roots in concrete imagery.'
Bruce, thought-provoking! Delivered with your usual eloquence. I pulled out my copy of The Snow Leopard just now. Thinking about the evolution of Matthiessen's experiences expressed through his writing and up to, End of the Earth. Wondering if you will someday write a book sharing some of the walks you describe above… Maybe more…
I haven't read The Spell of the Sensuous…yet. Yet, because now I want to :) Experiences like the night walk on the mountain are beautiful on so many levels: aesthetic (of course!), spiritual, scientific, cultural… I'm intrigued by your and Ben's reference to Abram, especially. And, I am intrigued by quadrants, layers, levels, theories, psychologies, philosophies…
The reason I am intrigued is for as long as I can remember, I have experienced the natural world as the night mountain walk. Each time is like the first time. One particular memory the TSK practice seems to articulate for me is my fascination with the night sky. I remember being about six or seven years old. After all the neighborhood kids went home for dinner, I'd drag my sled to one of the patches of soft snow away from the hill.
I'd fall back into making a snow angel and lay there looking up into the sky. Different than goofing around or just playing. Playing was sledding and racing down the hill over the icy ramps we made (likely, safety-conscious adults of today would prohibit that, lol). Perhaps my experiences were enhanced by my gentle, scientist great uncle? Perhaps I took for granted the rational, critical thinking he instilled in me from the time I could walk?
Nonetheless, I remember laying back, arms outstretched, in that soft snow. Thinking about the constellations and fascinated what I was looking at might have already disappeared from the universe while I was seeing its light millions of years afterward. I remember feeling the cold of the snow like nothing and watching my breath fog and freeze in air that seemed in my child's mind to be twinkling bits breathed centuries ago.
Same goes for playing in the orchestra. Beyond the obvious thrill of being in the midst of all that incredible sound and music, it was as if one could feel the waves of vibrato resounding through the air. In a synaesthetic way, colors accompanying frequencies of sound from trumpets, basses, even different composers. Absolutely enchanting…
I am intrigued by quadrants, layers, levels, theories, psychologies, philosophies because I spent my lifetime exploring the arts (folk and fine), literature, music, science and nature, instead. It is only this year that I have delved into researching philosophers and psychologists and respective accompanying theories and matrices and structural expressions of such. I feel like a kid, discovering what I took for granted or mused about while pragmatic, business-minded friends teased me good-naturedly…well, it is like discovering a whole new world! With language and theories and practices I “get”!!!
Anyway, I do feel like a kid here :) I've already begun reading Paradigm Wars and am enjoying it immensely. Over the last months I've been exploring the concept of time and discovering scientific theories relative to my thoughts about non-linear time and how all of it “works”. I'd think I'd like to explore TSK theories and practices, now that I'm aware of their existence :) I feel like I'm “working backward”, to borrow a dear friend's phrase. And filling in oh so many gaps along the way. La vita e bella, indeed…
With gratitude,
Erin
Hi, Ben,
Yes, it's been awhile since I read his book too. But you're right - he doesn't lump all languages together, or even all writing systems. He finds the trajectory laid out by the Greeks to have set us most adrift from nature. He finds even the Hebrew alphabet (not to mention its process-oriented grammar) to be more “grounded” or experience-near (e.g., less abstract) than modern Western languages, particularly those influenced by Greek and Latin.
I think his book is valuable and I really enjoyed it, particularly his evocation of various indigenous worldspaces and the interpenetration and co-determination of place, language, natural world, and human modes of cognition. But I do think he engages in a bit of Romanticizing and over-generalization - and as you say, it isn't entirely clear what way forward he proposes for those of us “saddled” with alienating or overly static and abstract language systems.
In my comments to Erin above, I did not mean to downplay the role of language in human cognition and perception. As I mentioned to Adam, I experimented with this quite a bit when I was younger, trying to create a process oriented grammar just for these reasons. I also tried to create a new phonetic system rooted in human articulation - where each letter is sort of like a pictograph of articulation, where each “part” of a letter represents phonetic actions which can be combined with much greater specificity than alphabetic letters (the strokes indicate things like bilabial, fricative, aspiration, stop, etc, rather than simple letters). But with that said, even though I am interested in this subject, I remember having some reservations about Abram's thesis that language was such a decisive influence. After all, even as a speaker of a Western language with a non-pictographic alphabet, he was still able to appreciatively enter into the worldspaces of his native informants.
On a different note, I wanted to add that I did really enjoy his reflections on the various conceptions and experiences of space and time among the native speakers he interacted with - Navajos, Hopis, Balinese, Nepalese shamans, etc. We take things like “time” and “space” to be constants, givens, but as Gebser points out so eloquently in The Ever-Present Origin, the transition between worldspaces (magic, mythic, mental/modern, aperspectival/integral) involves significant shifts not only in the conception but the experience of space and time - differences which show up concretely in human artifacts and forms of art. To use the language of this symposium, time and space are, in an important way, also enactments … not the universal, fixed, structuring givens Kant took them to be.
At one point in his book, Abram offers an exercise he sometimes does when he finds that he is losing the expanded sense of the living present that becomes especially vivid for him when he is living out in the wild, or with these other cultures - a means of counteracting the “pull” of mental-level time toward conceptualized past and future spaces. I'll share it here, since I offered some exercises in my blog above:
There is a useful exercise that I devised back then to keep myself from falling completely into the civilized oblivion of linear time. You are welcome to try it next time you are out of doors. I locate myself in a relatively open space - a low hill is particularly good, or a wide field. I relax a bit, take a few breaths, gaze around. Then I close my eyes, and let myself begin to feel the whole bulk of my past - the whole mass of events leading up to this every moment. And I call into awareness, as well, my whole future - all those projects and possibilities that lie waiting to be realized. I imagine this past and this future as two vast balloons of time, separated from each other like the bulbs of an hourglass, yet linked together at the single moment where I stand pondering them. And then, very slowly, I allow both of these immense bulbs of time to begin leaking their substance into this minute moment between them, into the present. Slowly, imperceptibly at first, the present moment begins to grow. Nourished by the leakage from the past and the future, the present moment swells in proportion as these other dimensions shrink. Soon it is very large; and the past and future have dwindled down to mere knots on the edge of this huge expanse. At this point I let the past and future dissolve entirely. And I open my eyes… (Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, p. 202).
Best wishes,
B.
Erin, I really enjoyed reading your reflections. I love Mathiessen's works…some of which represent, for me, such an exquisite wedding of Zen and Western naturalistic sensibilities.
Your description of lying in the snow and looking up in wonder at the ancient constellations reminds me of a blog post I put up a month or two ago on my first memories of the night sky. Perhaps we had some similar influences in our youths…
I'm glad you're enjoying Paradigm Wars. I think you will like Abram's book as well.
Many happy night journeys,
B.
Bruce and Matt
Hi - I'm back…
Matt said that for Whitehead:
“a particular fact is not true based on some immediate, empirical state of affairs independent of interpretation, but rather, a fact is true based only on a whole set of implicit beliefs and assumptions about the nature of reality.”
For some reason this triggers an emotional response in me and I’ve been sitting with it for a while. It’s a kind of anger or frustration that Whitehead is denying the existence of physical reality as most humans experience it. I know there is so much more to what Whitehead and others are saying, and yet it still comes over to me in this way.
Why?
I seem to be stuck on “not true based on some immediate, empirical state of affairs”
Bruce, I know that at some point, deep in the vast expanses of the symposium comments, you were a bit exasperated when we were back to the “hummer making road kill out of enactivists and scientific materialists alike” example. And I am also aware that, as you pointed out to Julian with his trip to the dentist, none of those physical aspects of his experience have ever been denied during the symposium discussions.
I also understand that it is actually impossible for human beings ever to make any conclusions about the natural world independent of interpretation. So what we call a fact is by default also a perspective because it’s us who has applied the word “fact” and its attached concepts.
And yet,…. here I am looking at Matt's Whitehead quote, and I am left wondering if you or Matt (or Whitehead?) would in any way conclude that, this statement - there is a big ball of fire 92 million miles away from the earth – is in some way not true, or only “true” based on human beliefs and assumptions. Now there are the obvious human assumptions in this statement, for example that a mile is something “real” independent of human measurement, and perhaps that “fire” or “ball” might be a singularly human concept. In which case we can simplify the language – there is an object much bigger than the earth and which gives off what humans call heat and light - this object, which humans call the sun, is it there or isn't it?
Based on past comments I am anticipating that you, Bruce, may well reply “yes of course the sun is there, it’s never been denied”. In which case my next question is “on what do you base such certainty”? And also if that is your reply then what is the fundamental difference between this and a physicalist approach, other than adding the observation that we interpret or enact our understanding of what we think the sun is - and is that the key difference??
What I want to say is “it’s there and we interpret it”. That's all. Is that what Varela et al are saying?
As ever, any thoughts welcome guys - I'm always willing to stand corrected.
James
p.s. In fact I'm waiting to be corrected on this one because with regard to what I currently understand Varela and enactivism and even to some extent Wilber to be saying, I still have a basic feeling of “Is that it? So what?”. I think I remember Hokai mentioning something along the lines of “one can expect someone to be able to espouse on issues of a higher stage but not enact that higher stage”. Do you regard enactivism as belonging to a higher stage which perhaps I am espousing about but am not yet able to enact, hence the circular nature of the discussions?
Hey James,
For whatever reason I didn't get an email notifying me of your post here (or maybe I did and I just didn't notice!), so I'm sorry for the delay in responding.
The lines you quoted are not directly from Whitehead, but rather are my interpretation of some of his ideas. Let me try to clarify what I am getting at, exactly.
There are facts about reality. Tons of them. But what is a fact? Leaving aside the possibile meanings of this term in an everyday context, let's explore what is meant by a specifically scientific fact, such as the one you mentioned, that the sun is a ball of gas 92 million miles away from the earth. Implicit in this statement of scientific fact are several assumptions, among them the assumption of the universal applicability of spatio-temporal relations. Now obviously, to conceptualize nature at all, we must conceive of it as extended in both time and space. But there are different ways of conceiving of space and time. For pre-Einsteinian physics, there was only Euclidian space and Newtonian time. This particular spatio-temporal scheme was believed to be the only possible scheme. Einstein showed that they were not, that in fact there are other geometrical ways of conceiving of space and time (ways that realize space and time as a single underlying continuum!). When you change the underlying geometry, you change the kinds of facts that can be derived from the relations between events in spacetime. This is what is meant by the statement: “a particular fact is not true based on some immediate, empirical state of affairs independent of interpretation, but rather, a fact is true based only on a whole set of implicit beliefs and assumptions about the nature of reality.”
There are not just a bunch of independent facts floating around out there waiting for us to find. To discover a fact, you must first throw some kind of conceptual grid overtop nature, which can then be used to derive certain abstract relations between events. Any two facts, therefore, even if contradictory, are not necessarily mutually exclusive. They could just be derived from different conceptual grids. It is a fact, from within Newton's conceptual grid, that time is universal, existing independent of observeration. It is also a fact, from within Einstein's grid, that time is NOT universal, but is dependent upon the conditions of observation. Both are true, even though contradictory, because facts gain their truth only in relation to the underlying conceptual scheme that allows them to be distinguishable to us, not in relation to the completely unconceptualizable notion of “reality independent of experience/perception.”
So what? Well, from Whitehead's point of view, all this is important because it prevents us from thinking that scientific facts are more foundational than our experience of being-in-the-world. In other words, it prevents a neuroscientist from saying that experiential awareness is really a set of relations between neurons in the brain. It is not that a relation cannot be said to exist between neural activity and experience; it is just that the abstract relations between neurons as measured by the neuroscientist occur within experience, and not independent of it. In other words, experience comes first, and then through it comes the notion of emergent gamma wave synchrony between neural clusters in the brain, or whatever. To see the latter abstract set of relations as primary, and our actual experience of them as secondary, would be to commit the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
“What I want to say is “it’s there and we interpret it”. That's all. Is that what Varela et al are saying?”
I'd rather put it this way: “it (a fact) is there because we interpret it.” There are no facts independent of interpretation, because for who would it be a fact? We call things facts because we assume they have consequences. But if a fact is true independent of any perspective, it has no consequences and so isn't a fact at all. Facts are always in relationship to some actual occasion of experience, which when verbalized is always already an interpretation.
Hope this clarifies, or at least sparks some more thoughts or questions! I believe Bruce had initially posted a response to you as well, but now it has disappeared. I suppose he is rewriting it…
be well,
Matt
LOL…yeah, bruce's entry has disappeared from my screen too…that's an interpretation of a fact…rotf…
james, glad you are back! hey matt…and bruce…i'm back too…
Hi, James,
I believe I understand your frustration at comments like Whitehead's, and I think I also get the “So what?” response that some of this talk inspires. I am not sure if I can say anything that will shift either of those responses, but I'm happy to answer your questions and see where that takes us. I think this is a topic worth pursuing, and that we can benefit on all sides from continuing to explore it.
In the case of Whitehead's quote, I am wondering if part of the frustration is from where one reads the emphasis in it.
“a particular fact is not true based on some immediate, empirical state of affairs independent of interpretation, but rather, a fact is true based only on a whole set of implicit beliefs and assumptions about the nature of reality.”
It seems that, when you read this, you may be placing the emphasis on “not…some…empirical state of affairs,” and taking it as a denial (of some sort) of an external reality. When I read it, however, I read it with the emphasis on “fact.” I think he is pointing out that “facts” do not exist independently, objectively - that a fact is a sort of judgment, and as a judgment, it depends for its meaning not on a simply given “emprical state of affairs,” but on the whole network of beliefs and assumptions about the nature of reality that inform our behaviors and observations. An “empirical state of affairs” is already a perspective. What he is attempting to do here is to define the nature of facts, in other words, rather than make definitive pronouncements about objective reality itself. If you study Whitehead's works, you will see that, while his model is pan-experientialist (he thinks experience is primitive), it is not solipsistic.
You wrote: I am left wondering if you or Matt (or Whitehead?) would in any way conclude that, this statement - there is a big ball of fire 92 million miles away from the earth - is in some way not true, or only “true” based on human beliefs and assumptions. Now there are the obvious human assumptions in this statement, for example that a mile is something “real” independent of human measurement, and perhaps that “fire” or “ball” might be a singularly human concept. In which case we can simplify the language - there is an object much bigger than the earth and which gives off what humans call heat and light - this object, which humans call the sun, is it there or isn't it?
Based on past comments I am anticipating that you, Bruce, may well reply “yes of course the sun is there, it's never been denied”. In which case my next question is “on what do you base such certainty”? And also if that is your reply then what is the fundamental difference between this and a physicalist approach, other than adding the observation that we interpret or enact our understanding of what we think the sun is - and is that the key difference??
What I want to say is “it's there and we interpret it”. That's all. Is that what Varela et al are saying?
In everyday, practical conversation, I'm happy of course to say simply that the sun exists, and I would say this because it appears consistently to my senses, has an effect on me (warms me, burns my skin), and is also collectively apprehended in the meaning spaces I inhabit or can observe (e.g., other people can talk with me about it, and I can observe other entities appearing to relate to it, such as a sunflower). But in a conversation such as this one, where we are dealing with deeper philosophical questions of ontology and epistemology, I would feel more comfortable saying that it neither exists nor doesn't exist – or that it both exists and doesn't exist. When I talk about “the sun,” I cannot point to the sun in itself, prior to interpretation. In talking about it, I invoke a vast network of relationships and dependencies, including most fundamentally (for me), a network of perspectives, an evolutionary history of enactments.
Thus, when you say, “It exists and we interpret it,” I would agree that this is a reasonable position, but would suggest that we go astray if we think we can “isolate” or point to that “it” prior to all interpretive acts, prior to all perspectives (or, as it exists in itself, objectively, independently of everything else). I believe I mentioned to Julian something called the “fallacy of division,” which ultimately says it is a fallacy to think we can distinguish the “real part” from the “constructed part” in our observations. There are different “levels” of interpretations or “constructions” that inform any given observation, and we can distinguish among these things – say, distinguishing the fairly universal sense-based aspects of our human experience of the sun, such as its color or warmth, from the cultural myths or stories we might also associate with it – but all of these things are perspectives, and everything we can meaningfully say about them involves interpretation.
Someone might object, Well, you might say that these things are perspectives, but no matter what you believe, if you leave a piece of milk chocolate out under the desert sun, it's going to melt. And that's perfectly true. But that “fact” is part of the same interpretive network. You haven't stepped outside of perspectives to prove the claim about perspectives wrong; you've just invoked more perspectives, more observations which cannot be meaningfully separated out from our overall meaning-making interactions with the whole, our own enactments.
There are a couple other points here to make – and I can anticipate a “so what?” arising just about now! – but I'll stop here for the moment and give you a chance to respond to what I've said so far, if you're interested.
Best wishes,
Bruce
Hey, y'all, sorry! Yes, I was going to add a part 2 to my post, but then just decided to delete the original and post them both together as one. Even then, I'm only halfway through….
Hey Bruce,
“I believe I mentioned to Julian something called the “fallacy of division,” which ultimately says it is a fallacy to think we can distinguish the “real part” from the “constructed part” in our observations.”
This brought to mind the distinction Locke made between primary and secondary qualities of our perceptions (many had made something like it before him; Democritus, for instance, wrote: “By convention there are sweet and bitter, hot and cold, by convention there is color; but in truth there are atoms and the void”). He would say that primary qualities are really in the object, and that secondary qualities are constructions added by perception based on certain powers of the object. So in other words, the apple's shape exists of itself, but the redness is constructed, from the light reflecting off it, by the subjectivity of the observer. This is the root of what philosophers of mind now call the “hard problem” of consciousness, which in this specific case would force us to ask: “how does electromagnetic radiation become the color red?” Construed in this way, I don't even know where to begin to attempt an answer to such a question. Hence its being “hard.” In fact, it may be impossible to find a solution, which forces us back to Locke's original distinction to see how this incoherence crept into philosophy.
If we take the example of the apple again, ask yourself if it is really possible to see its shape independent of its redness. You might draw an imaginary line around its edges and conceive of it thus as a shape existing independent of the redness. However, this is not what you immediately perceive, is it? It is actually an act of conceptual abstraction on your part, something which takes place well after the immediate sensory experience. In your immediate experience, there is no such line; there is only a red patch in the shape of what we call an apple. So what Locke calls primary qualities are actually abstractions added to the sensory experience after the fact. As we immediately experience the apple, it is impossible to distinguish between its redness and its shape. Locke first committed the fallacy of division by separating off shape from color, and then committed the fallacy of misplaced concreteness by taking his abstraction as more real than his immediate experience.
Make sense?
matt, it does make sense, but my question is this…if the color is what defines the shape, how can we be 100% sure that the shape is accurate, irregardless of the color?
btw…you just left all the blind folks in the dark…lol
Star,
In this case, accuracy is no longer defined as that which is true independent of our experience. Accuracy is what is true in light of experience. When the lights are turned off, the only way to know the size of the apple is by feeling it. Such are the limits of experiencing a world as a body. “Certainty,” if defined as “true 100% of the time, no matter who is observing, where or when the observation takes place,” is no longer anything but an abstraction, possible in some imaginary world, but not in ours.
Hi, Matt,
Yes, this is a good example. Thanks for this – James has been asking for examples, and this helps.
I believe the Cartesian / Lockean distinction between primary qualities (measurable qualities of objects, such as weight, shape, etc) and secondary qualities (more “subjective” qualities like taste and color) was first challenged successfully by Berkeley, who argued that ultimately, even primary qualities are experiences or ideas, so no hard and fast distinctions between primary and secondary qualities can be sustained.
Enactivism sustains this critique, but not by taking the Idealist path of Berkeley.
well, so we are back to neither of the neither of neither…iow, it neither exists, nor does it not not exist…nor both, nor neither…remaining in that open question…LOL…accepting and rejecting nothing…rotf…
hehe, yes I was going to mention Berkeley's critique. But I didn't because it is already too easy to misunderstand the middle way of enactivism with the extreme view of idealism. Berkeley is right to point out that even the size and shape of an apple come to us only through experience. But I think he goes too far when he suggests that the apple does not exist independent of our observation of it. This is where Whitehead comes in handy, as he suggests that the apple, even when not perceived by an animal, like you or I, with a sufficiently complex nervous system capable of recognizing the object called “apple,” still has some rudimentary experience of itself as an occasion existing in relation to other occasions (ie, like the tree it hangs from, or the curvature of gravity that weighs it down, etc).
lol, it's not so bad, Star! The apple is the thing that is red, that tastes sweet and keeps the doctor away. What more do you need to know?
LOL…julian would say we are playing dodge ball again…rotf…but, b/c of my experiencing, i just don't see any other 'logical' way, at this time…and no, it is not bad at all, when one's awareness can remain in that space…but then, i have gone all the way now, and am questioning if even that awareness, or middle groundlessness, exists…but hey, i am busy living in the here and now, so it's all cool…
wow.. thanks for all the replies everyone! for some reason i kept missing the most recent comments…and now after reading about primary and secondary qualities etc. my brain is hurting…i have to go and lie down… i'll be back ;-)
that's growing pains of the brain!
James, are you still around?
Bruce, thanks for the wake up call.
Um, what were we talkin about? I've been reading and been involved in so many related discussions that I'm kind of lost in a swirl of new ideas.
Actually right now I'm on a kind of Gaia diet at the moment. I take so much time out of my day when I really get struck into blog comment / discussions that my everyday molecular reality suffers, it doesn't feel healthy.
So I'm pondering about just going back to my lurking self, or doing quickfire responses. This is a quickfire response. My apologies if it wanders off topic…
Bruce: I'm aware that there are several questions that I haven't responded to you on. One of them was about you and Julian's approach to Truth cf Helpfulness which you contested. For me the discussion has moved on since then, and I'm sorry but I haven't spent any further time reviewing previous discussions in order to come to any clear statement… in others word I've let it drift. Sorry! Me very bad person!
The other was about span vs depth in the symposium discussions. When I made that comment I was only pondering off the top of my head as I wrote at the time, so I can't really find the energy to go deeply into this as I may have been off the mark.
I am currently experiencing mild disenchantment with Gaia and blogging. On the one hand, I am grateful for Brian (Mr Zaadz) and Siona and all the Gaia team that allow us to have these sometimes amazing conversations with brilliant minds on the other side of the world, and for free!!! Wow! And then I get really excited at the possibilities!!And through things like the symposium, I have really had my cognitive line of development stretched! I’ve had my perspectives altered / expanded!
But alongside this, I repeatedly feel this mild exasperation at the circular nature of some discussions, or I put my soul into a long comment only to find my main point being missed … and so I’m heaving long heavy sighs at the moment…{sighs}
I feel nourished in some ways, I do feel the positive side of the discussions and the exchange of information, despite the limits of the online format. But what it feels like for me so far at any rate is that I don't get back as much as I put in. So maybe the key for me is to ration my time here and type off the cuff, like I’m doing now….(?)
On some deeper points, for me, with regard to Integral, enactivism, postmodernism, speaking very openly, here are my main reasons for my current heavy sighing
- i see no poltical activism in integral
- i see lots of enclosed bubbles - integralites speaking to integralites in restrictive exclusive jargon, concretising the ideas of mostly KW so much so that they start making the territory fit into the map, not vice versa
- i see an adherence to postmodern ideas about the coenacting of the world that either i don't get, or can't accept (which is work for me to do…) and/or postmodern theorists are really bad at expressing it OR that I see a gaping hole in the so called “postmodern paradigm” because it really does not address the physical everyday experience of the majority in an effective way… OR maybe I get it so much and have done for some time but when people talk about “bringing forth the world” it’s such an alien phrase to my ears that I don’t recognise it for what it actually means…
- until I get clear on this, I don’t see much more productive discussion being possible for me because as Ken says in BHof E, “there simply is no way to carry these types of discussions forward unless we talk about the momentous differences between the modern and postmodern approaches to knowledge.” Well I’ve talked about them and read about them a lot and I’m still left scratching my head either with a kind of “wtf are they talking about” or “is that all this is about? Is that it?”
I’m actually occasionally a bit bored by the discussions. I’ve started to look at other integral websites willing to offer more robust critiques of Wilber than many of the integral spaces on Gaia. I’ve already come across one interesting idea -Why does Wilber not include YOU in his 4 quadrants? Can YOU be boiled down to WE? I don’t think it can. I’m getting the first sensing that one of the issues for me with integralism is it doesn’t look at the YOU, the otherness of the other… it jumps too quickly into the inclusiveness of the “we” and is uncomfortable looking at what differentiates….
Right that’s it. Time’s up for today’s newly rationed Gaia-time regime for me!
I really value our communication here Bruce. I’ve learned a hell of a lot from you. Thank You!
Anyway, I probably won’t be writing for a while, but I will be lurking!
All The Best
James
Hi, James,
Thanks for taking the time to write. I understand what you're saying and have felt a similar frustration at times. Sometimes the conversations do become exasperatingly circular, and sometimes I also pour a lot into a post and don't feel “met” by others' responses, so I hear you on both counts.
If there is anything you've written, in your blog post or here, that you feel has been skipped over or given short shrift, and you would like for any of us in this symposium to come back to it, please let me know and I'll be happy to go into it and attempt to give it a serious response.
I don't remember the Truth of Helpfulness discussion at all, so I guess I've drifted far afield too!
With regard to the topic of postmodernism, I am not sure what is actually going on in terms of your response to it – but I appreciate that you've made the effort to engage with us on this topic. Postmodernism, to the extent that it is largely an “intersubjectivist” paradigm, isn't complete, in my view; it needs to be rounded out by other perspectives, including subjective and objective. When I first came across Wilber's “myth of the given” arguments in Integral Spirituality (his way of presenting the idea), I was resistant to them; his argument seemed absurd in some ways, unrealistically idealist. I condemned it as incoherent. Then something clicked and I saw that I was misreading him, and now, I do see value in it. The “intersubjectivist” perspective isn't sufficient, in itself, but when you grasp it, it does impact presuppositions we've held about the other perspectives (and the phenomena they disclose) as well.
Exactly how this happens, and what this means, is where we've had the most substantial disagreements here in this symposium, in my opinion. While Varela uses enactivism effectively in cognitive science and his field of biology, I see its greatest value in its potential to transform us psychologically. In particular, I see two areas where it applies: to the degree that it is a modern reframing of emptiness, it can be used to reorient us psychologically, helping us to cut through and relinquish self-grasping; and, as an expression of intersubjectivism, it can help us relinquish naive, pre-modern conceptions of subjectively disclosed spiritual phenomena, and to become more cognizant of the impact of development, typology, etc, on our cogniton (and our experience of the world). While it shouldn't be understood as implying that, once we grasp it, our foot will suddenly be able to go through the “really” insubstantial ground, it does have the power to impact how we view the world as a whole. And because self and world are interdependent, a real challenge to conventional notions of self requires a similar challenge to “world” and other fundamental notions like “time,” “space,” etc. Gebser and others point out, in fact, that transition to an integral worldspace (or really, any new developmentally unfolding worldspace) involves shifts in time-sense as well self-sense, cognition, subject-object orientation, etc.
Regarding the deeper points you raised, and the reasons for your heavy sighing, I agree with many of your criticisms. Have you read my Integral Theory and Inclusivism blog? In it, I address several of these criticisms, particularly the self-insulation of Integral circles (and language communities), the shadow fear of or resistance to “other” that a “transcend and include” orientation can foster (or be driven by), etc. I also talk about this some in my Reflecting on the Shadow of Your Practice blog, if you haven't seen it yet. About Integral and politics – I think you're right. There is some discussion of politics here and there, but it's a topic that is often lost in the psychological shuffle. I admit that, while I have interest in real world issues, and my own interest in Integral and other paths is directly related to the fragmentation and suffering that mar our world, I am not very plugged in to the political scene and don't feel very articulate or informed in that area (a growing edge, for me).
Anyway, I understand your desire to ration your Gaia time, but hope you will not stay away too long. I really value your voice and always welcome your contributions to the conversations here.
Best wishes,
Bruce
dear james…i am understanding where you are coming from…i too got very frustrated when the conversations became more about quoting things and knowledge of theory, then about one's actual understanding of the knowledge of any particular theory…
if one is able to understand what they have quoted or what they have read, then the next step is to be able to express it with their own voice…that is where truth is exchanged and understood…
it is not enough to understand intellectually…the knowledge must be understood experientially…until that time…it is just words being passed around, and not much real understanding happening…except on some imaginary high intellectual level…where you eventually 'fall' off…and have to re-connect to your own true nature before that confusion and frustration subsides…and you can again see with clarity…
this is why the so-called great masters, eventually got rid of all their books…LOL…now i am not advocating that at all…but there is a strong message within that…
anyone can read a book…but until that information is digested and becomes a living experience…it is just a f***ing book! LOL…
what i find too, is that many, like Bruce…(you know i love you), have to be pushed into giving his understanding a voice…but when he does…IT IS AWESOME!!!!!!!
i think what is so difficult for many, is expressing that voice…b/c…this is that creative potential thing going on…these are things that have not been expressed in living, experiential terms before…we are covering new ground…but like i said, when these things are accomplished…it is the 'heart' that speaks…and that is why it resonates…until then, we are just babbling really and quoting different scriptures preaching from the pulpit, regurgitating teachings instead of understanding…
much love to you james…always, star…
p.s. always remember too…great confusion comes before clarity…this goes for the ones trying to understand what is being presented, and those trying to present within understanding…*
p.s.s. one more thing…LOL…it is real easy for us to go to our own private mountain top…to withdraw…isolate…etc…and sometimes we DO need that…to replenish…our energies…our clarity…but we cannot stay there indefinately…life has it's own terms…the universe unfolds…and we either participate willingly…or situations force us into it…or we go looking for a pistol…LOL
Bruce
Thanks for this - I will definitely check out your Integral Thoery and Inclusivism blog.
Star - yes no doubt I'll be revisiting againin a more involved way to Gaia at some time, because as far as I can tell there really is nowhere like it :-)
All the Best
James