Cosmos Café [11/13] Autumnal Mapping of Meta-phorical Thinking: Guided by the Gut Through Invisible Territories Into Communal Concretion

Commons Cosmos Café
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From Jorge Ferrer’s The Four Seasons of Integral Education: A Participatory Proposal:

Autumn: The body, planting, action. In many lands across the globe, Autumn is
the time to prepare the soil for the new harvesting cycle. The soil is scrabbled,
cleansed of old roots and stones, and, if necessary, fertilized. Then the new seeds
are planted in the soil.

In the human creative cycle, Autumn is the time for preparing the physical
body to be a solid and porous receptacle for the germination of new vital seeds.
It is important to release the body from accumulated tensions to make it more
open and permeable. It is also essential to relate to the body as a living organic reality
that holds meaningful contents that cannot be intentionally accessed
through the mind or consciousness…

…The task of the mind at this stage is to support appropriate action by engaging
behaviors such as those that create optimum conditions for listening to the body,
actualize physical structures, and search out new resources. This is also a time for
the mind to let go of old ways of thinking so that it can support and recognize the
novel fruits of the new creative cycle. During Autumn, the mind can stagnate the
creative process if it spends too much time wondering about the ultimate outcome
of the inquiry or tries to predetermine its development or arrive at its own
answers before the stages of the creative process have had the chance to unfold.
Autumn is the season to trust the body, to support the structural dimension of reality,
and to rely on the power of action.

@johnnydavis54: I could offer what I am learning from my own research conducted with many of you here. This is ongoing and not ready for prime time. and that we might focus our shared attention this Tuesday on a review, drawing upon themes and motifs that are already emerged in our conversations, we might find some more current flowing through our cyberspace commune. We don’t need outside experts. We can do an in-house review…

@madrush: I think we’ve cleary seen the limitations of the mental integral approach. The maps are useful because they provide us with some anchoring in the infinite—it is possible to organize experience through a mental ordering of ideas, insights, and methods. This provides some sense of health, safety, and sanity for a while. But the incursions of the monstrous / divine / infinite continue—and we need deeper ways to embody the immense and subtle energies that move through us. For me, it is more of an artistic process than it is one of grasping an ever-more complex cognitive map.

However, maps are useful and can also be pretty and fun; and they help us imagine the places we might go. And if we DID have map of a future integral world, would it tell us how to get there? How would we determine or divine the directions? A flock of migrating birds might attune to the earth’s magentic fields as they navigate to a precise mating spot thousands of miles away. How will we find our own way through these vast world structures?

@Michael_Stumpf: We’re Explorers,Pioneers or Maybe Young-Ones who have traveled a certain distance from the Ever-Present-Origin & within all These Types there’s an Deep Inner Yearning to bring forth a Buried Spark-Ember of Honoring the Sacredness of Fire before we Move Forward & Learn to Use the Senses,Imagination & Felt Heat as a Warming & the Very Expression"Ever-Present-Origin",so as to Truly Participate-Co Dance,Dance,Play,Play &Just do more Wiggle-Giggling!My attempt at what is the Fire in The Belly!

Reading / Watching / Listening

Links to suggested reading, podcast, video clip, or other media

Seed Questions

  • How would you know Integration? What is the first sign that let’s you know you are integrating?

  • As a Creative Agents, how can you use metaphorical thinking to evolve a healthy relationship to your audience and reader?

Context, Backstory, and Related topics

Agenda items

  • Meta / reflections on Café practice itself
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Well, I’m all ears.

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Oh yes, I’ll be there trying my ever present and emerging self to behave and respect this new form of interpersonal relationship.

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I do hope you refuse to mute your laughter, Marc… I laugh all the time. It is a sign that I have come across a paradox in myself or the Other. Of course laughter can be cruel. I just doubt that we are wanting to make fun of anyone here.

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I imagine that in the Integral structure artistic process and complex cognitive maps are complimentary. And when Vision Logic at your best that’s like what? It’s like a magic carpet ride without the carpet. I will be glad to demonstrate tomorrow what the research project we are engaged in is becoming. Might be interesting. Please stay tuned.

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… I’m trying to be stoic, accepting, mindful, accommodating, nice, non confrontational,; or as my psych-girl advocates /says- less off-putting, that is - if I don’t want to die alone … And by the way, my name is Mark . Just saying … Se ya tomorrow. I will behave, maybe …

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Sorry Mark…I think I was in-between Mark and Marco.

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No problem … Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar …

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Mark ,true enough,and then there’s the age,flavor,aroma & the Good Friends U share the simple pleasure of a Good Cigar,which U have a Vibe about U!

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I agree with this. Sometimes I emphasize the artistic because it’s been easier to fall back on the given models rather than push into creativity. However, the models and theory (frameworks and cognition in general) are still very useful for creativity.

That’s a great creative question. Perhaps, for me, it is like an elephant riding that invisible magic carpet. Unless I saw it with my own eyes, I would wonder (and even doubt) how something so heavy and huge and decidedly non-aerodynamic could yet still fly.

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I can resonate with that, Marco. Perhaps we can do an exercise that will make that push into creativity a shared activity? I do think the lonely artist routine needs to be given up. Art is social. We need to develop our audience. Perhaps we can focus on this topic tomorrow?

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Marco, I am glad U used the Elephant on the Magic Carpet,it triggered a visceral emotional memory from my past of being told in a sarcastic way that I Danced like a Epileptic Elephant…after many years carrying around that image, I came across a old Disney Cartoon movie “Dumbo the Elephant that could Fly with his Ears”,ever since then I haven’t lost my Joy,Wiggle-Giggle for Moving to the Beat of A Different Drum & Listening to the Beautiful Noise in My Inner Artist…Thank U !!!

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And perhaps, Marco, as Creative Agents, we can create conditions in the Infinite Cafe for the next wave of Cultural Capacities to develop? I propose that I conduct a live interview with you around the theme of artistic performance. We can get valuable feedback from the group.

Good philosophy, as Ken Wilber said, should fry your brains. Artistic performance, according to Deleuze is more difficult than philosophy because it works with the affective ranges in ways that philosophy does not. Head, heart, and gut!

I would like to ground our conversations in actual evidence rather than spin around in perpetual inferences. Can this happen?

i would ask you to do me a favor and update us on Stages and States. I want to get that on the table. I imagine that we already have had certain states of Vision-Logic but we are calling these states by different kinds of language. I wonder if we can refine our skills today? Learn the logic of the Crow? With a little help from our friends?

Beyond the Nature/ Culture split there is a field. I will meet you there.

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Great! I will need your help today, Michael. Could we co-model today? Do a bit of practice before the final report? I need some back up in case I run out of fuel.

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John it would be a honor to do a little tap dancing with U,I can’t think of a better way to challenge my skills & have fun too.See U down stream in the cyber current😜

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I’ll be there, John! Sounds like a plan. States and stages would make a fine starting point.

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Wow! I really enjoyed the intensity of this dramatic Cafe. What needs to be emphasized, in my humble opinion, is gift of the drama. We need drama to evolve beyond the drama. Life is dramatic. This brief video explains the Drama Triangle, which could be of use for creatively handling the intensity.

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The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, “You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.”

The man replied, “Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.”

And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."
Wallace Stevens

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Wallace was inspired by Picasso. We should read the whole poem someday, have a Café on the Blue Guitar. We could each read sections, then riff on the poem or draw our own guitars (of any crayon color) or read more poetry.

I would be interested, as well, in discussing the modernism of Wallace, Picasso, and the great artists of the 20th century. Gebser saw them as integral. The post-modern put itself beyond them. But what if they are still beyond us?

I wonder if there are alternative modernities we could discuss (not meta), which may be closer to integral than Integral is to itself.

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A great idea, Marco. The Modernists were hugely interested in the 4th Dimension and the Occult. It would be fun to develop these connections. I love this period.

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