Growing an Integral Body
Audio
In the midst of civilizational collapse, Seth, Michael and John reflect upon Cultural Memory, High School, and the importance of the Soul. A self-modeling exercise to develop endogenous imagery is explored.
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We are swimming in externally generated imagery, lost in a whirlwind of manufactured images. My approach has been consistently to re-direct attention to the perceptual space and to ask questions about interoception…, a secret language,… unique metaphor,…gut feelings…and bring that into the public spaces, and find a coherence.
Our platform ,which is already overwhelmed with models, theories, and narratives that are generated by external images, digitized media, is struggling to make sense. Our flight from the akward intimacy of our own network, seeking another website, another YouTube video., is a big problem, feeding our addiction to the exogenous and more unactionable theories about everything . We are certainly influenced by all of these models and methods…but what, if anything, are we integrating? I want to find a balance between interiors and exteriors. This balance would be a felt sense of how these fragments fit. I don’t have that felt sense yet but we are doing the best we can during an unprecedented break up. We may have to embrace our failure.
For example, after the episode, I took away an image of Seth’s yellow shoes in the urinal, of Michael’s friend with a gun, giving him a warning, of my own epiphanies in the library…as Michael pointed out, most of what is happening in the Integral world is happening in the Mental, and the Body, especially the Imaginal Body ,is underdeveloped.
That there are so few spaces for cultivating these delicate, unheard, unfelt, unspoken, untouched, areas of our secret lives, which are never given attention, is a great tragedy. That there are lots of ideas out there, externally produced, mediated by clever manipulations of multi-media, riding on speed…all of that leaves out the Soul, that vast endogenous, proprioceptive intelligence…left in the dark.
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Thank you for another offering. I am a sponge and you (three) are like waters flowing in a gentle stream.
Like a dog’s tongue, this sponge dips into the waters and takes pleasure in the cool, autumn scented hydration.
All of this is happening in slow motion.
I am now this dog in full non-local thought, a wild wanderer at the mouth of a flowing stream where three prongs unite. Paws and matted fur moist with these waters; ears attuned to trickles that may be flowing out from some cosmic creek. The tongue gently lapping up this pleasurable coolness.
I am alone in the wilderness. No master to listen for in the distance; no home nearby. This is my home, here now, these are my waters.
Yes. Yes! I have been seeking a way to participate in the conversation, to rejoin with a rejoinder on Infinite Conversations. Here. Over there. Online. YouTube comments to seemingly worthy-of-my-time YouTube videos. Plan A. Plan B. Plan C. Integral and me. The planetary. I don’t like to admit it, but even all of these kindred souls, these oddkin, can seem like they have hit a concrete wall. We all are searching. Reaching out for that metaphor. For that sense of the state of things. As you mentioned John (when contemplating the capturing of our current turbulent times in writing), the present crisis needs to be examined from outside, from outside of the outside. It can be so challenging to create that meaning when it is just being birthed.
“one must be attuned to the different lines that we are composed of, maintain an appropriate respect for each of them (without collapsing one onto the other), and pursue any engagement and experimentation between them with a healthy dose of ‘prudence’ and ‘precaution’. For it is only through such a practice that creativity and transformation can not only be embarked upon, but concretely realised in a strata of organisation that facilitates life.”
~ from Craig Lundy in his essay Who are our nomads today?
This speaks my mind about our present state (or the ever-present state) of fluctuations that pour into concretion and back into flux. With all of these “different lines” I do take a (hopefully) healthy dose of prudence and precaution as I engage with these experiments. I believe what we do here in our intimate circles is as you say a safe to fail project. We have developed a healthy truth that opens up the earth fro further transformation.
Please allow me a bit more time to process the recording. I have multiple strands of multi-sensory perception and thought coming through and have some challenge to place them into coherence.
What I liked about the recording:
Again, the flowing of energy between the three of you has reached beyond previous encounters. I liked Seth’s initial request to bring forth that which is carried forward from listening to others’ metaphors. He termed it making fruitful creative connections. I will be taking what I have learned from this session into future responses. THanks again you three!
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“The Way It Is” by William Stafford
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
A Spiritual Journey
And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home.
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