Our country is divided … an integral spiritual energy response might be better directed toward healing our wounds and divides … or should we keep the fight going?
Maybe I’m seen as delusional or as spiritually bypassing world problems, so be it. I would like see this forum upgraded to be a spiritually positive and an open-minded, welcoming community to all points of view, but I accept it as you direct it. Neither side of the politics have any satisfying answers to me.
It’s good to know someone resonates with the spiritual aspects of integral. It’s the spiritual aspects of Ken Wilber’s integral that attracted and led me here.
Thank you @Sidra ~ Peace 
I don’t see that you practice this yourself. I’ve seen many occasions. When you say “all points of view”, what I have seen is that you mean all points of view that you support. Do you really welcome all points of view?
My point of view and also spiritual belief is that humans are not capable of being only spiritually positive and open minded. It’s impossible and show me someone who thinks they are and I’ll show you someone in denial with very deep shadows they hide most of all from themselves.
Now let’s talk about healing.
Healing cannot happen when there is still infection hidden under the surface. The infection just grows and grows under the surface. If the pus isn’t drained it can harden and form a boil or abscess.
Part of the starting process of Healing for the USA in the past 40 years has been to uncover unpleasant aspects of our culture and history and “drain” them. It was necesary to shine a light on racism, sexism and homophoibia as it has existed in our culture. I’m old enough to remember occasions of violence against people of color, women and gays and the majority of people I knew said they “had it coming” or they were “looking for trouble” because they were rocking the status quo. As an example - it was so pervasive and accepted that as a child I never thought twice about the name of a game we had called “smear the queer”
Fast forward to the 2000’s and some people feel that this movement of social justice has gone too far. They were not allowed to speak about their concerns, so they festered under the surface until the shocking victory of Trump. This is the same infection of racism, sexism and homophobia that existed when I was a child, but it was just sealed up and not healed. Oh, add in amoral and immoral behavior in business and politics as well.
The difficult balance is to allow voices to be aired but also challenge it. So, for example if someone starts a discussion calling Jordan Peterson Integral - they can have an opininon but if they voice that opinion I have just as much a right to disagree. Just like if I posted somethins saying Obama was an Integral President I would expect some people to voice diagreement.
I don’t think it’s healthy at all to say people cannot voice their views - on one side or the other or even from 4th or 5th points of view. I also think it would be very unhealthy to supress disagreement and say you can only discuss things when you agree and you cannot discuss hot-button topics. In fact, the hot button topics are the ones that need to be dicussed more. The stronger an emotion is attached to a discussion, the more likely there is to be shadows in that person they are refusing to look at. I see this on both the left and the right. My own personal belief is that I am not helping the person at all by avoiding discussions that provoke their shadows.
Here is an interesting article about transcending vs bypassing:
https://www.evolvingmagazine.com/transcendence-means-down-not-up
welcoming community to all points of view
Including mine?
I do not see this an an either/or. Again, to paraphrase Ken, we do not deal with malignant red/amber movements (i.e. an attempted overthrow of our Constitution) by surrounding them with loving-kindness meditations. I personally believe the integral vision represents one of both compassion and discernment, perhaps best represented by the bodhisattva Manjushri (who Ken has often been compared to). There are definitely fights that I don’t want to “keep going”, but they can only be ended via a swift cut of Manjushri’s flaming blade.
If you want the fight to keep going, the best thing you can do is ignore it. Which is tempting to the ego, because it allows it to feel superior, more compassionate, more wise, without ever needing to get its hands dirty, and without needing to actually do anything to end the fight.
Here’s a way to think about it. Integral thinking consists of three primary principles:
The first is “non-exclusion”. This I think is what you are likely looking for in this forum, which you express as “I would like see this forum upgraded to be a spiritually positive and an open-minded, welcoming community to all points of view” — everyone is invited, everyone can speak their truth, let’s get it all on the table. Which is an essential part of the integral synthesis. This is also the preferred principle of healthy green. “Everyone is right.” (Though even this has its boundaries — non-exclusion requires people to speak truth to their own zones of mastery, and not to impose those truths onto other zones it’s not capable of addressing.)
The next is “enfoldment”. This is where things get a bit more tricky. This is where we use both our heart and our intellect to pull everyone’s respective truth together into a coherent understanding of our shared reality. This is the synthesis stage. And it always comes with tension, friction, and even conflict, because some arguments are going to be more true, and others are going to be more partial. No one wants to be partially right, no one wants their view to be subsumed into someone else’s larger, possibly better view.
That color-coded chart I posted above was one attempt to frame this enfoldment process — we take a look at the arguments, and try to figure out both right/wrong actions, and right/wrong reasons behind those actions. Because that first step of “non-exclusion” breaks down completely when we are trying to included wrong actions for wrong reasons. This is where green gets stuck — in the “paradox of tolerance”. If you’ve read Boomeritis, you know that Ken predicted that as soon as green became the status quo of our discourse (as it has in the social media era), red and amber quickly win the game, because it plays that paradox of tolerance against green. And I think it’s important that we work together to help this community avoid that same trap.
And this principle of enfoldment should be done skillfully, of course, and respectfully. It should be done in service of reducing suffering for all of us. It requires a grounded spiritual warriorship.
The important thing here is, without enfoldment, non-exclusion becomes pathological. It becomes aperspectival madness — we invite all the perspectives, but without a way to integrate them, they all slide frictionless across each other. It becomes Twitter.
And the last principle is “enactment”. In other words, if you want to know this, do that. A reminder to constantly verify and falsify our views, as well as each other’s.
This is how integral knowledge, wisdom, and skillful compassion are generated, I believe. All of which are components of a more integral spirituality. At least from my perspective.
I see this string as quite active in a red/amber dynamic, even after the swift flaming blade execution of @fermentedagave
To ignore is ignorance; is there really integral understanding in ignorance?
“non-exclusion” … Unless you have swiftly cut them off the platform as opposing input.
“enfoldment” … it’s not shared or integral if we remove those who “our hearts” and “our intellects” disagree with.
According to whom? Only those who enfold in concert to rally in support for their side, joining in the execution of the misfit ideas or people that don’t meet with “our hearts” and “our intellectual” biased truths?
Exactly!
I most certainly agree
It sure does!
Exactly! … especially if it’s not genuinely integral … meaning accommodating all the components and parts into a synergistic comprehension. This requires a spirituality beyond intellectual color graphs and reality mappings.
Arguing in support of one-side and/or in opposing other points of view(s), provides no clarity or fresh insights. These higher spiritual understandings remain unattainable to those who believe they “already know” …
By strong manning an opposing view and recognizing the bias in our own views, this is the fastest way to becoming integral. This is how integral knowledge, wisdom, and skillful compassion are generated and understood as components of a more integral spirituality.
I am grateful for your honest sharing and hearing me, or in refusing to do so. It’s all understandable to those reading here with a spiritually integrated mindshare.
This is certainly more insightful than the petty color games of political banter and/or propaganda.
Thank you for allowing my comments to be read. ~ Peace
There seems to be some additional emotional charge here that you are not quite owning, but is leaking through. Do you actually think Agave was booted because he disagreed with me? I’ve explained this many times over. Interacting with Agave fueled a ton of reflection and insight for me, which directly informed my content creation. But it was also true that he was a non-member who was dominating this community page day after day, and therefore setting the overall tone of the community experience for our members. Considering how many open integral discussion platforms there are out there, what’s wrong with having a private community for members who are actually supporting Integral Life? As a result, his account was paused, along with something like 300 other accounts, when we ran our script to only allow folks who are either currently supporting integral life, or have done so in recent years.
If this is your main issue with me, please say so outright, rather than letting it come through the cracks
I see this string as quite active in a red/amber dynamic
Interesting, I don’t see it. Mostly because I do not see friction as a product of red/amber.
To ignore is ignorance; is there really integral understanding in ignorance?
No, that’s why I am choosing not to ignore it. That’s the point I was trying to make
I most certainly agree
I’m glad you support my efforts. We shall agree then that we will not allow the paradox of tolerance to persuade us to tolerate the intolerable. Such as the attempted overthrow of a constitutional republic 
Just want you to know, I enjoy you very much @excecutive, and I appreciate the steady stream of feedback you provide for me. I don’t always agree with it, but I always welcome it.
Perhaps you could share more on this observation?
Since you have the ability to see “emotional charge” perhaps you would be so kind as to explain the irrational thinking (critique bias) of the people who ran the Russian Collusion Conspiracy or the Ukraine impeachment? Not the politics of it but rather the spiritual dynamics of the players involved and what effect that has had on the millions of people who elected the President in 2016.
Just for clarity - what is the “Ukraine Impeachment?” I am unfamiliar with this. If we are talking about the two Trump impeachments, I only know of two:
If you are somehow trying to infer that Hunter Biden or Ukraine was somehow responsible for Trump’s and the insurrectionist’s misbehavior on Jan 6th 2021, could you lay out that theory for us?
I suspect some of your questions regarding spiritual dynamics have to do with blaming others for one’s own lack of moral standing - on several scales including internal / external and individual / collective.
I am not interested in the politics I am interested in the spiritual dynamics at play among the players. I know that you too see both sides @raybennett it pleasantly bleeds through in your comments on occasion.
You’re much more guarded on your openness when it contradicts the lefts unified narrative. Here is a middle of the road discussion on the dynamics of politics. Start at 10:20 minutes watch for 4 to 6 minutes
Well it seems you keep bringing up a grievance about a previous forum member, without discussing it directly — even accusing me of removing this person solely because they disagreed with me.
Since you have the ability to see “emotional charge”
I mean, we all have this capacity, don’t we? Though it’s not really something we “see” but something we “feel”.
the people who ran the Russian Collusion Conspiracy
Who were those people? Do you mean the GOP-led Senate committee who released a report indicating that Russia was indeed interfering with our election, specifying “that Russia launched an aggressive effort to interfere in the election on Trump’s behalf. It says the Trump campaign chairman had regular contact with a Russian intelligence officer and says other Trump associates were eager to exploit the Kremlin’s aid, particularly by maximizing the impact of the disclosure of Democratic emails hacked by Russian intelligence officers.”
Or did you mean Paul Manafort himself, who publicly admitted to giving private polling data to Russia? He literally ran a Russian Collusion Conspiracy
Just want to be clear whose irrationality you want me to comment on!
As for the spiritual dynamics — I think our sense of shared “nation spirit” has been totally plundered and splintered by the actions of a pathologically narcissistic personality who never should have been elected in the first place, and wouldn’t have been if we were not already headlong into the aperspectival social media age. I think at this point, the only way to save the patient is to cut out the cancer, which is the most compassionate thing we can do to eliminate suffering for the greatest number of people.
And just to be totally clear with the “spiritual sickness” that I see plaguing this country, and across the world….
I believe that Trump (and more specifically “Trumpism”) is not the cause of our sickness, but rather the most obvious symptom, and the most significant contagion vector. There are always going to be any number of con men and carnival barkers in our society. The difference, of course, it that they never before had an actual chance of being selected by the population as President of the United States.
To me, the sickness is much more subtle, and far more ubiquitous. It comes from the fact that the majority of our political and cultural discourse has shifted to these completely decentralized and flattened postmodern platforms, all of which cause the population to self-organize in very different ways, without a “bottom floor” of a basic shared epistemology. It’s a platform that pushes span over depth, creating a lowest-common-denominator set of social rewards, and reinforcing the worst aspects of our frontal personalities. It causes the population to double down on identity politics and identity cults, which is where we get things like Qanon, the worst of Woke, and a resurgence of flat earthers.
As I said earlier, when the average discourse becomes green, red and amber win the game. Both on the political right, and on the political left.
This is why I consider Trump to be our first postmodern president, despite the fact that none of his lines of development come anywhere close to that stage.
I don’t see any easy way out of this, I don’t see any prayers or meditations that can help resolve this issue for us. The only way out is through — which means we have to wait for the next major technoeconomic era to emerge and lift us out of the social media age. I just don’t think our primate brains know how to handle so many different disembodied social contacts, and it causes us to reassert a more tribal identity as a way to cope with all the noise.
Fortunately, I think that new age is beginning to dawn, which is why I am very curious about how the AI revolution will force yet another social self-organization on a global scale. Perhaps this will be the era where we can stitch together a more integral epistemology that the majority of people can buy into.
Even though we agree more than we disagree the politics do expose an “emotional charge” … my personal irritation is with you specifically as “the man behind the curtain” … You’re always debating or supporting only one side, you never integrate the rational thinking of the millions of American’s who voted for the 2016 victory.
Read your own words that perfectly demonstrate to what I am referring.
Being integral, or at least pretending to do so, would accommodate both sides. Better yet, as I suggest to your dismay, strongman the opposition you’ll attract more visitors and generate more and better conversations. That may better feed your bottom line as a business too!
See above what Glenn Greenwald is doing with integral political analysis. Watch his numbers grow as he reaches people in their spiritual centers of reason and emotion, connecting all sides of the issues.
Integral is when everyone is accommodated. No one has to agree to anything because most everyone’s position(s) are understood and acknowledged within the analysis. He gains genuine credibility from all sides as a result.
My ambition is wanting that for our Integral Life Community here. I am hoping you can better hear me now?
~ Peace
I already opined on this stuff on those topic articles … Sadly, that share went into the black hole of irrelevance to the dwindling integral minds reading this stuff.
But I do steel-man these things, @excecutive. I do it regularly. I’ve talked about how we need to extend compassion to the people who showed up to the Capitol and broke through the windows. I also think they need to be held fully accountable, and that we need to send a very clear message that any attempted overthrow of our Republic will be met with severe punishment, particularly for the people who implemented the plan in the first place. But that doesn’t mean we can’t extend real compassion.
I’ve talked about my own deeply held conservative beliefs, which can run anywhere from amber to turquoise. I’ve talked about how badly we actually need a worldcentric conservatism in today’s world, and how regressive movements are preventing that from happening. I’ve talked about extending compassion to all the people who have been bamboozled by misinformation, and that we need to invite them back into reasonable discourse.
Integral is when everyone is accommodated.
I think we already covered this, but I disagree. “Non-exclusion” doesn’t mean “all-inclusion”. Again – right for the right reasons, wrong for the right reasons, right for the wrong reasons. Those boxes can be carefully transcended and included in some way. But “wrong for the wrong reasons” — such as continuing to spread lies about a stolen election despite all claims being laughed out of court — is not something we should try to transclude. Again, we don’t include the cancer. We annihilate it with great urgency.
But yes, I will continue to do my best to steelman these arguments. I even spent a bunch of time steelmanning the stolen election lies. But didn’t get very far, because every single claim is either easily refuted, has no evidence, or is totally unfalsifiable.
My question for you is, are you doing the same? You use phrases like “Russian Collusion Conspiracy”, but I am not sure you were aware that the GOP-led Senate commission confirmed that yes, there was fire underneath all that smoke.
And my other question is, despite saying you are not interested in politics, why is this the only topic you choose to engage me on? There are so many other things to talk about in this community. I have political positions, and I spend a lot of time and effort communicating them as clearly as I know how. You need to make a space for that, just like you are asking me to make a space for you.
Have you watched my Holons video? Would love to know what you think!
Have any opinions about the AI revolution? Would love to know what you think!
What do you think about the recent discussion about psychedelic therapy? Provocative issue! Would love to know what you think!
You’re deaf to my pleadings … perhaps someday you’ll read again from a spiritually integral plateau.
It’s always fun when I spend time writing multiple paragraphs and trying to carefully explain myself and engage in good faith discussion, and it’s quickly discarded by telling me I haven’t reached your spiritual plateau. C’est la vie!
You disagree with my political views. That is okay. I’m going to keep on expressing them, as carefully as I can. Can you make space for my views?
I have read all your stuff … I have attempted to create mutual understanding. Rewriting your stuff or copy and pasting it over and over again doesn’t change it’s meaning or my reply. I came here for the spiritual components I have learned from Ken, and I thought from you too.
Your misquoting me in an attempt to insult me reflects perfectly on where you’re coming from, not where I am. You have direct access to Ken and others let them instruct you on how to better communicate from an integral plateau or perspective.
I love you @corey-devos and this community! I am disappointed that you don’t recognize that. I certainly don’t want to continue this disconnect with you. I am sorry! ~ Peace
I’ve made a similar attempt! And that’s okay, maybe we can’t enfold together when it comes to this particular topic. We have plenty of other opportunities to find shared reality and agreement!
Your misquoting me in an attempt to insult me
Honest to god, I wasn’t trying to misquote you, I sincerely thought your comment was implying that you were standing at some higher spiritual station and “waiting” for me to join you. I certainly wasn’t trying to insult you, but rather letting you know how your language was landing for me. Apologies for any miscommunication on my part.
As for Ken… man, if you think I am overly critical of people’s political views, you should get that guy wound up and talking about everything he hates about the left
And I love you too! None of these interactions have made me think otherwise. I’ve said several times in this thread, I enjoy you very much, I appreciate your contributions and how you put yourself in service to peace. I think we are both trying to get up the same mountain, we just see somewhat different paths to get us there. Big Love!
Let me then talk about the spiritual dynamics of the podcast.
Within 2 minutes they established that they are not just against 49% on the right or 49% on the left - but they are against 98% on both the left and the right.
Their spirituality is rooted in being against the vast majority of humanity and trying to constantly convince themselves they are better. They present caricatures of everyone, establishing flaws in them then amplify those flaws so as to demonize them and therefore feel justified in attacking them.
In just the first 2 minutes he described the left as “marching lockstep”, having a “hive mind” and rejecting any attempt to argue within themselves.
Here is the spirituality of this - it’s very easy to hate a group that is described in the worst ways. It’s very easy to see only the worst of a group as representative of that whole group - then to have feelings of anger towards that group. Ahhh, but the cleverness of this way is that you can deny any wrongness in their own anger - their anger is justified and righteous because “the squad” is so hypocritical - and therefore each and every person on the left is also hypocritical as well - and so is the right so therefore in their distorted mind they are justified in being justifiably angry with 98% of humanity.
Do you doubt I have walked this path and am intimately familiar with it? All it’s ins and outs and variations. How to just be in a perpetual state of outrage because people are … people? Where does this spiritual path lead to, do you think?
With all this in mind - I would say the spirituality of the podcast is based in trying to form a cult of ideology against anyone and everyone - liberals and neocons alike. They are all hypocrites - but not us - no - we are smarter and more spiritual than everyone else (lol). And so the audience gets further isolated from the general population and more cult like and more resistant to anything outside their groupthink.
Here is a secret about spirituality - you know a person’s spirit by reading between the lines of what they fling at other people. When the podcast you posted flings out the accusation of hypocrisy, what I see is the podcast is hypocritical and to such a degree they cannot recognize it in themselves and have to fling it outward against everyone else. The more they can focus on what they believe to be another’s hypocrisy the more they can ignore their own. If they can gather others to support them in this, it pushes more into the shadows.
and here is my pre-emptive answer to the question I expect: Yes - every time I fling something out I do take a little peek inward and do one of several processes to address where inside me, which past experience or limiting self belief that it is coming from. The spiritual act is not to never fling. I don’t think it is spiritual to suppress, stifle or avoid “flinging” - but it is a spiritual act to observe oneself as if from the outside while flinging.