I have been wanting a place to share my thoughts growing out of Integral Thought for some time. This is as close as I have come. Thank you for your responses.
I have been particularly interested in cleaning up my unconscious - yes the things I have repressed but also the ideas I have accepted without really examining them. I grew up in a small midwestern town where a Methodist church was the center of community life. I’ve been wondering what all those Biblical Stories I heard have deposited in my unconscious. Did David killing the Giant mean that all leaders have to kill enemies before they are recognized as God-given leaders? Etc.,etc.
That’s the wild part about all those divine writings, parables, wives tails, cliches is that even 2-3000 years old and we’re still pondering them? My Rorschach response is “no matter how great the obstacle, do your best and you might prevail”, but do I “know” what was meant? LOL
Try this on for size to see if it resonates. Part of what we are doing with this highly rational approach is to decompose and perhaps reconstitute our language of experiences, ourselves, others, and the world we live in. By stepping out of language ruts so to speak, we create freedom from the cliches and sayings. As an example, do we really know what someone really is trying to say when they use terms like Love, Hate, Oppressed, Dominate, Integral, Inclusion, Left, Right, Transform, Conservative, Progressive, etc…? I would assume that we each have varied understandings of each, and perhaps even each have multiple understandings based on context and audience. The greater the differences in understanding, do we see the most “charge” in the discussions?
I personally watch for repeated cliches and speech patterns to ask myself if they really serve me. And likewise if someone repeats phrases, then it must be more “top of mind” for them than other topics.
And of course we can almost always look at what Marketers do what they do. Genius that Facebook used the term “Friend”. I suspect we all have “Friends” that we’ve never meet nor even spoken with. Are you a friend, just like the friend I have lunch with every week?
One thing that I had heard it’s not in the positions, but in the space (dialog) in-between where the gold lies. So if we can come from the context that we are each trying to say something valuable, then perhaps we can more deeply communicate.
Edit: @excecutive I just read your post and perhaps I’m rambling about something very similar to what you’re saying.
I am trying to keep reminding myself of the AQAL framework and this seems on-point with focusing on a specific quadrant - Interior Individual vs Exterior Collective. I find it difficult to keep from dynamically free-flowing across multiple quadrants in a single conversation. LOL
Thank you for replying to me I suggest that everything is inside of you in your spiritual space. The AQAL is the map of understanding, the blue-print to dissecting reality, we do this inside of ourselves in our own consciousness.
Image turning your entire perception of reality inside-out, so that there is nothing outside of you, EVERYTHING is INSIDE of YOU.
As we fix our OWN interpretations within ourselves the external conditions about these things change. Inside ourselves, in our spiritual space, we define our interactions with others. The story we tell ourselves needs to become integrated and whole. Within us, in that spiritual space we attain that place of wholeness, completeness, balanced rational and reasonable.
Living from this inner place of wholeness is living an Integral life. You are totally in control of your own world within. Build a perfect world inside yourself and you won’t need to fix anything externally everything becomes clear in your understanding.
This is the spiritual aspect of Ken Wilber’s work that I have gained and wish to communicate with everyone. ~ Peace
Yes, yes - as far as you go. All that takes place in the upper left quadrant. But what about the influence of the other quadrants?
Wilber has led me to think that we discover ourselves - our spiritual selves, our witness or the me that is there throughout all the changes in our lives, the I that is spirit - in a space/time world where there are many others in the same situation. While we are in a space/time world, we keep finding Spirit breaking in. In this space/time world, our upper left quadrant is dependent upon the upper right quadrant to operate. If our brain has a stroke or dementia, our upper left thoughts are limited.
Further we have very few thoughts that have not been influenced by the lower left. My thoughts, and I suspect yours, are highly influenced by the writings of Ken Wilber and his followers. I doubt we would be having the conversation if we had not joined the culture created around Ken Wilber’s ideas.
So, yes, we can find/attain inner peace or wholeness within ourselves. But when we do, we should be sharing it.
I see at as a continual folding/unfolding - a process - where we internalize/internally develop, then externally test/morph/change, then internalize/interally develop. And the cycle continues.
For us I don’t think this can work any other way as if we focus internally our lens, assessments, changes will be based only on ourselves. BUT this work has to be done. It’s not only “out there”, but the “out there” does give us highly (oft times painful) feedback.
The beauty of “include” is that we do get to “include” all that shaped us. Actually we must include all that shaped us before we can forward.
@millerdr Everything that you experience in all quadrants you experience inside yourself as @FermentedAgave so perfectly articulated.
As you use the AQAL maps to explain reality you gain greater and greater clarity at understanding the external world around you. As you gain this understanding it is uniquely inside of you that becomes integral and integrated.
Without this internal integrated picture you see others as separate pieces that seem not able to fit into the whole. As you integrate all of these disconnected concepts into your own map of reality you see the entire world holistically as one connected whole made of many connected pieces.
Those who argue one position over another have yet to attain this complete inner Integral perspective. They have yet to integrate the opposing views into their reality picture, they are still climbing the spiritual ladder of understanding.
When one reaches that point of inner clarity, assimilating all views, the conversations change. When we become Integral we move from debates and disconnects into exploration and discovery at deeper and deeper levels. Ken Wilber’s writing and explanations are the revelations from an Integral Life perspective.
My Rorschach response is “no matter how great the obstacle, do your best and you might prevail”, but do I “know” what was meant? LOL