Russia Is Catalyzing the Transformation Age

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I agree with the end part. Do good work.
I think pessimism is judgement you may have misplaced on me? Also quite a jump to assume pessimism is pushed onto my child.

I had a frank conversation with my daughter this past week about her living 600 miles from a war zone. My only message was to keep an eye on things and over the next 10 years keep an eye out for which way the wind is blowing - and that dad has a space to fall back to if everything gets worse.

But more importantly - I think people who do not look at the cake that is baking are abdicating their responsibility and culpability in the world’s deterioration. Yes, live a good life - but also be aware if one is living a consumption oriented and empty life. Is the joy based on the spiritual or material consumption, or worse does one’s joyful priviledged lifestyle rely on the exploitation of the other 90% of humanity?

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Yes. Strangely what you describe came to me about two months before COVID hit, when there was no clue 2020 would be other than just like 2019. I found relaxing into the sorrow and accepting it opened up a whole new profound level under that. It’s also returned with compounded interest this past week.

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Thanks Ray for your empathic response. I dealt with it by going into it even more deeply. We often hear people say “I can’t imagine what it would be like…” but the truth is, we can, at least to some extent. So that’s what I did, I imagined a scene in which 5 Ukrainian soldiers were hit by an air strike, and I watched the ghastliness unfold, which I won’t describe, but suffice to say, it gave new meaning to the phrase “blood and soil.” It was a very sensory experience in that all my senses were involved, and my heart; there were a few tears. Afterwards, I had spontaneous mental flashes of history, the sweep of wars and calamities and disasters and famines and all those kind of suffering things, and I was experiencing a “bird’s eye view” of it all, a higher perspective in which there was no emotional attachment to worldly events, just a clear seeing that “this is the way it has been, this is the way it is.” Horrifying and sorrowful deep in our souls, but simply “reality” from a witness-consciousness stance. The odd silent-mute feeling left me.

Care to share what “whole new profound level” unfolded as you relaxed into your sorrow?

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Yeah - it hits me every once in a while now, and the scope of this weeks events are stronger than anything in the last 2 years for sure.

No emotional attachment to worldly events, yes.

What you call “The way it has been, the way it is”, I call them cycles. From lunar cycles and I look up in the sky and say “oh yeah, it is a full moon.” to cycles of empires to cycles of species to cycles of mass extinction. I don’t share the assumption of most that humans discovered consciousness. I feel an old consciousness observing and also interacting with humanity just as it did with giant insects and dinosaurs.

But also maybe an analogy - that life is a dance, and when we were born, by that act we chose to get on the dance floor. Some people are doing some really crazy moves while some just stand there looking like they want to dance, but are too afraid to. Others are banging their heads or making quite a spectacle. But it’s all part of the dance.

On a micro level, what am I going to do the next 20 years - or maybe just the next month is all we have? Am I just going to stand in the middle of the dance floor, checking the messages on my device? Or will I let the music sweep me away? If I do, will my older body hold out, lol?
On an even more micro level - is it time for me to return to Eastern Europe? Older and wiser now. Or is it time to build a safe nest?
When we look beyond the attachments we normally have to worldly events - nationality, political affiliation, academic hubris, analysis and so on - what music is actually playing right now?

I hope you understand the music analogy. We can’t control the music that is playing for us, and most people don’t hear it until they detach from all the varied nonsense. Kind of like the song of the siren.
But also, be gentle with ourselves if we are afraid to follow it. It can be a very chaotic path.

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Who could have predicted social media facilitating resistance to this extent?

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@raybennett Several things came to mind with your mention of “life as a dance”:

–the Dancing Shiva (Shiva Nataraj), in which the ‘5-fold act of consciousness’ is symbolized: creation, preservation/maintenance/sustainment, destruction/dissolution, concealment, and revelation/grace. Is there anything else?

–the (Hinduism-based) statement of Deepak Chopra, that “life is a dance between the divine and the diabolical, with hopefully the divine always ahead, leading.”

–the dance between Putin’s dominator hierarchy and the growth hierarchy that pushes ahead, elevating orange and green (and teal. etc.) structures beyond Putin’s red-amber structure.

I recently watched the 2015 Netflix documentary “Winter on Fire” about a major episode in Ukraine’s fight for freedom. It covers the revolution of 2013-2014, the demonstrations during Yanukovych’s regime. Brutal dancing! Dirty dancing! And some poignant funerals and lovely music–the “ringing of the bells” that hadn’t been rung in about 800 years at the Eastern Orthodox Church. It’s a powerful documentary, available on You Tube now if you haven’t seen it and are interested in this particular slice of Ukrainian history.

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@LaWanna
I can’t think of anything to add to the dancing.

With regard to Ukrainians I think I do see something happening to Ukrainians this past week.
Within this thing something related to accusations of “pessimism” as well, lol.

Ukrainian society has A LOT of flaws. If nothing else, they at the very least tend towards the pessimistic. Yet they are literally on the front lines defending Democracy against a tyrant.
At the same time, their struggle has been mostly ignored by “Team Teal” and “Team Green” until two weeks ago.

I’m curious of the degree to which Team Teal pats themselves on the back for as you say “elevating structures”, without recognizing the absolute necessity of the dirtiness going on in the trenches in places such as Ukraine. My observation is that Team Teal tends to try to keep their hands clean, which I see as absurd. They stay safe - by analogy they dance in only on the periphery of the dance floor. They believe they are influencing the center as trendsetters but fail to realize they can’t even see the center, much less effectively influence it.
I don’t want to drag down Team Ukraine right now - but yes, I see the dance going on there for what it is. My first interaction with Ukrainians was in Eastern Europe in the late 1990’s when organized crime ruled between Moscow and Bratislava, I tracked the events of its citizens rising up and using sticks and broken glass to topple well armed riot police firing real bullets while the population of The United States was deeply engrossed in “Game of Thrones” Season 4.

If @robbsmith finds me pessimistic and therefore unethical (and therefore by extension abusive towards children as well) I really have to wonder how he regards Ukranian Babuskas. Not the most optimistic demographic on the planet - no, not optimistic at all … yet they also are directly confronting Putin’s Red power structure with a greater deal of effectiveness than Integral diagrams, papers and discussions … I judge.

Here is a little test for everyone who is INTEGRAL. Below I give you a way to combat disinformation with virtually zero chance of any negative repercussions.

  • Will you “just do it” and combat disinformation by a literal Tyrant by leaving your device on the webpage a little bit each day?
  • Or will you respond in the fear that there is some kind of hacking going on, or that you might get a warning letter of some kind from your ISP that says you are naughty?
  • Or Will you all form some kind of other Intellectual rationalization for just letting disinformation to spread unchecked

https://stop-russian-desinformation.near.page/

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I’m curious about the fourth option. Autocracy wins. Biden fights it out for three more years, loses reelection, and the next US president is Trump, or some version of Trump, and withdraws from NATO. It seems like significant numbers of people actually want some form of religious autocracy here and in Europe…it that a possibility?

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“Europe” is pretty hard to generalize about, and I don’t see the vast majority of Europe headed that way. I don’t see any appetite for religious wars or Autocracy in Europe - at least not West of Kyiv. Particularly not the Russian flavor of Autocracy, which many still alive have tasted.
The United States? Sure, why not Autocracy in America? It seems the majority in the United States want autocracy and to force the other side to follow their way. It’s clear in our foreign policy over the past 100 years and has silently moved into our domestic Politics.

But, yes - I also don’t believe there are only a “few possible outcomes” . I think when people do that as @corey-devos did, they kind of just want to keep it simple in their own minds.
Our global civilization has so many millions of moving parts and several of them are proving to be inadequate as others fail here and there.
What most westerners looking at this also fail to realize, even if Putin is toppled by other Russians - we’ve been there before, lol. Nobody remembers the events in Russia in the 1990’s lol?
There is a trend here, a certain commonality that nice polite academic types just seem to be completely clueless about, lol. - Russia - Iraq - Afghanistan. The same blinders are now going on with the mass media’s idealization of Ukranians and in this topic the hope that Russians will somehow be different the next time they form a government.
This isn’t me being down on Russians nor Ukrainians - it’s just pointing out that western academics usually have no clue at the grass roots level about the people they are forming theories about.
This isn’t the academic’s fault - I have a friend who was in Ukraine with the Peace Corps and even he didn’t get how deeply embedded - among other things - graft and corruption are in the society. More than just “society” - in the collective psyche.

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One funny thing I see is that when the media sees westerners going into Ukraine now, they are referred to as volunteers and I haven’t seen the media ask any questions regarding financial compensation. I think most people watching the news think these volunteers are working as unpaid volunteers, while I’m pretty sure they are being well paid. Using 2004 - 2006 dollars, the going rate in Iraq for mercenary “volunteers” was about $15,000 per month, plus or minus depending on the expected danger.
This is just kind of a minor example of something that I just automatically expect, having been friends with British mercenaries who participated in Iraq and Bosnia (though in Bosnia for less pay).
The reason I bring this up is that the cogs of transformation to Democracy is greased with prodigious cash flow - but depending on the collective psyche of the target nation, that cash flow may never actually fundamentally change the culture. It often does, but sometimes does not.

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@raybennett

Hey Ray, don’t you think you might be being a little hard on Team Teal (and Green)? The world is quite complex and undergoing many crises simultaneously; even the media is challenged to keep on top of every single crisis/situation/story that deservedly needs ongoing or constant attention. While you say Team Teal tries “to keep their hands clean…” I see it and would frame it a bit differently. Education is probably one of the most important needs in today’s world, education in general and also specifically about today’s world; along with a way to make sense of what is going on in today’s world. Plus, some people drawn to Integral are still trying to learn IT so as to simply apply it to their own lives. Team Integral is responsive, I think, to all of those needs, and in terms of world events, responds to the most current and critical issues–nothing more, nothing less. Neither you nor I know exactly how Integral Theory is or is not affecting the world, or how it will or will not affect the greater world in the future. I’m here because I resonate with it.

Since I’ve been participating at ILC, there have always been people who criticize Team Integral for not doing enough, not getting their hands dirty, not being “in the trenches.” To me, this comes back to the gunas: tamas, rajas, sattva. I think some Integral people use their sattvic (“light”) energy and their rajas energy (passion, desire, activity) to educate and sense-make; I see nothing wrong with this, and see that it is useful–just as I see that there is nothing wrong with getting one’s hands dirty and being in the trenches, and that that is also useful. Both are necessary.

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I also see an issue with defining what is a trench? There is an idea of Integral, that I know I want to see in the world, but there is another force here. There are people (I don’t like to categorize anymore), from those I know, who believe we are in a fight for humanity and have a vision of the world, that the more I learn about it, I am pretty sure a lot of people would prefer but is not my vision at all. It’s what triggered the question about autocracy winning. The better way to say it would be what if another system emerges all together. The system I see being fought for is just not seen or spoken of by anyone that I am reading. I think there is a liberal version of what teal is, but there is something else, another version and I think it would be helpful to see it. I have been optimistic my whole life, I am not anymore, even before this happened. For me it’s like integral’s evil twin popped into the room…he has the advantage of surprise

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My surface reply was “I don’t know, and only time will tell if it is enough or not enough.”

But then I realized that the question inferred a truth in my point. It’s not that I’m wrong, or that I’m completely whacko or off base or making things up. The question infers that I have a point, but also the opinion that I should not be addressing it in the way I am. Ironically, confirming the point I’m getting at. There is a strong refusal to look at or address ugly matters.
I don’t think this is a tamas, rajas, sattva issue - whether a person wants to build a foundation, light a bonfire, or sit and meditate in a cave - they still have to recognize why they are doing so. If a yogi goes to a cave to meditate because he is afraid to face war - that is not a “correct path”. If a man does not stand up to perceived injustice because he is afraid of his own anger, that is not a “correct path” (I specifically call out “men” because this seems to be an epidemic in the USA). If there was no injustice, the point is mot - but if there is perceived injustice and the reaction is avoidance because of a shadow, that is a major problem. Then we can go a step further and point out that it is even worse if the man who is afraid of his own anger not only withdraws out of fear, but tries to hinder another who is describing the injustice, again out of fear. If he is forced to recognize it - then he might have to face why he isn’t facing it. Much easier to tsk tsk others who are trying to describe problems.
So that’s what I’m concerned about many people who self-identify as Integral, but really have strong green shadows. Not whether they are actually taking action, but their reasons for not wanting to see the problems.

This leads me to a question that I don’t know the answer to, and I don’t think anybody does. Is a Teal society inevitable, or will it require blood? If not blood, at least a hell of a lot of sweat and tears.

Previous transitions have required blood. There were the American and French Revolutions that cemented the ideas of “freedom” and “liberty”, and later the Civil War was required to fulfill “equality”. The collateral damage of Liberty in France was Napoleon and his war against the entrenched Monarchies of Europe while the collateral damage of a Free and Equal USA was genocide of Native Americans. If we look back at the horrors of the religious wars that later allowed the Age of Reason, there seem to be numerous coats of blood painted as the base coat that enabled Green to stick.

That’s the frame I’ve been looking at the events going on in the USA and the world. Kind of always, but more intensely since 2000 and then again in 2012 and since 2016. I see those years as “branchings”, when humanity made decisions that set them on courses that could not then be undone.

What interests me isn’t whether others see the same thing, but the “why” behind what they see, and if their “why” is congruent with their daily activities. Usually it isn’t and we get things like “SUV driving Yoga mom antivax Qanon conspiracy theorists”, for example.

Since I could very well be wrong, if someone believes that humanity will transcend to Teal just naturally and without any struggle - I see that as a valid point also. Gautema believed this. All we have to do then is get everyone to practice Vipassana daily, lol.

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@Michelle I know what you mean about the possibility of “autocracy winning.” There is a lot of information about its spread. This site tracks democracy, and how it is tending toward demise in some parts of the world, towards autocracy. In Europe, Hungary and Poland are sort of “on the edge,” along with a few other Eurasian places. https://freedomhouse.org/article/new-report-attacks-democracy-intensify-autocracy-spreads-europe-and-eurasia

@raybennett I basically agree with @Sidra, that we’re all in the trenches in one way or another. The point I was trying to make, perhaps ineffectively, was that there are different kinds of trenches: the Ukrainians are in one kind of trench, protestors on the streets in Russia and elsewhere are in another, etc., and the intellectual/sense-making sphere is another kind of trench, where disagreements and different points of view and verbal conflict can and do arise. For socially conscious people who also have a dedicated spiritual practice, that is another “trench” of sorts, where suffering and injustice can be fully felt and addressed in particular ways (see Nomali’s episode in the other thread on the Ukrainian situation). As many trenches perhaps as there are people.

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I think we probably agree then, except that I see a desire in many not to hear or see anything except what is immediately in front of their “trench”, and to pish posh reports from other “trenches” as “bad for morale” if we are going with the trench analogy.

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When other stages emerged, the world was not so connected. Personally, I don’t see the transition to Teal needing to be bloody, it’s more the whole spiral never goes away and most of it is very bloody. What I no longer see happening is a Teal leadership that drives the world (I used to think this was possible). The world will be spread over vast levels of consciousness with such extremely differing realities that I don’t know how we can ever manage it all. A significant portion of the world believes that after the right person drops a nuclear bomb and creates the apocalypse, God will come to Earth, restore it to its original Eden state. Hopefully we never find “the right person” to do that!

For me the question I now have, since I no longer see it being possible that this many stages can communicate with each other, is can we coexist. The other question I have is why so many in countries that have systems that allow for higher consciousness to emerge, do so many stay in other levels. I used to think “helping people to evolve” was the thing to do, now I just don’t know what’s the right thing to do. There is level subjectivity to what is injustice. Is forcing someone to conform to a “higher level” the right thing to do?

My dad asked to participate in the thing the Pope called for which was to answer the question “why did you leave the church?” I hardly knew what to say, really because the church doesn’t want ME. I have had so many conversations with him about this and there is no where to go.

It’s an interesting time, sad and scary to feel at the real edge of evolution…I guess it will show us what it has instore.

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@Michelle You packed so much thought-provoking material into this one post Michelle; thank you! Here is what came up for me.

I have relatives who believe this, stemming from their amber-mythic stage and fundamentalist religious belief. Whenever I hear it, I find myself alternatively thinking of the “theory of dissipative structures” (by chemist Ilya Prigogine–easy to find info about this online), which is (minimally) an orange-rational stage general theory of the dynamics of systems (including societal systems), and a “scientific model of transformation at every level.” According to the theory, instability is the key to transformation, with the possibility of a sudden (and non-linear) re-ordering into a higher order when the system is fraught with magnificent stress, crises, chaos, conflict. Of course, total destruction of the system/world is also a possibility rather than that higher order, if the stress, crises, chaos, and conflict can’t be “damped.” But, I do hold to the possibility of this (positive) “shift” if you will, and without sacrificing rationality, can connect, if not to the exact beliefs or means or end-product, to the desires of those fundamentalists for a better world. (Sidenote: I do have “agreements” (or requirements :slightly_smiling_face:) with some of these relatives that we do not talk politics or religion ever–not to dissuade communication or understanding, but because some of the more fanatical and bad-mannered do not talk with me or to me, but at me, loudly and with no understanding of what it means to ‘listen.’ I do have my limits :slightly_smiling_face:)

It’s a good question. Some religions have found that difficult if not impossible. And in nature, clearly some plants can’t co-exist in close proximity: pine trees and roses (the latter requiring much nutrient-richer soil), beans and beets (negatively affect one another’s pH levels), for example. But there is also history of different human groups being able to co-exist, although not without some friction/conflict/bad feelings. I’m thinking of school desegration, and other race-related issues like separate drinking fountains, restrooms, etc. of the past that have ended. As for stages of development, we are co-existing now, again, not without conflicts and stresses which may possibly, possibly contribute to that jump to a higher order.

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There’s two sides to this, of course.
Can “we” exist with the other?
Can the other exists with “us”?

I think the degree to which these are not true determines the degree of conflict.
Also, I think failure to recognize the extent to which the other cannot live with “us” can lead to becoming overwhelmed by the other. An example is a temple of Buddhist monks being slaughtered by a group that refuses to allow them to live.

To a lesser degree, we see in the USA two opposite extremes that refuse to allow the other to exist, and have been escalating for decades.

When we take the stand that, for example, we will not tolerate bigots to exist in our society - we have to also understand that the bigot may not accept that. This isn;t to say that we should allow bigots, but we must know from the get-go that they might not just say “yeah, ok I will cease to exist”. Or to a lesser extent “OK, I will give up all my childhood heroes who were based on unhealthy male dynamics”, lol. When the stakes are higher and we are talking about high levels of power such as Putin and Russian Oligarchs, the stakes are much much higher and if we want to ante into that game we have to understand that before we join in.

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I see the whole 2020 BLM crisis in this way. The United States as a society wants racial equality, but not enough of the population is willing to accept the costs of that.
In the beginning, the cost of recognizing a person’s right not to stand for the pledge of allegiance was a bridge too far. Equality, yes - but don’t get uppity just yet.
Then holding police accountable was a bridge to far. Equality, yes - but don’t complain about the dark secret of police brutality. We as a majority of society don’t want to see that.
And so on. The majority of US society is in favor of equality - just as long as they aren’t forced to see unpleasantness on their TV News.

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It’s like when I first learned Integral in my 20’s, I was in a more green centered place and I interpreted it as a path for peace and more harmonious living. I think I see it all a bit more clearly now and see that even if I or a whole system can integrate the better sides of each stage that does not make the stage itself gravitate to only it’s healthy side.

I like your analogy to plants. I think that is really insightful. It would be interesting to use that in a way to think about cultivating more healthy communities. I tried that a bit with a school program I did years ago. It actually had some success, but COVID it and the rest is history!

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