to tide yall over til I return to deliver my usual AQALuscious delights...

Rip, mix, and burn, baby:

"In Free Culture, his third and best book, Lessig shows his hand. He has a cause, and he wants us to rally to it. The cause is the protection of that imaginary piece of real estate known as "the public domain" and the "free culture" that has always, Lessig argues, been built upon and interleaved with it -- the culture of transformative art, of sharing and borrowing and reborrowing and retransforming, of collages, cover versions, dramatizations, fictionalizations, and adaptations -- the whole universe of ways new art builds upon and emerges from old."

Apocalypse now?

"Left Behind: Elective Affinities and Double Ironies... What are we to make of the strange parallels between this popular series of evangelical fiction and this aggressive Neoconservative strategy for American hegemony?"

Stan Goff is the Man On Fire:

"...we need all the myths in a basket, and Hollywood accommodates: Imperial myths, melting pot myths, and hegemonic military masculinity myths, to articulate a culture's prevailing images a society needs to project about itself in order to maintain certain features of its organization."

Some subtle smelling salt for the somnolent self:

"...it is almost impossible to speak any longer about the personal Laor and the political Laor. There is only one poetic persona in it, which is simultaneously absolutely political and absolutely personal. The voice is that of a poetic persona through whose life the "situation" passes and touches everything he has, grasping and refusing to let go. The child, the wife, the hours of wakefulness alone at night, memory, the very act of writing--everything is political. And from the other extreme, every terror attack, every act of occupation, every moral injustice--everything is completely personal."

the I, We, and It of recent raps

Hey yall, just an integral sampling of the I, We, and It of recent raps:

"Christ dwells in cancer cells... I've always thought there's a drummer behind the drumbeat. The Universe, imagined, imagines you."

"More than 16,000 people converged on Fort Benning this past weekend to protest the School of the Americas...

"It is simply assumed that violence is the solution to any difficult problems the US encounters..."

Adventures in Boulder, continued...

Alrighty then, can I just say that I'm having second thoughts about NOT posting my communication to Ken? I mean, I wrote it, for god's sake! It belongs to me! It's MINE, goddammit! (Throwing self on floor, turning blue.) Did you get that? Blue! Quick, somebody call a priest to exorcise the memetic demon in me!

I think all this dissonance is born of my continued reservations about Warren and my aversion to not having the weight and exact nature of my position broadcast to the integral community at large. Maybe I'm pathologically attached, but I continued to feel unsettled about this whole issue and feel compelled to air both my grievances and allowances with a circle beyond the Boulder scene. (If you're totally clueless as to what I'm talking about, back that ass up and read the preceding post.)

I've made up my mind. In the interest of free speech, what follows is an edited version of my letter to Ken:

Thank you for the opportunity to respond further now that I've had some time to metabolize our dialogue and to reflect on this matter at length.

I experienced Warren as demonstrating an uncanny capacity for listening and was particularly impressed with his openness, humility, and commendable lack of defense. I must confess to being disarmed by his warmth and good humor--in the space of ten minutes I was beginning to feel positively chummy with the artist formerly known as the repudiator of patriarchy!

Warren's contribution in bringing to fluorescence the shadow side of 1st and 2nd wave feminism as manifested in the institutional disenfranchisement of males is incredibly important, timely and mandated by the demands of a genuinely integral dialogue and evolutionarily informed orientation. I believe, however, that this contribution is unnecessarily depotentiated by an approach which limits itself to a conventional, translative perspective, and is further handicapped by reductionistic, sometimes regressive flights into survivalist explanations which lack verticality and distort relevant data and obfuscate critical issues.

Additionally, I feel Warren is guilty of "dumbing down"developmentally complex processes and fails to offer the necessary transitional structures [this is perhaps my primary issue] which might redeem what strikes me as a strictly 1st tier approach. He also seems ill equipped to adequately address the nuanced holarchy of the sex and gender constellation, and in my opinion evidences a lack of sophistication in his well-intentioned "ham handling" of issues which are clumsily framed in such a way as to perpetuate a contrived gender dichotomy which I find lamentably divisive.

That said--Integral is obviously committed to both depth and span, and god knows that what Warren lacks in the former he compensates for in the latter! IF Warren could be brought up to speed on the rigors of an AQAL approach and have his flatland tendencies tutored out of him, I think he could be a valuable asset to the integral camp.

Conceivably, Integral's outreach and demographic could be significantly expanded with the addition of Warren (though the google"hit" on the incest issue--which I'm fairly pacified about--is potentially problematic). In the interest of span and radical inclusion (really radical inclusion!) ;) and your longstanding friendship, it is with reservation but not outright protest that I recommend Warren's participation in whatever sub-domain of I-I you deem appropriate, though I BEG YOU to keep your compadre on a short leash and divest him of his Schlessinger-like oversimplifications. (At least I didn't have to endure from Warren the self-righteous platitudes the moral matron dishes with such decadence!)

Okay, now that I've got that off my chest I can breathe easy and move on to the truly sordid details of my subtle safari!

After the smackdown at the loft I went to the Westin Hotel for the videotaping of Ken and Warren's dialogue which will be aired on Integral Naked. There, I had the immense pleasure of meeting Paul Salamone (kick-ass editor of The Manifest e-zine, I-I's resident artistic director, indie rock aficionado, and the person most responsible for encouraging the writing efforts which got me on board with the scene in Boulder--ROCK, Paul!) After hugging Paul (and a number of other awesomely warm people) I happened to glance across the room to the person behind the camera and recognized (promptly throwing myself upon) my "forum friend" Dan Allison (aka, Buddha Boy, hereby nominated as the Integral Youth Mascot).

While Warren and Ken did their thing, Micki and I passed a pen and pad of paper back and forth, furiously scribbling rebuttals and counterpoints to some of Warren's more creative statistics and assertions. About three quarters of the way into the silliness, Corey (DJ Rekluse) cruised by and asked me my take on the whole gig. We whispered back and forth until one of the camera people turned around and shushed us so we shut our shit up and behaved like good little students in Integral Sex and Gender Studies Class.

After the dialogue at the Westin, went out to dinner at Tuk Tuk with about a dozen people who'd attended the taping, and over pea pods and pad thai did a sort of Deida vs Farrell/Farrell vs feminism analysis, circumscribed within a conversation which explored postconventional principles as manifested and translated in terms of conventional gender roles and attitudes. (Does that make sense? My world was rocked.)

Later that night drove through a snowstorm to what everybody referred to as "The Boulder House" which turned out to be Ken's place (he rents to the integral crowd since moving to Denver.) After Cher and Marco were kind enough to show me the lay of the land (amazing library, and thangkas in abundance, along with some Alex Grey originals and other groovy art), I headed off to thaw my frozen self in a blissfully hot shower (aaaaaahhhhh.) Turned out I slept in Rollie's room (Integral Naked's managing editor, aka, "Mooseboots Rolliesattva," who wasn't due back from Canada til the following day). I parked myself in my pajamas on the cushion, delighting in the velvet silence as it enveloped my motionless form. I noticed that my breathing, which normally takes about ten to fifteen minutes to regulate, almost immediately became slow and even, and I suddenly realized that the house held a profoundly palpable energetic support for practice. Practicing in the Boulder House felt a little like sitting with Genpo Roshi.

The next day we (Cher, Mark, and myself) headed back to the Westin Hotel for a meeting in preparation for the Integral Transformative Practice Seminar which was due to begin the next day. I walked into the conference room and made a beeline for the fireplace only to run into Diane Hamilton, Genpo Roshi's senior student who I know from Kanzeon in Salt Lake City. (The last time I saw Diane was at 2:00 am in her bedroom where she was conducting a seance with other sangha members around a ouija board--she's a TRIP!) She was presenting at the upcoming seminar, and needless to say, we were quite surprised to run into each other so far from home! I also met Willow Pearson (also presenting at the seminar), who I'd had the pleasure of speaking with for several hours a few days earlier in preparation for the Farrell dialogue.

The meeting began, and since I had no place to go (unless I wanted to hang out in the hotel lobby, which really wasn't to my taste) I watched from about ten yards away, perfectly content to cuddle up to the fire on one of the zafu's I'd snagged from the upcoming conference accoutrements. Jeff Salzman, who was leading the meeting, called out to me across the room, "Why don't you join us?" and I answered, "Because I haven't been invited! I'm not part of the seminar!" to which Jeff responded, "That doesn't matter! We need your input!"

I practically skipped over, thrilled at the invitation, and Jeff introduced me by saying, "This is Brandy, who as many of you know was invited here at the last minute into the lion's den for the Farrell dialogue; it turned out, however, that she was the lion!"

An hour or so into the meeting, I headed to the beverage table for some chai tea, and ran into Brett Thomas, co-host of the Integral Business and Leadership domain at Integral University, who was due to present an ITP module at the next day's seminar. We remarked to each other how cold the room was, and he made reference to both of us not having any body fat to keep us warm, and in unison, we both lifted our shirts to show each other our skinny bellies, laughing out loud and then hugging.

A conversation ensued wherein he expressed his need for editorial help with the web content of Stagen Leadership Institute, where he serves as R&D head, strategist, consultant, facilitator, and executive coach, and long story short--he hired me. Don't wanna jump the gun, but it looks like a working relationship made in nirvana...

smackdown at Ken's loft

Suckers! Though the tag-line of this entry's the naked truth, I figured all you integral voyeurs might be more inclined to peep this show with a title that teases. (All will be revealed, my AQALuscious compatriots...in due time.)

First off. Thanksgiving. I know it's after the fact, but let me just say I harbor more than just a bit of ambivlance toward this "holiday." As I wrote to my British friend the day before feasting:

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, the American commemoration of the settler's bountiful harvest ensuring their continued survival and colonization. Of course, it's also a celebration of what turned out to be the impending genocide of the native population, but we conveniently excise this fact from our consciousness.

Thursday afternoon, I received an email from Colin Bigelow (Ken Wilber's personal assistant who apparently believes he can subsist on a diet of martini olives and causal access), asking me, in essence, if I'd like to fly in over the weekend to address my issues with Warren Farrel face to face with Ken and Excomm (aka, The Integral Borg) in the Bald One's Denver abode.

Okay, I said. (It's kosher--no big deal, right? Like, I get an invitation from Ken to hang at his loft and air my issues all the time.)

Right.

"Oh, and by the way," says my Unspoken friend, "Excomm will be making a decision about whether Warren is invited to be a part of the Integral Sex and Gender Studies domain based on the discussion on Saturday."

No pressure.

Since Willow can't make it, I'm initially told it'll be just me, Ken, Warren, and the boys (the executive committee--Jeff, Marco, Rollie, Huy, and Colin. Um, can I get that testosterone on the rocks, and spiked--with estrogen?) Shortly thereafter, somebody with sensitivity training (maybe Jeff, who by his own admission is "as gay as a tree full of chickadees") must have realized that in the interest of gender parity, the issues at hand might be better served with the inclusion of another female (ya think?) and I'm informed I won't be the sole bearer of an XX chromosone configuration.

I flew into Denver Internation Saturday morning and wasted a half hour going back and forth with Orbitz after I failed to print my shuttle voucher and needed it faxed. By the time I jumped on the Super Express it was 10:45 and I was due at the loft by 11:00. I arrived half hour late.

Shit.

From the lobby phone I dialed upstairs to the loft and Ken answered, hello?

It's the Navigationally Challenged Wonder requesting to be buzzed in! (I was beginning to feel like a character in The Matrix.)

Turned out it was Ken, Warren, Jeff (chirp, chirp), Pashmina (I-I tech genius), Marco (IN big kahuna) Cher (resident media goddess) Mark (Integral Spirituality domain), Micki (HR Headmistress), and me.

Shook hands with Warren and Ken (my but you're tall, and...um, developed in more ways than one) and the games began. The entire exchange, which lasted about an hour and a half, was too involved to reiterate here, but suffice it to say that though I stand by my reservations about Warren, particularly as regards his theoretical orientation, I was fairly pacified about his actual character after witnessing his warmth and uncanny capacity for listening, and repeatingly noting his opennes and nondefense even in the face of taking him to task over the Penthouse piece. (I actually composed a letter to Ken detailing my post dialogue position after he solicited additional feedback, but I think better of posting it in the interest of privacy and politics--and here you thought I-I was free of all that first tier food fighting!) ;)

There's much more JUICE to this little tale but I've got copy to get jiggy with and deadlines to make. Stay tuned for further Adventures in Integral Rant and forthcoming disclosures about flashing my new friend at the ITP seminar meeting...

horrifying to hopeful

!Hola my integral compadres! Allow me to share with you several points of interest--from the horrifying to the hopeful--that I came across during my morning reading.

Bob Jones III, president of Bob Jones University, in a post election congratulatory letter to Dubya:

Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ.

Paul Hodges responding to Canadian bioethicist Peter Singer's assertion of the nearly unlimited philanthropic application of nanotechnology in third world countries:

Well I love such naiveté. It’s sweet. But it’s not logical. Frankly, of course it’s true that nanotechnology could benefit the poor, of course it’s true that there’s areas of these technologies that in terms of energy, water and so on, that could be beneficial to the poor, and maybe some day will be beneficial to the poor. But the reality is, the issues are not what it could do, it is who owns it and who controls it. And the ownership and the control of this technology is initially with the world’s largest corporations and with the military of the world’s largest countries. And their interests are not the poor, their interests are to make sure that they are able to use technologies at the nano scale to benefit themselves and to make sure that they actually can use such a pervasive technological tool to strengthen their control over marketplaces, and naturally will not help the poor.

And last, Howard Zinn on hope and the nature of socio-political evolution:

Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don't "win," there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope.

An optimist isn't necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

On the home front, last night I dreamed that I "saw" my false self--it was a muddy brown, somewhat amorphous mass which seemed to be composed of swirling sewage and festering flotsam and jetsam. I didn't have much of an emotional response to the series of images, I simply observed them in an impartial but curious way (whereas my waking self would have been so averse I'd probably have run screaming for the shower). All of a sudden the dream became lucid, and I said to myself, "Oh, you're dreaming this! How funny! It seems significant--be sure to remember it once you wake up!"

Wednesday night I had a conference call with Paul Salamone and Marco Morelli to discuss the possibility of me assuming editorial direction of the upcoming I-I and I-U newsletters.

Opening the call, I was slightly anxious, feeling on the fringe of Paul and Marco's simpatico, but as soon as I confessed my nervousness I relaxed open into curiosity about how the conversation would unfold and began relishing the simple FUN of connecting with people I'd only communicated with through email.

As of now, the plan is for the newsletter(s) to launch sometime in December (naturally, the most insane month of the year!). Marco would network a series of sources for me to solicit copy from, and after polishing the various pieces, I'd have some wiggle room for my own AQALuscious creative embellishment. Paul (who's got some serious aesthetic flair) would then take charge of the layout and artistic dimension, ensuring a presentation with panache.

I really, really liked Marco and Paul's vibe--to my perception the interchange was very warm and expansive and I felt like the communication was clear, unencumbered, and consummately enjoyable.

My dream is to eventually assume a greater number of hours with I-I so I can quit my day job as a postal whore and maybe even arrive in Boulder already hooked up with fulltime employment. Now that would be creamy. =)

Taking back Jesus from the new Roman Empire

Excerpted from Tom Hayden's editorial in Boulder Weekly, Learning From The Loss

(AQALuscious disclaimer: the "faction factor " in this piece is a bit annoying, but it's underlying thrust--shed of it's partisan posturing--is right on the money.)

Instead of "Jesus Saves," we need to save Jesus. This is no time for the Democrats to begin pandering to any on the Christian Right who have turned Jesus into a symbol for a vast and potentially illegal political network of tax-exempt, church-based, right-wing partisan activism.

Let’s look at the numbers. White evangelical born-again Christians, who were 23 percent of the total vote, gave Bush a 78 percent margin, and the very secular John Kerry 21 percent. White Catholics (like Kerry) provided 47 percent support. On the other hand, "white Jews" voted 75 percent for Kerry, voters who attend church "a few times a year" gave him 54 percent, and those who never attend religious services produced a 62 percent Kerry majority. People of color were Kerry’s strongest religious base.

In the wake of the election, many Democrats no doubt will begin repositioning themselves as born-agains. Instead they should articulate moral and spiritual values rather than misreading the separation of church and state to mean that such concerns are constitutionally out-of-bounds. They should also attack the transformation of institutional churches into de facto partisan agencies, and everyone, Christian or not, should battle to take back Jesus from Empire.

Jesus was a dissident on the fringes of the Empire of his day. As Father Gregory Boyle says, "Jesus stood with everybody who was nobody. He made a beeline [always] to stand with those on the margins, those whose dignity had been denied, the poor and excluded, the easily despised, the demonized, and those whose burdens were more than they could bear. And they killed him for it." Father Luis Barrios agrees, saying that the historical Jesus was ignored by the authorities until "he went downtown" to challenge the elite. As the Christian radical Cornel West writes in "Democracy Matters," "prophetic Christianity" is being eclipsed by "Constantian Christianity"; that is, the very Empire that crucified Jesus later transformed him into the symbol of an expansionary state religion. This is what the Machiavellians like Rove and the neo-conservative non-believers have done through the Bush presidency: build the beginnings of a theocratic state just beneath the surface of the Republican Party, a shadow network of believers nesting in every crevice of bureaucracy available.

It is no accident that the young men and women killing, dying, being maimed and disoriented in Iraq come disproportionately from God-fearing families in small towns, or that the Pentagon hierarchy still supports a general who promotes the superiority of "our God" over the Muslims. For some conservative Christians, neither the Crusades nor the Confederacy are over. They continue in whispers, in code, covertly, awaiting the moment when the Good News can be proclaimed again, from Washington to Babylon. For these people, the second term of Bush is the Second Coming.

The only way to counter this trend toward state religion is by engaging the Christian community, especially the conservative evangelicals, in a moral and theological dispute about Jesus. Talk of the Constitution and Bill of Rights is not enough to break their paradigm. Pronouncements by liberal religious bureaucracies will not be taken seriously. The "people of faith" networks organized late in the presidential campaign are just the beginning of a populist spirituality as an alternative to the corporate-Republican cooptation of the faithful.


Stay tuned for a report of my conference call with the boys behind the scenes at Integral Naked...

Genpo Ox Herds all the way to Super Freak

Hey yall! My little trauma fest has ended (for those who commented, thanks so much for the support--it means a lot) and The AQALuscious One is back in her usual fine form!

Saturday morning I drove to Kanzeon for Genpo Roshi's Zen Ox Herding workshop. Upon entering the zendo and noticing rows of chairs rather than the usual array of zafus, my mind turned instantly from mundane concerns and the thought arose, "Dammit! A perfectly good outfit wasted on the expectation of sitting on the floor!" (I'd worn jeans and a sweater when I'd rather have opted for an ensemble befitting my fabulous fashion sense.)

The workshop was AMAZING. Rather than providing opaque conceptual elaborations, Genpo rendered transparent the stages of enlightenment as portrayed through the ox herding images by directly engaging the participants in different exercises (drawn from the voice dialogue he incorporoates into his Big Mind process) turning their attention to the immediacy of their present awareness.

There were quite a few new people in attendance and Genpo made a particular effort to ensure he didn't lose anybody. With about an hour and a half to go, he inquired of a newcomer seated in the front row about her immediate experience, and she responded that she suspected that "all of this is pointless. There's no meaning in life, there's no reason for being here, and I really get the idea that everybody--including all of you--are full of shit and parroting stuff from a philosophy book."

Genpo immediately hooked in and asked with an undercurrent of humor, "Ah, am I speaking to the Pessimist?" After having a lengthy dialogue with the Pessimist, he called out the Cynic (who he called the Pessimist's "kissing cousin") and invited a thorough airing of it's grievances. He then asked to speak to Great Doubt, which he engaged with an intensity even exceeding the previous voices. I noticed his Presence, his absolute non-resistance--never wavered. Not once did he attempt to talk the voices out of their respective positions, nor did he make the slightest attempt toward pushing the self to disidentify with them. On the contrary, he affirmed and validated the voices through reflective listening and inquiry, pushing not for disidentification but for full ownership of the perspectives belonging to pessimism, cynicism, and doubt. He even went so far as to own similar experiences in himself and praised the voices for their perspectives, explicitly stating that he believed they were worthy of more respect from the self than they were accustomed to receiving. (The participant, without intending to be, was delightfully, charmingly comedic, and her humored flowered with every passing minute.)

After fully entertaining these voices, he asked to speak to Big Mind, and in a series of masterful pointing out instructions (accomplished through inquiry) which in no way negated the previously expressed perspective, he succeeded in revealing the Source and Suchness of the these perspectives. In a final stroke of brilliance, he brought the exercise full circle by laying bare the utter point-less-ness of Big Mind, demonstrating that it is not any point, but the Ground of all points and all perspectives. (After class, it turned out that the pessimistic participant paid her monthly dues and became an official Kanzeon member, and me, well, I hooked up Sensei with Saul Williams, since he's got a major soft spot for hip-hop.)

Saturday marked the end of a month long sesshin and there were people from all over the world in attendance. In celebration, a party was announced at Diane Hamilton's house. (Diane is Genpo's senior student, right hand woman, and is closely aligned with the integral psychology domain of I-I.)

The sangha was swingin'! It's not everyday that you see Genpo grooving with his dog to Super Freak, or Diane gyrating on a table, standing on her head, leading group prostrations, or conducting a seance from her bedroom. (I shit you not!) The live band had everybody singing to Brown Eyed Girl, Pretty Woman, and old Dillan songs. There was bellydancing in the back room, a tango performance by two women, and as the night wore on, kissing all around. The shindig was potluck and the dining room table was turned into a smorgasbord, and from the dozens of bottles on the kitchen counter, it was obvious that just about everybody had made a run to the state liquor store.

One guy in particular had overindulged, and expressed with all the earnestness his intoxicated self could muster that I was a manifestation of sky, and that until that night he had seen the sky but never I Am The Sky (I was wearing a sky-blue, fleece jacket, and found his confession both humorous and endearing.) I don't drink and by the night's end I commented to Genpo that I was fairly certain I was the only one not thoroughly inebriated.

Doen Sensei, Vice Abbot of Kanzeon has said he doesn't like gloomy sanghas, that he doesn't like centers where the teacher projects an air of inaccesibility. After Saturday's shindig and jitterbugging with Genpo (and every other member there), it's clear that the danger of this at Kanzeon is right up there with Dubya publicly declaring his sympathies with Satanism. =)