Terry's Blog

The news so far during 2011 has been particularly electrifying: Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and the whole Middle East.  Budget crises worldwide, and in the USA, bitter battles including dramatic moves to rewrite the social contract. Japan’s earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis. The brutal civil war and international intervention in Libya. And there will be more electrifying and heartbreaking news soon, undoubtedly.

It stirs our hearts and our fears, distracts us, fascinates us, and confuses us. There are several ways to practice with this kind of news, and I want to share three perspectives about how we can work with it as a practice.

Practice #1: Relax, Feel It Completely and Let It Go

Why the “Killer App”?

What made computers indispensable?

• The first database programs, plus word processing and accounting software.

What first made the Internet a necessity instead of a curiosity?

• Email, singlehandedly. 

Why did cell phones become nearly ubiquitous so quickly, despite concerns about their health impacts?

• Mobile connectivity, plus the magic of texting, made cellphones an essential tool for postmodern lifestyles.

Why do we salivate over the iPhone, and now the iPad?

• Because the sleek tool lets us use thousands of amazingly cool, intuitive apps.

We undertake the ordeal of upgrading our operating systems only in order to access new applications. A “killer app” legitimizes any innovative approach, making the expense and hassle of an upgrade worthwhile.  Read more »

One of Andrew Cohen’s critics recently attacked me in a blog post. Detailing a few of the most inflammatory stories about Cohen, a group of teachers (including me, Ken Wilber and others) were accused of “enabling abuse” because we have dialoged and cooperated with Andrew, his students and his publications. None of us responded publicly to the attack. I chose not to because in the echo chamber of the blogosphere there is no way to respond thoughtfully and at length to irresponsible negativity without raising it to an implicitly equal status, and thereby validating and empowering it.  Read more »

I'm writing this in the spacious stillness of Thanksgiving weekend. My life has been moving at high speed, but over this holiday break an opening appeared. The phone barely rang, and a sense of deep peace naturally blossomed. My heart has been overflowing with spontaneous gratitude (or as Brother David Steindl-Rast so beautifully puts it, "great-full-ness".)

I'm grateful for many things—family and friends, my spiritual friends and communities, some inspiring creative projects, amazing partners, and my growing, vibrant communities of integral evolutionary spirituality and service. I'm especially grateful for the opportunity to serve humankind, and our current intensifying wild ride through what is certainly a kind of evolutionary whitewater rafting.

Optimism vs. Pessimism About Humanity's Prospects  Read more »

My last blog entry was written as Deborah and I prepared to fly to France so I could MC the 5 day Renaissance2 Great Shift Gathering in Perpignan.

I asked a lot of questions in my last post about the efficacy of such an endeavor. And my report is, I'm happy to say, essentially positive. The key principles I enumerated were very present during the gathering. And although there were certainly a range of vMemes interacting, the emphasis on creating tangible projects with business models remains a deep consideration of all involved. And I still have real hopes for what Renaissance2 can spawn in the weeks, months and years ahead.  Read more »

My root-guru, Adi Da Samraj, passed a year ago this Thanksgiving in Fiji. He was 69. I was a devotee of this great God-realizer from the age of 22 until I was 37. He not only profoundly transformed my life and consciousness, but, I think, helped transform the entirety of contemporary Western spirituality, even though he is not nearly as widely known as he is influential.

On this anniversary of his passing, I remember him with gratitude, and look back in amazement at his legacy. Please know, words fail here. To speak about Adi Da is to nominate oneself as one of the blind men reporting on the elephant. Adi Da was one part Jesus Christ, one part Picasso, one part Nagarjuna, one part Marlon Brando, and one part Genghis Khan. And more...

In recent years Ken Wilber has offered well-reasoned criticism and chose to be judiciously circumspect on the subject of Adi Da (after enduring extreme opprobrium for his previous high praise) but he never disavowed what he had previously written about Adi Da's remarkable body of original Dharma. "Da Free John's teaching is, I believe, unsurpassed by that of any other spiritual Hero, of any period, of any place, of any time, of any persuasion" and "it is becoming quite obvious that no one in the fields of psychology, religion, philosophy, or sociology can afford not to be at least a student of Da Free John."

Think of ideas such as "the self-contraction," the idea that "the ego is not an entity but an activity," the phrase "always already," the idea that "the end of the path is the Way from the beginning," the idea of the "paths of yogis saints and sages," and his "seven stages of life." All these seminal phrases and insights entered our contemporary spiritual conversation through Adi Da. Not to mention his remarkable Sacred Image Art.  Read more »

Assumptions about Organizational Hierarchies 

The word "integral" evolved etymologically from the Latin root "tangere." This same root is also the source of words like "tactile," "tangible" and "tangent." It means "touch."  The first syllable of the word Integral, "in" is a negation. So, etymologically, "Integral" at its root then, means "that which is untouched."

Something can be untouched only if there's nothing else to touch it. That which includes everything (so that there is nothing "else") is that which is untouched. Thus, Integral means radical inclusivity. This is the essence of Integral - wholeness.

As used commonly, though, this word Integral appears has two aspects. 

One aspect can be seen in related words like "integrated" or "integrating." We use these words to describe what happens when some individual or group, some aspect, element, or idea, which has previously been excluded, is now included in a greater wholeness, and everything shifts, and all the parts then have a new and right relationship to each other.  There is integration. It's about parts coming together rightly and making a more perfect whole. They connote something like "including all the parts and rightly relating them to each other."  Read more »

Integral Perspectives on Iran's Cultural Divide

In Integral terms, the demonstrators can be distinguished from the regime’s supporters by cultural qualities relating to states, stages, and relationships to shadow.

High states are part of the ethos both of the demonstrators and of the regime’s true believers. Most of these high states are evoked by acts of self-transcendence, whether they be self-abnegation or self-sacrifice, whether they be gross physical acts or subtle emotional or mental acts.

Persians are poets and revolutionaries, a heartfelt, brooding, noble, and passionate people. Each year, on Ashura, faithful grassroots Shia men go into a trance and beat themselves bloody to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hosayn Ibn Ali, in memory of whom Shiism originally emerged. Sufi mystics go together into trances in which they dance and sing and enter into ecstatic communion with Allah. Ancient Persian poetry is full of ecstatic mystic language, expressing a rich and passionate love affair with God. Modern Persian poetry is full of ecstatic emotional language, expressing a rich and passionate love affair with life, and pain, and death.

The structure of Iranians’ values are still centered in traditional agreements about symbols, tones, morés and resonances. But their values also now include certain modern and postmodern values like common sense, respect for the dignity of others, thinking for oneself, and the curiosity to observe the modern world directly. Their values are not altogether modern; but they are not exclusively conformist.

Their eyes have noticed a myriad of details and evidence and colors and shades of grey that the regime is telling them aren’t there. “Are you going to believe me or your lying eyes?” Everyone “in their right mind” knows the regime has lied to them.  Read more »

An Overview of the Transformative Events of June 2009

I think the events we have been seeing this month —June 2009 — represent a seismic shift, a great exclamation point in the punctuated evolution of the Islamic Republic. It is not just a political shift. This week of demonstrations, involving the shutdown of much of Iran, including the government’s intermittent shutdown of its whole communications infrastructure, have affected people who previously were not terribly activist, or reformist. Many have been radicalized. Many more have been forced to think. And feel.

Perceptions so far, politically:  

Ahmadinejad seems to have been weakened tremendously. He can no longer pull off his “man of the people” act in the same way as before. He appears suddenly crude to his countrymen. He can still do damage, but his larger influence will be in decline.

Khamenei has probably lost his aura of legitimate, overwhelming authority. He has been publicly discredited in the eyes of at least half the people, and many of the members of the clerical establishment. The very function of “Supreme Leader” is no longer secure.

Mousavi has become the man of the hour — the righteous leader wronged by corrupt authorities, the “Hossain” archetype of martyrdom that is the central theme of Persian Islam. This makes him dangerous, and puts him in serious danger.

Former President Rafsanjani is the wiliest and most powerful of the big players, and he's been the only one who has been publicly silent — and very active behind the scenes. Through the Assembly of Experts or the military, he could become the new kingmaker, or he may be in a difficult struggle for his political survival.  Read more »