The Daily Evolver

Theo Horesh is a Boulder social entrepreneur, philosopher and a familiar face in the integral community. Last year Theo published a series of insightful essays on the Middle East, inspired by his time spent with the Palestinians and the Yazidi refugees. I invited him over to talk about his travels, only to find out that he has also released a new book on a broader topic: Convergence: The Globalization of Mind.

I enjoyed our conversation, and hope you do, too. Theo and I talked about his travels, and his heart-to-heart connections with people under siege, particularly with the youth in whom he finds much to admire. We talked about how these kinds of connections — in both real space and virtual space — can bring on a more worldcentric mind for all involved.

Excerpt: If you see more you’ve got to be responsible for more

There are many examples of how this is already happening—the internet, international agreements and cooperation, travel and communication. But in a world where entire cultures span multiple levels of development, gaining consensus about what we can create, and how, can be a tricky proposition. The feeling of being overwhelmed is prevalent, as first tier structures of consciousness are mostly motivated by fear. How does integral theory transcend this thinking, and help us think about these vastly complex systems?

Listen as Theo discusses how each of us can call forth a worldcentric mind, so we can be a more awake and effective as we become more plugged-in and connected.

Repressed anger, hidden fears, unwanted impulses and compulsions…our psyches contain parts of ourselves that are concealed but which can deeply affect our lives. “We’re bigger than we know, literally,” says Jeff. “There are parts of ourselves that we’re not aware of but that are still there, and often they’re running the show. At a certain stage of development our practice becomes the process of shining a light on the areas that are in the dark.”

The discovery of the unconscious mind was a major achievement of human psychology, and has revealed powerful new therapeutic approaches to human health and happiness. The basic premise is simple: if dissociating from parts of ourselves keeps us from developing, then integrating those parts will accelerate our development. The extent to which we acknowledge our shadow is the extent to which we allow our development into whole people with rich relationships.

Primal drives and instincts don’t stay quietly locked away in the basement until we invite them up for tea. And the more complex we become, the more elaborate our defenses. But in the same way we gauge the wind by looking at the leaves on the trees or the waves on the water, we can see the effects of our shadows. It’s a pretty good bet that you’re operating from shadow when your emotional response is way out of proportion to the circumstances at hand. You may see yourself get angry, defensive or fearful for no good reason. You catch yourself lying and you’re not sure why, or you find yourself in the same difficult situation or unhealthy relationship over and over.

Dr. Carl Jung famously said “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” If we’re not aware of the forces in our psyche — physiological, psychological, emotional—then shadow is organizing us.

Dr. Keith tells us that the only difference between a destructive shadow and a constructive shadow is our willingness to engage with it. Not a pleasant task in the best of circumstances, let alone when we’re in the defensive states that arise when our shadows are activated. We have to trust others to help us—our partners, friends, support groups, and of course, our therapists. It takes courage to be vulnerable and open enough to confront these lost parts of ourselves.  And since the world is our mirror, it’s always going to happen in relationship. That is the difficulty, and it’s also what saves us.

We can learn to look within, to identify destructive shadow and then metabolize it and transform it. “When you’re dealing with destructive shadow, you have to feel it and accept it and simultaneously bring embodied moral discernment to bear on it,” says Dr. Keith. “That combination of acceptance and moral discernment is sometimes paradoxical, they’re often reciprocal inhibitors, and so part of development is getting better at bringing those forces together and reconciling them with the drives and impulses that arise.”

Those drives and instincts are expressed differently at the various altitudes of development, as is the embodied moral discernment that can transmute them. As usual, it helps to have an integral view — which is what you’ll get in this conversation from Dr. Keith Witt and Jeff Salzman: AKA, The Shrink and The Pundit.

On the left, a Shoshone berdache from the 1800’s. On the right, a young Rupaul, contemporary drag queen and star of the hit show Rupaul’s Drag Race on Logo TV.

After generations of persecution, gay people are achieving equality with remarkable speed in the developed world. Yet there was a time when gender variant people were not only equal but were honored and respected members inside their larger tribal societies (such as the berdache in Native American culture). Raymond Rigoglioso, author of Gay Men and the New Way Forward, says it’s time again for gay men to recognize, and be recognized for, the special contributions they make to society.

“Gay men, as a group, contribute to the human family and serve an evolutionary function,” Ray tells Jeff. “We play special roles that contribute to the welfare and vitality of humans, and to the expansion of consciousness.”

Ray puts these contributions into three basic categories: 1) re-inventing manhood, 2) serving and healing humanity, and 3) freeing and enriching the human spirit.

One of the “foundational gifts” that Ray talks about in his book is the ability to flow back and forth between the polarities of masculinity and femininity with ease, which naturally creates a fuller range of human expression. And as gay men (and women) become more accepted, we can also see gender expression shifting in the larger culture. The way that our great grandparents expressed masculinity and femininity is very different than now, says Jeff. “Men and women in general are integrating the gifts of the opposite pole.”

Many gay men think the distinguishing characteristic of their identity is sexual orientation, but Ray explains that they also have a different social orientation—an orientation towards service. You can see it in the roles of tribal ancestors—shamans, healers, visionaries, and artisans—and you can see it today, with the contemporary shamans in music and dance, the arts, spiritual leadership. And let’s not forget sexual leadership; after all, gay men have been enjoying “friends with benefits” for decades!

In the podcast, Jeff and Ray take us on a quick tour of the cultural climate for gays at each stage of human development. In the last few decades, postmodern values have allowed sexual minorities to claim some dignity and equality in the culture and in the eyes of the law. So what’s next? Where does gay culture go from here?  Is there even such a thing as gay culture going forward? “I believe so,” says Ray, “if we expand what it means to be gay from just having a different sexual orientation to our larger role in society. We have a future if we claim the social roles that we play.”

Pop culture is much maligned. But human beings have always told simple stories, stories that show us who we are, how to act, and all of the places we can go. For the vast majority of our history these stories were told around the fire. Today they are told in the glow of many billions of screens, our access points to a worldwide mediaverse that is telling every story, and connecting everybody with everybody.

Oprah Winfrey expands our identity into world-centric, even spiritual dimensions.  And sophisticated serial dramas like the Sopranos, Breaking Bad and Mad Men (which recently completed its six year run) provide morality tales as complex and powerful as classic literature.

New research out of the University of Southern California reveals that Americans consume media, both digital and traditional, for over fifteen hours per person per day. Waste of time? Much of it perhaps, but oh what a window we have on our world and each other.

There is a debate going on among geologists about when the Anthropocene began. As recently reported in Aeon Magazine, some are recommending a start date in the 1950’s due to the proliferation of thermonuclear test explosions which left a radionuclide signature across the planet. But also because the early 1950’s “coincides with the beginning of the Great Acceleration in the second half of the 20th century, a period of unprecedented economic and population growth with matching surges in every aspect of planetary dominance, from the damming of rivers to fertiliser production, to ozone depletion” and of course, greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

In the integral world, we often emphasize the miracles of development and the evolution of consciousness, culture and technology that arise through it. But development also exacts great costs in the degradation of the natural world, atmosphere and oceans. We also suffer a psychological toll of being alienated from the natural cycles of the earth, and oftentimes from each other. And of course some say that development is much worse than that—it is our doom.

But it may be more accurate to say that something new is being born. As societies develop populations become more urban and have fewer children, which results in a smaller ecological footprint. We see that in first world countries carbon dioxide emissions are beginning to drop, the air and water is ever cleaner, trees and biomass are increasing, and the number of wild animals is stable —  even as human populations increase (through longer life spans and immigration) and economies grow. It’s not all bad news.

Historically, we see ecological awareness come online as an effort to protect one’s own tribe, clan or country (thus the U.S. Clean Water and Clean Air Acts of the1970’s, as well and the clean-up efforts in China and other 2nd world countries today). This impulse matures as we become world-centric, and begin to see the all the earth and all the life it supports is sacred and worth preserving.

“But didn’t early cultures also have a sacred relationship with the earth?” you might ask. Well, they may have engaged in nature worship, but that was about nature protecting them, not them protecting nature.

As An Ecomodernist Manifesto points out, “Early human populations with much less advanced technologies had a far larger individual land footprint than societies have today.  Consider that a population of no more than one or two million North Americans hunted most of the continent’s large mammals into extinction by the late Pleistocene while burning and clearing forests across the continent in the process. Extensive human transformations of the environment continued through the Holocene period. As much as three quarters of all deforestation globally occurred before the industrial revolution.”

This challenges a basic tenet of postmodern, green-altitude environmentalism, the “pre-trans fallacy” that says the way forward for humanity is to go back to the way it was in premodern and even pre-agricultural times. This is of course is completely unachievable short of the collapse of civilization and a major human die-off — which is why there are some people in the environmental movement that actually wish for a “great collapse.”

As we push up against the limits of a finite planet, there are two competing views: 1) the modernist view that development is constructive and 2) the postmodernist view that development is destructive. What we see as integralists is that both sides of this pole reside in the first-tier altitude stack. As such, they think that their view is the only correct one and that people who hold the other view are co-opted, deluded, naive or stupid. Welcome to the politics of environmentalism! But from an integral perspective, again, it’s not all bad news. We see that the powerful conflict in these polarities is fruitful. Indeed, it is the engine of the dialectic of progress. We fight with our ideas but we have sex with them as well, creating more sophisticated, integrated perspectives.

An Ecomodernist Manifesto presents just such an integrated perspective. As Slate Magazine says, “After decades of hearing environmentalists rally against things (no Keystone pipeline!), the change in tone coming from ecomodernists is palpable and welcome. It’s inclusive, it’s exciting, and it gives environmentalists something to fight for for a change. Plus, the ecomodernist focus on people and planet gives the broad middle of the American public a way to embrace ethical economic growth, without having to chain themselves to a pipeline.”

So now, people who care about the planet can debate what we are going to say yes to, and how we are going to create a great Anthropocene—because there’s no going back. Humans are a geological force, as powerful as any other on the planet. We are Nature Herself, and no, Gaia is not mad at us. The Anthropocene posits a worldview in which humans are not just relevant but actually responsible for the fate of the planet.

“What is important is that we see that we don’t have to fight something or correct something as much as we have to support something that is happening under its own power,” says Jeff, “This is the continued development of first-person consciousness, second-person culture and third-person technology.”

Listen to the podcast for more details of Jeff’s integral analysis of An Ecomodernist Manifesto, and join the conversation.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

After the last week’s podcast about the protests in Baltimore, Corey deVos, editor of Integral Life, put us in touch with a friend who lives there. “He’s an integral practitioner, a former member of the Black Panther party, a Buddhist meditation teacher and a therapist.” Do you want to talk to him? Um … yes!

It seems like the people making most of the noise—the protesters and the pundits—are the either/or voices, trying to blame or exonerate. So Jeff was excited to talk to someone with an integral perspective on the African American experience at a time when the conversation is so ripe.

Justin Miles shared a piece on Facebook that he called “Meditation for Militants” which stands out as an integral voice, calling not only for a look at the economic, political and social systems (the exteriors) but equally important, self-reflection among a community that feels so much anger that it can turn on itself.

While some voices insist they should use that rage and bring down the system, others assert that “violence is not the answer.”

As John Paul Brammer wrote this week in Blue Nation Review, the protests in Baltimore are “not a random, unprovoked outburst by a group of opportunists. This is how the unheard speak when words prove to be useless.”

Indeed, anger has a lot of energy in it. That is why, from a tantric perspective, it can be useful—but only if you have the anger, and the anger doesn’t have you. Justin tells Jeff:

“I think care and concern are a part of the nature of anger. They’re part of the usefulness of anger, wanting to go out and expand this feeling of wanting to improve things in Baltimore city.

“The other side of that, I think, the part that maybe we’re not seeing, is the aspect of needing the anger in order to go beyond the anger. We don’t need to see anger as something that’s not useful or something that somehow we feel bad about. I say…let’s go with it. Let’s use that as our fuel.”

To be effective, an activist needs to know his own mind and heart. Otherwise he will not be able to tell the difference between his own demons and the injustices inflicted upon him by a system that is uncaring, and he will burn everything indiscriminately.

This is where contemplative practice comes in. When you take a step back and look within, says Justin, “what is discovered is clarity, strength and mental stability, qualities that all revolutions are based on at their core. The ideas of social movements arise out of deep concern and connection with our heartmind.”

Justin’s big heart really comes through in this conversation, and we hope to have him back on  the show.

Also in the podcast, Jeff looks at cynicism, and the role it plays in our political discourse. The integral perspective provides some relief from this tiresome outlook. Being aware of the fourth dimension (time) and taking multiple perspectives, “we become essentially post ideological. We become friends with life as it is, the world as it is, and we’re no longer comparing the world as it is unfavorably to some ideal…”

And lastly, questions from listeners: Mark in Tennessee is wondering about the ontological reality of visions, and Suzanne from North Carolina is questioning the legitimacy of astrology in light of her integral awakening.

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On the surface, the story of the unrest in Baltimore recently is a familiar story about police brutality and racism. But the glowing embers of civil unrest that were fanned into flames last week by Freddie Gray’s death is likely a systemic problem in America whose karma can be traced back to slavery. And more recently, four decades of middle class and working class jobs leaving American cities and the economic devastation that’s caused.

In West Baltimore, where Gray lived and was arrested, more than half of people between 16 and 64 are unemployed. In this podcast, Jeff feels into the anger and hopelessness in impoverished communities stripped of opportunity, and how that resentment is expressed at different stages of development, as well as responded to by the powers that be.

Measured in terms of death, destruction and injury, Jeff points out, the violence last week was about one tenth what it was during the riots in 1968. We can talk about how bad things are, and we can talk about how far we’ve come, and both perspectives are true.

A funny thing happens as we develop–we become more sensitive to injustice, and act to rectify it. As we act to rectify it, we become ever more sensitive to it, and on it goes, so that the gap between our ideals and our reality never closes.

The result is that less and less violence gets more and more attention. The news on TV is intended to hook our nervous system so we stay tuned, Jeff says…

“Obama talked about the peaceful protesters, and how sad it was that one burning building will be looped on television over and over and over again, which is what happens. Yet, thousands of demonstrators did it the right way. Obama said, ‘The overwhelming majority of the community in Baltimore has handled this appropriately. Expressing real concern and outrage over the possibility that our laws were not applied evenly in the case of Mr. Gray, and that accountability needs to exist.’”

The unfortunate fact about violence is that it actually works—in the short term. A week of protests in Baltimore didn’t get near the level of attention as they did when they started to turn violent.

It was announced on Friday that the state attorney of Baltimore has brought homicide, manslaughter, and misconduct charges against the six officers involved. Hopefully justice gets done in this case, both in regards to the police officers, as well as the looters and arsons. But the larger conversation this engenders is the engine of our evolution.

“What’s ultimately going to overcome racism on this planet is the increased ‘mongrelization’ of the human race, which is well underway” says Jeff. “That will continue with the increasing number of bi- tri- and multi-racial babies. I think this is a characteristic of the sacred world to come.”

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People are always sending Jeff questions, which he loves. Some of them he answers privately, others make for good podcasting and are worth sharing. The common thread running through most of them is an inquiry into: how are we to live more consciously and integrally? Not surprisingly, this is Jeff’s favorite topic of conversation!

“We’re exploring this new territory intellectually,” he says, “but we also have integral awakenings that we can feel in our own bodies. We experience living in a new worldspace.  But what is it?  What does it feel like?  How does it call us to act? How do we settle here, become stabilized and take up residency?”  That’s at the core of the listener questions Jeff ponders this week …

Thank you to everyone who sends in questions and comments. Please keep them coming! Our favorite way to get them is through Speakpipe, the orange tab to the right. You can also write to Jeff at [email protected].

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FULL PODCAST (PLUS EXCERPTS OF EACH QUESTION)

As the P5+1 reached the outline of a deal with Iran to roll back its nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions, modernists (orange altitude) celebrated in the US and in the streets of Tehran. Traditionalists (amber altitude), on both sides, warned that the other couldn’t be trusted. As Dr. Phil points out to heartbroken lovers trying to reconcile, you may not be able to trust the other to do what they say, but you can trust them to be who they are.

In this podcast Jeff points out that governments have evolved into greater complexity and cooperation—from clans to tribes to empires to nations. We are seemingly on our way to a federation of nations, a de facto world government, and you can see it happening now in many spheres, including the way the world has cooperated to keep the pressure on Iran, from the US and Europe to China and even Russia, a formal ally of Iran.

Nobody wants more nuclear weapons on the planet, but especially nobody wants one in the hands of the theocratic Iranian government, so much so that it has trumped other geo-political considerations. Maybe Tehran wouldn’t consider using them as official policy, but the possibility that they could find their way to someone who would is terrifying. In the podcast, Jeff invites us to feel into the scenario of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Chilling, no?

Modern technology in the hands of premodern cultures is one of the greatest challenges of our time (ISIS, North Korea, etc.). A pre-modern mentality is ethnocentric and is organized around defending against an enemy. At the traditional/pre-modern stage, Jeff says, “we are in a cosmic struggle with those who are on the wrong side of things. Not only other people but other powers, including transcendent powers.”

The traditionalists in Iran and in the US want to dig in their heels and fight the good fight. Meanwhile, the modernists are engaging with sanctions and diplomacy, which seem to have worked well enough. A deal was reached and thousands of people in Iran were celebrating on the streets and on social media. They are about to get relief from sanctions that have crippled Iran for a decade. A staggering 63% of Iran’s population is under 30 years old and they are dying to fully participate in the modern world, to share their “Persian-ness” as Jeff puts it — and we want them to!

While the keyhole view that the West has into Iranian culture via social media can skew our perceptions, according to New York Magazine the “tiny hardliner counterprotest” outside of the Iranian Parliament—200 men carrying handwritten signs—was “lifeless by comparison.”

Celebrations last night after #IranTalks #Tehran (AFP) pic.twitter.com/EfRM15gcvZ

— Sanam Maher (@SanamMKhi) April 3, 2015

Jeff talks about all of this in detail, and brings in a spiritual perspective. Plus, don’t miss the birthday dedication at the end from Ken Wilber, the crew at Integral Life, and a host of friends and fans…

Check it out, and join us on Tuesday evening for The Daily Evolver Live on Integral Radio.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jeff begins this first podcast of the 2015 Spring season by talking about the relationships we have with every precious form of life, from his garden tulips with their sensual unfolding in his ikebana arrangements … to the Great Mystery, the loving intelligence at the center and circumference of the Kosmos.

“One of the projects of being an integral spiritual practitioner is to re-enchant the world. To see that everything that is alive is also conscious; it has awareness, volition and yes, even longing,” Jeff says.

He reports on last weekend’s Return to the Heart of Christ Consciousness conference, put on by Integral Life, which drew over 250 people (plus several hundred more via the web) to the St. Julien Hotel here in Boulder, all of them looking at this question of how we humans relate to a personal divinity.

The 2nd person relationship with Spirit changes dramatically as individuals and cultures develop. Generally, our connection to the spiritual realm is lost when we move from the traditional stage of development (the amber altitude) to the modern stage of development (the orange altitude). We are unable to reconcile God’s presence with science and rational thought.

And then comes post-modern (green altitude) spirituality, which embraces first-person, nondual spiritual practices like meditation. It also embraces third-person spirituality such as deep ecology and nature mysticism. But God as creator, friend, lover? Not so much. There are still a lot of allergies, even with integralists, to the idea of a personal God.

In the second half of the show Jeff is joined by Steve McIntosh, author of Integral Consciousness, Evolution’s Purpose, and his new book The Presence of the Infinite, which will be coming out later this year.

Steve describes post-modern spirituality as progressive spirituality, and explains that it favors the nondual conception of ultimate reality. Evolutionary spirituality, which emerges at  integral consciousness, is a dialectical step beyond the postmodern worldview, and reintroduces us to a theistic, 2nd person relationship with the divine — but one that is post-mythic and trans-rational.

Steve says, “… nonduality is based on a very deep, real, replicable, and ancient spiritual experience. But the theistic side also has its own sort of spiritual experience, which is not the same thing. This is the experience, as I argue, of the love of God. The love of a universe that cares. The love of a higher transcendent form of reality that exists within you. It’s immanent and transcendent.”

But then, if God is so loving why is there so much suffering? Jeff wants to know. Steve says “the shadow of consciousness is suffering,” and does his best in the last part of the show to address the philosophical problem of evil–in five minutes!

Check it out, and join us on Tuesday evening for The Daily Evolver Live on Integral Radio.

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