Tentacles

So we're getting down to it now! We leave for the states on Saturday evening. Off on a great adventure which hopefully will turn out to be more pleasant than traumatic. We will have to see. Traveling at Christmastime is always a bit of a mess, and this time we have the little one in tow. Plus we're right in the heat of the US job market so I'm going to be sending out oodles of job apps while I'm away as well. Somewhere in there I need to get some work done too.

Meanwhile I'm trying to figure out if there is a way for me to squirm my way back into my G5 while we're away, and I think I may have come up with something. It's a bit of a kludge and involves cron jobs, a bit of python scripting and using my desktop workstation as a waystation. Still, with any luck I'll be able to worm my way in and perhaps even slurp some tasty bits out! I'll have to try it out this evening and see if it works.

I started reading Wilber's latest book Integral Spirituality last night. Oh boy... The 5 year gap sure shows. A whole new level of complexity has descended on the integral thing, probably having much to do with the founding of I-I. This is not going to be a simple read. Plus, I get the feeling it depends somewhat on the as yet unpublished Kosmos, Vol. 2. (Though to be fair he at least put some excepts out). Still, I think this one is probably going to be a bit of work. I am somewhat encouraged by his notion of 'integral post-metaphysics', depending on what that turns out to mean.

Still, I have to get my head around what he means by his "Integral Methodological Pluralism," and why his 4 quadrants now seem to have turned into 8 "zones". We now have an inside and an outside to each quadrant, (in addition to the left='interior', right='exterior' bifurcation of the original 4 quadrants.) So far, his one example is meditative study being upper left 'inside' and Spiral Dynamics being upper left 'outside'. So it seems like he's hidden the subjective inside yet another layer and in the process perhaps eaten a bit of the NOMA idea. ("Here's the point: you can sit on your meditation mat for decades, and you will NEVER see anything resembling the stages of Spiral Dynamics. And you can study Spiral Dynamics till the cows come home, and you will NEVER have a satori.") Although unlike NOMA, he seems to argue that you should do both instead of hiding behind which ever side of the invisible wall you would like to work on and ignoring the other side. I suspect that the eventual payoff will be the nondual realization which will of course illuminate all as the ground of spirit, or some such...

I found his 'Wilber-4' writing a bit mysterious until I managed to plow through SES. And as meandering and sprawling as that book is, it does have the ingredients needed to understand the rest of his contemporary books. Indeed, to really get "Wilber-4" I had to read SES, and let it percolate for a while, and then read A Theory of Everything which then put the bits in context. (Helped quite a bit by the excellent 'color' shorthand of Spiral Dynamics which does simplify the discussion.) SES was the fuel, TOE was the spark. But now he's gone and made things a bit more complicated and we need the new SES lay the ground work. Anyway, a little light reading for Christmas.

Integral Institute and the "Integral Movement" are quite interesting... Maybe even compelling. I just wish I didn't have the 'creepy cult alarm' going off in the back of my head. Is this what Scientology looked like in the 50's? Hmm... there's a thought to keep one behind the sofa.

Meanwhile, one can ponder this image and think Christmasy thoughts.