Word Of The Day: Dioristic / Distinguishing, distinctive, defining
Song Of The Day: Sexy Messiah / Stuart Davis (now on iTunes)

Let's say you wanted to know what my daughter looked like, and for whatever reason I could only show you a painting of a picture of a picture. First, I had taken her picture. Then, I took a picture of that picture. Then, an artist who'd never met my daughter, and had only seen that picture of the original picture, then that artist created a painting from that. Then, I showed you that painting as a representation of my daughter. Chances are, you will get a sense of some of her defining features, maybe even some of her spirit and essence, but let's face it, we are many degrees removed from the person herself. To know someone, you have to meet them in person, see them in real time, in three dimensional space, and read not only their voice and what they say, but see what they look like, what their body langauge is, and the innumerable other little details that combine to deliver the living, breathing reality of a person. Then, to really know a person, you have to spend a lot of time with them, really get to know their interiors, and that takes relationship, over time, etc.

Same with languages. Describing IS to you in a blog is just like showing you a painting of a picture of a picture. First of all, I'm giving you definitions in English. And that's really the whole point of the language, it's not equivalent, it's not horizontally convertable to simple translations, etc. If it were, what's the point? So, I'm picking words and ideas that can hopefully come across. But giving definitions in English -while unavaidable here- is flat and weird. Second, I can't write in the original script. Third, you can't hear my voice, see my body, and you have none of the auxillary varieties of meaning that are actually indispensable to language. When you read my blog in English, if you speak
English, you do have those, because even though you can't hear my voice and that, we are mutually versed in a certain canon
of English-isms and the Western (North American, European, etc) cultural catalogue of references. That's our base. But most importantly, to really get to know someone, you have to go into relationship with them over long-term, and so we'd need to speak to each other in IS for weeks, months, and years (decades) to move into depth with it, and with each other IN it. Then we might get somewhere.

And I'm not even there yet. I spend most of my time generating terms in the lexicon. That takes time, and I try not to rush it. Ther's about 4,000 terms (not counting the color-coding system, which would technically expand it to 40,000 terms) and until I've concluded that part of creating the lexicon, I won't really dive into learning the language. Then, it will take me at least a decade to become fluent, I'm sure. And I'll still never be a native speaker, because I will have acquired this language as an adult, outside the "language window" kids have between ages 0-6 or 7, where deep fluency is imprinted. You get past that, and it's sort of like learning the violin when you're grown up. You can get really, really good, but you will never have the advantages which are invisible, automatic, and naturally available to a some kid who started at age three and went Japanese on that shit. So it is with language.

I just want to make that clear, that what we're doing here is really looking at a painting of a picture of a picture. It's still useful, but it's quite removed and inanimate.

So, last installment here. We see then, that a word can have four inversions. Then, we add Wilber's altitudes, and we get ten possible colors (a color for each altitude). Together, the inversions and altitudes make 40 different coordinates, forty distinct locations, forty unique expressions of a primary signifier. That's a LOT of depth, and a LOT of flexibility.
In English, if I say "GOD" to you, we NEVER EVEN ESTABLISH

1, What altitude of consciousness does the speaker (source of the word) occupy as a center of gravity?
2, What altitude of God was the speaker specifically referring to? Which "God"? Since we know there are many.
3, What altitude of consciousness does the audience (individual) occupy as a center of gravity?
4, What altitude of consciousness does the back ground atmosphere of (collective) culture constitute?

Again, there's no overstating how much conflagration issues from cross-altitude bullshit in the World. When Jerry Falwell says "God", he is most definitely not talking about the same altitude, the same interpretation (world view) of God as Father Thomas Keating. And that, it turns out, is very, very important. Because what people are attacking, defending, and identifying with, are particular altitudes, particular locations, particular interpretations of God. The word itself is meaningless. People are talking about 40 (at least) different Gods. It is not exaggeration to say "one man's God is another man's DEVIL." YES, that EXACTLY RIGHT. George W. Bush's God is a devil to Janean Garafolo and so on. That issues from altitudes, from world views, from the interpretation of a subject. Show four different people one objective event, and they will have four different interprations of its meaning. Who's right? All of them. There is an appropriate interpration for each altitude. In fact, there is a healthy and pathological version of each altitude. But what's crucial to understand is that there are altitudes. These interpreations are NOT EQUAL, because the way development occurs is through successively expanding, ever-increasing radius of identity. Each World View includes a little bit more than its predecessor. In general, that is. And its NOT a fucking straight-ahead step by step ladder of development. It's a fucking MESS. We can make useful, over-arching determinations, but the reality of individual and collective evolution is a pretty wacky affair.

That said, our language -English and other- does a fucking horse-shit job of reflecting and designating the reality of these DEPTHS. It is pathetically inept at reflecting the dynamic, multi-dimensional calculus (Wilber has literally developed a calculus of perspectives, and it makes this language look like like someone drawing on a cave wall with burnt sticks) of inter-subjective exchange.

Why do we settle for that? Well, the answer is we don't- once we realize the richness of our being, the volume of our awareness can better be accomodated in writing, speech, and creative enterprise. Would you rather have one finger, or five? One hand, or two? One color, or forty? It's so ridiculous a question, we scoff. Yet, every fucking day of our lives we go through the bullshit of this drudgery. We have innumerable exchange, with our family members, among pundits in the media, members of government, and on and on endlessly, that are flat exercises in POINTLESS CONFUSION.

Saying "GOD" doesn't mean a fucking thing. What God? Who's saying? What level of God are they attempting to designate? Then, who's hearing it? What world view do they hear it from? What level are they attempting to hear? What is the background environment the exchange is taking place in? Are the participants inhabiting healthy or pathological versions of their respective centers of gravity? And on and on.

Now, it (almost) goes without saying that you do not transform a person's consciousness simply by engaging these depths. Just because I point out to George Bush that his God is a pathological Amber interpretation does not mean he will suddenly go "Eureka" and expand his World-view up a level to a ration one, or even become a healthy Amber one. People interpret from their level, and how we transform and evolve is very mysterious and messy. But, including depth in language will 1, increase the degree of clarity possible for many participants, and often reframe the discussions in a much more productive mojo, and 2, God (violet) only knows what communication would be like for a person who was born into a language configured with these depths, as pre-given features of communication. They would still have to move through all the usual stages (everyone starts at zero, and makes the journey one step at a time), but the expressive tools at their disposal would be richer, multi-faceted, more equipped at reflecting reality, and might even accelerate development.

One thing I have learned working on IS, is that ultimately, no matter what it ends up looking like or how it comes about, the future of communication is absolutely pointed in this direction. Once you experience something like Wilber's calculus of perspectives, or the altitudes of a linguistic system like IS, then the flat, lifeless forms that came before (all standard language) becomes infuraiting, depressing. Listen, if spend half your life sending fucking smoke signals with a blanket, and then one day someone comes along and goes "Uh,... here's high speed internet." you will never go back to smoke signals. And we are headed there. IF we make it -IF- as a species we continue to migrate through the interior gradations of awareness, then we are bound and destined for a richer, multi dimensional mode of expression and languaging. It's already trying to come into being, and whatever it ends up looking like, IT WILL BE INTEGRAL. Because that is the tip, that is the avant garde of what is being issued from the deepest quarters. That is our native endowment, that is our own being unfolding in its most inclusive at this time, and to settle for anything less would be to romanticize fucking blankets and smoke signals. No. No way.

And that is all IS is meant to be. An experiment toward that eventuality. That inevitability.

In speaking IS, these altitudes are denoted through prefixes and infixes in the word. In writing it, it can also be modified literally by a color-coding system. I'm sure down the road, when such things begin to flower, IS will look silly and insufficient. I HOPE SO! I welcome the day these clumsy experiments become the antiquated proto-types, consigned to the museums of awareness, an artifact for a rapidly advancing civilization. Authentically advancing, which means not just a facility with exterman phenomena, but the inward growth as well, of wisdom, wonder, curiousity, and the myriad forms of love that infuse all phenomena sentience.