song of the day: God Must Be A Bogeyman / Mingus
word of the day: tarnation / Damned, damnable, infernal, execrable (n, a, & adv, slang)

ha ha ha ha ha haha hahhaahahahahahahah!!! i almost lost it. i almost forgot. i almost....well, ok, i DID get lost in the dream again- but that's nothing new, i go unconscious about 375 times a day, and that's just the waking hours.

so, bush is president again. actually the context of our work on earth remains precisely the same. the bodhisattva's vow and work doesn't fluctuate according to administrations or regimes, and unless i fully die into that part of myself which is bigger than any of this, which is deeper than anything that comes and goes, what good am i going to be to my fellow human beings? the only way to work in the relative world is by abiding in the Absolute space in which it all arises.

it's a slippery fucking hold, resting in no-identity, dying into the transparency from which all the perspectives arise. but that's the gig, because it's so very important that i completely, totally ENGAGE the world, really live this life- whether it's loving my daughter and wife, playing music and making art with passion, making friends and working with foes- there's no way to really work for the sake of Love (real Love, not the emotional / delusional circus of clutching, but Big Love, Big Heart, Big Mind) if I get lost in the dream every time it gets exciting, every time it gets challenging. right now the dream is challenging, right now the Mystery is piercing a lot of hearts, weaving and threading something unknowable through all of us.

sometimes (sorry, i gotta take a second here, cuz at this very moment i'm listening to Def Leppard's Bringin' On The Heartache, and it SO FUCKING ROCKS. holy shit. that pre-chorus is the SHIT!!! DA-DA-DA-DA-DA "oh, can't you see.....DA DA DA DA DA...you got the best of me.....DA DA DA DA DA DA DA YOU'RE BRINGING ON THE HEEEEEEEEARRRRRRRRRTBREAK!!!!!!!!!!!!!! can't you see? can't you see.........? NO- OH!!!!!! NO-OH!!!!!!!!!)

ok, anyway. sometimes with spirituality or the integral thing, people think well, if you have really strong opinions, or if you take a position, then you have 'fallen asleep' again, then you are lost in the relative world. but that's just not the case. the spontaneous expression of LOVE is action in the world, is engaging life with vitallity and exuberance. now, whether that means hugging my mom or driving my car carefully so i don't hurt other people in an accident, or working hard to put the most highly developed officials into elected office- it is CRUCIAL i take a position, i have to have a perspective to take an action. the mystics who realize the Absolute and then hang out in the Void all the time are NOT Non-Dual. Genpo Roshi said something one time that i have always loved, and it was something like "the worst kind of non-duality is the non-duality that thinks it's better than non-non-duality." another way of putting it:

Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form

the problem with the Relative world is not having a perspective, it's not taking a position, it's over- identifying with it. i have extremely strong opinions and feelings about the Bush administration, but honestly, i do not ultimately identify with them, and i haven't really identified with my small self since i had a little awakening years ago. that doesn't mean that my small self stopped existing, or that the relative world suddenly passed out of existence because i recognized the emptiness it arises in was "ME" too. it just means that there is an awareness OF stu that is not merely Stu. that goes for everything, there is an awareness of all the aspects of my small self, and that awareness is not any of those aspects, but is capable of dwelling within each of them. i realize that what is thought of as "Stuart" including the personality, the preferences, the beliefs, the body, the mind, and the soul- will all pass out of existence in no time at all, and have no real lasting, permanent "reality" to them. Reality is the emptiness in which all the little realities rise and fall, form and vaporize.

and you know what? it's FUN to live and act in the world of form. it's FUN to have strong, passionate opinions, especially because i know they are not ultimately real, especially because i do not ultimately identify with them. they are tools, they are toys, they are forms at my disposal, but they are not "ME". when you are awake within a dream, you can have fun with it.

the danger is not having any notion, any sense that our true identity is not our opinions, our beliefs, our small selves. now, i don't need to tell you that, for instance, fundamentalist Christians, or extremist Muslims, or Corporate Berzerkers do very much ultimately identify with their beliefs, do very much identify with their perspectives as THE reality, THE one and only correct view. when you hear people talking about an integral approach, when you hear them bring up 1st tier and 2nd tier perspectives, this is in part what they're referring to. 1st tier perspectives include all pre-rational and rational perspectives, from:

PURPLE / magic-animistic to power clans
to
RED / power clans
to
BLUE / mythic-membership / order
to
ORANGE /acheivment-scientific
and up to
GREEN / wholistic-pluralistic World views)

this is to say 1st tier Word Views- each of those memes defend and inhabit their perspective at the exlusion / denial of the ones that come before them developmentally (including the pluralistic World View, which, even though it says no view should be higher or privelaged over another- it actually means no view is better than any other view, except its OWN view, which says all views are equal).

1st tier perspectives are the 'sleeping perspectives', they each believe the dream, and they believe their particular role or perspective is THE right one.

2nd tier perspectives (which are integral, and include include the trans-rational perspectives) are a different story. starting with Yellow / Integral are a bit more awake. they realize that ALL the perspectives, ALL memes are crucial, indespensible aspects of one dynamic, fluxing spiral. you don't get Green without Orange, you don't get Orange without Blue, Blue would not arise without Red, Red could not exist without its predecessor Purple, and i actually left out our good Buddy Beige, which is primal existence (basic hunger, protection, sex, etc). no one, no individual, no society, NO-ONE skips stages. it does not happen. people move through stages in different ways, at different speeds, but no one ever skips stages of development, and these memes are indeed stages of development. Green emerged about 30 years ago in signficant numbers, before it Orange emerged about 300 years ago (with the Enlightenment), Blue about 3,000 years ago, Red before it about 30,000 years ago, and so on. hearing that you might imagine Yellow and the 2nd tier perspective would be here in flowering, full force.

statistics show us that only about 1-3% of the population in the U.S. is integral or 2nd-tier according to this developmental scheme. if you've read this far and this all makes pretty good sense to you, you may be one of them.

the point here is that an integral approach regognizes the necessity of all these memes, all of these perspectives, and it first strives to make each of them healthy WHERE they're at. for instance, there is such a thing as a healthy blue meme, and a pathological blue meme. an example of a healthy blue meme would be Rudy Guiliani. a pathological example? oh, lemme see....uh.....THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION. in fact, they also have pathological Orange, but that's another blog. integral first strives for healthiness and wholeness at each level or stage of develpment (also including lines of development, quadrants, types, and states, but that's another-'nother blog), and then encourages development UP THE SPIRAL when it is possible.

this is basically the collectively groping and fumbling toward a shared awakening of sorts. i'm NOT talking about the whole planet becoming permanently enlightened (although that would be fun), because even if we theoretically had a society where, say, half the population were INTEGRAL or 2nd tier, every human being born in that society would still have to develop up the spiral. you are BORN at square one, every time. we could move more quickly through the spiral, we could eliminate pathologies, but there's no free ride.

so, this is a long ass long tangent which is meant to tell you THAT I'M SECOND TIER, MOTHER FUCKERS, BOW DOWN BEFORE ME, I'M A GOD MAN SO SECOND TIER I'M PISSING YELLOW ALL OVER YOU PATHETIC EARTHLINGS...

see? even when you're second tier you can have a big fat ole fucked up ego, just a big ole arrogant jack ass. but wait- remember, there is a jack assed, arrogance to my personality, but i am not that aspect. don't identify with it ultimately.

ok, here's the last kicker.

when you reach about 21 years old, where ever you may be on the spiral (orange? blue? red?) you STOP developing. you do not develope up through any more stages until maybe toward the end of your life, when you have a fucking melt down, you're about to croak, and the shit gets stirred up a bit. the ONLY KNOWN EXCEPTION to this rule is MEDITATORS. i'm not kidding you. the ONLY EMPERICALLY known exception / instance where people continue to develop up and out through stages after the age of 21 is those who have a daily meditation practice.

HELLO? is anyone hearing this shit? the ONLY EMPERICALLY KNOWN EXCEPTION. now THAT is something worth being radical about, that's a fundamentalism i can totally get into. as in: the fundamentals of development are such that if you want to evolve, if you want to develop through stages of consciousness after the age of 21, the one and only proven, reproducable, emperical method know to us is:

DAILY MEDITATION PRACTICE.

knowing this, i have to wonder, if we are not meditating, just what the fuck are we thinking? once you know this kind of information, in my opinion, to NOT meditate is to steal from humanity, it is to choose to shrink away from your role as an agent of transformation on the planet.

see? i'm a fundamentalist. it's FUNdamentalism

"meditation" could be any daily contemplative practice (christian centering prayer, ala' Father Thomas Keating, could be Zen, or Shambhala, or Kabbalah, or Vippassana, etc) every major religion has a contemplative, mystical practice within it.

this practice allows us to realize the Emptiness, and then fully engage the Form. that's why real mystics are fucking rockin' their asses off engaging politics, social issues, you name it.

i feel like i could fucking blog forever today, so i better just hit the breaks on this baby. the point is there's two reasons to incarnate:
#1, cuz you're unconscious and you had no choice, you just got spit back into the relative World (for the sake of the HOLE)
#2, cuz you're a bodhisattva now, bitch, and you work for Love in the WORLD as one of its awakened, surrundered operatives. (for the sake of the WHOLE)

which one are YOU?