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Integral relationships

Last post 05-10-2007, 6:03 PM by ambosuno. 684 replies.
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  •  05-06-2007, 7:18 PM 22398 in reply to 22387

    Re: Integral relationships

    That is a gorgeous photo scene. The greens are so delicious looking, David.

    I spent a little time outdoors today with a friend here in the grassy and tree-umbrelled plaza of the southern california coastal valley town. The wind was gently making its way through the  space between buildings, temperature was probably around 80 degrees F, and the celon tea with mango flavor was pleasing.

    We talked about women. Of course. And about our psychospiritual dabblings over many years since we met and since we moved here with our families for Krishnamurti and the associated school for our children. We talked about maybe doing a quasi-repeat of a, for me, amazing 10 day backpacking trip into the Sierras that 4 of us guys took around 1984. Maybe in mid september when the kids are back in school. I haven't done a trip like that since that time. It was a trip.

    Snow in England. I digress/regress for a short story. When I was in the army in Germany, a friend and I went over to London and each bought the, at that time, hottest retail street cycle there was - it was the year the norton commando came out. A year later I got discharged in Germany, 1969, and I drove up to Norway with my friend and we found his family relations in a small fiord town. We parted company and I headed to Scotland to check out mine in the bow of fife. I remember driving up the hiway though northern England and Scotland in May - through a snow storm. I made up for the cold by soon thereafter heading for Barcelona and catching a barco to Formentera - at that time a fairly sleepy, hippyish island, where I had a marvelously rich lonely time among company and embarrassed myself trying to debate a vacationing doctor of philosophy student about the marvelous merits of Ayn Rand - I said, "Hegel who?"

    We do like to reminisce as we get older, eh. And talk about flowers and sunlight and always women. I use the word we loosely, but I know you talk of flowers and sunlight. And women.
    Ambo

    Ambo Suno
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  •  05-07-2007, 4:13 AM 22414 in reply to 22368

    Re: Integral relationships

    Great memories, Ambo... Smile [:)]

    You mention Krishnamurti, and given your allegiance to him I can see where you're coming from in your questioning of the role of thinking!  Yet I sense a polarisation that isn't necessary:  K opposed the domination of thought, but fragmentation of any kind is unhelpful, isn't it? Domination by senses and emotion is at least as much a problem in the world...

    I was browsing through some stuff on Stanley Greenspan, who you mentioned, and I found this explanation of the contrast between his approach and that of Piaget, who Wilber tends to rely on:

    'On the basis of his experience in working with autistic children, Greenspan believes that intelligence is structured by affective (emotional) experience. Contrary to the traditional concept of development, which separates emotion from reason, Greenspan believes that emotions play a central role in learning and in the development of our intellectual faculties (for one example of how, follow the Experiment Module link to the left).

    Thus the essence of Greenspan’s vision of development runs counter to Piaget’s and gives more weight than even Freud did to the role of our early emotional experiences in the development of our intellectual and social faculties.

    So what does each child need in order to develop successfully, according to Greenspan? First of all, a safe, secure environment in which he or she can develop a relationship with a stable, protective adult. The rich, continuous interactions that begin with such an adult at the very start of life can them become increasingly subtle and complex. Children can then experiment, find solutions, take risks, fail, and try something else, all within limits and structures clearly established by the adults in their lives.

    The mode of intervention that Greenspan recommends for working with children is called “floor time”: time spent on the floor, following children in their play. The main idea is to take whatever activity the child initiates as the point of departure, then try to introduce an affective interaction into this activity.

    For example, if a father and his daughter start taking turns lining up blocks in a row on the floor, the child will understand the routine and wait for her father to put his block down before she puts hers. If the father then puts down two blocks in a row, or puts his block down out of line, his daughter will want to correct the error. The father has thus created an opportunity to, in Greenspan’s terms, “open and close a circle of communication”.

    In such situations, far from posing an obstacle to clear, logical thinking, emotions constitute the “glue” that binds all aspects of intellectual and social development together. In fact, abstract concepts are often classifications based on emotional experiences in the real world.

    Consider the mathematical concept of quantity, for example, which children derive from two kinds of emotional experiences. The first is the feeling of “a lot ”that children learn when they receive more things than they were expecting. The second is the feeling of “a few ” that they get when they receive fewer things than they would like. Children thus assimilate the concept of quantity on the basis of expectations with a strong affective component. Later, children can systematize these experiences with numbers, so that 10 becomes “a lot ” and 2 becomes “a few”. Thus children’s understanding of supposedly cold, logical mathematics is actually anchored in the affective experiences through which they first learned concepts of numbers.

    According to Greenspan, this same principle extends to more abstract concepts such as justice. Tomorrow’s judges will have to study the laws by which society codifies this concept, but
    their intimate knowledge of what justice means will come from their personal lives and their own experiences of having been treated fairly or unfairly.

    In Greenspan’s model, it is therefore essential for each child to develop the feeling of his or her individuality. It is through this feeling of being themselves and not someone else that children become capable of desiring and of having intentions. Every effort should therefore be made to encourage whatever helps children build this feeling of having their own personalities.'

    http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/a/a_09/a_09_p/a_09_p_dev/a_09_p_dev.html

    Interesting.   Thanks for drawing Greenspan to our attention, Ambo.

     

    ~ D

     


    'This is all the time you'll ever have'.
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  •  05-07-2007, 4:14 AM 22415 in reply to 22368

    Re: Integral relationships

    Sorry, repeat post...

    Embarrassed [:$]

    ~ D


    'This is all the time you'll ever have'.
    ~ Dr Hannibal Lecter
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  •  05-07-2007, 9:14 AM 22425 in reply to 22414

    Re: Integral relationships

    David - I think allegience isn't the correct word for my relationship with Krish. I in fact pulled myself away from him finally, more than 20 years ago, after having found myself painted into a corner.

    I did hang with K for quite a few years, from first reading him in 69 or 70 visting Ojai in the early seventies, sitting in the oak grove longing for something and loving his mixture of rationality and the nondual and other stuff. I longed like a nerd might long for a radiant self-composed beauty who was far beyong his grasp, in this case my mental grasp. And K didn't make it easy because he frequently asked the listeners, why are you here, year after year - if you haven't gotten it yet, why keep coming, and he repeatedly said that if you understand this intellectually (only), you don't understand it at all. He was an enigma and perhaps with contradictions and flaws, and I was captivated to try to get this highly neurotic brain to understand what he was saying - despite his caveats, like that a little of this stuff, without going all of the way, can be poison. Well the poison was felt eventually in the form of me feeling painted into a corner. But it was an exciting time, and being in the company of many people who he dialogued with and befriended like David Bohm, Rupert Sheldrake, and others did at least give this dense brain and being a sense that there was something greater to consider, in a general direction. I came to England near you, once, to camp at Brockwood Park and hear him talk.

    Carl Jung was my out at the time and it was a big step for me to open to very different material and approach. Then various other modalities and situations to try to penetrate my density from Esalen gestalt stuff to Reichian work, even to Scientology in Mexico City where it was cheaper. And the potpourri of spiritual approaches available in Southern California. And Grof  and on and on. Like yourself, I've been around some blocks, heard some good shpiels.

    I'd say that I was greatly influenced by K and related stuff. I'd say that I'm deeply informed by his deconstructive and questioning ways, and the wholeness that he apparently dipped into, swam in much of the time.

    K and various Eastern traditions actually have tried to divide up rationality from emotion. That was a recurring theme with him. When I got enough freedom to question, I started to question that. It seemed to me that they had to be interpenetrating, at least for most of us ordinary folk. And we couldn't make that a bad thing, because that's who we are.

    This Greenspan that you are appreciating at the moment, articulates this scientifically supported reality on the mutual growth of emotion, cognition, and our many  faculties. Though I hadn't understood it so well at the time, this idea was one of the central ones in a dissertation I did.

    I am still curious if K was right in suggestion that being rational without being repressive (of affect or drives or whatever) is possible and desireable. I don't expect it for me in this lifetime (which according to my tentatively set beliefs means never, for me) but it's an interesting question.

    So anyway, K is often my litmus test for "truth" and, yeah, I may have some residual "allegiance" and sense of his numinous attraction for me, but I am far afield from there now.

    Thanks for this ongoing inquiry, David

    Have beautiful day. Yikes I'm so late - gotta run. Ambo

    Ambo Suno
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  •  05-09-2007, 1:15 PM 22588 in reply to 22425

    Re: Integral relationships

    But you know, Ambo, Krishnamurti's message was really very simple, wasn't it?  Its just that its not accessible only through the intellect.  But nor is Wilber's, despite all the scaffolding of theory.

    Take this passage from Krishnamurti, about relationships and love:

    'The demand to be safe in relationship inevitably breeds sorrow and fear. This seeking for security is inviting insecurity. Have you ever found security in any of your relationships? Have you? Most of us want the security of loving and being loved, but is there love when each one of us is seeking his own security, his own particular path?

    We are not loved because we don't know how to love.

    Love is not the product of thought which is the past. Thought cannot  possibly cultivate love. Love is not hedged about and caught in  jealousy, for jealousy is of the past. Love is always active present.  It is not `I will love' or `I have loved'. If you know love you will  not follow anybody. Love does not obey. When you love there is  neither respect nor disrespect.  Don't you know what it means really to love somebody - to love  without hate, without jealousy, without anger, without wanting to  interfere with what he is doing or thinking, without condemning,  without comparing - don't you know what it means? Where there is love  is there comparison? When you love someone with all your heart, with  all your mind, with all your body, with your entire being, is there  comparison? When you totally abandon yourself to that love there is  not the other.

     

    Do you mean to say that you can discipline yourself to love, exercise the will to love? When you exercise discipline and will to love, love goes out of the window. By practising some method or system of loving you may become extraordinarily clever or more kindly or get into a state of non-violence, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with love.

     

    The mind can pursue sensations, desires, but it cannot pursue love. Love must come to the mind. And, when once love is there, it has no division as sensuous and divine: it is love. That is the extraordinary thing about love: it is the only quality that brings a total comprehension of the whole of existence.'

     

    Anyone who has ever loved anything can understand that immediately, no? 

     

    Can we make ourselves love someone or something?   We can't, try as we might.  Its a grace, which visits us.  Its not in anyone's power.  If I offer you a million bucks to love someone, it makes no difference, however much you want the money: you can't do it.

     

    That's because its about transcending and including the wishes of the ego - and the famous 'Secret' is thereby revealed to be hollow....

     

    For me, Krishnamurti is like Wilber in that he's always in touch with this realisation that there is only ever Now, that Truth is a pathless land which can't be approached through the will, and so on.... Its just 'getting' that, as one 'gets' a joke. Or falls in love.....

     

    Smile [:)] 


    'This is all the time you'll ever have'.
    ~ Dr Hannibal Lecter
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  •  05-09-2007, 7:59 PM 22606 in reply to 22588

    Re: Integral relationships

    David, I like these selections you made. It's been quite a while since I've looked at the specifics of what he said.

    That 'truth is a pathless land' possibility, really is radical. Thanks for bringing these forward, along with your own experience of the non-forcing of love. Ambo

    Ambo Suno
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  •  05-10-2007, 7:34 AM 22625 in reply to 22606

    Re: Integral relationships

    "That 'truth is a pathless land' possibility, really is radical" - I yaaah-concur! It's a soul-thing, no? which charts its own evolutionary course.

     Likwise, I like Krishnamurti quote-selections. Been a while since I looked at his writngs. "Thought cannot possibly cultivate love." and - "When you love someone with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your body, with the entire being, is there comparison? When you totally abandon yourself to that love there is no other." - liking that too.

    Hey there alls'KI

    I think journalling subtly - occuring  'poignant moments' is one way to see the souls love-journey in action. Because? we will miss it if  we don't pay attention to it.... 'Just obsering this with curiousity , even if it doesn't make much sense right now I will make note of it and see if anything developes' - kind of attention.

     Ever noticed that 'in retrospect' vision is always 20/20? that's what I'm spielling about. Back in the day , when I least expected - as the saying goes - I had a "Beloved" dream-encounter, which for the sake of point-making, I shall quote-note :

    "Nov. 12/93 dark moon - Undercovers with "Beloved" - Blisfull - thinking "this is heaven." ---------------same entry-day-------------"that's my Beloved. (he walked in troo front door) My heart just melted and I said "I didn't know when you'd be home or how" . We locked arms. Bliss!!!!"

    Years later, 'nothing ventured, nothing gained' - arrow, pointed to a new , yet to be accessed stage-possibilty (evolutinarilly speaking) and things happened ---------------------- "I'm crazy about you" -love-filled whisper. "How do you do that?", she asked.

    As far as I can see, souls can't be ego-ordered..."you are supremly loved and  absolutely safe with me" , whispers spiritually mature lover.

    Boundryless Field soul-meeting (astral) vibrate at a higher frequency with hightened sense of bliss-unity merge-ment....That's what it feels like.

    How 'bout  Gibrans' -  During A Year Not Registerd In History -  poem below?..I think it is  waaay 'soulfully poignant'. 

     

     

     

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  •  05-10-2007, 8:04 AM 22626 in reply to 22625

    Re: Integral relationships

    . . . In that moment appeared from behind the willow tree a beautiful girl with hair that touched the ground. She stood beside the sleeping youth and touched his tender brow with her silken soft hand.

    He looked at her through sleepy eyes as though awakened by the rays of the sun.

    When he realized the Emir's daughter was standing beside him he fell upon his knees as Moses had done when he saw the burning bush.

    He attempted to speak. Words failed him but his tearful eyes supplanted his tounge.

    The  young girl embraced him, kissed his lips; then she kissed his eyes, drying his copious tears and lips with her kisses.

    In a voice softer than the tone of the reed, she said: "I saw you, sweetheart, in my dreams; I looked upon your face in my lonliness. You are the lost consort of my soul and the other better half from which I was seperated when I was ordered to come into this world."

    "I came here secretly to join you, sweetheart. Do not fear; you are now in my arms. I left  the glory which surrounds my father and and came to follow you to the end of the world, and to drink with you the cup of life and death."

    "Come, sweetheart, let us go into the wilderness, away from civilization."

    And the lovers walked into the forest, into the darkness of the night, fearing neither an Emir nor the phantoms of the darkness.

    -Gibran 

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  •  05-10-2007, 1:12 PM 22646 in reply to 22606

    Re: Integral relationships

    Ambo

    ambosuno:
    That 'truth is a pathless land' possibility, really is radical.

    I caught a note of frustration in your experiences of Krishnamurti, and I can guess why!  He's such a damn absolutist, isn't he?  At once inspiring and demoralising.   For him, you either 'get' it or you don't.   Mostly, people don't.  So he berates them and moralises about them while at the same time evoking that glorious vision which for them is....just out of reach.   But close enough for them to be tantalised and keep coming back for more, even though they are constantly reminded of their failure to 'get' it.

    As I said, I think that Wilber has exactly the same vision.  But:  he's a 'Two Truths' guy.   Which means that he sees the relative as having its own validity, unreal though it may be.  Hence his model of the Spiral of consciousness, where you can make progress, and even if you're not enlightened, at least you're further on than those poor SOBs in Red and Amber....Wink [;)]

    All that is nonsense to K.  If he'd known about a Spiral, he'd have ridiculed it as a false ladder leading nowhere, serving only to reinforce the ego.  Turquoise?   Narcissism.   ILPs?   Delusion.  For there is nowhere to get to, noone to go and no way of getting there.  Truth is a pathless land.  

    From an absolute perspective, Wilber has exactly the same opinion.  Yet from a relative perspective, everything looks completely different, and what is worthless suddenly appears worthwhile.  This is something I have a problem with personally.  At some point the Two Truths must be reconciled, surely.  Either the Spiral leads to Truth, or it leads nowhere and is indeed illusory.  Can one really have it both ways?   Isn't this just sleight of hand?  Confused [*-)]

    Coming back to the theme:  for Krishnamurti, there is Love (as he defines it so inspiringly) or there is nothing.  All the shades of relationship we've discussed on this thread are utterly worthless insofar as they fall short of Love, which they can't 'lead' to, there being no paths to it.   From a relative perspective, there is value in interaction and intersubjectivity at all levels.  Which makes complete sense.  Until you fall in love, and all those so-called relationships are utterly outshone, and perhaps you get Krishnamurti's point after all....  Smile [:)]Smile [:)]

    Some thoughts anyway.

    ~ D

     

     


    'This is all the time you'll ever have'.
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  •  05-10-2007, 6:03 PM 22654 in reply to 22646

    Re: Integral relationships

    David, well said.

    Most of what you say here makes a lot of sense and sounds reasonable. Maybe partly because of my "allegiance", or his numinosity for me, well maybe my love for him, I have trouble acknowledging what you say here. My uncertainty here surely doesn't remove any veracity from your summation. Thanks for laying it out.
    "I caught a note of frustration in your experiences of Krishnamurti, and I can guess why!  He's such a damn absolutist, isn't he?  At once inspiring and demoralising.   For him, you either 'get' it or you don't.   Mostly, people don't.  So he berates them and moralises about them while at the same time evoking that glorious vision which for them is....just out of reach.   But close enough for them to be tantalised and keep coming back for more, even though they are constantly reminded of their failure to 'get' it."

    As for the following, you may be right. I don't feel Ken and K as so much the same as you state. but I'm not very objective about it. And I fear that for me to try to lay out  this comparison and contrast,  I'd get bogged down somehow - the attempt probably wouldn't be worth it. I'm liking hearing you engage it with this lively SOB zeal - I agree with Angel [A]. Thanks for responding.
    "As I said, I think that Wilber has exactly the same vision.  But:  he's a 'Two Truths' guy.   Which means that he sees the relative as having its own validity, unreal though it may be.  Hence his model of the Spiral of consciousness, where you can make progress, and even if you're not enlightened, at least you're further on than those poor SOBs in Red and Amber....Wink <img src=">"

    And you're probably right here, too.
    "All that is nonsense to K.  If he'd known about a Spiral, he'd have ridiculed it as a false ladder leading nowhere, serving only to reinforce the ego.  Turquoise?   Narcissism.   ILPs?   Delusion.  For there is nowhere to get to, noone to go and no way of getting there.  Truth is a pathless land."

    Good question to me.
    "From an absolute perspective, Wilber has exactly the same opinion.  Yet from a relative perspective, everything looks completely different, and what is worthless suddenly appears worthwhile.  This is something I have a problem with personally.  At some point the Two Truths must be reconciled, surely.  Either the Spiral leads to Truth, or it leads nowhere and is indeed illusory.  Can one really have it both ways?   Isn't this just sleight of hand? " 
    At a very quick response, I don't think K was very interested in the relative truth.

    Yes. I think that as ordinary people who dwell in the human relative world, we do as best we can with love. We define the word how we have to, so that we can know that we are involved in the biggest, bestest thing of all. In the quiet contemplative and maybe deconstructive places we might doubt that it is truly love - but it's probably very high relating for us advanced simians.
    "Coming back to the theme:  for Krishnamurti, there is Love (as he defines it so inspiringly) or there is nothing.  All the shades of relationship we've discussed on this thread are utterly worthless insofar as they fall short of Love, which they can't 'lead' to, there being no paths to it.   From a relative perspective, there is value in interaction and intersubjectivity at all levels. "

    I don't think I did these big questions justice. I wanted to get something on the table after a long-feeling day because your reply had so much energy, good spirit - and maybe I'm afraid that I'll never know how to answer these adequately anyway.

    Warmly, Ambo


    Ambo Suno
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