After a bit of reading, I'm wondering if perhaps we need to redefine our politicians, and thereby revitalize our politics, rather than create a new political model.
Most of the integral politics articles promote ideas similar to Clinton and Blair's Third Way or Bush's Compassionate Conservatism (great marketing tool that was never intended to be implemented). These approaches attempt to find a middle ground between liberalism and conservatism, a position that incorporates the best of both sides.
Using Spiral Dynamics as the framework, these approaches attempt to bridge the gap between the Blue meme (Christian fundamentalism), the Orange meme (free-market capitalism), and the Green meme (postmodern liberalism). Of course, the reality is much more complex than these simple phrases, but it gives a hint of the complexity of the problem.
The existing approaches are an outside-in process, creating a model and asking politicians to adopt it. However, I think the real solution may be an inside-out process. My take is that we need to create politicians who are capable of disidentifying from their own particular value meme and who are capable of seeing through the lens of value memes other than their own. The prerequisite for this skill has generally been thought to be second-tier thinking (yellow meme or higher on the Spiral).
I suspect, though, that there are simple techniques that can dislodge people from their particular value meme even if they haven't reached second tier. Psychosynthesis offers tools to achieve this goal (disidentification exercises), and Genpo Roshi's Big Mind (subscription required) can help free individuals from their ego identification, which facilitates multiple-perspective capabilities.
Rather than building an integral politics, we may need to create integral politicians and let the politics grow out of their work. More to come on this topic.
ADDENDUM:
After further reflection, I think we need both an outside-in and an inside-out approach to this problem. The outside-in aspect should be a loose framework, though, and not a rigid "party platform" as we traditionally think of it.
A truly integral politician must be able to define a just government in terms of collective values (interior-collective), social structures (exterior-collective), individual needs (exterior-individual), and unique visions (interior-individual).
S/he must be able to speak authentically about this vision of a just government to all three of the major value memes in our nation (Blue, Orange, and Green) in such way that each feels heard and validated.
This is the prospect of a truly integral politics.
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Politics and Non-Attachment, an Integral View
Buddhism advocates non-attachment as the path to liberation from the cycle of endless rebirths. Many of us work at this goal in our daily lives through mindfulness practice and other methods to reduce the clinging of the ego. When we work on personal issues, such as anger, resentment, greed, and so on, these practices are useful, and it's easy to see the advantage of giving up our attachments.
But what about politics? I maintain a political blog, Raven's View, through which I am very involved in specific political issues, such as removing Bush and his henchmen from office, and protecting our civil rights from the Bush administration's efforts to curtail them. I am also anti-war, in favor of equal rights for gays and lesbians, opposed to wingnut Christian efforts to impose their religion on the rest of us, and I have strong views on a variety of other subjects.
Do I have to give up my attachment to these issues to attain a greater degree of personal freedom? Will my political involvement limit my growth as a Buddhist?
Maybe. But I am willing to take that risk. As a follower of the Shambhala path, I have taken a bodhisattva vow to dedicate my life to the liberation of all sentient beings. To me, there is more to that vow than merely working on my own life to attain Buddha nature, no matter how much doing so might indirectly aid other beings. I firmly believe that part of that vow entails working to make the world a better place for all people, and that by doing so, it becomes easier and more likely that other people can attain liberation.
Oppressive governments, wars around the world, political greed, hatred among peoples of differing faiths -- all of these things limit the chances for anyone to become liberated. Fighting against these injustices is a way to create more positive karma in the world. It may slow my own progress toward liberation, but it seems that working toward becoming a bodhisattva should include the exterior world as well as the interior, the collective world as well as the individual, in a truly integral approach to Buddhism.
What we need is a fully integral Buddhist practice.
But what about politics? I maintain a political blog, Raven's View, through which I am very involved in specific political issues, such as removing Bush and his henchmen from office, and protecting our civil rights from the Bush administration's efforts to curtail them. I am also anti-war, in favor of equal rights for gays and lesbians, opposed to wingnut Christian efforts to impose their religion on the rest of us, and I have strong views on a variety of other subjects.
Do I have to give up my attachment to these issues to attain a greater degree of personal freedom? Will my political involvement limit my growth as a Buddhist?
Maybe. But I am willing to take that risk. As a follower of the Shambhala path, I have taken a bodhisattva vow to dedicate my life to the liberation of all sentient beings. To me, there is more to that vow than merely working on my own life to attain Buddha nature, no matter how much doing so might indirectly aid other beings. I firmly believe that part of that vow entails working to make the world a better place for all people, and that by doing so, it becomes easier and more likely that other people can attain liberation.
Oppressive governments, wars around the world, political greed, hatred among peoples of differing faiths -- all of these things limit the chances for anyone to become liberated. Fighting against these injustices is a way to create more positive karma in the world. It may slow my own progress toward liberation, but it seems that working toward becoming a bodhisattva should include the exterior world as well as the interior, the collective world as well as the individual, in a truly integral approach to Buddhism.
What we need is a fully integral Buddhist practice.
Saturday, October 08, 2005
A Response to Sam Harris
Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, has posted an excerpt from An Atheist Manifesto (to be published at truthdig in December) on the Huffington Post.
I own Harris' book and agree with much he has to say about the downside of organized religion. However, atheism is a reductionistic worldview that denies the existence of Spirit.
From the article:
Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want.
Please read the whole article, much of which seems to make sense from a flatland point-of-view. My response attempts to look through an integral lens at the bigger picture of Harris' argument.
Mr. Harris,
Your critique of traditional religion is necessary and accurate. However, your assertion of the moral superiority of atheism is reductionistic and misinformed.
Human beings (and their cultures) develop along a hierarchy, with each new level of development being more complex and more expansive than its predecessor. Consequently, religious expression also develops along a hierarchy. What you rail against is a 2000-year-old worldview that revolves around divine order and conformist rule. You approach that worldview from the next step up on the hierarchy, scientific rationalism -- and of course their view looks silly to you.
What you fail to understand is that all steps along the hierarchy of development are necessary. The monotheistic religions you despise are crucial to controlling the ego drive for power of the previous stage in human development. Remove the religion (from the inner city, for example) and the ego has no framework in which to become socialized (thus, gang culture). Human beings cannot skip a stage in their development, either as individuals or as cultures (witness the rise of Catholicism in Africa, which will eventually tame the tribal warfare ethic that now exists).
While your critique of the downside of religion is valid, your short-sightedness is dangerous. There may not be a God in your worldview, but the Kosmos (used in the Greek sense of the word) is not a random place without meaning.
I own Harris' book and agree with much he has to say about the downside of organized religion. However, atheism is a reductionistic worldview that denies the existence of Spirit.
From the article:
Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want.
Please read the whole article, much of which seems to make sense from a flatland point-of-view. My response attempts to look through an integral lens at the bigger picture of Harris' argument.
Mr. Harris,
Your critique of traditional religion is necessary and accurate. However, your assertion of the moral superiority of atheism is reductionistic and misinformed.
Human beings (and their cultures) develop along a hierarchy, with each new level of development being more complex and more expansive than its predecessor. Consequently, religious expression also develops along a hierarchy. What you rail against is a 2000-year-old worldview that revolves around divine order and conformist rule. You approach that worldview from the next step up on the hierarchy, scientific rationalism -- and of course their view looks silly to you.
What you fail to understand is that all steps along the hierarchy of development are necessary. The monotheistic religions you despise are crucial to controlling the ego drive for power of the previous stage in human development. Remove the religion (from the inner city, for example) and the ego has no framework in which to become socialized (thus, gang culture). Human beings cannot skip a stage in their development, either as individuals or as cultures (witness the rise of Catholicism in Africa, which will eventually tame the tribal warfare ethic that now exists).
While your critique of the downside of religion is valid, your short-sightedness is dangerous. There may not be a God in your worldview, but the Kosmos (used in the Greek sense of the word) is not a random place without meaning.
Saturday, October 01, 2005
New Agers Just Don't Get Physics No Matter How Hard They Try
I want to like Deepak Chopra, I really do. He tries hard, and his heart is in the right place. I had even hoped that his exposure to integral theory, through his association with the Integral Institute, would add depth to his work. Maybe it has, but his new book, The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire, makes all the classic mistakes that New Age leaders have always made when trying to use physics to demonstrate spiritual principles.
From the book:
Because observation is the key to defining the wave-particle as a single entity, Niels Bohr and other physicists believed that consciousness alone was responsible for the collapse of the wave-particle. It might be said, then, that without consciousness, everything would exist only as undefined, potential packets of energy, or pure potential.
This is one of the key points of this book. Let me repeat it because it is so important: Without consciousness acting as an observer and interpreter, everything would exist only as pure potential. That pure potential is the virtual domain, the third level of existence. It is nonlocal and can't be depleted; it is unending all-encompassing. Tapping into that potential is what allows us to make miracles.
Chopra is relying on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the Schrodinger's Cat experiment to support his theory that reality is a construct of human consciousness. To be fair, Buddhists (of which I am one) hold this view as well, although they don't quite mean it in the same empirical way. While Buddhists contend that reality is illusion (the mind creates a false reality based on attachment and fear), Chopra contends that we can shape reality through the act bringing our consciousness to bear on it.
This is an oft-cited interpretation of physics that the original physicists would likely have found quiet troubling. Let's make this more explicit. The wave-particle exists as both a wave and a particle until the moment it is measured (observed). Some people have assumed that only human consciousness is capable of the act of observing, which means that the material universe only ceases to be potential and becomes fact through the act of human beings making it so.
This brings up a very ridiculous problem: the universe existed for about 14.9 billion years (assuming it had a beginning point and isn't eternal, which isn't a given) before human beings were around to observe it. To quote Ken Wilber on this subject: "This view -- that mind generates matter by the effect of the 'participator-observer' -- is like saying the chicken (mind) sees the egg (matter) and thereby creates it" (Eye to Eye, 143). Yet everything we know about the history of consciousness says that it developed out of matter, which existed long before consciousness.
Many mystical traditions believe that matter is created out of mind (prana), "through an act of precipitation and crystallization, not perception and measurement" (Wilber, 144), which is quite different from saying that mind must observe matter to make it solid. What Wilber is talking about here is involution, the belief that higher-order consciousness filters down into lower levels (mind creates prana, or bioenergy, which then creates matter).
Evolution moves from matter to prana to mind to soul to spirit to nondual consciousness. Mystics from a variety of traditions posit involution, which moves in the opposite direction. The belief is that Spirit (nondual consciousness) becomes manifest through the process of involution, with each step toward matter creating an archetypal pattern that matter then can move through as it struggles to return to its source. Involution is a transrational intuiting of the nature of the universe; evolution is a rational understanding of the universe.
The mistake that Chopra and so many others make is trying to conflate transrational insight with rational understanding. It's a classic example of the pre/trans fallacy that so often permeates the New Age movement. Chopra has his heart in the right place, but he fails to fully comprehend the depth of the situation. Another way of looking at it is that he and the others have merged the upper right quadrant (exterior individual) of Wilber's integral map with the upper left quadrant (interior individual). This is what Wilber calls flatland -- reducing depth (vertical hierarchy) to span (horizontal expansion).
Until scientists and spiritual teachers quit making this mistake, we will be burdened with a world that denies Spirit or reduces it to something physical.
From the book:
Because observation is the key to defining the wave-particle as a single entity, Niels Bohr and other physicists believed that consciousness alone was responsible for the collapse of the wave-particle. It might be said, then, that without consciousness, everything would exist only as undefined, potential packets of energy, or pure potential.
This is one of the key points of this book. Let me repeat it because it is so important: Without consciousness acting as an observer and interpreter, everything would exist only as pure potential. That pure potential is the virtual domain, the third level of existence. It is nonlocal and can't be depleted; it is unending all-encompassing. Tapping into that potential is what allows us to make miracles.
Chopra is relying on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the Schrodinger's Cat experiment to support his theory that reality is a construct of human consciousness. To be fair, Buddhists (of which I am one) hold this view as well, although they don't quite mean it in the same empirical way. While Buddhists contend that reality is illusion (the mind creates a false reality based on attachment and fear), Chopra contends that we can shape reality through the act bringing our consciousness to bear on it.
This is an oft-cited interpretation of physics that the original physicists would likely have found quiet troubling. Let's make this more explicit. The wave-particle exists as both a wave and a particle until the moment it is measured (observed). Some people have assumed that only human consciousness is capable of the act of observing, which means that the material universe only ceases to be potential and becomes fact through the act of human beings making it so.
This brings up a very ridiculous problem: the universe existed for about 14.9 billion years (assuming it had a beginning point and isn't eternal, which isn't a given) before human beings were around to observe it. To quote Ken Wilber on this subject: "This view -- that mind generates matter by the effect of the 'participator-observer' -- is like saying the chicken (mind) sees the egg (matter) and thereby creates it" (Eye to Eye, 143). Yet everything we know about the history of consciousness says that it developed out of matter, which existed long before consciousness.
Many mystical traditions believe that matter is created out of mind (prana), "through an act of precipitation and crystallization, not perception and measurement" (Wilber, 144), which is quite different from saying that mind must observe matter to make it solid. What Wilber is talking about here is involution, the belief that higher-order consciousness filters down into lower levels (mind creates prana, or bioenergy, which then creates matter).
Evolution moves from matter to prana to mind to soul to spirit to nondual consciousness. Mystics from a variety of traditions posit involution, which moves in the opposite direction. The belief is that Spirit (nondual consciousness) becomes manifest through the process of involution, with each step toward matter creating an archetypal pattern that matter then can move through as it struggles to return to its source. Involution is a transrational intuiting of the nature of the universe; evolution is a rational understanding of the universe.
The mistake that Chopra and so many others make is trying to conflate transrational insight with rational understanding. It's a classic example of the pre/trans fallacy that so often permeates the New Age movement. Chopra has his heart in the right place, but he fails to fully comprehend the depth of the situation. Another way of looking at it is that he and the others have merged the upper right quadrant (exterior individual) of Wilber's integral map with the upper left quadrant (interior individual). This is what Wilber calls flatland -- reducing depth (vertical hierarchy) to span (horizontal expansion).
Until scientists and spiritual teachers quit making this mistake, we will be burdened with a world that denies Spirit or reduces it to something physical.
Monday, September 26, 2005
Integral Websites
Four websites to share with those of you interested in integral theory and practice.
1) Integral Review: A new online magazine (first issue can be downloaded as pdfs of each article). Most of the articles are fairly academic, though not impregnable. One of the best articles presents a new approach to personal emergence based on the concept of complexity intelligence (a fancy way of saying second-tier consciousness, for those of you familiar with Spiral Dynamics). The editors spell out their theoretical bias in the first full essay, as well as authoring most of the articles. They are looking for submissions for issue two, so if you have ideas you'd like to share, stop by their site and take a look at the submission guidelines.
2) Integral Politics: Nothing terribly new or innovative here, but it lays the foundation for an integral approach to politics. Most of the articles are by the usual suspects (Wilber, Beck, and Sara Ross of Integral Review). If you are interested in a new way to think about politics and a new model for who our politicians should be, take a look at the articles on this site.
3) Integral Transformative Practice: This site is based on Michael Murphy and George Leonard's book on ITP, The Life We Are Given. They are still in the process of building a fully functional site, but the framework is there, as well as a collection of books and media on ITP. Give it a look. ITP is likely the single best approach to personal emergence that has gone through extensive research. I might do a few things differently than they do, but their ITP program is sound.
4) Global Values Network: The GVN site isn't new, but it is still worth noting. They have an excellent review of the Katrina disaster from a Spiral Dynamics perspective. The site was co-founded by Don Beck, so SD is a big part of their project. Have a look around -- it's worth the time.
1) Integral Review: A new online magazine (first issue can be downloaded as pdfs of each article). Most of the articles are fairly academic, though not impregnable. One of the best articles presents a new approach to personal emergence based on the concept of complexity intelligence (a fancy way of saying second-tier consciousness, for those of you familiar with Spiral Dynamics). The editors spell out their theoretical bias in the first full essay, as well as authoring most of the articles. They are looking for submissions for issue two, so if you have ideas you'd like to share, stop by their site and take a look at the submission guidelines.
2) Integral Politics: Nothing terribly new or innovative here, but it lays the foundation for an integral approach to politics. Most of the articles are by the usual suspects (Wilber, Beck, and Sara Ross of Integral Review). If you are interested in a new way to think about politics and a new model for who our politicians should be, take a look at the articles on this site.
3) Integral Transformative Practice: This site is based on Michael Murphy and George Leonard's book on ITP, The Life We Are Given. They are still in the process of building a fully functional site, but the framework is there, as well as a collection of books and media on ITP. Give it a look. ITP is likely the single best approach to personal emergence that has gone through extensive research. I might do a few things differently than they do, but their ITP program is sound.
4) Global Values Network: The GVN site isn't new, but it is still worth noting. They have an excellent review of the Katrina disaster from a Spiral Dynamics perspective. The site was co-founded by Don Beck, so SD is a big part of their project. Have a look around -- it's worth the time.
Saturday, September 17, 2005
Support the Clinton Global Initiative
During his presidency, Bill Clinton read and recommended books on integral theory, including the work of Ken Wilber. He consulted with Don Beck's organization on implementing strategies based on Spiral Dynamics. It looks as though he has put into practice his interest in integral theory with the launching of the Clinton Global Initiative.
Here is the "mission statement" from their website.
The Clinton Global Initiative is a project of the William J. Clinton Foundation. The mission of the Foundation is to strengthen the capacity of people throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence. To advance this mission, the Foundation has developed programs and partnerships in the following areas:
Economic Empowerment
Health Security with an emphasis on HIV/AIDS
Racial, Ethnic and Religious Reconciliation
Education, Leadership Development and Citizen Service
The Foundation works principally through partnerships with like-minded individuals, organizations, corporations, and governments, often serving as an incubator for new policies and programs.
Along with these programs and initiatives, the William J. Clinton Foundation designed and developed the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas. Encompassing the vision of President Clinton, the Center is located within a 30 acre city park along the southern bank of the Arkansas River. In addition to the Little Rock offices of the William J. Clinton Foundation, the Clinton Presidential Center includes the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum and the Clinton School of Public Service.
To read more about the current work of the Foundation and the Clinton Presidential Center, please visit www.clintonfoundation.org.
If you look at the four items listed above where the Initiative is focusing its energies and resources, they comprise the four quadrants of Wilber's model. Economic empowerment is an exterior-collective concern; health security is an exterior-individual concern; racial, ethnic, and religious reconciliation are interior-collective concerns; education, leadership, and citizen development are interior-individual concerns.
This isn't the first attempt at an integral movement at the global level, but it is the first one led by someone as high-profile and charismatic as Bill Clinton. He alone may be able to pull off such an ambitious effort.
Investment partners in the inaugural event (September 15-17, 2005 in New York City) include Starbucks, Google, HP, Nokia, Yahoo, Microsoft, Citigroup, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Attendees at the weekend meeting include:
His Majesty King Abdullah II
Her Majesty Queen Rania Al-Abdullah
President Leonel Fernandez Reyna
President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom
President Paul Kagame
President Thabo Mbeki
President Olusegun Obasanjo
President Viktor A. Yushchenko
Prime Minister Tony Blair
Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan
Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia
Secretary General Kofi Annan
Vice Premier Shimon Peres
The Rt Hon Margaret Beckett MP
The Hon Hillary Rodham Clinton
His Excellency Amre Moussa
Dr. Condoleezza Rice
Dr. Madeleine K. Albright
His Excellency Jose Maria Figueres
Al Gore
Her Excellency Mary Robinson
The Hon Paul Wolfowitz
Quite a diverse assortment of individuals. Here is the press release detailing five commitments agreed to during the conference:
Clinton Global Initiative Announces Five Commitments at the Governance Plenary Session
Date: September 16, 2005
* City Year commits to opening a full-time national service program in Louisiana to engage a diverse corps of 50 young civic leaders in the relief, recovery and rebuilding efforts in the Gulf Coast. Their mission is to bring help, hope and healing to those whose lives have been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Working in partnership with the Louisiana Service Commission and the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, City Year corps members will serve as the primary point of contact for the National Service Disaster Relief and Preparedness Team which will be designed to mobilize a wide range of national service resources and thousands of volunteers to meet the current needs and long-term rebuilding efforts of the Louisiana communities devastated by Hurricane Katrina. In addition, City Year Louisiana corps members will serve in shelters and resource centers as guides for those displaced; work in partnership with local relief agencies to collect donations and supplies for those affected; develop educational and recreational activities for children; and work with corporate partners to support rebuilding efforts.
* The BBC/BBC World Service Trust in partnership with DFID, Internews, Reuters Foundation, Article 19, Media Institute of Southern Africa, PANOS, West African Media Foundation and the Rhodes University School of Journalism has created the African Media Development Initiative. The Initiative will work to increase free and independent media in Africa over a five-year period. Based on an extensive needs assessment research project, activities will encourage the implementation of legal frameworks which support a pluralistic press environment; providing training to journalists with sustained post-training assistance; support to commercial management; and policy awareness among key stakeholders to ensure that a free independent media is placed on policy agendas.
* The Open Society Institute will create a Revenue Watch Program to improve democratic accountability in natural resource-rich countries by equipping citizens with the information, training, networks, and funding they need to become more effective monitors of government revenues and expenditures. The Program has three components: the Revenue Watch Institute, which will focus on promoting revenue and budget transparency and accountability in developing and transition countries; the Budget Transparency Program, which OSI will fund and will focus explicitly on budget transparency and fiscal accountability in non-resource rich developing and transition countries; and the Central European University Transparency Curriculum, for which OSI will work with the Central European University to create.
* Starbucks Coffee Company will partner with Conservation International and American Wildlife Foundation on Coffee and a Farmer Equity Practices program. Starbucks plans to dramatically increase C.A.F.E. Practices purchases to include a majority of all green coffee purchases annually. C.A.F.E. Practices will continue to use independent third party organizations to verify farmers' practices and utilize Scientific Certification Systems, a third-party evaluation and certification firm, to train and audit these verifiers. Starbucks will continue to analyze transparency information received from C.A.F.E. Practices participants so that consumers will be able to make purchasing decisions based on farmers receiving an equitable share of the price paid. Starbucks will continue to work with coffee farmers, NGOs, and other industry leaders to further refine and improve upon C.A.F.E. Practices to benefit farmers, their communities and the environment.
* Walter Shorenstein will work with The Conference Board, Harvard University CSR Initiative and the International Business Leaders Forum to create CEO Dialogues. The partner organizations will work together to collect practical examples and to host a series of senior executive dialogues. The CEO Dialogues will encourage initiatives by multinational companies to: 1) build local economic opportunity in the emerging economies in which they invest through job creation, supporting micro-enterprise and youth enterprise development, increasing access to credit, building infrastructure, transferring technology, and spreading skills; and 2) build local human capital through the development of talent and partnerships to improve local capacity in the delivery of health and education.
The media have barely recognized the event. NBC News talked with Clinton on Friday morning and only spent less than a minute on his Foundation's new Initiative. Go to the website and read about their agenda. These people actually have the resources to make a difference on this planet.
Here is the "mission statement" from their website.
The Clinton Global Initiative is a project of the William J. Clinton Foundation. The mission of the Foundation is to strengthen the capacity of people throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence. To advance this mission, the Foundation has developed programs and partnerships in the following areas:
Economic Empowerment
Health Security with an emphasis on HIV/AIDS
Racial, Ethnic and Religious Reconciliation
Education, Leadership Development and Citizen Service
The Foundation works principally through partnerships with like-minded individuals, organizations, corporations, and governments, often serving as an incubator for new policies and programs.
Along with these programs and initiatives, the William J. Clinton Foundation designed and developed the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas. Encompassing the vision of President Clinton, the Center is located within a 30 acre city park along the southern bank of the Arkansas River. In addition to the Little Rock offices of the William J. Clinton Foundation, the Clinton Presidential Center includes the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum and the Clinton School of Public Service.
To read more about the current work of the Foundation and the Clinton Presidential Center, please visit www.clintonfoundation.org.
If you look at the four items listed above where the Initiative is focusing its energies and resources, they comprise the four quadrants of Wilber's model. Economic empowerment is an exterior-collective concern; health security is an exterior-individual concern; racial, ethnic, and religious reconciliation are interior-collective concerns; education, leadership, and citizen development are interior-individual concerns.
This isn't the first attempt at an integral movement at the global level, but it is the first one led by someone as high-profile and charismatic as Bill Clinton. He alone may be able to pull off such an ambitious effort.
Investment partners in the inaugural event (September 15-17, 2005 in New York City) include Starbucks, Google, HP, Nokia, Yahoo, Microsoft, Citigroup, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Attendees at the weekend meeting include:
His Majesty King Abdullah II
Her Majesty Queen Rania Al-Abdullah
President Leonel Fernandez Reyna
President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom
President Paul Kagame
President Thabo Mbeki
President Olusegun Obasanjo
President Viktor A. Yushchenko
Prime Minister Tony Blair
Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan
Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia
Secretary General Kofi Annan
Vice Premier Shimon Peres
The Rt Hon Margaret Beckett MP
The Hon Hillary Rodham Clinton
His Excellency Amre Moussa
Dr. Condoleezza Rice
Dr. Madeleine K. Albright
His Excellency Jose Maria Figueres
Al Gore
Her Excellency Mary Robinson
The Hon Paul Wolfowitz
Quite a diverse assortment of individuals. Here is the press release detailing five commitments agreed to during the conference:
Clinton Global Initiative Announces Five Commitments at the Governance Plenary Session
Date: September 16, 2005
* City Year commits to opening a full-time national service program in Louisiana to engage a diverse corps of 50 young civic leaders in the relief, recovery and rebuilding efforts in the Gulf Coast. Their mission is to bring help, hope and healing to those whose lives have been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Working in partnership with the Louisiana Service Commission and the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, City Year corps members will serve as the primary point of contact for the National Service Disaster Relief and Preparedness Team which will be designed to mobilize a wide range of national service resources and thousands of volunteers to meet the current needs and long-term rebuilding efforts of the Louisiana communities devastated by Hurricane Katrina. In addition, City Year Louisiana corps members will serve in shelters and resource centers as guides for those displaced; work in partnership with local relief agencies to collect donations and supplies for those affected; develop educational and recreational activities for children; and work with corporate partners to support rebuilding efforts.
* The BBC/BBC World Service Trust in partnership with DFID, Internews, Reuters Foundation, Article 19, Media Institute of Southern Africa, PANOS, West African Media Foundation and the Rhodes University School of Journalism has created the African Media Development Initiative. The Initiative will work to increase free and independent media in Africa over a five-year period. Based on an extensive needs assessment research project, activities will encourage the implementation of legal frameworks which support a pluralistic press environment; providing training to journalists with sustained post-training assistance; support to commercial management; and policy awareness among key stakeholders to ensure that a free independent media is placed on policy agendas.
* The Open Society Institute will create a Revenue Watch Program to improve democratic accountability in natural resource-rich countries by equipping citizens with the information, training, networks, and funding they need to become more effective monitors of government revenues and expenditures. The Program has three components: the Revenue Watch Institute, which will focus on promoting revenue and budget transparency and accountability in developing and transition countries; the Budget Transparency Program, which OSI will fund and will focus explicitly on budget transparency and fiscal accountability in non-resource rich developing and transition countries; and the Central European University Transparency Curriculum, for which OSI will work with the Central European University to create.
* Starbucks Coffee Company will partner with Conservation International and American Wildlife Foundation on Coffee and a Farmer Equity Practices program. Starbucks plans to dramatically increase C.A.F.E. Practices purchases to include a majority of all green coffee purchases annually. C.A.F.E. Practices will continue to use independent third party organizations to verify farmers' practices and utilize Scientific Certification Systems, a third-party evaluation and certification firm, to train and audit these verifiers. Starbucks will continue to analyze transparency information received from C.A.F.E. Practices participants so that consumers will be able to make purchasing decisions based on farmers receiving an equitable share of the price paid. Starbucks will continue to work with coffee farmers, NGOs, and other industry leaders to further refine and improve upon C.A.F.E. Practices to benefit farmers, their communities and the environment.
* Walter Shorenstein will work with The Conference Board, Harvard University CSR Initiative and the International Business Leaders Forum to create CEO Dialogues. The partner organizations will work together to collect practical examples and to host a series of senior executive dialogues. The CEO Dialogues will encourage initiatives by multinational companies to: 1) build local economic opportunity in the emerging economies in which they invest through job creation, supporting micro-enterprise and youth enterprise development, increasing access to credit, building infrastructure, transferring technology, and spreading skills; and 2) build local human capital through the development of talent and partnerships to improve local capacity in the delivery of health and education.
The media have barely recognized the event. NBC News talked with Clinton on Friday morning and only spent less than a minute on his Foundation's new Initiative. Go to the website and read about their agenda. These people actually have the resources to make a difference on this planet.
Thursday, September 15, 2005
On "Healing"
From a recent NBC/WSJ poll:
One Katrina-related story that has grabbed headlines is that many of the Gulf Coast residents who couldn't escape the storm were poor and minorities. According to the NBC/Journal poll, only 37 percent agree with the statement that the Bush administration would have acted with greater urgency had the affected areas been mostly white suburban communities. But there is a huge discrepancy by race here: Seventy percent of African Americans agree with the statement, while 67 percent of whites disagree.
Since the Katrina disaster, there has been a lot of talk about race as an issue in the response, mostly among Black victims and advocates, as the poll numbers show. In response to what appears to have been a racially biased response by the federal government, many people (of all ethnic groups) have been talking about healing the racial divide in America (even though poverty is the true issue). Nice thought, but it neglects the fact that race relations in America have never been healthy in the first place.
To heal something implies that it was once healthy, and it just needs to be returned to its original healthy state. We have never had a healthy relationship between whites and other racial groups in America. Therefore, there is nothing to heal.
Healthy race relations would be a completely new emergent in this country. It is not something that we can "heal" into existence; it is something we must grow into for the first time. What Katrina has done, if anything good can come from such horror, is expose the truth of the situation. More than forty years after the major Civil Rights legislation, we are still a racially divided nation. We can not change that with laws.
We must grow beyond the predominately narrow ethnocentric moral stance that prevails in this country and adopt a more expansive, compassionate worldcentric stance -- one that is blind to skin color and that celebrates the beauty of our diversity. We must grow into this view in our hearts and minds -- it's a change that must be made from the inside out.
One Katrina-related story that has grabbed headlines is that many of the Gulf Coast residents who couldn't escape the storm were poor and minorities. According to the NBC/Journal poll, only 37 percent agree with the statement that the Bush administration would have acted with greater urgency had the affected areas been mostly white suburban communities. But there is a huge discrepancy by race here: Seventy percent of African Americans agree with the statement, while 67 percent of whites disagree.
Since the Katrina disaster, there has been a lot of talk about race as an issue in the response, mostly among Black victims and advocates, as the poll numbers show. In response to what appears to have been a racially biased response by the federal government, many people (of all ethnic groups) have been talking about healing the racial divide in America (even though poverty is the true issue). Nice thought, but it neglects the fact that race relations in America have never been healthy in the first place.
To heal something implies that it was once healthy, and it just needs to be returned to its original healthy state. We have never had a healthy relationship between whites and other racial groups in America. Therefore, there is nothing to heal.
Healthy race relations would be a completely new emergent in this country. It is not something that we can "heal" into existence; it is something we must grow into for the first time. What Katrina has done, if anything good can come from such horror, is expose the truth of the situation. More than forty years after the major Civil Rights legislation, we are still a racially divided nation. We can not change that with laws.
We must grow beyond the predominately narrow ethnocentric moral stance that prevails in this country and adopt a more expansive, compassionate worldcentric stance -- one that is blind to skin color and that celebrates the beauty of our diversity. We must grow into this view in our hearts and minds -- it's a change that must be made from the inside out.
Friday, September 09, 2005
Integral Politics?
A lot of us are getting sick and tired of politics as usual. The liberals are narcissistic, blame all difficulties on outside causes, are afraid of hierarchies, and seem convinced that everything is relative. The conservatives are narrow-minded, blame all difficulties on personal weakness, are afraid of science, and seem convinced that only their worldview is true. These two positions are dedicated to nothing more than destroying each other.
What would an integral approach to politics look like? Some have suggested that Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were the first national-level politicians to attempt an integral approach to politics. I would partially agree, though I think both ultimately failed. Is it possible to take the best of conservative values and the best of liberal values to create a truly integral political vision? Is it necessary for one to have evolved to integral worldview, or is a worldcentric perspective sufficient for one to be such a leader?
Ken Wilber, Don Beck, and others have written on this topic, and I will be reading extensively over the coming weeks. In the meantime, I would love to read any thoughts readers may have on this topic. Just click on the "comments" icon below.
What would an integral approach to politics look like? Some have suggested that Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were the first national-level politicians to attempt an integral approach to politics. I would partially agree, though I think both ultimately failed. Is it possible to take the best of conservative values and the best of liberal values to create a truly integral political vision? Is it necessary for one to have evolved to integral worldview, or is a worldcentric perspective sufficient for one to be such a leader?
Ken Wilber, Don Beck, and others have written on this topic, and I will be reading extensively over the coming weeks. In the meantime, I would love to read any thoughts readers may have on this topic. Just click on the "comments" icon below.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
America's Tragedy
I've had a rough summer dealing with the deaths of my sister and mother. For a man who has only recently been working to understand his emotions, this has been a crash course in grief.
That said, my losses are nothing compared to the losses from Katrina and the shameful aftermath. There are no words muscled enough to carry the bone-cracking weight of this tragedy.
There may have been events where more people died, but there has never been an event in our history where so many people have suffered so much and have had to carry so much grief. The images of dead bodies bursting in the heat, children raped and killed by armed gang members in the Superdome, mothers who have no idea where their children are or if they are alive, children who are so overwhelmed that they cannot speak their own names to rescuers, thousands of people left for days without food, water, or hope at the convention center -- all these images are our American Tragedy.
They are also our shame.
Leaders, both local and federal, had four days' notice that this storm was coming. Much more could have been done. Bush and his administration stayed on vacation for the first three days of this horror. Parking lots full of school buses that could have been used to help the poor get out of the city were left to be flooded in parking lots. Military personnel who prepared for this tragedy were left unused. A military that can mount a major offensive in far-away lands within forty-eight hours could not get into New Orleans for five days. FIVE DAYS! Is this not America?
I am angry that so little was done and that it was done so slowly. I am angry that our leaders were so ill-prepared for an event many have been predicting for several years -- including former Vice President Al Gore in his book, Earth in the Balance.
More than angry, however, I am moved by the generosity and compassion so many of the survivors showed each other in circumstances none of us can truly imagine. They dealt with the horror of being trapped in the Superdome amid piles of garbage and human refuse, human bodies and human waste, death staining the air with a stench that would make you vomit. And yet these people, most of the ten thousand trapped there, showed each other the greatest compassion imaginable.
How unfortunate that it takes a tragedy of this magnitude to bring out the true nature of human beings. We are people of love, not hate and not violence. We are people who have soft, tender hearts.
My heart has been made more open, more tender, more human in witnessing the compassionate actions of the survivors of the greatest American tragedy we have ever known.
That said, my losses are nothing compared to the losses from Katrina and the shameful aftermath. There are no words muscled enough to carry the bone-cracking weight of this tragedy.
There may have been events where more people died, but there has never been an event in our history where so many people have suffered so much and have had to carry so much grief. The images of dead bodies bursting in the heat, children raped and killed by armed gang members in the Superdome, mothers who have no idea where their children are or if they are alive, children who are so overwhelmed that they cannot speak their own names to rescuers, thousands of people left for days without food, water, or hope at the convention center -- all these images are our American Tragedy.
They are also our shame.
Leaders, both local and federal, had four days' notice that this storm was coming. Much more could have been done. Bush and his administration stayed on vacation for the first three days of this horror. Parking lots full of school buses that could have been used to help the poor get out of the city were left to be flooded in parking lots. Military personnel who prepared for this tragedy were left unused. A military that can mount a major offensive in far-away lands within forty-eight hours could not get into New Orleans for five days. FIVE DAYS! Is this not America?
I am angry that so little was done and that it was done so slowly. I am angry that our leaders were so ill-prepared for an event many have been predicting for several years -- including former Vice President Al Gore in his book, Earth in the Balance.
More than angry, however, I am moved by the generosity and compassion so many of the survivors showed each other in circumstances none of us can truly imagine. They dealt with the horror of being trapped in the Superdome amid piles of garbage and human refuse, human bodies and human waste, death staining the air with a stench that would make you vomit. And yet these people, most of the ten thousand trapped there, showed each other the greatest compassion imaginable.
How unfortunate that it takes a tragedy of this magnitude to bring out the true nature of human beings. We are people of love, not hate and not violence. We are people who have soft, tender hearts.
My heart has been made more open, more tender, more human in witnessing the compassionate actions of the survivors of the greatest American tragedy we have ever known.
Saturday, August 27, 2005
From Dust to Dust
Ruth Sophie Harryman, February 19, 1930 - August 24, 2005.
Losing two family members in a single summer is sobering. To be the last member of my family still living and only be 38 years old feels strange. There is no one left to share the memories of my early life. There is no one left who has known me my whole life.
I haven't been close to my family for years. I always felt like an alien among them, that maybe I had been switched at birth. I sometimes think that someplace there may be another 38 year old man who feels the same way and would have been right at home in my family. But we are born into our families for a reason, even if we seldom discover what that reason may have been.
I had nothing in common with anyone in my family. For that reason, I grew up independent, thinking for myself from a very early age. (As a twelve year old, I argued with my father about the impending 1980 election, favoring Carter while my father favored Reagan.) Because I was an outsider in my family, I have often felt like an outsider in my culture, especially while growing up in a redneck portion of southern Oregon.
But that experience has made who I am today. As rough as it was, I would not trade it for anything else. I like who I have become, as conceited as that may sound.
Though I seldom liked my family, I am grateful for their influence on my life -- both good and bad. With the recent passing of my mother, I am the last one standing. From ashes to ashes, dust to dust . . . .
May all of them enjoy their next incarnations and experience far less suffering than they knew in their last lifetimes.
Losing two family members in a single summer is sobering. To be the last member of my family still living and only be 38 years old feels strange. There is no one left to share the memories of my early life. There is no one left who has known me my whole life.
I haven't been close to my family for years. I always felt like an alien among them, that maybe I had been switched at birth. I sometimes think that someplace there may be another 38 year old man who feels the same way and would have been right at home in my family. But we are born into our families for a reason, even if we seldom discover what that reason may have been.
I had nothing in common with anyone in my family. For that reason, I grew up independent, thinking for myself from a very early age. (As a twelve year old, I argued with my father about the impending 1980 election, favoring Carter while my father favored Reagan.) Because I was an outsider in my family, I have often felt like an outsider in my culture, especially while growing up in a redneck portion of southern Oregon.
But that experience has made who I am today. As rough as it was, I would not trade it for anything else. I like who I have become, as conceited as that may sound.
Though I seldom liked my family, I am grateful for their influence on my life -- both good and bad. With the recent passing of my mother, I am the last one standing. From ashes to ashes, dust to dust . . . .
May all of them enjoy their next incarnations and experience far less suffering than they knew in their last lifetimes.
Monday, August 22, 2005
Getting to Know Ruth
Three years ago, my mother was diagnosed with uterine cancer. The doctors thought it was terminal. Somehow, she recovered from the surgery, the chemo, and the radiation and lived for two years in remission. But uterine cancer nearly always returns, and so it has. My mother is in a morphine-induced coma to ease her pain. She will likely never awaken.
When she was first diagnosed, I wrote the following entry in my journal – a confession of sorts, as well as a tribute to the woman who raised me. She lasted three years longer than anyone thought possible, long enough to lose her daughter and to see her son find his life partner.
May her death be painless and her next incarnation be filled with happiness.
5.25.02
Getting to Know Ruth
For thirty-five years, my life until this very moment, my mother has been a non-person to me. Obviously, I knew she was human, had a history before my birth, and possessed her own hopes and fears. But I never really saw or experienced her as a real person, a complete human being. She was my mother, a collection of feelings and memories that I had accumulated over these thirty-five years.
A few nights ago, however, I found out she has cancer, very serious cancer. She has been sick for almost a month, but now it is official: uterine cancer, maybe more that will be discovered in surgery. But the surgery will have to wait until they can control some blood clotting that might kill her during a surgical procedure.
She told me she is tired, that after seventy-two years -- very difficult, challenging, painful years -- she is ready to die.
For the first time in my life, my experience of her shifted. It wasn’t the first time that I would be in a caretaking role with her, so the shift has to be something else. After a lot of tears, a few hours of writing in my journal, and listening to Lou Reed’s Magic and Loss, I began to clearly see my mother for the first time -- to see her life, her struggles, her loves, all from a place outside my own needs and fears.
My mother has become a person, a person whom I love very much, a person whom I hardly know, a person who is dying.
*****
My mother was born in February, 1930, along with a fraternal twin brother. When she was conceived, the world seemed to offer unlimited potential. There were jobs, and it was easy to support a family of five, even for the children of German immigrants at a time when Germans were not trusted.
Then the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began. Big cities like Chicago – where my mother's family settled – were hit hard. Jobs of any kind became scarce. Suddenly it was next to impossible to support a family of five. My grandfather took any work he could get, but still, there was often only enough food for one meager meal each day. Sugar cubes were given to satisfy the hunger of crying children. The struggle to feed the family went on for several years. My mother and her brother developed rickets, a deficiency illness caused by a lack of calcium and vitamin D. My mother was severely malnourished at an age when proper nutrition determines normal physical and intellectual development.
As a result of this malnutrition, my mother, like her brother, did not experience normal intellectual growth. Her IQ scores would likely test in the range of 70 to 80. By most standards, she is developmentally disabled. She has had difficulty living independently during those years when she was not living with her mother or married.
*****
I was thirteen when my father died. By that time I had been identified as “talented and gifted” and placed in advanced classes in school. It was difficult for a strong-willed and precocious child to grow up with a challenged parent as primary caregiver.
When my father died, I was the one who took care of the funeral arrangements, the insurance, the pension my mother would receive, and all the other financial decisions. I continued to perform most of the money-related tasks for two or three years. However, within six months of my father’s death, I was smoking pot regularly, drinking whenever possible, and beginning to show a lot of unconscious anger. Emotionally, I was completely shut down, using chemicals to stay numb. My straight A grades began to decline. I was in pain and needed a strong mother to comfort me, but she was in too much pain of her own, too lost to be able to help my sister or me.
Over the next several years, I became a daily drug user and was arrested for alcohol possession, vandalism, and growing my own marijuana. Grace alone kept me out of jail or the morgue for the better part of my teen years. The times I was locked up only made me angrier and more determined to feel nothing.
During those years, my relationship with my mother was terrible. I was incapable of seeing how much pain she was in, how lost she felt, how much she needed my love and support. However, as I became increasingly lost in a haze of smoke, drink, and pills, she learned to pay the bills on her own, got a driver’s license for the first time in her life, and found the strength to call the police when she found my little pot-growing operation. I was sixteen and completely out of control.
Although I knew my mother was different from other mothers, even when I was young, it wasn’t until I was a teenager that I truly became aware of the reality. I wasn’t understanding or compassionate. I was angry. I made fun of her in front of my friends. I told her she was stupid. I hurt her in more ways than I can count. And she just kept on loving me and doing her best to keep me alive and healthy.
As I write this, I still feel so much shame for those actions and words. I’ve spent the last 15 years trying to make up for the pain I caused her during those five years when I was acting out every shadow element in my psyche. If I had 100 more years to make amends, it would not be enough.
When I was 19, after hitting my personal bottom, I cleaned up my life and went to college. I studied psychology, literature, and religions. I began to learn a little about why I was so unconscious and confused during my teen years, and pieces of why my mother has had to struggle in her life. Most importantly, I began to learn about powers greater than me in this amazing Universe.
*****
My mother is not like other mothers. She was never able to help me with my homework. She seldom read to me. She was incapable of advising me on whom to go to parties with when I was in middle school and dating was new and awkward. When I began to publish poems after high school, she never asked to read them or showed any interest in my writing. When I was in college, she didn’t ask about my studies, had no awareness of national or international events, and only wanted to know if I was employed.
She isn’t like other mothers. I saw the mothers of my friends turn their backs and walk away from troubled sons and daughters, unable to face their failures as a parent and their children's pain. But my mother never stopped loving me, supporting me, or trying to help me, no matter how awful I became, and I became very awful. Where other mothers might or did give up, she loved me even more.
After 35 years, I am finally able to see that she was gifted in ways few people are. She has an amazing heart, a capacity to love that my mind can barely grasp. I didn’t have the mother I wanted, but I had the mother I needed. To get to where I am now in my life, I had to go through the pain and confusion of my youth, and I didn’t need someone to guide me through it, I just needed someone to love me no matter how lost I found myself. If I had been guided through those difficult experiences, without the pain, there would have been no learning, no understanding, and no wisdom gained from the experience of finding my own way through the dark places within me.
I would not wish my teen years on anyone, but those experiences are what allow me to sit here now and write these words. If I hadn't been so out of control, my mother may have never found the strength to take control of her own life and learn to be as independent as she became. Again, we get what we need, not what we want.
So, now she is dying. This comes at a time when my life is in a liminal space between who I was and who I will become, a self-chosen disruption of the course my life was following. In the middle of all this, my mother is diagnosed with cancer.
Odd as it may sound, the timing for this to happen in my life could not be better. I am in a unique position in my life to change the way I see the world, to change the meta-narrative of my life, to re-open my heart in ways I have been too frightened to do in the past. For the first time in my life I have a loving, supportive partner who is committed to walking hand in hand with me on the path of self-discovery and healing. It makes all the difference.
From this place in my life, I have learned to step back from myself, to see through the eyes of my observer self, or Witness. Through those eyes I see my mother as a person. I can see her struggles, her fears, her joys, her successes. I see her weaknesses and her strengths. I see her not as my mother, but as wonderful human being who has survived 72 painful, challenging years while holding onto the love in her heart. I see a woman who is not capable of knowing how extraordinary she is. I see a woman who inspires me to open my heart and learn to love in the same selfless way she has loved others for her entire life.
I am blessed to come to see my mother as the human being she is, not just as my mother. I have been given a chance to know her in ways I could never imagine before. I want to learn how she was able to love others so easily, despite being told she was not like everyone else and being treated as deficient.
My mother is not like other mothers. For however much time she has left, I want to learn about her fears, her joys, her life. I want to know the person who is named Ruth.
When she was first diagnosed, I wrote the following entry in my journal – a confession of sorts, as well as a tribute to the woman who raised me. She lasted three years longer than anyone thought possible, long enough to lose her daughter and to see her son find his life partner.
May her death be painless and her next incarnation be filled with happiness.
5.25.02
Getting to Know Ruth
For thirty-five years, my life until this very moment, my mother has been a non-person to me. Obviously, I knew she was human, had a history before my birth, and possessed her own hopes and fears. But I never really saw or experienced her as a real person, a complete human being. She was my mother, a collection of feelings and memories that I had accumulated over these thirty-five years.
A few nights ago, however, I found out she has cancer, very serious cancer. She has been sick for almost a month, but now it is official: uterine cancer, maybe more that will be discovered in surgery. But the surgery will have to wait until they can control some blood clotting that might kill her during a surgical procedure.
She told me she is tired, that after seventy-two years -- very difficult, challenging, painful years -- she is ready to die.
For the first time in my life, my experience of her shifted. It wasn’t the first time that I would be in a caretaking role with her, so the shift has to be something else. After a lot of tears, a few hours of writing in my journal, and listening to Lou Reed’s Magic and Loss, I began to clearly see my mother for the first time -- to see her life, her struggles, her loves, all from a place outside my own needs and fears.
My mother has become a person, a person whom I love very much, a person whom I hardly know, a person who is dying.
*****
My mother was born in February, 1930, along with a fraternal twin brother. When she was conceived, the world seemed to offer unlimited potential. There were jobs, and it was easy to support a family of five, even for the children of German immigrants at a time when Germans were not trusted.
Then the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began. Big cities like Chicago – where my mother's family settled – were hit hard. Jobs of any kind became scarce. Suddenly it was next to impossible to support a family of five. My grandfather took any work he could get, but still, there was often only enough food for one meager meal each day. Sugar cubes were given to satisfy the hunger of crying children. The struggle to feed the family went on for several years. My mother and her brother developed rickets, a deficiency illness caused by a lack of calcium and vitamin D. My mother was severely malnourished at an age when proper nutrition determines normal physical and intellectual development.
As a result of this malnutrition, my mother, like her brother, did not experience normal intellectual growth. Her IQ scores would likely test in the range of 70 to 80. By most standards, she is developmentally disabled. She has had difficulty living independently during those years when she was not living with her mother or married.
*****
I was thirteen when my father died. By that time I had been identified as “talented and gifted” and placed in advanced classes in school. It was difficult for a strong-willed and precocious child to grow up with a challenged parent as primary caregiver.
When my father died, I was the one who took care of the funeral arrangements, the insurance, the pension my mother would receive, and all the other financial decisions. I continued to perform most of the money-related tasks for two or three years. However, within six months of my father’s death, I was smoking pot regularly, drinking whenever possible, and beginning to show a lot of unconscious anger. Emotionally, I was completely shut down, using chemicals to stay numb. My straight A grades began to decline. I was in pain and needed a strong mother to comfort me, but she was in too much pain of her own, too lost to be able to help my sister or me.
Over the next several years, I became a daily drug user and was arrested for alcohol possession, vandalism, and growing my own marijuana. Grace alone kept me out of jail or the morgue for the better part of my teen years. The times I was locked up only made me angrier and more determined to feel nothing.
During those years, my relationship with my mother was terrible. I was incapable of seeing how much pain she was in, how lost she felt, how much she needed my love and support. However, as I became increasingly lost in a haze of smoke, drink, and pills, she learned to pay the bills on her own, got a driver’s license for the first time in her life, and found the strength to call the police when she found my little pot-growing operation. I was sixteen and completely out of control.
Although I knew my mother was different from other mothers, even when I was young, it wasn’t until I was a teenager that I truly became aware of the reality. I wasn’t understanding or compassionate. I was angry. I made fun of her in front of my friends. I told her she was stupid. I hurt her in more ways than I can count. And she just kept on loving me and doing her best to keep me alive and healthy.
As I write this, I still feel so much shame for those actions and words. I’ve spent the last 15 years trying to make up for the pain I caused her during those five years when I was acting out every shadow element in my psyche. If I had 100 more years to make amends, it would not be enough.
When I was 19, after hitting my personal bottom, I cleaned up my life and went to college. I studied psychology, literature, and religions. I began to learn a little about why I was so unconscious and confused during my teen years, and pieces of why my mother has had to struggle in her life. Most importantly, I began to learn about powers greater than me in this amazing Universe.
*****
My mother is not like other mothers. She was never able to help me with my homework. She seldom read to me. She was incapable of advising me on whom to go to parties with when I was in middle school and dating was new and awkward. When I began to publish poems after high school, she never asked to read them or showed any interest in my writing. When I was in college, she didn’t ask about my studies, had no awareness of national or international events, and only wanted to know if I was employed.
She isn’t like other mothers. I saw the mothers of my friends turn their backs and walk away from troubled sons and daughters, unable to face their failures as a parent and their children's pain. But my mother never stopped loving me, supporting me, or trying to help me, no matter how awful I became, and I became very awful. Where other mothers might or did give up, she loved me even more.
After 35 years, I am finally able to see that she was gifted in ways few people are. She has an amazing heart, a capacity to love that my mind can barely grasp. I didn’t have the mother I wanted, but I had the mother I needed. To get to where I am now in my life, I had to go through the pain and confusion of my youth, and I didn’t need someone to guide me through it, I just needed someone to love me no matter how lost I found myself. If I had been guided through those difficult experiences, without the pain, there would have been no learning, no understanding, and no wisdom gained from the experience of finding my own way through the dark places within me.
I would not wish my teen years on anyone, but those experiences are what allow me to sit here now and write these words. If I hadn't been so out of control, my mother may have never found the strength to take control of her own life and learn to be as independent as she became. Again, we get what we need, not what we want.
So, now she is dying. This comes at a time when my life is in a liminal space between who I was and who I will become, a self-chosen disruption of the course my life was following. In the middle of all this, my mother is diagnosed with cancer.
Odd as it may sound, the timing for this to happen in my life could not be better. I am in a unique position in my life to change the way I see the world, to change the meta-narrative of my life, to re-open my heart in ways I have been too frightened to do in the past. For the first time in my life I have a loving, supportive partner who is committed to walking hand in hand with me on the path of self-discovery and healing. It makes all the difference.
From this place in my life, I have learned to step back from myself, to see through the eyes of my observer self, or Witness. Through those eyes I see my mother as a person. I can see her struggles, her fears, her joys, her successes. I see her weaknesses and her strengths. I see her not as my mother, but as wonderful human being who has survived 72 painful, challenging years while holding onto the love in her heart. I see a woman who is not capable of knowing how extraordinary she is. I see a woman who inspires me to open my heart and learn to love in the same selfless way she has loved others for her entire life.
I am blessed to come to see my mother as the human being she is, not just as my mother. I have been given a chance to know her in ways I could never imagine before. I want to learn how she was able to love others so easily, despite being told she was not like everyone else and being treated as deficient.
My mother is not like other mothers. For however much time she has left, I want to learn about her fears, her joys, her life. I want to know the person who is named Ruth.
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Understanding and Transcending the Ego, Part 1
There seems to be a great deal of confusion in understanding just what Buddhism means when it talks about transcending the ego. Part of the confusion arises due to differences in usage, and part of the confusion arises as a result of ego having a variety of meanings depending on the context in which it is used. Yet another source of confusion is that Buddhist teachers are often teaching from the perspective of absolute truth, not relative truth. Identifying the ego so that it may be transcended becomes problematic in the absence of a working definition.
In order to sort this out, it will be necessary to take a wider view than merely defining ego in a concrete way. At its most basic level, ego is Latin for "I." Freud never used the word ego in his writings; he used the German pronoun das Ich, the I. So in Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the ego is synonymous with the sense of an unique self, an I. This has become the most common usage among the general public. Among specialists, ego is often used in a slightly less general way to refer to the organizing principle of the psyche that acts as an intermediary between the self (as subject) and the world. In this sense, then, ego is an object that can be observed by a subject, the self.
A more precise explanation, however, might dispel some of the confusion. If we use a simple model of human development that moves from simple to more complex, with each stage transcending and including the previous stage (assuming an absence of pathology), we then see how ego develops in relation to other elements of the psyche, such as the self and the Witness. A basic nine-stage developmental model (many of whose broader stages can be broken down into one or more sub-stages) moves through the following fulcrums:
F1, sensorimotor: material self (autistic self)
F2, impulse-emotion: body-ego
F3, representative mind: transition from body-ego to persona (early ego development)
F4, concrete operations (rules & roles): full emergence of ego
F5, formal operations: mature ego
F6, post-formal (existential): integrated self
F7, psychic (vision): soul
F8, subtle (archetype): soul becoming aware of spirit (Witness)
F9, causal (formless): emergence of spirit
Beyond the causal realm, all forms of separate identity are subsumed in non-dual consciousness.
As the self develops through each of the basic fulcrums, it becomes more complex and expansive in its capabilities. To simplify the process, fulcrums 1-3 may be considered prepersonal (pre-egoic), fulcrums 4-6 may be considered personal (egoic), and fulcrums 7-9 may be considered transpersonal (post-egoic). Most of Western psychology is concerned with the first six fulcrums.
The first three fulcrums are often considered egocentric, which does not mean ego-centered since the ego has not yet emerged. The term egocentric is used to refer to the absence of any differentiation between self and the world -- the world is experienced as an extension of the self. Egocentrism persists all the way through the end of fulcrum six (becoming weaker at each new stage), when the self begins to move beyond its own concerns and is able to hold the needs of others as equal to its own needs.
Buddhism is concerned primarily with the final three fulcrums. While many Buddhist meditation techniques actually work to strengthen the ego, the higher teachings work to bring forth the soul consciousness and spirit consciousness (Witness) that transcend ego development. More on this in a moment.
Ego development might be better understood as a "frontal" line of development in that its role is to act as an intermediary between the outside world and the self. Soul development occurs concurrently with ego development, but can only become an element of the subjective self when the ego has reached the final fulcrums of its growth. [However, a peak experience of higher-level consciousness can occur well before the self has reached that level as a stable entity, but the experience will be transient and unable to persist as an element of the self since stages cannot be skipped.] The Self (or Witness) also develops concurrently, and like the soul cannot become an integrated aspect of the self-sense until all the preliminary stages have been integrated.
When Buddhism talks of the ego as illusion or as neurosis, the point of view is that of the Witness, the highest aspect of the self-sense. This is where much of the confusion comes from in understanding the ego. At the deepest levels, the ego is illusion -- our truest Self is one with Spirit, non-dual, perfect. So Tibetan Buddhists refer to the ego as dak dzin, which translates as "grasping to a self." Sogyal Rinpoche is fairly blunt in his disregard for the ego, which is also equated with the self.
Ego is then defined as incessant movements of grasping at a delusory notion of "I" and "mine," self and other, and all the concepts, ideas, desires, and activity that will sustain that false construction. Such a grasping is futile from the start and condemned to frustration, for there is no truth in it, and what we are grasping at is by its very nature ungraspable. The fact that we need to grasp at all and go on grasping shows that in the depths of our being we know that the self does not inherently exist. From this secret, unnerving knowledge spring all our fundamental insecurities and fear. (Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, 116-17)
However (and this is where Buddhist teachings are difficult for Westerners), we must also function in a world with cars and telephones, and more importantly, other people. We need ego to navigate the daily elements of our lives.
Strangely enough, some Western psychologists -- Mark Epstein (Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart and Thoughts Without a Thinker) seems to be the most well-known, and therefore, the target of my disdain -- have adopted the ideal of no-self, that self is illusory, as a primary goal in therapy. It's hard to imagine anything more dangerous and short-sighted for the majority of people seeking therapy. In order for a person to approach the experience of no-self, there absolutely must be a solid and well-formed ego in place or any existing pathologies from earlier developmental stages will manifest in possibly dangerous forms. The mantra for this process as a project of therapy is "regression in service of the ego." Epstein rejects this project, as well as Ken Wilber's formulation of developmental levels and the process of ego development (Spectrum of Consciousness was the first articulation of Wilber's model, which has been fleshed out in The Atman Project and Integral Psychology), despite the near-universal acceptance of this model in psychology circles. Everyone from Jung to Piaget, Kohlberg to Gilligan, Kegan to Aurobindo have shown without a doubt that human beings move through distinct developmental stages, that each stage transcends and includes the previous stage, and that no stage can be skipped without the occurrence of pathology.
In order for anyone to enter the three highest fulcrums of development, all of the previous six must have been mastered and integrated into the self-sense. If there were any developmental traumas along the way -- and there are always are -- they must be addressed and healed (this is the meaning of "regression in service of the ego"). We must often re-experience the emotional elements of the original trauma in order to release the blocked energies and integrate the experience into a healthy ego. Likewise, we may need to symbolically address the original trauma through the acquisition of new skills or behaviors that mirror the original trauma -- for example, learning to breathe through anxiety attacks and calm oneself can work to alleviate the fear of helplessness that originally gave rise to the anxiety. Finally, some traumas are profound enough that we develop split-off parts of ourselves, often referred to as subpersonalities, which act as protectors from the original trauma. Over time they can become autonomous complexes in the psyche, acting outside the control of the ego. If any of these issues are present, they must be healed or they will manifest as pathologies in each of the succeeding fulcrums, including those of the soul and the Witness.
When we embark on the spiritual path, no matter what religion we hold as truth, transcending ego becomes the path to experiencing God or Spirit or Nirvana -- whatever you want to call it. Yet, even when we succeed in transcending the ego and, for example, the center of gravity for the self-sense lies in fulcrum eight, that of the soul, all of the previous fulcrums remain as integrated elements of the self-sense and are available as behavioral options for problem solving. That is to say, even if we have transcended purely egoic consciousness, if we must deal with someone who is attacking us we possess the option of responding in kind -- we still possess a body-ego capable of defending itself in order to preserve its physical integrity. The difference would be that rather than addressing the violent person with an equal degree of violence, we might try to subdue him or her without causing harm (as is taught in Aikido).
Having taken up the spiritual path, having done a lot of inner work to heal past traumas, and having adopted mindfulness practice as a way to move beyond ego, how do we identify what is ego and what is not ego?
Most simply (for the purposes of meditation), ego is that which is connected to samsara -- the world of suffering. Ego clings to the things of the material world, to its sense of who and what it is, and most crucially, to the notion that it is separate and unique. Because manifest reality is ultimately an illusion and is transient, we experience suffering through our attachment to that which is not real. Yet the closer we come to undoing the ego's hold on our lives, the harder it will fight to keep its control. Breaking free from ego is the toughest work we will ever take on as part of our spiritual lives. For this reason, many teachers highly recommend that anyone undertaking this work have an experienced "guru" to help him or her through the process. Wilber suggests that teachers must be tough -- a Rude Boy or Rude Girl who will not be nice in the face of ego's resistance and who will be ruthless in his/her compassion for our freedom.
In the next installment, I will address the ways we can identify the workings of the ego in our lives and how to work with the ego through mindfulness, especially as exemplified in the Shambhala tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.
In order to sort this out, it will be necessary to take a wider view than merely defining ego in a concrete way. At its most basic level, ego is Latin for "I." Freud never used the word ego in his writings; he used the German pronoun das Ich, the I. So in Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the ego is synonymous with the sense of an unique self, an I. This has become the most common usage among the general public. Among specialists, ego is often used in a slightly less general way to refer to the organizing principle of the psyche that acts as an intermediary between the self (as subject) and the world. In this sense, then, ego is an object that can be observed by a subject, the self.
A more precise explanation, however, might dispel some of the confusion. If we use a simple model of human development that moves from simple to more complex, with each stage transcending and including the previous stage (assuming an absence of pathology), we then see how ego develops in relation to other elements of the psyche, such as the self and the Witness. A basic nine-stage developmental model (many of whose broader stages can be broken down into one or more sub-stages) moves through the following fulcrums:
F1, sensorimotor: material self (autistic self)
F2, impulse-emotion: body-ego
F3, representative mind: transition from body-ego to persona (early ego development)
F4, concrete operations (rules & roles): full emergence of ego
F5, formal operations: mature ego
F6, post-formal (existential): integrated self
F7, psychic (vision): soul
F8, subtle (archetype): soul becoming aware of spirit (Witness)
F9, causal (formless): emergence of spirit
Beyond the causal realm, all forms of separate identity are subsumed in non-dual consciousness.
As the self develops through each of the basic fulcrums, it becomes more complex and expansive in its capabilities. To simplify the process, fulcrums 1-3 may be considered prepersonal (pre-egoic), fulcrums 4-6 may be considered personal (egoic), and fulcrums 7-9 may be considered transpersonal (post-egoic). Most of Western psychology is concerned with the first six fulcrums.
The first three fulcrums are often considered egocentric, which does not mean ego-centered since the ego has not yet emerged. The term egocentric is used to refer to the absence of any differentiation between self and the world -- the world is experienced as an extension of the self. Egocentrism persists all the way through the end of fulcrum six (becoming weaker at each new stage), when the self begins to move beyond its own concerns and is able to hold the needs of others as equal to its own needs.
Buddhism is concerned primarily with the final three fulcrums. While many Buddhist meditation techniques actually work to strengthen the ego, the higher teachings work to bring forth the soul consciousness and spirit consciousness (Witness) that transcend ego development. More on this in a moment.
Ego development might be better understood as a "frontal" line of development in that its role is to act as an intermediary between the outside world and the self. Soul development occurs concurrently with ego development, but can only become an element of the subjective self when the ego has reached the final fulcrums of its growth. [However, a peak experience of higher-level consciousness can occur well before the self has reached that level as a stable entity, but the experience will be transient and unable to persist as an element of the self since stages cannot be skipped.] The Self (or Witness) also develops concurrently, and like the soul cannot become an integrated aspect of the self-sense until all the preliminary stages have been integrated.
When Buddhism talks of the ego as illusion or as neurosis, the point of view is that of the Witness, the highest aspect of the self-sense. This is where much of the confusion comes from in understanding the ego. At the deepest levels, the ego is illusion -- our truest Self is one with Spirit, non-dual, perfect. So Tibetan Buddhists refer to the ego as dak dzin, which translates as "grasping to a self." Sogyal Rinpoche is fairly blunt in his disregard for the ego, which is also equated with the self.
Ego is then defined as incessant movements of grasping at a delusory notion of "I" and "mine," self and other, and all the concepts, ideas, desires, and activity that will sustain that false construction. Such a grasping is futile from the start and condemned to frustration, for there is no truth in it, and what we are grasping at is by its very nature ungraspable. The fact that we need to grasp at all and go on grasping shows that in the depths of our being we know that the self does not inherently exist. From this secret, unnerving knowledge spring all our fundamental insecurities and fear. (Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, 116-17)
However (and this is where Buddhist teachings are difficult for Westerners), we must also function in a world with cars and telephones, and more importantly, other people. We need ego to navigate the daily elements of our lives.
Strangely enough, some Western psychologists -- Mark Epstein (Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart and Thoughts Without a Thinker) seems to be the most well-known, and therefore, the target of my disdain -- have adopted the ideal of no-self, that self is illusory, as a primary goal in therapy. It's hard to imagine anything more dangerous and short-sighted for the majority of people seeking therapy. In order for a person to approach the experience of no-self, there absolutely must be a solid and well-formed ego in place or any existing pathologies from earlier developmental stages will manifest in possibly dangerous forms. The mantra for this process as a project of therapy is "regression in service of the ego." Epstein rejects this project, as well as Ken Wilber's formulation of developmental levels and the process of ego development (Spectrum of Consciousness was the first articulation of Wilber's model, which has been fleshed out in The Atman Project and Integral Psychology), despite the near-universal acceptance of this model in psychology circles. Everyone from Jung to Piaget, Kohlberg to Gilligan, Kegan to Aurobindo have shown without a doubt that human beings move through distinct developmental stages, that each stage transcends and includes the previous stage, and that no stage can be skipped without the occurrence of pathology.
In order for anyone to enter the three highest fulcrums of development, all of the previous six must have been mastered and integrated into the self-sense. If there were any developmental traumas along the way -- and there are always are -- they must be addressed and healed (this is the meaning of "regression in service of the ego"). We must often re-experience the emotional elements of the original trauma in order to release the blocked energies and integrate the experience into a healthy ego. Likewise, we may need to symbolically address the original trauma through the acquisition of new skills or behaviors that mirror the original trauma -- for example, learning to breathe through anxiety attacks and calm oneself can work to alleviate the fear of helplessness that originally gave rise to the anxiety. Finally, some traumas are profound enough that we develop split-off parts of ourselves, often referred to as subpersonalities, which act as protectors from the original trauma. Over time they can become autonomous complexes in the psyche, acting outside the control of the ego. If any of these issues are present, they must be healed or they will manifest as pathologies in each of the succeeding fulcrums, including those of the soul and the Witness.
When we embark on the spiritual path, no matter what religion we hold as truth, transcending ego becomes the path to experiencing God or Spirit or Nirvana -- whatever you want to call it. Yet, even when we succeed in transcending the ego and, for example, the center of gravity for the self-sense lies in fulcrum eight, that of the soul, all of the previous fulcrums remain as integrated elements of the self-sense and are available as behavioral options for problem solving. That is to say, even if we have transcended purely egoic consciousness, if we must deal with someone who is attacking us we possess the option of responding in kind -- we still possess a body-ego capable of defending itself in order to preserve its physical integrity. The difference would be that rather than addressing the violent person with an equal degree of violence, we might try to subdue him or her without causing harm (as is taught in Aikido).
Having taken up the spiritual path, having done a lot of inner work to heal past traumas, and having adopted mindfulness practice as a way to move beyond ego, how do we identify what is ego and what is not ego?
Most simply (for the purposes of meditation), ego is that which is connected to samsara -- the world of suffering. Ego clings to the things of the material world, to its sense of who and what it is, and most crucially, to the notion that it is separate and unique. Because manifest reality is ultimately an illusion and is transient, we experience suffering through our attachment to that which is not real. Yet the closer we come to undoing the ego's hold on our lives, the harder it will fight to keep its control. Breaking free from ego is the toughest work we will ever take on as part of our spiritual lives. For this reason, many teachers highly recommend that anyone undertaking this work have an experienced "guru" to help him or her through the process. Wilber suggests that teachers must be tough -- a Rude Boy or Rude Girl who will not be nice in the face of ego's resistance and who will be ruthless in his/her compassion for our freedom.
In the next installment, I will address the ways we can identify the workings of the ego in our lives and how to work with the ego through mindfulness, especially as exemplified in the Shambhala tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
On Renunciation
The new issue of What Is Enlightenment? features a short column by noted Zen teacher Cheri Huber, founder and resident teacher at the Zen Monastery Practice Center in Murphys, CA, and the Mountain View Zen Center. In her column ("Enlightenment is the Easiest Way in the World to Live"), she talks about the nature and value of renunciation as a crucial element of the spiritual path.
Too many people think of renunciation as giving up sex, or certain foods, or drugs, or money, or whatever the individual's particular weakness might entail. Yet what all of these things -- and so many others -- have in common is that they are things onto which the ego grasps. Renunciation is about seeing the ego for what it is -- an illusion -- and learning to undo its grasp on the things of the world and on its desire to have things its way.
"The ego wants this and doesn't want that. It is always in pursuit of something -- that's what keeps it at the center of the universe." However, Huber suggests that "people don't even know what the ego is; they can't tell when it's in charge. They really believe they are their ego. So we need a structure that enables us to begin to see ego for what it is and to differentiate between ego -- that which believes itself to be continuous and real and living outside of life -- and the Self -- that which was here before we were and will be here after we are not."
Huber concludes with the following wisdom teaching:
Enlightenment is the easiest way in the world to live. What's hard, grim, grisly, depressing, miserable, and oppressive is ego. And when we're identified with that little illusion of a separate self, we don't realize that the whole universe is behind us. That little ego is, in fact, an illusion, and everything that is true and authentic -- all of the love, the awareness, the gratitude, the expansiveness, the generosity, the kindness -- that's who we are. That spirit is who we are and it's calling us home. But the ego's onslaught, which tries to keep us in its grip, is awe-inspiring. So anything that gives us a little lift up and offers us a clearer view, anything that reveals ego for what it is, is helpful. That's the real value of renunciation.
I call my own form of renunciation coming undone. It's an ongoing process based in mindfulness practice that attempts to see the ways I allow my ego to shape my perception of the world, to define who I am. What Huber advocates is not easy. Most of us can spend our entire lives working on this one small element of enlightenment, and to have done so will be a major achievement. The path is the purpose.
Too many people think of renunciation as giving up sex, or certain foods, or drugs, or money, or whatever the individual's particular weakness might entail. Yet what all of these things -- and so many others -- have in common is that they are things onto which the ego grasps. Renunciation is about seeing the ego for what it is -- an illusion -- and learning to undo its grasp on the things of the world and on its desire to have things its way.
"The ego wants this and doesn't want that. It is always in pursuit of something -- that's what keeps it at the center of the universe." However, Huber suggests that "people don't even know what the ego is; they can't tell when it's in charge. They really believe they are their ego. So we need a structure that enables us to begin to see ego for what it is and to differentiate between ego -- that which believes itself to be continuous and real and living outside of life -- and the Self -- that which was here before we were and will be here after we are not."
Huber concludes with the following wisdom teaching:
Enlightenment is the easiest way in the world to live. What's hard, grim, grisly, depressing, miserable, and oppressive is ego. And when we're identified with that little illusion of a separate self, we don't realize that the whole universe is behind us. That little ego is, in fact, an illusion, and everything that is true and authentic -- all of the love, the awareness, the gratitude, the expansiveness, the generosity, the kindness -- that's who we are. That spirit is who we are and it's calling us home. But the ego's onslaught, which tries to keep us in its grip, is awe-inspiring. So anything that gives us a little lift up and offers us a clearer view, anything that reveals ego for what it is, is helpful. That's the real value of renunciation.
I call my own form of renunciation coming undone. It's an ongoing process based in mindfulness practice that attempts to see the ways I allow my ego to shape my perception of the world, to define who I am. What Huber advocates is not easy. Most of us can spend our entire lives working on this one small element of enlightenment, and to have done so will be a major achievement. The path is the purpose.
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