Author: Bob

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Next move

I’ve been busy, working on an application to grad school, plotting and planning my next move in this big game. There’s only so many hours in the day, and it’s understandable that I let some things drop away this past couple of weeks–blogging, exercise, Spanish lessons, meditation, guitar. Wait a minute… maybe it’s not so understandable. Do I smell what I think I smell? Snff snff… Yeah, that’s bullshit alright.

It amazes me how a mere week or two disengaged from my routines can leave me so out of sorts. I begin to panic a little, as if I might lose everything I’ve gained over the years, negate my progress permanently, cross some invisible line, some point of no-return. The older I get, the more certain I feel that, ultimately, I am fucked, that without some fundamental transformation of my point of view, I will never resolve the problems that vex me on a daily basis. This grad school thing, I know it’s crazy, I know I’ve been here before (several times). I just want a change for the sake of change. I don’t know what I want to do, really, just that I want to do something else. I know I’m just playing a game, and that this move will just lead to another, and that the only check mate I truly foresee is death. But what’s a boy to do?

Tomorrow the application will be in the mail. Then it’s life’s move.

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“Put down that telescope Galileo, and look me in the eye!”

In response to ~C4Chaos’s evolving thoughts on Sam Harris, particularly the following [referring to Robert Godwin’s critique]:

I do think that Sam Harris is fighting a good fight here. So instead of taking the dude down and insulting him downright, why not build on top of his arguments? I think building on Sam Harris’ work, like taking what’s partially right and extending his rational arguments into the transational, is a more “integral” way of doing it.

C-

Robert Godwin misses the point by a hundred miles, as do (in my opinion) nearly all the Harris critics I’ve read so far. Religion is just too personal a topic for most people to discuss, I guess. Clear thinking just goes out the window when ones most cherished attachments are challenged.

I was reading the Harris-Sullivan debate the other day and was utterly unable to see how any clear thinking person could see anything but Harris mopping the floor with Sullivan’s arguments. I’m sure this has something to do with my own blind spots, but thus far I’ve not heard a single critique of Harris’s position that rings true to me.

When you say “Let’s build on his ideas” or “extend them into the transrational,” it sounds a little condescending, as if the wider, broader, integral perspective is obviously more appropriate in all situations. I don’t think this is the case, and I think many so-called “integral” critiques fail in this respect. Harris is looking through a particular lens–at a particular level of magnification–when he looks at how we apply reason and rationality to religious beliefs. Just because there is a wider view available doesn’t mean it’s more appropriate to the question at hand. If you want to explore the meaning of facial expressions, the view from your own two eyes is more appropriate than both a microscope and a telescope. Likewise, I think that Harris’s analyses are dead on and appropriate to the specific points he’s making, and while changing the level of magnification to see the bigger, integral picture might be useful when addressing other questions, like how to deal with the problem of religious lunacy, when it comes to establishing the fact of said lunacy, flipping the switch to “integral” can just make things blurry.

–Bob

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Something somewhere

My first fiddle-about with iMovie, featuring a snippet from an old tune written during a very productive period of my life. For some reason, earlier today I felt like revisiting some journal entries from about that time (a little more than five years ago). I had been reading Wilhelm Reich’s The function of the orgasm and my mind was sparkling with insight and creativity. Two days before my 31st birthday, I wrote the following note after a long riff about Reich’s theories:

Saki Santorelli from UMASS has some mindfulness clinic at the university. He spoke on NPR today and seems to “get it.” Need to check him out.

So, I checked him out today, over five years after the fact, and I was super impressed with the Center for Mindfulness at the UMASS Medical School. My wife and I have been planning to move to Massachusetts once she finishes her PhD here at the University of Kentucky. I will be looking into the Center for Mindfulness in much more depth in the coming weeks, and I’ll report my findings as they trickle in.

There surely must be something somewhere…

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What it takes

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I’m reading a biography of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (To redeem one person is to redeem the world, by Gail Hornstein) and I’m amazed at how Frieda’s education unfolded in such a dynamic and organic fashion. Adapting to wars, anti-Semitism, sexism–it didn’t seem to matter what was going on, Frieda pressed on and got the most out of every opportunity. As with many people who become great at something, Frieda had undeniable talent, but it was through an extraordinary work ethic that she was able to make the most of her potential.

Bill over at Integral Options Café wrote about his own education and how it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I feel the same way about my own formal education. Beyond the fourth grade, school amounted to little more than an ongoing process of having to adapt to artificial social situations that existed nowhere outside of school. In short, it was a waste of time, and later on, when it became a matter of “higher education,” there was a good deal of money wasted as well. With a decent internet connection and a library card, I could learn more in six months than I did in four years of college.

What’s done is done, though, and there’s no reason I can’t continue to self-direct my education for the remainder of my life. It’s the work ethic I seem to lack. I like sleep too much, and purposeless playing-around time. This morning I woke up early (relatively) and worked out before I even knew what planet I was on. There are a million things I want to do, songs I want to record, languages to learn, books to write, states of consciousness to explore. There’s just not enough time it seems, and I don’t even have kids. How can anyone work full-time AND have kids AND have a bit of time or energy left to do anything else?

I wonder again and again: Do I have what it takes to be great?

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Sam Harris and Integral Theory

My friend Julian (over on the II-Zaadz forum) asked for an “Integral critique” of Sam Harris, and I couldn’t resist jumping into the fray:

I have given Sam Harris more than a bit of thought over the past few months:

Rational dialogue and human development
Atheism, meaning and morality
Why won’t God heal amputees
The great divide
Itchy fingers

I have a hard time thinking about what an “Integral” response to ANY issue looks like, to tell you the truth. Most so-called “Integral” analyses strike me as little more than oversimplified, misapplied developmental arguments, usually filtered through the kaleidoscopic lens of Wilber’s Spiral Dynamics Rainbow.

As I said before, I think Harris is quite clear as to what “level” of religion he is criticizing, i.e. the literalist/fundamentalist level. He’s also quick to point out that most of the people who embrace unreasonable, irrational beliefs in the religious sphere, are quite capable of (in fact, they insist on) being rational and reasonable in all other spheres of life. So, it doesn’t make sense to me to say “We need mythic level religion as a conveyor belt for all those pre-rational people out there.” These people are not “pre-rational” in any other area of their lives. They are not six year olds. A truly pre-rational person (i.e. a six year old) would only be confused by a church sermon or a Buddhist Satsang.

What a pre-rational person needs is a proper environment in which to naturally develop to the rational stage. Like I said before, religion is totally unnecessary for this process, as further brain development and Sesame Street take care of this quite nicely.

What Harris is trying to expose and knock down is the taboo against using our given rational capacities in the religious sphere. If Integral Theory applies here, perhaps it is in how the cognitive line relates to the spiritual line. I have too many questions about the concept of a “spiritual line” to take that any further right now.

This whole issue is personal, I think we must all admit. When I was twelve years old or so, it was rational arguments, like the ones Harris provides, that spared me from indoctrination into the world of mythic religion. It was this wholesale rejection of religion that, for me, cleared the way for development of a rational, then transrational spirituality. Rationality was my conveyor belt, and a set of parents who did not reinforce the taboo against criticizing religion. I’ll shut up now.

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Bad dancing

I’m finally feeling better, seeing things a little clearer. It’s easy to see now how far off the path I have strayed. Fortunately, I often have the impulse to write when I’m graced with moments of clarity, so I have all these blog posts and journal entries to help me remember the core insights that have contributed most to my sanity over the years. Coming out of the fog, I find myself retracing my steps, looking for a little familiar ground from which to carry on.

Today I made it back to base camp by way of jumping around the room like a lunatic. Strange as it may sound, this has been by core spiritual practice for the past decade or so. Calling what I did today “movement meditation” sounds pretentious as hell, considering that a fly on the wall would probably call it “bad dancing,” but whatever the label it left me in a state of energized clarity. And I’ve repeatedly discovered over the years that if I do whatever it takes to keep the window of my soul clean, everything else just takes care of itself. What baffles me is that while I know this to be true and also know precisely the set of daily practices that keep my grounded and clear-minded, I still choose–again and again–to ignore these hard-won insights. The price I pay for this ignorance is lost time, lost hope, and developmental arrest. I make myself spiritually sick until everything I do feels as fruitless as the dry heaves. I’m like so many of the drug addicts I work with–I know what to do, yet for some reason I don’t do it.

There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to change, that doesn’t want to grow, that doesn’t want to see things clearly. And that part of me can’t stand bad dancing.

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Ascendio!

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This is my first post of the new year, not because I don’t have anything to say but because I don’t have anything good to say. Being sick has clouded my perception, and I find myself worrying that I’ll never snap out of it, that I’m all tapped out of vitality and creativity. I certainly feel a great deal of compassion for anyone who suffers from poor health. All I have is some sort of flu thing, and I feel like I’m losing my spiritual marbles.

This time of year tends to be tough for me. It’s probably just the winter blues, and I’m just blowing it all out of proportion. With me, everything has to have some great spiritual significance. I have trouble accepting sometimes that I’m just a regular shlub, no different than the next guy. Even getting sick wounds my pride as well as my body, and you’ll often hear me say things like “I never get sick,” as if my typical state of good health is evidence of self-mastery or a high level of psycho-spiritual development. Yeah, I’m a piece of work, that’s for sure.

Overblown ego aside, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to be concerned (okay, obsessed!) with ones state of spiritual fortitude. Narcissistic though it may be, I like feeling as if every obstacle in my life needs to handled just right, like there’s something on the line in all that I do. My wife and I watched a Harry Potter movie (Goblet of Fire) the other night, and something lit up in me. With Harry, everything he does is part of some grand destiny, and however grandiose is might seem (and probably is), I’ve been happiest in my life when I feel the same way, like every move I make is just as it should be, not preordained necessarily, but at least congruent with the full unfolding of my deepest intentions and potential.

At one point in Goblet of Fire Harry uses a spell to propel himself to the surface of the Black Lake. Say it with me now: ASCENDIO!

Hmmm… I still feel like crap. What the hell? I guess there must be some magic key or something I’m supposed to find down here before I can come up for air. Yeah, that’s it, a magic key. Then, enlightenment shall at last be mine. IT SHALL BE MI…(interrupted by a hacking cough).

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Fish out of water

Oh God! That’s what I was saying between bouts of vomiting throughout the night on Christmas. It was a brutal end to a difficult trip home. I felt out of sorts from the get-go, untethered from the web of routines that keeps me grounded. Sometimes that web can feel unbearably constricting. Sometimes it’s cozy and comforting.

Despite feeling like a corpse, I managed to make the drive from my parents’ house to my father-in-law’s place in New Jersey. My wife and I will be visiting with her Dad for a couple of days before returning to Kentucky. Presently I’m sitting in front of my lap-top, sipping some coffee, and checking out what’s been happening online these past few days. This reflective piece from Ze Frank hit home (as it did for my buddy Sean):

Then I read the latest from Ken Wilber, in which he describes the horrific brush with death he’s endured these past few weeks. It seems Wilber not only managed to survive the ordeal, but he also found a way to turn it into an edifying and inspirational experience. This guy is one extraordinary human being and I admire him a great deal, despite the many critical points I’ve made lately. Thinking about how poorly I handled being sick (I was on the verge of praying for death at one point), I am reminded of how much further I have to go in terms of developing my capacity for equanimity in the face of adversity. Shit, I can’t even visit my family without feeling and acting like a fish out of water.

But hey, today I’ll take a little comfort, like how I feel when I look over at my wife as we both “work” on our respective computers:

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Old Corduroys

This always happens when I pack for a trip. I pack up all the clothes I usually wear, my favorite stuff, and I don’t want to dirty any A-list outfits, so the day before the trip I wear some stuff that’s been buried in the drawer for months. Like right now I have on my old grey corduroys and band T-shirt, an ensemble that hasn’t seen the light of day all year. And that’s just it. It’s the novelty factor, I guess. Just because I haven’t worn this stuff in ages, it suddenly stands out, it looks cool, it has me second-guessing my suitcase priorities. I’ll probably end up wearing these corduroys all week and, as usual, leave untouched ninety percent of everything I pack in my suitcase. I know this, and yet I go through the motions as usual. It’s a familiar pattern, but it doesn’t feel constricting to me. It’s comforting in a way. It’s fun. And that’s a relief, to observe me being me, with all my quirks and foibles, and for that to make me smile instead of cringe.

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Itchy fingers

Everybody’s talking about God! How could there be so much buzz over someone who doesn’t exist?

Coolmel had this to say while I was napping, and I can’t seem to keep my mouth shut (fingers motionless?) about this stuff:

What up C?

I threw in my two cents before I noticed your response over here. I just don’t think you can dismiss Harris with a simple developmental-levels argument. I’ve read/listened to/watched several Harris performances in the past few months, and I think he is very clear about which “level of God” he’s arguing against. Harris is repeatedly trying to point out what many of us are refusing to believe might be true–that a huge percentage of the world populace, including many in positions of considerable power and influence, believe that a particular book (i.e. the Bible or the Koran) is the absolute word of God, a God thought of as the omniscient creator of the universe. If this level of religious belief is really as widespread as Harris suggests, then we are all in deep shit, because such beliefs have dangerous implications in today’s world. That there are deeper, more developed conceptions of God and religions is beside the point. Changing “levels” or definitions in mid-debate (like Prager does) is dodging the issue. Maybe Sam is exaggerating or giving us trumped up statistics on just how many Americans believe Jesus is coming back soon to kick ass and take names. But if he’s even in the ballpark on his numbers, we should be very concerned indeed. The deeper articulations of our religious impulses have a place in the discussion, of course, when we are talking about how best to address the problem, but not as subterfuge used to keep us from recognizing it.