Category: Personal

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?

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).

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:

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.

I’ve been silent lately. Work has been difficult, as the kids on the Adolescent Chemical Dependency Unit have been particularly intractable. Stress at work inevitably leads to thoughts of changing course: “Why am I doing this? What do I really want to do with my life?” The extra hours on the job also keep me from addressing the always growing “To do” list on the dining room table. Wedding photos still not gone through. Thank yous not sent out. Holiday shopping not even thought about. Ugh.

It’s snowing right now, and my wife is not sure she wants to brave the elements and run our errands today. I’m just stuck, spinning in circles–mentally, physically, spiritually. I wanted to blog several times over these last few days. The Sam Harris-Dennis Prager debate about atheism was pretty interesting (I thought Harris wiped the floor with Prager). Then Prager, who I never heard of before this week, caused a stir over a Minnesota Congressman’s refusal to swear his oath on the Bible. I had lots to say about that one, but decided to spend my free hour flipping between Leno and Letterman.

Then I found myself rankled by the in-group dynamics and circular arguments that elevate certain blogs (and certain people, artists, bands, organizations) to “integral” status based on little more than a shared jargon and common interest in Ken Wilber. I was ready to launch into a long rant about that one, but then I heard that Wilber is in serious condition in a Denver hospital. Suddenly, I don’t feel like bitching anymore.

Bad vibes all around. I’ll take a few deep breaths, tackle one or two things on the to-do list, and then rock out on the guitar for a while. At some point, clarity will come knocking again. Hopefully, I’ll be able to hear it over the amplifier.

The following is a reply to my last post, from a lovely woman who’s been active on the integral forums and in life for a long while:

Bob my friend,

Decline, decay and resignation you say. I rise to their defence.

Decline: can be wonderful when it serves diminished ambitions cause then you can see how pointless most of them were.

Decay: of body, mind, possessions can be amusing when not extreme and taken as part of being human.

Resignation: can be priceless when she becomes the delightful acceptance that THIS (whatever is happening) is IT (life in full) and we get to chew the darned carrot of every moment, juice dripping down our jaws.

The defence rests. Munch,munch.

Marianthi.

It’s been many moons since I last participated in any “integral” forum discussions. Some folks wished me a happy birthday over on the HeartMind Forum, which inspired me to take a look around. Seems like there’s been a bit of a lull over there, and I decided to throw in my two cents:

[Quote from Steven] In the end I suspect that what we find compelling and what we notice has been lost derives from what we hoped or expected to find when we signed up over there [Integral Naked] first and over here second.

This makes perfect sense to me Steven. There’s so much energy wrapped up in hope. When I first picked up a Ken Wilber book, I was looking for hope, hope that there was more to adulthood than decline, decay and resignation. His theories gave me hope that there just might be something to look forward to, discoveries to be made beyond my wildest dreams.

The early days at Integral Naked were blazing with this hope-energy as well. There was a sense of being on the cutting edge, and Wilber kept this vibe going with his grandiose proclamations of how Integral Institute would soon explode onto the scene. Coming soon… the Multiplex…Integral University…an Integral world.

There were also personal hopes. For me, they were to find my niche, to belong to a community of like-minded souls, to find a career that fit, to make a few friends. For others (many others I suspect), the hope was to find love, plain and simple. And I don’t mean some fluffy spiritual love. I’m talking sex and romance. Perhaps because I was already in love, it seemed especially transparent to me how many of the exchanges–however philosophical or spiritual they seemed–were subtle (or not so subtle) pick-up lines and come-ons. Nothing wrong with any of that, of course. Had I been single, I would undoubtedly have been hoping for the same thing.

As with all endeavors weighted with unrealistic expectations, there comes a time when illusions come crashing down around us and we are left sifting through the rubble for whatever we can salvage. College was a time of hope for me, and I rode those waves until I washed up on the shore of a full-time job. The sense of let-down was pretty overwhelming, but I soon latched on to the hope of traveling to California. Eventually I washed up into another full-time job, until I was saved by the hope of graduate school. There I fell in love, and was so full of hope I could burst. Great years indeed, but eventually I crashed ashore alone and in debt up to my ears (and into another full-time job). Hope seduced me again a few years later, as I turned down a free ride to a PhD program to play in a band with some extremely hopeful friends. Several years later, the hope finally ran out on that one too, and I was led to my present situation.

A few months ago, I was watching an episode of Six Feet Under and heard a line that shattered me. David was talking to his mother (Ruth) and asked why it is that people cling so tightly to the past. Ruth replied: “Because that’s when there was hope.”

And so we started participating in this forum with our own hopes. Some prayers may have been answered, while others among us have not yet gotten what we had hoped for. I, for one, have all but lost interest in the “integral” online forums, which is likely a direct reflection of my loss of interest in Ken Wilber. I blog a lot these days, and have enjoyed it quite a bit. On some level I can feel myself being sucked in again, hoping that something will come of my engagement in the blogosphere. Maybe someone will like my music, praise my writing, offer me a job, show me a way out when hope in my present situation runs dry.

I think I have a fear of being hopeless. If true freedom is found in having nothing left to lose, I wonder what lies at the bottom of the well that is hope.

I grew up watching Super Friends on Saturday mornings. Even then, the idea of Wonder Woman riding around in an invisible plane seemed ridiculous. I mean, what’s the point of the plane being invisible if you if can still see Wonder Woman streaking through the sky? When I saw this Family Guy clip this morning, I nearly pissed myself laughing: