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.