All Discussions Tagged 'ITC' - Integral Post-Metaphysical Spirituality2024-03-28T16:08:24Zhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topic/listForTag?tag=ITC&feed=yes&xn_auth=noTrusting Desire - Zach Schlossertag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2015-09-29:5301756:Topic:623692015-09-29T16:10:26.405ZBalderhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/BruceAlderman
<p>In "Trusting Desire," which you can <a href="https://www.regonline.com/builder/site/?eventid=1646235" target="_blank">download here</a>, Zach Schlosser proposes a trans-lineage, living spirituality, one which honors and draws on traditional spiritual teachings (such as Buddhism) but which is more responsive to the complex challenges of our times. To frame his argument, Zach first recounts important steps in his own spiritual journey -- his study and practice of multiple forms of Buddhism,…</p>
<p>In "Trusting Desire," which you can <a href="https://www.regonline.com/builder/site/?eventid=1646235" target="_blank">download here</a>, Zach Schlosser proposes a trans-lineage, living spirituality, one which honors and draws on traditional spiritual teachings (such as Buddhism) but which is more responsive to the complex challenges of our times. To frame his argument, Zach first recounts important steps in his own spiritual journey -- his study and practice of multiple forms of Buddhism, various critical questions and points of dissatisfaction which arose for him along the way, and his subsequent exploration of several, more recently emergent spiritual approaches, such as Waking Down in Mutuality, Focusing, and the Diamond Approach. A key concern, as suggested by the title of the paper, is the importance of 'desire' (and a positive, this-worldly orientation) for a spiritual path that is relevant and responsible in a time of planetary crisis.<br/> <br/> His paper is not long, and I encourage others to read it, so I will not summarize the paper here. Instead, I'll just respond to a few of the points that most stood out for me.<br/> <br/> 1) I am only moderately familiar with the Waking Down teachings, and I have reservations about some of the work of the Bonders, but overall I resonated with most of the voices he brought into the discussion (including my own :-D). I, too, have been informed and inspired, in various ways in my own writing and practice, by the work of Bonnitta Roy, Eugene Gendlin, and A.H. Almaas: each working at the far edges of postmodernism to think and vision anew, to find new language and new modes of engaging the wildly creative flux of multiplicitous being. They are strong allies of emergent trans-lineage spiritual practice, whatever forms that may take.<br/> <br/> 2) I have a mixed response to Zach's critique of Buddhism. On the one hand, I know exactly what he is talking about, and I agree: in many ways, even modern Western Buddhism remains saddled by traces of the religion's early devaluation of worldly life and its distrust of body and desire. The existence of various forms of 'engaged' or 'embodied' Buddhism demonstrates the truth of this charge, to the degree that they present themselves as alternatives. Many years ago, for instance, a friend and I decided to pose a question to the senior teacher in our (Yungdrung Bon) lineage: what did he recommend we do, as practitioners, to respond to the ecological and economic challenges of our age? He told us just to work on individual enlightenment practice and not to worry about the world, since "worlds come and go." While I could appreciate a certain wisdom in his advice not to get entangled in fruitless world-worry, I also found it seemingly representative of the retiring oblivion for which Buddhism is often critiqued. Regardless of whether or not it was "enlightened" to worry about and want to work for the benefit of the world, I felt it was right to do so, and I left him feeling a bit disappointed and dissatisfied.<br/> <br/> On the other hand, I have some reservations about Zach's critique just because there are a (small but not negligible) number of Buddhist teachers and teachings that do not strike me, as I've encountered and engaged them, as life- or desire- or world-averse -- who do not see an awakened perspective, for instance, as opposed to desire, but rather as orthogonal to it (and pervasive of it). Some modern teachers, such as Mark Epstein or Jack Kornfield, have written recently about the value of desire -- drawing distinctions between constructive desire and non-constructive 'clinging' or 'craving' -- and this, again, could be read as the criticism-proving assertion of an alternative; but there appear to be perspectives and resources within certain long-standing Buddhist traditions which fall outside of the problematic dichotomies of early Buddhism. At the least, there are resources here for uniquely Buddhist responses to the issues Zach raises -- and as we may find exemplified, for instance, in some of David Loy's recent writings. Still perhaps requiring a 'strong pivot' (as he puts it) in many instances, but not necessarily the need to leave the tradition behind. <br/> <br/> I make this "on the other hand" argument only half-heartedly, I must admit. I stopped identifying as "Buddhist" a number of years ago and find plenty of nourishment for now in trans-lineage spaces, so I've followed a path similar to the one Zach outlines. And as we've explored extensively on this forum, there is work to be done to articulate a thorough-going postmetaphysical framing of the tradition that would be more compelling to modern understanding. But I do think Buddhism is rich enough to afford practitioners relevant 'paths forward' in our time, for any who would like to do so (and who are willing to do the work to bring that forward).<br/> <br/> 3) I appreciated Zach's discussion of process and 'living' ontologies -- and have traced, in my own writings, the emergence (out of nounal/structural metaphysics) various verbal, pronounal, and prepositional ontologies, among others -- but I would point him to Herbert Guenther's writings on Dzogchen for a consideration of the degree to which Buddhism affords a process view. Guenther, for what its worth, regards Dzogchen as the most thorough-going process ontology yet developed (and presents it as escaping the usual flat symmetries that we often find in Mahayanist framings). But that aside, Zach appears to be touching on an orientation that is gaining currency in multiple quarters (from Whitehead to Panikkar to various Object-Oriented and "evolutionary" philosophies, etc): the re-valuation of becoming, not as a 'corruption' of (or illusory overlay upon) a pre-existing static One, but as sacred in itself. This is Panikkar's sacred secularity, where the secular itself is not "godlessness" but the embrace of "time" and "world" as worthy in their own rights.<br/> <br/> 4) Regarding Zach's 'living' ontology, a key element of that seems to be a focus on apophasis: epistemologically on not-knowing, and ontologically on being itself as open and undetermined. Here, too, I think he has his finger on the pulse of certain emergent trends in theological thinking -- from the work of Catherine Keller ("apophatic entanglement"), to Ferrer's rendering of participatory metaphysics, to Almaas' recent work (which he notes), to ontological withdrawal in speculative realism, etc. I wouldn't define spirituality only as "staring into the unknown," but I do see this apophatic moment as crucial to emergent integral-participatory self-understanding and praxis, and as intimately related to our Gendlinian (and centauric) opening to the implicit. Regarding his assertion that we do not discover truths, but invent them, I would caution against going too far in the direction of a notion of reality as anthropocentrically generated (OOO's critique of 'correlationism'), but nevertheless I think this is a valuable distinction (or blurring) to make: the in/distinction of discovery and invention. Latour invokes here a word used by the French philosopher, Sourriau: instauration. Truth under this conception is both 'installed' and uncovered, like a treasure or gift, and we can never fully tell the two apart.<br/> <br/> 5) Lastly, regarding desire and trusting desire: As I said, I appreciate and generally share Zach's desire- and life-positive orientation, but I wish he had spent more time discussing his understanding of the nature and function of desire. I think this is quite an important topic, and worth dwelling deeply on. Is desire inherently trust-worthy, or is Zach recommending that we really trust ourselves enough to open to and receive the messages of the movement of desire? To what degree do messages of valuing and surrendering into trust of desire play into the 'ends' of our present consumerist culture? What is the relation of desire to the three transcendentals or virtues of goodness, truth, and beauty -- to tie this question in to Steve McIntosh's new book, The Presence of the Infinite -- or to eros and agape? What is the relation of desire to the ascetic 'vertical tensions' that drive Sloterdijk's (Nietzschean) anthropotechnics? Maybe we can explore some of these questions (or others) here.</p> Searching for Centaur - Chris Dierkestag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2015-07-27:5301756:Topic:618452015-07-27T19:14:58.614ZBalderhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/BruceAlderman
<p>In his award-winning paper, "Searching for Centaur: Retrieving Integral's Lost Self-Identity," Chris Dierkes makes a compelling case for recovering several key concepts from Wilber's early writings that have fallen in recent years into general disuse -- namely, the centaur (as metaphor for the integral / existential phase of development), vision-image (as a complement to, if not a more fundamental and encompassing process than, vision-logic), and intentionality. While integral consciousness…</p>
<p>In his award-winning paper, "Searching for Centaur: Retrieving Integral's Lost Self-Identity," Chris Dierkes makes a compelling case for recovering several key concepts from Wilber's early writings that have fallen in recent years into general disuse -- namely, the centaur (as metaphor for the integral / existential phase of development), vision-image (as a complement to, if not a more fundamental and encompassing process than, vision-logic), and intentionality. While integral consciousness now is often described in terms of "touching all the bases" and the capacity to hold and integrate multiple perspectives, Dierkes points out that Wilber's initial, existentially informed depictions of centauric consciousness were richer and more embodied. Dierkes lists four essential components of centauric being:<br/> <br/> 1. bodymind integration (aka somatic existentialism and noetic existentialism) <br/> 2. spontaneous will, supersensory awareness, vision-image cognition<br/> 3. existential concerns of life and death, being and non-beingness, finitude. <br/> 4. the proper basis for true spiritual transpersonal ventures<br/> <br/> Together, these qualities constitute an integrated, existential-organismic, postformal identity which Wilber has argued serves as an important foundation for, and bridge to, the later, stable emergence of transpersonal stages of development.<br/> <br/> I had not noticed the gradual creep away from references to the centaur in integral thinking, possibly because I teach transpersonal psychology and regularly appeal to Wilber's older works, especially to refer to the centaur stage -- and correlate and "unpack" it with further references to Jung, Washburn, heart-centered existential therapy, etc -- but I think Dierkes makes a good point that more recent descriptions of integral consciousness suffer, in some regards, from the shift towards AQAL, perspective-centric modeling, which arguably still presupposes the "basis" of the centauric distinctions, but without making them explicit. For instance, in <em>Integral Psychology</em>, we still find references to the centaur, but mostly on the charts (e.g., as a name for Fulcrum 6), without much further development or explanation.<br/> <br/> Similarly, I had not noticed the shift from Wilber's early appeals to "vision-image," which as its name suggests emphasizes imagination or imaginal cognition, to his later reliance on "vision-logic" or "network logic" as synonyms for integral cognition. Besides simply not paying attention well enough :-), I think I may have done this because I've related "vision" itself as an appeal to the imaginal, and I've often described the emergence of "vision-logic" to students as contingent on the resurgence and reclamation of the autosymbolic imagination, now integrating formal operational capacities. But the "imaginal" cannot be limited to "vision," admittedly; and Dierkes is right to emphasize, in my view, that Wilber's earlier descriptions of vision-image involved a richer constellation of capacities and dimensions -- unconscious, feeling, emotional, perceptual, linguistic -- than descriptions of vision- or network-logic typically do. <br/> <br/> One of the consequences of such a shift is that the importance of the emergence of integral "being" depending, in significant part, on feeling-work, existential inquiry and will-work, and imagination, as much as on increasing cognitive perspective-taking capacity, tends to be downplayed or overlooked -- even if unintentionally so. <br/> <br/> Dierkes discusses this potential loss in detail in his paper, and also provides several interesting case studies from his work with clients to illustrate his understanding of the importance of working with vision-image and intentionality in the emergence of stable centauric (or mermaidic) identity, so I encourage interested readers to check out his paper. Members of this forum will also likely be interested in his unpacking of the possible political, economic, and spiritual consequences for integral thinking of this subtle shift away from the centaur and vision-image (see pp. 51 ff. for this discussion).<br/> <br/> There is much more in this paper that is worth discussing, but I do not want this initial review to be too long, or to provide too many spoilers. But we can take up discussion of these things in the thread below, for anyone who is interested and wants to engage with this stimulating paper.</p>
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<p>[ITC 2015 Papers can be downloaded <a href="https://www.regonline.com/builder/site/?eventid=1646235" target="_blank">here</a>.]</p> Orientation to the 2015 ITC Paper Reviewtag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2015-07-24:5301756:Topic:617242015-07-24T17:24:54.167ZBalderhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/BruceAlderman
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2311752302?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-full" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2311752302?profile=original" width="550"></img></a></p>
<p>In <a href="http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/categories/itc-paper-review/listForCategory" target="_self">this section of the website</a>, we will host reviews and discussions of the papers submitted for the 2015 Integral Theory Conference. Unlike last year, we will not require that the papers be read or commented on in any particular order. If you are…</p>
<p><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2311752302?profile=original"><img class="align-full" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2311752302?profile=original" width="550"/></a></p>
<p>In <a href="http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/categories/itc-paper-review/listForCategory" target="_self">this section of the website</a>, we will host reviews and discussions of the papers submitted for the 2015 Integral Theory Conference. Unlike last year, we will not require that the papers be read or commented on in any particular order. If you are interested in a paper, start a thread on it to post your review and invite discussion from others. If someone has already started a thread on a paper you are interested in discussing, post your review and comments on the same thread*. </p>
<p>The conference papers are available for downloading <a href="https://www.regonline.com/builder/site/?eventid=1646235" target="_blank">on this webpage</a>, as well as the abstracts and presenter bios. To my knowledge, the list of winning papers has not been posted yet, but here is an unofficial list (to be updated once the official one comes out):</p>
<p><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Best Paper Award Winners:</span></strong></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">UL:</span> Chris Dierkes</p>
<p>Honorable Mention (HM): Terry Patten</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">LL:</span> Kate McAlpine</p>
<p>HM: Carter Phipps & Steve McIntosh</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">LR:</span> Randy Marten, Jeff Cohen, et al.</p>
<p>HM: Zak Stein (Desperate Measures)</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">UR:</span> Elliot Ingersoll</p>
<p>HM: Teresa Silow</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Alternatives to AQAL Metatheory:</span></p>
<p>Bruce Alderman</p>
<p>HM: Michael Schwartz</p>
<p>HM: Uma Narayama</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Research:</span><br/> Deborah Kennedy</p>
<p>Niki Vincent</p>
<p>HM: Howard Drossman & Shanti OmGaia<br/> HM: Steve Schein</p>
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<p>*For any who want it, I can edit the opening post to combine multiple reviews.</p> ITC 2015tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-07-28:5301756:Topic:573692014-07-28T15:57:11.180ZBalderhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/BruceAlderman
<p>Meta-Integral has just sent out the call for papers for the upcoming 2015 Integral Theory Conference. The theme for the conference is <strong>Integral Impacts: Using Integrative Metatheories to Catalyze Effective Change</strong>.</p>
<p><a href="https://foundation.metaintegral.org/sites/default/files/Call%20for%20Papers_final.pdf" target="_blank">See here</a> for details.</p>
<p>Meta-Integral has just sent out the call for papers for the upcoming 2015 Integral Theory Conference. The theme for the conference is <strong>Integral Impacts: Using Integrative Metatheories to Catalyze Effective Change</strong>.</p>
<p><a href="https://foundation.metaintegral.org/sites/default/files/Call%20for%20Papers_final.pdf" target="_blank">See here</a> for details.</p> ITC 2013 Conference Official Bloggertag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2013-07-05:5301756:Topic:494972013-07-05T20:20:33.649ZMary W.http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/MaryW
<p>A Google-Plus friend posted a link to this -- right now it's actually a fund-raising page, but looks like the blogger, <a href="http://www.indiegogo.com/individuals/307991" target="_blank">Jeremy Johnson</a>, has received the funds he needed. As the conference starts, perhaps there will be eventually a different link.</p>
<p>Since I won't be able to go to the ITC this year, I'll be checking in on the blog.…</p>
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<p>A Google-Plus friend posted a link to this -- right now it's actually a fund-raising page, but looks like the blogger, <a href="http://www.indiegogo.com/individuals/307991" target="_blank">Jeremy Johnson</a>, has received the funds he needed. As the conference starts, perhaps there will be eventually a different link.</p>
<p>Since I won't be able to go to the ITC this year, I'll be checking in on the blog.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/integral-theory-conference-2013-s-official-blogger" target="_blank">Integral Theory Conference 2013's Official Blogger.</a></p> Integral Theory Conference 2010tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2010-07-28:5301756:Topic:28722010-07-28T14:38:53.000ZBalderhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/BruceAlderman
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<p><a href="http://www.integraltheoryconference.org/home">ITC 2010</a> begins in two days -- actually, it begins tomorrow, for those attending pre-conference workshops -- and I understand that William Harryman will be the official blogger for the event. If you're interested, you can follow his reporting on the event at …<span class="Object" id="OBJ_PREFIX_DWT170"></span></p>
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<p><img class="rg_hi" id="rg_hi" style="WIDTH: 67px; HEIGHT: 108px" height="108" src="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:gGWpe3C94lC68M:l" width="67" name="rg_hi"/></p>
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<p><a href="http://www.integraltheoryconference.org/home">ITC 2010</a> begins in two days -- actually, it begins tomorrow, for those attending pre-conference workshops -- and I understand that William Harryman will be the official blogger for the event. If you're interested, you can follow his reporting on the event at <span class="Object" id="OBJ_PREFIX_DWT170"><a style="COLOR: #003366! important; TEXT-DECORATION: underline" href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1103583387270&s=22865&e=0013tI8meEMYutZRWcfXfGbGF9G8Dzx_dJ_imUOZ_n1gKTn5_ifE_LsftCI3fP9ok7GFaM-nt_Z6LsB-rA0Bfle0FHdRn2b13m0_cuVJsOtqt6buqTzZO_n7nL2VZmwN3J_-NnF2Ia7zKw=" target="_blank" shape="rect"><strong><font size="2">Integral Options Café</font></strong></a>.</span></p>
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<p>If I have time, I'll also post some of my own notes from the conference here on this thread.</p>
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<p>Will any of the other members of this forum be attending the event? </p>
<p> </p> ITC 2010 Paperstag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2010-07-22:5301756:Topic:27082010-07-22T15:50:37.000ZBalderhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/BruceAlderman
The Integral Theory Conference 2010 website has posted <a href="http://www.integraltheoryconference.org/talks">links to the abstracts and full papers</a> for the various presentations at this year's event. I am posting a link to the webpage here as a resource, since I think a number of the papers could serve as the basis for some fruitful and interesting discussions.
The Integral Theory Conference 2010 website has posted <a href="http://www.integraltheoryconference.org/talks">links to the abstracts and full papers</a> for the various presentations at this year's event. I am posting a link to the webpage here as a resource, since I think a number of the papers could serve as the basis for some fruitful and interesting discussions.