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Team Integral

Posted February 4th, 2012 by Bill Kilburg

I have it that most of the members here at this site are really smart people. Most are college educated { I am not } and most seem to get Kens work at a much deeper level than I do.

What leaves me perplexed is the lack of creativity,{ bringing forth something new from nothing } and the  nit picking that is thrown about .I am not making anybody wrong for where they are it in their development , but it just seems that is where most of the post are about, and written from, including my own.

Is this the best we can do in using our language and our written word ? Do we really want to continue having our written words used in this way ? Bringing into empty space limiting beliefs thrown at each other so as to look smarter , or whatever  that makes us feel better at someone elses expence.

Whats the possibilty of using the 4 quadrants and our written words  bringing forth  Self empowering  and Self appreciating people who acknowledge Kens work and write from what we are about as people who bring forth something new.

And distinct from that like the old forum had have a shadow section where you are free to let your shadow run wild. In that context its all good cause thats the context we agree to play in and write from. And when you let the wind out of your resisted creations you are free to come back and use ourself constuctively. Sharing with each other what we are up to in life so we can assist each other on this journey we are on together. Lets BE here Now playing on this Team Integral.

 

 

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from acorn to oak; from competition to cooperation…

Posted February 5th, 2012 by Charles Bowling

 

Hi Bill,
 
I make no claim to be a film buff, in fact I rarely watch films, but one of my all-time favorites is based on the book by Nikos Kazantzakis; it stars Anthony Quinn in the lead role of Zorba the Greek.
 
The tension in the drama is between Zorba and his foil or counterpart played by Alan Bates. Zorba is possessed of a nitty-gritty level of enlightenment, while the Bates character represents the thinking mind. (To use your term a ‘smart’ person.) Poor soul, he is stuck there, attached to his ‘status’ as an ‘educated’ person, and more or less oblivious to the idea that there's any other way to go through life.  
 
Nonetheless some fondness grows between them, and as they go through all sorts of adventures and misadventures -possibilities beckon for a deeper connection…
 
Not being an intellectual type Zorba sometimes soulfully retreats into his music –perhaps out of a sense of lost opportunity for something deeper and more real.
 
The final scene finds our pair on the beach. The Bates character -having gone through much- has an epiphany, and in a moment of great beauty and surrender he turns to Zorba and says somewhat hesitantly, “Zorba, will you teach me to dance?"
 
Zorba is amazed, and somewhat incredulously replies, “Did you say dance, my boy? Dance!”
 
The music swells, each man extends an arm to the other, and they embrace in a greater sense of knowing. The camera switches to an alternate point of view via helicopter and we move up and out becoming aware that the island of their ‘coming to meet’ is but part of some greater whole or circumstance.
 
-Charles
 
 
 

 

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Bill

Posted February 5th, 2012 by tanya charlie

I also did not benefit from a college education.  You are not alone here.

I sense in you a polarizing toward favouring what you consider to be the more beautiful aspects of contact, while trying to, subtely perhaps, campaign against the more 'gross form' antagonistic elements.

One thing I have observed about us humans, is that even if we did try to elevate communication to the highest heights of decency and co-operation, even that would become antagonistic at some point.  And quickly too!

Human beings always have a way of turning what is positivie into negative.  A certain kind of creativity, sure!  And this is not wrong, it is a natural cycle of life and a universal principle.

Human beings are now charged with the task to evolve to transcend these conditions while still letting them be as they are.  You cannot change the play of opposites. 

The current condition of the human race is to seek out pleasure and joy while avoiding pain and problems, often to the detriment of our own psychological growth.  We don't become strong autonomous human beings, we stay small, socially-conditioned-mechanical objects that are pushed around by low vibrational survival drives.

Our mission now, is to keep ourselves involved in the process of relationship, so that we start to carve grooves that transcend the selfish need to block people from our lives, or run away from others in a narccissistic attempt to gain some kind of false autonomy.  We are blessed with a space here to interact certain ways that brings about insight into the nature of our own victim mentaities, with the possibility of trasncending that self in order to truly serve the world in the midst of sometimes tragic doses of adversity. 

I believe that an Integral forum is largely about learning to flex a muscle called tollerance.  Imagine what structures you and I will be able to inhabit in the future if we allowed the antagonism to flourish alongside grace and forgiveness?

In fact, Grace and Antagonism cannot exist without eachother.

Blessings

Tanya

 

 

 

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Zorba the Integralite

Posted February 5th, 2012 by Layman Pascal

Hi Bill,

  • Like Tanya I did not benefit from a college education (Oh, I went to university for a while but there was no benefit...). 
  • Like Charles, I love "Zorba the Greek".  It reminds me of Rajneesh's assertion that the "new man" needed on the this Earth was -- Zorba the Buddha.  
  • Like Shalk I am a friend to nit-picking.  Both as mutual critique AND, especially, as the deeply creative work of finagling nuances from within our insight-feelings.  And I even like his "Kantian ethic" of "write the kind of posts that you would like everyone to provide".  

Probably that ethic is not too far from the creative longing you were expressing?

Ultimately, it will always be a dynamic, complexity, grace/antagonism, higher/lower, compete/cooperate scene here -- but that's not what I care about right now.  What do I care about right now?  It's the undercurrent I hear in your post. Something stirring.  A creative energy that would like transcend its own habits?  A will to make its own sharing into something more -- more personal, more impersonal, more dynamic, more aesethetic, more of a gift to the community. 

I believe a higher quality of energy can be generated in us by allowing a struggle to proceed between our creative impulses and our reactive impulses.  However, this means we need to let our creative impulses try to create something.

I hope you will show us something.

Bill (sorry if using your name sounds trite) if you were going to die tomorrow -- what one post would you wish you had created & shared with this community?

 

 

Thanks, I've been...

Layman Pascal

 

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