Sunday, February 24, 2008

Neighbor Post

Neighbor Post: Gender and Sex and Adulthood

I suppose the biggest neighborly gesture I've made since I got back from England (this itself is a long story involving a series of very unfortunate events, some of which I might go into in other parts in future check-ins) was the remarks I made at the meeting on sexism at my neighborhood of Twin Oaks intentional community. I came in somewhat late but was in time for a fishbowl discussion in which people were supposed to talk about personal experiences of sexism here at Twin Oaks. {A fish bowl discussion is one in which a few people in the middle of the room stage a conversation and are gradually replaced by members of their audience who want to have their say on the issue.}

I should say that this meeting had a facilitator, whom I know, though I am not sure what exactly was behind this person's choice of meeting structure. I have always been very much aware of the inherently non-neutral role of facilitation however, even though facilitators claim to be only neutrally serving "the Group". I mention this as this issue came up for me at the very end of the meeting.

Anyway, in the midst of what seemed to me a lot of score-keeping regarding differentials of respect, attention, local groups and institutions, etc for male-identified and female-identified people, I saw fit to get into the fishbowl (as usual in such circumstances, it would have been too excruciating for me, once I was there at all not to say my say) and confessed to finding both male and female-identified people equally frustrating since such identity uniforms, besides being inherently competitive (competition is one of the things Twin Oakers are trying to transcend according to the Twin Oaks bylaws) such uniforms have the property of inhibiting the full expression of anyones authentic individual-personhood. I said that this was just as much a problem of people who switch gender-stereotypes (persons with testicles and penises identifying as "women" and persons without them identifying as "men") as it is with those who identify along more traditional lines…

I am glad I spoke as much as I did but, as this issue for me is much more involved then the above implies, I wish I had been able to elaborate more, and I find I can't resist taking the opportunity of this check-in to do so.

Basically my idea about "Manhood" has been that a "Man" is simply an "Adult Male Human Being". This seems uncontroversial, but the key word here for me was "Adult".

For me an "adult" is someone who has a primary interest in there being a better future in this world we live in. The idea is simply that as a person becomes physically able to reproduce themselves, that aspect of the personality that is concerned with the future; with the world in which potential children, and children's children etc, would live in (I call this part of us the "inner adult") wants to become prominent in the personality, and that when this concern becomes primary in a male then that male becomes a Man, that is an "Adult Male". In the same way, when the same transition happens to a female, that female becomes an Adult Female or "Woman".

Put so simply to myself, it was immediately obvious that this transition to adulthood was actually something which is extremely rare, and that, in a sick culture such as our own, something happens (and something else doesn't happen) usually in adolescence, which leads to some kind of inner estrangement from this adult, long-term view, so that the emergret inner adult is either starved altogether or fed on some kind of "junk-food".

By "starving" the inner adult, I mean ignoring altogether the responsibility to take such a long view, (the taking of which involves spending ones adult life, trying to find out and put into practice that which would make a better future for posterity). Often the repression and neglect of this impulse is rationalized by pointing to the seeming hopelessness of creating such a better longterm future, so that a willfully myopic warping and narrowing of  temporal vision seems justified.  Such an behaviour, is not much more than a demomstration of fear, demoralization, and a general misunderstanding of what is at issue; it is an abdication of the right and responcibility to live fully, and without such fullness of life there can be no real meaning and hence no real joy. Moreover, such an abdication merely recapitulates the vary attitudes of our ancestors that both diminished their own lives and led to the diminished world we now live in.  

Just as often as such myopic pseudo-realism is employed to avoid the challenge of adulthood, a kind of (hyperoptic?) pseudo-spiritual or pseudo-religious displacement  is used to the same end. This sort of cop-out  is employed by artfully devaluing and shifting attention away from the "merely mundane" future completely, and so overfeeding what could be called the "Inner Elder" at the Inner Adult's expense. To be sure, the Inne Elder; the part of ourselves which acknowledges "ultimate things" and is aware of the need for inner growth and transformation, needs to be "fed" just as well as the inner adult, but far from such feeding of the "soul" being contradictory to the needs of adulthood, these aspects of our selves are mutually dependant on each other, so that Adulthood that is not "soulfull" is not real adulthood and "spirituality" that is abandons the responcibilities of adulthood is not healthy spirituality at all...  In neither the pseudo-realistic nor the psuedo-religious discounting of the future of this world does one sense anything implying the need for any real resistance to the inertia of whatever happens to be the current way of "life". On the contrary, both points of view are obviously contrived so as to rubber stamp the inner and outer status quo and so seem to me equally symptoms of immaturity, unconsciousness, and confusion.

There is also the trick of simply feeding the Inner Adult "junk-food" in the sense of participation in politics and political movements in the various established senses of those word.s.  These kinds of politics are both established and permitted precisely because they are manifestations of, rather than challenges to, the dominant culture of apartness, and as such cannot in their very nature really lead to a more healthy and sustainable future. It is not that I deem it quite impossible that such things as voting in elections or joining some factional political group can be engaged in in such a way that the behavior might play some tactical part, though only as a necessary evil, in an overall strategy that would lead to Healthy Culture. The fact is that, as things are, I see no evidence that such a thing actually ever happens, and this makes me see such behavior as equally pseudo-adult in nature; more like sports, and other childish rehearsals for war (the ultimate in future-degrading behavior) then anything involving Goodwill and real adulthood.

This kind of pseudo-adulthood is, so far as I can tell, pretty ubiquitous, even in progressive movements, including the intentional community movement that I myself am a part of. Myopia is alive and well here also, sometimes accompanied by a kind of complacency and self-righteousness which makes it even more adverse to the kind of inwardly and outwardly open attitude that is consistent with adulthood. Such an open attitude is necessary because any good faith experiment in being a part of a better future (any good faith attempt at anything really) must obviously remain fully open to the negative feedback that alone can reveal the degree to which the attempt is deviating from its end. Nor should any status quo be suffered to remain that inhibits or distorts such feedback or that is too institutionally and psyhologically inert and inflexible to be able to respond to it appropriately when it is received.

There are many ways, subtle and unsubtle, to ignore all of this, and many more ways to pretend that such concientious, good faith adulthood is happening when it is not. Individually, the repression of feedback usually involves habitual use of "Anesthesia" and distractions of various kinds; things that drown out and numb the prickings of the inner adult. Collectively this can manifest as the collusive avoidance of open, face to face communication, or more often, in the collusive structuring,, managing, or "facilitating" of conversations (community meetings for example) so that they touch on anything but that which is the real problem, thus using the illusion of feedback and goodfaith to actually avoid the reality of these things.  

Given all of this, I would have to say that I don't really consider myself to have met any Men (or Women either) in the course of my life so far; just stunted adolescents at best, even in so-called "progressive" movements. It begins to seem obvious to me that humankind has generally speaking not yet collectively "grown up" at all.

There is still something worth saying though, toward envisioning what that , for the most part unrealized, adulthood would look like in relation to gender. The paradoxical thing about this conception of Men and Women as gendered adults is that, once the inner adult is really primary in the personality, Gender itself is seen as just another identity-uniform, (like that of race, and often enough, religion), that itself facilitates the kind of competition, self-betrayal, and power-over tendencies that threaten the collective and individual future. Such adult persons are therefore likely to be the first to see and agree that gender roles need to be replaced with an identity politics that emphasizes, what is shared rather then what is not, including shared and common responsibilities as well as "rights". In other words it is the True Men and True Women who, because they are true "Adults", will be the First to respond to the necessity of transcending gender-uniforms altogether in the affirmation of something like the "us and us" identity-politics of what I am calling Individual-Personhood. From this point of view, Manhood and Womanhood might be seen as brief phases of identity and thus as part of a natural transition from that of the adolescent male or female to that of the adult Individual-Person; a stage of the transition that most people have not reached at all.

Ultimately however, although there is definitely something to all of the above, such a conclusion would still reify the abstraction of gender roles in a way that could exclude or confuse, for example, individuals born with both sets of sexual organs. In such a case, gendered thinking would seem to require some kind of choice, as though genitals of either this or that kind were somehow necessary to be an Adult. Since the door to Individual-Personhood is really Adulthood, and since this Adulthood is completely independent of ones genitalia, (independent really even of whether one has any functioning genitalia at all; since I am quite sure that promptings of the inner adult kick-in at a certain age regardless of this), it makes more sense really, that the transition from adolescence to adulthood not be seen to essentially involve conceptions of gender at all, however much they do need to involve some understanding of the healing and responsible use of  ones specific genitalia, and sexual energy in general (among many other things).

I want to be clear here that, though the Adulthood I am speaking of is an absolutely necessary aspect of individual-personhood, I do not mean to imply that a healthy individual-person must be functioning exclusively from that place anymore than healthy eyes must always be rigidly fixed on the horizon. On the contrary, for proper seeing the eyes must be free to focus on the near and the far; on the near in relation to the far and vis versa. They must also be free to blink; and in dreaming, to turn inward. In the same way the healthy functioning of an individual-person implies not only a healthy inner adult (mind or thinking-function), but a healthy inner child ((heart/emotions), inner animal (body/sensations), and inner elder (soul/intuition) as well, so that the general dynamic is one in which considerations of the future are coordinated with those of the past, present, and eternity as well. Healthy Individual-Persons can be very "childlike" for example, but this behavior is "childlike" rather than "childish" precisely because it ornaments and augments the persons healthy adult function rather than detracting from it.

Continuing such a metaphore, one can say that the healthy individual is like a relatively "happy" family in which the inner child, (heart/emotions) inner animal (body/sensations), inner elder (soul, intuition) and the inner adult (mind, thinking) are all being fed as well as possible and are involved in each others healing so that to neglect one member is to harm the whole. Those focusing on the future to the exclusion of (rather then in coordination with) the past, present, and eternity are demonstrating, not healthy adulthood, but some version of the kind of Hyperopsis I alluded to earlier.

And, of course, as always, its necessary to apply good sense and life-logic to this whole understanding. The "healthy individual-person" is a kind of ideal type after all. I should probably have written "the healing individual-person" or even just "those who are conscious of their individual-personhood", since those ways of saying it seem to make more room for the truth that, since we all suffer (probably almost constantly, though in varying degrees of intensity), from the stunting and alienating imprint of the default culture of apartness and fear that we were all "initiated" into, being an "healthy individual-person" means being aware of being "sick" or "wounded" individual-person" as well, and so being willing and able to acknowledge our sick imprinting and, when they happen, the  lapses in integrity  that derive from that. This willingness and ability is a part of that coming-together of "soulfulness" and "adulthood" that I alluded to earlier, and is in fact, a major part of the work of  inner and outer healing as an individual-person, which has nothing at all to do with keeping ups some kind of image of perfection or "righteousness".

Anyway, I couldn't say all of that at the meeting I went to, so I had to be content to limit what I said to what I related at the beginning of this check-in. Still, I think my even saying that little was pretty challenging to probably most of the people there, though, as usual, it doesn't seem to have been enough to counter the prevailing trend toward what seems to me to be essentially immature and childish (however understandable) factional identity-politics. It even seems likely that a "men's group", such as there have been here in the past will evolve out of the meeting so as to be "equal" to the women's groups that exist here. I would not have anything against such groups if they functioned as crutches are supposed to function; namely as tools to eventually be transcended as those using them gradually learn to stand and walk upright as each individual-persons in their own right, but that does not seem to be the intention at all.  Besides, as I have already suggested, it would be better to call any such group devoted to human maturity an "Adult Group", which could certainly be "coed", though individuals might occasionally divide along "genital" (rather then "gendered") lines, to talk about genital-specific things such as prostate cancer, yeast infections, pregnancy etc…though even here I don't see any reason to keep such information separate from individuals with different genitalia, sharing such knowledge and concerns without regard to gender could only enhance general understanding and compassion anyway, so far as I can see. After all, no individual with prostate cancer, morning sickness, or hot flashes responds to it in exactly the same way anyway, and approaching such events with gendered prejudice seems to me more likely to obscure (or lead to the repression of) important individually relevant details rather than to there expression.

In general, my attendance at meetings here has not been so good as I would like, though I try to befriend (listen to, support, and challenge) my neighborhood in other ways. As I said above, neighborliness is only one aspect of Individual-personhood, and it would not do to focus on it to the exclusion of other responsibilities except perhaps in a special emergency or as a response to a strong inner-consensus/inspiration that such a focus is imperative in a specific situation. Still, I think I there is room for challenging myself right now to find out some more regular and conscious way to be a Friend and good neighbor in my neighborhood (though this might get me in more trouble) and am making a few experiments in this direction, even though I don't think I'm doing too bad right now under the present circumstances.

Welcome and Thanks,

I-P

posted by: piankhy | 17:24 | comments (2)

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Experiment post (name change)

{I feel the need to post this here (i've already done so on other of my blogs and pages) and on my other motime blog (which I know I have been somewhat neglecting due to a lack of engagement from who ever is actually reading all of this). I am not sure how much more is will post here but want to post this even before I have the time to go back and change whatever I can change in the blog accordance with my decision--I-P}

Name Change

{I wrote this for my blogs and online stuff but I thought I'd put it here to as a way of explaining my name change and sharing a bit about one of the concepts of what I call "healthy culture" with the community---

I-P}

If anybody reads my profile they will know that I am trying to transcend factional Identity politics such as race and gender, religion, among other things. For a long time now I have been dissatisfied both with my birth names and with the ones i have chosen for myself since. If anyone goes to my lifedancelog.motime.com blog and scrolls down to the post entitled “a vision of names” they will read a story in which I asked “Spirit” for a new name and actually received 3. Unfortunately I haven't had inner consensus to use them openly, wanting to make the sharing of such a names a sort of mark of bonding between myself and others who have received names in a similar way.

I still don't have inner consensus (of mind, heart, body, and soul) to share my new names but I do have it, after another “Vision Dance” (the particular kind of ritual at which I received the names alluded to) to replace, where ever I can, the various faction-connoting names I have chosen for myself in the past.

I-P stands for “Individual-Person” and perhaps is more like a title such as “Mr” or “Mrs”, than an actual name. But as such it is a very different kind of title (almost an “anti-title) in that it affirms an identity and an Identity politics that Transcends race, gender, even species, together with any other kind of factional identification of Class or Profession or anything else. It is an identity politics that, among other things, affirms the paradoxical equality and primary togetherness of all Beings.

The “individual” part of individual personhood represents the “vertical”, “self-directed” aspect of the Identity; it relates roughly to ones own experience of ones self in terms of ones own “thinking (mind), Feeling(heart) , sensation( body), and intuition (“soul” in a certain sense) to use a somewhat Jungian vocabulary.

The “Person” part of individual-personhood relates to the “horizontal”, “Other-directed” aspect of Identity in terms of the generic archetypal “social roles” that I affirm to be inherent in anyones Existence at all. These roles (which also constitute four venues of social interaction) are four fold: Family-member (the Familial venue), Neighbor (the neighborly venue), Citizen-of-the-World (the Civil venue) and “Soul” (for lack of a better word, the Religious/Philosophical/Metaphysical venue).

These two identities (the individual and the personal) are related paradoxically in the same way that the vertical and horizontal of spacial orientation (and so the five directions) are related. This means that they are not really two separate identities at all but one five-fold identity. in a same way that horizontal “north, south, east, and west” (the 4 “horizontal” directions) imply and involve “up-and-down” (what I am calling the vertical 5th direction) of spacial orientation, so the “Personal” implies the “Individual” and visa versa, and fulling ones potential as one involves fulfilling it as the other at the same time. Of course having a been initiated by default into the one-sided, paradox and Life-denying logic and sensibility of the present and historical cultures of apartness, we all tend to take for granted and for real and experience of that corresponds to this alienation of inner and outer social existence and so must of us have fallen prey to political implications (basically war in one form or another) that proceed from such false dichotomy and false consciousness.

As an example of this, I want to go a little bit here into one of the effects sick culture has on Identity-politics in our modern version of the culture of apartness. This is that, since the kind of paradoxical togetherness involved in Individual-Personhood is (like paradox in general) hard to even understand in a sick culture let alone live out, what has happened in our politics is that an experience of ourselves that is essentially a paradoxical “both/and” sort of thing vis-a-vis the individual and the “community” (self and other), has been broken apart, dichotomised and so treated as if it were essentially “either/or”.

In our time the Capitalist side of such dichotomization is the ideological mythology about some one-sided and dissociated and atomized conception of “the individual” that is in almost complete denial of the relationships and responsibilities inherent in anyones existing at all (i.e. of what i am calling the four roles/ venues of “personhood”). Even internally (and not coincidentally) the capitalist idea of an “individual” is dissociated, since it involves the priviledging of the “Thinking function” (over feeling, sensing, intuiting) within the the whole of our subjective individual experience. This of course lead to endless alienation, anxiety, lonilness, competition, etc... and ultimate individual and collective suicide.

On the other hand, more traditional, “socialistic” or “communistic” (but equally one-sided) forms of Identity go to the opposite extreme in enslaving the real whole “Individual” to some equally distorted conception of “personal” (social) relationships and responsibilities. These can be anything from Kinship or Gender roles, to the roles of “citizens” (narrowly and nationalistically defined), to various career or employment roles, all of which inevitably demand that the “individual” suppress or distort aspects of their individuality to fit such factional and misconceived and one-sided identity-uniforms. Of course this, via in a way that is only superficially different, also leads to endless alienation, anxiety, loneliness, competition, etc... and ultimate individual and collective suicide.

Anyway, what it means to actually and fully live the paradoxical relatively “themless” identity politics an individual-person within the context of the assumptions of a healthy culture is some thing that I'd have no time to describe here even if I was not still in the process of learning this myself, but I do know and have time to say that “coming-out” as an “individual-person” involves an implicit and explicit renunciation of the kind of false solidarity that comes from the normal “us-and-them” way of bonding (that is of “us” bonding against “them”, whether the “thems” are other creatures, other genders, or other so-called “classes” of any kind. It also involves a conscious acceptance of the implicit responsibility of healthy coming-together, not only outwardly with others (as a responsible “Family-member”, “Neighbor”, “Citizen-of-the-World” and “Soul”) but also inwardly as an authentic Individual.

Of course I'm not likely to ever be permanently cured from “back-sliding” into old, alienated, ways of thinking and feeling, about myself and others since the habits of forty years cannot be expected to change overnight even when there are some new habits to exchange them for (as is the case here). My name change here is just an affirmation and reminder of my intention to go in this direction and of my commitment to it .

Finally, as I said, I currently regard “I-P” as a kind of “title”. If, in the future I do get inner consensus to share the three names I was given. Then I will formally adopt them and be “I-P so-and so”. For now, I will just be “I-P”.

PS,

There is some insight into all of this kind of factional identity politics from the song “uniforms” which is among my myspace blogs. So I quote the text of it here:

Uniforms
By I-P

You wear a uniform of a woman
You wear a uniform of a man
You wear a uniform of an employee
Or a Jew or a Mexican
You wear a uniform of a soldier boy
A uniform of a civilian too
And when you play the game of “me or them”
You wear a uniform of you!

Chorus:

Ohh, my friends, take off those uniforms!
Ohh, my friends, take off those uniforms!

You wear a uniform of a bourgeoisie
A uniform of a working class
You wear a uniform of Humanity
When the Martians come at last
You wear a uniform of your politics,
Your race and your religion too,
But if you want peace in the world my friend
This is my advice to you:

Ohh, my friends, take off those uniforms!
Ohh, my friends, take off those uniforms!

Well I'm talkin' about your identity
I'm talkin bout your foolish pride
And the fear and insecurity
That scares you into takin' sides
'cause everybody is the same and different,
Butt-ugly and beautiful as any star,
And if you take off all of them uniforms
Maybe you'll find out who the hell you are!

Ohh, my friends, take off those uniforms!
Ohh, my friends, take off those uniforms!

You wear a uniform of an anarchist
You wear a uniform of a wife
You wear a uniform for every thing you do
And for every part of your life
But there's no uniform for Personhood
Or for authenticity
So if you're uptight and uncomfortable
Take this advice from me:

Chorus:

Ohh, my friends, take off those uniforms!
Ohh, my friends, take off those uniforms!

It's us it's us it all of us so please come off of it
It's us is us its all of us; this is “Themless” politics
It's us it's us it's all of us good-and-evil, healthy-and-sick
It's us it's us it's all of us: this is “Themless Politics”!

Chorus:

Ohh, my friends, take off those uniforms!
Ohh, my friends, take off those uniforms!

posted by: piankhy | 13:35 | comments

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Individual post

Breathing Like an Individual

The ritual, culture, and politics of breathing

For the last few days I have be contemplating the factional identity politics of class and the comparative difficulties of practicing healthy culture that they seem to involve. In the city (where image and vanity seem to rule especially) and in my own newly arrived at situation, there is a lot of occasion to contemplate such a thing. Having had experiences among "millionares", "middle-class" folks and "the homeless" I have come to the conclusion that they all tend to share sick culture equally, at least to the extent that they identify with such titles, and that they are all more or less equally far from the field of inner and outer belonging that is Individual-Personhood.  But though the disease is the same for everyone wearing a uniform of "class", there does seem to be some distinction in the facility each "soldier" will have in shedding that uniform and entering into an experience of authentic identity. At least my experience is that I don't have to actively maintain some sense of myself as "homeless" or whatever to "maintain" that designation in the eyes of others. "putting on airs" about such a thing is definately more optional than in the more elevated positions (not to say that it doesn't happen"). What I am getting at here is that, from my experience, it is marginally easier to practice healthy culture when one doesn't have to maintain somekind of "elevated" position among ones fellows. Among other things, in such a situation as this, I have more exposure to (or just less distraction from) what we all have In common is individual-persons: the elements, bodies, sunshine, the company of non-human individual-persons, the outdoors generally, the whole "leaves of grass" sense of glorious of egalitarian commonality...

Still, although this being a "tramp" business seems to be more conducive to Individual-Personhood, and to the "us-perception" that is the path to it, to take advantage of such an opening one needs more of healthy culture than just its cosmology and Identity-politics; there is Ritual to consider as well. (I should explain here that I use the term "us-perception" to mean something more a like  "us-and-us"-perception, that is, something I oppose to the normal alienated, "us-or-them" or "me-or-them"-perception that is the norm, though this terminology might be refined in the future).  What I am discovering while walking about downtown Phildelphia, sitting in coffie houses, doing tai chi or playing clarinet in the park (as well as applying for jobs that seem suitable) is that there is an inner "us-perception" as well as an outer one, and that these depend on each other mutually.

The inner "us" is the "us" that comprises the "Individual" aspect of Individual-Personhood and of which I have already written on this blog: the inner animal, inner child, inner adult,and inner elder. These aspects of our individuality have corresponding places on or in the body, and it is possible to use this understanding to assess the degree to which the corresponding aspect of the individual is being repressed or inclusively integrated into the wholeness of the personality in that moment. Specifically, the area of the lower belly is the area of the inner animal, the area of the heart is that of the inner child, the area roughly from the neck to eyes is the area of the inner adult and the area about that trancending the top of the head is the area of the intuition or inner elder.

Now, what I what to share here is that simply Breathing, considered as a ritual (and remember by "ritual" I mean any repeated action that reinforces a cosmology, identity-politics, and infrastructure) is potentially one of the most basic and expressions of being, of participation in togetherness, of welcome and thanks. What I am discovering is that it is possible to breath in a way that "feeds" the animal, child, adult and elder inclusively, and that such breathing means breathing as a whole "individual" and by implication, as a whole Individual-person. Just a little practice of such breathing, (which begins with welcoming inhalation of animal "belly-breathing, and continues with the visualized sense of the air and light feeding the heart, mind, and soul respectively, reversing this order on the exhalation of gratitude), is enough to lead one to diagnose ones own and others degree of alienation from their individual-personhood just in terms of the way they are breathing and standing or sitting (posture is very much inextricably involved with the whole thing and it is impossible to breath like an Individual in certain postures).

Most people seem to alternate (it seems more like a struggle is going on really) between "child" (chest) breathing  and "adult" (throat) breathing and never seem to feed there inner animals and elders at all. I imagine that the chronic hurry and bustle of city life together with the fact that the qualtity of air in cities does not exactly inspire whole-hearted indulgence, account for this tendency even in many of the poor and idle. I suppose in some rural places one might expect more animal breathing, though I can't recall this  from my recent experience in the country. What seems obvious after a little bit of looking around from this point of view is that people are as factional and inhospitable toward their whole selves as individuals as they are towards each other, and that they suffer from this inwardly as unconscious individuals as well as outwardly, as unconscious Persons... 

Anyway, the point of cultivating this form of inclusive breathing as an expression of my full Individuality and  "inner us"-perception, (besides the paradox that "breathing like an Individual" is itself both an individual and a "general", sharable thing) is that it is also an expression of my  "personhood" and so of my outer "us-perception" as well; Feeding the Inner Animal means awakening more to the familial wherever I am; Feeding the Inner Child means keeping alive my sense of my neighborhood; Feeding the adult helps me remain awake to strangers and to my civil responcibilities, and a well feed elder (and here I should say that, in breathing, the elder is fed more at the "cusp" of the in-breath and the out-breath, and that this is more of a psychic thing), keeps alive my sense of ultimate things and of the responcibilty of coming to terms about such things with others. I know that the details of this are not obvious yet but it must suffice for now to say that, In general, as I inwardly affirm inclusivity and togetherness in my very breathing, then outwardly inclusive perception in also affirmed and enabled so that the true Mutuality of inner/outer "us-perception becomes manifest, and the threshold of a consciously shared Individual-Personhood is really reached.

There are subleties about breathing and attention, both in myself and others that I am discovering and that I may add to this post later, but the fact of the situation is that I am writing this in an internet cafe and others are waiting so I will have to take a deep, (inclusive) breath and let this stand for now, but not before challenging myself to keep up this renewed default (a "default only, since life-logically, it must also integrate its opposite) of Individual-personal breathing, and being, for the forseeable future.... 

Welcome and Thanks,

I-P

posted by: piankhy | 17:39 | comments

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Just a quick correction to a word I used in the above post - I meant to use the word "Non-Impartial" not "Impartial".

posted by: piankhy | 21:21 | comments

"Inexperience"

This I-P - Tusti - is in no way "inexperienced" in the ways and wherefores of our sick culture being as I live and work in the "heart" of it. Having studied, researched and worked/ work within the underbelly of our sick culture, I consider myself extremely "street" in every respect. This profound turn of events could not have been foreseen by even the most "experienced" of I-Ps - at least not those I-Ps with a cleansed but "street" soul.  What this was was an accumulation of "isms" all cooked together and stirred with a power tripped, judgemental and impartial immigration officer who had been given unjust laws to use at this I-P's will. Her actions where a culmination of all this - nothing more, nothing less.  What this demonstrates is an accumulation of many components of sick culture all rolled into one which played out into deportation with no right of appeal. Even our Immigration advisor was uncomfortable at what he saw before him with our case and this I-P is used to working with asylum seekers and refugees who have less rights than anyone in our global village yet Piankhy had no rights at all. Not one. I-P  was judged and found guilty in a heartbeat based upon one Immigration Officers lifelong sucking in of filthy sick culture from every corner of our society and is just a symptom of what both Piankhy and I are choosing to help heal (or die trying) within our world.

posted by: piankhy | 20:12 | comments

Citizen of the World Post

posted by: piankhy | 15:18 | comments

Saturday, May 05, 2007

Soul Post

{note: I think my friend Tusti is willing make posts (as opposed to comments) on this blog in i-p's own right only after i-p and I meet and consense more on various things about it. I am not sure we have worked out the technical details of just how that works anyway as yet. As its stands, I will continue to post here as usual but with the implicit invitation that i-p comment in the space provided--or not--as i-p sees fit. --p}

Soul Post

I still have not really found a regular in-person venue in which practice coming-together with people in terms of ultimate things, though it is true that any conversation with me of any real length is going to involve me sharing something about healthy culture and its cosmology or togetherness. There was some healthy culture talk between me and two of my co-managers on a fencing project recently, for example. I was somewhat indirect and I was speaking mostly of other world views and trying to explain them in terms of the assumptions that they seem to share with those of Integral Science, but it felt like a good gesture non-the-less. As I said in a previous post, I am also reading a book of channeled information that has been very influential in the spirituality of my friend Tusti, as a preparation for our further coming-together as souls once we meet. Most recently I have shared some of my world view with a Korean person who is visiting twin oaks with the result of the person wanting me to sponsor I-P in a vision quest before I leave for England. I am looking forward to it. The fact that such conversations and encounters often happen makes me a little less worried about my degree of Life in this "Soul" venue of my Personhood, but I know that ultimately things need to manifest on a much grander scale and a with challenge to—perhaps even a confrontation—with the collective conscious and unconscious loom in the future in this regard. There is a sense that all that I am doing now (especially in the way of reading and research) is preparation for this. Listening…

I do think that I have found a pretty good venue of on-line explorations in this area, and that is “Crossroads of Religion”, which is a “tribe” on the networking site “tribe.net”. It is a pretty no holds barred venue for the discussion of various speculations, beliefs, and practices regarding ultimate things, that includes not only religion, but science and philosophy, whether theistic or atheistic or agnostic. Civility is not always to be expected in these “discussions” but  I often find it interesting reading and have even ventured a post or two myself.

The last post of mine was a copy of the post on “Life-Logic” that you can find on the partner blog to this one. The ensuing exchange lasted for about 50 posts and in places felt pretty tedious, but I am very glad I did it because of the realization (or perhaps it was just more of a strong reminder) of how the assumptions behind logic mirror the assumptions behind the purpose of discourse itself. In other words, it soon became clear how the “either/or”, “true/false” dichotomies assumed in logic are themselves manifestations of the “Zero/Sum”, “Win/Lose”, competitive motive and framing of public conversation itself (which of course just reflects the “competition-crazy” culture of ancient Greece in which such our formal logic has its roots). What got clarified along with this of course, is that the relatively non-competitive and exclusion-transcending assumptions of Life-Logic also imply and involve a default intention and attitude regarding discourse (a different kind of discourse really) that is equally non-competitive; one in which the guiding intention is “win/win” mutual insight and the joint manifestation and experience of Living Truth, rather than the “win/lose” result of the normal public debate.

This of course put me at a distinct disadvantage in the ensuing discussion of my post since at many points I, and at least one of my interlocutors, were writing at cross purposes and (at the beginning of the discussion anyway) this was not really as clear as it should have been to any of us. It is not that I felt participating in “debate” was some sort betrayal on my part, since Life-logic certainly allows this kind of thing when appropriate, but the lack of clarity about the differences between life-logical discussion and debate meant that my departure from the normal rules of such debate (when they did not seem appropriate) seemed like inconsistencies or “cheating”. If I had started with the distinctions between life-logical discourse and normal discourse so far as underlying intentions and assumptions go, and formally invited the others to experiment with the such intentions in the ensuing discussion (or at least to acknowledge my right to do so), then the discussion (at least with my main interlocutor) might have culminated in more of the win-win experience that I was intending. Still I think that the whole thing resulted in some mutual growth and understanding even with that person (though this was not really acknowledged on I-P’s part).

I noticed that those who met my essay with more openness, and more of the intention of mutual learning seemed inspire me to greater clarity than the I-P’s that were more immediately critical. The following post of mine, for example was a belated response to a side exchange between two other participants regarding the “idea” of shared or sharable understanding. I think I ventured my response  mostly because I felt receptivity on the part of the person I was posting to. In retrospect I am not so sure it is a clearer explanation of this aspect of integral science than I have posted elsewhere (for example, in my very earliest post of the partner blog to this one), but I think it takes it a little further. Here is the post:

“Hi Loki, Thanks for your comments and support. I had the Idea of trying to share some of the following during your discussion with Swarm about understanding but didn’t. I think I’ll do it here even though it sort of means opening up a whole can of worms. Tell be what you think:

In Integral Science there is are relative distinctions made between Information (which is relatively abstract hearsay, presumably abstracted from someone’s memory: I have only "information" about Tibet if I've never been there), Knowledge (by which is meant remembered experience of something: I have relative Knowledge of Tibet if I have been there in the past but am not there now), Understanding (by which is meant Actual experience: I have relative Understanding of Tibet if I am actually there now), and Faith (by which is meant various assumptions of the ultimate meaning of my Understanding, Knowledge, and Information: now that I am here in Tibet Faith in the meaning of my being here guides my actions).

Life-Logically it can be just as relevant that each of these four aspects of Living Truth can be relatively distinguished as that they overlap, imply, and grade into each other.

At the level of Cosmology and Logic and other fundamental assumptions, Faith feeds Understanding (because Faith when acted on leads to a present experience in terms of the Faith). At the same time Understanding feeds Knowledge (because present experience becomes remembered experience in time) and Knowledge feeds Information (because Information is the “result” of memory that is abstracted and translated into agreed upon communicable signs). And closing the cycle, Information in turn feeds Faith (in the sense that the Information provides the terms in which Faith (in the cosmology, logic etc…) is affirmed, expressed and justified.

So in terms of Life-Logic, Faith in Togetherness is going to feed the experience (Understanding) of Togetherness, which will in turn awaken past memories of (Knowledge of) of Togetherness. Information about Togetherness will develop from this in the form of terms in which primary Togetherness can be affirmed and explained as Faith etc. The same is true of Faith in primary Apartness: it will feed the experience of primary Apartness (which, life-logically, is always there as Alienation and Fear—just as that of Primary Togetherness is also always there as Belonging and Love) and awaken past memories (Knowledge) of Apartness. This will lead to Information in terms that affirm, express and justify Faith in Primary Apartness. The difference here is that Faith in Primary (paradoxical) Togetherness includes Apartness in a dynamic and integrative way and so allows for a full Understanding (experience) of reality, a fuller Knowledge of it and a more diverse palette of terms (Information) in terms of which it can be expressed, than is the case when Primary Apartness is affirmed.


Anyway, all of this seems to relate to you guys disagreement in that, the only way we can really share Understanding is if we also share Knowledge, Information and Faith to some extent. The good news is that people do all share these things to some extent and that is what makes shared understanding possible. The bad news is the extent to which our own individual and collective cultures of apartness deny this essential common ground in such a way as to accent the non-sharable aspects of Understanding (and Faith, and Information, and Knowledge) and ignore or fail to cultivate the sharable aspects. Paradoxically of course, when this as happening between two people or groups they ARE sharing in a way: they are sharing the culture of Apartness, sharing a Faith in Apartness, Sharing and experience (understanding) of Apartness as alienation, and its associated kinds of memories and resulting kind of vocabulary. But this is sharing on behalf of not-sharing; it is togetherness on behalf of apartness, and as such it is a sign of cultural erosion.

Coming together with a Faith in primary Paradoxical Togetherness on the other hand, leads to a result in which differences are seen to imply (as they do imply) similarities as well (and visa versa: similarities are seen to always imply differences). In this way false and rigid solidarities and inner and outer factions can be dissolved and dissolved in such a way as to reveal and further the experience (Understanding), Knowledge of, and vocabulary for, our true solidarity as Individual-Persons with in the living dance of mutuality and Paradoxical Togetherness that we began by affirming as Faith. When this is happening “Cultural Composting” (that is Healthy Culture) is what is happening and healthy Understanding between Individuals and Cultures can be not only shared but cultivated.

Take Care,

Piankhy”

All in All I think that “The Crossroads of Religion” (It should really be called “The Crossroads of Religion, Science, and Philosophy”), is a pretty appropriate place for Integral Science and its Life-Logical assumptions to be shared online. I think I’ll keep reading, making posts, and starting the occasional Topic, and see what comes of it. At the vary least I helps me feel a little more alive and “Soulful”  in this venue of my Life-Dance.  I don’t however, intend to become complacent with it and so cease to be working my way toward ever more vital (and very likely more risky) gestures in this area.

posted by: piankhy | 17:05 | comments

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Experiment Post ("Metapost")

Life-Dancing with others: Welcoming My Friend Tusti

Well, however it will ultimately work out, this blog experiment has reached a pretty momentous point right now in that I am finally being joined on-line by someone who is committed to entering with me into the experiment of Healthy Culture and the Identity-Politics of Individual-Personhood that this blog constitutes.

Tusti (this is the name i-p chooses to be known by on this blog) is the Friend and Life-Dance partner who I am going to meet and probably live with in Liverpool England in May or early June of this year. We have corresponded and sort of “fell in love” with each other on-line and over the phone, and I am going to England so that we can begin the process of consensing on the details of our Living Friendship and Life-Dance together as whole individual-persons (rather then as primarily citizens-of-the world as has been the case so far).

On the one hand, the whole thing is an experiment in healthy culture, and its probably good that we have had so much distance between us since it helps us to stay out of habitual ways of relating in terms of (Gender, Race, Nationality etc..) which, no matter how much we may theoretically agree on the need to transcend them, are nevertheless going to be the Default tendency in that we are both born into the dominant culture of apartness. One the other hand, it’s clear that nothing can really begin until we actually are physically together.

It would be misleading for me to try to present us as some kind of monolithic “united front”. That would be starting off in the spirit of the very “Public/Private” culture of phoniness that I think we both seek to replace with a culture of truthfulness and Individual-Personhood. The fact is that there are a number of pretty big issues between us even at this stage in our relationship and even with the considerable degree of understanding and consensus we have been able to come to about things by phone and computer; I think we both know that there are going to be serious challenges to us sustainably coming-together in a healing way, not only because of outside pressures but because of our own issues.

One of the issues, which (like all of them) is both a great opportunity and a great challenge, is issue of veganism and in general the issue eating, killing and dying: Tusti is the vegan with whom I had the discussion I quoted from in the previous post, while I am still more or less confirmed in my own leaning toward raw instinctive/intuitive omnivorous-ness.

There is another main issue so far, but that I will leave to Tusti to introduce here if i-p chooses.

The biggest issue for me how ever is that of us coming to terms in relation to our Integrative.

Our Integrative

For what has yet to be fully consensed to and worked out between us is the Integrative of our relationship. Although we have both, in the course of our friendship so far, cursorily acknowledged our understanding of our own “piece of the Lie”, mutual insight into the details of what this is, just how it manifests, and how our friendship will be structured so as to challenge that in each other, is not as clear as it needs to be. Without such insight and such a conscious plan, the Integrative intention of the coordination our own healing with that of each other and the world can't happen because healing itself cannot happen unless sickness itself has been both fully acknowledged, understood, and taken into account.  In certain traditions, this sickness, this “piece of the Lie” that we all have is called "the Shadow", and in others I am familiar with it is called the Chief Obstacle. In addition to calling it a persons “piece of the lie”, I also just think of it as ones own sick culture. By whatever name, if it is not consciously acknowledged and addressed in the dynamics of a relationship, than it itself will be what is running the relationship, which will then no longer be a Living Friendship at all but the everyday collusion, mutual distraction and mutual exploitation that passes for friendship in a sick culture.

As I say, Tusti and I have not fully done this work which we both think will be somewhat easier to do in person, at least in some ways. In other ways, physically coming together has its own difficulties, especially in an urban situation in which busy-ness is the order of the day and time and energy for such patient and somewhat delicate exploration, presumably scarce. I am not sure what we will do about this. I am beginning to think that our original plan of me staying at an intentional community in the countryside and her coming out to visit and rest from city life makes more sense than any more immediate form of living together, since there is likely to be more time in the slower pace of country life to give such matters the attention that they deserve. On the other hand, decisions and understandings reached in such relative calm might not reasonably be expected to stand up against the adverse environment of city life. Perhaps things can be arranged so as to alternate between deciding things in the country and testing them in the city.

At any rate the challenge of coming to an Integrative shared understanding is hopefully being helped even now by my formally discussing of it in this introduction.

As Two Individuals

It occurs to me that our integrative challenge as Individuals could be understood both individually as well as personally. Individually it could be understood as a dynamically healthy and flexible coming-together of Inner Animals, Inner Children and Inner Adults, and Inner Elder, keeping in mind that distinctions of this kind are only relative and that “dysmutuality” between us in any one area will inevitably involve dysmutuality in each of the others as well. Personally, it could be understood in terms of our roles as Family-members (the province of the inner animal), Neighbors (the province of the inner child), citizens-of-the-world (the province of the inner adult) and “Souls”, (the province of the inner elder). I think I will chose to use the language of the Individual before using that of the Person in the what follows, as this entire blog is usually presented more from the personal/horizontal rather than the Individual/vertical point of view and that point of view is as relevant to this development as the horizontal/Personal one.

To the extent that we both suffer from sick culture as Individuals, Tusti and I are both in various states of “inner apartness” and dysmutuality, between and within our own Elders, Adults, Animals, and children. In order to come together in a healing way it is important for us both to get some Idea of how the culture of Apartness manifests in each of those aspects of our Individuality specifically, and also as a whole

The Elder:

The Idea that the voice of the inner elder (which is the Intuition) could be wrong may sound odd to some, but it is clear to me that reliable access to our higher selves is erratic at best and that intuition can be distorted by beliefs and fears of apartness, if not at its point of ultimate origin, then at its point of reception into our consciousness.

Fear based intuitions, imaginings, and metaphysical positions can be expected to periodically emerge between myself and Tusti and in fact already have to some extent…The process of coming together about what parts of our own and each others belief systems may be more reflections of “our piece of the Lie” is beginning with a mutual listening to each others world-views and beliefs that is taking place in various ways; Tusti has read my blogs for example, and I am currently reading a book that she has found to be very influential for her spiritually called “Bringers of the Dawn”. This example is just one part of what will be an ongoing conversation between us regarding ultimate things and issues of “Faith”.

Ultimately it will be our sharing a Primary Faith in Togetherness that will enable us to persist and grow (though friendly discussion of whatever disagreements we may have in these areas) into a shared expression of Living Truth. I do not think that this will happen solely because of what we are doing together (or even alone) as elders only but as a result of our inner and outer dance as Adult, Children, and Animals as well…

The Adult:

As Adults, I think that the culture of apartness often manifests in the kind of "Us and Them" Identity politics which is for me a kind of junk food people feed their inner Adult in lieu of practicing healthy Culture. Although we both seem to agree in principle on the idea of “Taking off ones Uniforms” there are ways in which we can both fall into this kind of thinking and I have a sense that Tusti's social situation discourages the kind of “coming out” as an individual-person that would be a sign of growing out of such factional childishness. Like, sports and like war, the temptations of being involved in any kind of sally of  an “US” against a “Them” (and it doesn’t matter what groups play those roles), is extremely tempting, if only because the experience of the more meaningful adventures of Healthy Culture are relatively absent for comparison. For the ordinary “foot soldier” in such social or political movements, the temptation is mostly the false sense of solidarity and outer belonging that comes at the expense of the ability to be really in touch with and so express, oneself; at the level of the “leaders” and “war-mongers” in whatever area, that temptation is of course augmented by the attention and ego gratification of having followers etc…

Besides dealing with the familiar political manifestations  of this sort of factional Identity-Politics, Tusti and I will have to deal with it in terms of gender, but I want to treat of how I see this challenge separately later since my views of it have changed somewhat.

The Child:

Like everyone else born into the dominant culture, both Tusti and I have our emotional wounds and longings which are entangled in various kinds of dysmutuality and unfriendly relationships with other aspects of our selves. Sometimes the inner adult uses a certain kind of anesthesia or distraction to numb itself to the existence of the child’s pain and longing for wholeness, sometimes the child itself is numbed with drugs, sweets, or sex  in ways that, besides being only  temporary in there effects, also do damage to the animal of the body as well. Often the inner Elder is involved in this through adherence to some conscious or unconscious fear-based belief (whether in religion or science) in terms of which such inner apart-ness is rationalized.

For Tusti and I, coming together in a healthy way emotionally means listening to each others stories and memories as they relate of our emotional wounds and supporting and challenging each other to move past the need for the anesthesia that numbs our own full experience of them. Again, as Individuals actually work as a whole, the progress we make in the culture of living friendship on the level of emotion will both depend on and itself have effects on, the other levels as well; for example, religious as well as political dogmas of apart-ness are to a great extent reinforced by and founded on emotional wounds that fester from neglect of attention and friendship.

 The Animal:

The Inner animal is of course involved in all the rest of the individual’s existence and typically suffers most directly from the effects of the various forms of anesthesia which, as sufferers from sick culture, we use to maintain a regime of Apart-ness within ourselves. Often we cannot even be properly aware of our bodies or of the life-energy (chi) that flows through and informs them until the inner animal is detoxed to some extent at least.

This is part of the reason for fasting in general and in particular the fast that is involved in the Vision Quest (which is more comprehensive in that it is a fast from artificial distractions of all kinds, not just food). Such detoxing and de-numbing of the body also happens positively through the ingestion of good and minimally processed (callesthetic) food via things like instinctive nutrition. The door of awareness opened by such practices can be widened or narrowed by the practice or non-practice such things as Chi Gung and Taoist/Tantric Sexuality, when practiced in the light of healthy Culture.  In non-Tantric culture of sexuality for example, (and I don’t mean just the sexual act) the body and its potential energies of evolution (both in terms of the individual and of the Species) is typically wasted in vain and temporary glory of the ego and its alienated assumptions. 

So far as challenges between my self and Tusti go as Animals, the main thing seems to be the reality of the extent to which a relatively apartness-ruled and anesthetic modern medicine has already injured our bodies and taken them hostage through regimes of drugs and fear-based and addictive therapies.

Tusti’s and my practice in befriending our bodies will likely be some combination of taking in more that is healthy in terms of substances, energies, practices, and—as our bodies grow stronger—weaning ourselves away from any dependency on the relatively mal-esthetic substances and treatments of most modern medicine.   

As Individual-Persons in this Blog.

So far I have shared some of the challenges to the healthy coming together that Tusti and I, by our willingness to become Life-Dance partners, are committing to face as individuals (as I said, I have done this here mostly because the “Individual” meaning of coming-together in a healthy way as "The Individual" per se, has not been gone into so much on this blog). Of course we exist as Persons as much as we do as Individuals, and this Blog is about part of how we will try to integrate that more horizontal aspect of our life-dance to the more vertical one of our dance with each other as individuals.

Since the concern of the inner adult is usually manifesting outwardly in terms of the role of Citizen-of-the -world, the main point of our sharing some of our life-dance through this blogs is not only to learn and teach the kind of culture and practices through which our (Tusti’s and my) individual culture of Apartness can be transcended and even turned into account in the service of the Healthy Culture of Togetherness between us, but it is how this can happen as well on the macro level, between political and social factions on all levels of scale.

This is one of the reasons why our differences and seeming contractions of character are so valuable. The more we find ways of transcending those differences through the practice of healthy culture, the more relevant our discoveries and practices will be to others beside ourselves. The experiment of this blog in particular (as opposed to our Life-Dance in general) then becomes one of having a structure that can be meaningful and useful in the largest possible context.

Specifically, what I am proposing for this blog at this stage in its evolution is the following:

Tusti will begin (when and if she has inner consensus to) posting about i-p's life and i-p’s own individual-personhood in the 5 venues.  Then the listening, supporting  and challenging part of the experiment will come in the comments, which will be a record of our attempts to respond to each other in a way that is an appropriate mix of these three attitudes under the circumstances, and in a way that feeds and nourishes as much of the individual (elder, adult, child, and animal) as is possible  and appropriate online.

 The comments part of this blog will then become a running dialog about the issues in the venue of the post to which the comment responds.

For example After I post this Tusti might respond with comments of Listening, comment of support, or comments of challenge:

1: The Listening comment

 (These would be questions of clarification, or summaries of part or all of what someone has written so as to be clear that i-p understands. This will also reassure me  that the Tusti listening. Of course I will respond to such questions and summaries.

2: the supporting comment

These would we statements that support to some degree what I have written that would further it and/or complement it in some way.

3: the challenging comment

These would be comments that challenge, to the point of expressing out right disagreement with, what I am saying.

I don’t really propose that our comments and responses need to be so rigidly classified in practice. It might make more sense just to respond naturally and to use the 3-fold model of a friendly response that appropriately balances Listening, Support, and Challenge, to temper, for example a response that would otherwise be too one-dimensionally challenging (and thereby fail to express and cultivate Living Friendship even if ones point is legitimate). At the same time a reply that expresses a degree of support that is not really felt is in the long run unfriendly to both ones-self and the other. And of course a neglect of proper listening takes away the foundation for any healthy form of agreement or disagreement.

The point is that whether or not we end up using the fully formal structure that I have outlined here, the conversation that is going on between Tusti and I in the comments will hopefully involve listening, supporting and challenging, both as content and as subject matter.

I think it’s necessary to add here that, listening, supporting and challenging, where they only take place outwardly, would just be another form of one-sidedness and apartness. So comments on the posts of this blog are also susceptible of analysis from the subjective point of view as well, which implies the understanding that a truly friendly post will come out of a concern for appropriate inner Friendship;  inner listening, supporting and challenging as well as that which goes on outwardly between us. A liberal use of “I” language (even broken down into “my elder, my child, my adult, my animal”, speaking for each in turn) is a welcome way of expressing that this inner friendship is going on even while the outward statement is being made). Other forms of language are also invited of course, when they seem appropriate.

Finally, all of the above is just MY vision of what this experiment is to be online, and it remains to be seen how much Tusti will agree with what I have written. As I have already said, I have no interest in presenting us as some kind of United Front and this very post is itself susceptible to modifications deriving from the Living Friendship process of Inner and outer consensus between Tusti and myself, so take all of this as just a conversation starter about what things will be like on this blog. Look for her comments and the ensuing conversation here as well.

I have said that I don’t want to present a of phony “public” united front as existing between Tusti and I, but I am certainly gambling on the idea that we are a least united strongly enough in a common faith in, and will toward, inner and outer Togetherness, so as to be able to pull this whole thing off at all. I must be honest  enough with my self to admit that even this is something that remains to be seen. Motives are often mixed; outer circumstance might triumph; catastrophe could loom; I could find myself homeless and heart broken on the streets of Liverpool trying to stay alive and stave off suicidal depression until my miserable return flight to Twin Oaks etc...etc…anything is possible, but I feel that the whole thing is worth the risk and that, like any good experiment; something valuable, something worthy of thanks and gratitude can be learned no matter what the result…

And of course, in the best case scenario, what we are doing will become a model for Healthy Culture and part of a Cultural Singularity that will make a better future for our own and succeeding generations of beings on this planet…Its Living that we are doing; Living is trying really, really trying, and that is what we are doing. With Audacity, Truthfulness, with Trust and Faith and good humor to spare; how can that fail to be more worthwhile than the alternative of miserable surviving...and what a great and good story it is to be in…!

So with that I will end my take on this new development in my experiment and welcome unconditionally, and with much Love, my Friend Tusti, both into my Life-Dance and into this Life-Dance Log…

Welcome my Friend,

Welcome and Thanks…

Piankhy

{note:  just a reminder that I am trying out or “I-p” or “I-P” ( which is pronounced "eye-pee" and of course stands for “Individual-Person”) as the a gender-transcending and trans-species substitute of He or She etc. I know it sounds funny, but all such innovations sound funny until you get used to them.}

posted by: piankhy | 22:39 | comments (5)

Monday, April 23, 2007

Individual-Post


As an individual I don’t really feel I have been coming-together or “coming-apart” to any great extreme, though I do have certain problems in this area that I have yet of “confess to” on this blog (challenge). These days though, the prospects seem pretty good for the former on one area at least, as I have met someone who very much wants to come together outwardly (as Individal-Persons in the context of Healthy Culture), but also in such a way that we come together inwardly and Intimately as individual minds (inner adults), Hearts (Inner Children), Bodies (inner Animals) and Intuition (Inner Elders) involved in experiment in healing sexuality. Of course we both know that coming together as "Persons" is part of that as well, but the point for this part of my post is focusing on the Individual per se, and that means experiments in healing sexuality, and energy work (chi gung) among other things. As I said in a previous post, the prospect of meeting this person (which is much more certain now than before) has got me recommitted to the Chi Gung, Tai Chi, and Taoist sexual practices and also to experiments with them that would integrate (and to some extent transform them) into more of an expression of Healthy Culture.

But I also include eating as part of individual healthy culture as what we eat (as well as our attitudes toward eating) can bring us into togetherness with our "inner animals" or into a greater state of apartness from that part of ourselves, and so from our wholeness as individuals. I am a little worried about what the future holds so far as this goes, because I will be living with this person in the city for a  good while and I don’t know how I will really be able to eat as well there as here, where I am also sure the air is much better). Ironically, food wise, some part of me seems to want to prepare for my time in Liverpool by becoming a bit of a vegan, since I’ll probably not be able to get organic, free-range, and as-local-as-possible animal foods in the city (perhaps with the exception of fish).

The reason this is so ironic is because of the following discussion with my present and future Life-Dance partner (who wants to be called Tusti and who I will introduce more in another post. Tusti is a “Vegan” (as its understood in the common parlance of identity-diets) and shortly after we began our correspondence this February, we had a email discussion of our differing views about eating  that almost ended our incipient Life-Dance together. Sharing that whole episode in our friendship (which was pretty dramatic) would mean posting much more of our correspondence than I include here, but it seems more appropriate right now just to share my part in the main substance of it (which I have previously excepted and posted in various places as part of a citizen-of-the-world sort of gesture). Here is a copy of that post:

Discussion With a Vegan

“(I recently had a e-mail discussion with a vegan. (I tend toward mostly raw paleo-diets, instinctive nutrition, and Weston Price type stuff, which are not exclusive of meat as long as its not factory farmed). I thought I'd share some of our exchanges (or rather, mostly my part in them, since I don't really have her permission to include her words.)

The email she sent me was entitled "Speciesim" and in it this percent explained why she was a vegan and sent as an attachment various articles and the like about Deforestation, Desertification, Water Pollution, as well as an article making an analogy of Speciesim with Racism and of farms with Slavery (In what follows I do not comment on this analogy, which i think is valid in many ways but which does not really seem relevant to the eating of meat, since this is perfectly possible, (as is a certain kinds of farming) with out being speciesist in the least.) anyway, here is my reply to her:

"This is an interesting issue for me. I hope I can address in a way that is helpful. I have read, among other things, Beyond Beef" and "Mad Cowboy" (not the exact title) Fast Food Nation, among various other things and I share your concern and disgust with factory farming and If I lived in the city and/or could not get free range organic meat and eggs, or hunt, I would not eat meat at all. As it is I live on a farm where we raise our own organic, free ranging and I think (relatively) happy animals.

My experience of life on such farms and in the wilderness has given me a perspective on death, pain and other beings that is pretty similar to that of those indigenous peoples who have long since come to sustainable and non destructive terms with there environment. From such a point of view dying, killing, and eating are pretty much all part of the same phenomenon as living and we are all equals in this regard; I will die and be eaten one day just as I myself kill and eat. this is basically good since dying and feeding other life is just part of the normal "etiquette" and responsibility of beings in the natural world and is involved with, among other things, the need to make room for others beings to have their chance to Live. If, for example the "lions" every really "lay down with the lambs", than the population of lambs would just skyrocket and they would end up eating all the grass, bushes and tree bark, and this would eventually make things bad, even for they themselves, who would end up starving to death .

This realization and acceptance of the meaning of death helps to inspire real Life which for me involves another responsibility we all share; namely every creatures responsibility to really Live and not just survive; to find out what it came into the world to do and to try to do it before it dies. I seems to me that only when this other responsibility (which I think only humans have trouble with) is not fulfilled that eating, killing, and dying become fundamentally ugly and meaningless because living itself has become so. This situation is the norm in the modern world these days, which to me accounts for the whole existence of factory farming, as well as pesticides and many other things.

People in the city tend to be dissociated from real Life and real ecology in general and often give me the impression that they think that this "killing and eating/being killed and eaten" business, as well as nature itself, is not only disgusting but is well...avoidable or something. (I think many people unconsciously feel the same about their bodies--that they are disgusting and somehow avoidable). I think that the only reason some are happier eating carrots or soybeans (and soybean farms, by the way have surpassed cattle ranches as the reason for the destruction of the rain forests of South America) is because a carrot or soybean plant is suffering in a way that they would need special instruments to be aware of (such instruments exist--see the book the Secret Life of Plants) and so does not remind them of their own inevitable death. I don't think that this is the only factor involved of course and as i said, i would be a raw vegan myself--or as much of one as I could be--under certain circumstances.

I also think that the average persons body (a persons "inner animal"; the part of nature that we are most directly), is abused constantly by everything from chairs, to processed food (vegan or not) to a neglect and waste of its sexual energies and their evolutional potential. This everyday abuse and repression of the inner animal translates ineluctably in to similar abuse of outer animals and outer nature in general and it needs to be discussed as much as the latter.

As for farming, I see progressive farming as a kind of halfway house between our alienated city-life and the wilderness. Hunting and Gathering seems to me vary much more healthy than most forms of agriculture yet if domesticated animals (including ourselves) are ever going to get back to something like that, we will all have to be "bred" or "unbred" back to Wildness, probably over generations. Such a conception of farming would have the opposite intention as farms do today and such a farm would be run in a fundamentally different way, I intend to post something about this in my blog sooner or later.

To recapitulate, the real problem seems to me to be the culture of Apart-ness and the fear and alienation from the natural world (which also involves alienation from the spiritual world) and its cycles of birth and death that seem to be part and parcel of at least some so called civilizations, including ours.

I don't feel the need for righteousness about this whole thing though, or the need to condemn people who eat factory farmed meat, or pesticide grown food, our who abuse their inner animals (or inner adults, or inner elder, or inner children) in various other ways. Its all just part of sick culture and EVERYONE suffers from, is imprinted by, and is involved in, sick culture in one way or another--either by "crimes of omission" or " crimes of commission" and usually by both. Self-righteousness is itself an aspect of sick culture and only serves to polarize and divide people along lines of this or that one sided and one-dimensional claim to (ones own pet) virtues over against the others corresponding vises (the others virtues as well as ones own vises being ignored--or worse--denied completely, in the process). Such one-sidedness is the stuff of which Wars are made.

The only thing to do that is really healthy it seems to me to practice the culture of togetherness (which means to me to be addressing the root of the problem in a positive way) while at the same time acknowledging--yet minimizing as much as possible ones unavoidable involvement with sick culture Both inwardly And outwardly. Healthy Culture as, i see it, is a kind of cultural 12 step program, a process of healing rather than a static state of being healed (and so presumably "holy", and so presumably "holier-than-thou"). Its like going up an endless mountain in which the main difference between people is not how high up they are (every finite number is essentially the same distance from infinity) but whether or not they are going up hill, standing still (an only temporary option in this case) or going down. you know what I mean?"


The person next wanted to know how I feel when I kill an animal. This was my reply:

"Your question makes me think back on an experience of killing a goat in Hawaii at the Permaculture homestead I lived at there. The animal was old, blind, and had lost its partner a few weeks previous. I spent a lot of time identifying with the animal knowing that my own life is really suspended on the same fragile thread that its is, and that I have no more importance, nor really any more control over when and how I die than it does. I affirmed this to the animal itself many times and blessed and thanked it for its life affirming to myself and to it, the literal truth that I would "pay it forward" as the saying goes.

When I wasn't thinking about that, I was thinking about how to kill the animal as well and as quickly as possible. Sorry if I get graphic here but its pertinent to your question. I killed the animal with one stroke of a very sharp machete which took off its head completely except for a little skin. Immediately up to that moment all of my concentration was on doing the thing well--when the moment came--or a millisecond after, I felt relieved and glad that I had done it well.

What happened then was interesting in that I actually felt (or imagined) something like a light finger moving across my own neck, as if to promise or inform me that with this killing I had moved made it likely that my own death would come in a similar way. This, was--and is--fine with me, and I would much rather die in the way that I killed that animal than spending months and years in some miserable hospital hooked on drugs hating life and fearing death, or worse completely unconscious and unaware...(and also using up resources that are maintained at the expense of the murder of whole landscapes in the search for fuel to run power plants to keep my EEG machine going..)

I also felt, as I watched the animals last reflexive death throes, a feeling of responsibility and resolve to use the energy that I got for the animal well, for Life, in a way that had real meaning and heart. And also I wanted to use as much as possible of the animal and waste as little as possible. I helped skin and butcher the animal and I helped tan its hide among other things,

I feel the need to say for completion--even though it might gross you out even more--that we were all into primal diets and instinctive nutrition in that place and so we ate the animal raw, though letting some of the flesh age and dry at room temperature. Like many indigenous peoples, we considered it best to eat the organs as soon as possible. To this day the idea of cooking "meat" (or otherwise processing it and so disguising what it is and was, as well as the whole meaning of how it got to be on ones plate, is as disgusting to me as I imagine the idea of eating raw meat is to others.

As I say i my essay about health and nutrition, whatever the "health benefits" of eating like this (which you can learn about from googling "instinctive nutrition", or "primal diets", for me the reason to eat raw and intuitive/instinctively is not that it will help one live longer, but that it helps one stay close to Life itself, and that in inspires one to really Live at all. processing food and disguising it in various ways just perpetuates a regime of denial and alienation regarding some of the most essential aspects of our being in this world.

Anyway, since then I have killed or been involved in the killing of other animals, and the experience has been similar. When we kill a steer at Twin-oaks, I am usually there and help as I tend the steers as well (which just means checking on them once a week and giving them mineral salt). I am also usually the only one who feels the need to make gestures and affirmations of gratitude, equality, and well wishing for the soul of the animal as it continues on its journey.

That bit about the journey reflects my metaphysical beliefs about reincarnation, which I won't go into now as my feelings about living, killing, and dying relate to them, but do not really depend on me holding them.

Having shared this, I wish I could say that I always engage in the same feelings and gestures every time I accidentally kill a bug or intentionally pull up a carrot (or eat one that someone else pulled up). Its essentially the same situation and deserves the same respect in my opinion, but i have not yet reached the level where I always give these events--which only Seem less dramatic or important, or meaningful--there due respect. I am very much working on that--its one of the reasons I eat by myself and am always trying to make eating a more mindful and contemplative act.

Hope this was helpful in some way.

--Piankhy"

Anyway, one can see here the irony that (unless I can get some really good free-range, local etc..meat connection, I will be being  as much of a raw, organic vegan as I can in liverpool.

I worry a little about all of this though, because I don’t want to lose my perspective about the meaning of eating and become dissociated and in denial about it the way I feel many city (and even “country”) people are. Listening…Support

I also worry a little about not exactly being on the same page about this with Tusti (who very much understands where I am coming from and respects me about it, but still—for emotional reasons—seems pretty disturbed by the whole thing. Listening…

Tusti (like everyone) has her own issues regarding coming-together as an Individual especially I think as regards the “Inner Animal” of the Body, but I will let Tusti introduce these as part of I-P’s own Life-Dance Posts on this Blog.

{note: I am trying out or “I-p” or “I-P” ( which is pronounced "eye-pee" and of course stands for “Individual-Person”) as the as a gender-transcending and trans-species substitute of He or She etc. I know it sounds funny, but all such innovations sound funny until you get used to them.}

Welcome and Thanks





 

posted by: piankhy | 12:03 | comments

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Life-Dance Post

Well I have been somewhat remiss about this part of my blog experiment. I have a few posts in progress but I can’t seem to finish any of them. Today is my Death Day Eve preceding my annual Vision Dance (see posts from a year or so ago) though, and since I traditionally do some kind of check-in, as well as a life-dance party and life-dance walk on the day before my death day, I thought I would do my check-in online.

Individual: A Living-Friendship beckons from England (I hope). Maybe we have a rendezvous, a Life-Dance date. It is challenging; we are very different in many ways; we haven't met in person; we correspond and plan to meet. There is love, (some kind of love) and very much affection. She has read my blogs; I don't think there is much in the way of big secrets between us. It seems fortuitous as I have just given myself a refresher course of the practice of Taoist Sacred Sexuality (I intend to post something about my ups and downs with this soon) and she is game for this kind of thing; She seems game for the whole adventure of these blogs describe and point to. Amazing. We will see. I am not being so credulous about it as I sound but at a certain point, I would be willing to take the chance. Even if it's not too good to me true, it will certainly be a real (possibly even harrowing) adventure. Heroic just to think about it really (comic-heroic—which is good) considering the odds that are against us. Listening.

As I said, Vision Dance tomorrow. We’ve been having lovely weather and I am looking forward to it. Besides the DVD’s about healing love, I have been collecting and practicing from lot of Mantak Chia Taoist chi gung DVDS. They are very helpful.

Neighbor: A week or so ago, at a community meeting called "What are we doing Here", I felt moved to question whether we have the right to be here at all. I mentioned the Monacan Indians who originally lived on this land,