10 Cups Hephaestus Fairy

I've been a slug. Summer, is well, . . . yes...

That being said, I have been reading one of the Ur-texts of the integral "movement", though I don't think that's really the best word therefor. Perhaps "amovement" would be better? to go along with atemporal, arational, aspatial and aperspectival? Just a thought since Jean Gebser created a whole slew of different terms to speak of the aperspectival mutation that has been slowly gestating inside us all since the days of Leonardo da Vinci.

I started to post something recently, and I may still post it. A meditation on the nature of time and the both/and aspect of spiritual reality. (Not "Either astrology or physics," but "Both Astrology AND Physics." "Neither religion nor science, but both, and some other things developing as well.") It is helpful to try and slog through one of these books, and come up with my own conclusions rather than sit and try to be satisfied with the likes of Mr. Wilber and others. Most people don't go back to a text like The Ever-Present Origin, and while I can see why (and I would love it if I could get into a study group with others o' like mind about this book so we can all hash it out like it was an AA Big Book Meeting), I'm really glad I'm doing this legwork myself. I'll be curious to read other "Integral" thinkers, but I'm really planning on staying away from Wilber for the time being. I want to immerse my own "integrality" into the seminal texts.

Be all that as it may, I am also interested in submitting a couple of thoughts about the weirdness in the world today, and my own reactions to various people's perspectives on the boorish behavior of all parties involved in the Middle East. I read on one site that an "integral" perspective would side with the Israelis. On a gut level, I feel this is a rationalization of some sort. I don't see the Israelis or the Palestinians handling this matter with grace or in any way aligned with divine intentions. I'm not exactly sure what's going on in the Israeli mindset. The term "mad dog" does seem to be appropriate here. It sure feels like overreaction to me. It aslo looks like a number of people are a mite quick to jump on either bandwagon, either pro-Israeli or "pro"-Hezbollah. One of the things that increasingly has irked me about looking at the eternal tinderbox that is southwest Asian politics is that one can not seem to go about looking to find out what "reality" is without being accused of being "anti-semitic." It's a word that sends shivers up and down the spine, because that's tantamount to calling someone a Nazi these days. Ironically, it's when someone is called a "Nazi" that we've been told the epithet-thrower has lost the debate. Certainly most people check out when they hear the word. Perhaps the same fate needs to await "Anti-Semitic?" One can hope.

People like William Kristol become ever like the Wizard of Oz's man behind the curtain, only it's "ignore the Jew pulling the anti-Semitic strings." As if someone's race or "sectual preference" should absolve someone of acting humanely! Does the Holocaust give Israel the right to persecute a group of people who may have a legitimate point about the land they had stewarded for over a millennia? When I think of the Balfour Declaration, personally I think of the plight of Lois Wilson writ large on the map of the world. Lois Wilson was the wife of Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. Sometime in the 1950s, Lois realized that Bill's idea was so wonderful, that she and a friend (Ann S., I believe) got together and started Al-Anon. If only they had done so in time for the founding of Israel! Some of the Anglo-American codependence might have been addressed at that time. At least it would have kept the nascent apocalypticists in check.

There's more to it than that, I realize. A certain primal appeal to the dormant thug that resides below the skin's surface and rises up in nationalistic, "patriotic" fervor as evinced in the junior wars that are sporting events and everything that multiplies in devastation therefrom, is merely accepted and built into this system rather than confronted head-on. Few of us seem ready to address this winged lizard that clutches at our root and sex chakras so that we may enter into "the brethren of humankind," to celebrate our differences rather than seeking their (and our own) elimination. That is what is so disheartening about people on either side of the fence throwing about their addictive epithets--they are blind to the mirrors of their collective Other, and because they give that shadow more and more huge power, they threaten themselves with engulfment therefrom. I wonder just how many of them are truly gone far beyond the pale of recovery and into the wild urban desert of their own auto-mechanized insanity.

Part of it is in the Abrahamic creeds themselves, for all of them enshrine this unfortunate us-vs.-themism, which is part-and-parcel of Saklasian projection. G_d/Beelzebub aka Jehovah/Satan is the dualistic yin-yang that refuses to acknowledge its other side, and so becomes like the dog chasing its tail through the cosmos. Both sides need love don't they? Both sides need to put down their bats/bombs/rocks, etc. How this is achieved, I don't know. Anyway, I have other thoughts but I don't have time right now to put them all down. I need to not be a doormat and call it as I see it. My $.02