~posted by Clint (i posted this on KW.com last week...i thought it would be interesting to play around with these ideas here)


Written in parts over the last three days, this blog is comprised of in-the-moment reflections and explorations on a current issue arising in my life and practice. The act of engaging in what turned out to be a public exploration of a sensitive issue as it was arising proved to be exceedingly difficult yet ultimately rewarding. As such, consider this the first in an intended series of postings about explorations of similar issues.


I hate the Witness. You know, Turiya, the ever-present, pure observing awareness that witnesses the arising of all other states. I hate it. I wish I didn’t know what it was or how to access it. I hate it because it is probably going to prevent me from ever posting this blog. I hate it because I suspect it is behind my developing ability to see the components of the AQAL matrix arising in each moment. Why is this a problem, you ask? I’ll start by explaining how the issue developed.


I teach the Introduction to Integral Theory workshops that precede our five-day seminars. I begin each presentation with a discussion about the mind module and why it is included as a core module in ILP. I teach that learning Integral theory is a practice. And, that it’s not merely a practice that concerns getting really smart in theory but rather a multi-decade long practice of training your awareness to see the components of AQAL arising in every moment; a practice much like the ones you might undertake in the spiritual, body or shadow modules; a practice that helps you gain access to a more complete and accurate view of reality thereby affording you a more sophisticated understanding of yourself, others and the world.


As with almost all learning, you begin the practice of understanding AQAL with an initial reliance on 3rd person (3-p) apprehension. You read books or listen to lectures and audio programs until you developed an understanding of what the AQAL maps look like. You apprehend symbols, then concepts, and then rules which you operate on as you expand your knowledge of AQAL. 3-p apprehension is critical to learning and, as such, is a logical place to start.


Over the past year, I have noticed that something—possibly our sociocultural reliance on 3-p learning—has led to the tendency to reduce the learning of Integral theory to a practice that exclusively utilizes 3-p apprehension. It has become a practice aimed solely at learning the maps really well; a practice that leads us to a place where we can judge our progress as complete enough; a practice that may, at some point, end when we decide we know integral. Can we ever know integral? What about the other two perspectives? Learning as a byproduct of 2-p interactions—which occur in a number of arenas including seminars, salons, forums, etc.—not only helps us refine our 3-p understandings but can lead us to practices that train our 1-p awareness in the ability to discover that AQAL is the territory of each and every one of us. 2-p interactions can awaken the idea that learning AQAL is a process of discovering not just the maps but also the territory that they describe.


Currently, I teach the mind module as a practice of moving from a 3-p to 1-p understanding of AQAL. This doesn’t happen in an afternoon workshop. It takes decades, and my sense is that a place from which you can judge your learning as complete enough just doesn’t exist. It is like telling your Zen teacher that you are done meditating because you are enlightened enough.


Six years ago, I gave my first teaching on Integral Theory. I was a cocky student of integral for two years when I designed and taught a 15-week undergraduate course. It went beautifully despite the fact that I had no idea that I was peddling 3-p teaching mixed with some 2-p dialogue without the faintest understanding that we were exploring the territory of each and every one of us. I hadn’t the slightest understanding of how to contextualize learning AQAL as a path of practice. I didn’t even understand this last year—after 2.5 years of working for I-I—when I first taught theory at an I-I seminar. Fuck, that is scary to even admit but it’s 100% the truth.


I didn’t discover this path until six months ago when I stopped myself from taking a really stupid action in a moment of intense contraction, because I was able to witness my state, the quadratic causes of my intended action and the quadratic implications it may have had if I had chosen to act. In that moment, AQAL awareness stayed my hand, so to speak. Witness-like awareness helped me see AQAL arising in the moment, not in reflection or analysis after the fact, but in the moment. It flashed into awareness like a satori. Shortly thereafter, I realized that I was on the path of practice I described above and that is when my love/hate relationship with the Witness began. Yeah, realizing AQAL as the territory arising within me has helped my teaching. Yeah, being aware of the path has helped my ILP. Yeah, it is helping me to become a better person. But, I still fucking hate it. And herein lies the problem.


The past three months have been a wild ride. Personally, professionally, academically, it has all been in some degree of turmoil. I can’t really get into the details, so trust me when I say its been rough. I am sure that everyone reading has had similar experiences. So remember back to those times and ask yourself if you might have been served by seeing more and more of reality arising in every moment.


As I continue to walk this path with an awareness of the path, I am able to see more and more of reality arising in the moment, and it’s not really helping. In fact, it’s making things worse. Since first discovering that learning AQAL was a path, I envisioned that movement on this path would bring about clarity; that I would learn how to act with more perspectives in mind; that I would move more effortlessly through complex situations; that, in any given moment, I would be served by my awareness. I didn’t think I would come to hate it.


I failed to realize that the result of seeing so many dynamics arising within personal and professional situations would be an inability to act, an inability to make sense of things, an inability to integrate, and an inability to do virtually anything to bring about clarity. How about this for a bad metaphor: It’s like being in a hurricane that is decimating your house. You look out of the basement and the chaos and damage is obvious, real, and present. Then, as if that weren’t enough, you have this LCD screen permanently attached to your head and its constantly showing you satellite images of how devastated your entire neighborhood, entire town and entire region are. You can’t escape the global view, the higher perspective. Despite any of your actions, you are unable to deal only with the turmoil currently around you. You can’t escape the view of the AQAL matrix arising in your relationships, your company, your entire life.


Now, you are probably wondering why anyone would want to escape a higher view, a more encompassing perspective. Why would anyone want to trade what amounts to the possibility of a worldcentric perspective for an egocentric one? Good questions. I have asked them myself. And my answer has always been “I don’t.” I don’t want to trade my awareness for ignorance because I know it’s not bliss. But, I sure as hell would like to make sense of my life.


I have been sitting with this for the last 24 hours and this is the best I can come up with as to what it means, what to do, etc. If I were able to stably access the Witness, I would see my life as if it were a movie. I would see everything as objects arising in my awareness. What currently amounts to a frenzied parade of disjointed AQAL bits and pieces chaotically arising with no hope for integration would be nothing more than clouds gracefully drifting through the sky-like space of my primordial awareness. But, I can’t stably access the Witness, so the AQAL bits and pieces continue their tormenting parade through my unstable mind. Even knowing that one day I may be able to stabilize the Witness makes me hate this path. Why? Because that day is not today, I guess. Because fleeting moments of witness-like awareness leave me with one foot in a higher perspective capable of seeing AQAL arising and the other firmly rooted in my ego’s storm-battered house replete with its fear, contraction and anxiety. Why couldn’t it just be one or the other? If that is not the epitome of futile, ridiculous questions I don’t know what is.


After subjecting myself to further immersion in this dilemma, I have come to realize that I am attached to wholeness, attached to integration, if you will. Something about having a foot in both these realms doesn’t sit well with me. (As if I can just turn off the higher or lower perspectives.) Something about having only chaos when this path was supposed to bring clarity irks me a bit. (As if the path owes or promised me anything.) Something about blaming the path or hating the Witness feels like a good course of action. (I can’t be serious. As if becoming a victim will somehow make this better).


I have sat with this for another 24 hours…and it’s becoming increasingly clear. The hurricane is life, its samsara, and its never going to stop. I can’t control it or make it less intense. It doesn’t matter what degree of AQAL awareness I have, seeing more complexity doesn’t stop the storm. I realize that I have a dysfunctional relationship to the mind module and the practice of learning AQAL. I think it owes me something, or that I should have earned some peace and clarity for being a good student. This has got to be to most ridiculous thing I have ever admitted believing.


A one hundred year old oak does not bend in a storm as a result of understanding the complexities of the weather. It has big roots. What does Big Mind have to say about hurricanes? What does the Fully-Functioning, Integrated Human Being have to say about AQAL awareness ensuring a peaceful existence?


After three days of working with this, the answer is stunningly simple. I need to check back in with my Spirit Module practices. At the heart of the most seemingly impossible paradoxes can arise a profound simplicity if life is not left unexamined. Full engagement of the chaotic arisings of form can yield the gift of a simple equanimity when one relinquishes the unceasing desire of mind to make sense of the Unknowable. From only that place will life’s hurricanes cease to shake what is truly unshakeable.

To be continued….

---

Why on earth do you keep looking for God when God is actually the Looker? --Ken

gorgeous honesty, clint !

i am reminded of hearing ken say something like: we don't do our ilp to one day be "happy" .. ain't gonna happen

the only thing that is happy is the witness because it's not attached to anything .. nothing sticks

sounds like there may be a sticky witness thing happening here and it is quite fascinating actually

do tell more

 

clintfuhs:

After three days of working with this, the answer is stunningly simple. I need to check back in with my Spirit Module practices. At the heart of the most seemingly impossible paradoxes can arise a profound simplicity if life is not left unexamined. Full engagement of the chaotic arisings of form can yield the gift of a simple equanimity when one relinquishes the unceasing desire of mind to make sense of the Unknowable. From only that place will life’s hurricanes cease to shake what is truly unshakeable.

Ha, this is fucking great. I too have been all over the place lately and feel the coming to ground of this last paragraph in particular. My 'ground' amidst it all came almost as a surprise, an, 'oh yeah, I forgot that's how it works', shock when I realized I could just be present with how things were. I could simply be with what was. It just was there this set of circumstances, this storm, and no pushing or tugging was required on my part to deal with it - apart from being on my feet and present. Its the change of gears, the shift down, the getting down to/with, whatever it is I'm averting myself from, that hurts.

I won't offer suggestions, as it's evident you're dealing with it fine by yourself. Not to mention you're right there in the belly of the Integral beast. (thats not the right metaphor is it, ha). I'm sure its going to make you that much better as a teacher.

Anyway, thanks for sharing. You provide no details but the ebb and flow of your story and its 'resolution' (always provisional) resonates at this moment for me. A story from the line of fire. Always good.


Castel

Anyway, thanks for sharing. You provide no details but the ebb and flow of your story and its 'resolution' (always provisional) resonates at this moment for me.

Just read Fairy Faye's comment about, 'Sticky Witness', and then your own last paragraph, and realize that the 'resolution' I speak of may not actually have yet occurred? You know the solution that much is clear.

As the man says, do tell us more....

Best,

Castel

that was an intense rollercoaster read dude, and the ending was very cool,

full engagement -- sometimes a beer is just a beer,

have a beer clint.

This is very similar to the stuff that I have been struggling with, on and off, for the past 10 months.  I've gotten over the fact that living an integral life does not make things easier and that there is not some fabulous reward for getting here (though, rarely, I still get pissed, like WTF!?).  In fact, I often find life more challenging now because I have access to more perspectives and can more readily see what were previously shadows, which can be quite painful.  And I certainly have lots of stickiness left: attachments galore.  I resonated with the concept of attachment to wholeness.  I seriously desire non-attachment.  I have the following two quotes on hanging from my computer monitor at work:

The senses are so strong and impetuous, O Arjuna, that they forcibly carry away the mind even of a man of discrimination who is endeavoring to control them.  One who retrains his senses, keeping them under full control, and fixes his consciousness upon Me, is known as a man of steady intelligence.

Bhagavad Gita

Over the course of centuries, Zen has branched out into different schools with individual methods, but the purpose is still the same - to point directly to the human mind.  Once the ground of mind is clarified, there is no obstruction at all - you shed views and interpretations that are based on concepts such as victory and defeat, self and others, right and wrong.  Thus you pass through all that and reach a realm of great rest and tranquility.

Zen Master Yuanwu

I am not yet "a man of steady intelligence" and I rarely experience the "realm of great rest and tranquility."  Knowing that this realm exists sometimes comforts me and calls me higher and sometimes torments me like I'm King Tantalus.  Oh, the fun never ends.

---

To be nobody-but-yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. - E.E.Cummings

Hi Colin

Its interesting to me to read the quote from the Bhagwat Gita. I can see how in the past it has been interpreted with a smaller degree of integrality that we can interpret it today.

It seems to put the focus bang on the senses. And cautions against their strength. And talks about "mastering them". After much experience, the focus today is sho\ifting to our attachment to them, not them per se.But in the past many people read this line as a rejection of the flesh and repressed their senses and body.

For me part of reclaiming my aliveness is to celebrate the senses and get them out of cold storage and allow them their full granduer! Despite our attachment to our senses today have you noticed how numb and compulsive most of us are?

But yes, to do that from a place of non-attachment. The steady intelligence becomes the underlying spacethat we are attuned to  in which all the gorgeous tumult arises. And this awakening process makes us both more divine (non-attached) and more human (more sensitive to everything). Thus, we gain greater peace and greater feeling for the world.

Gita

 

Hi Gita,

Yes, there are certainly "lower" and "higher" readings of that quote from the Gita.  For me, the focus is not on "restraining the senses" in the ascetic sense, but being Witness to them and not allowing them to draw me into self-delusion.  Being Master instead of slave.  I am nearly always more sensitive to my "senses", but sometimes I am literally consumed by them and other times I am able to Witness them, even while experiencing them fully.  Not to say that is necessarily tremendously easier; there is more of a spaciousness, though.

Colin

---

To be nobody-but-yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. - E.E.Cummings

Hi Colin

The skills with which we approach our senses and emotions and thoughts are of great interest to me.

At some stage on this journey, I thought I was witnessing my senses but in fact I was withdrawing into my intellect and watching then from there. It was a fragmentation process and it felt "thin" and tinny. Now, when I am conscious I allow my feelings to course through my whole body (noticing habitual blocks as they do), I let them run their course, and as I allow that somewhere in that flow I shift to loving witness spontaneously. Perhaps its in the decision to let them run their course that the seeds of that shoft are sown? 

The other aspect that I am learning about is containing emotions. If I dont immeidately discharge them externally through action, then the emotion or sensation has a chance to deepen, ripen, and spread making its ways to my toes, and that's also a worthy experience. It requires developing strong boundaries, it requires a strong chalice to hold that water, and that I am learning day to day.

Gita

 

Hi all!

Sorry i cant spend more time posting in here. I didnt mean to drop the first post and then split. I need to spend my free time writing papers for my phd rather than in forums. :(

I posted the following on kw.com the other day...thought i would share it.

~posted by clint

While writing the blog, Adventures in Practice: I Hate the Witness, I was almost positive that I wasn’t going to post it. Something about the chaotic nature of the topic, the choppiness of my writing, or the idea of publicly sharing an unresolved issue in my practice had me thinking that it wasn’t appropriate to post it on Ken’s site. Even after sharing it with Colin and Corey—who both told me to post it—I remained hesitant.

It wasn’t until people began e-mailing responses that I saw my initial reservations more clearly. I feared that an unknown number of unknown people were just waiting to judge me. After reading responses like the ones I have posted below, I re-owned that projection and began looking at the blog in a different light. More on that in a moment…check out these responses first….

This is from a friend whom I met at a seminar a few years ago...

Clint,

Thank you for sharing this with us. The clarity and vulnerability with which you recount your struggles is brilliant and the humility inherent in the owning of your frustration of “not knowing” is beautiful.

you so aptly pointed out, this struggle of constricting against the wisdom of the witness is familiar to all of us…and yes, sometimes the lure of ignorance holds a seductive sort of bliss. I commend you for mustering up the courage to fully inhabit your constriction and give it voice. You are a very brave soul.

What struck me most about this post is your admission to favoring 3-p and 1-p perspectives in your practice and the acknowledgement that 2-p is a vital part of the equation. I feel this is a core issue that many of us struggle with. All three perspectives enrich and inform each other; and, together, they facilitate growth. Thank you for calling our attention to the need to attend to all 3 perspectives.

When I first received my ILP Kit, I was taken aback by the fact that the relationships module was deemed an “auxiliary” as opposed to core module. I also noticed that the “Gold Star” practices in the core modules were heavily 1-p and 3-p practices. I found this to be disheartening. It is wonderful to see you calling attention to the importance and value of 2-p practice in this blog. Reading this has given me renewed faith in Integral.

Deepest bows~

a humble student

From a friend and colleague...

Just read your first post of hate the witness and i resonated with it...thanks for writing about the turmoil...my own interpretation of my experience is that i sometimes glimpse both the intentional aspect of my experience ...what I am currently intending to do -- and the "ironic process response" arising at the same time. So again, like you said, then I don't know what to do. Because if I take my intended action, I know the ironic process will kick in simultaneously...

what I take from what you said is that relaxing and letting go, relaxing and letting go, relaxing and letting go, allows the process to continue.

let's keep in touch on this if it helps us. otherwise, we will continue our 1st person processes

regards,

[ ]

From another seminar attendee...

Amen, brother. Right to the last word of the last sentence. Amen.

From a close friend and former I-I employee...

YES! Yes to ALL of that motherfucker. Nice blog

From someone who attended an Intro workshop I co-lead...

Hi Clint,

(I attended the aqal day-long teaching the day before the Integral Contemplative Christianity seminar last month.)

Just wanted you to know how much I appreciate your blog entry about living aqal moment-by-moment as each moment arises. One of the things that stuck with me, after the day of your teaching with Terry, was your comment toward the end, that the goal is to come to the place of awareness of all four quadrants, as they arise. Later that week, I commented to one of the attendees, that I would like to see that idea really fleshed out, maybe in the sense of sort of a dissection of a given moment or something. I have made attempts at that very thing myself, in these weeks since.

So, to have you bravely doing exactly that, is just great! Even though, on one level, I hear you warning me that it is not for the faint-hearted! On another level, there is nothing else worth doing!

Thanks,

[ ]

From a member of the community whom I have never met...

Hi Clint,

I just finished reading your blog posting (adventures in practice) and wanted to say thank you! I could relate quite deeply to that turmoil, the confusion and overwhelm, that being inbetween, not completely here and not completely there. The seeing of all the chaos but feeling it too, like it's everything while knowing that it actually isn't, and not being able to, like you said, reliably access the witness. Also that sense of expecting a reward/being owed something.. I can relate to that have come to think it's not at all ridiculous, just human. This path is nothing without kindness...

Thanks again Clint, it was meaningful to read.

With much warmth,

[ ]

From a very dear friend and brother on this path...

Love it! I would like to see that last part fleshed out just a bit more, it was so brief it landed as a bit anticlimactic. I know it is a simple conclusion, so you can state it pretty simply and with much concision, but i want you to relish in that simplicity.

There are, of course, different sorts of simplicity in our world, from the naive simplicity of life left unexamined, to the profound simplicity that arises when the impossible paradoxes of our condition can be reconciled with a small turn of phrase. That is a simplicity that needs to be earned, by both author and reader, and is the sort of simplicity that seems to offer glimmers of your own soul just beyond the periphery of mind. Kind of like those paragraphs Ken writes after his theoretical drive-by shootings, spitting out a pretty little poem that helps us grok everything he had been writing about all at once, while simultaneously seeming to bring the entire fucking Kosmos into relief. I think it's that kind of simplicity you are pointing towards, and i want you to pull it out a little more and roll around in it naked.

Oh, i also like how it ends, turning to the Spirit module--though i just want to point out, "the Spirit module" itself sounds like exactly the same 3p slings and arrows you were just trying to dodge =)

Just my humble feedback, brother love, do with it what you will!

[ ]

From a member of the Multiplex community. This response offers some truly enlightened wisdom...

that was an intense rollercoaster read dude, and the ending was very cool, full engagement -- sometimes a beer is just a beer,

have a beer clint.

[ ]

A heartfelt thank you to everyone who sent responses. Your words helped me to re-own my inclination towards self-judgment, and your interpretations presented perspectives that have deepened my experience of engaging in what is presenting itself as a latent aspect of my practice. The nearly in-the-moment reflection on issues as they were arising was painful, but the emergent 2-p dialogue certainly outweighs the expenditure tenfold. With that said, and with a sincere hope that others will share in a similar fashion, I have crossposted the original blog on the Multiplex Community site. If you aren’t already a member, Join Now and post an account of a current issue arising in your practice….

Stay tuned to kw.com for new posts on Adventures in Practice….

---

Why on earth do you keep looking for God when God is actually the Looker? --Ken

Hi Clint:  Did I read that we could start adding some of our own Practice experiences here.  If not, I will start a thread on ISC Forum.  I wrote and suggested you read a piece by KW on IOS.  Later I thought of a couple of questions I wanted to ask you and I got pulled away.  Partly because I  knew that I was having some sort of movement going on and it finally dawned on me that I needed to do some work to transmute emotions.  I was crying a lot and when trying to get my computer to behave,  I became so frustrated and then went into a deep deep rage-something that I had never known.  I have experienced pretty deep anger but this was more like

scary to me.  There is an ad out today on TV showing these people whacking vac. cleaners around and busting them up or throwing them over  a rail from a high apt bldg.  Later I thought how I would love that when the rage was there.  But I was more paralyzed or I would have thrown the computer at the wall..  Still, it did not really get to me to do the work for a day or two.  It finally clicked that the rage was not about the computer but was stuck and embodied.  I did what Eckhard Tolle talks about and have been doing this work for almost a year.  Also I have studied and teach body work and believe in it.  Big Time.  I laid down and went into my body to feel places where the rage might be.  In the middle of my breast bone which is so often the case. For Me.   I feel sure that some people suspect heart attacks when this type of thing is really wanting to transmute the emotions.   I let the story line go completely and stayed with the suffocating feeling, giving it lots of room and breathing in and then out with more force but not so much as to get too tired.  I also

want to do Shadow work with this.  There were a few things arising that forced the way thru but I sent themdown a river on a log and went blank again.  After about20 min.  the feelings lightened but not completely.  I got up and went about other things.

A few hours later, I realized there had been a shift and by the next day, other aches were gone and I knew a shift had taken place.  Again other things would come up

that I could relate to for a "reason".  I am debating whether or not to even look at that or to just let it go.  I have done that both ways.  And I am not being secretive.

I am just tired of telling and if that cont.  then I will leave it alone.  One of the questions I wanted to ask you is.   What does choppy feel like.  How do you do choppy.  What is choppy?  Is it really in your writing?  Your writing was very clear

to me.  PH.d   Big tall order.  I hope that you are taking Karate or something like that to help break up all the body collects when overwhelmed, not enough time (we think)  usually totally will not let go of control.  Only you know.  And I agree with the simplicitiy thing.  It is a matter of knowing what you need each time.  Too much navel gazing turns us in and away from others and ourself.  I still like that piece that Ken does on theIOS.  Stay Well and Love   Pattye Gilligan

 

Hi Clint:  Did I read that we could start adding some of our own Practice experiences here.  If not, I will start a thread on ISC Forum.  I wrote and suggested you read a piece by KW on IOS.  Later I thought of a couple of questions I wanted to ask you and I got pulled away.  Partly because I  knew that I was having some sort of movement going on and it finally dawned on me that I needed to do some work to transmute emotions.  I was crying a lot and when trying to get my computer to behave,  I became so frustrated and then went into a deep deep rage-something that I had never known.  I have experienced pretty deep anger but this was more like

scary to me.  There is an ad out today on TV showing these people whacking vac. cleaners around and busting them up or throwing them over  a rail from a high apt bldg.  Later I thought how I would love that when the rage was there.  But I was more paralyzed or I would have thrown the computer at the wall..  Still, it did not really get to me to do the work for a day or two.  It finally clicked that the rage was not about the computer but was stuck and embodied.  I did what Eckhard Tolle talks about and have been doing this work for almost a year.  Also I have studied and teach body work and believe in it.  Big Time.  I laid down and went into my body to feel places where the rage might be.  In the middle of my breast bone which is so often the case. For Me.   I feel sure that some people suspect heart attacks when this type of thing is really wanting to transmute the emotions.   I let the story line go completely and stayed with the suffocating feeling, giving it lots of room and breathing in and then out with more force but not so much as to get too tired.  I also

want to do Shadow work with this.  There were a few things arising that forced the way thru but I sent themdown a river on a log and went blank again.  After about20 min.  the feelings lightened but not completely.  I got up and went about other things.

A few hours later, I realized there had been a shift and by the next day, other aches were gone and I knew a shift had taken place.  Again other things would come up

that I could relate to for a "reason".  I am debating whether or not to even look at that or to just let it go.  I have done that both ways.  And I am not being secretive.

I am just tired of telling and if that cont.  then I will leave it alone.  One of the questions I wanted to ask you is.   What does choppy feel like.  How do you do choppy.  What is choppy?  Is it really in your writing?  Your writing was very clear

to me.  PH.d   Big tall order.  I hope that you are taking Karate or something like that to help break up all the body collects when overwhelmed, not enough time (we think)  usually totally will not let go of control.  Only you know.  And I agree with the simplicitiy thing.  It is a matter of knowing what you need each time.  Too much navel gazing turns us in and away from others and ourself.  I still like that piece that Ken does on theIOS.  Stay Well and Love   Pattye Gilligan

 

Sounds like you're beginning a paridigm shift, and a supreme one at that!  I remember the turmoil and indecisiveness upon entering Green in my early twenties, and the turmoil of entering Teal.  The integration part takes forever, meanwhile, everything happens too fast.  Yup, it's a hurricane all right.  One moment you're in a new perspective, and then you're pulled back into the old perspective.  What fun! (not!)  I hope you get flashes of insight as your subconscious integrates the new perspective.  My experience is that I "get it" in flashes of insights, where small portions are partially integrated.  Then more flashes the next week or month...  Until it's all second nature.

I've noticed that I've never spent much time in a stable paradigm until the holes start revealing themselves, and then I feel the pitter patter of a light rain, which I know will inevitably turn into the perfect storm.  It's like I'm destined to live in a storm forever, with a few days of sunshine in between.  And this open-ended AQAL map doesn't improve the forecast...

---

myspace.com/zentaimusic
resting.awareness@juno.com

Dear ats:  That is different to write..   Dear ats:   I want to reply and ask a couple of questions and will as soon as time opens up.  Here's one.  Did you mean it literally about the rain?  I don't get it that way- more of a metaphor?  I do have these times of being filled with energy that feels like the most wonderful gentle falling warm rain.

Along with that is much love and I can either stay there with that or sort of punch a button with the smallest of thought shift and let things arise.  The things that come up are usually the thoughts or ideas that are worthwhile or lead somewhere.  Will give and example of that later.  Thanks for your comments.  Do you live in Hawaii permanantly? You Dog.  Love Pattye

Dear Gita:  I meant to respond to your comment about containing emotions earlier.

I read about this from some of the modern Jungian women.  It is very important to be able to contain the emotions, esp..  when we are needed to focus on our work, while with others, etc.  It is a sign of a mature women when she can be going through a really tough time and wanting to cry or scream or whatever and she cont. to do what need s to be done.  I have had to do that so much in my life, raising five children, teaching Phy.s Ed. and then a psychotherapist.  The storms woud rage through and the discipline of putting problems in a box and under the bed until we can tend to them is active Holy Work.  It seems that is more a women's problem but of course for the feminine of both sexes.  We have all had to carry on during hellish times and once I knew it was required, that it clicked with me to do that, I found that there

was much Grace around the corner for me esp. as related to my work, such as when dealing with others.  The raising of children became easier for me and good for them with little surprises coming from the discipline of dying inside.  It is one of the real horrors of war, watching families losing members and having to carry on and carry on and on and on to eat and/or stay alive. Tests abound that we know nothing of and I still think that our attitude and love helps someone some where besides us.  God I hope so.  I liked your Post.  It reminded me.  Love Pattye