I just listened to Sheldrake and Wilber part 3 and enjoyed it a lot. I think that the point about whether a "we", a collection of "I"s can then be characterized as an "I" is a good one. I like the flocking, schooling, herding dynamics into which I can gestalt back and forth from we to I.

Ken got talking awfully fast in this and though he gained throwing out a lot of ideas of his, I think he lost the possibility of going more deeply in the question that Rupert seemed ready to do. It might have offered Ken something new, rather than more of what he already knows. I am struck by what a socially gracious guest rupert appears to be. He also seems to be an excellent listener who patiently can mark time, in a sense, with his own developing responses to what's being presented, and then when he gets a turn to unwrap his thoughts and perceptions, he can do so, maybe letting go of something already long past in the riff by ken and just address the latter things, or find his main point. I enjoy his style of thinking and conversing. They each have their own style and I suppose that some of that comes out of responding to some inner psychological agendas that they have.

Going slowly into stuff accomplishes some things, I suppose, and flying quickly, even though playing a little fast and loose with words and thoughts, accomplishes some things. For example, Ken made a small distinction that could have been questioned and parsed a bit, whereas in the overall presentation it probably doesn't really matter. I'm not sure that the distinction between him moving across the room as less than a whole being in motion and that of his dog who supposedly moves in full wholeness (I may have his language a little off, here) is quite so categorical, and if it were important I could explain why.

I also felt that, as mentioned in the article posted by ikarma, that Ken spoke a little fast and categorical about the staring example - he used the phrase in his assertion, something like "statistically, undeniably". Well the statistical study mentioned in the article above actually does deny that. And pretty much every educated person knows that many statistical studies can be challenged and denied, and ought to be challenged and denied. There are so many possible research errors and limitations, including statistical, in studies, they are legion. One year you hear incontrovertibly that milk is bad, and the next year that it is good - to use childrens' crayoning methods to emphasize my point. So I don't think one should shut doors on inquiry quite so quickly - one can loose credibility by seeming to not be self-aware as one speaks to quickly.

Overall, I like this material a lot and the high level exchange between ken and rupert. I look forward to more by these two.

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Ambo Suno

hi ambo,

yes, wilber does go quickly over alot of material, but i think he needs to, because, typically, people haven't read or, at least, fully comprehended what he's written. as he senses this, and i think it became quickly evident that sheldrake hadn't yet given SES a close study, he will often give a quick synopsis just to let them, and us, know what's already out there.

ambo:

I'm not sure that the distinction between him moving across the room as less than a whole being in motion and that of his dog who supposedly moves in full wholeness (I may have his language a little off, here) is quite so categorical, and if it were important I could explain why.

the irony here is that you confused what wilber was saying, but you got it right!! yes! wilber and his dog are both holons, and essentially the same thing occurs when either of them decides to up and walk across the room: essentially all of their cells move with them in concert--none of them get a chance to vote about this. the distinction wilber was drawing was between his dog or himself as a single holon and gaia, for example, which is a complex, social holon. gaia is simply incapable of taking the sort of concerted actions a single holon is capable of. if gaia had this same sort of capability, it could decide, for example, that it's time to do something about global warming and, voila!, we, loyal part/members of gaia, would all commence to ride bicycles instead of SUVs whether we wanted to or not. obviously, since gaia is only a social holon, i.e. a group of holons, not an actual holon, it doesn't have that power.

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Hi, Ralph - thanks for your questioning this along with me. I think that you and I hear things and process things differently. Well, hello, ambo, of course we do - we are two individuals, holons. I think that I hear Rupert's part a bit differently than you and seem to sense (presume? imagine?) that he actually has a pretty good grasp of what Ken's talking about, but wants to investigate some of the fine points. They do a pretty good job together; and Ken does a pretty good job of briefly acknowledging the commonalities in their understanding. Ken, I thought gave a good explanation of why he thinks it's incorrect for some people to try to stack the social hierarchy on top of the individual, since the social begins immediately and runs concurrently with the individual. But I think in the issue that I quote below, he jumped right on his point of boundaries being dropped over a cluster of I's, in a new "I" defining way so quickly that he didn't give a chance for considering the possible nuances that Rupert was considering. When Rupert says something like, "I'm still a little uncertain about . . ." Or maybe, "I am still a little confused about . . ." he is, I think, being humble, open-minded, curious, wanting to further more fully understand the situation - he is not as naive and ignorant as some might presume from his gracious way of inviting further inquiry. I think he tracks Ken quite well. And I wish Ken would slow down and listen a bit more, put his own momentum of knowledge and understanding temporarily in abeyance, actually inquire and truly dialogue with Rupert at certain junctures, rather than simply try to educate Rupert as to his way of theorizing about it. This is a small point I am making, and the exchanges between them are rich, nonetheless, and I get a lot from Ken running his theories past us all.

As for your comment, "the irony here is that you confused what Wilber was saying, but you got it right!!" I may have confused some what Ken was saying, but I think you presumed a bit quickly what my point was. What I was looking at was the 'fact' that in the same way that humans often have somewhat spit-off sub personalities sometimes at odds, and out of synchrony with one another, a dog (and we humans) at more physiological levels are not always moving wholly across the room. Yes, looked at in terms of transportation of cells in a very gross way from here to there, we all will agree that the dog, Ken and David totally moved - unless one of them farted or breathed and left part of themselves behind. But internally there are some basic functions, at least, that don't operate always in synchrony. Sort of analogous to lines of development, there are lines of functioning. An old dog is lying in the winter sun from the window; his sore hip joints are at rest and relatively comfortable. Dog-type affect apparently quiescent - not predominantly stick chasing 'happy', nor 'afraid', nor belly-rubbing 'ecstatic', nor 'obsequious' or 'cowed', nor much of any of the dog repertoire of emotional expressions, whatever they be. His baseline arousal is in a sense low. His attention is folded inward in some dog-like way, perhaps snuffed up against a deep dreamless sleep. His sensory thresholds are within a comfortably accommodated holding pattern. His intention if we may call it that, is to be just how he is. Then someone calls him over. A young puppy might leave sleep immediately and bound across the room, all systems, all lines, and all functions firing in synchrony. Old winter dog might open an eye, and with enough of his pleasing, human loving soul decides to go over there. I am wondering if parts of him don't want to go. Yes, his body as seen from the outside moves all cells to another location. His arousal is partial, his attention is partial, he's half asleep, some of his hip mobilization cells are still trying to keep the sensory thresholds for comfort and pain in a holding pattern. Old doggy is not entirely behind this proposition, perhaps, even as he moves towards his boring snack bone. He is split along functional lines. Humans act in conflict and contradiction, seemingly moving ahead and yet dragging feet simultaneously, and maybe dogs are conflicted in terms of physiologic specialization. In humans, it is sometimes suggested that these inner splits and asynchronies may be causes of dysfunction and disease.

Though, probably it would not be parsimoniously correct to say that a person's intention around a certain object of her attention was a holon, a dominant monad, there might be further interesting inquiry about these nuances, of splits within the self. In the absence of functioning corpus callosum, would right and left brains be dominant monads? Where is the sufficient boundary? Gaia. Crystal. Solar system. Looking at when a "boundary is dropped down around" whatever is interesting. To me, Ken and his inspiration's (Yant ?) conclusions are not 100% foregone. The map in scope and detail are not finished or necessarily correct. When we get a very bright inquiring mind such as Sheldrake, I personally would like to hear Ken momentarily enter the unknown and explore. Yet these exchanges do take place in II and there are some intentions and agendas here so understandably, they are usually taken as opportunities for conveying the AQAL theory.

Anyway, I guess Ralph that we have different ways of seeing things. Well, again, hellloo, of course. We are individuals, though we meet in IN.

This was the part of the exchange that I was thinking of. Wellness for us, ambo

RS  . . . A whole protein molecule would have an I'ness that is over and above the carbon, nitrogen, and so forth, atoms within it. Or a crystal. Over and above the molecules within it. So there is a sense in which it is not clear to me to what degree the We turns into an I, because when you have a higher level morphic field that integrates the individual I's, or individual units, and there is a sense in which they are We, and also there is a sense in which they have become an I.

KW  Yes, and I think what happens is, the way that a We is actual turned into an I is there is a physical boundary dropped around it, so originally two atoms were just talking to each other and their exteriors and their interiors were resonating, but they had a proto I and they had a We, but the "We" is not an "I".   You and I are talking right now. There is no monad that pulls all of our strings. Whereas a dog, my dog, gets up and walks across the room, 100% of its molecules get up and walk with it. So when there is a boundary dropped around a "We", and that boundary is the boundary, or at least part of the physical boundary of a dominant monad or of an "I", then the We's get converted into I's and that's in essence what happened a lot in evolution. Part of its creativity was taking some separate I's, dropping a boundary around them, and turning that We into an actual I. So the boundary got dropped around them and "pow", a molecule. The molecule now is an I. And of course interiorly, you can look at its atoms and it's atoms still have an I, and to some extent they still have We's when they interact, but now, they're morphic fields and their attractor of the morphic fields is now largely, or at least significantly, determine by the morphic field of the new boundary that's around it. So then now you have molecules running around; and only when molecules start talking to each other. So there are two molecules talking to each other to form a We, but the We is not an I. There is no single thing that controls what both molecules do. But if a boundary is dropped around them, a protein for example, then those molecules are now part of a larger holon, and therefore that We has actually become an I. But that I is what actually determines the probabilistic field of the morphic field; and so those molecules are acting according to the protein and whatever the attractor of the protein is and we are both positing there is a morphic field of that protein that governs its folding, among other things, and therefore determines the actions of the molecules in that protein. So that's the only time you get a We turning into an I - is when the We actually becomes part of a single holon that does have an I. . . .

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Ambo Suno

Whoops - in my immediately above post, in which it took me quite a while to transcribe, I made a few clerical errors - like saying David when I meant Ken, and social when I meant individual, but now I think it reads how I meant it. Geesh, some words it you mis-write change the entire meaning. Sometimes, if I don't carefully proof read a riff, my punctuation gets pretty weird - dang.

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Ambo Suno

ambo,

if someone you valued highly were, from your perspective, repeatedly, and always incorrectly, criticized, wouldn't you want to defend that person, especially if he/she had much more important things to do than defending him/herself?

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Ambo, you make an interesting point about the splitting of consciousness, different personalities going off in different directions, creating different narratives (I'm paraphrasing what you were saying about the dog, but I hope I'm understanding your point).  It seems to me that what the growth and development of consciousness in an individual is essentially is learning to be aware of those narratives, figure out that no single one of them is who you are, and thus begin to integrate them, transcending and including.  So from an interior, individual perspective, maybe that's what morphic fields are, the habits that form when those smaller I's are integrated into a larger I.

I think, though, that one of the most interesting points of this discussion is what to morphic fields look like from an interior, collective perspective, the LL or We.  If a We becomes an I in the UL then does an I become a We in the LL.  I'm kind of just throwing around ideas at this point, but here's a way I think that process migh twork:  In transformation, as seen from the LL quadrant, an I begins to realizes that it exists in a larger nexus of communication then was previously accessible in the I awareness, and thus, as it integrates its narratives in the UL, it becomes integrated into a larger We-nexus in the LL.

"ambo, if someone you valued highly were, from your perspective, repeatedly, and always incorrectly, criticized, wouldn't you want to defend that person, especially if he/she had much more important things to do than defending him/herself?"

Ralph, I'm guessing you are talking about you coming to the defense of Ken and the products of his work. Yes, I think that is a very strong and understandable tendency we have. Ken is certainly a valuable person - and continuing along the same vein of consideration, so are you. Loyalty, as a value, I think also has some merit.

I sometimes feel embarrassed, guilty, apprehensive/anxious, or ashamed when I criticize someone, directly and indirectly. I also have felt a little badly at times when I couldn't agree with or was even bothered by what you are saying or the tone in which you say it. Not infrequently, the question comes up in myself, why do I feel compelled at certain times to respond and to react, when I might be able to feel that my reaction will be life alienating. Naturally, there are a number of possible reasons at work, including projection, shadow, general background level of emotional charge at a certain moment, a history of a reactive bad chemistry with someone for what ever reason, some engrained pattern of rebellion and emotional charge to authority figures that gets to express itself when I think someone speaks or acts incorrectly, in terms of content, ethics, and what not - the excuse my emotional being is waiting for. I think all of this goes on in me at different times at different degrees. Maybe if we could count the millions of moments where I am fairly patiently in equipoise or 'positively' charged around someone, the judged extent of my reactivity would be moderated.

With Ken, there is something about the high profile that he assumes, the surety, certainty with which he speaks, the grandness of his highly visible physical form that he develops, the audience that he reaches, the delicacy and preciousness (from my standpoint) of the material with which he deals and almost proselytizes, one could say, that all come together in me with strong aversion --- again, perhaps largely for the above stated reasons of my internal makeup. And also, as is said, which I think has some merit, something like "Big claims require big proofs." He is willing to express himself in many ways, and some of those many ways inevitably at times will trigger us more ordinarily neurotic folk.

Ken is a big boy. He is mighty and becoming expansively mightier. He can and does defend himself in action, in verbal action when he reaches some point. I suspect that there is some intrinsic, not entirely incidental defense in how he displays himself and has developed himself in the highly visible, palpable verbal, bodily and gestural power that he has chosen, maybe co-chosen for himself. I suspect that he is conscious of these intrinsic defenses that go along with the whole package that he co-chooses moment to moment, as most of us ordinary folk do.

I don't know that I have ever seen him or heard him indicate a serious flutter of normal emotional uncertainty, or emotional self-questioning in his public persona that evokes empathy in me. I have with you. If I took a little more time with this post, I might be able to acknowledge that I have felt some empathy for him as to more general ways about his situation, but it doesn't come to me at the moment. As I see him at this moment, as you present this to me, he is pretty much out there in his powerful self and world-view presentation. I'm guessing that many people who know him might be able to tell me of his more private self-sensitivities, delicacies, ordinary fears, moments of self-doubt. I don't doubt that a sizeable legion of people would jump to his defense with considerable aggressive potency were they to think/feel the right combination within themselves. Mostly they know that he's OK, and that the world, including my petite challenges, criticisms and innuendos are unfolding as they . . . well as they are - OKly.

As to your part in defending him, it must be a valid and in a sense respectable expression of yourself as human. I'm finding my way to engage your 'challenge', and hopefully there is some respectable process and learning going on for me. As to "if someone you valued highly were, from your perspective, repeatedly, and always incorrectly, criticized . . ." I personally think that you might want to consider that maybe it isn't quite so total, so "always" incorrectly criticized. You too might want to look at your blind spots, your positive shadow stuff, and all the rest - well, I'm guessing that you are probably pretty much in the same way that I am. Maybe I shouldn't be so presumptuous in saying we, because the change for me around these psychological patterns happens pretty slowly. I expect that I will die with still a shitload on board of foibles, insecurities, aggressive reactivity. Luckily, in some ultimate sense, it apparently doesn't matter because I am "turiya" imbued, in spite of myself.

Any way, I can feel at this moment the momentum of my defense and attack and defense and  flitting bit-like incursions of perhaps wisdom and compassion and delicacy that comes a little slowly following the intensity of my verbal blast here.

Bowing, eyes up slightly, wondering . . . and suddenly hoping that I'm not crazier than a shitbird, or if I am, that there's a universal OKness about it. Crossing fingers metaphorically, bowing, and through the doorway, ambo

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Ambo Suno

hi fangsz, some time no see.

although you addressed your message to ambo, he's been kind enough to devote his efforts to responding to my message, so, in gratitude, i'm going to try to step in for him.

i don't really have that much to say. i do think you have an important insight, but like almost all the insights we have, you're not the first one to have had it. in this case, what you say reminds me of an argument of robert kegan's in his book 'in over our heads'. i'm tempted to try to explain what he had to say in this regard, but he said it much better than i could, so my recommendation is to check out this book when you get a chance.

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ambo,

your long, thoughtful message really needs at least as much thought on my part in replying. this is just a start.

it's difficult for me to talk about this, because i see things somewhat differently from the way you do--a way that you, understandably, don't like. and while i greatly admire wilber, and seek to emulate him in many ways, it would be a gross mistake for either you or me to identify myself with him. i mention this right at the outset, because i suspect that much of what you say about him in your message could be applied (or misapplied) as well, if not better, to me. of course, you also point out some of the things you and i have in common, and i fully agree with you about that.

generally speaking, though, it sounds to me like you see wilber pretty much as an Other, as not-you, whereas i tend to see him as what we could also be, as possibility even if not actuality. think What We Always Already Are. when i'm reading him or listening to him i try, among others, taking a 2nd person perspective, imagining that i am seeing what he sees and saying, accordingly, what he is saying. afterall, he is human, and as some dead roman once said (translated into english), nothing human is foreign to me.

you know, we've all been given different roles in lila's kosmic play. if we become jealous or envious of someone else and the role they've been given, or angered at the role we may feel has been dumped on us, then we're not going to have a very good time in that play. it's also easy to imagine that my particular role is much more important than that of others. needless to say, that also leads to problems.

wasn't it in this IN dialogue that wilber mentioned the possibility of being a worm, something that sheldrake, i believe, didn't respond very warmly to? but can't spirit get into wormness, into being a worm, just as easily and with as much gusto as it gets into humanity? and aren't worms an integral part of lila's play?

that's the perspective from the infinite side of the street, of course. but even from the finite side, wilber may appear to have a more glorious role than we do, but kosmic justice is somehow mysteriously at play here, i believe. sometimes it's better to be a mouse than a man.

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ralphweidner:

hi fangsz, some time no see. although you addressed your message to ambo, he's been kind enough to devote his efforts to responding to my message, so, in gratitude, i'm going to try to step in for him. i don't really have that much to say. i do think you have an important insight, but like almost all the insights we have, you're not the first one to have had it. in this case, what you say reminds me of an argument of robert kegan's in his book 'in over our heads'. i'm tempted to try to explain what he had to say in this regard, but he said it much better than i could, so my recommendation is to check out this book when you get a chance.

Thanks.  I'll be sure to give it a look.  Also, I think you're statement on most insights not being "first" could reference back to the idea of morphogenic fields, one person has an idea, and another person reproduces the same idea seemingly independently, but actually because a real structure of consciousness is developing.  As Ken says, the most common response he gets to his books is along the lines of "I thought of that but I didn't know quite how to say it."  And, taking that thread deeper, doesn't all insight come from the timeless Now which transcends and includes the perceived sequential order of time, in which case all insights come from the always already, so even "new" insights were already there.  I think that's part of the reason that, as Ken says in the latest dicussion on sports, nondual states create developmental "stretch marks" pulling our consciousness into greater transcendence and inclusion.  Experiences of nonduality start to shake our illusion that reality is sequential.  It is only the dream that is sequential, but it's an important dream because we're all in it together.  That was a bit stream-of-conciousness, but I hope it adds to the dicussion in some way.

fangsz:

doesn't all insight come from the timeless Now which transcends and includes the perceived sequential order of time, in which case all insights come from the always already, so even "new" insights were already there.

i think you're right, but not completely so. from the infinite side of the street, those insights were always already present, but from the finite side, they weren't. so, they both were and they weren't, as best we're presently able to say. in the future, i expect, they will be able to say it better.

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ralphweidner:

fangsz:

doesn't all insight come from the timeless Now which transcends and includes the perceived sequential order of time, in which case all insights come from the always already, so even "new" insights were already there.

i think you're right, but not completely so. from the infinite side of the street, those insights were always already present, but from the finite side, they weren't. so, they both were and they weren't, as best we're presently able to say. in the future, i expect, they will be able to say it better.

Yes, I agree with the "they were and they weren't" distinction, and I agree that we will likely develop the complex language to better express that in the future.  Interesting that the process of development and evolution to bring about new forms often simply present new ways of understanding the always already, not as a given pre-existing reality, but as a formless Emptiness that holds all forms as its own texture.  I think a big part of the important studies that we're going to have to do with regard to evolution is investigating the relationship between form and formlessness, finite and infinite, and why, for example, formless states propel the development of new forms.  I think maybe, in part, it is because, on the formless side of the street, those newly forms are already there, because nothing can be not there (or here), and they have merely yet to condense into form in a finite world.

fangsz,

i enjoy reading your thoughts about this. it's something i like to wonder about, in the childhood of my old age.

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Fangz, thanks for your post and sorry that it has taken so long for me to respond. Lately, it seems that I have a more limited cyber-output in me than I used to, but your good questions and perspectives have stayed with me until I could write something. I'll just mention again that I've appreciated your manner of posting for a long time.

When I first glancingly read your post, I didn't quite know how to understand it, but as I'm giving time to it this AM, I'm starting to get interested. I thought that it was obvious that I became a We in LL, almost by definition, as a number of I’s socially hung out together and shared experience ("If a We becomes an I in the UL then does an I become a We in the LL.") and didn't require understanding how We's became I's in the UL to understand it. I thought, well, yeah, sure, in the UL the continuous inputs from people and environment, outer and inner impinging on a newborn and onward were the various 'voices' of we’s, which become integrated in development to make up a self. And that, yeah, there are many areas of physiological and psychological specialization that inevitably develop in our complex organism that then have to be managed and thereby integrated. (Sometimes, integration of these specialized functioning strategies and 'voices' seems relatively seamless, a functioning blended, psychosocial emotional mélange, more of a puree, and also sometimes included and in a less fine sense, integrated, but more like the islands in the ocean metaphor, or stew or chunkstyle.) As you say, the we's become an I-self. And the LL, We'ness happens in its way.

Now, with you, I'm considering that the details of how that happens could be interesting, too, and consistent with what you are saying "In transformation, as seen from the LL quadrant, an I begins to realizes that it exists in a larger nexus of communication then was previously accessible in the I awareness, and thus, as it integrates its narratives in the UL, it becomes integrated into a larger We-nexus in the LL."

One question I often have is how conscious these integrating, including processes are, how consciously aware we are of these. I think it varies, and I often have had the impression that a finer, more foundational integration tends to be on the less-conscious side. This is almost certainly more how it works for deeper physiobiological integration that occurs beneath our sensing and knowing faculties, especially when we are young. And it is surprising when we discover that someone, or ourselves, in quiet moments can feel though consciously in some way, more unconscious levels of how we function and how we have been pieced together, that are not mostly cognitive deduction or theoretical speculation.

So that's probably the main way that I would restate for myself what you have said. "development of consciousness in an individual essentially is learning to be aware of those narratives, figure out that no single one of them is who you are, and thus begin to integrate them" There are levels of learning that occur without trying to "figure out" in the consciously intentional way that I think of when I hear that phrase or "learning to be aware". This is a bias I have, and some of my bias may be well founded and some may not.

Obviously in many practical ways learning in this intentional way is helpful. My bias is that this mode of learning and figuring out is often over-used and mis-used and that's why we become mainly cognitively developed critters who have trouble distinguishing the more virtual from the more real and often have a profound blindspot around it - we often say and think that we are actually tapping into some more essential sense of life's fabric and can't see that it's mostly thought generated or image generated, that the world we think we are in contact with is mostly metaphor. This learning process seems to buttress our sense of self and can be used potently like social currency among other interested and thusly oriented people. Without this learning and figuring out, we might have little that we can say, little that we know, and we might feel befuddled or terrified at the emptiness of our selves and the vacuousness of life. I think that there are a lot of us thusly oriented people trying to figure this and that out, and it may be of less use than we think. One might also use the language of existential or religious crisis or of psychopathology in emphasizing this conundrum. At this moment I am thinking that the injunctions to  "include" and "integrate" really don't help very much to "transcend". Inclusion may look more like behemoth chunk style integration, with unwieldy chunkiness and more sequestered sub-personalities and sub-functionings, even physiological. Humanity out of balance, in some somewhat grotesque versions of willed inclusions and attempted transcendence.

Wow. Yikes. Excuse me Fangz if I elaborated riff-like so heavily on that one minor aspect that I have been trying to figure out for years. And maybe the ancient question remains whether it's possible to figure one's way out.

This bias, against the very processes that I have employed so heavily, have influenced my sense of what good guidance or therapy or parenting could look like. There would be a more sparse and judicious use and encouragement of figuring things out and trying to go directly to most psychological problems, but rather encouraging integration through more indirect means. (I hope you don't ask me what those means might look like because I'm feeling over my head already - attempted smile) There might be, however, more being more present with, allowing time for, guiding through who one is and how one acts, and less what one says. What one says might come later, more often catalytically and less instructionally, sometimes maybe wrapping things up in comprehensive and esthetically pleasing thought packages.

Again, wow. So where am I in regard to your questions and comments?

OK. "So from an interior, individual perspective, maybe that's what morphic fields are, the habits that form when those smaller I's are integrated into a larger I." I think I don't tend to think of morphic fields as "habits", though that's probably a legitimate way of characterizing them. Some patterns are probably reinforced by repetition, in habit like ways and those may be part of the nature of morphic fields. I think I have two somewhat disparate images about morphic fields. One is that the important ones, and maybe all 'true' morphic fields are mostly out of man's intentional control. Maybe this comes closest to my being able to accept the notion of a higher intelligence or some a priori dynamic functioning of the world.

Another image I have, that can be related, comes out of non-linear dynamic systems theory and complexity theory that illustrate conditions and change as landscapes. The way that I have taken these in is seeing that established patterns can be altered by our actions and ways, but that important big changes, like transcendence are more subject to barely glimpsed xyz-factors that suddenly arise from deeper (I suppose, why not higher) terrain and rearrange the troughs and ridges on a transcendent scale that would look very different from our intentional Osterized or reciped inclusions and attempted integrations.

As I come back again to your points and questions, I imagine that in these last runaway riffs I might be majorly minimizing what is known about how development and psycho-social dynamics on our everyday scale do explain how many I's are taken into individuals, and those we's form the I's of the selves that we are. And that as you are suggesting, I think, that something about that process that forms our I-selves is intimately related to how We'ness is sensed in the LL. That concurrently We's and I's dance into each other and develop alchemically (or more mechanistically if that's how we happen to see it) what we in AQAL theory divide up for convenience sake along our everyday, conventional understandings and study from various disciplines and traditions.

As I go back to your statement, “you make an interesting point about the splitting of consciousness, different personalities going off in different directions, creating different narratives (I'm paraphrasing what you were saying about the dog, but I hope I'm understanding your point).” I’ll say, yes, and I’ll just clarify that the “narratives” that I was referring to are both more higher level specializations like sub-personalities (as Wilber speaks of) and in the case of old dog, physiological order specializations that are fundamental to our survival and set some dynamic parameters of who we can become. Again, the ones I mentioned are arousal, affect, sensory thresholds, attention, and a little different leveled, intention. These all have to dynamically weave together, be integrated, much of it seemingly on unconscious and less visible levels, as the substrates of our functioning selves.

Geesh, Fangz, I gotta stop this strange explanation now. I hope it relates enough, as I stuff it in the bottle and let it float away. Thanks, ambo

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Ambo Suno

Fangz - I guess I also want to know what you think about my reply - where, really, do you think I am tilted off in some direction that doesn't balance with your view of things? ambo

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Ambo Suno