The Need For Men’s Liberation

The Need For Men’s Liberation
with Warren Farrell and Ken Wilber

Come on, let’s say it together: “Men are being oppressed.” It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it? It sort of sticks in the back of the throat, and we almost need to look around to make sure no one is listening before we say it out loud. In today’s academic and cultural climate, it’s not easy to make a point like this—the kindest reaction you might receive is a cynical eye-roll.

But really, why is it so difficult to admit that men could use a little help learning how to redefine themselves in today’s world, and how to “man up” in a new way to meet the challenges of our modern lives? Maybe it’s because our definitions for words like “oppression” and “power” are too limited, restricting our understanding of these dynamics to just a tiny shred of what’s actually going on beneath the surface of male/female relations. Just as our notions of “oppression” have often led us to perceive women as perennial victims, robbing them of a dignity they had never really been without, so do our notions of “power” keep our attention diverted from the very real issues men are dealing with today.

Instant Insights: “Power” is not defined by the amount of control someone has over others, but the amount of control one has over his or her own life. Feminism can be defined as freeing females from being coerced into traditional female roles, and the same work needs to be done by men. Feminism did a great job of exploring issues of male power and female powerlessness, but not a great job at exploring issues of female power and male powerlessness. In terms of recognizing and developing their power, men are in a similar position today as women were in the late 1950′s, at the dawn of the feminist movement. As long as men do not rise to the challenge of redefining themselves for today’s world, women continue to be pressured to learn how to “row on both sides of the boat,” while men keep to their own side. The result? The boat just keeps going around in circles…. In order to succeed, men need to learn from the feminist movements of recent decades, and use their work as a jumping-off point—and not to hold feminism or women’s studies as an opposition to men’s liberation. In order to take a truly comprehensive view of sex and gender, we need to look through at least four lenses: subjective/psychological (e.g. masculine vs. feminine), objective/biological (e.g. male vs. female), intersubjective/cultural (e.g. gender roles and definitions of “man” and “woman”), and interobjective/social (e.g. the techno-economic realities of the time).

“But men do have more power,” you might say, “just look at who is running the world!” A fair argument in some circles, but somewhat disingenuous when we take a closer look. For one, the amount of power men yield in economic and political spheres has very little impact upon the average guy in the street. And while it is certainly true that throughout history men have largely dominated the “public sphere”, it should be noted that the ratio of women in the workforce and the overall income gap between men and women is rapidly approaching some degree of balance.

But more than anything, this critique of men’s power (and powerlessness) is completely missing the mark—because power is not defined by the amount of control a person has over other people, but the amount of control one has over his or her own life. In this sense, women’s power is too often overlooked, while men have yet to fully come to terms with their own power, as they are still being primed from birth to equate “manhood” with “disposability.”

Men are constantly being locked into a single option—to excel in the “public sphere”, even to the point of breaking their own backs—with very little understanding or training around the “private sphere” options available to him. Meanwhile, men continue to place an unfair amount of cultural pressure upon women to pick up the slack in both spheres, without doing their own work to spend more time with the family, to develop their own emotional availability, to become a more involved father, and to focus on the interior realities of the home life.

We are looking for new role models, new behaviors, and new ways for men to define themselves. We are looking for a path beyond the merely macho, beyond the feminized 90′s guy, and beyond the disposable hero. The goal is not to neuter men or to neutralize the sexes—quite the contrary, we are trying to find a radically improved masculinity, as well as a radically improved femininity, honoring the very real power yielded by males and females alike in both public and private spheres. We are now discovering a new generation of men and women—newly integrated men and women who can see beyond the narrow definitions of gender that have been handed to us, fluent in both interior and exterior realities, and finding new ways for both sexes and both genders to show their love for themselves and one another.

What Is Integral Art? Part 2: The “I” of the Beholder

What Is Integral Art? Part 2: The “I” of the Beholder
with Ken Wilber and Elle Nicolai

Why is art so important? As Ken discusses in this clip, art and creativity represent an intrinsic dimension of human consciousness itself, and developing our aesthetic sensibilities is just as crucial as our moral maturity or expanding our scientific knowledge of the world. As such, artists play a very special role in our lives as interpreters of this present moment, preservers of our shared past, and arbiters of tomorrow’s unfolding. Historically it has often been the artists who have pushed our cultural edge forward the most profoundly, simply because they have a certain freedom of experimentation that most people in other vocations simply do not have.  As the leading edge of the world’s development is now Integral, we can begin to look to artists whose consciousness is integrally informed to offer us glimpses of a more sane and inclusive future, and help unearth the radical potentials that await us there….

Obama’s First Year: The Good, the Bad, and the Partial

Obama’s First Year: The Good, the Bad, and the Partial
with Ken Wilber, Diane Musho Hamilton, Robb Smith, Aaliyah Haqq, and Bert Parlee

After last week’s State of the Union Address, you may have been reflecting upon the past year of Obama’s presidency and asking yourself a few questions:

• How did he do?
• Am I feeling inspired?
• Am I benefiting in any real way from Obama’s policies and his leadership?
• Could Obama really be our first truly integral president, transcending and including the best of Democratic and Republican values?

We’ve been asking ourselves the same questions, and thought we would take a moment to offer our own integral assessment of President Obama’s first national State of the Union Address. So we posed these questions (and a handful of others) to Ken and a few other smart and savvy minds, who were kind enough to share five uniquely enlightening perspectives on Obama’s first year—the good, the bad, and the partial….

The End of Poverty. Part 1: Dignity in the Midst of Deficiency

The End of Poverty. Part 1: Dignity in the Midst of Deficiency

with Martin Burt and Ken Wilber

It was impossible not to feel our hearts burst as we watched the aftermath of last week’s earthquake in Haiti.  We looked on with horror as an entire nation of people already on the edge of survival had their lives and their families stripped away from them. We sat helpless and heartbroken—praying, practicing, and breathing for the victims, trying to find a point of silence still enough to contain all this pain.

What we witnessed last week was tragic, and yet tragically inevitable.  Haiti is a nation without building codes and without a modern infrastructure, because Haiti is a nation without an economy.  It is truly maddening to know that there would have been far fewer deaths last week if Haiti hadn’t been so morbidly impoverished—it is worth noting that the 1989 earthquake in San Francisco registered a 6.9 on the Richter scale, and killed 63 people.  Last week’s earthquake in Haiti registered a 7.0, with a recent estimate of 200,000 casualties.

So what is really responsible for these deaths? Tectonic plates? Or poverty itself?

This is why we are so inspired by Martin Burt, whose Foundation Paraguay is one of the world’s most innovative micro-finance organizations, used now in 27 countries and modeled by 50 institutions.  Martin employs an explicitly integral approach to poverty elimination, using 200 different measures for poverty to finally solve poverty in both its interior and exterior dimensions.

Poverty, Martin reminds us, is not only an impoverished standard of material living, but also an insidious misconception about human beingness: that we only are only rich in spirit when we are rich in wealth.  This misconception, prominent among the world’s rich nations, paradoxically exacerbates the suffering of the world’s poor because it encourages partial approaches to poverty, as if merely giving them more “stuff” will cure the poverty of dignity that always and everywhere accompanies the absence of human self-sufficiency.

Some of us had the opportunity to listen to Martin talk with Ken a few months ago, and we were all blown away by his story. It wonderful to see Integral theory being applied in such concrete and practical ways around the world—but more importantly, it was invigorating to see it used in a way that is directly improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around the world. After all, you can spend a lifetime learning all the very best philosophies in the world, but if it doesn’t actually help make this world a better place, it’s just empty words.

Poverty elimination lies at the core of the integral spiritual impulse. It is impossible to consider yourself truly “spiritual” without caring about the poor, without opening your heart to suffering in all its forms.  It’s important to remember that spirituality is more than a 1st-person experience—in order for our lives to be fully lived, we must allow our hearts to break open to the full suffering we are surrounded by, recognizing the basic human dignity reflected in every person’s eyes.  But it’s not enough to just feel it in the 1st person, or to open ourselves to love in the 2nd person—we must also act in the 3rd person, directly engaging the political, technological, and economic systems that continue to lock so many people into perpetual poverty, supporting the world with our wallets as much as we do our hearts.

Art, Consciousness, and God: The “I” of Beauty

Art, Consciousness, and God: The “I” of Beauty

with Ken Wilber and Elle Nicolai

Do you know what Integral Art is? Would you be able to recognize it if you saw it? Does a piece of art need to have some intrinsic spiritual component in order to be considered integral? And since the word “integral” is often synonymous with phrases like “a theory of everything,” wouldn’t that require each piece of integral art to cover all possible bases—including all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, and all types in the artwork itself?

In this interview Ken shines some light on these important questions, offering a simple coherent definition of Integral Art while explaining how it both includes and sets itself apart from every other artistic movement in history. If you are new to the integral aesthetic experience and are looking for a basic introduction to the major forms and functions of Integral Art, you will not want to miss this talk…!

Take a Moment

Perspectives on Beauty: Of course, there is much more to the Integral Art experience than just sitting back and taking it all in. We are more than just idle consumers of art—we are also the enactors of art, co-conspirators in Beauty’s unveiling. Our interpretations of beauty are therefore at least as important as our actual perceptions of beauty, and certainly indivisible from the whole of our experience. As such, we want to give you the tools needed to help you more deeply perceive and interpret the beauty that surrounds you.

Take a few moments to check out Michael Schwartz’s exquisite exploration Looking at the Overlooked as he guides us through some key perspectives to help deepen our experience of art, beauty, and the creative impulse.

Image: Griffin by Mark T. Smith

Medical Miracles and the Non-Local Mind

The Power of Premonitions. Part 2: Medical Miracles and the Non-Local Mind

with Larry Dossey and Ken Wilber

Have you ever had a powerful experience of intuition at one time or another in your life?  Perhaps you knew what someone was going to say right before they said it, or you had a dream that eventually came to reality.  Or maybe you have felt the electric thrill of being “in just the right place, at just the right time.”  Many (if not most) of us have had experiences like these, but find it difficult figuring out how to relate to them—or if they are actually real in the first place.  By their very nature, phenomena like premonitions, intuitions, and other paranormal experiences are so subjective, so slippery, and so hard to think critically about.  This has created a great deal of naivety on both sides of the psi divide between believers and skeptics alike, and has made it almost impossible to have an open, intelligent, and meaningful discussion of the topic.

Until now.

You are constantly being informed by your intuition.  At every moment, you are immersed in a field of subtle knowing—whether you know it or not.  And what’s really cool is that you can actually get better at it!  If you have ever been curious about the significance of these sorts of experiences, or wondered how you might be able to make yourself even more receptive to your own intuitive capacities, you do not want to miss this enthralling discussion!

Ken Wilber’s Personal Development

Ken Wilber’s Personal Development

with Ken Wilber

After presenting his fascinating lecture on states of consciousness, stages of consciousness, and the three kinds of “self” (see the previous videos in this series), Ken is asked to report where he is in his own growth and development, what obstacles he has faced, and where he thinks his edge currently is.

Towards a Comprehensive Theory of Subtle Energies

The Kosmos Trilogy, Vol. II, Excerpt G: Towards a Comprehensive Theory of Subtle Energies

by Ken Wilber

You’ve heard it before: The whole universe is made of energy. Nothing can be created or destroyed, only changed. We’re all made of the same stuff, just stardust looking back at the stars. Observations like these have become cliche for new age spirituality–sincere attempts to divinize the universe, perhaps, but often founded upon hazy understanding of both science and spirituality.  Though it is true that there is an energetic component to everything in the universe, without defining just what we mean by “energy”, or discussing the many different kinds of energy, or how these different kinds of energy work and interact with each other, we are just reciting empty platitudes.  Fortunately, Ken Wilber has given a lot of thought to the relationship between matter, energy, and consciousness, culminating in this exquisite essay on subtle energies.  Here he presents a comprehensive taxonomy of energy, ranging from dense physical energies like weak/strong nuclear forces and electromagnetism, all the way to the subtlest energies associated with the most advanced states of enlightenment. This is a rather advanced essay, which may require some prior understanding of Integral theory, but one that may very well change the way you think about the natural world.

The following is an excerpt from the first draft of volume 2 of the Kosmos trilogy, tentatively titled Kosmic Karma (volume 1 of that trilogy was Sex, Ecology, Spirituality).  This excerpt suggests a coherent and comprehensive theory of the many approaches to subtle energies, their origin, nature, and development.  This particular excerpt comes toward the end of the volume, which means that somebody reading this excerpt will not have the benefit (or the torture) of having read the first part of the book.  I will therefore present a brief introduction, followed by an integral approach to subtle energies.

The first two excerpts from Kosmic Karma (“An Integral Age at the Leading Edge” and “The Many Ways We Touch”) can be found here; they explain the general approach itself.  “AQAL” (pronounced ah-quil) is short for “all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, all types,” which is the metatheory of the integral approach, and which will be explained as we go along.

A Guided Tour Through the Chakras. Part 1: Food, Sex, and Power

A Guided Tour Through the Chakras. Part 1: Food, Sex, and Power

with Michal Levin and Ken Wilber

You have committed to waking up in this lifetime. But your path to awakening may be blocked by damaged relationships with family, food, sex, money, power, etc. These damaged areas often manifest in the body as a misalignment—that is, a literal physical dislocation—of your first three chakras. Working to realign them can heal this damage and clear your way to deep spiritual opening.

Meet Michal Levin, gifted energy healer and spiritual guide.  Michal’s extraordinary story is in many ways defined by her discovery of the chakras without any formal training or study of traditional systems of chakra contemplation. Her talent manifested spontaneously, calling her into a life of deep spiritual contemplation. In her dialogue with Ken Wilber, she shares her own unique distillation of chakra alignment—resulting in growth from being unconsciously and painfully controlled by our energy, to using our energy in a conscious and mature way for the benefit of all….

What makes Michal Levin’s chakra meditation so unique is that she received it as part of her own awakening and not from studying a lineage tradition. What she is sharing in this talk with Ken is the result of eighteen years of observing what happens to the individuals and groups she has taught worldwide. As Ken says of Michal, she is “very unusual in that she brings something fresh and new that is absolutely worth studying because it extends what we have received from the lineage minds.”

In this dialogue, Michal shares her chakra meditation in step-by-step detail, and reveals not just the basic practice itself, but Michal’s distinctive opinion that we must work and release the issues of the first three chakras before moving on to any of the higher levels. Michal and Ken also align her teaching with the Integral perspective, shadow work, and the activation of our higher selves.

If you are looking for a very practical, no-nonsense approach to unlocking the power of your energetic chakras, this extraordinary interchange between Michal and Ken will surely illuminate your path.

TAKE A MOMENT

In this dialogue, Michal Levin presents her own unique system of energetic development, which shares many important similarities (and some differences) with traditional systems of chakra contemplation. Before you listen, take five minutes to sit in silence, letting your mind become like a mirror—reflecting everything, while keeping nothing for itself. Try to maintain this state of “mirror mind” as you listen, and see if her words resonate with your own life experience. Simply observe your connection to Michal’s words as she speaks, and see if you can locate the energetic dynamics she describes within your own being….

For more about chakras and subtle energies, be sure to read Ken Wilber’s extraordinary essay Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Subtle Energies here on Integral Life.

False Self, Actual Self, True Self

False Self, Actual Self, True Self

with Ken Wilber

Ken continues his discussion of the three kinds of self: the False Self (the broken or illusory self image), the Actual Self (the “authentic” or healthily-integrated self at any particular stage of development), and the Real Self (the timeless Self behind and beyond all manifestation).  He also talks about the two different vectors of growth, which he calls transformation (the vertical ascent through different stages of consciousness) versus translation (making sense of the world from whatever stage you happen to be at, in the healthiest way possible.)  This is a crucial distinction, especially for idealists who consider the goal of the Integral movement to be to “raise consciousness” and transform the world.  But forcing individual or cultural transformation is not only impossible, it’s really not very compassionate, as everyone has the right to plateau at whatever stage works for them and the circumstances of their lives.  Integral practitioners should not be focusing on transforming the world, but rather helping people better translate the world from wherever they might be—after all, the best way to foster and support people’s growth in the long run is to make them as healthy as possible in the short run.