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Ramsses II
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(11/23/05 10:20 pm)
Reply 		Integral Weekend Experiential Training (I-WET) - Ken Wilber
DrBill: So I decided to make the trek from Ohio to the Apple to taste the wetness. By the time it was all said and done my wife and 17 year old daughter were going to tag along to “see the city and visit MOMA”, (my daughter just completed her first year at art school) while Dad was “joining yet another cult” (my daughters take on my spiritual journey) and we were leaving my teenage son at home. My wife, Diane and I have always shared these quests and this was the first time since we started meditating 22 years ago that she opted to defer and instead accompanied our kid around town. She masked her disappointment well. Saturday morning early I set out to find the venue. I was strolling (wait, no one in NY strolls, it’s more like race walking) down 7th Ave in Chelsea between West 21st and 22nd and was attending to the signage across the street. Sign after sign of all the small eateries, shops and businesses. My eye was drawn to this large white sign with huge letters, “EROS Café” (I didn’t know KW was in the restaurant business). My mind wandered as I made a mental note and thought, “interesting twist on my way to commune with the boulder baldy bunch”. I rounded the corner at 18th and headed down the block looking for the “Pavilion”. The venue was exquisite minimalist gallery space that encompassed 7000 square feet of white “high-gloss epoxy resin floor as smooth as poured milk--becoming its own decorative element softly reflecting natural or colored lighting in the room.” The walls and ceiling were also white with large 15 foot floor to ceiling windows lining the south wall. The room was set with 100 white, wooden folding chairs in a semicircle around a small riser with three tall black chairs. A long expanse of tables behind, set end to end, along the wall, dressed with black linen and topped with a dozen randomly spaced small tea light candles in clear vases and a large bouquet of vivid long stem roses to one side. To me, there was this very subtle innuendo of reverence. Barely audible, sublime music played somewhere in the background. The room was so expansive that the space with objects only filled a third of the total volume. It felt open and roomy, yet still very intimate. The setting provided such a sharp contrast with the frenetic energy of the city outside. Every detail of the space, placement of objects, light, sound, and color had to be by design and I wondered who the architect of this environmental transformation could be as I made another mental note. The DLP screen was just off to the right with a microphone stand just barely visible. There were only 2 or 3 people there (it was early) and coming out from around the screen, putting his guitar down, was “minime” himself, the punk monk incarnate. I decided not to be shy, since I have never met him, and walked directly up and said “Stuart, are you ready to play??” His face immediately broke into this huge smile that went all the way around his head and he opened his arms and gave me a hug like I was his long lost cousin Manny from the Bronx. This openness and authenticity immediately set the tone for me and I then knew that this show was going to be radically different than the hundreds of other “spiritual workshops” I had been to over the years. My first taste of the wetness and I had been there for less than 60 seconds.

So it began. The room came alive as it filled with people who immediately began introducing themselves. There was a sense of anticipation. Some folks seemed to know each other. There were a set of long tables off to the right beyond the DLP screen that held the av equipment. Ceiling to floor windows began at this table ran down to the end of the room on the right. This space was a “visible back stage”, where the presenters and the support staff sort of hung out, gearing up for their performance, head mics and all. Stuart donned his guitar, ambled over to the mic and light up the room. I have heard a sampling of his work but was in no way familiar with it. It was clear that his work was ecstatic to him as he was completely entranced by his performance as were we. Introductions followed. Huy Lam, a gentle, soft-spoken, understated man with blazing eyes. Diane Hamilton, easy composure consistent with long term practice, quick piercing eyes and a brilliant smile with great shoes. She was an interesting blend of soft feminine grace and radiance with this underlying flavor of the warrior. Bert Parlee, the wisdom of the elder with a willingness to share his years of personal experience with KW . He is the kind of guy that draws you in the instant you put your eyes on him. His energy filled the room as soon as he began to speak. He had everyone up out of our chairs and moving around the space in a warm up experience before anyone could blink. He jumped off the stage and melted into this crowd of 100. Everyone could still here him because of his mic but he was elusive and merged with the exercise. It was awesome. This man is a master of group process and as a psychologist myself with 25 years of experience I am qualified to make the assessment. Next up was Diane and Big Mind with 100 of us. Beautifully choreographed, she was completely steady and the process created a significant state shift that was palpable in the room. It was very intense, profound and gentle at the same time. The next morning Huy walked us through the 3 body kata. His facilitation of subtle body awareness had everyone smiling at the ease with which we could play with the energy. I was partnered with a physicist and we directly experienced the chi movement. It was sweet. Huy’s demonstration his martial arts expertise at the end blew everyone away. Then Diane took the tiller and guided everyone in the shadow process with Bert following with community building and the closing celebration.

The most profound aspect of this experience for me was the incredible depth that was attained in each of the pillars. The group was very eclectic in terms of the numbers of people who were familiar with integral theory. The presentation of theoretical material was embedded so expertly into each of the pillars, that as you moved through the experiential pieces the theory came alive in a direct personal way. Theory into practice. I spoke to one 20 something man whose only exposure to KW was to listen to his commentary on the Matix DVD, yet the group was functioning as a unified organic whole. I feel that the facilitation of the diving into this depth of the pillars was directly influenced by the high degree of coherence within the presenters and staff. It was clear that there was a deep personal and professional connection between the entire staff and that they were indeed living their dharma. Their authenticity, self disclosure, humor, and sense of not taking themselves too seriously is such a welcome shift from the usual menu of flatland spiritual retreats that pervade today. This event was designed from an AQAL perspective and allowed the participants to directly experience eros, spirit in action. As the weekend came to a close, it seemed that no one wanted to leave, including the presenters. Each of us was basking in the glow that emerges when the experience of a state shift in consciousness occurs. We were drunk with bliss. IMHO the newest price point product on the I-I smorgasbord is caviar at bargain basement prices. Guaranteed satori for the price of a couple of theatre tickets. This critic gives this event a two tiers up, way up. Thanks Ken, et.al.

Maryw: So yes, I’m back from the L.A. I-WET this past weekend. In his great description above Dr. Bill discusses the content of this 2-day event – but here’s a specific re-cap so folks can get an idea of the schedule. I-WET (Integral Weekend Experiential Training) covers four modules or “pillars” of integral practice. The first morning starts with the cognitive: an introduction to integral theory. The afternoon focuses on the meditative with Genpo Roshi’s Big Mind process. The second day begins with some training in physical exercise and a bit of further discussion about Big Mind, and the last half of the day took us through a psychodynamics process via the “3-2-1” exercise – designed to reveal shadow projections.

L.A.’s I-WET was held in a fancy-schmancy downtown skyscraper-hotel, the Westin Bonaventure, in which I’d reserved a room. I decided to arrive the night before, driving up from the San Diego area in mind-numbing Friday night L.A. traffic, a traffic jam at 10:30 p.m., lord have mercy, with hopes of getting a good night’s sleep and being well-rested for Saturday. This is actually my first experience staying in a swanky high-rise hotel, so damn swanky the only way you can park your car is through a valet. Lauded as a “city within a city,” the hotel is one of those multiple-shop-and-restaurant complexes, all glass and stone and steel, embedded with waterways and fountains and green (but plastic) plants and trees. My room is on the 25th floor, take the Red elevator, madame. A proudly displayed plaque informs me that this very elevator had been used for a scene in the 1993 film “True Lies,” starring our very own governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Just as I step inside the elevator a beggar approaches me with a story about her sister who had been in an accident . . . all my stuff is in my suitcase so I tell the woman no, I have nothing for her, and she gives me this woebegone expression that stabs at my catholic-girl-valet-using-splurging-on-hotels-heart. True Lies.

So perhaps part of my karmic payoff was that my room was so close to the elevator that I was able to hear its electronic groans all night long as it traversed up and down the 35 floors. The elevator was especially busy around 1:30 – 2:00 a.m., when the rotating cocktail lounge on the top floor closed. I got probably four hours of sleep each night.

Despite all of this, I did enjoy the weekend. Like DrBill above, I got to the I-WET space early and only one other person was there: Nicole, a teacher and ontological coach. We chatted in the hallway for a couple of minutes, then Stuart Davis arrived with a bellhop carting some musical equipment. I said something silly like “well, this must be Stuart Davis, hi,” and he responded with a warm and openhearted “hi.” I liked him immediately. A little later I ran into Jana Espiritu Santo, the artist who recently won Integral’s trip to Boulder and who is featured in an IN video. She was a volunteer for this I-WET weekend, assisting with registration and set-up, and is a really vibrant, exuberant presence. A delight to meet her in person. I was also glad to see IN Managing Editor Casey, whom I’d met during the IN member pow-wow in Boulder last August. All these enthusiastic youngish peeps make me feel hopeful about the future of Integral.

The group gathered for the I-WET was smaller than I’d expected – about 60. This was a good size, I thought – big enough to include a variety of people but small enough for camaraderie. The teachers and facilitators – Diane Hamilton, Clint Fuhs, Huy Lam, and Stuart Davis, all introduced themselves and then Diane put us through some ice-breaking exercises. Many of you already know this about Diane but I’m going to say this again anyway: Diane is an absolutely stellar facilitator. Very welcoming, confident, perceptive, graceful, and compassionate! She somehow managed to take each one of us by the hand and lead us to a nugget of wisdom that we needed at this moment. She taught through her words, her gestures, and through the silences between her words.

The first “pillar” of the weekend was an introduction to integral theory by Clint. I think this might be the most challenging part of I-WET – in terms of planning and teaching – because people come to these events with different levels of familiarity with KW’s work. We had some who had been reading KW for fifteen or more years (including SES and all its footnotes), those who were at a more intermediate level, those who had read a book or two or who had listened to Kosmic Consciousness, and a few who only knew about KW through a spouse or a friend. For many people the lecture defining holons, quadrants, lines, levels, types, states, stages, etc., was all old hat. For others it was a good “refresher” or – for those who were more familiar with Ken’s earlier works – an update through “Wilber 5.” But I know there were a couple of people who got lost – for people with no familiarity with KW this might have seemed like too much at once. I found it valuable as a refresher, though – and in fact there was one major thing that was clarified for me and I want to elaborate on it a bit. Clint pointed out that people (including even KW) have fallen into the habit of misapplying the Spiral Dynamics “color-coding” system of stage development. Spiral Dynamics is a way to map only one line of development – the UL values/consciousness line. But integralites often use it to discuss the cognitive, spiritual, cultural, interpersonal, affective, etc., lines. Thus “value judgments” start creeping into discussions of developmental levels across the board. Integral now uses a different color coding system (one that’s aligned with the rainbow spectrum of natural light, including such colors as amber and teal, with “clear light” at the high end) to chart developmental “altitude” in a more content-neutral way.

We met each day from 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

For the first half of the first day we listened to an informative lecture, complete with visual aids, that introduced us to integral theory. After lunch Diane Hamilton led us through Genpo Roshi's "Big Mind" process, which took us to the end of that day.

For the first couple of hours on the second day we did physical exercise: Huy Lam led us through some Qi Dong, Tai Chi, and yoga-type moves that exercise the "three bodies" (gross, subtle, and causal). Then we spent some time discussing the Big Mind process that had taken place the day before. During the second half of the day we focused on the "3-2-1" exercise, a journaling process that enhances people's awareness of their shadow projections. We spent about a half an hour journaling to some specific prompts, then we broke into groups of three to share our stories and process things a bit. Finally the entire group reconvened to discuss their reactions to the 3-2-1 exercise.

It was only the first part of the first day -- the intro to integral theory -- that was "heady and intellectual." Big Mind, which took place during the last half of the first day, is a guided meditation that invites one to a glimpse of the non-dual. And the second day's focus on the physical and psychodynamic modules were not "heady" at all. I felt like the two days provided a pretty good balance of cognitive, meditative, physical, and psychodynamic work.

Throughout both days Stuart Davis graced us with his music at various points -- we would take 10-minute breaks and get "called back" with a song of Stuart's. This was quite a treat!

A couple of more thoughts from me . . .

Except for my one experience listening to it on Integral Naked (which could really only be a listening), I had never participated in the Big Mind process before the L.A. event. It's been lauded as something guaranteed to give one a "satori" experience, so I looked forward to participating in it live at the L.A. I-WET.

In general, people seemed to be quite affected by Big Mind -- and Diane H., as I've said before, is a graceful, perceptive, open-hearted facilitator. As we wandered through the the various mind-voices -- the protector, the controller, the seeker, the voice of fear, the voice of excitement -- many people were able to plug right into them and on occasion found it challenging to disengage from certain voices. I, on the other hand, was not really able to "shift" from voice to voice. Perhaps I just remained in protector mode, as I tend to do when I'm in groups of people I don't know well. It was obviously a valuable experience for most participants, but for me it remained largely an intellectual exercise. I did not experience satori. Later I wondered if this was because I had already been doing a traditional meditation practice for years and had already gone through my own initial "state-change" experiences.

Interestingly, the following day, Diane pointed out that Big Mind is a non-traditionalist way of creating a state experience, and that more traditionalist practioners often find it to be more of a cognitive jaunt.

I appreciated hearing her thoughts on traditional and nontraditional paths: Those on a traditionalist path often eventually feel a need to "break out" of it in some fashion, while those outside of the traditions find themselves being drawn to one. The integral path, then, is somewhat like a koan in which one might hold both the traditional and the nontraditional ways in a transformative embrace -- dancing from one to the other or taking each one by the hand . . .

Ciao, peeps,
Mary W.

DrBill: Hey MaryW and peeps et al,

I am a 23 year vedanta practitioner and did not say one single word during the NYC wetness Big Mind drill. From my perspective as a psychologist with extensive familiarity with the underlying tenants of the core processes of voice dialogue ala the Stones I found it very interesting that my subjective experience of the process was as pronounced as it was. My reaction to the movement into the “trans” voices was startling. I had the sensation internally of expanding into the entire room and experiencing a heart connection with each and every participant that brought tears to my eyes which was immediately picked up by Ms Diane (at the beginning of the big mind process I was cajoled by her into moving from my chosen seat at the rear of the room, due to shyness, to the single remaining seat in the front row that was 6 feet directly in front of her). The experience was vaguely reminiscent of the state shifts that I found to be common during the extended meditation retreats that I went on with 5000 of my closest friends (grin) in the early days of the TM Siddhis “world peace assemblies”. The subjective experience was similar yet with Dianes transmission it did not take 2-3 weeks of 10 hours a day in full lotus as it did back then. I found the transmission access point via voice dialogue to be a fascinating and effortless progression that continued to unfold the heart connection for several hours after the end of the days’ wetness events. It was funny to see my wife Dianes’ reaction to me when I returned to the hotel room. She just smiled that knowing smile of hers which honored and acknowledged the state shift and my relentless 18 yo daughter in her predictable directness said “come on Dad, you can be all blissed out with your Boulder, bald buds at the cult classes but you have to snap out of it ‘cause we’re hungry and want to go eat”.

For me this was truly a “hand in hand” experience of traversing and blending the boundaries of the traditional and non-traditional path dichotomy as you have so eloquently described. Thanks for the peek Mary.

drbill


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