It's been three weeks since I arrived in North Carolina to be with my Beloved, Anyaa, and four since I last posted. it's been an incredibly busy four weeks!

Leaving Seattle

First, I spent the last week in Seattle, getting what I was taking packed into a Pod, getting my car transported back here, and cleaning up the house I'd been living in for the last 8 months. Ah, that house served Anyaa and I well, what with her running a circle of women doing the Shamanic Priestess Process over those months, and I kicking off my men's groups. And while that house blessed us, we also blessed the house, creating sacred space that will linger far after we're gone.

The house will be occupied by the new renters in May, and I wonder if they will feel the indelible presence we left behind? The house deserves no less.

The Arrival

I arrived in Atlanta on Friday night, March 21st, Spring Equinox, and Anyaa picked me, and another friend of hers, up at the airport. On our journey of 2-1/2 hours from Atlanta to Western North Carolina, I watched the full moon racing behind passing trees, still bare from winter, as if in the opening scenes of a movie, keeping pace with us as we traveled north toward our destination, and my new home.

Since Anyaa lives in a 600 square foot cabin, with a 600 square foot deck, looking southwest, there was no room for an office for me. Hell, there's barely enough room for me! Anticipating this, we bought a 16'x10' barn and had it delivered to the lower pad on her property a couple of days before. I'd also ordered some tools and materials I'd need to to insulate it, build a closet and a loft for storage, and paneling and trim to finish it out for my office. That took over week! We also had satellite internet installed as the only other available internet option was dial-up,a situation Anyaa had been living with for the past three years. Not great, but better than dial-up.

I don't recommend satellite unless it's your only option. A far cry from the 100mbps speeds I was used to in Seattle. Paradise ain't perfect.

Every morning we walk to the top of the mountain, say our prayers to the universe, come back and do an hour of yoga and weights. it's the perfect ITP practice.

Wise Wolf Men's Council

My labor was interrupted on the second weekend, as there was an event here at Isis Cove, the community we live in. This was the third year that Venus Rising, the organization that developed Isis Cove, sponsored a free event called "Wise Wolf Women's Council," and about 108 women attended this conscious and spiritual event this year. New this year, Venus Rising added a men's council, and 25 men attended the fist annual 3-day weekend event.

In addition to attending, I got to present, and facilitated a 45-minute long Big Mind meditation, which offers a state (temporary) experience of non-dual realization.

During the weekend, men got a taste of stepping into conscious men's work, and many had not done any transformative work on themselves before, but came at the urge of their feminine partners who were attending the WWWC event.

Some highlights of the weekend were a firewalk (yes, I walked over the 15' long burning coals in my barefeet about a dozen times with no ill effects....what power our minds and intentions hold!), breaking a metal-tipped arrow with the soft spot of my neck by pushing on it (very scary!), and a 3-hour sweat lodge that we, the 25 men, built from scratch using native saplings and heating local rocks with fire we built.

One of the biggest highlights of the weekend for me was knowing that there were 25 men who were coming together, consciously, putting their egos aside, and connecting with one another in a way that some of them had never experienced before. These are men that I'm proud to call brother. The other was being welcomed by the Divine Feminine at the end of the weekend in a ceremony that represented the Sacred Union of the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine.....beautiful, and included a short 30-minute Shamanic Breathwork, where I clearly saw my path laid out before me.

The Asheville Integral Warriors Group

Anyaa leads a group of 7-8 women in Asheville every other Thursday night, and we thought that me leading a men's group, like the ones I've facilitated in Seattle based on the work of David Deida, on the the same night, would be a natural. To make this happen, I marketed the local Ken Wilber Meetup group, consisting of 19 members, and men in relationship with local women who have done Anyaa's work who want their partners to step into conscious work, as well.

To do a men's group, I need a minimum of 5 men to get the juices flowing in the group process. I only had four men show up for the intr0ductory evening, two of whom were already in Mankind Project (MKP) groups, one who spent 30 years in the marines and who wan't really interested in developing deepoer bonds with other men, and one who wanted to do the work, but in group setting. No men's group just yet.

I later found out that the local MKP group conists of about 100 men, a remarkable number considering Asheville only has a population of 60,000, and that there's already a David Deida group here, consisting of about 12-15 men: a wealth of existing men's groups.

The Local Ken Wilber Meetup

Not to be discouraged, I decided to further market the local Ken Wilber Meetup group of 19 people, contacted the local leadership to offer a presentation at the next meetup. It meets the last Sunday of the month on Sunday morning from 9am to 1pm....4 hours! Meditation, Integral Life Practice, a DVD of Wilber, and discussion....but only 2-3 people show up.

A new plan is needed.

So I'm working on that, hoping to eventually have enough men to do the Integral Warriors group. Meanwhile, I'm going to offer a series of different offerings every other Thursday night and see what happens.

A Personal Note

I am absolutely loving it here! I am in a life-partner relationship with a woman I love and admire deeply, and feel that my life puropse is unfolding before my eyes. Anyaa and I are developing a deeper relationship than was possible in our long-distance stage, no matter how much time we spent together. As I build my soul work and my freelance graphic and illustration business, I'm able to contribute around this beautiful property and Anyaa's life that allows her to relax into doing what she does best. A beautiful partnership that serves us and the people we come in contact with.

There is also a deep spiritual reawakening taking place in these mountains. They are alive an are the oldest mountains on earth., and witnessed the genesis of life itself.

The Future

Anyaa and I, in partnership with Brad and Star Wolf, principals of Venus Rising, are in the process of developing a couples workshop where we'll take 10-20 couples to Costa Rica early in 2009 to do a week on intimate relationship and transformation. I'll be writing more about that in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, I know I've made the right decision to move from Seattle to North Carolina, in spite of leaving so many great friends and a great community that I helped found and build.

The dialogue between Ken Wilber and Andrew Cohen on Women's Enlightenment in the latest issue of What is Enlightenment, and my and Anyaa's take on it, has stirred a lot of conversation on the SeattleIntegral list. With about even support and disagreement on our postings, it's good that a discussion has ensued, for there have been a lot of really excellent points from both perspectives.

Anyaa and I are sticking to our perspectives, but opting out of the discussions for the most part, as we've said most of what we want to say on the subject....except to make one last point that goes beyond the WIE article and what I think is its masculine perspective at the exclusion of the Divine Feminine.

Isn't it interesting that people who would never think of killing anything else think that killing the ego is so important?

More at Integral in Seattle

Greetings, fellow Conscious Lovers!

Did you know you don't have to be in a relationship to be a Conscious Lover? It's true! By opening your heart to the world and the universe, you invite in conscious love, and with intention, perhaps even a future beloved (I've done this!)

And in the third Big Love Integral workshop module coming up on Saturday, July 14th (click the attached image or go to http://www.bigloveintegral.com/), we're going to explore several practices that can help you open your heart to the possibilities found in conscious relationship.

Whether you want to invite love into your life, improve an existing relationship, either with yourself or another, or just (just?) learn how to feel deeper compassion and empathy, you won't want to miss this module. We'll be diving deeply into states of non-ordinary consciousness through guided imagery, Tonglen, and other practices, including one I've developed around Big Love.

It's only $75 per person for the all day event (we're still at introductory prices), so invite a friend and plan on attending. Attendance at prior modules not required, but helpful, and as always, RSVPs are appreciated (prepay and get a 15% discount!)
You know you've been wanting to attend!

BIG LOVE INTEGRAL
Module Three: OPEN HEART PRACTICES
Saturday, July 14th, 10am - 5pm Nordby Conference Center, Fishermen's Terminal, Ballard (at the south end of the Ballard Bridge, close to Chinooks)

Call Gary at 206.779.5870 for more info or to RSVP (where comfortable casual clothing and bring a cushion or backjack for meditation.
See you there! Gary

Oh, yeah.....please feel free to forward this to others you think might be interested or benefit!
Oh, and one more thing...I'm presenting Module TWO in Portland on Sunday, July 15th.

In the latest issue of "What is Enlightenment," Andrew Cohen and Ken talk about enlightenment for women and how they have to get past and give up their sexual (feminine) power in order to become enlightened.

Andrew's approach is a total disaster, replete with an unbelievable reductionist view and total confusion and lack of understanding in the difference between "woman" and "the Feminine," and disappointingly, Ken does not correct him, but merely places what Andrew is saying into an integral context (to his credit, he does this very well).

Andrew totally fails to recognize any understanding that there might be different approaches to enlightenment. Before you protest, he's basically saying that the only approach is the masculine, that a feminine approach doesn't work, and that women have to drop the feminine in order to become enlightened. He does not ask that men drop the masculine to do the same.

He also claims to have been working on breaking through with this approach for 12 years and that he has finally cracked the code. Could that have anything to do with the fact that he's a man? Perhaps not in every case, but in this one, my answer is a definite "yes."

Women have been successfully doing this work for over thirty years. Too bad Andrew's ego wouldn't allow him to work with some of them as a student, instead of doing a spiritual bypasss himself, having his women students do the same, not by integrating the feminine, but by transcending and excluding it. This is like "enlightened" fundamentalism.

I'm talking to a lot of conscious women who are outraged by Andrew's audacity and I share that outrage. What a shame!

Read Anyaa McAndrew's blog on the article.

Integral in Seattle

An Individual Couple’s Journey Through Development via Spiral Dynamics

Yesterday I presented the second module of my Big Love Integral workshop. There are six modules to the workshop, as this is a very big subject: "Conscious Romantic Relationship in an Integral Context."

The second module is all about relationship as it fits into various developmental models with the biggest emphasis on Spiral Dynamics Integral. After we had finished going over the model and what relationship looked like in each of the seven vMemes (value memes, or levels of development based on values), I was asked to layout a specific relationship as it progressed through the spiral.

Because I'm certainly most familiar with my own relationship, it was an obvious choice (Anyaa and I have an agreement that we can use our relationship as teaching moments, and we pretty much let it all hang out....with much love and respect, of course!).

So here's how I see our relationship as it moved from the earliest survival moments into where I think it is today. As we progressed from a first email to today’s flex and flow of co-creation, our relationship has clearly gone through developmental stages, just as individuals and civilizations do.

Not all of the traits of each of these Value Memes (vMemes) show up, because we are, after all, happening in a modern context and from our own developmental perspectives. Still, aspects of these stages have definitely been present.

Beige, Basic Survival: We talked on the phone for two months, always deciding if we wanted to continue the long-distance conversation. Some close calls. Distance was, and still is, the hardest factor.

Purple, Tribal: Some feeling of magic around the relationship begins to develop. “The Universe brought us together.” Rituals begin forming. Recreational sex.

Red, Power, Ego: It didn’t take long for us to hit a power struggle in our relationship over keeping commitments. Because we brought later stage consciousness to it, we sailed through fairly easily.

Blue, Authoritarian, Rule of Law: We begin to set up how we do things. Who does what? What’s okay in the relationship, what’s not? Bring order and stability. A sense of responsibility toward each other.

Orange, Materialistic, Achiever: We want to have the best relationship possible. You are an amazing partner and you bring out the best in me (partner as status). The intersubjective “we” begins to develop internal values of its own.

Green, Egalitarianism, Equality: We are equals, 50/50 relationship (Deida’s Stage 2), we share some responsibilities, particularly around financial arrangements because of our long distance relationship status. Also a sense of “All We Need Is Love” tries to creep in.

Yellow, Existential, Systemic: Co-creation, we create and take responsibility for our own relationship and its evolution. We see the big picture of a shared higher purpose, and ease into chaos, change, flex and flow. Recreational sex still exists, but there's also a sense of co-creational sex (procreational sex was never really an option for us!).

I have absolutely no idea what relationship, looks like at Turquoise and beyond, but I very much hope to bring that perspective to you one day, as I think we've both got one foot in it!

More at Integral in Seattle

Those of you who know me, know and understand that I'm seeking ways to turn my integral passion into an integral living, without becoming a "consultant." This posting is a brief rundown on how I'm going about making that happen.

First, I'd like you to visit a new website/artifact I've created, the i-Boutique, with the help of Cafe Press. Here, I'm using my design abilities, along with my razor-sharp wit (UL), to create integral apparel (UR) with an attitude (UL again). The current designs are integrally-themed and also include some apparel designs for SeattleIntegral. To avoid any conflict of interest, as one of the leaders of SeattleIntegral, all the profits from the sale of SeattleIntegral related items go to support the Seattle salon (LL). Please buy a lot.

More

iBoutique logo design by Gary Stamper

Recently, integral salon leaders from around the world, friends all, even though I haven't met them all....yet...were hit with a request from one of us to help with the energy of the salon they lead. Another salon leader followed that up with their own questions about dominant voices taking over meeting with uninformed knee-jerk reactions, leaving the leaders of the group struggling with how to handle those situations. I'll eventually post the entire conversation (as soon as we've agreed how), but wanted to share some insights on group process that we've learned from at SeatleIntegral. Lord knows, we've had our share of disastrous meetings! I remember one Meetup in particular, that had fallen apart with those knee-jerk reactions, where my wise-beyond-her-years friend Kari and I sat across from each other smiling and laughing inside, and wondering, what the F*** just happened? Here's an excerpt I posted from the email exchange.

Original Image by Gary Stamper at the iBoutique
*A.F.G.O. - Another F***ing Growth Opportunity

Historically, there have been three types of government rule: Warlords, Theocracy, and Aristocracy. Although there have been occasional pockets of democracy throughout history, it has not, by any means, been the norm. During the 18th, 19th, 20th centuries, and early into the 21st, we have been engaged in a rather spectacular experiment never seen before on this scale.

More here

Integral in Seattle

Integral in Seatle