Better view

“People are different.”
– a fellow traveler

That seems true enough on the surface, yet it inspired me to see if they really different at a deeper level, and if so, in what way?

As I watched the first two episodes of the BBC series How Art Made the World this week, I was struck by the startling evidence of similarities in the perspectives of people across time and space.

In art, we are taught that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. And this made me wonder if the differences between people could be largely dependent on the beholder’s perspective too?

Take a look at how the Egyptians depicted humans in their visual arts, unchanged over thousands of years during their civilization. Such consistency is unthinkable in our rapidly changing world of today. The Egyptian way of visualizing people was carefully crafted and uniformly maintained with great discipline. Time passed, the perspective stayed the same.

Then watch the similarities in how our ancestors painted animals on cave walls across historical Europe, and how close these resemble the rock wall paintings in South Africa made just a couple of hundred years ago. They might have painted for similar reasons, as the documentary suggests, showing what they saw in their mind as they traveled in and out of the spiritual realm during altered states of consciousness that were induced by spending time in dark and narrow spaces.

When Picasso explored the famous bull paintings in the Lascaux cave in France in 1940, he declared that “we have learned nothing in twelve thousand years," attesting to the enduring similarities in art and artists over such a long time.

And observe how the chubby, impersonal “Venus” statuettes from prehistoric times, discovered in many places across Europe and beyond, look remarkably similar. Yet there is no indication that the communities who made these images were not in touch with each other, so how could they produce such similar visions of people? The documentary suggests that the perspective was determined by the tribes’ shared view of their existence as hunter-gatherers. Different places, same perspective.

Jump in the time machine and switch for a moment to today’s global challenges and the politics to address them…

When President Bill Clinton spoke in June 2009 to promote global cooperation for the survival of mankind, he urged people to focus on their similarities. “We are genetically 99.5 percent the same,” he said, yet “from time immemorial, people have fought over identity rooted in that (half percent). We should have spent more time thinking about that other 99.5 percent of ourselves.”

And summing up the prospects for success, he concluded that “if we have a chance, it has to begin by people accepting that they can be proud of who they are without despising who someone else is.” Such messages are now broadcast in electronic images, across vast distances.

Focusing on similarities has a compelling logic, yet unlike in the Egyptian and early European times, in today’s world it seems difficult to do. Even if people might be similar in many ways, they seem to be hard-wired to look for their differences in their continuous search for meaning and creative expression, and as they work hard to make money from products and services that have to stand out from others to be marketable.

Meanwhile, wars and conflicts keep filling news stories, showing that plenty of people around the world are still committed to despising each other because of perceived differences.

And yet, look around and observe that globalization trends continue to diminish or wipe out diversity, as illustrated by the phenomenon of Starbucks and other global brands. While people keep focusing on differences, diversity and uniqueness, increasing numbers end up drinking the same coffee, wearing similar clothes, and using the same computer software and other accessories.

What more is there to discover about similarities and differences? Turning back to history, the BBC documentary points out that people did go through very dramatic changes in their societies, which altered their outlook drastically and made them look at themselves and their fellow humans in a totally different way.

For example, when the Egyptians became exposed to the Greeks, a new way of visualizing people emerged synergetically in art, which was soon to inspire people across their lands, and later spread from Greece to other parts of Europe and even across the world.

And the hunter-gatherers who created the Venus statuettes and cave paintings stopped doing so rather abruptly around the same time as they evolved into societies organized around agriculture.

While spending time in these musings, I also continue my exploration to understand integral theory and wonder how it might be applied to stimulate personal growth and foster sustainable development in today’s world.

From reading philosopher Ken Wilber’s A Brief History of Everything, I am discovering how his AQAL model of integral theory suggests that the development of individuals and of societies can be compared to climbing a ladder. The components of his metaphor are the ladder, the climber, and the different views that appear when climbing the ladder.

Wilber argues that as people grow and societies evolve, they can negotiate higher levels in development, much like climbing the rungs of a ladder, and that the process of moving from one level to another is both challenging and a one-way street. Once a higher level is reached and inhabited, the view of self and the world changes into an expanded version, which becomes less and less egocentric and narcissistic.

He refers to three important stages of development (for individuals and their cultures) as being egocentric, ethnocentric, and world-centric, and he quotes research results claiming to show that roughly two-thirds of the world’s population today still live in egocentric and ethnocentric stages.

Wilber also explains that a smooth journey upwards on the ladder is by no means assured, and that as they grow, people and societies tend to leave dismembered parts of their identity behind “in the basement,” from where these “shadows” conspire to reduce the energy for further growth until they are faced and re-integrated.

As a result, greater depth (moving higher on the ladder) comes with lesser span (fewer people reaching, and living from these higher levels).

If it is true that a majority of people are still living in egocentric and ethnocentric stages of development that focus predominantly on their individual needs and those of their groups, it might well be very difficult for the world to respond to the challenge posed by President Clinton to look for what people have in common rather than their differences.

As I continue to read about higher world-centric and integral stages of development, with their changing and ever wider views from the higher rungs of the ladder, it seems that while science and art show that people throughout history have always shared much in common, the differences between people today remain huge in their own eyes and in the prevailing worldviews of the egocentric and ethnocentric “membership” societies they live in.

A piece of good news seems to be that all through history people have found it possible to climb up the ladder of expanding consciousness, where they discovered more similarities and greater depths of existential experience. And Wilber claims that the number of people living today with integral worldviews, while still very small, is growing rapidly.

Throughout human history, art has always been an important channel of expression for the mystics who climbed the ladder and transcended their own society’s worldview, from cave paintings to sculptures, from the writings of Thomas à Kempis to the poetry of Rumi, from the writings attributed to Lao Tze to the koans of zen masters over time, from the questioning and deconstructive prose of Osho to the lyrics and humming in a universe “written on air” by Jim Paredes, and in countless other artistic expressions around the world.

It seems that, when seen from higher rungs on the ladder of consciousness, people’s similarities as well as their different worldviews can come into a clearer perspective. Climbing that ladder may allow people to see that they are not so different after all, but that their worldviews are. And the different worldviews of these “beholders” are what largely inspires their perceptions, actions, and art.

As I continue climbing, I find that the view keeps getting better.


Photograph: Better view at the end of war. Liberation monument commemorating 5 May 1945 in Wageningen, the Netherlands.

Integral discipline

"Read everything he writes. It will change your life."
- Deepak Chopra

Stirred doesn't quite describe what happened, shaken is more like how I felt, an almost rude awakening. And the shaker?

On a typical day he gets up between 3 and 5 in the morning in his house overlooking the mountains around Boulder, Colorado. After an hour or two of meditation he works until early afternoon. This is followed by an hour of weightlifting to keep him grounded in his body. The afternoons are for chores, and after a meal around 5 pm, he spends his time watching a movie, visiting friends and reading something light. In the biography Thought as Passion on the life of Ken Wilber, Frank Visser wrote in that the world-renowned philosopher leads a disciplined life.

Listening to Wilber give his 4-day interview on Kosmic Consciousness to Tami Simon of Sounds True, I heard a master story teller clarifying profound dimensions of science and spirituality with ease and empathy, always speaking in a light-hearted manner full of jests about himself and his accomplishments. Discipline remains invisible below the surface.

Over the past four decades, Wilber's integral philosophy has changed the lives of millions of people. He is quoted by www.integrallife.com as the internationally acknowledged leader and preeminent scholar of the Integral stage of human development, which continues to gather momentum around the world, and as the most widely translated academic writer in America, with his 25 books translated in some 30 languages. He has also been called one of the most controversial and profound thinkers of our age, and is the first psychologist-philosopher in history to have his collected works published while still alive, and at the time he was only 48.

Behind the success and smooth presentation of philosopher and story teller Ken Wilber lies a fascinating and inspirational story of determination to overcome challenges.

After trading in an all-American image and dropping out of Duke university, Wilber took a job as dishwasher to support himself in writing his first books in the seventies. He talks about a personal transition and decision to “get into interior growth”, and then experiencing a strong burst of it. After graduating from another university, his first book at the age of 23 became the foundation of what was later to become his integral theory. However, The Spectrum of Consciousness, after completion in 1973, was only published in 1977 after having been turned down by numerous publishers.

Once published, the book made him famous overnight as a leading thinker in the fields of psychology and philosophy. To write the book, he had labored in thought for three years while doing his manual job, and worked on reading and research for about ten months, wrote Visser. This was followed by a month or more of tortuous 15-hour bouts of typing, supported by a gallon of milk and naps on the sofa.

In later years, Wilber kept up his production of books with ever wider scope of application, and spent more and more of his working life in self-imposed isolation, serving time in solitary research and writing supported by a vast collection of books and videos.

Interspersed with these productive years were periods where Wilber was forced to deal with intense personal challenges, which led to pauses in his writing. Talking about the years of caring for his partner Treya Killam Wilber, who died of cancer in 1989, he remarked that “the pain, terror, agony was so horrible – either you really just committed suicide or come out on the other side, with a quantum leap in growth.”

The suffering was further complicated as he found himself affected by a little-known enzyme deficiency disease that crippled his work for while. Talking with Tami Simon about these periods of affliction, he said that “if you’re lucky enough to deal with them, you can accelerate growth, and if not, you can really go to hell.” In retrospect, he considered this time to be the most important transformative period in his life.

After passing through these dark valleys, he resumed his writing and shared what he had learned through these tribulations in Grace and Grit, which was published in 1991 and attracted many new readers.

Wilber encountered further torment at key stages in the development of his integral theory. The birth of his masterpiece Sex, Ecology and Spirituality in the mid 1990s was intense, he told Tami Simon, and the subsequent period involved a trying period of “dying to my own Ken Wilberness.” Later he would suffer frustrating flare-ups of the enzyme deficiency disease, causing a down-period of more than half a year.

He is remarkably transparent about the evolution of his integral theory, and how he made corrections in later years to his earlier model. In his interview with Tami Simon he describes these periods of retrospection and failing forward as extremely hard and disturbing emotionally and physically, and “plutonium intense.”

While his books map out what seem to be continuously positive evolutionary paths (and spirals) of development from pre-personal to personal, trans-personal and nondual stages, he doesn’t restrict himself to a positive lens. Instead, he underlines that each evolutionary stage actually comes with new challenges and chances to mess it up on an ever grander scale, individually and as societies.

Hence, he explains, we experience not only breakthroughs in health, education, economic development and spiritual empowerment, but also Auschwitz, continued destructive wars, 9/11, environmental degradation, and global warming.

To deal with these choices and challenges that the evolution of human consciousness brings, he underlines the importance of will and personal discipline in a recent interview on the website of the Integral Institute he founded with friends. “To have some muscle to exercise your will, your volition, your capacity to make these choices in the midst of what reality hands you, is absolutely crucial. Since we have so little emphasis on discipline and will, basically you're just at the mercy of your whichever will speaks loudest.” Wisdom grown from personal experience and choices, no doubt.

I was first introduced to Ken Wilber and his philosophy by my teacher Jim Paredes during the Tapping the Creative Universe workshop in Manila in 2003. However it took until this year for me to get immersed in Wilber’s integral theory and to explore its meaning for my life and work.

As Wilber explains about his now-famous 4 quadrants of the subjective “I”, the objective “It”, the intersubjective “We”, and the interobjective “Its,” it is all too easy to limit oneself to live in any one of these four perspectives. Reading integral theory should therefore not remain an exercise in the objective realm of “It”, so I started my own travel into the subjective interior by reading and listening about Wilber’s trials and tribulations on his own internal journey to “integral.” I have also started involving others around me in exploring integral theory, to allow me explore “We” dimensions together with them.

Of my integral journey so far, I found Wilber’s mountain-top views breathtaking, and I am most impressed, indeed shaken, by the example of his own travels and the part that discipline and will have played in the life of this master storyteller.

Deepak Chopra was right to say that reading Wilber can change your life. I keep reading him.

Photograph: Balloon over Flanders.

Counting in Three

"The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature."
- Joseph Campbell

Three is a magic number for understanding what is important in life. Most religions have trinities.

In local Balinese communities, I found that life is supported by beliefs that are surprisingly straightforward and relevant for the world today. In popular terms, the Balinese trinity, or Tri Hita Karana, goes as follows.

First, to live in harmony with God or "the most supreme". Second, to cultivate mutual understanding and help each other. Third, to care for the environment, recognizing that the same life force is present in all beings.

Each of these three life supports are connected and follows from the others. Together, they become like a circle, without end or beginning.

Seen by Balinese people as a holistic foundation for everyday life and celebrated in numerous community festivities throughout the year, the application of this trinity seems as profound as Bhutan's concept of pursuing gross national happiness.

In these two places, matching the beat of one's nature with Nature is both a commitment and a daily opportunity.

Photograph: To the cremation, Ubud, Bali.

Touched in Bali

"Life is entertained only through the phenomena that constitute our experience."
- Roger Ames and David Hall

My forehead rested on the wooden plank as the sun shone intensely warm into the upper floor of the bale.

I could feel a trickle of sweat gliding down to the floor, like children on a slide in slow motion. My arms resting behind me, palms open, I surrendered to the moment.

Feeling directly intimate with one's experience, the teacher from New Zealand said, is the heart of yoga. No need for seeking of some-thing, no need for traveling to reach some-where, no need for depending on some-future, but to enjoy what is already manifest in our unique self.

Wizened yet flexible and full of vitality, Mark Whitwell captured our attention and intent as if he held us all in the palm of his hand. There is a yoga practice for everyone in this room, he promised us, telling us not to adapt any commercialized yoga style. In stead, let yoga adapt to you. Find the yoga that is for you, he said, and do your yoga, every day. Do your yoga…

And I did, this morning, merged with my Dao practice. I look forward to another yoga class on Wednesday. As I rediscover myself in Ubud this week, my senses are alert to find out what is waiting to touch me as I walk the next steps on my path. I am tapping my creative universe.

According to Roger Ames and David Hall, creativity is always reflexive and is exercised over and with respect to "self." In their magnificent interpretation of Daodejing entitled Making This Life Significant, they explain that in the cosmology of Dao, people who tap into creativity and "have their stuff together" change the world around them. In the Dao, developing integrity "is a co-creative process in which one shapes and is shaped by one's environing circumstances."

This is what I set myself to experience now, to shape and be shaped by the influences from my environment, with heightened awareness.

From opening my body in sweaty stretches to enjoying delightful meals and taking in the cool breeze and verdant greens surrounding me, I learn to entertain life through these phenomena here and now.

Photograph: Verdant green in Ubud.

Real sin

"There is only one real sin, and that is to persuade oneself that the second-best is anything but the second-best."
- Doris Lessing

How to stop missing the mark? Is that what the sin question is about?

Most religious traditions talk about sin as something that people do that goes against certain morals or rules, and is therefore prohibited or considered wrong in society. Some Christians have gone beyond that to refer to sin as a life-long condition or state of mind.

Followers of Christian traditions have for millennia been warned against seven deadly sins, named as extravagance or lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. To oppose and substitute for these sins, they were reminded to practice seven holy virtues of chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility.

Some protestant Christians went as far as saying that, due to original sin, humanity had lost any and all capacity to move towards reconciliation with God.

In Islam, religious scholars have over time compiled as many as 70 major sins, which are described as acts rather than states of being. Many other traditions hold similar views of sin, with a focus on the notion of wrongful acts.

In an interesting recent update, the Vatican in 2008 added a warning against what it called seven modern social sins, including environmental pollution, genetic manipulation, obscene wealth, infliction of poverty, drug trafficking, morally debatable experiments, and violation of the fundamental rights of human nature.

As with so many things in life, one can also explore and adopt different perceptions about sin. The prevalent one has been to focus on the quality of the act, and its consequences. You do something wrong, and this is what will happen to you. If you repent, here is how you can atone for the sins you have committed. And, of course it is better to avoid doing wrong in the first place.

There is, however, another perception that is quite opposite, which is to regard sin as missing out on something. Remarkably, the ancient Greeks regarded sin as "missing the mark" or target, like in archery. And the biblical Hebrew word for sin had the same meaning. Their perception was about something that is missed, and how to do a better job of hitting the mark next time, like an archer honing his skills.

Interestingly, some early definitions of the concept of the deadly sin of sloth took a similar perspective when they called it the sin of sadness, of apathy, depression, joylessness, uneasiness of the mind, an absence or insufficiency of love. All these terms refer to a human condition of missing out on what is good.

In Dante's Purgatorio, penitents for sloth had to run continuously to make up for what they had missed in life.

In recent times, the more prominent perception of the sin of sloth has been as a failure or indifference to utilize one's talents and gifts. As Wikipedia puts it, it is more a sin of omission than of commission.

This notion of missing out may be what Doris Lessing referred to when she put the now famous words about sin and second-best in Anna Wulf's mouth, in The Golden Notebook. Her relentless focus was on choosing to do the best.

Commenting that laughter was by definition healthy, Lessing found herself very much on the positive side of human endeavor. "Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so," she said.

While the traditional black-and-white doctrines of sin to mark things to be avoided are still prevalent in today's world, my sense is that more and more people choose to focus on the positive side, to get better at setting and hitting their marks and enjoying a fulfilling life.

No longer held back by popular religion's dire warnings of punishment for sinful wrongdoing in this world or the next, the new notion of sin as "missing the mark" is inspiring me and many others to live "integral" lives and let go off fear and the sin of accepting second-best.

Perhaps that is what the spiritual leaders of ancient times had in mind too.

Photograph: Passage in Topkapi palace, Istanbul.

Way with change

"Change is a law."
- Dan Millman

Life is forever changing. Indeed I can say that life is all about change.

As an introverted soul, I always look forward to recharging my battery in moments of solitude and quiet. And when I sit still in a quiet room, it can seem for a moment as if my world comes to rest, without tiring changes. Then it turns out to be an illusion.

The antics of my own mind continue to create activity, and even late at night I hear a bus driver blaring his horn in frustration of someone else who blocks his way in speeding to the next stop.

It is difficult, if not impossible to be still and resist change.

I know how meditation can help me observe my mind and its endless flow of thoughts, but I also know the mind cannot be shut down. Within its own constraints of repetition and extrapolation, it keeps ever vibrant.

And outside my awareness, millions of cells in my body are regenerating all the time, and my heartbeat and breathing are continuing uninterrupted.

Meanwhile, all around me the earth keeps spinning at a dizzying pace, unseen to anyone but the scientists who monitor such movement.

How can I find moments of peace and freedom of action within such relentless movement and continuous change taking place all around and inside me?

Can I practice having little retreats while continuing to be a participant in this circus of movement and changes called the Universe?

A few weeks ago, I was looking forward to a long journey, expecting that the many hours of travel would offer a good opportunity for a soul retreat. Yet what I experienced was a non-stop sequence of moments and events, some more memorable than others.

Reaching the destination, I discovered that being surrounded by thousands of people for a week-long conference offered even fewer chances for solitude.

With my fellow traveler's ingenuity, we found that the only place for a quiet recharge during the daytime was to sit in the back row of the large auditoriums, like using a cinema to rest rather than seeing the movie.

As I write this, hundreds of people keep passing by the windows of the coffee shop, going from cinemas to shops and vice versa. Each of them living a life, with emotions, challenges, and changes to face. An amazing totality really, this Universe.

Every day, the world offers me new insights, new points of view, new challenges, and new opportunities. I feel immersed in it like in a fast-flowing river.

Hour by hour, day by day, I allow myself to float, to observe the changes, stopping myself from resisting the flow. Choosing to adapt to changes is starting to feel like a game I can play.

So what time do I really have to recharge my battery, to realize what my options are, to how to decide among alternatives, to take action, to enjoy passion, and to deliver results?

Since the past is already behind me, and the future continues to elude me ahead, I find myself enjoying to turn to zero, to the moment where everything is possible, where everything can be done, to the now, to the present moment.

As I reflect, I no longer cling to my mind's thoughts, to time, to anything really. Through my moments of passion and my times of living flatly, I find myself happy most of the time, either with or without a reason. I can smile.

To have more time later today, or tomorrow, to do what I dream of, is an illusion. There is no such thing.

There is only now, and my decision how to use this present moment. To consciously do something that brings me closer to realizing my life dreams.

Or to let myself wander farther off these goals. Or, to simply go with the flow with a sense of wonder, ready to discover something new as I move further along the river.

I can see now what made Dan Millman choose the title for his book The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, which he confidently subtitled saying that it would change lives.

I can live in the present moment with the peaceful heart of a mystic and a warrior's spirit of discipline. Working simultaneously with my logos or reason from the right brain, and with my mythos or intuition from the left brain. Thank you, Dan!

Photograph: Istanbul, witness to millennia of changes.

Spark me

"We shape the clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want."
- Tao Te Ching

It happened today.

After lying wrapped in a shiny yellow cloth high on a shelf in my apartment for more than a year, Atintya has now moved to adorn the wall of my bedroom, mounted on a slab of Philippine narra hard wood, courtesy of Noli, the owner of one of Manila's more famous art houses, Renaissance Gallery.

Everything has its time, but for Atintya to come out took much longer than I expected. I celebrated today, for this and other reasons. Who needs a reason, anyway? Life awaits my decision to celebrate any day.

Decorating my living place is important to me. I like to be surrounded by images that inspire me. What an opportunity it is to choose items to adorn my home! To see things that resonate with me and my dreams.

I read that relationships between life partners are bound to fare better if their home is adorned with their pictures. I have come to believe that this is true. Precious relationships need treasuring, and having visual reminders inspires me to do so daily.

It is no different in places of worship, I believe. Temples and churches present visual reminders of the invisible power of the universe, the keys to life. Asia is full of images of deities, so rich, somewhat like the catholic church with its plentiful images of saints. These all remind me of the magic of life, and inspire me to share this with others.

I have selected or consciously welcomed all pieces of art and decoration in my home to inspire me. All carry meaning to me. I try to celebrate them everyday, and to open myself to draw inspiration from them.

Atintya is special to me. Pictured in meditation and surrounded by flames on key parts of the body, the image is a representation of Sang Hyang Widhi Wasa, the “one supreme unknowable God.” Atintya is said to have gained importance in Bali because he falls in line with religious beliefs that revolve around a single god, of whom all other gods are manifestations.

Atintya inspires me to be totally alive, from top to toe, to connect with the almighty universe. And to spark others around me to be similarly alive.

No less, and can't be more.

Photograph: Atintya.