Art, Soul and Earth

Richard Long

Artist of the Landscape

Sculpture and Landscape Art have always held a powerful attraction for me. Andy Goldsworthy was the first eco-sculptor I came across and his sculptures and the pictures of his installations enabled me to experience the ephemeral beauty of art created in situ with natural materials, not created for any particular beholder or market simply for the beauty of the piece itself.

Richard Long was if not the original, one of the first contemporary artists to make marks on the landscape and present this as art. His recent exhibition 'Heaven and Earth' at Tate Britain covered the whole panorama of his work over close to fifty years. This show was a phenomenal experience, an elemental tribute to the man his mission and prodigious dedication to his work.

In its totality, as well as in its particulars the exhibition allowed the visitors to sink deeply into the consciousness of an artist whose art is totally integrated into the meteorological, cosmological and planetary rhythms of the natural landscape. My overwhelming impression in experiencing the exhibition was not of Richard Long the person, but more of him as an emblematic archetype of human motion crossing the planets terrain, evoking hundreds thousands years of trekking, migration and movement across the surface of the earth. Long, outstanding in his art because of his total immersion in nature, conveys the primal urges that drive humanity in the timeless quest to explore the landscape of the living planet.

The central motifs or cohesive themes that ties all Longs’ pieces together are his walks, which are mostly solitary quests, walking in straight lines, or exceptional distances daily, framed or envisioned by a simple mathematical or poetic blueprints.

As well as installations of stone, rock, wood or within divergent landscapes Long creates textworks that relate to walks he has undertaken. These are to me, some of his most powerful offerings, a three line textwork to encapsulate a 366 mile 8 day walk a walk to a Lunar Eclipse or a textwork outlining a walk of 173 miles in seven and a half tides. Not given to excess verbiage, Longs textworks are items of sparse simplicity, the tip of the tsunami of his endeavours. Some works purely describe occasional sounds heard on a 700 mile walk or sights seen on Dartmoor, remarkable for their lack of commentary and absence of emotiveness, these austere recordings of elemental nature strip away surface experience to reveal our inner timeless primordial instincts.

The exhibition was deceptive, as the exhibits could been viewed simplistically as just objects on display, isolated from one another and so consequently the show might have had limited impact on the observer. A magnificent mural painted on the Tate’s walls for the exhibition, one with gold coloured clay paint, applied in swirling interwoven shapes across a twenty feet span, which were displayed together with textworks inscribed on the walls and installations of stone of irregular shapes and sizes weights and appearance, arranged and organized into coherent oval circular or oblong shapes. However walking through the hall with intention and deliberation, absorbing and imbibing the art as organically as the artist may have created it, revealed the immensity of Long artisitc vision and the impersonal expression of his soul as a force of nature itself.

This exhibition fully portrayed the ability of art to connect to transcendent spirit and as such is light years ahead of the supercilious products of the celebrity obsessed art establishment.

Glorious 39

Film Review

Stephen Poliakoff’s film the Glorious 39 is a suspenseful study of identity, class and paranoia set in the immediate period before the start of the Second World War. Romola Garai plays the adopted but eldest daughter of an aristocratic family whose life unravels as she progressively uncovers their complicity in a plot to dissociate Great Britain from the battle against Nazism unfolding in mainland Europe.

Avoiding the pitfall of presenting a far fetched action thriller, the director underplays the murder and espionage elements of the film to subtly study the deterioration of once secure familial relationships, as well as the suffocation and patronage of the highly cultured and excessively mannered pre war British nobility. Using classic suspenseful cinematic touches, the director heightens the viewer’s sense of the main protagonist’s immediate danger, her escalating isolation and deteriorating mental health, so much so that seemingly innocuous occurrences evoke irrational apprehension and a sense of extreme peril in the audience.

The accidental discovery of an intriguing gramophone recording that she stumbles on in the family’s barn, triggers the disappearance then murder of friends and close associates eventually revealing the full extent of her adoptive family’s involvement in a plot to undermine the war effort. These events are portrayed against the backdrop of palatial family homes the idyllic surrounding countryside and the misleading calm cleverly contrasts the insular life of the privileged rich with the gathering storm poised to engulf Europe.

The beloved daughters increasing alarm is frequently assuaged by her father, played by Bill Nighy a brilliant paragon of calm assurance and unctuous duplicity. Even at her worst moment when his actual evil intent is starkly exposed, he speaks to his daughter in such caring fatherly tones that it is possible to believe that he still harbours genuine concern for her. The erosion of her position as a cherished and beloved daughter culminates in the alienating revelation and discovery of her Romany heritage and the rising tension of her estrangement both grips and horrifies. Her outsider status is manipulated so comprehensively that her sanity becomes unhinged, isolated, desperate and times drugged, her captors undermine and fragment her tenuous hold on reality.

This enthralling film emphasizes the vulnerability of women in the pre war age, their dependence on social status for security and protection, without family and deprived of social connection whilst living in permanent anxiety with mental instability an inevitable outcome.

Shaykh Fadhlala Haeri

A post on the Enlightennext UK blog co-written with Carole Raphael to describe a summer evening spent in the company of a revered Muslim mystic.

We were honored to host Shaykh Fadhlala Haeri, his wife Aliya Haeri,, a Sufi master in her own right, and many of Shaykh Fadhlala’s devoted students at our London EnlightenNext Centre recently. It was an evening of rare spiritual camaraderie and joy.

Shaykh Fadhlala is a Sufi sheikh who comes from a long line of respected teachers of Islam. Born in the holy city of Karbala in Iraq, he was educated in Europe and the US and pursued a successful career as a businessman before becoming a religious teacher more than twenty years ago. Shaykh Fadhlala is the founder of the Academy of Self Knowledge, the author of many books on Islam, and spiritual guide to students living across the globe. Currently, living in the Republic of South Africa Shaykh Fadlalah is a progressive mystic and is as deeply informed by the global context and his scientific education as much as his spiritual heritage.

The evening began with an intimate dinner with the Shaykh, a few of his closet students, and EnlightenNext’s Managing Director, Finance Manager and Head of Operations. Following the meal Shaykh Fadhlala gave a talk in which he gave a brief overview of the Sufi Path, which he described as the spiritual heart of Islam.

His main theme was how to pursue an authentic life. With great warmth humour and clarity the Shaykh explained that authenticity, or the condition of being truly ourSelves, with a capital “S”, is the goal of the spiritual life. And by authenticity the Shaykh meant living from that part of ourselves which is highest—the divine within us, the light of God, the soul, or higher consciousness…whatever you want to call it, he said. That higher part is already in us, he said, and it is already enlightened.

Any virtuous attribute carried within in it an expression of divine essence, when drawn to express these qualities we become a vehicle for the infinite to express itself in the world. It is our work to turn away from that which is lower so that higher consciousness can be known and embraced.

The Shaykh sprinkled his talk with a number of metaphors. These imparted an intangible poetic quality, I thought, to what he was conveying as well as served as a tool for envisaging the breadth and absolute dimension of what he was speaking about. For example, he spoke about the “map of creation” as a way to express that life is a process and one with a definite goal. And the process, or path, has a direction, he stressed, one towards higher consciousness. “The issue is arrival,” he repeated in various ways.

He also acknowledged that we have to be aware that we are conditioned beings that our consciousness is conditioned no matter who we are and, at the same time, we are always changing. But that doesn’t mean we can’t also experience the ever-present boundless dimension of consciousness. He explained that by accepting boundaries and our limitations, we will be able to transcend the lower attributes of the self. When the ego’s will is subservient to God’s will, or the authentic self, we are able to rise to higher dimensions. In a particularly beautiful turn of phrase, he said “we are already colonized… by [our] soul.”

With expert precision he identified the many pitfalls and delusions of ignorance, which shield us from progressively uncovering our sublime true nature. He also counselled us to avoid attachment, especially in spiritual matters, and to remain humble.

Thanks to the Shaykh’s spiritual transmission an extraordinary evening was conducted at the EnlightenNext Centre in an atmosphere of considerable mutual respect and warmth. A soul sharing between two dissimilar groups dedicated to the second face of God, connected and bonded by the mutual recognition of spirit being higher, through the auspices and grace of two visionary contemporary teachers. What occurred throughout the evening forged a template for an interfaith communion conducted at the deepest possible level and thereby opening up a potential for ecstatic unity to be spread amongst the diverse faith communities of the planet

I Am a Serious Man -New Film

This new and totally absorbing film by the Coen brothers is replete with their customary stylistic idiosyncrasies, gentle yet farcical humour and off beat quirky characters through which they stunningly pull off an incisive and culturally accurate film. Based on elements of their own upbringing, set in a mid west Jewish American middle class suburb in the late sixties, the narrative of the film throws up a series of unpredictable yet believable circumstances, as it depicts a tsunami of familial and personal crises that engulf its main protagonist.

The unerring precision with which the Coen’s portray this passage of history, its claustrophobic banality and simmering unspoken emotional tension, induces in the viewer a state of suspended horror even nausea, at the grating awkwardness of everything it portrays.

The area where the film scores its greatest successes lies in the riveting portrayal of a huge variety of Jewish characters played, by an assumedly all Jewish cast. These actors vividly bring to life the tensions of the time through not expressing them. This is conveyed magnificently and simply through the acutely precise body language through which each actor imparts the alienation and mute isolation of the times as well as the characters from one another. As a subtle contrast to this stifling tone, the film refers at times obliquely and at others more directly to the countercultural seismic shifts occurring outside the perimeters of this enclosed world.

Ultimately bleak, the film traces the travails of Larry Gopnick, Physics Professor as he is sideswiped by a completely unexpected separation and possible divorce, blackmailed out of the family home and cringingly patronised by his wife’s intended new husband and bribed and blackmailed by a student potentially undermining an impending offer of tenure. Understandably he descends into a state of anguish, from which not one single acquaintance is able to assuage his deepening gloom. In desperation he seeks out two of three local Rabbis only to be offered glib platitudes or meaningless obscurantism.

The film within its own parameters is a triumph of convincing pathos, humour and whilst not nostalgic, an affectionate backward look at a very a specific time and place of a cultural rite of passage.

However stepping outside the Coen brothers’ milieu and seeing through, the artistic oeuvre that they inhabit, it is possible to discern certain cultural assumptions upon which the film is based. These presuppositions pervade the fabric of the film and render the overall message and content of the film a portrayal of a lost and nihilistically bereft humanity.

Whilst perfectly capturing the emptiness and isolation of modernity, the knowing almost sneering, poking of fun at human eccentricity, the nonexistence of any sense of underlying meaning or purpose in the lives of those portrayed, guarantee this movie carries the Coen’s typical filmic emotional undertow –their pervasive signature note of human futility and purposelessness. Whilst this film is not as much overt homage to the death drive as ‘No Country for Old Men’, ‘A Serious Man’ its ultimate longer term affect is to reduce art to smug irony.

On the initiation of the EnlightenNext Discovery Cycle in Tuscany July 25-August 16 2009

Seven weeks ago Andrew Cohen initiated the Discovery Cycle on the Being and Becoming retreat held amidst the outstanding beauty of the Tuscan hills.

The 'Being' part of the event was held over the first ten days where Cohen propelled participants into the perfect timeless ground of enlightenment. Using passages of his earliest work ‘Enlightenment is a Secret’ Cohen guided the most veteran meditators and the newest initiate deeper and even deeper into that nameless place where nothing ever happened and from which a problem never arose. After a day or two those attending felt an enormous magnetic field developing compelling them into letting go into the freefall of that weightless place. The field made the act of meditation increasingly natural and easeful allowing retreatants to shed layers and possibly lifetimes of habitual unconscious tension. With immense care and forensic precision in answering questions Cohen facilitated 120 delegates to encounter the mysterious wonder of enlightenment and allow it to fully permeate their experience. After ten days of total silence and immersed in that matchless perfection participants were radiating a rare quality of inner peace and stillness

Midway through the retreat it shifted gears into the 'Becoming' section, a handful of meditators left and 150 plus others arrived to take the retreat forward into hitherto uncharted waters. With his prodigious talent for creatively illustrating the dimensions of the self Cohen spoke for up to three hours at a time revealing the many subtleties and complexities inherent in the challenging task of conscious evolution. His consistent focus throughout the retreat was on the four essential elements of human experience, contrasting the authentic self the absolute positivity of the big bang in motion, with the sublime emptiness and indifference of the ground of being and then comparing these absolute dimensions with the relative and conditioned nature of the cultural as well as the personal psychological self.

Cohen’s consistently metamorphosing teaching style produced striking elucidations of both new and familiar principles. He defined ego as both best friend and worst enemy, the worst being that part of the self which is inert and violently resistant to change, the best being aligned with the culturally conditioned self that has developed over time and that which is capable of encompassing greater and greater degrees of evolutionary complexity. The core tenets of the teaching were described not as a guidance that if applied would create an improved person but kosmic laws that pulsated with their own radiant vertical enlightening energy.

In addition to these radical and illuminating discourses Cohen arranged the 250 plus people into groups of around 20-25 to meet daily and share their reflections insight and experiences on specific topics outlined by Cohen that he had raised in that morning’s talk. Each group was carefully arranged to compose of individuals with similar levels of knowledge understanding and familiarity with these Evolutionary Enlightenment teachings and were facilitated by two of Cohen’s most senior and closest students. Three or four groups were composed of individuals with little or next to no understanding and experience of evolutionary enlightenment the eleventh comprised of those with 11 -23 years, so a whole gradation of experience was represented within all the groups.

The morning teaching was followed by a group discussion in the afternoon and subsequently in the evening, all of the groups lead facilitators reported on the progress and some qualities of each group. During which Cohen took any questions offered by group members on the discussion content or group process. Remarkably every single day each group progressed step by step into deeper understanding of enlightenment and the process of intersubjective conscious development, irrespective of existing understanding or knowledge of the principles being taught. By the end of the retreat every participant was in an altered state, inspired enlivened and ecstatic and acutely conscious of the immense potential for the good of humanity and its future that this impersonal emergence represented.

In addition a small group of volunteers who had signed up for The EnlightenNext Discovery Cycle Higher Development Research Project before the retreat and were assessed at the beginning and end of the retreat on a range inventories, scans and profiling instruments to gauge the impact of the retreat on these individuals. As the study will be longitudinal these scientific tests will evaluate the participants responses and conscious evolution over a significant period of time and eventually scientifically evidence and demonstrate the effectiveness of these teaching methods.

Overall, Cohen's initiation of the EnlightenNext Discovery Cycle clearly demonstrated that a new utterly positive wholesome human culture can be created and/which is well within the grasp of anyone at a post modern stage of development, With little preparation or training 250 sincere individuals recognised that the future was in their hands and their creative power to affect the course of evolution was imminently achievable. It was also clear that this developmental milestone would be scaled up and made available to even larger numbers over time and as one former Buddhist observed that the retreat catalysed the turning the 'Fourth turning of the wheel'. A revolution in consciousness in culture is occurring and waiting for you to sign up!!

On the initiation of the EnlightenNext Discovery Cycle in Tuscany July 25-August 16 2009

Seven weeks ago Andrew Cohen initiated the Discovery Cycle on the Being and Becoming retreat held amidst the outstanding beauty of the Tuscan hills.

The 'Being' part of the event was held over the first ten days where Cohen propelled participants into the perfect timeless ground of enlightenment. Using passages of his earliest work ‘Enlightenment is a Secret’ Cohen guided the most veteran meditators and the newest initiate deeper and even deeper into that nameless place where nothing ever happened and from which a problem never arose. After a day or two those attending felt an enormous magnetic field developing compelling them into letting go into the freefall of that weightless place. The field made the act of meditation increasingly natural and easeful allowing retreatants to shed layers and possibly lifetimes of habitual unconscious tension. With immense care and forensic precision in answering questions Cohen facilitated 120 delegates to encounter the mysterious wonder of enlightenment and allow it to fully permeate their experience. After ten days of total silence and immersed in that matchless perfection participants were radiating a rare quality of inner peace and stillness

Midway through the retreat it shifted gears into the 'Becoming' section, a handful of meditators left and 150 plus others arrived to take the retreat forward into hitherto uncharted waters. With his prodigious talent for creatively illustrating the dimensions of the self Cohen spoke for up to three hours at a time revealing the many subtleties and complexities inherent in the challenging task of conscious evolution. His consistent focus throughout the retreat was on the four essential elements of human experience, contrasting the authentic self the absolute positivity of the big bang in motion, with the sublime emptiness and indifference of the ground of being and then comparing these absolute dimensions with the relative and conditioned nature of the cultural as well as the personal psychological self.

Cohen’s consistently metamorphosing teaching style produced striking elucidations of both new and familiar principles. He defined ego as both best friend and worst enemy, the worst being that part of the self which is inert and violently resistant to change, the best being aligned with the culturally conditioned self that has developed over time and that which is capable of encompassing greater and greater degrees of evolutionary complexity. The core tenets of the teaching were described not as a guidance that if applied would create an improved person but kosmic laws that pulsated with their own radiant vertical enlightening energy.

In addition to these radical and illuminating discourses Cohen arranged the 250 plus people into groups of around 20-25 to meet daily and share their reflections insight and experiences on specific topics outlined by Cohen that he had raised in that morning’s talk. Each group was carefully arranged to compose of individuals with similar levels of knowledge understanding and familiarity with these Evolutionary Enlightenment teachings and were facilitated by two of Cohen’s most senior and closest students. Three or four groups were composed of individuals with little or next to no understanding and experience of evolutionary enlightenment the eleventh comprised of those with 11 -23 years, so a whole gradation of experience was represented within all the groups.

The morning teaching was followed by a group discussion in the afternoon and subsequently in the evening, all of the groups lead facilitators reported on the progress and some qualities of each group. During which Cohen took any questions offered by group members on the discussion content or group process. Remarkably every single day each group progressed step by step into deeper understanding of enlightenment and the process of intersubjective conscious development, irrespective of existing understanding or knowledge of the principles being taught. By the end of the retreat every participant was in an altered state, inspired enlivened and ecstatic and acutely conscious of the immense potential for the good of humanity and its future that this impersonal emergence represented.

In addition a small group of volunteers who had signed up for The EnlightenNext Discovery Cycle Higher Development Research Project before the retreat and were assessed at the beginning and end of the retreat on a range inventories, scans and profiling instruments to gauge the impact of the retreat on these individuals. As the study will be longitudinal these scientific tests will evaluate the participants responses and conscious evolution over a significant period of time and eventually scientifically evidence and demonstrate the effectiveness of these teaching methods.

Overall, Cohen's initiation of the EnlightenNext Discovery Cycle clearly demonstrated that a new utterly positive wholesome human culture can be created and/which is well within the grasp of anyone at a post modern stage of development, With little preparation or training 250 sincere individuals recognised that the future was in their hands and their creative power to affect the course of evolution was imminently achievable. It was also clear that this developmental milestone would be scaled up and made available to even larger numbers over time and as one former Buddhist observed that the retreat catalysed the turning the 'Fourth turning of the wheel'. A revolution in consciousness in culture is occurring and waiting for you to sign up!!

Brian Swimme Poet of the Cosmos

Attending Brian Swimme's recent evening talk at the Schumacher College was an inspiring and uplifting and unusual experience. The man is so passionate about the evolution of the cosmos, tracking its deep time origins, tracing lightly over the mathematics, physics and the utterly immense scale of the whole process. Simultaneously his joy in the discovery of the Universe as self, transmits a degree of grounded positivity that you rarely encounter in the public sphere.

Swimme's enthusiasm for the evolutionary process opens the mind up to the miraculous formation of stars, the majesty of collapsing and spiralling galaxies, the might of gravitational waves plus the stupendous distances involved at every level. His ecstatic delivery shames conventional science and scientists for their desiccated approach to their subjects.

One particularly evocative moment occurred when he distinguished between the planetary bodies in our solar system. He characterised the mass of Jupiter as a planet of gases a planet body, that you could literally travel right through the centre of the vapours and emerge intact on the other side. Contrasting this with Mars which he said was dead inert rock, totally lifeless solid and impermeable.

The earth lies between the two and is in a state of balanced turbulence, it is fluid with a flaky crust. The centre fluctuates between a gaseous and solid state the movement of the core magma drives the plates ultimately generating life, it is swimming in a constant state of disequilibrium. That life evolved out of these elements in Swimmes view was more miraculous than anything narrated or described in any of the Holy Scriptures.

He described the Sun as igniting 600 million tonnes of Hydrogen gas every minute turning 596m into helium, the missing 4m tons is emitted as light energy which is what nourishes the earth. He portrayed this as an act of cosmic generosity.

He vividly described that pivotal and poignant moment when the first unicellular organisms having run out of food sources, had to invent a completely novel way of extracting energy from the environment. They evolved to capture and convert the energy of a photon inventing the process of photosynthesis, indicating that even at this basic level of life some form of consciousness must have been operational.

Outlining the evolutionary developments from amoeba to mammal and then to human life, Swimme swiftly switched focus to the quantum, the quark and most elementary levels of material reality. He described the appearance and disappearance of trillions quantum particles as generated out of the all nourishing abyss and at its root a ‘space time foam’.

After this part of the talk had finished I put a question to Brian on why so many interpreters of Thomas Berry’s work seemed to over emphasise the community of the earth at the expense of the importance of human self reflective consciousness and consequently generate an antipathy toward human presence on the planet.

He gave me a very cute response and asked me what proportion of people on the planet were awake to the dangers I guessed at about to 2% and then as I started to change my mind but he stopped me! He then said the alarmist messages about the state of planet had a place and needed to be communicated, as not enough people were awake to the real dangers.

However the flip side was everybody needed to be awake the fact that we were at a time of great opportunity and possibility and this was also a crucial part of the picture. Funnily enough he said that Thomas Berry used to get very depressed about the state of the planet and it was left to Brian to have to cheer him up!!

LSE talk by Susan Neiman titled What Makes Heroes?

Susan Neiman is a moral philosopher and a distinguished scholar, she is director of the Einstein Forum and is used to asking big questions and making the tools of her academic discipline relevant to the average, thinking citizen.

She has authored a new book titled Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown Up Idealists and the topic of heroism is central to the book. I became enthused about her having read an interview with her in EnlightenNext magazine written by Elizabeth Debold.

In her talk at the LSE one of her central themes was to reconstruct our idea of heroism. For her Odysseus represents bears true hallmarks of heroism in contrast with the invulnerable Achilles who has been become our prevalent heroic archetype, modelling in her view, an infantilised hollow version of heroism. Odysseus is heroic because he uses his wits and guile and endlessly struggles to overcome he challenges and trials he faces. Unusually for a Greek myth he utilises no super powers or assistance of the Gods. It is these momentous efforts that make Odysseus heroic, this process moulds and shapes his humanity and character into one to which we should all aspire.

Another theme that emerged from her talk was that our most common heroes are usually ones that die, sometimes martyrs and almost always tragic and have generally tended to die for a noble cause. Nieman was emphatic that a dead hero was next to worthless because they let humans off the hook, if a hero dies their example is almost impossible to follow and therefore we consequently let go of our own aspirations to heroism.

She illustrated her argument with little known vignettes of what she regarded as true heroism what follows is one example. We all know about the man that lay in front of the tank at Tiananmen Square who was crushed, yet there was a more potent story in the background that got far less media exposure. A bus driver noting what was happening drove his bus forward to block the route of some the tanks and realising that the bus would be removed threw the keys of the bus away where they would not be found and remained by his bus.

Most of us worship Gandhi, Mandela, the Dalai Lama because they are distant and therefore safe and they personally, can have extremely little direct impact on our lives. Therefore there is very little impetus to desire for change. Philosophically she is deeply influenced by Kant and thus wants to reinvigorate ‘Enlightenment Heroism’. This includes having an awareness of ‘the difference between things as they are and things as they should be’.

This was a dense rigorously argued talk packed full of cultural philosophical and political references many of which were lost on me. However in addition to the authoritative call for a new type of heroism Susan thoroughly punctured many of the revered and jealously guarded tenets of postmodern culture. Heroes she argued inspire us to struggle to become more fully human. She is arguing for a re-evaluation of the terms good and evil honour and nobility because social theory has relegated the hero to the sterile term role model.

Initial Impresssions from SDi UK Summit 26-27 June 2009 with Don Beck

This post was written in response to the summary of the UK Summit event posted by Keith Rice on his blog

Keith as you have done the 'fill in' so well on the facts I shall not blog my own summary!!

This leaves me with the luxury of just adding a few qualitative background comments to your informative structure.

I was struck to begin with how Don adapted his teaching style to be more inclusive of the group and how he initially surfaced everyone’s thoughts on the current LIFE conditions in the UK. Then how he followed this by highlighting the PRIORITY Codes of each meme system and finally focused on the common BELIEFS and Worldviews of each system over the passage of the two days

His use of Chariots of Fire film and particularly the scene in the Scottish Church hit me with a tsunami of overwhelming BLUE. When I first watched this film many years ago I would have enjoyed the propriety and Britishness of the characters but would have been glad not to been present for the stultifying suffocation of that age.

What was shocking was that despite how many conventional ritualistic and bureaucratic structures still being present in our social and other institutions, yet the rigour of these blue values has almost been entirely erased from the social and personal culture sphere(including mine!)

Over the two days I found the feedback from non UK nationals very refreshing and the objectivity of their reflection on the positivity of UK or British culture was both useful and uplifting. Because of the peculiar lack of value, I personally place on these positive characteristics, I found I appreciated the foreign perspective more highly than the Brits!!

On day two I was hugely affected by the statement from the MP read aloud by Lynn Sedgemore. This conveyed so utterly positively, our unique nationalistic qualities and history. The relationship to British identity was resoundingly unequivocal and at the same balanced informed and resolutely as well as pointedly anti extremist. Interestingly the writer’s sense of self was so fused with responsibility and appreciation for British identity that it also contained a clarion call for the need for all Brits to move forward together. I was therefore completely gobsmacked that the piece was written by a British Asian former MP and Justice Minister Shahid Malik. The appreciation of British values was so accurate and unambiguous it made me think that this is the direction from where the reconstruction of British identity might arrive!!

More to be posted here on the two day summit.

Summary of the Faith and Science 21st Century mini meet up – 18 June 2009

Jay Lakhani opened the meeting eventually outlining his view on why Science and Religion were not two mutually exclusive spheres of human endeavour. He cited the influence of Wittgenstein, whose insistence that different models of belief could exist separately within their own universes, if they were internally self consistent with their own truths, as a key to why there has been some little integration between these two disciplines.

The resultant lack of reconciliation between Science and Religion has done untold damage both enterprises. Jay is extremely passionate about the benefits and achievements of Science which is the most enduring and widespread of all human systems. Science evolves by making hypotheses testing out theories and changing to encompass new discoveries. Scientific thought though is flawed with it’s fixation on matter. Religion though in comparison is stuck in a rut.

To understand the historical interpretation of religious experience Jay explained that the revelation of spirit or the absolute is always unchanging and transcendent in its nature yet has to be interpreted by the human experience through whatever the cultural filters and knowledge of the time. This explains the ancient tendency to create a personified aggrandised externalised God with superhuman attributes.

Today Science is struggling with the limitations of its own methodology; conceptually it is not generating notions with sufficient explanatory power to describe the phenomena that it is witnessing. As a quantum physicist Jay has been privileged to be taught by Roger Penrose and is very well acquainted with the key discoveries at the quantum level that challenge the underpinnings of scientific methodology.

Even Einstein as a physicist who was deeply committed to a rational material explanation of phenomena got himself into difficulties refuting the claims of Bohr Schrödinger and Heisenberg. Taking the group into the detail of quantum discoveries Jay demonstrated the limits of the materialist model to explain quantum entanglement and the uncertainty principle for example.

Jay drew the group’s attention to the fact that when you peered beyond the current limited scientific explanations all matter seems to be an appearance and also everything is inextricably interconnected. The deep introspection and contemplation of the mystics describe the essence of everything as non material consciousness.

Jays passionate evocation of the non material essence of reality, created a very receptive atmosphere for his claim that a new spiritual humanism was required, to embody the both the discoveries of Science and Religion.

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: The Extended Mind, Morphic Resonance and Spiritual Experience

Notes based on a joint conference held by the Alister Hardy Trust and the London Science and Medical Network group at Kensington Unitarian Church 6th June 2009.

Rupert gave a perfectly organised and cohesive talk on this topic straying into areas that he does not frequently cover in public forums. Interestingly he talked about the use of psychedelics to catalyse religious experiences throughout the history of spirituality and also divulged the positive lasting impact of his own personal experimentation with these drugs. He included this comment within a comprehensive categorisation of the types of activity that induce or generate religious experiences.

He followed this by describing three theories of mind; the materialist view which he claims has failed to prove its case, those metaphysical theories that are in essence platonic because they claim that there are laws outside of nature that govern the mind. Finally he explained his own theories and evidence for what he terms the extended mind.

He then talked about his appreciation of religious place, ceremony and ritual observance, commenting on how acts of ceremony and liturgy repeated consistently over time provide us with a direct ancestral connection. Those identical acts performed by our forbearers have set up a sympathetic field of Morphic resonance that is so embedded in sacred spaces that they can induce spiritual experiences in people simply by entering them.Rupert also extrapolated on his recent musings on the nature of consciousness and the past as well as the realm of possibility.

In the plenary session he depicted his own views of the 'credit crunch of materialist science'. He states that conventional science has constantly offered promissory notes on it’s conviction that a complete explanation of various phenomena in scientific terms is not far off. He stated it was time to insist on an end to these promised explanations. Especially because these scientists have cornered all the available funding using just one modality of scientific research.

He proposed a Littlewoods football pools betting exchange, whereby scientists had to declare specific dates and then bet their personal finances on these predictions! Furthermore he proposed an ‘ecumenogenesis’ of western life sciences in order to properly pool information to create a more convincing explanation of the unexplained and conveniently ignored gaps in the current scientific model .

In the break I commented to Rupert that his musings on consciousness the past and possibilities had move forward since the time he had spoken on the topic, he replied by stating that it was constantly on his mind as he tried to come up with a coherent explanation for the relationship between past present and future.

Integral Parenting

My close friend Patrick Bryson recently gave a pioneering presentation at the June salon of the London Integral Circle on the topic of Integral Parenting. What follows is the post I put together on the groups Yahoo forum summarsing the flow of his talk;

An engaging evening devoted to Integral Parenting was enjoyed by the group in Hampstead last Wednesday evening

Patrick Bryson took us on a brief but intriguing journey into what integral parenting might look like. Not claiming to be an expert in integral theory, Patrick presented several examples of integral interventions he made whilst raising his fourteen-year-old daughter. These actions revealed the potential of adopting a conscious and integral approach to parenting, which he believed was allowing his daughter to find and experience an authentic identity, independent of the hypnotic pull of her peers and the prevailing materialistic culture. In relating to the topic of ‘Why parenting is already an integral issue’, Patrick put forward to the group that parenting was already an integral issue because the level of the parent’s consciousness was automatically the level of consciousness adopted by the child.

Patrick was insistent that the key factor in promoting his daughter’s welfare was his work with other students of Andrew Cohen on developing a new reference point for the self within the intersubjective, as guided and informed by his teacher Cohen. This equipped him to step back from some of his conditioned parenting impulses and be sensitive to critical moments in his daughter’s development. The focus of Cohen and Wilber and that of Spiral Dynamics on the stages of individual and cultural growth had been extremely useful in understanding and responding to his daughter’s experience.

One particularly mind-blowing event occurred when his daughter was around the age of seven and began asking profound and meaningful questions about life. They had been walking through some beautiful parkland when they spotted a deer. His daughter asked the question ‘Where did the first deer come from?’ and Patrick was able to answer her by explaining the deep time cosmological development of human consciousness in terms she understood. Furthermore, he witnessed her awaken to her own experience of the evolution of the universe within her own consciousness as they spoke! The consequences of this event are still unfolding today as she moves toward adulthood. These naturally occurring deep questions are frequently dismissed or ignored by parents, and the opportunity to develop depth is almost always wasted.

His daughter also went through a period of time during which she had become highly insecure because of intense competition among her peers. It was ‘a battlefield of best friends’. The dynamics of this competition caused her much torment. During this time both her parents did not get too drawn into the day-to-day drama of her suffering but held a larger integral context for her. Slowly, she was able to disentangle herself from these dynamics and discover within herself, a distaste for the unhealthy competition. In doing so, she had made her suffering an object and became disidentified from the causes of her suffering. This was the process, Patrick noted, through which consciousness always evolves. His daughter has now developed a level of autonomy within the peer group and is able to stand her own ground. She can question and challenge behaviours which make her unhappy. In the last few months she is starting to relate to her potential, thinking of the future, making her own plans, and shining in her studies.

Patrick also touched on the simple guidance offered to him by Andrew Cohen related to raising children by teaching them respect and demonstrating that life is positive. On the subject of respect, Patrick also spoke about the postmodern parenting context in which parents are reluctant to exercise their authority with children and, rather, seek friendship and equality with their offspring. The necessity to provide structure and guidance is frequently neglected and leads to scenes of the child-parent insanity we frequently witness in our streets and shops.

A lively back-and-forth discussion ensued. Challenges and responses to the issues raised by integral parenting were explored by the group. It was clear that such an implicating issue provoked deeper and wider engagement in the group than is usually the case!!

Scientific Revolution or Evolution?--Conquest vs. Consortium as the Future of Science

Elisabet Sahtouris gave a talk this week on the above topic at the London branch of the Scientific and Medical network

She convened the Hokkaido Symposium in summer of 2008 to create a convergence between those scientists that believe in a Living Universe and those conventional scientists that believe in a Materialist Universe.

Elisabet already got coverage for her symposium last year for in Hokkaido in the Kosmos Journal attached which kicked off the conversation above.

Quote from the article:

In a time of need to shift as quickly as possible from unsustainable lifestyles to sustainability around the globe, we ‘Hokkaido 8’—now calling ourselves an Evolution of Science Group—recognize this issue, to have key potential for facilitating that shift, especially as it concerns the relationship between consciousness and matter

So this symposium brought a number of PhD scientists including a Nobel Laureate, who believe in a Living Universe and the primacy of consciousness. Together they analysed materialist science to examine which were the key basic assumptions upon which this form of science is based.

Equally they then analysed their own belief system in a Living Universe and came up with a set of basic assumptions for this belief system. They have now are seeking
E50k to put a survey 5000 scientists throughout the world using an international surveying company in order to screen their underlying beliefs about nature of the universe. Elisabet feels this is much more useful than asking them if they believe in God!!

(article again)

In collaboration with international survey company, GlobeScan in London, a global survey of scientists’ deep-seated unproven assumptions—the foundational worldview beliefs upon which any science necessarily rests—is in the planning stages. The results of that survey, never before undertaken, are expected to reveal that the foundations of science are not as monolithic as commonly believed, and that therefore a diversity of sciences, with formally agreed upon methodological commonalities as outlined above may be not only desirable but almost mandatory in a peacefully globalized world

In the talk she stated that a lot of ancient cultures had scientific systems with specialist aspects Vedic Inca Taoist etc and envisaged a consortia of sciences balancing a materialist science worldview, with these ancient sciences but equally demanding these ancient sciences come up the mark of Western scientific methodology.

What was revealing for me was having all the basic assumptions mapped in one place, as they feel very familiar to me and yet not been fully specified articualted so accurately before in my view;

What follows below is what I remembered, and can manage to record, transcribed from my notes made during the talk.

Materialist Assumptions

Everything is constructed of matter
Darwinian Natural Selection explains evolution
Science as Practiced is the only means to understanding and knowledge
Reality is meaningless
Space and Time is the only context for reality
Psy phenomena are not real
There is no Higher Power
There is no non local causality
Life is a derivative of non life
Intuition is untrustworthy and unscientific


Living Universe Assumptions

Mind or Consciousness is of primary importance
Intelligence plays a role in biological and cosmological evolution
There are many avenues to True Knowledge
Reality lies outside of space time
Psy phenomena can be studied scientifically
A higher power exists
Non local causality is real
Life is fundamental to the Universe


The underlying assumptions are not really scientific of either position there are really just cultural beliefs

Another summary of the talk http://www.scimednet.org/localgroupscontents.php?action=Report&Control=London+Group

Integral Politics & London Integral Salon

My second offically published article was recently put online;

London Integral Salon Notes from the Field January 18, 2009

A Dialogue and Discussion on Integral Politics

With John Bunzl and Victor Anderson, Facilitated by Michael Herrick

Now Published on the Integral Leaderhsip Review website

http://www.integralleadershipreview.com/archives/2009-03/2009-03-notes-pendle.php

Rupert Sheldrake Visionary Scientist

I went a talk given by Rupert Sheldrake presented by the Gaia Foundation at Burgh House in Hampstead on Wednesday night.

The event was held in a unique and intimate setting. A buffet meal and wine is served beforehand in a flat on the ground floor of the Gaia Foundation’s office and then the talk is held for one and half hours in Burgh Hall just across the road. This is then followed by more food and wine back at the flat afterwards. The talk was titled Morphic Resonance, Collective Memory and Habits of Nature.

I arrived early to network yet ended up in the garden and was invited by Rupert to sit on the available chair next to him. So I found out what he is currently doing and thought to publish some of this on this blog.

He is currently republishing his books ‘A New Science of Life’ and the ‘Presence of the Past’ and updating them in terms of his own experiments plus the latest developments in current science. Whilst these developments stop well short of proving his theories he feels they are headed in the right general direction. I noted to him that he was lot more active giving lectures and talks recently and he said he was doing this to emphasise the importance and significance of his work on Morphic Fields and Morphic Resonance as his books of late had focused a lot more on his experiments.

The talk he gave was both beguiling and riveting and as usual he put everything into a huge philosophical context, pointing out some of the erroneous assumptions upon which most of materialist science is based. The latter part of the talk was full of the scientific examples and anomalies that point to his theory of Morphic Resonance.

There are three further points that were of most interest to me;

1) Creativity
Toward the end of his talk Rupert added a postscript about creativity, explaining that his theory of Morphic Resonance really has little to say about creativity as it describes habits which have been repeated and that which is repeatable. Science is essentially a study of habit. He felt creativity occurred in nature when the existing habits are blocked and this almost forces creativity to occur but this could not really be studied or understood by science.

I questioned him further on this as I felt happenings such as the ‘big bang of plants’ must require a fuller explanation. His response was to say some of these things were beyond the mind and therefore we lacked the capacity to know or understand them, he was aware of these ‘punctuated bursts of evolution’ and his best explanation he said drew from the realms of philosophy and theology. In actual fact he saw these occurrences as interventions from the Holy Spirit.

2) Consciousness
My recollection of this component is quite indistinct as it was a small fragment right at the end of the talk. However Rupert was answering a question about the space of emptiness and that of potentiality, when he alluded to the fact that everything that is created that is matter, which is studied by the science is arising in some sense out of the past.

Consciousness in contrast was arising out of the future and was looking backward at the past. I may not be expressing this exactly he meant and was fleeting moment in time but I thought this nano moment revealed something significant and different about his view of consciousness.

3) A Wager

Rupert is shortly about to publicise in the Economist I think, a bet he has constructed with Lewis Wolpert one his most eminent scientific detractors with whom he has conducted several public debates. In a recent debate Wolpert stated he was fully confident that within 20 years science would have discovered the totality of information that governed the development of the human organism.

Rupert challenged Wolpert’s ‘faith’ in science (he is a rabid atheist!) to produce this result and subsequently Wolpert changed his prediction to 100 years. To cut a long story short since the debate and after a lot of bargaining down by Wolpert, they have wagered a case of the finest port (which will matured to it’s peak by May 1 2029 in twenty years) that science will have discovered everything that it needs to know about the development of the nematode worm the simplest animal life form within those twenty years. Rupert is obviously betting against the likelihood of this happening. I may not have the exact terminology right here but I hope you get the sense of the wager!

Overall an inspiring mindstretching and very valuable evening.

Interesting approach to meditation by Buddhist monk

At the end of February 2009 -I am really behind with my posts!!-

I attended a meditation session at the Hub in Islington with Vajradaka, a non-sectarian Buddhist meditation teacher.Vajradaka started meditating in Kyoto, Japan in the late sixties. After practicing in various Buddhist traditions, he joined Friends of the Western Buddhist Order and until recently lived for 21 years in a meditation retreat centre in the hills of Wales where he led retreats and mentored people in meditation.

Whilst the content of the session was not highly remarkable by the standards I am used to, the style of presentation was unusual and possibly something our teachers at Enlightennext could learn from.

Key features included;

Silence was a component but not the main activity of the session
Meditation was presented within a philosophical construct and partly as a contemplative exercise
Illustrates how work with total beginners can be achieved
Highly accessible almost secular presentation
Free of all Buddhist cultural trappings and obvious Buddhist dharma
Use of Leonardo Da Vinci as an example made it very easy to for people to relate to the content
This style would be easy to adapt to business and educational sessions
The philosophical impulses utilised can easily be related to the authentic self

The session

The session started with introductions and sharing experience of meditation

Then there was a short 10mins session of silence

Vajradaka encouraged people to stay in the space and opened up to some contemplation by asking to write down whatever came into our minds through free association in answer to the question 'what is true'.

He then spoke about becoming aware of habits, becoming aware of habits created choice, choice was extremely important as choice and evaluation plus awareness offers the possibility of a different choice.

Becoming aware of the relentless nature of habits allows for disengagement from them

He drew some comparisons with Leonardo da Vinci who despite his wonderful technical abilities and achievements it was his constant drive to understand creativity. It was Da Vinci's striving to understand and his drive to learn about the source of this is what has made him unsurpassed in his achievements. He emphasised it was Da Vinci's curiosity and continuous practicising of creativity that made him excel

Vajradaka then got people to reflect on something they wanted to change and had people share this in small groups of four people.

Everyone that came back into a big group and then Vajradaka started a discussion concerning the inherent paradox of meditation practice of being relaxed and alert at same time. He got people to give their own examples of this in their own experience. The first example was of a person who considered themselves shy yet could still be quite extroverted in varying situations. The instructor talked about bringing science and art together. Also the paradox of 'No I and No will vs I will and how will I?' which gets you onto the cushion in the first place.

Vajradaka has just started his business Creative Engagement and is delivering meditation sessions to the British Library. he has a blog sit https://owa.wie.org/owa/redir.aspx?C=d7e7a6f50667441d8f05c1f638f951fd&URL=http%3a%2f%2fcommunicatingmeditation.wordpress.com

The International

I went to see this film on Sunday at the Holloway Odeon; and I have to say it was more than disappointing. The key characters fulfill their stereotypical roles with Clive Owen appearing as if by rote angry, unkempt, brutalised, horrified and angry again, as with Naomi Watts who is sorely under utilised as the female lead, conforming religiously to genre type. This was not the actors' but the writers fault, the producers of Bourne and Bond at times, overcome incredulity, through audacity and stunning action, however the International fails to deliver on all of these fronts.

Despite the topicality of the subject matter, essentially the storyline failed to engage me enough to suspend disbelief in the lead characters. A summary of the plot is as follows;

Interpol agent Louis Salinger (Clive Owen) and Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts) are determined to bring to justice one of the world's most powerful banks, the International Bank of Business and Credit (IBBC). Uncovering illegal activities including money laundering, arms trading, and the destabilization of governments, Salinger and Whitman's investigation takes them from Berlin to Milan, where the IBBC assassinates an Italian prime ministerial candidate. (from wikipedia)

What attracted my to see this film was the stunning look of the trailers and the production values implicit in such ravishing appearances. The scenery and the backdrops are mainly breathtaking, particularly the scene featuring the Italian arms factory and shots of the precipitous cliff edge route away from the site. Additionally the building and location shoots are visually poetic, their imposing immenseness conjuring up resonances of feudal castles and palaces of a more mythological era.

Armin Muelher-Stahl is very credible and skilfully underplays his role as an ex Stasi Head of Security for IBBC and his character allows some (shock!) moral complexity to enter into the film. Furthermore Ulrich Thomsen a Jonas Skarssen , the president of IBBC plays the head of the evil empire as a normal businessman, coldly calculating the best way to further the banks financial goals without any hint of sadism or megalomania, whether these portrayals are down to superior acting or better drawn characters it is hard to tell.

These positive points aside it leaves me wishing for more nuanced ambivalent portraits of the ‘good guys’. Who in the International are so preposterously always doing the right thing, that the evil banks employees, partially steal the show and demonstrate to some degree the motivations that caused the current economic crisis.

Don Beck:Dancing the Integral Vision

A day workshop with Don Beck in on March 14th 2009

The whole event was phenomenally successful as over 100 people attended, which were far more than the forty we had initially envisaged.The participation was of a very high calibre and we were very happy to host so many delegates at the EnlightenNext London centre.

I thought though that I would write about two of the interludes during the workshop might were of greatest interest to me.

The most electric part of the day was after Don Beck played the video (below) titled `I am a Reborn American' Afterward he canvassed the audience to feedback their experience of the video whilst it was playing. Apparently the Norman Lear media people, in the wake of Obama are seeking to unite the country and leave the divisive Bush legacy behind. The videos producers have approached Don and asked him about how to improve the video and widen it's appeal.

This video was a masterly way to surface the implicit assumptions and values held within our cultures' memetic structures. The video provoked some strong reactions as well as bringing to light many of the darker shades of pluralistic (green) from Europeans and an occasional an American alike!

To my mind the most negative responses highlighted the inadequacies of a global worldview.When you watch the video below at the bottom of the blog you might be interested to monitor your own responses. I deliberately have not explained too much because the it provokes and evokes a wide range of responses.Post your responses on this blog!

The other aspect of the workshop that was most fascinating to me was Don's intention to reawaken the healthy aspects of British Identity; that impulse that travelled explored and civilized the world as well as the innovation and creativity for which our nation is noted. In fact he titled his presentation `From Rule Britannia to Cool Britannia to Integral Britannia.'

I think Don was trying to elicit a sense of responsibility for the world/spiral and encourage us Brits to take global problems on using the knowledge that Spiral Dynamics contains.You might be amused to know that most of us Brits drew a bit of blank here!

Partly the postmodern deconstruction, of the British colonial and imperial legacy has left a vacuum in our identity, which combined with British reserve uptightness and cynicism means a healthy British identity seems a long way off!! I questioned the panel at the end on this subject and only found one of the responses remotely inspiring.

I believe that Don was also encouraging this because our British tolerance of extremism and inertia around a positive sense of British identity would actually allow those radicals with greater convictions to fill the ideological/political vacuum and ensure that they thrive in the absence of a robust opposition.

Though very worthy, obviously a healthy nationalism would preserve numerous vital forms and structures here; it still feels retrogressive to reconstruct a nationalist identity given that global consciousness leaves that behind. But a healthier Brit identity could be helpful given the challenges we might face. Perhaps the Kosmic consciousness could help figure this conundrum out!!

As a volunteer at EnlightenNext London I am and have been a key organiser, promoter and networker supporting the work and the mission to transform consciousness and culture. As well as meeting numerous people and going to an eclectic range of London talks and events, I spend hours writing copy for various Enlightennext events, sending e-mails and posting web listings to publicise these various happenings.

This year key tasks outside of working hours, have included the following; I have written copy and promoted Ursula King's talk at the Islington centre on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: An evolutionary mystic with a global spiritual vision, worked with the London Integral Circle to present the Don Beck workshop Don Beck Spiral Dynamics in Action: Dancing the Integral Vision this last weekend do see the report below. The tasks for Don included a huge copy writing fest a massive mail out, endless to and froings via e-mail with Don, countless discussions on how to best organise present and partner, for an event that turned out to be a massive success.

Other work in the pipeline has included more copy writing and consultation around a partnership with Alternatives St James in Piccadilly for the third in a fantastic series of dialogues between Rupert Sheldrake and Andrew Cohen Creativity, Habit and Freedom . In addition I have been prinicpally responsible for drafting the copy for another EnlightenNext partnership event with Olivier Mythodrama Associates titled 'Men and the Quest:A weekend evolutionary journey for Men, with Richard Olivier, Linus Roach and Chris Parish. More on this to follow.