Entry 5- 4:06 pm, Jan 2/2011 (Conclusion, Departure and the Coming Kin*dom)
The conference has now ended, and I sit alone (with my fiancée on a plane) slowly sipping a pint on Cannery Row (which is close to Asilomar, the conference grounds), my train leaving in three hours. I just
sat in front of a statue of John Steinbeck and felt a deep, deep emotion for the man. His Grapes of Wrath was a central part of my moral development (along with his Cannery Row), and with post-conference heart wide open I sat in front of his big mug and choked back tears of gratitude. I have an unbelievable clarity at the moment. If I compare my state to the four days ago when I arrived on Cannery Row, it’s shocking. The world is so present before me. Even in this rather busy American tourist sector, I see every building, every car, every passing human, perfectly distinct, with no effort, as though the whole world has slowed down. Can I look at everyone in this room and see through to the divine within them? At the moment I can. I spontaneously cry as I realize this, at this change in my heart and perception, and uncontrollable founts well up and whirl within me. A few folks must be wondering who the gushing nut job typing away on the computer over there is.
Today was the final day. Diane Musho Hamilton, sensing the energy of the ‘final day’ (restless, starting to come apart), asked us first thing to stay focused and to tighten our attention and intention through the last hours. This was still a major day of practice. The day started in the main hall with a live audio call with Ken Wilber (who is quite physically ill and couldn’t be there in person). The integral vision- of a human understanding/experience/practice that includes the psychological-spiritual-cultural-physical-cosmological dimensions of our existence integrated into a living healthy whole- is not reducible to Ken Wilber or his particular expression of that emerging level of human development. However, he has been a pioneer in the field and has given his life to helping unfold this type of vision, and it was a heartwarming experience to be with five hundred people whose lives have in some way been touched by his, and to give our heartfelt love and appreciation with a rousing round of applause for the man. You could hear he was touched by the reception, and it was nice to just simply thank someone for the life they have lived, for the service they have given.
The second half of the morning was Integral Church, a really great tradition started last year. Last year Craig Hamilton gave the sermon, and this year it was a hilarious but poignant talk by Arjuna Ardagh. He reminded us that the etymology of the word church means “house of the Lord”, a public place where people gather to worship. Ardagh read passages from the Zen tradition, from Sufism, and from the Bible. The passages had an emphasis on the core nondual heart of the great spiritual traditions, an arrow straight to the divine. He spoke about the three part journey of leaving the theistic ‘father in the sky’ religion, moving to a skepticism and perhaps a-theism, and then finally coming to a place where we find the divine within, the Buddha-nature of one and all.
There was music from the Kabbalist tradition, sung by Rabbi Miriam Maron, and new music written for the occasion by the conferences’ volunteers. And Jeff Salzman, the big tall heap of heart loving man that runs Boulder Integral, once again sang country tinged Christian gospel songs that he’d sung in the southern American Baptist church of his youth. It’s a beautiful thing to come from an integral understanding and to be able to strip out those aspects of traditional (blue meme) Christianity that are still relevant, deep and moving. To be able to accomplish the mental yoga whereby you let the more literal/fundamental (and repugnant to those who’ve grown past it) aspects slide by, while opening self and system to the love and the wisdom that still calls forth from the diamond center of this great Western spiritual tradition. When Jeff sang Old Rugged Cross so gently and openly, with a twinkle of a country twang, I sank deeply into the longing, the yearning, the sorrow and the passion that hummed and hovered in those old words.
The final portion of the day was in a sense the most powerful of the whole five days. I knew it was coming too, and part of me dreaded the finish. We gathered in the main hall where Rabbi Marc Gafni, the curator and core heart visionary of the event, led us to the finish. After he described next year’s ISE, we rocked out and stomped out and clapped out a couple of rousing old Jewish chants together in fine raucous fashion. Then came the final practices. Even after four days of opening I was squirming a little with anticipation. I partnered up with Ted, a big halunk of a man (maybe about sixty years old) from the southern US. We were instructed to look at each other deep in the eyes and take turns saying- “I will not be written into the book of life without you”. Oh dear.
But this is it, isn’t it. This is the same sort of realization that leads soldiers to spontaneously run back into enemy fire to save a fellow soldier, as if the lives to be rescued are their own. And this is related to a context I’d been thinking about during the whole conference, and one that Wilber had finally given voice to in his audio call- our problems as humans are now global. Whether it’s the financial system, terrorism, environmental degradation, or global warming, many of the problems we have to solve are global and thus beyond the ken of any one single nation state or peoples. And thus we need an interior transformation to accompany this set of challenges, this set of historical circumstances. We need to achieve the moral and spiritual growth whereby we learn to love all humans, all sentient things, where we come to an inner identity with the globe as a whole. And if this sounds like a pipe dream, it’s not. Robb Smith asked everyone in the final session if they were “going home with practices”, and we all said we were, loads. This transformation is not only achievable, it’s already underway. The fire of Eros is well lit. Thanatos will not win. If we listen with the right kind of ears, the drums of a new future already beat on the horizon. They promise the final overcoming of separation. They sound the coming of the Kin*dom.
When Ted and I looked into each other’s eyes, our eyes softened and glazed and we smiled deeply. I loved that bastard (in 2 minutes) as much as anybody I’d ever known. I’d of dragged Ted back to the helicopter in an instant. We were in this together I realized, there was no way to victory but with each other. For the final exercise, we were to tell the other person what our vow for the year was, given what we had experienced and learned. What were we going to put into action? I told Ted, as he held a space of big heart receptivity for me, that I was going to love the whole world with all my heart, like I’d always wanted to but was too afraid or too vulnerable to do. I intend to keep that vow.
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I wanted to finish this series of journals with a song, and there are of course many songs about love that I could’ve chosen. But I decided to go with Goodnight Saigon by Billy Joel. It might seem strange to choose a song about war; however, the core underlying connections are the same it’s just that this time the front lines will be different, and the in-group global. The new front lines will be on the streets, in the classroom, down by the ocean. It’ll be in the forests, on our knees, in the pews. It’ll be on the mountain, in the fields, together through life. It’ll be in our arms, from the roof, dancing on stone. It’ll be across the wires, in the alley, through the night. It’ll be in our hands, throughout the skies, up the river. It’ll be in the moss, planted in dirt, leaning toward Heaven. The new front lines will be in the boardroom, on the sand, mounted on camels. It’ll be seen in the leaves, known by mice, and sung by blowholes. It’ll be found by the shoreline, seen in young faces, and howled at night. I’ll see you out there.
