90 Days of ILP

K-punk, in speaking about Capitalist Realism, but with application here:

A parallel with clinical depression may be instructive here. In particularly acute cases of depression, it is recognized that no verbal or therapeutic intervention will reach the patient. The only effective remedy is to do things, even though the patient will, at that time, believe that any act is pointless and meaningless. But 'going through the motions' of the act is an essential pre-requisite to the growth of belief 'in the heart'. Much as Pascal famously argued in his Wager, belief follows from behaviour rather than the reverse. Similarly, the only way out of cultural depression like now is to act as if things can be different.

One thing painfully omitted from the first version of the ILP kit is the notion of purpose, especially as it applies to our working life (an oh-so-crucial component of 20-somethings trying to make their way into the world). This explains why, contra more meditation and esoteric literature, I've been lately addicted to such gung-ho personal power books like The 80/20 Individual or Napolean Hill's classic (and classically weird) Think and Grow Rich.

As I read, I realize that what I encounter in my daily work life -- distraction, lack of motivation -- is something that could be partially remedied by introducing a ritual component to my 8-hour task eradication sessions. Lest you think I'm advocating the taking of Holy Communion while cleaning out my inbox, or sacrificing wee baby lambs on an altar designated for the adoration of Demeter during a conference call, I challenge you to consider something far more secular: a checklist and a stopwatch.

Checklist: Oftimes the things distracting me during a work session are idiotic hindrances easily nixed with a bit of forethought: swollen bladders, thirsty pallets, too-tight belts, unanswered time-sensitive voicemails, etc. The best thing to do, I've found, is to treat each 2-3 hour work block (that amount of time devoted to a single, large, gruesome/fun project) the way one would a formal meditation session at a Zendo: get everything out of the way so you can fully immerse yourself in the activity. If you find that you forget to eat, or pee, or call back Uncle Bob about the Sonoma Valley timeshare before settling in to do that logo for Bob's Non-Gay Hair Salon, preempt this Alzheimer's Moment by writing it the frick down to remind yourself.

Stopwatch: This banks on the old saw that "work expands to fill the time allotted to it." Rather than setting your day's work horizons wide -- "I'll just get whatever I can get done before the sun goes down behind that cliff shaped like the wounded indian" -- break your major tasks into chunks, determine a time limit for each, and set a stopwatch to countdown the allotted time. When it beeps, you finish, whether your work sucks or not. Deadlines work, baby.

Not much of an idea, but it's a start. Look to this blog for future developments as I try to wrestle my way through the daily Energy Suck on the way to a happier, more productive tomorrow.

It's not every day you get to play Apple to Apples with two German students, an exercise guru, and a 29-year-old Zen priest, but that's pretty much what I did last night, in what turned out to be a very interesting, book-free method of practicing the Mind Module (along with various relational/somatic capacities).

The award-deserving party game is a litmus test for determing where one's level of irony, comfort, humor, socialization, and wit lies, and tests one's ability to take perspectives (as it helps to know where the judge of the current round is coming from, i.e. if he's a German, keep your Americana non-obscure, or if he's a Zen priest, be sure to play -- literally -- the "Zen" card).

Follow that up with some Taboo and Scattergories, and you'll never need to read this dude again.

[Post for yesterday].

This marked the first day of my "bounce back" from the travel/illness ILP void. Positing the simple of act of just beginning over all lengthy exercise activity, I boiled it down to a very simple 10-minute, 4-module exercise to do in my dining room before running to catch the bus. In other words, Keep It Simple Stupid.

Body: modified, super-sleek 3-Body Workout, amounting to about 3 minutes of basic movements and light yogic stretching.

Mind: sat in my chair and "felt into" the four basic perspectives of my existence: all the shit going in my head, the phlegm and pain working its way out of respiration, the myriad conversations I'd left hanging in the air, the rental/infrastructural systems my apartment is embedded in.

Spirit: very simple 1-2-3 of God, which is quickly becoming my favorite practice. Rest as the infinite "I Am", then put yourself in an I-Thou relationship with this imagined deity, followed by a contemplation of the deified's presence in all manifest phenomena. Whether or not God exists is kinda besides the point: the practice is just a fun rollercoaster through different perspectives, with all the humility and agonized ecstasy that implies.

Shadow: Here's where I keep getting hung up. The kit suggests 3-2-1 Process as its "gold star" practice, but it's clear that it doesn't apply to all "issues". The main way to get 3-2-1 started is to indentify someone around whom you have a noticeable "charge", but herein lies the problem: today I love/hate everyone equally, with no one standing out as particularly worthy of praise or blame. If I had to choose an "issue", it would be my job, and the funds I'm not putting away for my future existence. The real shadow, then, is my antipathy towards self-sacrifice in the moment for the sake of the future. And that, it turns out, is the basic pathology of life today: we'll go in horridly in debt just to live a little bit more sensate pleasure in the here-and-now.

To win our Selves away from this maw, that's our real challenge today.

I am swamped in work and career ambition once again, cut in no small way with frustration and shadow. I'm snippy, bitter, angry, perpetually annoyed -- all the things that makes the desire to practice but a slim thread of futility. And this, of course, is the moment when practice matters most.

With my body recovering from a brief illness, the body module is all too easy to forget. Though my diet continues to improve, my clogged lungs prevent any push-up duels, and thus the temptation is to not do anything. Yet to honor my commitment without going nuts, I must return to basics: walking, light stretching.

The same goes for Spirit: I skipped today's staff meditation (I had lunch to eat, a Fast Company to read), but this doesn't excuse me from re-connecting with the hypothetical Ground of Being I seemed to have left by the wayside during my drunk days in Texas (er, or does it?). One single, simple breathe is a start. One-Minute Modules? Fluck that-- try One Second!

Mind: mind mind mind mind. I think too much as it is. Someone explain this to me.


The Shadow is being kept busy right now writing this angry blog post. Does the seething come through? It should. There is an unarticulate rage conjured by the multiplicity of small frustrations amped through the day: the office's heating system, my too-tight pants, my bad hair day hair, people talking, other people not talking, the deluge of small tasks I must confront, the unresolved issues stemming from myriad relationships, the unanswered emails which steal into my dreams and demand "Reply!".

The Aviator Howard Hughs had a solution to these madness-binges: lock oneself in a theatre, drink a lot of milk, and fill the empty bottles with your urine, as you strip naked and let your life's work project across your pale insane body.

Don't mind if I do.

This past weekend's excursion through Texarcana with a significant other led to the inevitable Mirror Fight. By "Mirror Fight" I am referring to, of course, something Rochester Zen Center abbot Bodhin Kjolhede once said about marriage: being married is akin to holding a mirror up to your ego 24/7, where all of your weaknesses and delusions are exposed. I'm not married, but still...

It appears that one of my key limitations is the inability to assert my personal worth. For instance, I will gladly take jobs well under market value -- with little in the line of benefits -- for the sake of convenience, self-defeat, for prestige, or just to experience something new (i.e. working at Starbucks for a few months after spending 4 years as a graphic designer). This allows people to poo all over me, and disrespects the talents I hold deep inside, and sacrifices my long-term health, financial or otherwise.

How of much this is true is, of course, contextual, but I wonder how much it applies to the rest of ya'll.

Part of the problem, I think, is time-based. We don't assert our present value because we don't take our future needs into account. For instance, with the cost of healthcare skyrocketing, Social Security bottoming out, and Boomers entering senility, many of us may need to support our parents down the line. Buying property, equipment, paying to educate our offspring: all are very real costs we should plan for now.

Another is an excess of idiot compassion, that is, we don't want to charge too much, nor appear miserly and avaricious. This forgets, of course, how much money is actually out there, and how rich some well-intentioned people actually are.

A third, though, is something deeper: the lack of an authentic personal story, which I believe could be discerned while avoiding the twin horror-poles of New Age Narcissism vs. the Unexamined "Satisfied Pig" Life. While we'd best not revel in our own lunatic shallow impulses, we can't pretend we don't offer a unique perspective in the world, and that this perspective has value if framed and presented in the right way.

For me, I could mention the adventurous idealism of my misspent twenties: the the hippie adventure tour bus, the mean-spirited alternative newspaper, the budget-salary stint as a college professor, my days at the commune, or even the fact that I have a band with my brother. I could mention my skills as a creative problem solver, the unrelenting coffee-fueled brain binges, even my obsession with Web 2.0-savvy science fiction.

If presented with passion and integrity, this perspective could be something people will pay for. Speaking of which, email me at psalamone at gmail dot com if you'd like to make me out a donation check. I promise it will go to good use.

Very.

Apparently, yes. Very. Especially if you underdress for a surprisingly cold trip to Texas, run your body down with decadent food and enough booze, then hog on espresso beans during your 7-hour trip home. Head cold, sore throat, sinuses: where are the one-minute modules for these?

I have one: sit with it. Don't pump chemicals, don't pop pills, don't move around, just sit. Feel the pain in all its loathsome detail. The aches, sores, itches, sickly pulsations: let them all creep across your existential windshield.

And that's it.

When you practice without confidence, you ring like a cracked bell. In your daily activities you quail and waver, and people find it difficult to trust you, because you cannot trust yourself. But you can do better.

Confidence is the unshakeable glue, the stirrup with which you affix yourself to the speeding horse(s) of life. To commit to flux, to grasp dearly to unlasting essence: this is our curse and our blessing. Go confidentally into that which you have no business being confident about. Risk foolishness, a lack of realism, even death and dismemberment, simply because you know that to approach something half-assed is to perish the sin of mediocrity.

We practitioners are not mediocre.

Instead, we look for the fulfillment and bliss in each moment. We stock our existential toolbelt with the awareness gadgets we use to command our unruly mind-bodies into conformity with the Solar Status Quo. Our bravery is a virus, our virtue is most virulent. To practice is to constantly touch our strongest foot to the deep end of the time pool, only to push off and hurtle ourselves farther upwards into the obnoxious air of unruly existence.

Be confident, because you can openly confront the nonconfidence of life. Expecting heartbreak and ruin, spread only fulfillment and order, turning a nose upwards at those who would fail to act for fear they may be "wrong". There is no "wrong", there is only the panopoly of learning experience unfolding before us in liminal space, the Questing Question which drives forth our need to answer this mystery:

Why is it that people and things fall apart?

Strike forth in/with confidence, young sir and madam, and let your leaden insides ring out for all surrounding churchbells to see (and feel). Declare with unwavering righteousness that which you barely know, exposing your the unearned certanties of your tentative insides to a manifest civilization which only knows contingency and disease.

Prove that you see a timelessness in all things, a wispy bedrock within all phenomenon, and find the rest of us following in your footsteps as we forge our own trails into the forests of the Deific.

...but it doesn't have to be.

[Post for yesteday]

As a member of the "red eye" tax bracket, air travel to me is synonmous with sleep deprivation, a state of mind ill-fitted to handle the sorts of ILP practices one might find time alone on a plane conducive for: journaling, reading for intellectual stimulation and perspective-taking, meditating on the Emptiness of screaming infants and overweight men with bad hair. None of these were a possibility for me yesterday as I took a 7am flight from Denver to Dallas to Austin.

It was all I could do just to read a few pages of my in-flight magazine, go to the bathroom, and hover in that general distracted zone between wakefulness and sleep, where one second I'm being asked by a stewardess for my drink choice, then *blink* in the very next second the drink is on my table and the stewardess is 50 feet down the aisle and the teenagers making out next to me are laughing at the way my head lolls.

But there is one thing in which air travel excels: contemplation of death. Indeed, it is with full trust in other flawed humans that we cast ourselves into the stratosphere, hoping to return to earth in one piece a few hours later. Everything about air travel is designed to distract us from this fact (especially on jetBlue, who must spend more money on mini-TVs and free drinks per annum than incontinent men spend on toilet paper), and yet the fact remains: we humans strap ourselves onto a fuel-loaded missle, aim it at a distant collection of skyscrapers, say a prayer and hit "go", 1000s of times a day, as unceremoniously as most people tie their shoes.

Thank God, then, for the Winter Olympics, where a contemplation with death is built into the very name of some of its events, i.e. the Skeleton, the head-first solitary sled race where people with names like Jeff Pain put it all on the line for a disk of worthless metal. The irony, of course, is the flirtation with a far more gruesome collective death each racer must undertake en route to Torino: the plane crash.

And so how do we take this wisdom of death and build it into a "Traveller's ILP", where far more active forms -- such as the 3-Body workout, or Big Mind -- are far harder to do? One thing to do is to recognize the collective dimension of any excursion: feel into the lives of each person, the hopes and experiences aligned before and after this brief flight. Feel into the passion and heartache it takes to catalyze this trip in the first place: the job they have to do, the loved ones they have to see, the far-off vacation spot whose beauty beckons. Feel into, even, the sheer human ingenuity it took to make any of this possible in the first place, the unprecedented advances and shocking technologies which we limited, coffee-addicted beings were able to wrench from the hands of the Atomic Gods to put to our own uses.

Then feel into the fact that you are strapped, by mundane mechanics, to these lives and dreams and jobs and genius innovations, fully free for a few minutes of illusory spatial isolation, high above the clouds, closer to the sun, and deeper into the Great Big Blue.

[Marketing shill's note: Terry Patten leads an excellent meditation on death and dying on the Meditation With Form CD found in the ILP Kit.]

During a half-day staff retreat with Diane Hamilton yesterday, we talked a lot about communication, and in that discussion I realized something: I hate listening to people talk. I cease paying attention when somethone is speaking at length on something which I find find boring, redundant, unfocused, or (hee hee) not about me. I feel as though my time is being wasted and they are filling the air with trash. I feel as though silence is a better option, and I'd prefer the world were far quieter than it is.

But then Diane said something that gave me pause. To paraphrase:

"We're afraid to fully listen to someone," she said, "because it is an act of ego death. We lose ourselves when we truly listen."

This much is obvious. I have been in green activist organizations where narcissistic personalities were able to dominate entire 3-hour consensus meetings, taking full advantage of the pluralist's tendency to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. In getting involved with the integral scene, which seems built upon layers and layers of words words words, I found this tendency even more prevalent (especially in we boys), where every third person I meet is prone to giving satsang at the drop of a hat. The thing is, some of these folks have some very important points to make. Others do not. Do I wish to sort the wheat from the chaff?

Five years ago, Buffalo, NY. I went to few sessions of an A Course in Miracles (ACIM) group which met in a New Age bookstore across the street from the same bar I gawked at woman and slurped Guiness inside of. Each session began with the passing of the candle, wherein each participant (usually 10-15 folks sitting Indian-style in a circle in the back of the store) would take their turn revealing their deepest truth at that moment. While most kept their discourses brief (if tearful), one particular individual, who looked like Michael Clark Duncan in turquoise hospital scrubs, spoke at length about his experience with alien abductions and out-of-body experiences.

Fuck.

For a full fifteen minutes I resisted, hoping someone would stand up and kick this dude in the mouth. It seemed profoundly rude, an of act antisocial violence disguised as "self expression" so vile I believed a law would be passed to ban it. But then, suddenly, something occurred to me: the whole point of ACIM was to get a direct experience of the (gulp) "power of love". As the practices used by the group were so intense they often lead to subtle bliss states (that, or I just couldn't stop looking at the Canadian stripper's perfect rack), I decided to trust in the process and actually love this dude who would not shut the fuck up.

In that instant, I felt I got the point of every spiritual teaching ever ushered: lose yourself and love unconditionally: Trust that Tyrone the night nurse would terminate his soliloquy at a reasonal point in time. Trust that he had something profound and worthwhile to say. Trust that, somewhere deep inside, he had the best intentions of everyone at stake.

And trust I did, for another 30 minutes, before hugging everyone goodbye and heading across the street, there to imbide another, more liquid form of love.



In other news, check out Sean's second foray into the world of ILP blogging. Lookin' good bro.... Blogging on this site will be intermittent in the next four days as I travel to Austin, TX for personal reasons. If I can't find my way to a 'puter, rest assured I'll be back on Tuesday. Thanks for reading.

Two weeks into this, I'd be interested to hear how much this blog is helping people with their practice, their entertainment needs, or their life. Is there enough about ILP? Too much? Shorter articles? Longer? Comments please! :o)

[Post for yesterday] Further snowfall blanketed Boulder, a twist of fate that "wipes the slate clean" and unites all citizens in its frigid danger. On Broadway, three buses and four cars collided. On the 205 line, the 9:30 bus caught up to the 9:00 bus, because the latter was stuck on an icy corner going up a hill.

I've always found there to be something quite mystical about snowfall. Is it the austerity? The purity? The innocence? The whiff of death? I'm not sure.

Snow Practice: go outside, make a snowball, hold it in your hands and bring it indoors. Mind the pain, the play of heat and cold, the throb of red hands and the rubber grope of whitened fingers. See it dwindle, liquify, pouring in slow motion through your palms. Breathe. Sleep.

Then jump in a snow pile.

I won't lie: sometimes it is a privelege to work at I-I. Case in point: our office ILP practice. Each work day we set aside an hour for voluntary group practice in a different "module" each day. Tuesdays are devoted to Psychodynamic work, which was the original name of the Shadow Module in the first place. For those of you with the kit or who have done the 3-2-1 Process, you know what an effective method it is, but it's not the whole story. Honestly, some of us are even sick of "3-2-1".

So along came my co-worker Annie to the rescue.

With experience in counseling and group dynamics, she led today's session through a series of practices designed to explore our personal boundaries and sense of autonomy. Too often, she argued, we will say "yes" or "no" to a request by somebody without checking in with ourselves first, often basing a decision totally on how we wish to be perceived, the fear of being left out, not wanting to hurt the other person, etc. Do this enough, and you will notice how inauthentic and stressful your life will become.

Anyways, one solitary practice for regaining this somatic sense of personal autonomy is the practice of refusal, of saying "no". Say no five times in a row, pausing each time to observe the thoughts and feelings that catalyzes in you. For me it was something weak-willed and spineless at first (I was saying no to tall German dude after all), but with practice became more assertive and self-assured.

One thing I could say no to, I've realized, is writing so much. I love doing it for all of you, but sometimes, duty calls me in other directions. When asked to continue writing a blog post, in this instance, sometimes I just have to say....

For years I resisted because I love eggs and hate cleaning, but now there's no excuse: Teflon cookware is a "likely" carcinogen. Won't you join me in throwing away your chemical-spewing pots and pans today?

It seems inevitable: that I would run out of things to say regarding "practice". There's only so much to comment on, short of just copying and pasting whole sections of copy from the ILP kit's handbook. This happened to me today around 2pm. To alleviate this uncharacteristic mental silence, I went for a walk.

North Boulder Park is a cheery strip of grass and small ball fields a block away from our office. Young mothers with small children dot its sand-filled playgrounds, and in the spring and summer, short-statured soccer teams use it for practice and games. We have played frisbee in its long tall grass, watched the Western clouds turning pink as the sun dips to bed early in the evening. To the south, the Flatirons stand supreme, welcoming the wealthy outdoor athlete to the Colorado Front Range.

Much as Zen has built-in warnings against "stinking of Zen", I realize now that I "stink of practice." There is only so much that can be said about modules and practices before the abstract air grows stifling and bland. No life could ever fit a "module", no existence could be reduced to "you must do this" and "you ought to try that". Inside I am feeling the old soul call of the rebel, rising up to break the new chains I've volunteered for it to submit to.

The thing is, ILP merely echoes what common sense would have us do if we once again would fall awake. Tired? Sleep. Hungry? Eat. Confused? Step back, relax. Angry? Reflect, talk it out, have a dialogue. There is nothing to these practices, they've been encoded in our DNA long ago, all the idea of ILP does is remind of us of what we would be doing naturally should we not be so caught up in the madness of a distracting world.

The purpose of ILP, then, is to stop doing ILP, to simply have the awareness and presence of mind to know when you should sit down, shut up, do some push-ups, take someone else's perspective, or revel in the appreciation of everything in Creation. Granted, I'm not there yet. A workholic needs the daily prods and publicly-made blog promises to keep him in touch with what he should know already.

But when the time comes, I'll be selling my kit to the first bidder. Let's start at, say, 10 bucks?

I think this pretty much speaks for itself. Hat tip, Coolmel.

A clean inbox, a clean desk, a more supple body, a diet composed of fresh produce: none of these seem to be enough. Last evening found me chugging an entire bottle of Yellow Tail while watching the Enron movie all by my lonesome. Today I awoke early, only to spend the entire morning reading Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe, nursing the usual hangover headache and sense of disappointment in myself. But, as Casey is wont to say, this too shall pass.

What is it, really, that separates ILP from a hundred other Body-Mind-Spirit systems just like it? On the outset, one would be right to surmise it to be the addition of "Shadow", but even that is at least implied in other systems. No, the real boon of ILP is, I believe, the concept of the One-Minute Module, the idea that ILP's concentrated, distilled practices are so effective that even practicing them for a minute is more effective than anything else you're currently doing.

Indeed, it is a supreme irony that such a grandiose theory as Ken Wilber's integral vision would yield such small-scale injunctions, but that's the beauty of it: integrative thinkers, because they supposedly understand the urgency of the "big picture" of a world gone batty, place a high premium on efficiency. We're busy, and we don't have time for 1-year meditation retreats or even 1-hour yoga classes. The One-Minute Module is a the espresso shot of personal growth.

The ILP kit offers nine One-Minute Modules pertaining to the Four Core Modules (Body, Mind, Spirit, Shadow), yet none yet for the "Auxiliary" (though hardly unimportant) Modules. To alleviate this deficiency, I'm opening it up to see what one could concieve as an effective distillation for each of these. Some opening shots:

Ethics Module: Such an important component for growth seems ill-suited for the one-minute treatment, but let's go for it anyways: for one minute at a time, do something nice for someone else. Especially effective would be to do something nice without telling anyone about it, i.e.: clean a section of your house you've never cleaned, buy your roommates some new food, empty the dryer lint trap, hold a door open for fifteen strangers entering Safeway, or pay the toll for fifteen more strangers on the highway. Search each day for opportunities for random acts of kindness, and see what happens.

Work Module: See Day 7's "three circles" idea, something I nicked from Good to Great. Another possible practice could be a one-minute visualization of what it would be like to be in the midst of your ideal working situation: what would your body feel like, where would you be, what would you be doing, who would you be talking to, what would your emotional state be like? I think that a regular practice of "feeling into" one's ideal work state could serve as a powerful future-magnet (chaos attractor basin, telos point, whatever) which could subtly guide one's actions towards this future goal.

Sex Module: Careful, careful. You won't be serving anyone by having sex for a minute. Even masturbation seems inconcievable for such a short time-span. Should you just look at porn? Compliment your significant other's southern regions? Visualize your genitals filling the entire room? Not sure on this one....

Relationships Module: Yet another instance where just one minute of anything seems entirely inappropriate, even if it's a quick make-out session during a tv commercial break. But if you really want to help your relationship grow, try something more mundane: pluck your eyebrows. Fold some socks. Do a couple sit-ups. Give a back-rub. Be nice to the in-laws (for a minute).

Emotional Module: What, oh what shall we do to exercise our emotional being for only a minute? Have a brief sob? Laugh until it hurts? Stare at ourselves in the mirror and smile? Look for "emotional transmutation" to be a practice offered in further versions of the ILP kit, as well as ILP level 2 seminars.

Unfortunately, this brief thought exercise has failed to rein in the feelings of vague malaise and directionless blase which have afflicted me all day. Let that be a lesson to all of us: no matter how "complete" a philosophical personal development system may be, the acute angles of real existence will always exceed its grasp. Now if I could only get a free minute....

Check out Steve Pavlina's latest podcast. Crikey, is this cat "integral" or what?!

My Gmail inbox is empty. My Apple inbox is empty. My desktop is empty. My consciousness? Empty.

Something subtle has shifted in me these last few days. Chalk it up to the Baker-roshi talk (see below), my email diligence, my discovery of RSS aggregators, or daily 5-minute meditation sessions, but things are starting to feel a bit... lighter. And I am actually starting to feel a bit more optimistic, less agitated, and less overwhelmed.

Does this mean that... ILP is working?

God damn we need to get this guy teaching at an Integral Institute seminar.

It's not every day that one of the key founders of American Buddhism gives a ten-dollar talk in your frigid town. Courtesy of hyper-alert German visitor Dennis, my friend Marco and I took a work break up to the Chatauqua center to see famed Zen patriarch Richard Baker-roshi give a talk entitled "Why Practice?". Now a rude person would have dubbed this event "Why Bother Making a Point?", but not I. I went more to feel the presence of the notorious (and notoriously open-hearted) Soto priest than to engage in an intellectually-stimulating discourse.

It began promptly at 7:30, so we showed up at 7:35. The audience of 50 or so was already seated, eyes closed, and a minor functionary had to scramble from Baker-roshi's side to collect our crisp bills. Soon enough, Baker opened his eyes and launched into a rambling, Bob Newhart-meets-Alan Watts discourse on... something. The old man touched down all over the place, grasping at whatever straws came into his brain (the Superbowl, his 5-year-old daughter, the chirping patterns of birds in Central Europe) and mouthing generic spiritual platitudes about movies and art.

Yet at the 8:20 mark he suddenly gave sure evidence of the Zen realization for which he's been lionized. To paraphrase (badly):

The zazen posture allows the body and mind to 'sleep' while your awareness maintains a type of wakefulness. Soon you will not only hear the birds outside [birds were a constant theme throughout his talk], but you will hear your hearing of the birds, which is often accompanied by bliss, a non-referential joy. This is the experience of senses experiencing themselves. But the bird outside does not hear its singing in the same way you do, and this is the Mystery: your senses aren't shared by the world. The world extends into your senses but can't be fully known. (The Chinese translate this mystery as "Li", which among other things means "steep", as in, "this Mystery is steep, tough to climb up"). An element of the world is this 'not-knowing', this Mystery, and we are through practice we are mooring ourselves in this Mystery.

Following a bathroom break, he took some questions (there weren't many-- most people seemed to just be smiling in subtle bliss), and then it was done, and we were back in the cold, looking for a hot meal.

It was a fine ending to a day characterized by anything but deep awareness and blissful awakedness. From the moment I arose, it was a day of nonstop distraction, endless blogs and emails and instant messages and task lists and "Hey, check this out!" and rumors and scandal and innuendo. At 2:00pm, when I took a 5-minute meditation break in the conference room, it felt as though I was subsisting in the midst of a swirling tornado of ideas--thoughts, words, video clips, famous bloggers ranting about the lack of transparency at Microsoft, Web 2.0 companies with cool APIs, hipster productivity applications, and everything else.

In reponse, I cleared my deskop of its drain-clogging 200 files, and shot down another 800 files from my email Inbox. I might be going down in the middle of this tornado, but I will go down fighting.

Thanks Duff for this one: The Pocketmod organizer, a cool piece of post-Palm personal organizing.

Attention all yee Mac-using ILP freakanatics: click here.

[With apologies to my sinous friends...]

This might have everything to do with the scrawny distance runner stature I've had for my entire life, coupled with my aversion to spending long hours of blog-reading time at the gym, but I have to ask: why do so many people who practice ILP put such a focus on ripping big muscles as the surest sign of physical health? Do they lack imagination? Are they insecure? Hopelessly coopted by the mainstream? Painfully superficial?

I'm not sure.

Today I went for a Fartlek run and did some Hindu squats, neither of which is going to be showing up in the girth of my biceps anytime soon. Yesterday I did 8 pull-ups, and the day before that I did nothing. But I am feeling better already. Just the fact that I am using my body more is a blessing I can already feel.

But do I really need to cultivate rock-hard muscles? Can I be "integral" without knocking things off of shelves with my giant pecs? Can I help liberate all beings by dead-lifting 350 lbs? Even Murphy and Leonard said something to the effect of "the ideal integral man combines the realization of the Buddha with the physique of Charles Atlas". Why?

Some of us might rather aspire to just an average, healthy physique, combined with the imposing will of a Frank Lloyd Wright, or the aesthetic sense of Paul Klee, or the oddball guitar playing of Stephen Malkmus.

Wright in particular has been an inspiration to me lately. Today my brother and I watched The Mike Wallace Interviews with Wright, and I was stunned at the utter conviction of the man. When asked how he felt about growing old (this interview took place about 2 years before Wright's death in his 80s):

MW: Do you think that you are any less rebellious--less of a radical--in your art and life than you were a quarter-century ago?
FLW: Rather more so...only more quiet about it.

You can't help but liking the guy. And you'll notice, of course, that he did it all without bulging biceps ;)

Short post today, too much going on. There's something amazing about being in the center of a whirlwind and consciously choosing to hold on as tight as you can, white-knuckled and energized. That's what my life is becoming: a naked ballet on a panopticon treadmill, where the whole world watches and makes demands of the men and women shouldering the boulder up an endless hill. Grandiose? Natch.

In other news, my pal Duff and I have discovered a new way to do push-ups: via email. Last night I dared him to do some push-ups, he went and did 15, then reported back via his Gmail account. In response, I did 20. He did another 15. Then I did 5 hand-stand push-ups, and won the night hands-down (pun intended).

Today today today I walked and ate and met people and emailed and made calls and drank coffee and clawed with bloody fingernails at a world perfectly satisfied with its trad mediocrity. Yet as Mother Theresa and Jim Collins and all the saints since time immemorial have demonstrated: "good enough" is not good enough. Demand more, push more, cut through, kick ass, take names, save lives, liberated the enslaved, wake up the drowsy, engage the alienated.

Buddy, your work is cut out for you.

Check out Brian Dunn, the latest blogger to "take the challenge" (the irony being, of course, that ILP is super easy in the first place -- it's the blogging that's hard). THIS JUST IN: In a completely unrelated sub-development, personal development guru Steve Pavlina has just written an amazing post about Blogging for Personal Growth. Thanks Steve!

Why am I talking with a Western accent? Because I and some co-workers were treated to dinner and Brokeback Mountain this evening, courtesy a generous friend. It was a decent flick as far as love stories go -- full of hopeless tension and random vistas -- but I couldn't help but feel robbed by the sexualization of every little scene. Sheep traversing mountain passes, pickup trucks kicking up dust, rodeo clowns distracting rabid bulls: none of it was safe from innuendo.

But then it occured to me: what a perfect metaphor for meditation practice! Indeed, if the essence of the erotic is the capacity for each lover to focus fully on the Other in the moment, then surely basic meditation is something akin to treating each breathe as a lover, something to caress as it passes through the nose and out into infinite space. Expand it: not only each breathe, but each moment is something worthy of being loved and loving you.

In other news, we've some friends in from Germany here to hang out and help where needed. Click here for the blog of Dennis and Stefanie, a couple from Bremen who've done some interesting things organizing the integral scene in Western Europe.

As I finish week one of this ILP experiment, I think it's now important to reflect on where I've been and where I might go. While I still can't convince myself of the more profound significance of meditation, I have begun to crave it in a basic physical sense, the way I once craved a beer every night. Likewise physical exercise: though its call is subtle, I do make habitual space now for at least one repitition of an exercise per diem (usually push-ups or Hindu squats). For Shadow Work, I engage in sporadic 3-2-1 and try everything in my power to keep the outsize ego in check. For Framework, studying business books like Good to Great will do fine.

But this leads me to an interesting question: why are THESE the four core modules? (This is not rhetorical: I really wonder why). Why isn't Relationship more important, or Work-in-the-World? The latter particularly, for a young man trying to find his place, seems of utmost importance, far more critical than Body (we boys have an endless supply of piss-n-vinegar), Mind, or Spirit.

Indeed, if the integral movement wishes to hold significance in the world of youth, a hat tip in the direction of right livelihood must be made. For my part, I can offer you this, a One-Minute Module in the service of determing your proper Role. And, appropriately enough, I got this idea from Good to Great.


Draw three circles, which intersect each other in the middle. In one of the circles, write "What is My Deepest Passion?". In another, write "What I Can Be the Best in the World At?". In the third, "What Can I Make Money At?." Take a moment to think, then fill out the answer to each. Your mode of right livelihood would be whatever intersects all three, and it should be the fanatical focus of your existence from here on out. This need not be set in stone: revisit and revise each week as the discoveries of the previous seven days dictate.

But really, whatever you come up with, fret not: it's unlikely you'll discover a true calling as a gay ranch hand in xenophobic 1960s Wyoming.

As admitted in previous posts, although I am obsessed with integral theory, I still don't get spirituality: what it's for, why I should do it, who it serves. For three years I meditated every day out of the fear that I would not become enlightened and would spend the rest of my life making other people suffer. I meditated because Ken Wilber said it was the best way to transform myself, to wake up to reality, and to give my gift to the world. But fear is no reason to do anything, least of all spiritual practice.

So last May, I quit, and didn't sit a single wink until just this last week when my ILP challenge began. Why? Because it felt inauthentic. Because I didn't see the reason for it. Because I had far more fundamental concerns in life, namely, building a career, working on my art, and finding love. Meditation was, and is, a colossal waste of time, and after 3 years of breathing on a brown pillow, I had a lot to catch up on.

But something Diane Hamilton said in our IN Therapia talk [subscription needed] the other day made me think twice. When asked what my practice for the Spirit Module would be, I cut her off and said "I won't be meditating on a cushion, that's for sure!". She said it was fine, I didn't need to, that all I could do was consider the option of creating an "open space" each day, something a workaholic would sell a lung or a loved one off to avoid attempting.

But being a fan of highway medians and the sight of weeds cracking through ashphalt, this stuck a strange chord in me. Life for me is a thick morass of email threads, blog subscriptions, overpriced food and underpriced drinks. I'd compare the quality of my day-to-day awareness to a thick mat of festering seaweed if it didn't have so much in common with the stinking canopy of a dark and boiling jungle. Air? Sunshine? Wind? Poppycock, fantasies.

But it's clear that more open space is what I need. My mind needs to breathe, and in lieu of so many laced branches and knotted vines, the only method to achieve this is brute force, hence: meditation.

But it must begin slow. As Ken once advised one of my co-workers, start very small. Commit to sitting, or breathing, or hacking out an open space, for just 5 minutes a day. Once you get used to the swing and the feel of this daily machete, feel free to widen your arc. Just don't slash-n-burn the whole forest: certain animals are worth protecting.

So for the past three days, I've been sitting in an office chair with my eyes closed and my nostrils focused upon, 5 minutes at a time. Simple, elegant, and stupid, like I need to let myself be sometimes.


In other news...
Mad props to integral blogger Jean Dufreznee for pointing out the "hyper-masculine orientation" of ILP, which the name of the 90-Day ILP Challenge blog, ahem, makes no attempt to ameliorate. What, I wonder, would a "hyper-feminine"--or at least a "hyper-balanced"--approach to ILP look like? Stay tuned to Ms. Jean....

Well well well, it seems that my Aussie buddy Tuff Ghost is attempting to one-up me by taking a 100-day ILP challenge! Good luck buddy, may the best boddhisattva win ;)

Dear American sports consumers: it is no longer subversive, witty, or ironic to inform everyone around you that you only watch the Super Bowl "for the commercials." Yeah, we know. See, everyone watches the Super Bowl for the commercials, because they're fun. We watch the game, on the other hand, to become enlightened.

If you noticed a parallel this evening between the Big Mind meditation process (one of the spiritual practices recommended by the ILP kit) and the Super Bowl, you are not alone. Every year, millions of Americans tune in to this national secular holiday to be shown the different aspects of their own minds duking it out on the green white-striped battlefield.

Sit in a comfortable relaxed posture with spine erect, beer in hand, breathing naturally, and let the contents of mind and emotion settle. Silently call forth your interior facilitator voice and ask to speak to the Remote Controller. The Remote Controller is that aspect of yourself with whom permission must be asked to speak to any other aspect. Now ask to speak to the voice of The Quarterback. You are young, handsome, alert: the center of attention, you must flee the adversarial world while seeking to accomplish great things. Now ask to speak to the voice of The Offensive Lineman: you are obstinate, heavyset, and selfless: it is your job to protect the greatness and potential of The Quarterback, staying rooted to the Earth at all times.

Let's call forth some other voices.

Ask now to speak to the voice of The Kicker. You are the unsung hero, pale of face and long in hair, a fragile specialist with a lonesome, specific responsibility. The Cheerleader: sexy, flamboyant, unwavering in hope and enthusiasm. The Coach: set jaw, furtive commands, flexible intellect. The Waterboy: impotent, unimportant, yet deeply fundamental.

But there are wiser voices to be consulted. Namely, The Observers, The Sportcasters: the voices of Big Football Wisdom (who sees The Game of Life as it unfolds in real time, while noting the deeper connections to unseen forces, both present and past), and the voice of the Big Football Color Commentator (the voice of holding these silly Games-of-Life lightly). You are both Al Michaels and John Madden, Terry Bradshaw and Dennis Miller, Deion Sanders and Phil Simms, all in one.

But, you will notice, that even as you tease these Voices of the Super Bowl out, even as you speak to every last cornerback and backfield referee and hotdog vendor and to the voice of the football stadium itself, that you are none of them. They can be objectified, but they are not you. You are the vast, hyperdimensional pixelated TV space in which they all arise. You are, as it were, the Super Mind.


Postscript
In other news, this morning I worked on a new combo I call the "Numbers Walk": walking while practicing the 1-2-3 of God, followed by the 3-2-1 Shadow Process. As I ambled down a suburban street in my neighborhood, I rested into the first-person "I am all that there is: super divine mega-consciousness" mindset, then had a little conversation with this divine mega-consciousness in second person, followed by a third-person reveling in all the magnificence of this mega-C's being in the world (which in this case consisted of an empty soccer field, two trees, some goal posts, and a crushed beer can). A few minutes later, I picked one of the 10,000 things that piss me off, and did a quick 3-2-1.

It seems that a certain friend and I place importance on different things in life: this person on the mundane tedium of daily existence, myself on the big picture transcending it all. This person, in fact, takes great pleasure in haggling a deal from the vendor of a minor service: I'd rather have my teeth pulled than spend a single second away from my Important Books. So we had a fake conversation, there in my mind as I walked down a street called Grape, and I realized that what this person is really asking of me is NOT to become lost in the absurd details of existence, but to PUSH BACK at the world when it is trying to rip me off and be less than it can be. So I took this awareness on for myself, resting in the idea that *I* am concerned with the small stuff (no easy task for a Wilber fan, it seems), and was going to push back at an unfair world.

And so, to put this realization into practice of caring about mundane bullshit, I made myself a late lunch and drove to a friend's house to watch... the Super Bowl.

Congrats Pittsburgh.

Word is spreading! Big ups to my new buddy Sean for giving me a shout on his deepsurface blog. Thanks for reading yo.

So, last night I engaged in one of the "secret modules" of ILP I'm not supposed to talk about, namely, the Vice Module. The practice I use to exercise this capacity is, of course, drinking in shitty bars, namely The Catacombs, Boulder's basement dive of choice.

Technically, I didn't practice the Vice Module by itself, I included it with a practice from the Relationships Module I call "shooting the shit with my work buddies". (Is this getting a little too jargon-y? So be it. My AQAL Matrix will transclude your holonic turquoise meta-mind and you will like it). When you combine two modules at once, we call that a "Combo". Much the way "kick-punch-kick-block-punch" is a far more effective attack in Tekken 4 than a simplistic "kick-kick-kick", combining your Modules could make your practice even more bad-ass.

I digress.

How would you make "chillin' with the homies at a shitty bar" a practice which could transform your life? For one, right intention. If you go out with Bob and Frank from Accounting with the intention of ignoring them to watch the Stanford game, chances are you're not going to be cultivating any major aspects of your body-mind. But if you go with the intention of listening to them bitch, offering moral support, and seeing if you can keep their girlfriends entertained without making it seem like you're hitting on them, then you're in for a Transcendental Treat.

That "treat", of course, is the Jagerbomb, and it's your sour-strong $7 reward for being a good, attentive pal. Pound three of these, and see how long you can practice Integral Inquiry, which is the constant attempt to rest in the present moment. Each time you feel yourself withdrawing or contracting, you say something to yourself like "Dude, stop it!" and return your attention to the present moment.

Which is a really good idea, because shitty dive bars are often filled with pretty members of the opposite sex, who, like you, are dying for some legitimate depth in their repugnant, shallow lives.

Vice Module, we salute you.


[Note to blog addicts: I now have an RSS feed.]

My office is located next to a group home for, er, "disturbed" adults, as in last year one of them took off all her clothes and threatened to jump off the roof. Anyways, their patio has a perfect view through the window of the main room of our office, which is a converted dance studio. This is the context in which I decided to do the 3-Body Workout at 7:30 am this morning. I popped in the "Out-of-the-Box ILP" CD, stood in the center of the room, closed my eyes, and listened with my hands folded in front of me. As I imagined myself "extending into the infinitie vastness of space" or whatever, someone within that infinite space started laughing at me. And then another. And then another. They were standing on their patio watching me. The 3-Body Workout became a 1-Body workout, and I sat back down at my desk, red-faced.

Over the course of the day, it became pretty clear right now which two modules I need to work on most: Body and Spirit. My 12,000-ton shadows and subconscious Go-Bots are scary in themselves, and my mental abilities barely rival that of a well-trained chimp with a Ken Wilber: Super-Thinker! backpack, but for my body and, uh, "spirit", the situation is far worse.

I have been exercising pretty much every day since the Fall of 1992, when I joined the high school wrestling team. This past November, I stopped everything: no more running, swimming, biking, walking, lifting, nada. As one might expect, I grew a bit of a gut. My back started hurting. I got little headaches. I became addicted to protein bars (for the convenience, not the muscles). What was once a proud physical platform -- a mighty aircraft carrier launching thousands of vitality-powered jet fighters through the sortie clouds of life -- was become akin to a mat of seaweed in a shallow bay, riddled with trash.

And so, Mr. ILP Kit, this is my challenge to you: get me in shape. I don't have a coach, I can't afford a gym, and I'm lazy as shit. Your work is cut out for you. Where should I start -- arm curls?

Now about that spirit. To be blunt: I think it sucks. Spirituality: I don't get it. I obsessed about it for years, read a lot of Watts and Wilber, even had some mystical this-or-thats, but I'm still stuck as to the point of "waking up" (which is ironic, given the tagline of the ILP kit). I'd rather just have a healthy, effective ego that got shit done.

So, before I "wake up to serve all beings", I need to cultivate some more basic qualities in my ADD-rattled brain: stuff like basic concentration, enough self-awareness to know when I am getting obsessively caught up in something, an ability to step back and just BREATHE sometimes.

That's why, just to start things, I'm going to start with one of the most basic meditations contained on the "Meditation with Form" CD: counting my breathes. Like this:

1... 2... 3... Porn... 5... Sex... 7... 8...

Oy vey.

Today I recorded an Integral Naked: Therapia phone call with Big Mind teacher Diane Musho Hamilton, by far one of the most amazing human beings I've had the pleasure of meeting this past year (if all goes well, this should be the feature on IN this coming Monday). The core issue we drilled into was my obsession with the Romantic Artist archetype. Basically, in the last 6 months or so, I've become a workaholic, addicted to the feeling of my own creative output.  As such, I really don't want to do anything else besides write, make art, do design, record music, and brainstorm. Sleep? Feh. Eat right? Poo. Meditate? Yawn.

After giving her the general picture, Diane asked to do some voice work. First, she asked to speak to The Controller, that part of me that insures my survival and guards my boundaries (in the Big Mind process, the Controller is basically the dude that lets the counselor talk to all the other voices). It seems my Controller is freaked out by my manic creative death drive to burn myself out by age 30. She then asked to speak to The Muse. The Muse, it turns out, is a very powerful entity. And it doesn't give a shit about little Paul. Once it's done using me to manifest some work out into the world, it will move on to someone else. Unfortunately, the feeling of being in service to The Muse is addictive.

Diane then asked to speak to the voice of Artistic Discipline, whose job it is to hold The Muse in check and not let her beat the shit out of me. Turns out, the AD is doing a terrible job, and The Controller is not pleased. [I know this sounds like some ridiculous psychodynamic melodrama, but it actually works!] So she asked to speak to the voice of Wisdom, who is also freaked out by the insanity of the Muse.

We then sat in silence, on the phone, for a full 2 minutes, resting in the space of not-knowing. Then, out of nowhere, my invented Voice of the Creative Problem Solver chose to speak. This voice is unshakeable, confident, ruthless. He was looking at the clouds, utterly convinced they held a lesson for him he could use to solve this whole Muse ordeal.

Without getting into the details, in the end I realized that I need some positive counter-archetypes to the "romantic artist" role model. Oddly enough, Picasso emerged as this for me by sheer dint of his longevity, a long-shot for me if I continue on my present sleepless course. So now, as a part of my Mind Module, I'm going to be studying the lives of the great, long-term, consistent genius artists. No more Jim Morrisons or Jimi Hendrixes. I need someone more sustainable.

I also realized I could incorporate this deconstruction of the "romantic artist" in my Shadow Module. Furthermore, to counteract the deadening effects of constant computer time, a new, easier commitment to exercise in the Body Module must be embraced. And finally, a few open spaces, read: Spirit Module.

I know it sounds overly simplistic. I'm sure there's stuff I'm leaving out. But it's a start.


[Oh yeah,  click here to get the kit fo' yo'self!]

Integral Life Practice is a simple, customizable program of personal development conceived by Integral Institute (Ken Wilber, president) of Boulder, Colorado. In the interests of full disclosure, let me first state that I have been a full-time employee of I-I since November 2003, where I have served as a web/graphic designer and copy writer. Ever since I first began reading Wilber's books in the Fall of 1999, I'd been practicing my own version of an ILP, which included running and weighlifting, meditation, intellectual pursuits, and a modest amount of creative visualization, affirmations, and the like. When we broke ground on the Integral Life Practice Starter Kit Project in Summer of 2005, I made a conscious decision to cease these activities in order to concentrate my energies full-bore on the completion of this massive undertaking (which consists of 3 books, 5 dvds, 2 cds, and a poster). No more exercise, meditation, shadow work: nothing.

Ironic, huh?

Now, the project ended in December (and is shipping now), but I didn't resume my practice as I had hoped. In fact, I began working in the office even <i>harder</i>, which leads me up to today: a committed workaholic, with absolutely no time or energy to devote such silly pursuits as those I once practiced. My days consist of a vacillitation between MANIC creative flow states, broken by fractured task-minding and sporadic communication, broken further by interminable meetings and concalls.

Yet the warning signs are beginning to mount.

For one, my back hurts. My energy level is sagging. My sleep schedule has been completely destroyed, my work space is in disarray, and my tasks are piling up while my enthusiasm for dealing with the daily tedium of work in the real world wanes. I've got some serious anger issues, an inability to stay focused on any task for more than 5 minutes, and a deadly affection for the "Romantic artist" archetype. I'm on an ego trip.

I look now to ILP not as the all-saving balm for my meager existence, but as a bit of personal "feng shui", something to add a few minimal changes to the furniture of my lifestyle in order to redirect things in a more healthy manner. Where once I focused entirely on practice at the expense of career, and where now I focus entirely on making stuff for money at the expense of practice, soon I will learn to balance the two poles. Personal Development guru Steve Pavlina said something to the effect that, for any permanent lifestyle change to set in, you've got to do it for 90 days. So here I go, Day 1, February 1, 2005. 90 days, 90 posts. Come May 1st, I hope to greet you as a brand new, more freely-functioning and autonomous Paul.

Epilogue

This evening, I cracked the kit open, leafing through its pages and shrink-wrapped digital media like I didn't have every word and pixel and PMS color memorized. I read the first half of the Welcome book, leafed through some of the Handbook, and then promptly passed out on the sofa at work.

Three hours later, I woke up, and began Day 2. It's going to a long climb.