90 Days of ILP

My Aunt Marge put the "great" in Great Aunt. A world traveller and a long-time singer in the church choir, she worked for RCA records in Mahattan for many years, owned a Siamese cat, and never failed to send a greeting card on a major holiday or birthday. Though she never had any children of her own, she was a major influence on the lives of my brothers and I, having introduced us to everything from Beatles records to the treasures of Africa to what it means to age gracefully. She passed away this morning.

She was 86, and for the past three months had been deteriorating so quickly, being checked in and out of the hospital many times, that her passing may have come of something of a relief. As she started to decline, my parents suggested I send her a call or write her a card to brighten her mood, but for one reason or another, I kept putting it off. It was never the right time, I never had the right amount of energy, my cell phone never had enough charge to make the call. This was not done out of malice, but out of a false need for everything to be perfect. I couldn't just buy a card, I had to design one from scratch. I couldn't just write a "get well soon" message, I had to tell her everything she'd meant to me in my life, even after she had retired, curtailed her travels, and become a permament fixture at the family dinner table back home in Upstate New York. But I didn't, and now it's too late.

While certainly this was a personal failing on my part, it also highlights a struggle I believe that many of us face: honoring our past and the people who made us who we are, and devoting our time to the future and our own potentials as human beings. I think we often feel burdened by the bridges we've taken to get where we are today, and in our weaker moments may burn them intentionally, or let them crumble through neglect. But these are the exact moments when practice, and our commitment to the elimination of suffering, matters most: when the people who've sacrificed to bring us the pleasures we now enjoy are suffering right in front of us. To take some form of action to alleviate this suffering may not seem like the most convenient thing to do, nor the thing that will help us the most in our careers, but that's the point: the world is more than just us and our own concerns.

And so, with another important participant in my evolution as a human being now leaving us behind for a better place, I think it is a good time to remember this key cornerstone: our lives do not belong to us. Aunt Marge, Rest in Peace.

Well, guess what? Mr. ILP Blogger, Mr. #1 Man Night promoter, Mr. "I Set Goals and Then I Meet Them", failed to meet his goal yesterday. Why, you ask?

Let's back up. The purpose of the Men's ILP Group (or "Man Night", as we prefer to call it), among other things, is to provide a space for humans with male genitalia to hold each other accountable to their own growth. Last night was night #4, and it was where the second round of goals were tabulated. Every man who set a goal for accomplishment by last night, met his goal. Except for me.

My goal was to revise one of my short stories, and submit it for publication. I revised it, I printed it, I wrote the cover letter, I even address the envelope, but I failed to get to the post office in time. I was drinking beer, writing and recording spoken word pieces, doing my work for I-I, and when the time came, I realized I had missed the deadline. And, yes, the boys -- men -- held me accountable, in the form of twenty gut-wrenching push-ups, and the threat of temporary ostracism from the group. I let them down, and this is my punishment.

Need Man Night be so harsh? Yes. That's the point. Our higher self has a momentary flash of insight, sets an intention, and then we're hijacked once again by this Thing That Calls Itself You, the stupid, pleasure-only Ego. It takes some foreign elements, some hyper-aware communard brethren, to hold the small self's face to the flame of what the higher self has in store for it.

Such is Man Night.

My boss is a lunatic. He basically took 12-15 separate websites, had a crack team of flash dudes string them together, and came up with this, his brand-new website (launched today). Nice work dude. And if you want to see how the I-I staff parties, check out the photo section.

Ok folks, I've got five days left on this thing: what are you thoughts for moving on from here? I've gotten dozens and dozens of emails since this thing began lauding its inspirational capacity and the quality of its writing (thank thank you to everyone who dropped a line)... is that a sign things should continue, post 90-day? Are you pining for a post entitled "Day 6,733: Paul's Body-Mind Unfolds Into Emptiness"? Should I move in another direction? Quit altogether? Make more art and shut the hell up already? Your feedback please....

PS: Also note, Tuff Ghost has just begun his challenge, click here.

The other day, Integral Spiritual Center hosted a live event in Denver, featuring, along with the ubiquitous KW, Father Thomas Keating, chief patriarch of Contemplative Christianity (a.k.a. "centering prayer") here in the states. The event began with a gospel singer from Naropa (above), which got Wilber clapping so hard he lost all note-taking strength in his right hand for the first five minutes of the talk.

Then it was on: two solid hours of theory and wise espousal, with KW and Father K. sharing equal time to deal with all the vagueries of states and stages, the importance of the shadow, one's relationship to the divine, etc. After a break, a few panelists joined KW and FK, including my mentor John Forman, who asked FK a question on the similarities of FK's centering prayer to the Benedictine practice of Lectio Divina, which is a form of meditative rumination over a sacred text.

According to John, the process can be boiled down to 4 steps:

1. The reading stage (slow, deliberate)
2. Discursive (uses the faculties) meditation/rumination
3. Yearning for union with God/Spirit, which turns to prayer
4. "Hear" the answer in the "language of silence"

Unfortunately, such an in-depth practices requires a bit of time to actually "sink in", keeping it from inclusion as a one-minute module. But, for a word-geek like myself, this is far more interesting than boring ol' vipassana.

[NOTE: This post is for theory geeks only. People with actual lives, click here.]

Frank Visser, Dutch emprasario of Integral World (formerly known as "World of Ken Wilber", and the only website worth reading for we integral fanatics in the late 90s), has started a blog called Wilber Watch, which is "devoted to the work of Ken Wilber, including both his fans and his critics, as long as there's debate." I realize it could be proven a bit disloyal (?) for an employee of I-I to promote the work of KW's critics, but then again, if Scoble can do it, why can't I?

Speaking of the critics, check out Jeff Meyerhoff's rebuttal to Mark Edwards' deconstruction of Bald Ambition here.

And lastly, please welcome ace critic Andrew P. Smith back to the fold, with new posts at Integral World on Integral Methodological Pluralism and KW's pdf preview of Integral Spirituality.

Let's rock ya'll!

After a long weekend with a friend from out of town, it was all I could do yesterday evening to just sit and watch AMC's Godfather marathon. Bad move, according to a recent post on the geek blog Creating Passionate Users which outlines the role that exposing oneself to negative/angry people can have on the brain. The post references the recent discovery of mirror neurons, which activate in the same way while watching someone doing something as if you were doing it yourself. In this light, by exposing myself to the despicable likes of doomed hothead Sonny Corleone or conniving Miami slime Hyman Roth for hours on end, I was actually creating mafioso neurons in my own brain!

The Angry/negative post came hot on the heels of Microsoft uber-blogger Robert Scoble announcing that he would be moderating his comments (unthinkable!). Says Bob: "Yes, I am now approving every comment here. And I will delete any that don't add value to either my life or the lives of my readers." In so doing, Scoble is nobly trying to protect himself from the "emotional contagions" capable of being spread by "people who are deeply unhappy".

What does this mean for practitioners of ILP?

One immediate reaction is this: if we remove ourselves from the life paths of "deeply unhappy people", are we not both a) perpetuating their unhappiness, and b) acting out of fear? Doesn't this smack of a lack of compassion? Aren't we just continuing in the Boomeritis tradition of shallow, unengaged narcissism, dooming others to their lot in life in order to serve our own growth?

Think of all the angry/negative people you have in your life. I can think of at least a half-dozen in my own. Are they helping you give your gift to the world? Are they preventing you from loving, and being, more? Is there something you can do for them? Is there a way you can be with them without succumbing to their lowest-common-denominator permanent frown?

Now think about the "happy" people in your life, not so much the oblivious "it's all good bro!" hippie down the street, but the people with a realistic, impersonal view of the world who choose the path of positivity and optimism without blinding themselves to the harsh realities of our world. People who know what they are capable and not capable of, people who don't blame others, who give their best and hold the world to a high moral standard.

Who would you rather be with? Who should you be with?

[PS: Comments have been quiet as of late, gimme a shout-out if so inclined if you've read this far, thanks!]

As men, we'd like to get to the point of things. As such, at Thursday's third meeting of the weekly Men's Integral Life Practice Group, we decided to shorten the unwieldy name to the brusque "Man Night". Have a better idea?

Now then, this was the first Man Night where we would hold each other accountable to the practice goals we'd set for ourselves the week before (which were written on the "man board" with the "man pen" the previous week). Guess what? Everyone did theirs! A most auspicious beginning. A couple elements of goal-setting:

1) There seem to be two or more types of goal setting. What we're working with so far are a) one-time accomplishments (i.e. get the gym membership, call the girl, sell the car) and b) ongoing, longer-term goals (i.e. getting in shape, creating a healthy relationship, achieving financial stability). For now, the practice group "man board" format seems best suited for the former.

2) We'd like to trust each other, we really would. But men need proof, tangible evidence, and most of all, measurements to show themselves and each other that real accomplishments are being made. "Energetic" accomplishments are airy fairy and intangible: give us something we can hold! While some of us indeed provided tangible evidence (a gym membership card, a cover letter to be submitted with a short story), other goals are going to be harder to concretize.

3) Celebrate your accomplishments! Each man got a round of applause and some hoots and hollers: this helps create a positive feedback loop (?), a subtle system of reward given to good deeds.

Now then, at Meeting #3, following the sharing of accomplishments, we brought up our issues of the week, and moved towards a general topic to address in the vein of issues associated with integral masculinity (what that means, of course, is the whole point of the group in the first place. As of right now, we don't know!). After a few go-arounds, a theme emerged: the ability to draw boundaries with members of the opposite sex (or whoever you may be attracted to), to be able to show both love and to assert one's purpose and mission in the world.

One participant gave a brief run-down of the David Deida 3-stage model (real brief: Stage 1 men are dickheads, Stage 2 men are pussies, and Stage 3 men are sensitive men who get things done), and then gave us all an injunction: find a way to respond with a compliment to the women (or whoever) who are challenging us in our lives, and follow it up with a statement asserting a boundary. For some of us this was harder than it is for others.

The group then focused on the romantic difficulties of a certain member, who is looking for advice on how to find women to date. Our advice? Forget bars and parties: find a club, class, or activity, or better yet: start your own.

Following this, we decided on our goals for the next week, made high-fives all around, and went out into the cool night air, barrell chests thrusted forward, fists at our sides, and manly grunts ringing from our mouths, ready to take on the world.

Man Night!

This week marks the very first ILP 5-day seminar to not take place here in sunny bland Colorado (a.k.a. the blood state), but instead in sunny bland California! Click here for the IONS page describing the seminar, or here for official I-I info, uh, not that you're going to get in or anything. But have no fear, for next up in May is New York City!

Having attended my fair share of integral seminars in the past few years, I can honestly report that when it comes to the live seminar experience vs. the experience of the kit, there's no comparison. It's one thing to do some modules and some Gold Star practices in the boring lonely comfort of your own home, but quite another to put yourself out there into the glorified gym class that is an integral seminar. And I'm not just talking about the cost ;)

There's something about practicing with others that seems to pull (or push) you along to do things you'd never be able to accomplish on your own, a certain implied level of accountability--whether catalyzed by the need to compete, or the desire to not lag behind--that occurs when people committed to their own growth get in a room together to mess around with cutting-edge tools. In high school shop class, this may have ended in a finger being cut off, but here in the protected arena of the integral experience, the things we build are certainly immense.

And so, here's to you, oh brave ILP pioneers: let's rock this mutha, and do it with high fives and light stretching until the bouncers have to kick us out. SanghAAAAAA!

Please pardon the previous post, I was temporarily forgetting the essential enduring feature of life on this planet: ceaseless slavery, hard work, and the grueling nature of life as a soldier in a war without end. The thing is, my ego is fighting back against the ILP regime of personal growth. Big time. To wake up at the same time every morning to do the same things each day smacks of everything the separate self sense finds anathema: routine, dullness, death of the pleasure principle. The ego wants to live, it wants to be "free" to "express itself," it wants to live in the sponteneous ever-present Now... and ILP is here to put a stop to all of that. If you feel like crap, if life has become a monotonous act of drudgery, it means you're on the right track. Grin and bear it homie.

Thus I take great inspiration in a variety of authors, all of whom have a piece of what it means to be an artist living beyond ego.

First we have Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art and many works of fiction, whose attitude towards his work is that of the cold-blooded mercenery, a professional ably to cooly assess his craft, and to excise those things the wee stupid ego finds so clutch-worthy. Pressfield has indentified the enemy of artisans everywhere to be Resistant, that whinging brat holding court in the middle of your brain who works by way of tornado, hurling spinning shards of excuse after excuse into the face of any artist trying to take his work to the next level.

Then we have K-Punk, the post-postmodern British theorist and Spinoza phreak who joins philosopher Slavoj Zizek in the denunciation of the "pleasure principle" of postmodern depressive adhedonia. Asked how he was able to write so much, the prolific blogger once quipped that "[W]riting, far from being about self-expression, emerges in spite of the subject." Elsewhere, he states "Psychedelic Fascism legitimates and propagates a radically unSpinozist notion of being free: i.e. give free reign to your Inner Child = yr Inner Fascist."

K-punk pal and music journalist Simon Reynolds tends to agree: "Symptoms of this syndrome ("an inability to do anything else except pursue pleasure") being a binge approach to everything, with the result that kids get locked into an addiction/debt control matrix, and also an aversion to anything that involves difficulty or the non-instantness of gratification/comprehension."

Hmm, difficulty like... practicing ILP?

Anyways, the issue with me is one of the ego making its last stand against the overwhelming success of my ILP plan to robotize my life and render the whinging pleas of the stimulus-craving Inner Kid obsolete. Lucky for us, an entire module (the Shadow) has been devised to deal with just this thing.

And so, into the depths we go, with a machete and a capture bag at the ready....

Depression is a mystery. One moment you've got your whole life together: room is clean, bank account is flush with funds, daily activities are contributing to your career path, your friends are all happy and your job is secure. You wake up every morning leaping out of bed, sit down for 10 minutes of intense meditation, then run to your next engagement with physical exercise in the basement, followed by some light cleaning and three hours of amazing creative writing, you post another inspiring missive to your amazing blog, and then it's off to work where everyone loves you and things get done and the world seems alright after all.

A week later, you don't want to do anything.

What Is Enlightenment? is up for a Webbie, click here to vote. Regardless of what you make of the content, design-wise, WIE's web site is heads and shoulders above Belief.net, their main competition.

Do you like red meat? Deep-fried fats? Booze, beer, and shooting things with pistols? Motor bikes, porn, and sword-n-sandals movies? Chest pounding, mountain climbing, and talking about tools? Then look no further than The Men's ILP Group, coming soon to an integral community near you! We go fly fishing, read Hemingway, and challenge each other to do our best Charlton Heston impressions. But don't ask us to meditate, be sensitive, or talk about things like we're a buncha intellectual fairies: that's good enought to get you canned, boy.

Seriously though, this evening marked the second meeting of our weekly Men's ILP Group in Boulder. We had Duff, and we had Jason, and we had a pack of dry-erase markers and another guy named "Seth". (Last week's attendees included my friends Ryan, Kyle, Dennis, and Ballard C. Boyd, all of whom were out of town this week). It began with Duff doing 30 push-ups for being 3 minutes late. It ended with handshakes, manly grunts, and stately exits. In between, the good stuff:

First of all, a Men's ILP Group could take many forms. Ours consists of a group of dudes meeting in a badly air-conditioned room with a bag full of Kirkland Snacks and a whiteboard, meeting to discuss the theoretical aspects of what it means to be an "integral man", along with the sharing of personal stories, working on personal issues, and holding each other accountable to goals. Yours could take place in a quonset hut by a highway rest stop, and consist solely of five dudes in leather masks beating each other with copies of Sex, Ecology, Spirituality while maintaining Nondual awareness, it doesn't really matter.

Second, though "masculinity" need not be a property inherent to the biological male organism, for convenience's sake, it's the false distinction we've decided to make. Besides, the bio-femmes in Boulder have their own group, so why not us? We agree that male bonding, often a looked-down upon aspect of modern society, can have its positive aspects. This evening we shared sports stories, stories of nature, and stories of camping.

Then we wrote down our goals for the coming week on the "DO NOT ERASE!" whiteboard, and concieved of a devious form of "consequence" should we fail to meet our chosen mini-missions: public humiliation in the form of a public "wall of shame". We'll see how it goes.

(PS: Though I'll leave it to the others to reveal their own goals, mine was to submit a short story to a national fiction publication by next Thursday. If you feel like bugging the shit out of me for not doing it a week from now, which won't happen, be my guest.)

(PPS: yes, we have a mascot. His name is Mansquito.)

Well, well, well, it looks like uber-sleeper Steve Pavlina has called it quits on his Polyphasis Sleep experiment, and has once again joined the ranks of we Monophase-oids. His main reason? Because the rest of the world is Monophasic. Welcome back, Steve-O!

Attention US citizens and integral practitioners: I don't often shill for political causes on my blog(s), but this one has me too terrified to do otherwise. If you feel so moved, CLICK HERE to sign a MoveOn.org petition to stop Bush's insane plan for nuking Iran. ILP, done properly, is not a life practice limited to things designed to hone body, mind, spirit, and shadow, it's also one that must take into account society. If the unthinkable happens, and the Bushies herald forth a new nuclear age, don't expect to be able to meditate once the fall-out makes your skin turn purple and slide off your bones. Just a notion to consider.... And of course, we should all be willing to listen to counter-arguments.

ADDENDA: Lest you think I've slid into unthinking Green-ism, here's Mark Steyn with an alternative perspective on why those fallible humans occupying what was once Persia may not be so innocent and pristine as a well-intentioned peacenik might choose to believe.

What I used to do (ILP day 1): Work as hard as I could until I passed out (usually between 3am and 6am), then wake up on the office sofa and do it all over again. If there was time towards the end of the day, I'd squeeze in a workout (read: 10 push-ups, maybe a light jog), do some writing (blogging counted), and perhaps meditate. The fundamental tasks -- make a living, eating food -- took precedence over the significant ones -- working on my writing, honoring my body's long-term health, honing my mind, exploring my shadows, and I was all the worse for it.


What I've been doing now (ILP day 60s): Getting all of my significant tasks out of the way first. This means: wake up at 8, meditate and exercise, and write (no blogging!) nonstop for an hour or two. With any luck, I can get these done and get out of the house by 11 or 12, and only then do I start the work day. This ensures that I have enough energy and time for the things that matter in the longer term, and am forced to optimize my work time to get the most of my mundane "cash" tasks out of the way as quick as possible before that midnight bedtime.

And looks like Dan is of the same mindset.

Check out cartoonist Hugh McLeod, the guy who does the "Gaping Void" comic strips on the back of business cards, here with some relevant advice on stamina and consistent practice:

Stamina is utterly important. And stamina is only possible if it's managed well. People think all they need to do is endure one crazy, intense, job-free creative burst and their dreams will come true. They are wrong, they are stupidly wrong....

If I was just starting out writing, say, a novel or a screenplay, or maybe starting up a new software company, I wouldn't try to quit my job in order to make this big, dramatic heroic-quest thing about it.

I would do something far simpler: I would find that extra hour or two in the day that belongs to nobody else but me, and I would make it productive. Put the hours in, do it for long enough and magical, life-transforming things happen eventually. Sure, that means less time watching TV, internet surfing, going out or whatever.

Against my better judgement, we've just networked the house for wireless internet and free cable TV (thank you Comcast). Just a month ago I got a laptop. What was once an activity limited to the office during business hours, can now be ubiquitous, and with it arise all the old problems I thought I'd defeated. Last summer my old laptop crashed, and I moved to a new place with a mutually-understood "no TV!" policy. Before that I was working in the dining room, online all day long, three steps from a sofa and a channel changer with access to 100 channels, a mode of living I'd been doing for 5 years. With this move, I intentionally left the new house unwired, and over the past year have seen enormous strides made in my writing, music, and artistry. Now the old demons are back, and I am terrified.

There was a time when I thought I could defeat TV addiction. Ha ha ha. There was also a time when I thought email and video downloads wouldn't get the best of me. Ho ho ho. The fact is, there is no escape from the networked life: once you're in, you're in. The trick is to find new ways to limit your involvement, stop your participation, and hold it all at arm's length. And with a steady wake-up time, a new commitment to writing, and growing habits for practicing ILP modules every day, I can once again turn to the struggle that almost killed me: losing oneself in the desire drugs of the 24/7 info-economy.

That's where a little bastard of an advice book called The War of Art, by novelist Steven Pressfield, comes in. Tv, Internet, porn: all of these are forms of Resistance, the unrelenting force of nature Pressfield posits as the true enemy of the working, evolving artist. For if there is one thing the aforementioned techno-vices have in common (as does the technology that provides them right here to my dining room table as I type this), it is the ability to instantly gratify. Writing, artistry, and practice, on the other hand, are long, drawn-out, miserable affairs, which may not yield benefits for many years, if not ever.

Says Pressfield:

When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul's call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers. We're doing exactly what TV commercials and pop materialist culture have been brainwashing us to do from birth. Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification, and hard work, we simply consume a product.

Many pedestrians have been maimed or killed at the intersection of Resistance and Commerce.

You might say that I am an expert at network-facilitated Procrastination. Besides drinking, indie rock, Ken Wilber, and running, its been one of the key features of the duration of my twenties. It's the reason I started this blog. It's the reason I realize I couldn't realize my potential on my own, sitting on my tv couch waiting for inspiration to strike. It's only been recently that will and intent have to be matched by complementary social structures (or, the "lower right" quadrant for you AQAL geeks). Giving up TV was hard, yet the last year has taught me that it's also hard to miss having. Yet with cable now back in the house, other structures become even more crucial to maintain the balance between work and play, to keep from Procrastinating again right through my thirties. Integral Life Practice, and all the other idiosyncracies I've been able to introduce into my own life, may provide just this structure.

To paraphrase Field of Dreams: if you build it -- a daily routine, a structure, a practice -- "they" (those inspiring moments we artists live for) will come.


[NOTE: If you have derived any inspiration from these words, please leave a comment. I am considering a new blog around the topic of artistic inspiration and art practice -- integral or otherwise -- but would like some "market data" beforehand. Thanks!]

This sort of monthly assessment would have made more sense as the post for Day 60, but I had more important things to write about on that day, apparently. While I cannot say with anything resembling honesty that I've fully tested the limits of the ILP kit's modules and practices, I can state with full authenticity that over the last two months, to merely take the stance of a practitioner towards my life has been far more rewarding than I ever expected. While I have yet to grow massive pecs or maintain awareness through the great states of consciousness, to say nothing of purging myself completely of all shadowy sub-personaes, I have grown through this process in ways I'm only just begining to realize.

For one, the value of time has become exceedingly crucial. To take the practice stance towards life means making space for "unproductive" activities like meditation and journaling, requiring a certain capacity for tracking what one does each day. Towards this end I've been keeping a rudimentary time journal, a simple notebook where I just mark down the beginning and endpoints of each day's activities. This has inadvertently led me to the zen stance of "do one thing at a time", which is a hell of a lot easier to keep track of.

The deeper issue with time, however, is learning to leverage what you do best, a concept known by various signifiers such as the Power Law, the 80/20 rule, or the Pareto principle. The general thinking is: figure out what you do best and do it, outsourcing your weaknesses and time sinks to others as you are able. I look to no other a role model than ILP theorist Big Kenny in this regard, as he is one individual I know with an extraordinary ability to both know and honor what he does best (writing), while delegating the tasks he finds irksome (ahem, like blogging about the kit he inspired). And if you've seen his latest work, you know that he just keeps getting more effective with age.

Another recent development has been my daily 8am wake-up time, which may seem arbitrary but has done more to increase my own sense of commitment, health, and longevity than anything else. Without this rock in the middle of a rushing stream, it seems, everything else can swept away in the tides of chaos. It has forced me to give-up drinking caffiene at night, excising television before bed (too stimulating), and making sure I go to bed at a decent hour. But more importantly, it's shown that my fixed pattern of late nights is not so "fixed" after all, and that I am capable of far more self-control and evolution than I thought possible.

A third development is one of consistent writing practice, inspired in large part by my "Supplementing the Muse" dialogue with Diane Hamilton. In ascertaining my own "80/20" power spike, it's quite clear it subsists somewhere in the realm of written communication, therefore to not cultivate this talent cheats not only my six fans ;) but myself as well. So I've made a commitment to at least one hour of pure, non-blog writing per day (today I did two!), which may not have yet led to a novel, but has taught me many positive virtues, such as consistency, discipline, non-attachment, beginner's mind, slowing down, patience, and paying attention.

How does all of this relate to ILP? A better question would be: how doesn't it?

While my general antipathy towards pursuing spiritual enlightenment remains, aspects of its seem to be entering through the back door via the vehicle of, yes, writing.

The aforementioned Big Kenny has been an inspiration in this regard as well. His writing doesn't seem to be limited to the "just start writing and see what happens" variety, oh no. He actually seems to set an intention with each writing session to use his skills to translate and (pardon the New Age-ism here:) manifest some form of clarity and luminosity in each thing he writes. Any polymath typist can create long works of brutal prose, but what Wilber adds to this endeavor is a hopeful concern to be of service to the enlightenment of all beings everywhere. The point here is the setting of the intention, coupled with (as he revealed the other day at a staff meeting) the 1-2-3 of God perspectival meditation, which a) taps you into the magnificence of the Created, b) puts you in a humbling dialogue with the mind of the Creator (however you conceive of the principle), and c) allows you to don the mantle of the Creator itself. I would never bother doing such a practice to become drooling mystic with no career skills, but I find it of possible interest if it helps my writing practice.

And, of course, to meditate, you need to be able to do so without falling asleep: hence, again, sleep practice, working out, staying fit, and all of that. Additionally, you can't really pretend to be God with one hundred thoughts of murder and rage bursting through your skull, hence, again: shadow work. It's all starting to make sense.

To sum up: this sh-t is working, albeit in convoluted ways. Thanks for reading.

I know, I'm as shocked as you are. I wasn't even expecting it. Now that I'm waking up at 8am every morning (see this post for why), weird things are starting to happen. Take this morning: after going through the trouble of yanking myself out of my twin-size at this ungodly hour, it was with something considerably less than enthusiasm that I considered the proposition of using my new waking time as an excuse to go to work early. Why ruin a pleasant morning with email?

So instead, I meditated, something I haven't done in the morning since, oh, 2004. I watched my breathe for 12 pleasant minutes (that's twelve One-Minute Modules!), and then immediately launched into a modified 3-body warm-up followed by some Hindu squats and Hindu push-ups. It became clear that, plunged into the foreign territory of A.M. wakefulness, I found myself becoming something I'd always swore I wouldn't: a boring, routinized adult. And that's ok. At 29, I'm older than most dead rock stars, and it's time to start becoming the buttoned-up asshole the next round of kids will need to rebel against. (The hippies ruined that for their kids, best not to follow in their stinky green footsteps).

I blame the 8am wake-up time, which I've adhered to for the past week (except for Sunday, when I woke up with a hangover at 2 in the afternoon). It has become something of frame on which to hang the rest of my day, a rock in the middle of a rushing stream, the base from which I bungee. If you doubt me, try it on yo' self.

My next challenge: getting through another day of email, blogs, work, and Lonely Island videos without feeling completely drained. And after that... the moon.

Check out Chez (LINK HERE (quicktime)), uber-blogging mascot of The Lonely Island gang (the same guys who brought you the "Lazy Sunday" video on SNL) as he attempts to "get comfortable" for a round of 4th chakra meditation. Please note: the ILP kit does not come with a blonde wig or black tights. Youll have to go here for that.