Julian's Blog: One Year Anniversary!

This is the archive for Aug 2006 - Aug 2007 - Now Click here for the new and expanded 2 Year Best of Archive for 2006 - Aug 2008!


What is the post-New Age paradigm? How do we TRULY integrate East and West, mind and body, sense and soul, psyche and spirit, spacious contemplation and razor-sharp discernment? What can we learn from honestly examining the mistakes of the past and how do we move forward as initiated spiritual adults?

It being almost a full year that I have been blogging here at Zaadz, I wanted to give any newer readers an overview of some choice selections of the work I have done so far:

I started off blogging at Zaadz with an eye towards writing a book about 21st Century Spirituality that would include references to Ken Wilber's Integral theory, as well as depth psychology, yoga and bodywork as integrative energetic disciplines etc. The underlying premise is that in a post 911 world we can no longer afford the superstitious dogma of old-world religion or the silly fantasies of the New Age worldview. A radical new vision is neccessary.

The central underlying theme of my entire blog is that this new vision has three key elements:

1) Cognitive Development/Critical Thinking

2) Shadow Work/Psychological Awareness and Process

3) Inquiry-Based Practice

(Of course creating community and doing  service work is important too. The former I do with my daily work - the later through a group I am part of called Yoga Groove Collective.)

Tragically, the above three elements are almost completely lacking in both conventional mainstream religion and the popular New Age spiritual beliefs. In both cases, this results in a fragmented, denial-based set of superficial worldviews that are spiritually stunted at pre-rational levels and are in many ways an insult to the sacredness of life.

Some think that saying so is taboo, unkind, arrogant etc...

My response - you gotta know where the energy is blocked before you can go about healing, growing, transforming and actualizing - personally or collectively. Doing so will inevitably provoke the feelings that are underneath the defensive regressive beliefs - this is not a bad thing. Failure to do so subverts the purpose of philosophy, psychology and the core ethos of spiritual practice. It amounts to what Trungpa Rinpoche called "idiot compassion."

The call is to what Wilber's Integral Institute describes as an ILP or Integral LIfe Practice. My personal version of that includes  yoga, meditation, ecstatic dance  and bodywork (all four as both personal practice and work that I facilitate for others),  pscyhe/shadow work via the previous four modalities as well as the hermeneutical inquiry of talk therapy and the experiential layer-surfing of Holotropic Breathwork and reading and writing. I also count interacting with both art (especially cinema) and current events/politics as part of my ILP.

Find out more about ILP here.

What is Open Sky?

My Open Sky body of experiential work is best represented right now by my 8 CD audio collection called Radical Transformation: A Map to Mind-Body Ecstasy. This set features four applied practice session that go with four in-depth lectures on pscyhology, anatomy and an entirely contemporary interpretation of the chakra system as a map of both psycho-spiritual development and embodied ecstatic awakening. The audio recording is from a 4-part, 12 hour workshop series I created and taught around the country for 6 straight years.

I offer ongoing classes, workshops, retreats and trainings in the Open Sky work.

You can check out Radical Transformation here!

Also, stay tuned for my latest audio program from the training session I just returned form at the Esalen Institute - it's called "Contemporary Shamanism" and will be available through Radio Qi!

21st Century Spirituality

Begin at the beginning! Here are the raw opening pieces  (these were originally long emails i was sending to a small group) I composed toward the idea of a 21st Century Spirituality:

Science and Spirituality

New Age: What Do I Mean?

Pre-Rational Spirituality

Trans-Rational Spirituality

Making the Transition

Beyond the New Age: An Integral Vision

An Integral Healing System: Open Sky

The Transformational Self-Map

21st Century Spirituality

Cognitive Development/Critical Thinking

Shadow and Light

Ecstatics and Ascetics: The Duel of The Dual

Intention and Depth: 21st Century Spirituality Reloaded (with videoblog)


The Secret and Other Superficial Distortions

Next comes my "The Secret" period. I watched this hugely succesful piece of spiritual cinema and immediately wrote a quite scathing review. This led to several follow-up pieces, many appreciative emails, a lot of fiery debate and best of all an opportunity to dialog with Ken Wilber on IntegralNaked.org about what this movie was reflecting in our cultural zeitgeist re: superficial narcissism and magical thinking.

Check out my series on The Secret, What The Bleep and other New Age canards here:

The Secret: Spiritual Cinema?

What the Bleep and Wilber

The Spiritual Psyche's Shadow (mega post with about 20 videoclips and a brief history of cults, gurus and aliens)

Top Ten New Age Mistakes (unfinsihed)

The Alien Channel and Other Spiritual Circus Sideshows

Alien Channel Part Two

Spirituality, Politics, Religion and Truth

Quantum Physics Gone Wrong: Ramtha, Masuro Emoto

Psychic Delusions: James Randi, Sylvia Brown, and Shawn Hornbeck


Reviews

In addition, i have a series of entries in which I mostly review recent movies through either an integral or  depth psychology lens. Titles included are The Fountain, Pan's Labyrinth, The Last King of Scotland and more!

Check out my movie reviews here:

The Fountain: Integral Cinema at it's Best (featured on KenWilber.com)

Pan's Labyrinth (follow the link for the in-depth mythic analysis in part two!)

300: A Problematic Masterpiece

The Last King of Scotland: Post Colonial Complexities

A Moth to the Flame (book review on Connie Zweig's novel about Rumi!)

I interviewed Connie here ( She is also a renowned Jungian therapist and the author of four previous  books that emphasize shadow-work!)

Uplifting Rebel Music (concert review: Michael Franti)


First-Time Zaadz Blog Events

I also created and participated in two groundbreaking (and cutely named) discussion formats on Zaadz: the Z-bate and the Zymposium. The initial Z-bate was with prominent blogger C4Chaos and was a discussion on the topic Faith, Reason and The Four Quadrants. Really good stuff and a nice introduction to applied Integral Theory at around the Wilber IV level.

Z-Bate #1: Faith Reason and the Four Quadrants (follow the links to read all six parts of the dialog with C4Chaos!)

The first Zymposium was called Integrative Spirituality" Grounded Contemporary Perspectives and featured 7 bloggers (including me) over 7 days collectively hosting discussions on their blog page. The announcement of Zymposium #1 created a big ruckus beforehand, along the lines of - Who did I think I was? How dare I suggest that everyone else's conversations were not deep or groundbreaking enough? Why were certain bloggers chosen and not others? as well as the always fun accusations that I was a) a sexist rationalist pig and/or b) An elitist anti-spiritual scrooge of some sort - the Zymposium was read by over 2000 people and hosted almost 400 separate comments in the rich and engaged dialog that followed. We held 5 of the 6 hottest discussion/hottest blog positions on the Zaadz homepage for 2 of the 7 days and were always featured in 2 or 3 of those spots each day!

For access to Zymposium #1: Integrative Spirituality: Grounded Contemporary Perspectives go here:

The Zymposium Round-Up

Zymposium #2 - Riding the Kundalini Dragon: Integrating Altered States is here!

Politics, Violence, and Confused Integralism

I have also blogged on current events, politics and the impact of  best-selling intellectual Sam Harris. Most notable are Sam Harris' wonderful debate with Muslim scholar Reza Aslan and my piece in response to the VA Tech Tragedy and the confusion amongst integrally-informed people on Zaadz regarding the really offensive (yet logically consistent with it's false premises) New Age reaction to this sort of event - epitomized by "personal growth for smart people" blogger Steve Pavlina. This one turned into myself, Ken Wilber and Stuart Davis unanimous in our dismay - and on the other side of the debate,  most of the integral-claiming folks on Zaadz trying to defend the indefensible. A fascinating chapter, and a fine litmus test for both the problems with New Age beliefs and their incredible (often unconscious) ubiquity!

Check out those pieces here:

VA Tech Tragedy: Integral vs New Age Perspectives

Libby: Cementing a Legacy of Cynicism

Humor and Truth

The Spiritual Problem of the New Age for Integral

Spirituality, Altitude, Politics and Interpreting Art

Sam Harris and Reza Aslan

Sam Harris: Orange Meanie or Teal Secular Humanist?

Authentic Adult Spirituality is Beyond Belief

The Many Faces of God

Santa Claus, Jesus, Wilber, Kohut and Piaget





Here's looking forward to another year of fun!

All the Best
~julian