Sarah Nicholson - The Evolutionary Journey of Woman: From the Goddess to Integral Feminism

[NOTE: This post also appears at Integral Options Cafe this morning. While the main topic is integral feminism, it feels particularly useful for men to be acquainted with this book, too.]

 

The following is my review of Sarah Nicholson's recent book, The Evolutionary Journey of Woman: From the Goddess to Integral Feminism (Integral Publishers, 2013). Sass was kind enough to send me a PDF review copy of the book.

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When I was 20 years old or so, I began reading the Collected Works of C.G. Jung on the recommendation of an art history professor who correctly intuited my affinity for Jung's approach to psycho-spirituality. As an adjunct, I also discovered (again) the work of Joesph Campbell, who was the editor of The Portable Jung, one of the better introductions to the writings of Jung, grouped thematically. I was previously familiar with Campbell's work from his PBS series with Bill Moyers (based on his, The Power of Myth) in the 1980s.

The parallels between Jung's model of psychological individuation and Campbell's model of the monomyth took me back to Campbell's work, especially The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Bollingen Series, No. 17), which then took me back to the work of Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner.

In essence, the hero's myth, which Campbell called the monomyth, is a symbolic narrative of initiation, a process that can be broken down into three stages - separation (from family, community, previous identity), [crossing the threshold in answer to "the call"], initiation (physical and psychological trials, often involving a confrontation with the divine feminine and a need to find atonement with the father), [decision to take the gifts acquired back to the world or not], and return (bringing the "boon" bestowed or earned back to the world, sharing the gift with others, no longer fearing death).

Within those three larger movements, Campbell identified 17 individual stages for the whole process - stages that are common to many (if not most) of the world's best known hero's quests.

One thing you may have noticed, however, is that this model is distinctly masculine. While Campbell occasionally made reference to the monomyth applying to women as well, there is little evidence of this in his work.

The question is this: What does the evolutionary journey (individuation) of woman look like?  Can her story be framed within this same structure, or is there a unique path that women follow in their own trasnformational process?

These are the questions Nicholson addresses in her book.

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From the Introduction:

"In the midst of a period of internal and external exploration, fueled by the desire to understand the significant disparity between my socio-cultural context and my inner calling - which insisted that life was deeper, wider and wilder than social norms and material goals suggested - I found the work of Joseph Campbell. This meeting was deeply affective. His exploration of the hero beautifully articulated the core purpose of human life as attunement to the path of awakening, and this spoke to me directly."

As she explored the areas of mythology, religion, and spirituality, she discovered the "deeply androcentric nature of these worlds." In her book, Nicholson seeks to find and follow the heroine, to discover and share her story and to "explore woman's evolving relationship with what it is to be human."

To outline the broader project of book, here is the table of contents (personally, I find the table of contents, the references, and the index to be good indicators of whether or not I want to read a given book):

ONE: HEARING THE CALL: THE HEROINE’S JOURNEY    1

Joseph Campbell and the hero’s journey
Mysticism and mythic symbol
The hero’s journey as perennial philosophy
The hero as ‘everyman’
Feminist critique of the hero

TWO: CROSSING THE THRESHOLD: CONFRONTING THE QUESTION OF WOMAN    17

Feminist approaches to the question of Woman
The First wave of feminism
The Second wave
Sex versus gender
Psychoanalytic and poststructural feminism
Woman, mythology and the religious symbolic
Feminist theology
Mary Daly: Reweaving the journey
Carol Christ: Thealogy
Goddess spirituality and the Great Mother
The God problem
Jungian archetypes
The archetype of the self for women
Towards the third wave and beyond

THREE: WHO IS WOMAN? THE THIRD WAVE AND BEYOND     43

Time and the evolution of feminist thought
The discourses of the Third wave
Subjectivities of inter-relation: corporeal feminism
Process philosophy and the Nomadic Feminist subject
Third wave religion: Buddhism’s nondual philosophy
Non-dual philosophy: Transontolog
Definition: The Name of Woman
Integral theory: New tools
Towards an Integral feminism
Woman - through the quadrants
Evolutionary consciousness

FOUR: THE ROAD OF TRIALS: EVOLUTIONARY PATHWAYS    65

The limits of evolutionary theory
Wilber’s evolutionary theory
Holonic theory
Developmental eras of consciousness
From Origin to Integral: The work of Gebser
Wilber’s Integral Theory of development
The Archaic Stage
The Magical Stage
Habermas: Social Labor and the father
Bacofen: Mother right – Father right
Pre-modern Gender: Wilber’s suppositions
Man the hunter
Foraging: woman the gatherer
Evolutionary continuity: sociobiology and sharing
Sexual dimorphism
The collective hunt
The sedentary woman
The father and the question of work
Feminist archaeology: Re-capitulating the evidence

FIVE: MEETING THE GODDESS: THE MYTHIC PLAINS   97

The Question of Venus
Symbolism of the Magical stage
The Mythic stage
Stages of consciousness: From Magic to Mythic
Gimbutas and the Great Goddess
Critique of the Goddess hypothesis
Remembering and inventing the Goddess
Re-reading the Mythic evidence
Epochal mutation: From Mythic to Mythic-Agrarian
The Metamorphosis of Myth: The Tales of Inanna
Inanna: The Great Death
Mythic-Imperial Stage
The Hero and the Warrior
Mythic-Agrarian: The Iron Age

SIX: THE RISE OF THE RATIONAL     123

The Mental Rational Stage
Formal Operational Cognition
From Monotheism to Globalism
Feminism: Emergence vs. Oppression
Gender Stratification: Coercion and Voluntarism
A rebuttal to Co-creative theory
Capacity Development
Woman and the cultural symbolic
From mythos to religion
The separative self
Pathological dominance
The rise of feminist consciousness
Integral answers
Towards the horizon

SEVEN: DIVINE HORIZONS: THE HEROINE’S PATH TO THE UNITIVE   151

Self abnegation: Women’s estrangement from the divine
Women’s divine horizons
Adult development theory
Critique of developmental theory
The first stages of development
Women in the conventional
Critique of gendered theories of development
Girls development and adolescence
The developmental journey of the hero/ine
A developmental junction: Achiever or Affliate
Differentiation and the separative self
The Post-conventional tier
Integrated vs. Construct Aware
The Post-Postconventional tier
The transcendent stage
The Unitive stage
Practising the sensible transcendental
Horizontal and vertical, terrestrial and heavenly
To be incarnated? Archi-ancient and forever future

EIGHT: CONCLUSION     175

Returning from the Journey with Gift Giving
Hands – the Discourse of Integral Feminism
Next Steps: Sacred Marriage

Her chapters (2 and 3) on the history of feminism are very instructive for readers who are not familiar with this material - and few of us outside of academic feminism read most of the authors she references. They also provide a solid foundation for her later explorations of a uniquely heroine-oriented myth and a critical framework for her deconstruction of gender in Ken Wilber's integral theory.

Inanna and the Descent to the Underworld

The myth she feels drawn toward is one of the oldest human myths, the Sumerian myth of Inanna, Queen of Heaven and goddess of lust, love, fertility, and warfare. However, it's important to note that she is not the goddess of marriage. Her domain is lust and she is associated with extramarital sex and affairs, and she can often be found in taverns seeking the adventure of new sexual partners. The Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh also makes reference to Inanna's well-known disregard for her lovers (after the act).

Nicholson understand's Inanna's narrative as a classic hero's tale, or heroine in this case. Her story was the genesis for her book, and even though she chose to expand the study beyond Inanna's myth, she felt pulled back to the myth.

For two years her story was the topic of this book, but the need to establish an Integral feminist philosophical and methodological position that could adequately contextualize her story in terms of stages of consciousness, the evolution of gender dynamics, and changing representations of the female divine, became increasingly clear to me. Thus this book is focused on the greater schema. Yet, no matter how much I put Inanna’s story aside it continued to return to the text. 

One of her best known myths is "Inanna's Descent to the Underworld." Staying true to her nature, when Inanna is rescued from the Underworld, she must choose someone to replace her there. The first few people they come upon are all mourning servants, but then they come upon her husband, Dumuzi, who is not mourning at all (far from it), and she chooses him to go with the demons and take her place in the Underworld.

Any effort to analyze the goddess figure in history requires discussing and critiquing the work of the archeologist Marija Gimbutas. Despite her popularity among lay readers (especially in New Age goddess movements), archeologists and anthropologists have offered harsh and thorough criticism of her Goddess Hypothesis. Gimbutas' main idea is that all of the world's variety of goddess figures can be traced back to a single neolithic goddess or divine feminine figure. Further, she contends that this period of "peaceful, matrilineal, agricultural and primarily sedentary culture of Mythic Old Europe" ended with the invasion of nomadic herders who brought with them domesticated horses and lethal weapons. According to Gimbutas, these invaders brought to Europe "myths of conquering warrior hero gods" (p. 105).

Aside from the vast criticism of her model in archeological and interpretive grounds (which Nicholson spends a couple of pages outlining), there is also the issue of the pre/trans fallacy (an idea developed by Ken Wilber) in assigning trans-rational capacities to a pre-rational culture. An additional issue is that many anthropologists and archeologists believe that it was agriculture that ushered in the patriarchal dominance from which modern goddess movements seek to extricate themselves [see references: 1, 2, 3], not nomadic herders.

Here is the stance Nicholson takes on Gimbutas' work:

While not absolutely explicit, it is clear that, in keeping with feminist methodology, Gimbutas’ archaeo-mythology is a liberally intuitive and creatively interpretive method. She moves her subject matter out of the realm of archaeology and into the realm of mythopoesis and in doing so blurs boundaries and distinctions, utilising but going beyond the scope of the material evidence. Yet despite these methodological problems, there is much rich material in Gimbutas’ extensive research that should not go unutilised.... (p. 107) 

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Integral Feminism

Nicholson uses Ken Wilber's model of integral theory to underpin her larger project in this book. For this reader, the time spent on Wilber is the weakest part of the book (but I suspect this is less about the book and more about the seeming need for every book using integral theory to spend a couple of chapters explaining Wilber's AQAL model, as if homage must be paid).

To be fair, Nicholson is perfectly willing to criticize the weaknesses in Wilber's theory, and when it comes to sex and gender, there is a lot of room for criticism. 

It is my intention, utilizing the philosophy and methodology of Integral feminism, to follow woman’s journey through the broad waves of human development, as Wilber presents them , to her arrival in feminist consciousness. Along the way I examine how Wilber positions woman and I make feminist incursions into this history where necessary. (p. 63)

Jean Gebser and Jurgen Habermas, primary sources for Wilber's integral model, also get their due from Nicholson. In chapter four, the author offers a thorough and cogent critique of Wilber's (via Habermas) views on the division of work and gender roles in the "Magical" stage of human evolution.

The evidence seems relatively clear that early horticultural societies were not terribly divided in work roles according to gender (as Wilber would have it). Wilber espouses somewhat of an essentialist position on gender and gender roles, and while there are essential differences in some respects, gender roles are (or were) more egalitarian and less rigidly divided.

Studies of contemporary horticultural societies show an equal distribution of productive work between men and women. Both women and men “plant, weed, harvest, and transport crops” after new areas of land have been cleared and prepared for cultivation, mostly by men (Huber 2006, 71). This is likely to have been the case in the Neolithic period also. (p. 109)
 
While moving towards the socially conventional ‘roles and rules’ of concrete operations and conventional morality, the early Mythic [13] period would not yet have the reified differentiations of gender roles and status divisions that are demonstrated in later stages. (p. 109)

 As horticulture became agriculture with the invention of metal tools, especially the hoe and later the sword, humanity moved from a early mythic worldview to a mythic-agrarian worldview. Kinship loyalties now played a lesser role in culture than did political/power loyalties. Dependence on and subservience to a king was now central in daily life.

By tracking these societal changes alongside changes in the Inanna story, the myth becomes reflective of the lives of its tellers.

The Sumerian mythologies of the goddess Inanna straddle the divide between the early Mythic and Mythic-Agrarian stages. Inanna is a particularly important case study. Encapsulated in the very first written mythic narratives, she is both a unique representation of the heroine and of the divine in female form. In this guise she represents the archetype of the Self as envisaged through the Mythic stage. The significant changes that occur in the manner of her representation as the Mythic stage transitions to Mythic-Agrarian demonstrate the shifts in consciousness that occur during this period. (p, 112)

Nicholson details some of the changes that occur in Inanna's myth over that period of time (roughly 2,000-3,000 BCE). This is how the author characterizes her subject:

 The Mythic Inanna embodied the values of adventure, curiosity, knowledge, sensuality and deeper self-knowledge through mysticism. As a spiritual hero she is both agentic and communal, transcendent and yet deeply immanent. As a goddess, Inanna fully represents the burgeoning consciousness of the Mythic Age. Fundamentally different to the mother Goddess espoused by Gimbutas [16], Inanna is a goddess of exploration and knowledge. (p. 113-114)

From here, Nicholson continues to trace the evolution of the archetypal feminine Self, the development of a heroine's myth, through Wilber's psycho-social stages of development.

Final Thoughts

This is a book I found to be educational, enlightening, thought-provoking, and with which I sometimes found myself arguing. Isn't that what good books should do? Being as familiar as I am with both Campbell and Wilber, however, it was easy to let Nicholson lead me on the "evolutionary journey of woman."

As a man who works with other men on issues around gender roles, this feels like an important book for men to read, at least as much so as it is for women. Perhaps nowhere is this so true as in the integral community, with its reliance on Warren Farrell and David Deida as essential leaders in masculinity.

The integral community, in particular, with so many of the primary authors being male and holding essentialist positions, dictated in part by Wilber, has alienated a lot of women. For example, here is a passage from the "Integral Operating System," based on the writings of Carol Gilligan:

Male logic, or a man’s voice, tends to be based on terms of autonomy, justice, and rights; whereas women’s logic or voice tends to be based on terms of relationship, care, and responsibility. Men tend toward agency; women tend toward communion. Men follow rules; women follow connections. Men look; women touch. Men tend toward individualism, women toward relationship. (Wilber, 2012)

Seriously? To define the feminine as communal, caring, and immanent and the masculine as agentic, rights-oriented, and transcendent is so painfully reductionist that both men and women should be turned off by this androcentric nonsense.

Now, we have Sarah Nicholson's book and voice to add some justice, autonomy, and individualism to the heroic journey of the integral feminine.

References:

1. Hughes, SS & Hughes, B. (2001). "Women in Ancient Civilizations". In Adas, Michael. Agricultural and pastoral societies in ancient and classical history. Temple University Press. pp. 118–119.
2. Eagly, AH, & Wood, W. (June 1999). "The Origins of Sex Differences in Human Behavior: Evolved Dispositions Versus Social Roles". American Psychologist; 54 (6): 408–423.
3. Erdal, D. & Whiten, A. (1996). "Egalitarianism and Machiavellian Intelligence in Human Evolution" in Mellars, P. & Gibson, K. (eds) Modelling the Early Human Mind. Cambridge Macdonald Monograph Series.
4. Wilber, K. (2012, Mar 11). The Integral Operating System. Part IV: What Type Are You? Retrieved on August, 4, 2014, from https://www.integrallife.com/member/ken-wilber/blog/integral-operating-system-part-iv-what-type-are-you

Vanessa Fisher - Men and the Future of the Integral Movement--with R. Michael Fisher

 

Over at her blog, Poetic Justice, Vanessa D. Fisher has posted the final interview in a series she conducted in promotion for the book she co-edited with Sarah Nicholson, Integral Voices on Sex, Gender, and Sexuality: Critical Inquiries, part of the SUNY series on Integral Theory.

This interview is a little more special than the previous three - she is interviewing her father, R. Michael Fisher, author, philosopher, teacher, and a whole lot more. Here is the bio material that was posted at Beams and Struts:

R. Michael Fisher

Michael Fisher, a philosopher at-heart, who has studied and applied the work of Ken Wilber and other integral theorists to the general area of curriculum theory and instruction, healing and spiritual development, and specifically to social emancipatory praxis, since the early 1980s. His philosophy is liberational and grounded not so much in the human potential or new age movements of which he's often critical, but ground more in a path beginning with the theory and practice of Re-evaluation Co-counseling, Integral Studies, Sacred Warriorship Studies, Critical Theory and the Fearlessness Tradition.

A self-proclaimed fearologist and cultural critic, therapeutic counselor, artist and educator, with a BSc in Environmental Biology, a BEd in Science Secondary Education, an M.A. in Adult Education and a Ph.D. in Curriculum & Instruction, his transdisciplinary research as a scholar and public intellectual has led to many published exhibitions, monographs and articles--while he continues to lecture, coach and counsel in private practice, facilitate workshops, and engage in trans(per)formative artistic practices and collaborations. He is former founder/teacher of the School of Sacred Warriorship (1993-96), co-founder and Director of the In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute (1989-) (http://www.feareducation.com), and founder Director of the Center for Spiritual Inquiry & Integral Education (http://csiie.org). His personal website can be found at http://loveandfearsolutions.com/

A prolific writer with over two hundred publications since 1974, his latest book, The World's Fearlessness Teachings: A Critical Integral Approach to Fear Management/Education for the 21st Century was published in the late fall of 2010 by University Press of America (Rowman & Littlefield). Michael is a certified school teacher and a Level-2 Spiral Dynamics Integral Technology facilitator. Born and raised in Western Canada, he has recently moved to Carbondale, IL, USA with his wife/partner, Barbara Bickel. Michael (pronounced my-ky-el), formerly Robert M. Fisher. He lives in conscious abstinence, as spiritual practice, without a motor vehicle, ownership of house or land, TV set, and the titillation of Facebook and Twitter.

It's a good interview featuring two REALLY smart people - check it out!

Men and the Future of the Integral Movement--with R. Michael Fisher

Jul 22, 2014

As the third and last of my special dialogues devoted to giving people a taste for the contents of our book, yesterday I interviewed Dr. R. Michael Fisher (who is also my father) on his chapter in our anthology entitled "Are Men Tragically Hopeless? A Critical Integralists' Perspective". A chapter which situates men at a significant point of crisis in evolutionary history and presents the case for a radical shift in how we think about men's liberation. Responding critically to both integral and postmodern theory, and drawing from his personal experience, Fisher's chapter follows the developments and struggles of men in conscious community and advocates for the liberation of both genders by working from the ruins of hopelessness.

In this, dialogue we explore Fisher's unique approach to men's liberation work as a practice of social identity development which includes political, economic, cultural, and social systems perspectives. We also chart and personally reflect on the history of the integral movement, and discuss important critiques of integral theory and leadership, while exploring our own relationship to the questions of gender as father and daughter.

Download this Dialogue as an MP3

This was a provocative dialogue that touches on many topical issues. At times theoretical, at times deeply personal, and at times controversial in our discussion of men, women and the integral movement.

This is the third of a series of three dialogues I conducted in preparation for the launch of my book this month, in order to give a taste of some of the topics that will be covered in the anthology. Click here to see and listen to all three free interviews I hosted for this series, with Diane Musho Hamilton, Dr. Elizabeth Debold, and Dr. Warren Farrell.

* * * * *

My book, Integral Voices on Sex, Gender and Sexuality: Critical Inquiries, co-edited with Sarah E. Nicholson, is now available on Kindle through amazon! Paperback and hardcovers will be available August 1st.

I also put together a short video trailer for our book this weekend on imovie, I'm not a professional, but I liked how it turned out, and it was a lot of fun! Check it out:

There's also seven days left to enter our draw for a free copy of our book before it is published, through Goodreads. 

If you'd like to receive automatic updates when a new dialogue is posted, you can subscribe to my new Poetic Justice iTunes podcast page, which I've recently created and uploaded all my dialogues to. This will give you free access and automatic updates on all my Poetic Justice Dialogues in future.

Sarah Nicholson, my co-editor for this anthology, and I have also created a group Facebook page, where many of these dialogues and topics related to sex, gender, and sexuality are being discussed in more depth. If you'd like to join the group conversation, please click this highlighted link and request to be added.

Enjoy....

The Missing Myth: A New Vision of Same-Sex Love - An Interview with Gilles Herrada

In this interview from last summer, Vanessa Fisher (co-editor of Integral Voices on Sex, Gender, and Spirituality, scheduled for release in July, 2014) interviews one of the contributors, Gilles Herrada, about his book, The Missing Myth: A New Vision of Same-Sex Love. Here is the publisher's ad copy for the book:

If homosexual behavior is an aberration from the standpoint of reproduction, why is it widespread among humans, primates, and a myriad of other animal species, and why has it been favored by evolution? And if homosexuality is considered a moral problem based on religious beliefs, why were more homosexuals exterminated under the brief reigns of such secular regimes as the Communists and the Nazis than during the entire Christian Inquisition. Why is everything about homosexuality always a paradox? In The Missing Myth, Gilles Herrada tackles the many questions about the role and meaning of homosexuality in the evolution of our species and the development of civilization: what evolutionary edge same-sex relationships have provided to the human species; what biological mechanisms generate the sexual diversity that we observe; why homosexual behavior ended up being prohibited worldwide; why homophobia has persisted throughout history; why the homosexual community resurfaced after World War II; and others.

I've had the good fortune of reading Gilles book and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to understand the depth and complexities of same-sex love - including its rejection and the still persistent homophobia many people express.

The interview is excellent - enjoy.

The Missing Myth: A New Vision of Same-Sex Love

An Interview with Gilles Herrada by Vanessa D. Fisher


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Gilles Herrada, Ph.D., is a research scientist, a writer, and life coach at LifeAsACreation. He has worked at the universities of Nice, Paris, Columbia, and Harvard, and is published internationally.
In this Dialogue, I interview Gilles about his recently published book, The Missing Myth: A New Vision of Same-Sex Love.

Below is a short quote from the book, which offers a taste of the new and expansive context Gilles opens in his book for re-visioning same-sex love...

After having been stigmatized as a sin or a perversion by two millenniums of homophobic culture, a mere half-century of well-intentioned pro-homosexual discourse has left homosexuality impoverished, truncated, disjointed, and ripped apart. Why is this? Modern homosexual identity only started to emerge in the nineteenth century and really grounded itself no earlier than the second half of the twentieth century. In this respect, this identity is extremely young, and because of the historical cultural context in which it was born, modern homosexuality has essentially been conceived and theorized within a biological, psychoanalytic, and sociological, and hence profoundly materialistic context.

As a result, modern homosexuality exists in body and mind, but has no soul.

Modern homosexuality has been analyzed and rationalized by modernists, contextualized and even deconstructed by postmodernists, but not many have dared to give it meaning…. As a consequence, the sacred dimension of modern homosexuality—symbolic and spiritual, inevitably—has remained largely ignored by the homosexual discourse, leaving its brutal rejection by traditional religions still unanswered.

In this sense, the original and somewhat humble premise of The Missing Myth is that homosexuality has yet to discover itself..."

While at Harvard, Gilles discovered a large family of genes involved in the detection of pheromones, those “secret” odors that trigger animal sexual and social behaviors. Gilles also attended and facilitated programs in what is commonly labeled as “personal development.” These workshops gave him the rare opportunity to discuss with homophobic men in an open and intimate setup. This offered him a unique chance to inquire into the mechanisms of homophobia empathically, that is from a homophobic standpoint.

Part of his research work regarding homosexuality’s history was presented at the First Integral Theory Conference in 2008 and will soon be published in the anthology titled Integral Voices on Sex, Gender, and Spirituality, co-edited by Sarah Nicholson and Vanessa D. Fisher, to be published by SUNY Press.

Gilles currently lives in New York City.
This Dialogue was recorded July 11, 2013

Vanessa Fisher: Revisioning Men's Worth: A Critical Exploration of the Challenges and Opportunities Facing Men & Masculininty - An Interview with Mark Forman

This interview with Mark Forman, PhD., was featured near the end of last year in Vanessa Fisher's "Dancing in the Liminal Dialogue Series: A Global, Border-Crossing Inquiry into Art, Activism, Spirituality & Leadership for the 21st Century."

Vanessa's interviews are excellent, and Mark is a good guest for her dialogue series. Mark moderated an excellent panel discussion on Integral Masculinity at the 2010 Integral Theory and Practice Conference, on which I was one of several panelists (along with Pelle Billing, Diane Hamilton, Gilles Herrada, and Bert Parlee). Mark is the author of A Guide to Integral Psychotherapy: Complexity, Integration, and Spirituality in Practice, published in 2010 by SUNY Press.

Revisioning Men's Worth: A Critical Exploration of the Challenges and Opportunities Facing Men and Masculininty in the New Millienium: An Interview with Mark Forman

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Mark Forman, PhD., is the Clinical Director of Life Design Centre, an innovative psychotherapy studio dedicated to changing the lives of individuals, couples, children, and families. He is also the Executive Director of MetaIntegral’s Psychotherapy Center and the Lead Organizer of their Integral Theory Conference, the world’s largest academic conference devoted to Integral theory and its application.

In this dialogue, I interview Mark on his views regarding the unique challenges and opportunities facing men and masculinity in the 21st Century. We critically examine cultural discourses surrounding the shifting historical roles of masculinity and femininity, explore the impact of feminism on men over the last 50 years, and point towards new directions of inquiry for men's role in the future.

Mark is a long-term practitioner of both yoga and meditation, having studied intensively under several prominent teachers, including Gurumayi Chidvilasananda and Kenneth Folk.

His latest book, A Guide to Integral Psychotherapy: Complexity, Integration, and Spirituality in Practice was published in 2010 by SUNY Press. Mark is also currently co-editing, along with Michael Raffanti and Toni Gregory, the first ever text on Integral Diversity, entitled Integral Approaches to Diversity Dynamics: Exploring the Maturation of Diversity Theory and Practice.


*This Dialogue was recorded on November 12, 2012

Vanessa Fisher and Mark Forman - Revisioning Men's Worth: A Critical Exploration of the Challenges & Opportunities Facing Men and Masculinity in the New Millenium

As part of her on-going series Dialogue Series, Dancing in the Liminal: A Global, Border-Crossing Inquiry into Art, Activism, Spirituality and Leadership for the 21st Century, Vanessa Fisher recently interviewed psychologist and integral theorist Mark Forman on the topic of revisioning men's worth. This is god stuff.

Revisioning Men's Worth: A Critical Exploration of the Challenges and Opportunities Facing Men and Masculinity in the New Millenium

Posted by Vanessa Fisher on Tuesday, November 13, 2012
With Mark Forman

Download this Dialogue as an MP3

Mark Forman, PhD. is the fourteenth guest on my Dialogue Series, Dancing in the Liminal: A Global, Border-Crossing Inquiry into Art, Activism, Spirituality and Leadership for the 21st Century (see overview for this series here).

Mark is the Clinical Director of Life Design Centre, an innovative psychotherapy studio dedicated to changing the lives of individuals, couples, children, and families. He is also the Executive Director of MetaIntegral’s Psychotherapy Center and the Lead Organizer of their Integral Theory Conference, the world’s largest academic conference devoted to Integral theory and its application.

In this dialogue, I interview Mark on his views regarding the unique challenges and opportunities facing men and masculinity in the 21st Century.

We critically examine cultural discourses surrounding the shifting historical roles of masculinity and femininity, explore the impact of feminism on men over the last 50 years, and point towards new directions of inquiry for men's role in the future.

Mark is a long-term practitioner of both yoga and meditation, having studied intensively under several prominent teachers, including Gurumayi Chidvilasananda and Kenneth Folk.

His latest book, A Guide to Integral Psychotherapy: Complexity, Integration, and Spirituality in Practice was published in 2010 by SUNY Press. Mark is also currently co-editing, along with Michael Raffanti and Toni Gregory, the first ever text on Integral Diversity, entitled Integral Approaches to Diversity Dynamics: Exploring the Maturation of Diversity Theory and Practice.

Robert Augustus Masters - Bringing Sex out of the Closet (Integral Post)

This Integral Post from Robert Augustus Masters is an excerpt from his recently updated and re-issued book, Transformation through Intimacy, Revised Edition: The Journey toward Awakened Monogamy. It is one of the three most important relationship books I have read (the other two being David Schnarch's Passionate Marriage: Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships and John Welwood's Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships: Healing the Wound of the Heart).

The message of enlightened monogamy and relationship as a spiritual path is one too often missing in the integral world, especially when it's "leaders" espouse their "right" as "second tier" and "post-conventional" to have sex with anyone and any number of people they deem suitable - and we should not dare to question their obviously egocentric sex drives (addictions?) because they are so much "more enlightened" than the rest of us. After all, they are the "leaders" in the integral community. [Please note that the quotation marks are meant to impart cynicism.]

Masters' work calls bullshit on all of that, which is why his entry into the integral world (which coincidentally coincided with Gafni's leaving) is such an important step forward.

Bringing Sex out of the Closet

July 2nd, 2012



Sex is arguably still in the closet.

Yes, it’s wearing a lot less and showing a lot more than was the case forty or fifty years ago, but it’s still not truly out in the open, except in mostly superficial ways. Its ubiquitous exposure, highlighting, and pornification simply camouflage it. However brazenly explicit sex now is, it nonetheless remains largely hidden, its depths mostly untouched, its heartland still largely unknown, obscured by the tasks to which we commonly assign it, especially that of making us feel better.

Just as getting openly and passionately angry does not necessarily bring us any closer to truly knowing our anger, being frequently expressive of and/or pervaded by things sexual does not necessarily bring us any closer to truly knowing—or being intimate with—our sexuality.

How-to books and courses on sex abound, pointing out various ways to get turned on or more turned on in a relationship, with little or no attention given to actually exploring the very turned-off-ness that seemingly necessitates finding out how to get turned on. Judging from the sheer volume of such books and courses, plus an immense amount of personal testimony from all quarters (for example, the great number of American women who admit that they don’t enjoy sex with their husband), it appears that there’s an abundance of sexual dysfunction and dissatisfaction within relationships.

There is plenty of focus on this, accompanied by all kinds of remedies, but not nearly so much focus on how dysfunction and dissatisfaction in the nonsexual areas of relationship might be affecting one’s sexuality.

We are usually quite reluctant to cast (or even to permit the casting of) a clear light on what is actually happening during our sexual times with our partner—other than biologically—but without this, we are simply left in the dark, pinning too much on what we hope sex will do for us.

And there is so much that we expect sex to do for us! More often than we might like to admit, we assign it to stress release, security enhancement, spousal pacification, egoic gratification, pleasure production, and other such tasks. We may use it as a super sleeping pill, a rapid-action pick-me-up, an agent of consolation, a haven or hideout, a control tactic, a proof that we’re not that old or cold. We may also employ it as a psychological garbage disposal, a handy somatic terminal for discharging the energies of various unwanted states, like loneliness or rage or desperation. Mostly, though, we just tend to want sex to make us feel better, and we use it accordingly, whether in mundane, dark, or spiritual contexts.

Not only do we hear more and more about “sexual addiction,” our culture itself is so ubiquitously sexualized that it could be described as sex-addicted. But sexual addiction is not primarily about sex but about that for which sex is a “solution.” It is so easy to think that our sexual charge with a particular person or situation is no more than an expression of our natural sexuality, when in fact it may actually be an eroticizing of our conditioning or of some need we have. (For example, arousal in a certain pornographic fantasy may be secondarily sexual, its primary impetus being rooted in one’s longing to be unconditionally seen, loved, and wanted.)

There won’t, however, be any real freedom here until we release sex (and everything else!) from the obligation to make us feel better. So long as we keep assigning sex to such labor—slave labor—we will remain trapped in the very circumstances for which sexual release is an apparent “solution.” Increased stress means an increased desire to get rid of stress, and if we attempt to do so through sexual means (which does not really get rid of stress, except in the most superficial sense), we simply reinforce the roots of that stress. In addicting or over-attaching ourselves to erotically pleasing release, we also frequently addict ourselves to the very tension that seemingly necessitates and sometimes even legitimizes such release.

The abuse of sex, particularly through the expectations with which we commonly burden it, is so culturally pervasive and deeply ingrained as to go largely unnoticed, except in its more lurid, obviously dysfunctional, or perverse extremes. Even more removed from any telling awareness is our aversion to truly exploring and illuminating the whole matter of human sexuality, not clinically nor in any other kind of isolation, but rather in the context of our entire being, our totality, our inherent wholeness.

That is, sex does not need to be—and in fact cannot be—crystallized out and set apart from the rest of our experience (as those overly focused on the mechanics of sexuality often try to do). Rather, it needs to be seen, felt, known, and lived in open-eyed resonance—and relationship—with everything that we do and are, so that it is, as much as possible, not just an act of specialized function nor an act bound to the chore of making us feel better or more secure, but rather an unfettered, full-blooded expression of already present, already loving, already unstressed wholeness.

To embody such wholeness requires a thorough investigation of the labor to which we have assigned—or sentenced—our sexuality.

That labor and its underpinnings are eloquently revealed through the stark slang of sex. Many of the words and phrases regarding our sexual functioning bluntly illustrate the frequently confused, disrespectful, and exploitive attitude commonly brought to one’s own sexuality and sexuality in general. Consider, for example, the notorious and enormously popular “f” word, for which there is an incredible number of non-copulatory meanings, a fucking incredible number, all pointedly and colorfully describing what we may actually be up to when we are busy being sexual or erotically engaged.

Here’s a partial list, the majority of which overlap in meaning: ignorance (“Fucked if I know”); indifference (“I don’t give a fuck”); degradation (“You stupid fuck”); aggression (“Don’t fuck with me!”); disappointment (“This is really fucked”); rejection (“Get the fuck out of here!” or “Fuck off!”); manipulation (“You’re fucking with my head”); disgust (“Go fuck yourself”); vexation (“What the fuck are you doing?”); exaggeration (“It was so fucking good!”); rage (“Fuck you!”); and, perhaps most pithily revealing of all, exploitation (“I got fucked”).

Throw together the various meanings of “fuck,” plus the “higher” or more socially acceptable terms for sexual intercourse—including the vague “having a relationship” and the unwittingly precise “sleeping together”—and mix in some insight, and what emerges is a collage composed of (1) the dysfunctional labor to which we have sentenced our sexual capacity; and (2) the expectations (like “Make me feel wanted” or “Make me feel better”) with which we have saddled and burdened it.

When we primarily assign our sexuality to stress release, security reinforcement, egoic reassurance, the fueling of romantic delusion, and other such chores—thereby burdening it with the obligation to make us feel better—we are doing little more than screwing ourselves, dissipating much of the very energy that we need for facing and healing our woundedness, the woundedness that, ironically, we seek escape or relief from through the pleasuring and various sedating options provided by our sexuality.

This is not to say that we should never use our sexuality for purposes such as stress release, for there are times when doing so may be entirely appropriate, but such usage needs to be more the exception than the rule.

We are living in a pervasively sexualized culture—“sexy” as an adjective has infiltrated just about every dimension of life. There’s much more openness regarding sex than there was fifty or sixty years ago, but much of that openness has more to do with breadth than depth. We have more permission to experiment with sex and to talk graphically about it, but we nevertheless don’t talk about it in real depth very often—exploring, for example, the nonsexual or presexual dynamics that may be in play during sex—for to do so would put us in a position of real vulnerability and transparency, not so able to hang on to a semblance of “having it together.” Seeing what we are actually doing in nonsexual contexts while we’re busy being sexual may not be very high on our list of priorities!

And this is the era of informed consent, centered by the myth—yes, myth—of consenting adults. In sexual circumstances, many of us may not be clearly considering what is really going on and what is at stake, instead making choices from a desire (largely rooted in childhood) to get approval, affection, connection, love, or security, or to be distracted from our suffering. At such times, we are operating not so much as consenting adults as adult-erated children (and/or adolescents) whose “consent”—however “informed”—is largely an eroticized expression of unresolved woundedness or unmet nonsexual needs.

The deepest sex, sex requiring no fantasies (inner or outer) or turn-on strategies or rituals of arousal, but rather only the love, openness, and safety of awakened intimacy, cannot be significantly accessed without a corresponding depth in the rest of our relationship with our partner. Without such mutual maturity, it doesn’t matter how hot or juicy or innovative our sexual life may be, even if we have many orgasms, big orgasms, together.

In fact, when we make coming together a goal, we simply come apart, separating and losing ourselves in our quest for maximally pleasurable sensations. “Sensational” sex is precisely that: sex that is centered and defined by an abundance of erotically engorged sensations. The romanticized presence of these sensations is often misrepresented as actual intimacy, at least until the rude pricks of reality do their vastly underappreciated job.

Most couples we see are not really all that happy with their sex life. Some of them have gone flat sexually, having had little or no sex for a long time. (Not surprisingly, the rest of their relationship is also usually flat, emotionally depressed, low in passion, unnaturally peaceful.) Other couples are more openly frustrated, wanting more than they are getting (such a quantitative focus being mostly a male complaint), or wanting more connection before sex (such a qualitative focus being mostly a female complaint). And others initially act as if they are doing fine sexually, being reluctant to reveal their discomfort with the direction that their sex life may be taking (like tolerating a partner who prefers porn to them). And so on.

The good news is that such dissatisfaction, if allowed to surface in its fullness, will often goad a couple into doing work that they would otherwise avoid or postpone.

As a couple explores their sexuality, and explores it deeply, they will discover that what’s not working in their relationship usually shows up in their sexuality, often in exaggerated form. And conversely, as they ripen into more mature ways of relating, they will find that this revitalizes and deepens their sexuality. No sex manuals or tantric rituals are needed, nor any fantasies or other turn-on tactics—their increased intimacy and trust in each other are more than sufficient, creating an atmosphere within which love-centered, awareness-infused sexual desire can naturally arise and flow, carrying the lovers along into the sweet dynamite and ever-fresh wonder and ecstasy of what sex can be when it has deep intimacy’s green light.

DON'T MISS: Monogamy as a Path to Awakening

Robert Augustus Masters, Diane Bardwell Masters, and Ken Wilber

In this extraordinary discussion, Robert and Diane talk to Ken about the next evolution of intimate relationships: monogamy as a spiritual path, a crucible for awakening, and a vessel for enlightenment in the 21st century.

About TRANSFORMATION THROUGH INTIMACY: THE JOURNEY TOWARD MATURE MONOGAMY

Intimate relationship has long been viewed and lived as a lesser alternative to spiritual life. More recently, the need to integrate our spiritual and intimate lives, rather than maintaining separate spheres and relationships on autopilot, has become increasingly apparent. Given the high rates of infidelity and divorce, it would seem that the possibilities of freedom through intimacy have not been explored in much depth. Too often we pull away when relationships become difficult, missing out on the rewards of connecting more profoundly.

The passage from immature to mature monogamy is not only a journey of ripening intimacy with a partner, but also a journey into and through zones of ourselves that may be very difficult to accept and integrate with the rest of our being. Transformation through Intimacy explores intimate relationships through a four-stage lens: me-centered, we-centered codependent, we-centered coindependent, and being-centered. Bringing his many years of experience as a psychotherapist and spiritual practitioner to the subject, Masters shows readers not only how to navigate the thickets of reactivity, conflict, shame, anger, fear, and doubt, but how to understand them in a new light so that a deeper level of relating to oneself and one's partner becomes possible, opening new levels of trust, commitment, and love.

"This is an important and tremendously useful book, packed with wisdom and insight. Highly recommended!" –Ken Wilber, author of Integral Spirituality

Rob McNamara - The Three Faces of Embodiment

Rob McNamara is one of the leaders in the integral embodiment community (along with Shawn Phillips) and has been instrumental in designing the body component of the Integral Life Practice system. His first book is Strength to Awaken: An Integral Guide to Strength Training, Performance and Spiritual Practice for Men and Women (2012). This piece comes from Integral Life's Integral Post series.

To start off, here is some background on Rob:

Rob McNamara

Rob McNamara is an Author, Performance Coach, Psychotherapist and Professor from Boulder Colorado serving clients throughout North America and Europe. Rob’s book, Strength to Awaken: An Integral Guide to Strength Training, Performance and Spiritual Practice for Men and Women (2012) sets forth to reshape integral embodiment and the evolution of integral consciousness. He is a professor of Integral, Transpersonal and Developmental Psychology at Naropa University and has has worked with Ken Wilber, the Integral Institute and contributed to Integral Life for over a decade serving as a Core Faculty for the Integral Life Practice and Integral Spiritual Experience seminar series.

Here is the beginning of the article - enjoy!

The Three Facets of Embodiment

Going Beyond Misunderstood Embodiment

July 23rd, 2012

Recently I spent an afternoon with Ken Wilber down in Denver to discuss the important issue of embodiment. Ken and I first met over a decade ago and our early connections circled around the rich and often misunderstood discipline of strength training. You could say embodiment is, and has been, a central concern for both of us. As we settled into conversation at his loft, we kicked around some of the major issues: why embodiment is essential for all of us and how it is critical for many to grow into what I am calling mature integral consciousness. Here are a few dimensions of our conversation that I would love to share with you.

The Two Big Misunderstandings

When I talk about embodiment, most of the time people immediately start to think about and look at their body. While this is most certainly part of the picture, it is not all of it. Embodiment is not just a message that you need to give your physical body more attention, care and consideration. Often when I get into conversations about embodiment, someone starts talking to me about how they have been meaning to eat better, get to the gym more and so on. Yes, this is part of it, but quite honestly—at least from my perspective—this is tertiary. Embodiment is not and cannot be reduced to taking care of your body. This is our first big misunderstanding.

The second big misunderstanding is the presumption that embodiment is pointing to some anti-intellectual feeling consciousness residing in your body. This is the generic and often overplayed question, “how do you feel about that?” The implicit message, stop thinking and start feeling. This is often not necessarily an invitation to become more embodied, but instead more psychologically divided between two modes of functioning: thinking and feeling. Embodiment is not anti-thinking or anti-intellectual motion. So, if this blog is not about taking better care of your body or a message telling you to get out of your head, Where exactly are we going?

Embodiment is the structure and form of who you are. Embodiment is literally you in form. The structure of your thoughts are just as much a part of your embodiment as the form of your skeleton. The anatomy of your emotional life right now in this moment, the pattern of breath that is breathing you, the shape of your attention in this immediacy and the organization of your perspective as you make meaning about this sentence are all part of your embodiment—just as is your muscle mass and heart rate. Embodiment is the structure and form of you ... all of you.

The Topography of your Embodiment

Embodiment has at least three central processes. Lose one and your embodiment erodes, causing you to become less in the immediacy of your life. The three processes are embrace, inhabitation and movement. 

Go read the rest of the article at Integral Life.