CURRENT MISSION

Walk Across America 2010

ABOUT ME

I took a one year vow of silence in 2000. I have recently written a novel however, I have not began the process to attempt to publish because I have only just finished it a day or two ago. I like disc golf. I am motivated by inspiring others, by learning, and by taking chances. I am a kind, compassionate person. I really like Dr. Dog and a band called The Teeth. Things of an esoteric and spiritual nature intrigue me. I like art and nature.

PHILOSOPHY

If a tree walks in the forest, and no one is around to see it, does it leave a leaf?

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I Try To Be The Best Person I Can. I Try To Listen To The Voice Of My Highest Self.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I have hosted a dinner for a couch surfer in Wisconsin! Relatively new to CS.

Interests

AQAL Integral Methodological Pluralism. Diversity. Human Dignity. Big Mind/Big Heart. Zen. Consciousness.

• dogs
• arts
• writing
• books
• golf
• cartography

Music, Movies, and Books

Darjeeling Limited.

Clockwork Orange and Great Gatsby are two of my favorite books.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I was on Oprah Winfrey to discuss my year of silence. However, I was silent at the time, so I spoke through a word processor suspended behind mine and Oprah's chair.

Teach, Learn, Share

In life and in conversation, I am always very perceptible. I usually offer insight which is difficult to reach but offers a unique perspective. I mentioned Integral Methodological Pluralism because this is one of the foundations of my current exploits in everything I have been learning for the past 6 years. A good website to learn some of its techniques is http://www.integralnaked.org Stemming from the productive writing of Ken Wilber, I.M.P. is a way of integrating the various truth identities from Buddha to Sangha to Dharma. I am beholden to the words of Stuart Davis that Love Has No Opposite.

Integral Methodological Pluralism is often difficult for people to grasp or comprehend. I feel that I am exceptionally talented at illuminating its insights while not pushing belief of any kind on anyone. Integral understanding, specifically the AQAL map (All quadrants, All levels) is simply the most comprehensive map we have of our personal interaction with life. AQAL is revolutionary in that it takes up the claims of Alfred Whitehead that consciousness goes all the way down the Perennial Philosphy's Great Nest of Being. So that matter is consciousness in its most dense and least conscious form.

Ken Wilber calls (I think correctly) the great nest of being (matter to body to mind to soul to spirit) a giant morphogenic field which goes from most dense and least conscious all the way to most conscious and least dense. He uses this map to point out many great insights from the idea that everything simultaneously arises in all four quadrants as both an interior and exterior as well as individual and collective presence. He then makes the case that leaps in conscious connectivity in the upper left quadrant are expressed in its exterior forms as the development of the triune brain. So in other words, consciousness and complex organizations of matter (i.e. brain) are the interior and exterior dimensions of each other, however, neither can be reduced to the other. We can have a perfect picture of all the seratonin and dopamine present in a person's brain, but if we want to know what a person is thinking, we will still have to ASK them. We can not reduce one entire quadrant of experience (i.e. personal phenomenological introspective awareness) into being only "REALLY REAL" in one sense, and that is its exterior (OBJECTIVE) nature. The efforts to do this are essentially efforts to tear the Kosmos (which is by nature tetra-arising already as undeniably being all four aspects of these quadrants) in two and to uphold one estimation of truth (objective physical existence) above the other equally valid and necessary aspects, i.e. Inner subjectiveness and cultural fit.

Once these realizations are formally recognized for what they are, and hoping that students will not confuse these MAPS which are only maps, with the actual TERRITORY, which is themselves, then the next step of integral methodological pluralism allows a practitioner to locate the various aspects of the quadrants and view them for various other aspects of the quadrants. So this would be for example, the ability to have a third person objective analysis of your first person inner subjective feelings. Because of the loopy nature of this, it is hard to pull off, but it is valuable. Instead of feeling those feelings like you ordinarily would, try stepping back an evaluating them like you would a piece of art. What TEXTURES do they possess? By doing this, you become less subservient to them, recognizing that they are an important component of who you are but not nearly capable of reaching either your very very lows nor your limitless heights.

Practice and conditioning can allow you to transcend the subject and object duality which you continually facilitate in every aspect and develop a more natural estimation of self which does not come in and out of being, but rather rests as though of pure emptiness in the never ending folds of organic time and process.