Blog

Jorge Ferrer's "Revisioning Transpersonal Theory"

Zayin Cabot PhDc — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 20:10:19 +0000

Ferrer’s Revisioning Transpersonal Theory is a sustained critical analysis of the naïve universalism that is all too common in the fields of integral and transpersonal studies and the equally pervasive tendency within our contemporary critical postmodern academy to emphasize pluralism to the point of risking a vulgar kind of relativism.

Atemporal Creativity... Recently published in ReVision

Zayin Cabot PhDc — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 20:18:07 +0000

See full article here....

Jean Gebser and Dane Rudhyar

Zayin Cabot PhDc — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:57:23 +0000

In this short essay I will account for what looks like evolution when viewed from the Mental epoch of human history, and what looks like devolution when viewed from the Mythical epoch . By way of beginning our discussion I will assume that a movement towards freedom and novelty are inherent to the world. Alfred North Whitehead calls this foundational abstraction Creativity and defines it as the process whereby the many become one and are increased by one (1978, p. 21). After some careful comparison I have come to see Dane Rudhyar's process-oriented triptych model of consciousness as a description of a similar, if not identical, process. Rudhyar tells us that novelty is introduced and embodied in the world by a triptych process of involution, devolution, and evolution. His definition and use of these terms can bring a considerable amount of clarity to Gebser's mutations of consciousness. Before clarifying this point, I will spend some time defining these terms. I will rely heavily on Whitehead's own terminology to do this . I will also assume that the reader has a working knowledge of these terms, so as not to have to define each of them as I go.

Atemporal Creativity

Zayin Cabot PhDc — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:24:12 +0000

Abstract: In the work of many contemporary authors evolution has been aligned with a linear developmental view of consciousness. The work of Jean Gebser suggests consciousness unfolds in leaps or mutations, what he terms spiritual evolution. He adds to this that the coming mutation will be atemporal and acausal rather than linear or cyclical. For this deep intuition to be applied in any real way it requires a clearer elucidation of the process of spiritual evolution whereby novelty ingresses in actuality. This paper illustrates how Alfred North Whitehead's consideration of propositional feelings, intellectual feelings, and rational knowing we can find a coherent description of an originating impulse that he terms Creativity. Creativity is the process whereby leaps of novelty can occur. By combining the work of these two authors we can grow a deep and penetrating understanding of evolution and consciousness.

Mt. Diablo... A Prayer

Zayin Cabot PhDc — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:49:12 +0000

I walked on the top with those rocks for the first time... and they prayed for me. They prayed with me, and through me, and taught me how to do the same. Those rocks are the tip of a mountain temple formed millenia ago, and they have suffered the passing of Life in a most crucial way. As I sat there in silence in a circle led by a Buddhist priest, I heard them call. They asked me to sink with them, only to rise with them, an apprentice to their still. So clear, the why I had become, to be a silent mountain, apprenticed to a mountain, and to a group of holy rocks who have waited for us to come.

Letter to Our Elders

Zayin Cabot PhDc — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:41:04 +0000

A Letter to our Elders by: Zayin Neumann And the elders watch in dismay. They feel the pain in their bones as we come to take them away. We feed their children with these new ideas as we pave their sacred land, running bulldozers across their souls. They feel the excruciating force of our will-to-be-free ripping their time honored stories apart. They look at us and they see uninitiated children who are spreading across the world. But if they look a little closer they see the demon spark in their own children’s eye. They step back in horror as they realize it is in them, just as it is in us. They wonder aloud, and in ceremony, “How can we bring back our ways? We must remember the sacred relationships and sacred the times, when we walked with Mother Earth and Father Sky, with Sacred Corn and Maestro Tobacco. These uninitiated people have forgotten from where they come!” What is happening to this world, where the children have left home before they could become adults?

Michael Harner - The Importance of Shamanism

Zayin Cabot PhDc — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:42:17 +0000

Finding One's Medicine

Zayin Cabot PhDc — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:12:18 +0000

Shamanic practitioners tend to specialize, just like MD's and other health professionals. Similar to a doctor, they go through intensive trainings that often leave them teetering on the edge of life and death. Then they do rotations. Unlike MD’s, who choose their specialty and then go through the steps necessary to learn their chosen specialization, a shamanic practitioner’s medicine finds him.

Why Shamanism, Why Now?

Zayin Cabot PhDc — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:07:09 +0000

The world we live in is asking for an incredible, almost unimaginable shift in our way of being. "For this to happen," writes Jean Gebser, "there is one basic prerequisite: all the parts must be heard or experienced, intuited or endured, seen or thought in accord with their very essence." This is the work I am nurturing with my own Integral Gardening, and it is the work that so many of you are doing in your own ways. This is the work of our time, the touching and nurturing of our entire lived experience as human beings.

Shamanism and the Future Edge of Health Care

Zayin Cabot PhDc — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:03:41 +0000

There is currently a revival of shamanic as well as indigenous healing and wisdom in contemporary Western society. Much of this work is practiced outside of the various contexts in which it was born, and yet people throughout the world are daily finding deep and long lasting healing and nurturance via these time honored methods. The question naturally arises, “Why is shamanism relevant, even necessary, for our place and time?”