October 13th Meeting Planned - Focus on "My Aging" from an Integral Perspective

Yesterday's Madison Integrals meeting was a great success, with solid attendence (17 members) and excellent ideas generated... thanks to Tom C for framing the issues and provoking the conversation! Tom has also reported (through the list-serv) that the group agreed to a focus for next month's meeting. That communication is reproduced below:

End of session discussion, yesterday, left us with a project, for the OCT meeting, to ground Integal Theory in application to our own lives. We looked for a topic all had experience with and ended up with “aging”. No one protested that they were being left out. I will offer a format to prepare for the next session. Feel free, its early, to recommend modifications to my draft below.

When I use this technique, I call it generating a “tetraglyph”. Imagine there is a circle at the center of the AQAL axis. This is the focus of inquiry. Put the words “my aging” in the circle. Then review each Q in an inquiry re what exists in this Q that elucidates what “my aging” is to me. Make a short list of distinctions that emerge with some sense of significance, maybe even a sense of insight. To get a larger picture of this topic, do this exercise two more times: What was “my aging” about 10 years ago? What will my aging be about 10 years from now? Make separate distinction lists for all three time periods, now, past, future. Three distinctions in each Q could be sufficient here.

We have a month, so let’s make this a little bit bigger project. Look at your distinction lists. Do the items, concerns, for the 3 time periods collectively suggest what Memetic level you have generated this list out of? Make at least a tentative decision on what Memetic level this list of distinctions probably came from. Now, imagine you are one Memetic level earlier. Fill your imagination with distinctions that can generate their own links in your neural nets, e.g.
What is your sense of time?
What is your attitude towards death?
Why do you bother to stay alive?
What upsets you?
Where are you living?
What conditions do you live in?
What are your three strongest desires? I really want….
What do you eat?
Where do you eat?
Who are your friends?
What are your friends up to?
Once you have imagined, in some detail, what this prior Memetic level is like, and are centered in this imagination as best you can, from this center, do the tetraglyph again, three times, past, present, future.

(For those attending yesterday’s session, what we are doing above is generating/conjuring a State of Consciousness, and indwelling it, for the purpose of discovering what this SOC generates in our mentation.)

Now go thru this exercise again, but pretend (suspend disbelief J ), imagine, you are one Memetic level higher than your original tetraglyph was generated from. Generate the neural net that you imagine would be present if you were one level higher. Once ensconsed securely in this imagined future, this newly generated neural net, do the final tetraglyph, again 3 times, past, present, future.

Now you have 9 lists of distinctions: Past, present, future, for current, past, and future Memetic levels. Its likely we will all have more to offer at the next meeting if we do this complete exercise this week, and then have the rest of the intervening time to assess the impact and usefulness, or not, of the exercise. I suggest that each person send a note to this list serve when they have their 9 lists completed. The design here is to generate some group momentum, motivate those who might otherwise put this off, and perhaps with comments that might be added prime the conversation pump for next meeting.

I suggest we start the OCT meeting with a round robin, each person giving a short report on any discoveries, or insights, that this self inquiry has generated. I trust the group conversation will unfold from here affirming, or not, that the models are useful for self guidance….and by extension useful in guiding others.

Again, feel free to modify this suggestion. We have a place to start from here.

Be well – Tom C.