Tomorrow, May 1st is A National Day of Strength and the release of Shawn Phillips’ new book, Strength for Life. Shawn was one of the original co-founders of EAS nutrition products, and his ideas about strength training and product full strength have been instrumental in my reclaiming my body. (and losing all that weight last year!)
In support of Shawn, we’re trying to get as many people as possible to buy his book tomorrow to drive it up the bestseller lists! Purchase it below and order some FULL STRENGTH HERE
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was sitting at mcguckins this afternoon, waiting for 10 key copies to be made. on the aisle cap near there I saw a bunch of model rocket stuff, and got excited. One of the summers around 5th grade I spent making rockets and launching them across the street. Hours in the cool humid basement with glue, an exacto knife, and paint would lead to fantastic launches across the street. I had one that you even stuffed a GI Joe in, and he would parachute down. Way cool.
So it blew me away when I recognized some of the rockets. I totally remember putting these 2 alphas together. THEY’RE EXACTLY the same today, same photo on the cover, same pieces, same everything.
There’s something strangely comforting about that. Plus whoever designed for Estes must be making BANK off the royalties. The true path to riches.
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(unedited, stream of conscious, and rambling. enjoy!)
1) Might integral awareness actually been a hindrance to growth?
I think for a lot of people the ‘path’ to integral is lead by the cognitive, or an understanding of the systems of AQAL and integral consciousness. this intensely developed cognitive map, at least for myself, actually helped me to increasingly hold my distance from the parts of myself that needed the most work. locating these issues on a map became a substitution for me actually visiting and dealing with them. Thus, I think an awareness of the map can actually sometimes do more harm than good. So perhaps cognitively learning the map too early before the physical and emotional body are ready to ‘get’ integral actually makes it harder to grow than if one naturally arrived there intuitively.
Similarly, I’m also not so sure ILP is the best thing for everyone. At least for myself, I’m starting to feel that an integral life practice, (practices working mind, body, spirit, and shadow) might only really be useful once a certain stage has been reached in one specific line.
For whatever reason, I’m thinking one has to be really highly developed in one particular line before an awareness of, and exercising of, other lines becomes really potent. Up until a certain point, I think practicing ‘a little bit of everything’ actually dilutes acceleration. Too few eggs in too many baskets. However, when one really commits to one practice specifically, be it meditation, a martial art, yoga, dance, singing, or painting, I think a certain type of growth occurs that one just can’t get from an ILP. Fully committing to one thing means practicing it THROUGH states: good days, bad days, huge leaps, long periods of no growth, to the point that you become incredibly intimate with how that practice feels inside and out. A kind of home base develops. And maybe it’s only from that intimacy/home base that one can really FEEL and see the relative merits and benefits of working other lines, instead of just cognitively grasping the reasons for doing so.
In my own case, I think ILP was used for avoidance (in some ways like certain polyamorous relationships could be) As soon as things start to get painful or sour in with one practice or partner, we’ll just move on to the next! Partner one is being bitchy today, and rather than confront that and really work with whats going on (in both myself and the partner) I’ll just move on to the next!
Similarly, I might do a little strength training, but as soon as it gets REALLY difficult, like the times when you wonder why the hell you’re even doing it (and likely the times ripe for the most growth) I’ll just move on to meditation or the 3-2-1 process…
For me personally, this was a good solid year in IL of trying to do too much, running, lifting, trying to meditate (and beating myself up when I didn’t), and reading reading reading as much as I could. Truth be told, one year of just lifting for an hour 3 times a week in the mornings caused me to grow far more as a person that that whole year of ilping did. I saw more results, felt more focused, and naturally find myself growing in other areas as well.
Anyway, that’s just a theory but one I think might be worth exploring. Lines of development and ILP are incredible insights, but ones sometimes used for bypass, not growth. I think ILP might be really effective when one is pathological in an area/line, or highly developed in another. But not in the middle.
2) is the move from green to teal (yellow/integral) the biggest bottleneck of the spiral right now?
really feeling into it, I’d say no. having lived in two really green towns (santa cruz and now boulder) I actually see plenty of people moving towards ‘integral’. what I don’t see as much of is people moving to green! it’s just a hunch, but my guess would be that the greatest ‘clogged’ point on the spiral is obviously in the amber(blue) - orange - green zone. I think pushing more people into green would pop more people into integral that trying to change those in green would.
that’s all. just random thoughts I had waiting to get some car tires changed.
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Finally got this here blog onto dreamhost, and can let my old hosting service go, hurray!
Not that I’ve been doing much blogging. Haven’t been up to much other than working, continuing strength training, playing lots of Halo 3, and enjoying the onset of spring here in boulder.
Stay tuned, a shorter, but hopefully just as transformative Training Challenge feels like its just around the corner…
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just upgraded to 2.5, and something didn’t work…
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You can now embed falling fruit talks across the web! Share away!
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