From root at mandala-designs.com Fri Dec 9 23:39:56 2005 From: root at mandala-designs.com (root) Date: Fri Dec 9 23:40:51 2005 Subject: [Kenwilber] Excerpt from Ken Wilber's new book Message-ID: <20051210043956.55073173A4@mx2.mandala-designs.com> Folks -- Ken wanted to share this brief excerpt from his new book -- one that he is just completing: Integral Spirituality. This book will be published by Shambhala this coming summer. Hope you enjoy it. As we approach the pub date, we'll provide additional excerpts from the book. ============================================================================================================ Where Is Spirit Located? Here's a simple thought experiment. Picture the following men or women, and then tell me which you think are probably the most spiritual? 1. A man in an Armani suit 2. A woman driving a red Ferrari 3. A player pitching baseball in the major leagues 4. A professional comedian 5. A mathematician 6. A person in a tank top lifting weights 7. An Olympic swimmer 8. A college professor 9. A model 10. A sexual surrogate Which do you think is the most spiritual? Which do you think is the least spiritual? It's funny, isn't it, the things that we think are not spiritual? Why do we picture most of those men as not being very spiritual? Or conversely, why do we have such a hard time seeing them as being spiritual? Aren't we actually just giving our own prejudices about where we think spirit is or is not to be found? Or worse: aren't we really just announcing how old and fragmented and NOT INTEGRAL our ideas about spirit are? Why is telling jokes not spiritual? Why is something beautiful -- a car, a suit -- not spiritual? Why is physical excellence not spiritual? Why is sex not spiritual? Why is.... It's a new world, it's a new spirituality, it's a new time, it's a new man, it's a new woman. All of the above categories are deeply spiritual. Mostly all that list is, is a list of things we are afraid to allow spirituality to touch. Dead from the neck down, with no humor, no sex, no aesthetic sensibility whatsoever, wasting away, spending one's days and nights ignoring the world and lost in prayer... what a strange God, that. Well, no more. Dead to life, dead to the body, dead to nature, dead to sex, dead to beauty, dead to excellence: that never was a real God, anyway, but merely a desiccated distillation of the things that men and women always had the most difficulty handling, and things from which God became the Great Escape, a distillation and concatenation of every phobic and repressive impulse a human being possessed. Well, no more. It's a new world, it's a new spirituality, it's a new man, it's a new woman. The Spirit is integral, and so is the human being. Copyright 2005 Ken Wilber ============================================================================================================ Don't forget to check out Ken's latest audio program: Integral Operating System, available from Shambhala Publications at http://www.shambhala.com/html/catalog/items/isbn/1-59179-347-5.cfm . You also might want to place your pre-publication order for the Integral Life Practice Starter Kit (scheduled to begin shipping by the 2nd week of January) http://www.shambhala.com/html/catalog/items/isbn/0-9772275-0-2.cfm Happy Holidays! From root at mandala-designs.com Fri Dec 9 23:39:56 2005 From: root at mandala-designs.com (root) Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 23:39:56 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Kenwilber] Excerpt from Ken Wilber's new book Message-ID: <20051210043956.55073173A4@mx2.mandala-designs.com> Folks -- Ken wanted to share this brief excerpt from his new book -- one that he is just completing: Integral Spirituality. This book will be published by Shambhala this coming summer. Hope you enjoy it. As we approach the pub date, we'll provide additional excerpts from the book. ============================================================================================================ Where Is Spirit Located? Here's a simple thought experiment. Picture the following men or women, and then tell me which you think are probably the most spiritual? 1. A man in an Armani suit 2. A woman driving a red Ferrari 3. A player pitching baseball in the major leagues 4. A professional comedian 5. A mathematician 6. A person in a tank top lifting weights 7. An Olympic swimmer 8. A college professor 9. A model 10. A sexual surrogate Which do you think is the most spiritual? Which do you think is the least spiritual? It's funny, isn't it, the things that we think are not spiritual? Why do we picture most of those men as not being very spiritual? Or conversely, why do we have such a hard time seeing them as being spiritual? Aren't we actually just giving our own prejudices about where we think spirit is or is not to be found? Or worse: aren't we really just announcing how old and fragmented and NOT INTEGRAL our ideas about spirit are? Why is telling jokes not spiritual? Why is something beautiful -- a car, a suit -- not spiritual? Why is physical excellence not spiritual? Why is sex not spiritual? Why is.... It's a new world, it's a new spirituality, it's a new time, it's a new man, it's a new woman. All of the above categories are deeply spiritual. Mostly all that list is, is a list of things we are afraid to allow spirituality to touch. Dead from the neck down, with no humor, no sex, no aesthetic sensibility whatsoever, wasting away, spending one's days and nights ignoring the world and lost in prayer... what a strange God, that. Well, no more. Dead to life, dead to the body, dead to nature, dead to sex, dead to beauty, dead to excellence: that never was a real God, anyway, but merely a desiccated distillation of the things that men and women always had the most difficulty handling, and things from which God became the Great Escape, a distillation and concatenation of every phobic and repressive impulse a human being possessed. Well, no more. It's a new world, it's a new spirituality, it's a new man, it's a new woman. The Spirit is integral, and so is the human being. Copyright 2005 Ken Wilber ============================================================================================================ Don't forget to check out Ken's latest audio program: Integral Operating System, available from Shambhala Publications at http://www.shambhala.com/html/catalog/items/isbn/1-59179-347-5.cfm . You also might want to place your pre-publication order for the Integral Life Practice Starter Kit (scheduled to begin shipping by the 2nd week of January) http://www.shambhala.com/html/catalog/items/isbn/0-9772275-0-2.cfm Happy Holidays!