There is an old proverb often used as an analogy for technological growth, about an ancient emperor of China and the inventor of chess. According to the story, once the emperor became aware of the game of chess, he sent a message throughout the kingdom seeking to reward its inventor, offering anything within his power to give for such an exceptional game. Upon meeting the emperor, the inventor, a poor peasant farmer, thanked the emperor for his generosity, and proceeded to place a single grain of rice in the first square of a chessboard. He then placed two grains in the second square, four in the third, eight in the fourth, etc., doubling the number of grains for each of the chessboard’s 64 squares.
At first the emperor was fairly amused by the farmer’s request—after all, these were mere grains of rice we were talking about, how much could he possibly lose? So he allowed the farmer to continue. It wasn’t until they got about halfway through the chessboard that the emperor began to notice that something didn’t quite smell right in Shanghai. After 32 squares—32 successive doublings of a single grain of rice—the farmer was up to about four billion grains of rice, the equivalent of a few acres of rice fields. If they were to continue all the way to the end of the board, the farmer would be owed about 18 quintillion grains of rice, which would require a rice field twice the size of the surface of the planet to produce, oceans included. Read the rest of this entry
For some, the notion of “God in 2nd-person” can initially seem somewhat confusing, off-putting even. After all, with whom exactly are we communing? The anthropomorphic “personal God” we know from the Western religious traditions? The pantheon of deities and demons we find in the East? Mother Nature? The Great Web of Life? The Flying Spaghetti Monster? There seem to have been so few exemplars in the modern and postmodern worlds to help us understand the “we” that exists between our individual selves and the divine, especially since this crucial “Second Face” of God is so frequently labeled as obsolete, a quaint relic of mythic consciousness.
As human beings continue to evolve, so do our conceptions of God. In fact, some would go so far as to say that as human beings evolve, God evolves right along with us, and with every small step humanity takes toward wider care and deeper consciousness, God takes another step toward its own perfection and the divinization of the universe. And it is through our very conceptions of the divine that God’s voice can speak to and through us, finding more volume and resonance as the architecture of thought becomes more sophisticated and inclusive.
Our consciousness is inextricable from our environment. Colors, angles, textures, and lights all conspire to sway our moods and shape our experiences; molding our conscious and unconscious minds according to the prevailing social norms and cultural trends of the time. We can feel this every time we walk into a room, a very subtle but noticeable reaction to our surroundings—perhaps a sense of calm and spaciousness, or of creativity and energetic vibrancy, or of anxiety and claustrophobia. You can feel this right now as you read this, your immediate habitat inescapably affecting the sound, feel, and meaning of every word. There is no simple mathematical equation to make sense of the connection between consciousness and environment, as the same surroundings can elicit entirely different reactions from psyche to psyche, culture to culture. Adding to the complexity, we often surprise ourselves by naturally surrounding ourselves with environs that dramatically contrast our interior states:
“Did you have a good life when you died? Enough to base a movie on?” -Jim Morrison
Diagnosis: The postmodern cultural condition whereby highly developed cognitive pluralism becomes infected with poorly developed emotional narcissism.
Yesterday Brad Warner posted a fairly scathing critique of Integral Life on his blog, Hardcore Zen, in which he lampoons some of the marketing copy we currently have on www.myilp.com, which is an advertisement for the still-thriving Integral Life Practice Kit. The title of his blog was 
From indigenous shamans invoking the elements through rhythm and dance, to the ancient cult of Pythagoras seeking the ever-elusive “harmony of the spheres,” to Sufi dervishes whirling their way to enlightenment, to the hallowed tones of sacred hymns echoing through secluded monasteries—all throughout history, music has always been an important part of spiritual life. It has been used as an instrument of worship, appreciation, and fellowship; a channel for inspiration and illumination; and a gateway to both sensual embodiment as well as radical self-transcendence. Music has often been thought to mirror the elusive mysteries of creation itself: all melodies reflecting the mathematical patterns of the universe, all rhythms echoing the primordial heartbeat of God.
There is much talk in America these days around the issue of race. With Barack Hussein Obama as the elected President of the United States, we have begun to collectively reflect upon our relationship with race and racism—and the conversation seems to have polarized into two radically different positions. On one hand, Obama’s viability as a presidential candidate across a wide range of demographics prompts liberals to proudly declare that, finally, we live in a “post-racial” America, no longer tethered to the racial divisiveness that has infected our political systems since the country’s inception. On the other hand, a great number of people are still asking the question “are we ready for a black president?,” which itself seems to indicate that a genuine “post-racial” America is still on the horizon of human evolution. The truth, of course, lies somewhere between, or beyond, these two extremes—we have certainly made some tremendous strides in our collective attitudes toward race and racism, but we cannot confuse our accomplishments with outright victory. There can be no singular victory over racism, but like peace itself, it is a victory that must be won again and again, perpetually into the future.