A monster mashup for all you trick or treaters: Things That Go BUMP In The Night

Things That Go BUMP In The Night
right-click here to download

Running Time: 66 minutes, 6 seconds

Complete tracklist below the fold….

Enjoy!

*UPDATE* I just uploaded a new version, having thrown out a mix i wasn’t particularly happy with and adding a better closing song—all while keeping the entire mix to a diabolical 66 minute 6 second running time.  If you’ve already downloaded the first version, go ahead and replace it with this one.
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I have been looking forward to this week’s launch for a long time, eagerly awaiting the opportunity to invite you to check out a new monthly installment here on Integral Life: the debut of the Integral Life Art Gallery.  As many of you already know, art, creativity, and aesthetics have always been an essential part of an integrally-lived life. In fact, the very existence of a genuinely transformative Integral Art scene is one of the greatest indicators that we are indeed part of a bonafide cultural movement, as we have often looked to our greatest artists to scout out the unfamiliar territory ahead of us, blazing new paths through the wilderness of consciousness.

We have been working very hard to find a way to present the extraordinary talent shared by the Integral Art community here on Integral Life, and I believe we have achieved exactly this. I am very proud and excited to invite you all to check it out.

Our debut gallery features the work of Bryce Widom, an accomplished painter, designer, and illustrator as well as a beloved part of the Boulder/Denver integral community. His gallery is titled 1000 Views of God, and I am sure you will find it as breathtaking as I did.

“By painting 1000 Views of God, I’m consciously marrying my work as an artist with my spiritual path. Each painting becomes a meditation, a prayer, a moment of turning all my attention toward the divine with an open body, mind, and heart.

In this exploration, no subject is off-limits, for there is no limit to the domain of the divine. This includes both the “shadow” terrain of my inner landscape, as well as the brightest aspects of Spirit.” -Bryce Widom

And be sure to check out Bryce’s exclusive interview with Stuart Davis, The Life of an Artist: Fantasies, Realities, and a Thousand Views of God, in which you can find insight into his creative process and some of his own personal struggles eking out a living as an artist.

Of course, there is much more to the Integral Art experience than just sitting back and taking it all in. We are more than just idle consumers of art—we are also the enactors of art, co-conspirators in Beauty’s unveiling. Our interpretations of beauty are therefore at least as important as our actual perception of beauty, and certainly indivisible from the whole of our experience. As such, we want to give you the tools needed to help you more deeply perceive and interpret the beauty that surrounds you.

Which is why we are also excited to introduce you to our new Aesthetics Editor, Dr. Michael Schwartz, Professor of the Philosophy of Art at Augusta State University. Michael will offer some very special commentary for each of our monthly art galleries, as you will see in 1000 Views of God.

So you can get to know Michael a little better, we have also included an interview between he and Stuart Davis, The Complementary Dance of Art and Economics, originally recorded in 2005. Whether you’re an artist or not, we invite you to listen in on the ways we can all bring a more comprehensive, integral, balanced approach to life as a human being. And balanced doesn’t mean boring—you can rock the boat all the more wildly, because you’re aware of all the things keeping you afloat.

We have also included Ken Wilber’s masterful essay Integral Art and Literary Theory—a pièce de résistance in its own right—in which he walks us through his integral process of art interpretation and takes an in-depth look at a famous painting by Van Gogh of a pair of worn shoes.

Download PDF      Read online

I titled this letter “The Rebirth of Cool” because that is exactly what this week’s offerings strive for. This is Integral Cool. These are the perspectives at the forefront of the new avant-garde, pushing deeper into new possibilities and new expressions of creative novelty, forging the sounds and visions of the Integral movement with every brushstroke, every melody, and every written word.

After all, an evolution without dancing (or painting, or acting, or writing, or performing) is an evolution not worth having.

Special thanks to Angie Hinickle for her exquisite work creating the new Integral Life Art Gallery.

Call For Submissions: If you would like your own art to be considered for a future Integral Life Art Gallery, please submit samples of your work as well as a brief description of how the Integral vision has informed your process to Angie at art@integrallife.com

It is said that if you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will jump out immediately and without hesitation, as any self-respecting amphibian would—but if you put it in a pot of cold water and slowly turn up the heat one degree at a time, the poor thing will eventually boil to death, fatally oblivious to the increasing threat its environment portends. Though fairly macabre (no frogs were harmed in the making of this blog post), this analogy pretty aptly portrays the condition of our current place in history, in which our entire world seems to be coming to a boil right before our eyes—a slowly culminating but inevitable transformation of history from one state to another. And we have, until recently, been largely oblivious to this—but now we are beginning to take notice, and like the frog who suddenly realizes that it’s getting just a bit too warm for comfort, we are collectively faced with an existential ultimatum—either jump out of the pot, or boil alive.

But can we jump out? Is there any hope for us at all? Can we possibly transform in time—and if so, how? On the one hand, transformation is an utterly mysterious process, often happening suddenly, violently, and without any warning at all. On the other hand, Western science has very proficiently demonstrated that evolutionary leaps—both biological and psychological—tend to occur when environmental pressures demand them to. According to the biological fossil record, this has usually been due to such things as drastic climate change or the geological merging of two previously isolated ecosystems. In terms of psychological development, when asking the question “why do people transform?,” we can look to the concept of the “dialectic of progress,” which essentially states that every new stage of psychological growth brings with it its own “good news” and “bad news,” the good news of each stage being the resolution of the bad news from the previous stage. Or, as Albert Einstein famously quipped, “problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.” We ascend the spire of psychological and cultural growth simply by solving our own problems—and every step forward comes with its own new set of emergent problems, which can only be addressed by taking yet another step forward, as consciousness continues to bootstrap itself ever closer to the evolutionary horizon. Read the rest of this entry

The Integral Bazaar: Your One-Stop Shop for All Things Integral.

I spent the weekend integrating a fully-stocked Amazon marketplace here on CoreyWdeVos.com (or PokingWholes.com, if you prefer a less me-centric way to refer to this site.) As far as i can tell, this is the first and only one-stop shopping extravaganza for Integral materials anywhere on the web—or is at least the most comprehensive Integral store i’ve seen yet, with new additions being pulled in every day. As of right now, there are over 200 books, audiobooks, and multimedia offerings available, separated into a handful of categories (which you can find on the right sidebar within the store):

Ken Wilber (currently 35 products): A complete list of Ken Wilber books and audiobooks

More Integral Resources (currently 15 products): Books and media from around the Integral ecosystem that work explicitly with AQAL theory.

Friends of Integral (currently 119 products): A wealth of resources from close Integral friends and past guests on Integral Naked and Integral Life.  Separated into topic-related categories—including business/leadership, environment, sexuality, and spirituality—with new categories being added very soon.

The Shoulders of Giants (currently 37 products): A list of books that have held a profound influence upon Ken Wilber and the Integral Vision as we know it today.  This is one of my favorite categories, and really look forward to fleshing it out a lot more in the weeks to come.

Corey’s Favorites (currently 82 products): I am an adherent to the religion of pop.  Some of my favorite non-integral books, dvd’s, graphic novels, and video games.  Just a way for you to see what kind of geeky stuff i am into.

Again, The Integral Bazaar is still under construction, and i am inviting feedback from you all as to what books and media should be added (particularly in the “More Integral”, the “Friends of Integral”, and the “Shoulders of Giants” sections.)  Feel free to drop a comment below with your recommendations.

I hope you enjoy!

Hunter Lovins, President and Founder of Natural Capital Solutions and author of Natural Capitalism, spoke with Jim Garrison on Integral Life about some of the real-world solutions to climate change that are already taking effect around the world. While many people condemn big business and big industry as anti-ethical to the environmental movement, Hunter helps makes the case that these sorts of large companies are actually in a better position than most to deal with the bulk of the ecological problems we are all aware of. Sound too idealistic? What if we told you that many of these companies have already begun cutting carbon emissions, reducing waste, and increasing efficiency, without any sort of major incentive from the governments of the world.

Why are they doing it? Simple: to turn a profit! Surprised? Be sure to listen to this interview for more details. If you have ever wondered how we can begin to accelerate our response to climate change in the short term, you will find Hunter’s insights invaluable. Read the rest of this entry

“The planet,” Jim Garrison is fond of saying, “is on a collision course with itself.” The monumental challenges of the 21st century seem dire indeed, almost insurmountable in many ways. And to make matters worse, only a portion of the population has the developmental capacity to fully recognize the complexity of our collective problems, while the majority of the world remains blissfully unaware of the impending catastrophe we seem to be heading toward. And many of those who can see feel utterly helpless to do anything about it, unable to find their own ecologically sensitive values reflected in the culture at large. And so they anxiously await what many perceive as the inevitable, a tsunami of global crises to wash over us all, rendering the fruits of human civilization undone in a single fell swoop.

“You can’t get ‘better and better, worse and worse, faster and faster’ without something going ‘pop’ sooner or later, in a way that would be catastrophic….” -Jim Garrison Read the rest of this entry