This post from How to Save the World is titled Why We Hate Complexity.

It's a good post - I especially like his posits of why we hate complexity:

I think the reason is that the acknowledgement of complexity, of a system's being beyond our understanding and analysis

    * reduces our sense of power and control
    * increases our sense of helplessness and insecurity, and
    * reduces our confidence in the predictability of the future.

This also reminded me of a classic book by Alan Watts titled The Wisdom of Insecurity.

In a sense, Integral Practice, is an attempt to navigate the world in a way that a way that is true to our spiritual, emotional, social, and physical selves.  And this involves participation - hopefully participation that WORKS - for the most part. 

But in the end - the emptiness/fullness of phenomena, and the encounter with dissolution of the self - this will never be fully solved by any practice, any way, any belief system.

We build sand castles out of our lives, and invest these sand castles with our selves, our sense of ownership, our loves, our projects, our communions, and our creativity.

Because this is what humans do.  Scorpions sting.  Humans seek meaningful activity.  

The confrontation with dissolution, with death, beyond that meaningful activity, is almost an anti-integral practice.  But spiritually and existentially necessary, just the same.

READ THIS FIRST - before watching the video below.

One of the things that I think is very important to understand - in spite of our blogs, in spite of our intelligent minds, in spite of our wise, synthetic analysis -

Blogging - at this point - is coming from a specific band of human capability.  And this band - the intellectual, the silent awareness, the peaceful watching - is actually one of the least satisfying ways to touch the Divine.

Now - it happens to be the way that I am most comfortable with.  But there are a lot of assumptions about "how to behave" that come with this perspective - that are important to be aware of.

I spent enough time in my 20's "checking my mind at the door", that I can assert that the other ways in which we touch God - matter more to people.

The bliss-devotional aspect of the Divine, is, for most people, simply more important to the Spirit - to connection - then any amount of theorizing and satori.

When you are really INTO the bliss-devotion aspect of your SELF - at least in my own experience - the analytic portion of self is pretty "checked out".   I would say that to the analytic portion of self, the bliss-devotion aspect seems fundamentally ALIEN.

"WTF are those crazy people doing??"

But they aren't crazy, really - they are riding on a wave of bliss-devotion. 

It goes without saying that this wave of bliss-devotion is RIPE for manipulation of people - which makes it dangerous.  But it also is the juice of Spirit - and as such, needs to respected, and be accepted in the integral conversation.

I found the following on YouTube - watch it when you get a chance.  I don't know anything about this particular guru - not the history, not anything - but I can pretty much tell you, simply by the characteristics -that as silly as this guy seems to be, it most likely is the case that this guy, and a large percentage of the worshippers - are riding on a wave of bliss-devotion - where you must dance! 

Finally, a real question - if you find the following soccer behavior acceptable and fun (which I do), do you feel similarly about the below?  If not, why not?

For anyone who ever played a video game fighting game - here's a fun "live action" Tekken match.