New Home!
Boulder Center for Integral Living
Yes, it is true. BCIL now has its own space! Friends, we are so happy and excited and nervous and everything you can imagine. Developing communities, let alone 'integral' communities is certainly not an easy thing. But we are on board and committed to the integral vision and we want to give this mission our all. And we need the help of anyone interested in anyway they can. Mostly, we really hope that you will come and visit us and spend a little time in practice with us.
I think that, maybe 5 or 6 years ago, when I first read Excerpt B (Ken Wilber) on the Shambhala website, the last few paragraphs made my eyes a tad moist (just like many other of Ken's writings have done). The reason why I am reminded of that reading today is because I feel that BCIL, like many other organizations, has potential to do that - we too can become one of those "pockets of care and consciousness where individuals exercise second-tier potentials in an ongoing effort to embrace as gracefully as possible all dimensions of the radiant Kosmos." I will copy and paste those last few paragraphs from Excerpt B below.
We want to bring so much love and attention to this home. I can never quite thank Ken Wilber enough for the education and wisdom that he has given us. I think we'll just try to do it and live it the best we can.
We so want your blessings, guys, and when are you going to come, visit your new home??? Seriously, if you are in the Boulder/Denver area, you gotta drop by!
All Love
Nomali
[An excerpt from] Excerpt B: The Many Ways We Touch
-Ken Wilber ( www.kenwilber.com)
...by whatever name and in whatever context, integral salons are in fact already forming around the world, pockets of care and consciousness where individuals exercise second-tier potentials in an ongoing effort to embrace as gracefully as possible all dimensions of the radiant Kosmos. The more one actually practices an integral meta-paradigm (in personal life, in business, in education, in politics, in medicine, in spirituality), the more Eros is set rumbling through the system, agitating and pulling toward a second-tier transformation that explodes the legitimacy crisis inherent in all first-tier waves and throws them open to an enrichment beyond their first-tier imprisonment, an enrichment that is their own inherent potential and divine birthright set free in the deeper and wider spaces enacted by integral practices.
How to extend this compassion and clarity to all sentient beings is a fiery concern that blazes forth in these salons and circles of unfolding and enfolding care, circles that you are almost certainly involved in or you would not have read this far; circles that call out to you to give the best that you can, and then more; circles that call forth from you the best that you can be, and then more; and circles that are beginning to deposit the Kosmic habits of a tomorrow dedicated to compassion, a horizon luminous with intimacy, a future hopelessly fallen in love with love, circles drenched in the tears of a beauty descending on all beings, accepting each as they are, insisting each be more, assisting them to be so, catching them if not.
It is to those salons that I respectfully submit a consideration of three helpful guidelines for integrally informed practice--nonexclusion, enfoldment, and enactment--with the hope that they will help make room for whatever is arising, moment to moment to radiant moment, while causing the least amount of pain and extending the most amount of compassion to all our brothers and sisters manifesting with us.
We must forgive each other our arising, for our existence always torments others. The golden rule in the midst of this mutual misery has always been, not to do no harm, but as little as possible; and not to love one another, but as much as you can. Therefore, let a calculus of torment as well as one of compassion guide the maps with which we navigate samsara.
In the end, yes, that which is samsara is not other than nirvana, and that which is nirvana is not other than samsara: the world of finite, manifest, temporal things crashing into each other, torturing each other, loving each other for a moment or two, every now and then, turns out to be the domain of the very and only Divine, with each and every thing, just as it is, a shimmering gesture, a luminous glance, a sparkling jewel, spontaneously arising in the sea of the Great Perfection, the entire show nothing but the radiant smile of your own Original Face.
But in the meantime, there is this manifest mess. As long as the world is arising around you, then this is samsara, and therefore calculate your actions on the least harm and the most care. When the very same world is arising within you, then this is nirvana, and all your actions will take care of themselves, while the calculus of pain and compassion will unfold of its own accord, treating every sentient being with the utmost concern, vowing to liberate each and every one of them, knowing full well that in reality there are no others to liberate--because in the entire Kosmos there are no others at all, no inside and no outside anywhere, but merely and only This. Greet the day within you as the unfolding of your kin, watch the sun arise without opening your eyes, feel the distant galaxies rising and falling with each and every heartbeat of the only heart there is--you can feel it beating right now--and bless the entire universe arising within by consenting to feel it again, now and now and now. In the great unfoldment that enfolds all, bow to the suchness of all beings, in the only place that is ever real, and the only time that is only now.
Access: Public
boulder center for integral living
July 2008
Hello there:
What are the phone numbers and e-mail for the center? If you could, please send them to durwinfoster@gmail.com.
Thanks!
Hi Durwin,
We are working with Rockynet to get phone lines into the building so that we will have new lines. This will take a little time. We still just about have nothing in the building!! Long, long way to go. However, you can always write to info@b-cil.org or to anyone of us in the coordinating circle. The email addresses are below.
Jeff@b-cil.org (Jeff Salzman)
Nomali@b-cil.org
Jason@b-cil.org (Jason Lange)
Ross@b-cil.org (Ross Hostetter)
Mary@b-cil.org (Mary Hostetter)
Until our phones are ready, please feel free to call us too. I will send our cell phone numbers to your gmail.
Thanks for checking in.
Nomali