Wyatt Earp Shoots My Shadow

So...

Here is Wilber's original Wyatt Earp themed post.  Here is the follow up.  And, courtesy of ebuddha, here are lists being compiled of blog posts about Wilber's posts: Responses linking to first post.  Responses linking to follow up post.  Here are some cool zaadz comments.

And here is (most likely) the longest post I will ever write.

Ken's Wyatt Earp post made me uncomfortable.  And then reading all the reactions to it made my head hurt.  Wilber as narcissistic asshole?  Wilber as the head of a cult?  Wilber playing a joke on us?  Bad judgment?  Wilber'’s rant as a great liberator?

Nothing sat right with me.  The best I could do was tell myself he was writing as what he was accused of being.  And probably went overboard.  But even this felt like I was trying to justify it to myself to remain in safe territory.   

Glued to each blogging advance in the conversation, I tried to write about it.  Oddly everything I wrote was about me.  My discomfort with certain types of people, the sideways steps I take when confused about my path.     

And then the 2nd post.  Oh... the 2nd post. 

I started it thinking, "“oh shit this is going to be serious cover your ass time,"” but by the end I wanted to pump my fist in the air and laugh with joy.

I mean, holy shit!   

Oh, and I mean that in the most embarrassing of ways.  I saw the light!  No!  I saw the dark!  I saw everyone's shadows.  Just glowing in every post I read and reread.  I saw my own shadow like this enormous fucking neon sign.  And it was so beautiful.  Just this screaming play of vanity and insecurity, just this swallowing up of all experience to tell myself a story of my own worth. 

And I'm so grateful. 

I saw it all flicker and become transparent in service to something larger.  I feel like my mind has been blown.  Burst open.

Here'’s the thing:  I want to get it.  I have always wanted to get it.  God, please let me be 2nd tier.  Man do I ever want to be the guy who just groks the fuck out of this stuff.  I want to have already had non-dual experiences so people will love me and my precious little blog and think I am some kind of god damn genius. 

But that'’s just the thing that got gotten at.  How my desire to be the guy who gets it fucks up my ability to sit still and feel the Witness.  How my ego'’s need to conquer Integral keeps Integral about my ego.
 
Part of me, in reading Wilber, hates to be reminded that I am not having non-dual experiences, that I cannot figure out for myself all of these beautiful grand connections.   

When I go to sites that are critical of Wilber and Integral there is so much insecurity I have to deal with.  I want to able to simply read and dismiss them.  And instead I read them and think, "“Oh shit, oh shit, what if this is right?  I can'’t buy this Integral stuff if it turns out to be wrong, oh fuck, oh fuck," and a small part of me begins to hate the critics.  And hate Wilber.  And hate my god damn foolish enthusiasm. 

But this is just clamoring noise.  This is just something else that makes it hard to sit still and feel the Witness.  These critics could be right and Ken Wilber could be the cult leader to end all cult leaders but that would not change the nature of the face I had before my parents were born.  Nothing can change that, and all the ways I talk myself out of meditating as if my life depends on it (or my hair is on fire and mediation a cool pond) are the same silly ego games of so much of this criticism and my own frightened reaction to it. 

Sometimes the critics have points.  But I have not read anything that really takes apart the theory, or refutes its usefulness in navigating transformation. 

And, in a way, he is right about the Wyatt Earp business.  How many follow up posts seemed to want Wilber to step aside so that someone else (who do you suppose?) can take up the true mantel of Integral?  Destroy your heroes anyone?

Well, for me, this ridiculous exercise worked.  I got totally shook up.  Then I read the 2nd post and saw clearly.  Nothing Wilber said effects, as he put it, IAMness.  Wilber could shit on the porch, as one critic said, and whether he did or didn'’t it, it doesn'’t effect anyone'’s true nature, it doesn'’t make us any more or less Spirit.     

Wilber uses clear and concise language.  The transformations that I have undertaken since first reading him have changed so much about how I live.  I have not read one other author who can time and time again say, so clearly, this is how the world feels, here is something to try, here is how the world will most likely feel after you do it for a couple of years. 

All this talk about who should say what or who gets to hang out with rich fuckers in Fiji or New York or which critics get to be taken seriously is just a lot of noise.  It is clouds passing in the sky. 

And in the relative world... well, I guess Wilber can take a crap wherever he wants and I'’ll be relatively embarrassed and disgusted if it's on someone's porch.  Then I'’ll go home and listen to the 123 of God and be absolutely grateful.   

Wilber'’s critics can call him a jackass.  And Wilber can stamp his feet and threaten to piss in their eye-sockets.  And it can all be a marketing ploy.  And it can all be a data gathering exercise for future I-I studies.  And it can be a joke.  And it can be a sweet mind-fuck.  And it can be the slap in the face that quiets internal chatter long enough to hear Spirit.  There'’s room for all of that.  And that'’s the point, right? 

I feel excited by this in a way I haven'’t felt since, well, I guess IWET, which wasn'’t so along ago.  But damn that post made me want to stretch and embrace my highest self and do whatever work is necessary to stabilize realization. 

Just wake the fuck up.  That'’s all.  Wake the fuck up and smile at the foolish games played by my ego. 

So, yeah, fuck it, I am taking another sip of kool-aid.