a koan for Humanity - Chapter TWO

Chapter TWO

My background - to anticipate what an audience will respond positively to - or "Move with Joy to Liberate".

You might have heard this one:
it´s said we ´re all highly unique but each one of us is blind to his / her own uniqueness.
Like we all carry a little light bulb on our heads and each one of us has a very specific color to that bulb. So everything I ever experienced, ever will experience, is colored by my light – leading to that I take the uniqueness for granted and I think it´s just normal, that´s the way life is. You take your light for granted.
It´s also said that there are two important days in our lives – the day we´re born and the day we find out why. In other words, the day we start to see our own specific light, our own specific contribution in the world.

I could have become an engineer. I probably would have worked with invention and evolving the next generation of whatsoever .. I loved electronics and invented things in high school, build a simple computer based sampler for my technical college degree (that was 1984 and if you´re into making music and ever worked with sampling, you might know that 1984 was very early. Sampler came around in the 90s).

I didn't become an engineer. Age 34, after having left three universities behind me (with out any degree) and probably 15 or 20 different jobs also behind, I was so fed up. After some really deep analyzing into what I really really love to do, always some how have done and can imagine to turn into a business, I became a DJ. That´s right – disc jockey.
Entertainment, fun, dancing, parties, events, night life .. weddings, I love playing at weddings.

About 20 years later I still dj and entertain. One of the apparent qualities a DJ need to have, is a good feel for what an audience will like the most in about 3 minutes, expressed in music. One of the maybe not so apparent qualities a DJ also need to have, is the same a good director has, like a theater or film director. We create an arc of suspense, ideally starting building with the very first piece of music and having everyone land with the very last piece .. ideally after the last sound, there is a distinct feel of "end of the party" for tonight. It can be a moment of perfection.

Now, of course there is a lot of experience that goes into my dj:ing after working years with music. What pieces of music go good together. There are books and training in this. Sometimes the theory fits. Often is does kind of fit, sometimes not at all. I make a living out this, so I can not afford to stick to theory. I need to go with what is. What is making this specific audience happy on this specific evening at this specific moment? Everything else is of less importance. And I've got 2 minutes to figure out the potentially very best fitting next song.

You could say, we as DJs are creating happy futures. Moment by moment.

Ok, that is limited to some hours, and to a specific audience in a specific setting.

This little book project is taking the same basic principle a little further. Humanity evolves, somehow. Theories, like the integral and others based upon integral thinking / spiral dynamics / Theory U and so try to predict what might come. It´s a bit like treating evolution like a donkey, using a whip from the past (=prediction), saying go there. We do not do that out of stupidity. Of course not. We do these predictions, beacause that´s the best we know. That´s what mental abstract thinking is capable of.

The donkey might move, but its not going to be a happy donkey, is it?

What about a carrot?

Ken Wilber talks about how fear driven first tier is. And one sign of second tier is that fear falls away, that being driven by fear lessens through increased sense of meaning – a "fundamental leap in meaning" is how he calls it. The word “meaning” can of course be interpreted in several ways. One observation I make among fellow integral travelers is that meaning is used quite mentally – it´s about understanding and through understanding trying to integrate the first tier heritage. It can be a very academic “meaning” at times.

But what then? “Fear lessened” might leave a kind of motivational empty space. What drives evolution from here on? Is evolution automatic? Always? Can we know that? Can we take it for granted? Some assume that evolution of consciousness goes on automatically. Though, maybe it doesn't´t. Maybe evolution says something like: “I took you this far for free. Pushed you through. Now it´s up to you where and how you want to go on.”

I think we need to make aware choices from here on. What do I allow to inspire me? What are my aware choices? And I think that from now on we can actually chooce pretty much with what speed we evolve. Choice the “right stuff” and evolution speeds up nicely, choice the “wrong” stuff, and pathology of integral yellow / teal appears and spreads.

Don´t choose, and some kind of world wide consciousness default setting takes on the lead.

Still, some kind of guidance may be needed. I advocate Joy as one such quality. Joy on a broad sense. A Joy that when it reaches the heart is an important ingredients in Love. A Joy that in the body let´s us be very alive. Let´s us experience this life directly now. It brings certainty beyond any doubt. A Joy that when it touches the mental is an important ingredient for inspiration, for deep and wide blissful understanding .. that opens the door for Meta Mental.

Is that a good carrot? Does it allow us to move with joy to liberate evolution? To also recieve suprising updates to consciousness, the way artist do, so that Reinventing Consciousness happens .. this is another way to hint at Meta Mental.