Wholeness and sensing with the belly center (learned from Philip Shepherd)
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Some fabulous speakers on scene,
A focus on practice: that’s keen.
We’re still old and white,
But there’s a lot we got right
at IEA 2017!
- What is IEA 2017 and why do you care?
- The three centers: head, heart, and belly
- The enteric brain (“gut brain”)
- Western culture is mostly orange/rationalistic worldview: WCME 019: Spiral Dynamics and the Enneagram, with Deborah Ooten
- The patriarchy says “the head center is the only important one”
- John Coates meets Ahmed of the Sengoi, who communes with the ocean
- This is why we’re hype about both the Enneagram and weird shit!
- Our five senses reinforce the paradigm of having a boundary between self and external world.
- The American dream of individual independence is a dream of “safety” which is really disconnection, e.g. Howard Hughes
- A magic wand changes one electron and changes the whole world. The universe feels me move and think.
- The body knows how good a stock trade is
- “Unintegrated abstraction is unreality” -Philip Shepherd
- Agriculture changed everything and created good and evil, seed and weed
- You can’t get to harmony via control
- Joseph Campbell says the hero is “the man of self achieved submission”
- “You know that’s a tree. Why would you bother feeling it?”
- “You get true self knowledge by opening to the world, and the world tells you about yourself.” -Philip Shepherd
- “Any sensitivity is a form of intelligence, but the sensitivity must be grounded and integrated.” -Philip Shepherd
- Our culture is blind to wholeness. When you’re blind to wholeness, the present does not exist.
- Aligning yourself with compassion is dangerous because you say “Okay, now I’m going to be compassionate here” and that disconnects you
- from wholeness. But if you align yourself with wholeness, you will be compassionate.
- “No sailor has ever arrived at the pole star, but it keeps you true.” -Philip Shepherd
- The inclination to raise your consciousness is not aligned with wholeness
- Why does everyone care about etymology?!
- Philip Shepherd’s first book: New Self, New World: Recovering Our Senses in the Twenty First Century
You can find Philip Shepherd at philipshepherd.com
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