Tuesday, December 30, 2008

It

is a bar of soap.

Why the "I" in pIece?

A few fellow Egos have asked My Ego what the capital "I" is to represent in the pIece Now post. My Ego tries to not reveal such hidden meanings, allow readers to grapple with the meaning of meanings. While the interpretations that each reader may project onto My Ego's intended meaning also hold true, My Ego certainly can explain My Ego's Ego.

In all the shards of glass, I is (t)here. I, friends, is you is I. No matter your political slant, skin color, gender, sexual orientation, love of hate or Rick Warren--the broken glass at our feet is a mess we are all responsible for. To place blame at this point would be to fundamentally misinterpret time's ever-present unfolding, Now.

There is no other way to create the Integral stained glass mosaic without first seeing I in every pIece, taking responsibility for each, and finding the most effective and efficient means of gluing them together.

I is in every pIece.*

*Please don't confuse I with My Ego. They [are/not] the same.

Sunday, December 28, 2008

pIece Now

The Glass House of America has been shattered. My Ego will not waste words on the building of the glass house, or how it became broken. The undeniable fact is that the house has been shattered to pieces, which now lay in smoldering, colored piles across the country, as glass dust particles spread throughout the world via the winds of cyclic change.

The shards now cutting our bare feed leave us with two distinct options: keep walking on them until we bleed to death, or find ways to take the pieces; big and small, colorful and black and white, with every nuance of opacity, and glue them back together into a stained-glass mosaic structure of beIng like nothing before.

While many will fearfully run around yelling to the heavens with a fist full of glass, throwing shards at those with different types and colors of glass trying to get one last cut into the Other, there will be those of us collecting the pieces for imminent use. The key to our new Now is in developing many new types of glue with which to build the new stained glass mosaic. Some of the glue will dry hard as a rock, while some will be porous and allow light and subtle substance to shine through. We'll focus on the glue, and we'll find the right glue for the right glass.

There will still, and always, be those throwing the shards at each other, but their fists will eventually grow too bloody to have any real effect. Meanwhile, when the mosaic first starts to come together, we'll be too close to it for it to make any sense. We'll see only colors and pieces, and of course the glue. Yet, as we continue to pIece the artwork together, we'll slowly step away from the window, and we'll begin to see Shapes. Forms. Characters. Narratives. Stories. Forms based on reciprocity. Characters who's motives transcend to the greater good, while including our selves in doing so. Narratives that prove the values of both/and over the division of either/or. Stories that include other's narratives, different culture's characters, yet... the same Universal Forms.

Let us not forget that this is indeed still a window-Being; a substantive surface that allows light to pass through it in both directions. There will always be a window between isIng and the Light, yet it's up to those putting the pieces back together to shape a new window to refract the Light so shed as far and wide as possible.

We are the leaders of the Integral generation. We are those willing to tell a new story by pIecing the old ones together in our inclusive, ever-evolving image.

It's time, frienemies, to pIece Now.

~mIe

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Naive Irony

8 years ago, a new century arrived with an ever-increasing set of dichotomies, further dividing our country into the polarized camps that seem to come so easily to us. Meanwhile, the small but rising group of Integrators danced between the two, looking for any ground of mutual respect with which to grow a new system of values based on reciprocal development.

In the new millennium, My Ego has lost count of the number of times My Ego has been accused of being "naive" in the face of said polarity. Soon after the attacks of 9/11, My Ego repeatedly called for a new energy economy based on independence from foreign oil and creation of a new energy economy based on sustainable principles. Using the "energy" gained from 9/11 to our advantage, there was never a better time to come together and re-purpose that energy into... new energy.

My Ego even began developing the foundation for the business My Ego runs to this day, with the mission statement "Developing Sustainability Through Creativity." My Ego based this decision on a predicted rise in "green" marketing and an infusion of capital into the green movement. My Ego can't keep track of the number of times My Ego was accused of being young and naive, laughed at for being overly idealistic and that one day, My Ego would "understand how things really are." Naive, indeed.

Looking back, it seems a cliche argument, yet My Ego fought hard against the Iraq war from day one. Let's be clear: My Ego was not "anti-war", in fact My Ego argued at the time for the proliferation of strategic dis-integration of fundamentalist networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, through military and information warfare. My Ego called out the utter lack of respectable rationale for the Iraq invasion, the lack of any real evidence for invading outside of adding fuel to the flames of the Military Industrial Complex... surely, My Ego was the naive, unseasoned judge of international politics.

The list could go on and on, but let's skip to the grand finale of this thesis.

The greatest of My Ego's naive insight of them all... support of our president elect, Barack Obama. The day after the DNC convention in 2004, My Ego sent an email out to friends and family, and will never forget bringing to work the same message: the man who gave the keynote address would be the next president of the United States. The redicule and laughter received can not be understated; for four years My Ego stood hard and fast against this claim. No way a black man could ever be president against the vitriol of Palin's America, none the less the primary against the Clinton machine.

And now, the crux of the post, and the twisted questions that stands before My Ego. Despite the actual outcomes of the examples given, the fact My Ego still supports the president elect further proves My Ego's naivite, so the argument goes.

Thus, despite the fact that My Ego has been vindicated as spot-on for many of the most fundamental issues of the new millenium, despite that My Ego has proven to the nay-sayers that the impossible is possible, that hope can prevail over fear, that inclusion can win over diviseness, My Ego is still accused of being naieve. "You'll see," say the self-fulfilling prophetic ignoramists.

What exactly will it take to be respected as a human being making focused, calculated and honest decisions that seek to include the finer points of both sides of the argument, without detracting from commonality of either? Will that day ever come?

Time, in it's enduring ever-presence, will tell...