Gaia Community: Durwin's Blog

Where are the wise elders who value all children?

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 03:18:42 GMT

And are willing to help out parents of young children who are being run ragged between working and parenting, with little or no support from grandparents because those individulas do not live locally?

Think of the health benefits: the sense of continuing to be worthwhile in one's life by building a relationship with great children. They'll love you; you'll love them. Your health will improve. The health of the parents will improve. The children will be better off with more people who love them in their lives. It's potentially a win-win-win solution....

.....so why isn't this happening? Or if it is, please tell me because I am unaware.

Looking for enlightened volunteer grandparents in the Vancouver/Burnaby/North Van/West Van area...

Tags: elders, trans-generational, trans-generational dialogue, helping, volunteer, volunteer opportunity, children, elder-children connection

trauma, recovery and creativity

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 03:52:29 GMT

I have learned something important, i think, in the last couple of months of my life. I experienced a healing related a traumatic loss that I had basically forgotten about -- until the healing occurred.

The traumatic episode was an interpersonal career-related one: I had a very unfortunate experience in a practicum in education in 1997, that left me believing that elementary schools were not the place for me to work, and that children were not the age group of people I ought to be working with.

I'll spare the details here, other than that they involved a power laden encounter with two supervisors in a rather small, dark room that left me feeling shamed and quite utterly disempowered.

Remember: shame is the experience of shrinking...

But here is the healing, occurring 10 years later. Having spent a year at home half-time looking after my spectacularly wonderful daughters, ages 4 and 2 (entirely an objective assessment of them :), I felt renewed confidence and interest in working with little beings. So an opportunity presents itself to work in an elementary school as a counsellor and I take it. I meet an inspiring principal and a district counsellor who head up this inner-city school employing a community-development approach called "project hope", and a psychologically-informed approach based on attachment theory.

I take this half-time job at this school, and experience a sense of engagement in my work more profound and clear than I can remember in a long, long time. If I go to work feeling grumpy, I now often find my spirits lifting over the course of the day, even though I may be dealing with very challenging situations, like kids experiencing suicidal ideation, and the like.

Weird, huh!?

Friggin awesome, actually.

So this experience has revitalized my clinical focus, and sharpened my research focus in my career: I really like working with kids and families. And addressing trauma, including attachment related interpersonal trauma is emerging as being increasingly central to both my clinical and research work.

The take-away lesson: we ought not to underestimate the significance of traumatic experiences on our lives: these experiences can push our lives off-course. At the same time, given that the universe seems to operate according to both karma and creativity, it is never too late. If we stay focused on our healing and development, which always includes our role in the healing and development of others, good things may happen when we least expect it.

That has been my experience.

Tags: karma, creativity, trauma, healing, development, children, families, learning, recovery

Gift of authentic power: Integral masculinity for 21st century

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 15:12:43 GMT

The gift of authentic power: Towards an Integral masculinity for the 21^st century

What we need going forward as men is neither a myth of male power nor of male powerlessness, but a living context in which men recognize and enact authentic power.

Mythic consciousness was patriarchal. Empowered by the sky god myth, men enjoyed (but also suffered under) instrumental power over others - over other men, women and children in the economic and political spheres. Men's dominance in the socio-political sphere (but also vulnerability to other men higher in the hierarchy), was balanced by being tasked with the role of protector and provider for women and children. Yes, men had primary economic power, and, yes, they were expected to use that power for the benefit of the women and children under their care.

Modern consciousness, first and foremost, is about objectivity. And therefore, a free-functioning market economy will basically reward people with their market value, whether they are male or female. Warren Farrell has done much work to dispel the notion that men are paid more for the same work as women. As he points out, no corporation in its right mind would hire men should that corporation have to pay those men more for the same amount of work. Put another way, corporations would be smart and would hire all women to work for them, since they would have to pay them less for the same work. We don't see this happen. What we do see is corporations abroad hiring men and women from marginalized ethnic groups at low wages. Again, modern feminists do the legitimate victims a profound disservice when they propose that the modern North American woman is somehow being treated in a manner analogous to those men, women and children from 3^rd world countries.

In the relational sphere of couples and families, modern consciousness also introduced the notion of equality. Thus, modern consciousness sows the seeds of freedom for men from domination by their role of protector and provider role. Likewise, women are at least partly freed from being dominated by their roles of nurturer of the young and keeper of the home.

However, to the degree that it fosters an extreme objectivity, a dissociated objectivity, we could make a case that modern consciousness as it has developed in the West has injured feminine ways of knowing, which might be characterized as interior: both subjective and intersubjective. Radical corporatism injures both men and women in terms of their interior and relational lives.

Postmodern consciousness, at least as it has developed in North America, is about subjectivity - the individual's perspective is highly valued -- and intersubjectivity: relationship is highly valued. Objectivity is often denounced, or at least is seen as highly relative in importance in comparison to subjectivity and particularly intersubjectivity. In terms of gender relations, in the postmodern world we see a swing towards the predominance of feminine ways of knowing and being in the world. On the positive side, we see an increased honoring of intuition and other interior modes of knowing such as contemplation and meditation. Likewise, an honoring of connection and relationship. On the negative side, with extreme postmodernism, instrumental modes of being come to be seen as inherently problematic. Since many men's biology orients them towards an instrumental mode of being (we might say "power over objects" or I-It relationships), many men have suffered greatly from the influence of postmodern feminism. Since postmodern feminism has been particularly dominant in academia, we see the exiting and disappearance of men from that sphere.

The birth of integral consciousness allows us to actually see the pattern just described. Prior to integral consciousness, evolutionary patterns are not really perceived. It's as if they don't exist. But with integral consciousness, the prior evolutionary pattern comes to be perceived, and then in active mode, integral consciousness seeks to weave together the various threads, mythic, modern and postmodern; masculine and feminine.

In her excellent article, "Beauty and the expansion of women's identity", Vanessa Fisher unpacks a developmental history of beauty and looks to help build a path to the future for women. Inspired by her work, and Ken Wilber's insights, I believe we need likewise for men a developmental history of power, that in addition to providing such a history, provide suggestions for the way forward for men and boys, beyond postmodernism.

Tags: integral, integral masculinity, masculinity, men, power, authenticity, gender

Authenticity

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 21:21:28 GMT

Authenticity

What I want to write about this morning is the experience of authenticity I had a few days ago, as well as a general orientation I carry increasingly that being authentic is my most important value.

Andrew Cohen has written and taught quite a bit about the Authentic Self. The authentic self is related to a particular state experience of a self at a particular stage, and his use of the term arises out of a specific paradigm or injunction - enlightened communication - that is used in his community. Therefore, I don't want to assume that my use of the term means the same thing as does his use of the term.

That said, I certainly have had some experiences of states of authenticity that have been deeply meaningful to me, in particular because of the, well, self-authenticating nature of those experiences. A few days ago I had one of these experiences.

Can't rely on a state for our identity, however, because states come and go...so here is where there is a need for transcendence to a self beyond states - i.e. Witness consciousness or nondual identity.

Last night I dreamt about being a member of Cohen's community. There was some subtle luminosity present in the dream, because I feel some resistance to that luminosity right now in the waking state.

The dream was also full of fear of cults. Wacky things were going on in the dream - my life was in danger at a couple of points from Cohen's folks who were "hunting me down".

I grew up in an intensive communal environment, which could explain the source of such fears.

Time to go move my body...

Tags: authenticity, authentic being, states of consciousness, Andrew Cohen, intentional community, personal experience

Integral Time Management

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 18:27:47 GMT

Integral Praxis of Time

I've been thinking lately about what an integral approach to the topic of time management might look like. Because in a career counselling or career coaching context, time management is a practical and important topic. But as far as I can tell, time management -even the term - tends to evoke a rationalist, "right-hand path" mindset, to use the integral term. Working in a predominantly formal-operational mode, a person learns to prioritize tasks, chunk out various amounts of time to achieve those tasks, and so on.

I have admittedly not been very good at this for a while - it seems to me that I used to be rather better at time management - and I have had trouble figuring out why. Well, I think part of the problem is that I have been trying to fit myself to a conception of time management that no longer works me, given my dynamic dialectical awareness of time.

With integral consciousness comes a sense that what is at least as important than time management, in its narrow sense, is timeliness. A prominent writer in this area is Bill Torbert, who has developed much in the are of an integral approach to action inquiry in real time. Within action inquiry in real time, I believe a person co-enacts a process dimension of time, which is what gives rise to the sense of evolution being much more than a scientific concept. It becomes a felt sense or lived experience. Time just feels like it is going somewhere important, and the individual wants to participate in that. So, it seems to me that a pragmatic value or quality of active participation in the flow of time, as experienced dynamically, is that of timeliness.

Perhaps we could look for a synthesis of time-management and timeliness through the quadrant model, with timeliness being the experience felt in the UL, and appropriately managed clock time being organized in the UR. And of course, the collective dimensions are important as well. In particular, if a person with integral consciousness wants to have career satisfaction, he or she would be wise to look for an employer that organizes his or her business holocratically - or at the least, values the mutual co-arising of timeliness and time management. Either that or work for oneself. Since there are not many of these organizations out there yet, this means the latter option is going to be a more feasible one for many of us.

I have left out one really important aspect of an integral approach to time-management: not timeliness but timelessness. An integral action inquiry needs to make contact with timelessness, or allow space for the sense of Witness consciousness to emerge - it is inevitably difficult to write about something that is experiencing the writing, not an object of it!

For this aspect, I think one of Andrew Cohen's recent teachings is helpful. I have been quite critical in the past of shadow aspects in Cohen's teaching and interpersonal relationships, and I remain wary of the seeming lack of attention paid to psychodynamic issues in his work and in his community. I have submitted to them several times my interesting in seeing an issue of WIE devoted to integral psychotherapy and coaching. That said, I find his recent teaching on spiritual inquiry to be very illuminating. In particular, I appreciate his emphasis on a practice of spiritual inquiry that balances allowing oneself to "not already know", on the one hand, and to "want to know" on the other. In Cohen's own words, "not already knowing, at the deepest level, aligns us with the ground of all being, that primordial emptiness, inherently free and already liberated, that is the Self as unmanifest consciousness. Wanting to know, passionately, energetically wanting to understand, aligns us simultaneously with the Authentic Self, which is the evolutionary impulse of deepest manifest expression of consciousness. So the perfect evolutionary posture is one that is dynamically poised between those two opposites."

These are some initial thoughts on a topic that I think is of great interest and importance to integrally-oriented folks interested in feeling engaged and satisfied in their work-life, or really any time in their lives where action is required!

Tags: integral, integral counselling, integral coaching, counselling, career counselling, time, timeliness, time management

Role of psychotherapy in a post postmodern context

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 16:37:39 GMT

The following is very much a rough draft, but I haven't posted in a while so I thought I would put it out there.

What I want to write about this morning is what is the role and place of psychotherapy in a post postmodern context.

Presumably, there will be some role for psychotherapy in the post-postmodern world. Psychotherapy is most generically defined as the intentional activity of one person attempting to improve the well-being of another person, through a deliberate process of some type of interpersonal engagement.

At present, it seems that in the WIE worldview, there is no legitimate place for any kind of therapy. I haven't heard this outright, but neither have I seen any attention given to therapy in the pages of the magazine.

Contrast this with AQAL journal, at present the lead publication of I-I, and you see nearly the opposite case: psychotherapy, followed closely by education, has received the most treatment.

What is going on here?

My opinion is that WIE folks - Andrew Cohen - has thrown the baby of psychotherapy out with its postmodern bathwater. This is an unfortunate state of affairs - and yet, the profession of psychotherapy does carry some culpability for this.

Ken Wilber, in a recent conference call, spoke about how "regression had replaced repression" as the most significant psycho-cultural issue in North American culture, in recent years. If true, this is a statement that psychotherapists need to pay very close attention to. Because in most or many psychotherapy circles, I see how the focus remains largely on undoing repression. This puts psychotherapy behind the growth curve of the culture at large - and more importantly, means that psychotherapy becomes part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

It seems that the development of coaching is one way that psychotherapy has tried to make itself relevant for the post-postmodern context. However, coaching is often criticized by depth psychotherapists for being shallow and - the worse of all sins for depth psychotherapists - "cognitive".

What then are the partial truths of coaching and depth psychotherapies, and how could they be brought together in an approach to psychotherapy that is relevant for the challenges the culture faces, where regression has replaced repression as the most significant psycho-cultural issue? This seems to me to be a relevant topic for our consideration.

Tags: integral, integral psychotherapy, Ken Wilber, Andrew Cohen, regression vs. repression, post-postmodern

Research: Child abuse rises when dad is at war

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 16:34:40 GMT

This is from American Psychological Assocation website.

Child abuse rises when dad is at war

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER - August 01, 2007

Confirmed cases of child abuse and neglect in Army families substantially increase when one parent, usually the soldier father, is deployed to combat, according to a new Pentagon-funded report.

The study of nearly 1,800 families, including some at Fort Lewis, found that the rate of child maltreatment was 42 percent greater during deployments compared with times when soldiers were home.

Civilian mothers were nearly four times as likely to neglect their children than when their husbands were at home, and nearly twice as likely to physically abuse them, according to research appearing in Wednesday's issue of the Journal of American Medical Association.

What surprised researchers was "how strong the results were and how consistently they applied" to families regardless of socioeconomic status and other characteristics often linked to abuse and neglect, lead author Deborah Gibbs said Tuesday.

"It's not an isolated phenomenon," she said. "The evidence is pretty strong that combat-related deployments are responsible for the increase."

Officials at Fort Lewis and Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma gave general comments on the study Tuesday but referred further questions to the Pentagon.

"Families are placed on additional stress. The parent is deployed. You're going to have increased cases of neglect," said Lt. Col. Kris Peterson, chief of psychiatry at Madigan. "Some of that is intuitive. (But) military families are very resilient. They have income, medical resources, places to get help, so these things have been looked into."

Gibbs emphasized the problem was not rampant among Army families in which one parent was deployed and another was a civilian.

Her team's research of such families in which child maltreatment was substantiated found 3,334 incidents during the 40-month study. Ninety percent of the offenders maltreated their children on a single day during that time.

"It's safe to say that this is a small part of Army families with a soldier deployed," said Gibbs, a senior health analyst at the non-profit RTI International in Research Triangle Park, N.C. "Most Army families do a terrific job with coping with stresses that are tough to imagine."

Officials at Madigan and Fort Lewis listed an array of programs and services they provide to families to deal with stress before, during and after deployments.

The offerings include counseling and other mental health services, support networks, parenting classes, child care and fitness programs.

The Army also refers parents to off-base resources.

Madigan has preventative intervention programs for couples and families and social workers "designated to deal with soldiers and families on deployment-related issues," said Col. Samuel Mack, chief of social work.

The medical center has trained counselors in nearby school districts to help 150 to 200 children with acute needs related to bereavement and deployments, said David Callies, chief of children and family services.

To see more of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, for online features, or to subscribe, go to http://seattlep-I.com.

Tags: fathers, men, father-child reunion, father-child bond, gender, gender & sexuality, family, gender issues

Worldcentric compassion by heterosexual men for heterosexual men

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 20:11:08 GMT

I don't know exactly what to say about this topic...I just know it is an important one and is one that I don't think I have ever read much about anywhere...the "old boy's club", btw, was not about this -- the old boys club was about particular groups of men bonding together to achieve protection and provision for "their" particular group of women and children -- and against other "old boys clubs" belonging to different companies, religions, countries.

I am not stressing heterosexuality to exclude homosexual men. I am stressing heterosexuality to include heterosexual men. For me it is a given that I, as a heterosexual man, ought to be compassionate towards homosexual men, as well as towards sexuals of any other kind.

I just think that the idea of worldcentric compassion extended by heterosexual men to all other heterosexual men would be something of an evolutionary breakthrough...but what do you think?

Is this a discourse and/or praxis that anyone else knows about or has engaged in? It would need to be at integral altitude to work, because at green altitude, men's compassion for other men is often blunted by their uncritical support for the shadow aspects of feminism (e.g. victim feminism, competitive feminism -- see Warren Farrell and Hoff-Summers for critiques of the shadow aspects of postmodern feminism). Compassion at green is also compromised by being too wimpy...too much idiot compassion -- too much support, not enough challenge: e.g. idiot compassion won't work with terrorists and/or those with highly narcissistic and/or anti-social personalities in general...

It strikes me that we don't really have an integral men's discourse...we have bits and pieces...its scary territory because we certainly don't want to regress to "old boys club" mentality...but i think it is good to remember that the old boys club wasn't really about this....this would be something emergent...

Tags: compassion, men, sexuality, worldcentric compassion, integral compassion

Study: Women Don't Talk More Than Guys

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 16:08:00 GMT

Hurrah! Whenever a stereotype falls to science, both sexes are better off!!!

Study: Women Don't Talk More Than Guys
Associated Press - July 05, 2007
WASHINGTON - Another stereotype - chatty gals and taciturn guys - bites the dust.

Turns out, when you actually count the words, there isn't much difference between the sexes when it comes to talking.

A team led by Matthias R. Mehl, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Arizona, came up with the finding, which is published in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

The researchers placed microphones on 396 college students for periods ranging from two to 10 days, sampled their conversations and calculated how many words they used in the course of a day.

The score: Women, 16,215. Men, 15,669.

The difference: 546 words: "Not statistically significant," say the researchers.

"What's a 500-word difference, compared with the 45,000-word difference between the most and the least talkative persons" in the study, said Mehl. He said the least talkative person in the study - a male - used just over 500 words a day, while another male topped that by more than 45,000.

Co-author James W. Pennebaker, chairman of the psychology department at the University of Texas, said the researchers collected the recordings as part of a larger project to understand how people are affected when they talk about emotional experiences.

They were surprised when a magazine article asserted that women use an average of 20,000 words per day compared with 7,000 for men. If there had been that big a difference, he thought, they should have noticed it.

They found that the 20,000-7,000 figures have been used in popular books and magazines for years. But they couldn't find any research supporting them.

"Although many people believe the stereotypes of females as talkative and males as reticent, there is no large-scale study that systematically has recorded the natural conversations of large groups of people for extended periods of time," Pennebaker said.

Indeed, Mehl said, one study they found, done in workplaces, showed men talking more.

Still, the idea that women use nearly three times as many words a day as men has taken on the status of an "urban legend," he said.

"We realized we had the data," Mehl said in a telephone interview, so they went back to their recordings and calculated the actual numbers.

Their research began with one group of students in 1998, two groups sampled in 2001, two in 2003 and a final group in 2004. One of the 2003 groups involved 51 students in Mexico, the rest were all in the United States.

The students were fitted with unobtrusive recorders that sampled their conversations - the students didn't know when the recorders were on. From the samples, a total number of words for the day could be calculated.

Of the six groups sampled, women used more words than men in three and men used more words than women in the other three, including the one in Mexico.

The research was limited to college students, but Pennebaker said he believes it would probably apply to others in the same age range.

"The question is, how it applies to people as we get older," he said in a telephone interview on Thursday.

Mehl said he thinks it should apply across age groups, but he wondered how it would be affected by different cultures.

Tags: women, men, study, research, gender, sex, gender & sexuality

Study: Women wield the power in marriage

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 16:01:31 GMT

Women Wield the Power in Marriage
Posted from: Psych Central Senior News Editor
on Friday, Jul, 6, 2007

Reviewed by: John M. Grohol, Psy.D.
on Friday, Jul, 6, 2007

The old adage of women being “the boss” around the home is true say researchers from Iowa State University. While men may still have more power in the workplace, wives are taking responsibilities and leadership in the home environment.

The study of 72 married couples from Iowa found that wives, on average, exhibit greater situational power — in the form of domineering and dominant behaviors — than their husbands during problem-solving discussions, regardless of who raised the topic.

All of the couples in the sample were relatively happy in their marriages, with none in counseling at the time of the study.

The paper titled “Sex Differences in the Use of Demand and Withdraw Behavior in Marriage: Examining the Social Structure Hypothesis,” appears in the Journal of Counseling Psychology.

Associate Professor of Psychology David Vogel and Assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Studies Megan Murphy led the research.

“The study at least suggests that the marriage is a place where women can exert some power,” said Vogel.

“Whether or not it’s because of changing societal roles, we don’t know. But they are, at least, taking responsibility and power in these relationships. So at least for relatively satisfied couples, women are able to take some responsibility and are able to exert some power — but it’s hard for us to say why that’s so.”

“Women are responsible for overseeing the relationship — making sure the relationship runs, that everything gets done, and that everybody’s happy,” said Murphy, “And so, maybe some of that came out in our findings in terms of women domineering and dominating — that they were taking more responsibility for the relationship, regardless of whose topic was being discussed.”

As part of the study, each spouse was asked to independently complete a questionnaire on relationship satisfaction and an assessment of overall decision-making ability in the relationship. Each spouse also was asked to identify a problem in their relationship — an issue in which he or she desired the most change and which could not be resolved without the spouse’s cooperation.

Spouses were then asked to answer some questions about their chosen topics, including the type of problem-solving behaviors that generally take place when this topic arises, and the importance of the topic. Couples were then brought together and asked to discuss each of the problem topics for 10 minutes apiece — discussions that were videotaped. The researchers did not participate in the discussion.

“We actually just asked them to start talking about the issue, and then we left the room,” said Vogel. “And so they were all by themselves in the room talking. We were as non-obtrusive as possible. We just came back at the end of the period of time, and asked them to talk about the other topic.”

At the end of the discussions, couples were separated again. Each spouse was then debriefed and discussed his or her feelings and reactions to the study.

Vogel said that wives weren’t simply talking more than their husbands in discussions, but actually were drawing favorable responses from their husbands to what they said.

“That’s what I think was particularly interesting,” he said. “It wasn’t just that the women were bringing up issues that weren’t being responded to, but that the men were actually going along with what they said. They (women) were communicating more powerful messages and men were responding to those messages by agreeing or giving in.”

“There’s been research that suggests that’s a marker of a healthy marriage — that men accept influence from their wives,” said Murphy.

The study was funded, in part, by the National Institute of Mental Health, along with ISU.

Helpful article, but the tone of surprise annoys me: "men were actually going along with what they said"...sheesh: can see the "myth of male power" at play in the background here...also accepting influence (which comes from Gottman's pioneering research) is hopefully different from giving in to "domineering" and "dominating" behavior...I'd like to be able to accept influence, but I am not much interested in being dominated...

Tags: marriage, relationship, women, men, power, gender, sex, gender & sexuality

Where did you come from?

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 14:18:22 GMT

I came from 100 Mile House BC. I came from the top of the stairs, down into my office where the computer is. I came from that place where the Zen masters always say we come from, but I don't quite remember but I dreamt I was being given shit for not having sorted it out yet....I came from the dreams I had last night into this waking life...I came from the womb of my mother, now dead, and the seed of my father....I came from....

Tags: QaR, question, history

Prayer of an Integral Emissary...

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 21:39:17 GMT

May the next thoughts and images and feelings of my mind be from the highest identity and state that I intuit...
May the next words out of my mouth be from the most authentic identity and state that I intuit....
May the next actions of my hands and feet be from the most authentic identity and state that I intuit...
May I undertake my daily practices of meditation/prayer, physical exercise and emotional fitness exercises with the above in mind, in order to become the best channel for Spirit possible.
May my working and my relating reflect the most authentic identity and state that I intuit....
And, may I remember that All is Well! Unconquerable, Emptiness prevails.

Tags: Integral, Integral Emissary, Emissaries, prayer, integral life practice, intention

I am an Integral Emissary

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 23:44:33 GMT

or an integral emissary...
I am feeling into this emergent soul identity...bridging my past, present and future...my past with its colorful, high energy tones...the present, just here...the future unfolding...small seeds sprouting...

Tags: flow poetry, integral, Emissaries, soul, soul-identity

Dissident Domestic Violence Experts Announce Conference

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 02:43:41 GMT

Hello: This is from www.GlennSacks.com who is doing great work helping to bring gender-inclusive approaches to the forefront of our attention.

Dissident Domestic Violence Experts Announce Ground-Breaking Conference

May 30, 2007

Dissident Domestic Violence Experts Announce Ground-Breaking Conference: 'From Ideology to Inclusion: Evidence-Based Policy and Intervention in Domestic Violence'

As I've noted on many occasions, the domestic violence establishment is not telling us the full truth about domestic violence, and many destructive family law and criminal law policies have been based on misinformation.

Research clearly establishes that women are frequently the aggressors in domestic combat, often employing the element of surprise and weapons to compensate for men's strength. Yet arrest and prosecution policies are stacked against men, as is the public dialogue on this important issue. Perhaps worst of all, misguided women's groups' distortion of the domestic violence issue has been the leading impediment to passing shared parenting legislation.

Last year dozens of leading authorities in the domestic violence field formed the National Family Violence Legislative Resource Center (NFVLRC) to change the domestic violence system. The NFVLRC advocates for non-discriminatory and evidence-based policies and seeks to correct the many damaging laws and policies which have been based on misleading claims.

NFVLRC co-founder John Hamel, LCSW, a court-certified batterer treatment provider and author of the book Gender-Inclusive Treatment of Intimate Partner Abuse, explains:

"The founding members of NFVLRC have recognized for some time that current policies are politically driven rather than being based on scientifically sound information, and are seeking to change them. As a result of flawed policies, many children are being denied the same range of services simply

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because of their victimized parent's gender. Current policies have in many instances also resulted in a loss of civil liberties, and research indicates that they have sometimes resulted in increased danger to victims...NFVLRC believes that unless domestic and family violence policies are reformed, victims, children and future generations will continue to suffer from this social problem."

Last year over 50 of these authorities signed a letter urging the California legislature to stop the state's policy of excluding male victims and their children from domestic violence services. The NFVLRC has just announced their upcoming conference--"From Ideology to Inclusion: Evidence-Based Policy and Intervention in Domestic Violence." The conference will be held Friday/Saturday, February 15-16, 2008 in Sacramento, California.

Topics for the conference include: Use and Misuse of Restraining Orders; Effects of Mandatory Arrest Laws; Interventions in Disputed Child Custody Cases; Male Victims; Female Perpetrators; Power and Control in the DV Industry; Limitations of the Patriarchal Paradigm; Gender-Inclusive Interventions; and numerous others.

Many of the leading authorities in the domestic violence field will be speaking at the conference. These include: Erin Pizzey, founder of one of the world's first battered women's shelters in 1971; author and psychologist Don Dutton, who served as a domestic violence expert on the prosecution team in the OJ Simpson trial; Linda Mills, PhD, LCSW, JD, New York University; Murray Straus, PhD, of the University of New Hampshire; clinical psychologist Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling of the University of South Alabama; Philip Cook, author of Abused Men: The Hidden Side of Domestic Violence; Janet Johnston, PhD; forensic psychologist Dr. Tonia Nicholls; Marlene Moretti, PhD, coauthor of the book, Girls and Aggression: Contributing Factors and Intervention Principles; Miriam Ehrensaft Ph.D, of the Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, at Columbia University; Nicola Graham-Kevan, BSc, PhD, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Central Lancashire [UK]; and numerous others.

To donate to help support the Conference, click here. To learn more about the National Family Violence Legislative Resource Center, visit their website at http://www.nfvlrc.org/. To contact them, write to John Hamel by clicking here.

The conference is geared towards professionals who deal with the domestic violence issue in the mental health, family law, and criminal justice fields. Continuing education credits are available for LCSW's, MFT's, PhD's, Batterer Intervention Providers and Family Court Mediators/Evaluators. MCLE credits are available for attorneys. Conference co-sponsors are the Family Violence Treatment & Education Association (http://www.favtea.com/) and the California Alliance for Families and Children (http://www.cafcusa.org/).

To learn more about problems with the domestic violence system, see:

My co-authored column Texas Bill to Create Domestic Violence Offender Registry Will Harm Innocent Men (Austin American-Statesman, 4/11/07)
My co-authored column CA Legislators Vote to Protect Pets from Domestic Violence but Deny Services to Male DV Victims (Long Beach Press-Telegram, 4/21/07)
My co-authored column Simpson Case Led to Harmful Domestic Violence Policies (Riverside Press-Enterprise, 12/5/06)
My co-authored column Letterman Case Shows Problems with Restraining Orders (Albuquerque Tribune, 1/17/06)
My column VAWA Renewal Provides Opportunity to Stop Destruction of
Innocent Cops' Careers (Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, 7/19/05)
My column Domestic Violence Treatment Policies Put Abused Women in Harm's
Way (Daily Breeze [Los Angeles], 11/7/05)
My co-authored column Brett Myers Case Obscures an Important Truth About Domestic Violence Arrests (Delaware County Daily Times [Philadelphia], 8/2/06)
My co-authored column Domestic Violence Lawsuit Will Help Secure Services for All Abuse Victims (Los Angeles Daily Journal, San Francisco Daily Journal, 12/28/05)
My column Domestic Violence Series Substitutes Emotion for Facts (San Francisco
Chronicle, 4/8/05)
My column New Report on Maternal Homicide Crisis: Myth-Making and Manbashing (Lexington Herald-Leader, 1/3/05)

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

Tags: men, equality, sex & gender, integral sex & gender, gender, sex, domestic violence, gender-inclusivity

Bridging Jung and Wilber: towards healing the 'inner ascender'

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:17:58 GMT

Recently participating as a witness in a complex psychotherapeutic intervention called therapeutic enactment -- which is an updated and refined form of Moreno's pioneering work on psychodrama -- has stimulated some thoughts and feelings about the importance of healing a subpersonality, schema, pattern, voice or archetype that we might term the "inner ascender" -- or, the "inner frustrated ascender". Here I refer to what Wilber describes in Sex, Ecology and Spirituality as the "frustrated ascent" that became a punishing descent in the West. So, part of our Western cultural baggage, if Wilber is right, is that we may carry this frustrated inner ascender...and potentially not even realize it consciously.

From a depth psychology or Jungian standpoint, we need to make this unconscious pattern conscious, so that then we can heal it, into something more akin to a "healthy ascender". We don't want to lose our inner ascender, and we don't want to be "in denial" of it: we want to have a healthy inner ascender or, put another way, a healthy relationship with our inner ascender.

How can we describe the inner ascender? The inner ascender is that part of us that sincerely desires to know God or Spirit in the most intimate way imaginable: communion, yes, but even beyond that the inner ascender desires union or even identity with Spirit or God (whatever terms we are using). The inner ascender intuits that this is possible....even intuits, perhaps, that such a state is true NOW -- if only the other aspects of ourselves would relax enough to allow such a state to be known consciously.

And this direct knowing of God or Spirit that the inner ascender intuits is not an abstract thing; rather, it is fully embodied -- its an experiential knowing.

So let's just posit for a moment that we each have an inner ascender, but that for many of us, our relationship to it is highly frustrated. Having identified the problem, how might we intervene?

Well, let's turn to Jung first. Let's imagine that Jung, feeling frustrated by the rather thorough denial of ascent in Freud's work, begins to forge a path for the inner ascender to follow. But Jung, unfortunately but understandably given the lack of proper maps and compass available to the West, gets his directions a bit mixed up. Sometimes when he thinks he is traveling up the mountain, he is in fact traveling down! This directional error in Jung's work was spotted by Wilber, and formed a seminal early contribution of Wilber's to transpersonal psychology -- the pre/trans fallacy.

An understanding of the pre/trans fallacy, speaking very generally and pragmatically, helps us to keep our bearings straight while ascending the mountain.

For example, sometimes it is very helpful to do intense regressive therapy, in order that we can then continue our ascent in a much more healthy manner. This is akin to climbing to what one thinks is the top of the mountain, or nearing the top, only to find out that the particular peak we think we are on is a flimsy outcropping of rock that could turn into a rockslide and crumble down the mountainside at any moment, taking us tumbling with it! In this case, the best course of action is to scurry back down, as quickly as we can, and find another path. In integral psychotherapy, we might call this "regression in service of the ego" (borrowing Ken's term from the text Integral Psychology).

But if we are caught in a pre/trans confusion, we will lose our bearings, and having scrambled to the bottom, out of harms way of possible rockslide, we will keep right on going, down, down, winding down, somehow believing because of thick fog that we must be drawing near that darn peak sometime soon!

Neither of these situations are actually very funny! Falling down in a rockslide is really dangerous stuff -- better to do the necessary regression work so that one isn't seriously psychically injured in a rockslide because the foundation under one's feet is unstable. This is the case for me: I realize a need to do regressive work; however, i want to do it in an integrally-informed context, that is, one where the guides aren't stuck in the fog of the pre-trans fallacy, trying to convince me that if only we keep going down, down, down...we'll find the ....top? Hmmmmm.....this situation isn't very fun either!

An integrally-informed regressive therapy provides a way out of this dilemma. We do the descent as authentically as possible, while guided by an understanding that descent is descent in service of ascent. We are not descending out of frustration that ascent is even possible. We haven't given up hope, as have so many in the West, at least historically, that ascent is even possible! And we include some of the practices of ascent: e.g. contemplation / meditation or even nondual pointing out instructions. But neither are we ignoring the narcissistic element in ourselves, the inner Peter Pan that thinks that no backtracking ought to be necessary...we can just climb right up that mountain in one pretty much straight line and hey, why even climb, let's just fly to the top!

Perhaps my partner's name is Wendy for a reason :)

Hey, if we are postmodern advaita-vedantists, admiring Tolle, Ganjaji or Adyashanti, we don't even need to build up our quadriceps in service of the climb (e.g. no meditation needed). We just remember our identity in the Now, and we are all done: we are right there at the top already! "That was easy", as the Amazon slogan goes.

Well, this is partially true! But it is not the whole truth, if by whole truth we mean both relative and absolute...

But I digress...:)

To be continued (perhaps)

Tags: integrally-informed psychotherapy, integral psychotherapy, Jung, Wilber, Carl Jung, Ken Wilber, Eckhart Tolle, Ganjaji, Adyashanti, regression in service of ego, regressive therapy

Beware anti-male advertising...

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 17:02:03 GMT

Cultural commentators such as Warren Farrell and academic analysts such as Katherine Young at McGill University have noted the rise in anti-male (misandrous) advertising. Above is a recent example that both men and women who are genuinely concerned about equity between the sexes need to be aware of: from Glenn Sacks' blog.

Tags: men, misandry, equality, sex & gender, integral sex & gender, gender, sex, video, TV

Gratefulness for my past: The Emissaries of Divine Light

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 19:40:22 GMT

I grew up in an intentional community called the Emissaries of Divine Light. Yup -- that is really what we called ourselves! Pretty provocative huh? Maybe a little self-important too? Well, we were...and we also were involved in bringing forward some great understandings, values and spiritual practices at a time when such things were a little harder to find than perhaps they are now...there certainly was no Zaadz!

Recently I had the opportunity to meet with one of the original leaders of the Emissaries. I felt some trepidation leading up to the meeting. However, I felt I handled myself well in the interview, managing not to be triggered much by aspects of what he might say, or memories I might still be carrying...yes, some aspects of my upbringing were traumatic, or at least pretty darn dysfunctional...

Today in reflection I made a list of what I think are give of the positive "partial truths" (to use the integral term) that the Emissaries promoted in their teachings and way of living:

1) Awareness of and direct live transmission of what they called "cosmic identity"; interestingly, Ken Wilber refers to the term "Kosmic Consciousness"

-in Vedanta, this might be the Self; in Buddhism, perhaps Emptiness; in Christianity: Heaven or union with God in Godhead; I am not 100% sure of these correlations, but I think they put us in the ballpark

2)A core practice to help one stay connected to this deepest identity: in each moment of the day, paying attention to what is our highest intention, and taking action from that place

3)Attunement practice: a form of vibrational healilng, akin to Reiki, and potentially a form of meditation as well, particularly if deliberately engaged as such

4) A focus on service to others and the wider world

5) Taking responsibility for oneself and one's action -- a virtue or character ethics

These are all good things that I want to stay connected with, to include as part of my way of life moving forward.

Tags: intentional community, my life, Emissaries of Divine Light, Kosmic consciousness, cosmic identity, Self, vibrational healing, attunement

Damned if you do, damned if you don't: stay-at-home dads

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 22:15:50 GMT

Number of stay-at-home dads increasing
United Press International - June 17, 2007
WASHINGTON, Jun 17, 2007 (UPI via COMTEX) -- The number of men in the United States who forgo a career to become a stay-at-home parent is increasing, U.S. Census Bureau statistics show.

The Washington Post reported on Father's Day that an estimated 159,000 U.S. fathers have embraced fatherhood as a full-time career. While that figure represents only 2.7 percent of stay-at-home parents, it is a nearly 300 percent increase from a decade ago, the newspaper said.

Experts point out that such figures would likely increase if single fathers and dads who only work part time to help out at home are factored in.

Yet some experts have complained of the positive regard society offers such stay-at-home fathers, saying such applause is representative of a gender bias.

"If moms work, they have possible guilt for not being home with their kids. If they're home, there's a lot of tug that they're sacrificing their career," University of Maryland professor Eric Hazell told the Post. "For dads, people think it's just great that you stay home. Then when we go back (to work), it's what people expect in the first place."

In commenting on this, first off, note that we are a culture of complaint. "possible guilt"...wow, there is a big societal problem :). But if we are going to play the double-bind, look how hard it is for my sex, game, it definitely cuts both ways: if I don't stay home as a father, I'm seen by some women as a typical macho corporate guy who just doesn't "get it" in terms of valuing the role of parent; then, if I do stay home, I'm seen by women as "not bringing home the bacon", not being a protector-provider, and my status again suffers...these arguments will never end at this level of discourse...we must move to a view that gives us enough altitude to move past these double-binds...

Also, I note the implicit cultural command here: "Don't dare be pro-men, because if you are, you must be anti-women....what a sorry state competitive feminism has left us in! So, either-or...but in saying this please note I am not criticizing the healthy aspects of feminism, which have greatly benefited my wife and have given me great confidence in the future for my two preschool daughters...

Tags: feminism, men, women, father, fatherhood, stay-at-home parent, integral sex & gender studies

Activism in support of fathers

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 16:54:54 GMT

The following comes straight from Glenn Sacks blog at www.glensacks.com

Protest TIME Magazine's Father's Day
Hatchet Job on Dads!

June 12, 2007

Protest TIME Magazine's Father's Day Hatchet Job on Dads!

TIME magazine's new Father's Day hatchet job on divorced and separated fathers--"Daddy Dearest: What Science Tells Us About Fatherhood"--questions whether fathers "have done a good enough job to deserve the honor" of having a Father's Day. The contents page reads "Behavior: Why some animal fathers are more nurturing dads than many men are."

In the article, which appears in the June 18 issue of TIME magazine, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy and Mary Batten write:

"In the U.S., more than half of divorced fathers lose contact with their kids within a few years. By the end of 10 years, as many as two-thirds of them have drifted out of their children's lives. According to a 1994 study by the Children's Defense Fund, men are more likely to default on a child-support payment (49%) than a used-car payment (3%). Even fathers in intact families spend a lot less time focused on their kids than they think: in the U.S. fathers average less than an hour a day (up from 20 minutes a few decades ago), usually squeezed in after the workday."

The drumbeat continues--dads don't care, dads walk out, dads

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are stingy. All of these canards have been debunked many times, but that doesn't stop the mainstream media's attacks on fathers and fatherhood.

To write a Letter to the Editor of TIME magazine, click here.

Let's look at each of these accusations individually:

Criticism #1) "In the U.S., more than half of divorced fathers lose contact with their kids within a few years. By the end of 10 years, as many as two-thirds of them have drifted out of their children's lives."

In other words, dad's a cad who walks out and doesn't look back. The authors' assertions are contradicted by a large body of research.

We're not given a source for this information, but it is likely the highly-influential and highly-publicized study conducted by Frank Furstenburg, Ph.D. and his associates. Furstenburg used a large, representative national sample in his study, and he found that half of the children in his study had not seen their noncustodial parent--usually dad--during the previous year. Furstenburg labeled these men the "disappearing dad."

Arizona State University researcher Sanford Braver, who conducted the largest federally-funded study of divorced dads ever done, points out that there are many problems with Furstenburg's research:

1) Furstenberg's research is based only on custodial mothers' views--the fathers were never asked. I doubt many fathers would feel their angry ex-wives are a particularly accurate source of information about their bonds with their children.

2) Those who cited Furstenburg's research widely presumed it applied only or primarily to divorced dads, as did the TIME magazine article's authors. However, in his study Furstenburg did not distinguish between divorced dads and never married fathers. When Furstenburg's colleague Judith Seltzer later separated the two groups, she found that divorced fathers were more than twice as likely to have retained contact with their children as never-married dads.

3) The survey, which is used to condemn American fathers in June of 2007, was based largely on divorces which occurred in the late 1960s! A tremendous amount has changed in the area of gender roles in the past 40 years.

Braver's study found that--by either parent's account--90% of fathers had contact with their kids in the past year. Of those who lived within 60 miles of each other, there was virtually universal contact.

Moreover, Braver's research found that to the degree that divorced fathers' contact with their children is infrequent, the cause is very often not the fathers' lack of desire, but instead attempts by mothers to push their ex-husbands out of their children's lives.

According to the Children's Rights Council, a Washington-based advocacy group, more than five million American children each year have their access to their noncustodial parents interfered with or blocked by custodial parents. We get no sense of this enormous social problem from the TIME article.

Criticism #2) "According to a 1994 study by the Children's Defense Fund, men are more likely to default on a child-support payment (49%) than a used-car payment (3%)."

Whereas TIME magazine assumes that dads don't pay because they don't care, Braver found in his research that "unemployment is the single most important factor relating to nonpayment." Braver notes that his findings were "consistent with virtually all past studies on the topic" and that it "belies the image that divorced fathers don't pay because they refuse to though they are truly able to pay."

Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement data shows that two-thirds of those behind on child support nationwide earned poverty-level wages; less than four percent of the national child support debt is owed by those earning $40,000 or more a year. According to an Urban Institute study, even among fathers who experience income drops of 15% or more, less than one in 20 are able to get courts to reduce their child support payments. In the interim, arrearages mount, along with interest (10% or more in many states) and penalties. This greatly contributes to child support noncompliance.

The "child support vs. used car" comparison is spurious. For one, divorced fathers don't just pay child support--they sometimes also pay spousal support, and are frequently saddled with stiff and sometimes catastrophic divorce-related legal fees, often including those of their ex-wives. Also, child support alone often comprises a third or even half of a divorced fathers' take-home pay.

In California, for example, a noncustodial father of two earning a modest $3,800 a month in net income pays $1,300 a month in child support--almost $300,000 over 18 years. For the financial burden to be equivalent, the father would have to buy a hell of a lot of used cars.

One more point--since noncustodial mothers' default rate on child support is higher than that of noncustodial dads, the "child support vs. car payment" statistic which is used to vilify fathers also applies to mothers.

Criticism #3) "Even fathers in intact families spend a lot less time focused on their kids than they think: in the U.S. fathers average less than an hour a day (up from 20 minutes a few decades ago), usually squeezed in after the workday."

We're not given a source for the assertion that "fathers in intact families spend a lot less time focused on their kids than they think," but it may have been taken, to one degree or another, from Susan Faludi's 1991 anti-male bestseller Backlash. In that book she contrasts what men and fathers do around the house with what Faludi says men "think" they do.

And who's to tell them they're wrong, that they don't do much, they only "think" they do?

Their wives, of course.

It never seems to occur to Faludi or Hrdy/Batten that perhaps the fathers' assertions of their roles are accurate, and that it's mothers--who often pride themselves on being #1 with the kids--are disparaging or downplaying fathers' role. It is likely that, to some degree, both fathers and mothers exaggerate their own roles, though we get no sense of that from the TIME magazine article.

The "lazy husband/uncaring father" stereotype is a myth. Census data shows that only 40% of married women with children under 18 work full-time, and over a quarter do not hold a job outside the home. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' 2004 Time Use Survey, men spend one and a half times as many hours working as women do, and full-time employed men still work significantly more hours than full-time employed women.

When both work outside the home and inside the home are properly considered, it is clear that men do at least as much as women. A 2002 University of Michigan Institute for Social Research survey found that women do 11 more hours of housework a week than men but men work 14 hours a week more than women. According to the BLS, men's total time at leisure, sleeping, doing personal care activities, or socializing is a statistically meaningless 1% higher than women's.

Despite the fact that fathers bear the primary burden of supporting their families, the Families and Work Institute in New York City found that fathers now provide three-fourths as much child care as mothers do. This figure is also 50% higher than 30 years ago.

The "usually squeezed in after the workday" slap is also spurious. Between dads working all day and the kids being in school, it's hard to see when a father would have much time to spend with his kids that isn't "usually squeezed in after the workday." The full TIME Magazine article can be seen here.

Again, to write a Letter to the Editor of TIME magazine, click here.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

Thanks to shared parenting activist Jane Spies, M.S. Ed., for pointing this article out to me. Jane is currently working with Aginelo Productions to promote the new documentary film "Support? System Down," which criticizes abuses within the child support system.

Tags: fathers, father, fatherhood, integral gender & sex studies, gender, sex, parenting

Heroic Father Story

http://durwinfoster.gaia.com — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 16:12:55 GMT

This is an extraordinary story of one father's heroism in relationship to his son: http://glennsacks.com/blog/wp-trackback.php?p=764.

Tags: father, fatherhood, men, radical dad, hero, story