An Integral Casa Blanca

I was in Boulder, Colorado, two weeks ago. I was there on Integral Recovery business and had the opportunity to meet with Robb Smith, David Riordan, Marco Morelli, and Jeff Salzman. All of these folks are extraordinary individuals in their own right, and are part of the present arising of this Integral wave. Someday they will be part of the history of this luminescent birthing of Integral consciousness.

All births are messy and bloody and chaotic—that is the nature of evolution, creativity, and new beginnings. I spoke with one delightful woman, Nomali Perera, who was a veteran of the creation of the Integral Institute from it’s earliest formulations. I told her how grateful I was for the work that she and the others had done at Integral Naked and Integral Spiritual Center. I added how much these offerings had enriched and deepened my life, along with my ILP. I told her that in my little hamlet of Teasdale Utah, I had gotten a very pure dose of the Dharma (the pure teaching/the essence). She said, “you got the Dharma and we got the drama.”  Indeed. Well, bless all of you that went through the early trails and tribulations of I-I.

I read a book one time on the making of the movie Casa Blanca, and the whole process of making this film was one of the most screwed up, dysfunctional things one could imagine. From day to day they didn’t know where the script was going; anger and a sense of the impossibility of the task and near despair ruled. What was the ultimate result? It was a masterpiece of the American Cinema. So to all of you early pioneers, thanks. Did you create a masterpiece? I think so, and at the very least you created hope. Hope in me. Hope enough for me to pick myself off ground where I had fallen again and again, where every first tier giant I jousted with turned into a windmill and knocked me on my butt. With the rage of a wounded warrior, I kept throwing myself back into the fight with an existential fatalism whose only answer was to resist the sputtering collapse of my world. But that has changed. I see and feel things so differently now. Hope is reborn. The sun is rising in my soul. Though all the fissures and the fractures and the cracks, I can see light shining through. You all were extraordinary in the gifts you gave and made available. So, good job. Well done, and thank you.

From the script of Casa Blanca:

Rick: I congratulate you.
Victor Laszlo: What for?
Rick: Your work.
Victor Laszlo: I try.
Rick: We all try. You succeed(ed).