I'm planning for an August academic/spiritual/political pilgrimage that will start with attending the 1st Biennial Integral Theory Conference at JFK University outside of San Francisco on Aug. 7-10 and end at the Democratic National Convention in Denver from Aug. 25-28.

((See: http://integral.diydharma.org (note diydharma is not affiliated with this event - this URL is just easier to remember than the ugly URL they are using ;-) and http://www.demconvention.com/ ))

I'd like to spend some time in San Francisco, Boulder and Crestone between those.

What else should I plan on doing (eg. retreats, etc.) ? Who wants to meet up along the way?

~s

I spent some time the other day putting together the first track for RadioKosmos -- the integral streaming radio station I've been scheming on for a few months. I mixed together a voice track of Eckhart Tolle reading from "Practicing the Power of Now" with some super-mellow ambient jazz/electronica and some tones I produced with a binaural beat generator.

The binaural effect is quite interesting when you look at the waveform. It almost looks like a double-helix spiral. I uploaded some screen grabs you can have a look at:
http://virishi.net/images/binaural_beat_helix/binauralhelix13.jpg
http://virishi.net/images/binaural_beat_helix/

For those of you unfamiliar with binaural beats you can read more about them on Wikipedia at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_beats

The whole track is just under 50 minutes. I would love it if you would give a
listen (binaural beats require headphones) and let me know that you think.

Download the file (45mb):
http://arkady.indymedia.org/media/audio/integralmashups-RadioKosmos1.mp3

Warning: Do not attempt to operate heavy machinery while listening to
this file!  ;-)

metta,

Obi-nine

PS. It's also available as an ogg file for those who are into all that.
http://arkady.indymedia.org/media/audio/integralmashups-RadioKosmos1.ogg

Yesterday I went to my first meeting of the Vancouver Integral Salon. I got a flat tire riding up there and ended up being about half an hour late.

About 8 people were already deep in conversation when I arrived but I stealthily slipped into their midst without them raising any objections. Unbeknownst to me it was only their second meeting which helped explain why we ended up spending most of the subsequent two hours talking about our respective backgrounds and what we'd like to see the salon accomplish.

Many suggestions were offered but the one that seemed to resonate the most was to act as a meta (metta? ;-) group to the other integrally-informed initiatives that are currently shaping up in the Vancouver area. To that end we are going to create sub-groups and focus on specific projects including a website (which I offered to lead), bringing the integral approach to other like-minded events (eg. the upcoming World Peace Forum), and organizing reading/discussion groups around specific readings and authors.

We decided to continue to hold the meetings once a month on the second sunday for the forseeable future. The agenda for the next meeting will include a discussion of what a "yellow" (from Spiral Dynamics) group would look and act like. I plan to demonstrate a prototype Drupal site to the group that we will use to help organize future initiatives.