Integral conference in Bremen/Germany, day 2 - the German shadow

II went today to the workshop of Sebastian Gronbach about Integral Anthroposophy. Anthroposophy is huge in Germany, ten times bigger than in any other country, but forget your ideas about the old and boring Anthroposophy and Waldorf schools. There is new generation of young Neon- Anthroposophists and they are discovering Ken Wilber, Andrew Cohen and the new spirituality and they are making their own cross version, hot and edgy. So cool! Katrin and Steffen gave our workshop on Meditation and Evolution. I heard they did a great job there. The main event today though was a surprise event, a spontaneous emergence that nobody had planned. People yesterday had quite a reaction to Terry Patten’s call for German leadership and for the Germans to turn their cultural shadow of the Second World War to a moral strength of a culture facing the dark side but also facing its bright site. Today in a plenum session, without any plans to go there, this topic about our cultural shadow broke through like powerful nature force. It felt quite unstoppable as one and another one and another one and another one wanted to talk about how important it is - or not – too further look into our shadow. First I thought sh... what’s going on here, as the debate was quite heated, if German should still and again after 60 years look deeper into our collective karma, but then I thought “No, this is amazing, we are witnessing a mighty shadow breaking open in the midst of 120 integralists. Because of its force it was so obvious that we are not talking about something that is long time ago, but something that is very alive in our souls. Not that we resolved the question here, but that this happened in this way, was amazing. Also in our public phone call with Ken Wilber this was one of the many questions that were asked and responded to. Ken talked a lot about Integral politics, about Obama having a Marxist leaning, about his not yet published books (like his book The Many Faces of Terrorism, that will also come out as a trilogy now) and also bout Steve McIntosh’s book Integral Consciousness. But again I was taken what he said about German culture, how Germany’s history is a big example of a pre- trans fallacy. That Hitler had also been possible in Germany ( amongst many other reasons) because people like Hegel, Schelling had been etc. such a leader of European culture into the trans-rational. Hitlers pre-reational was more possible because of Hegels trans-rational. German Integralists have to take responsibility for what they have to give to the world. Ken said there is a reason why the Integral movement in Germany is maybe one of the strongest in the world. I felt, because of what had happened today here at this conference we are in a better position to take a next step here Germany. When I spoke at the panel discussion at the end of the day about how important I think it is to own our history, both bad and good, the response of the audience was powerful.