Hello! I’m a maintainer of the Russian Integral LiveJournal community that is devoted to Ken’s work and writings. We try to stage a 2nd tier place on the Russian Web, for there’s almost no social websites that have their Center of Gravity at the 2nd tier. Thus, our community lets people discuss all the basics of the Integral studies. Here’s the short text I wrote after talking to my friend about his Gestalt practice with dreams. When he told me that Gestalt-based techniques allow him to get very profound insights into the patterns of his whole life, I had a clear vision, which crystallized the very next day, the vision that all such insights reflect not only the patterns of our individual selves, but also the meta-patterns of Kosmos itself. — W.K.

Sock Puppets

Gestalt therapy and shadow work can be enhanced, if you get the true scale of their application. Imagine a toy theater… or even better: imagine that you put sock puppets on your hands (creating these puppets is simple, one just has to sew buttons to socks in order to make funny faces with eyes). And you start making these puppets interact with each other: talk, punch, hate, have sex, and play Good and Evil with each other — all this while yourself immersing into the game as deeply as infinity takes, all the way down… And then you make the puppets do spirituality, follow “the Path of remembering their true Self”, that’s your play. And then at a moment you turn these puppets to yourself, looking at them thoughtfully. And that very moment you imagine these socks looking at you with their round button eyes and quivering. On the sight of their God they begin to have mystical experiences, insights, and they start preaching a new religion about the existence of The One, writing books, staying immersed into the Great Contemplation.

And then your game stops. You take off these sock puppets and rest your hands on top of your knees. Now, these hands don’t have their own separate eyes, and there’s “no more” of a separate self in them, for their self has always been your Self. Their consciousness has always been your Consciousness. And there’s no God that is yours, for You are I AM.

Have you ever wondered, why gods are drawn with multiple hands?