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December 2007 
Creating an Integral Beauty Koan for Women
Posted on Sep 4th, 2006
by 
Vanessa
Vanessa
Ever since I started working seriously with the issue of beauty in my writing I've seen some interesting things manifest around and within me.
First it seems that the more I write about beauty, teasing it apart and reshaping its construction using an integral framework the less I feel enslaved by it as a woman. This makes sense from the perspective of Wilber's model in the sense that the more I am able to objectify my interior constructed perceptions and images of beauty as well as my pain and struggles with beauty, the less I am so strictly identified with them.
It seems that through the process of objectifying and bringing clarity to the issue of beauty as a woman by using the integral model I can work with and transcend/integrate those shadow elements that have followed me surrounding my appearance since I was a child. I know the issue of beauty is huge for many women to more or less of a degree in severity.
For me personally, it has always been a deep struggle.
It has been through my work with integral beauty that I feel I have gained many new tools to understand and transcend the limits of culturally embedded gender roles and stereotype images that are so deeply engrained in my being. But the real juice of this model is that it has also offered me the most potent practice for getting me in touch with that eternal watcher, and returning me back to the beauty of that deeper mystery...the beauty I believe every woman is truly seeking when they spend so much energy trying to perfect thier physical appearance.
Reconceptualizing beauty from an integral standpoint has truly manifested in a greater degree of embodied awareness and freedom. A freedom that arises from the very act of finding and holding multiple perspectives on my understanding of beauty. Quadrants, levels, lines, states, types....they all offer another fruitful quest, investigation, exploration, struggle,breakthrough of insight and expansion of self.
The idea that has come out of my latest writing is the desire to create an integral beauty koan that can be used and practiced by women (and men(-:) An integral koan in the way I am conceptualizing it is a koan that engages body, mind and spirit in self, culture and nature. And I am choosing to create that integral koan specifically designed for engaging the paradox of beauty in all those realms.
I'll enter these concepts more in future blogs.....
First it seems that the more I write about beauty, teasing it apart and reshaping its construction using an integral framework the less I feel enslaved by it as a woman. This makes sense from the perspective of Wilber's model in the sense that the more I am able to objectify my interior constructed perceptions and images of beauty as well as my pain and struggles with beauty, the less I am so strictly identified with them.
It seems that through the process of objectifying and bringing clarity to the issue of beauty as a woman by using the integral model I can work with and transcend/integrate those shadow elements that have followed me surrounding my appearance since I was a child. I know the issue of beauty is huge for many women to more or less of a degree in severity.
For me personally, it has always been a deep struggle.
It has been through my work with integral beauty that I feel I have gained many new tools to understand and transcend the limits of culturally embedded gender roles and stereotype images that are so deeply engrained in my being. But the real juice of this model is that it has also offered me the most potent practice for getting me in touch with that eternal watcher, and returning me back to the beauty of that deeper mystery...the beauty I believe every woman is truly seeking when they spend so much energy trying to perfect thier physical appearance.
Reconceptualizing beauty from an integral standpoint has truly manifested in a greater degree of embodied awareness and freedom. A freedom that arises from the very act of finding and holding multiple perspectives on my understanding of beauty. Quadrants, levels, lines, states, types....they all offer another fruitful quest, investigation, exploration, struggle,breakthrough of insight and expansion of self.
The idea that has come out of my latest writing is the desire to create an integral beauty koan that can be used and practiced by women (and men(-:) An integral koan in the way I am conceptualizing it is a koan that engages body, mind and spirit in self, culture and nature. And I am choosing to create that integral koan specifically designed for engaging the paradox of beauty in all those realms.
I'll enter these concepts more in future blogs.....
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