Foo-Ling – The Face in the Fire?

Suzanne Cooke-Greuter stood beside me at the great bonfire at the Guylas Party at IEC2018.

An almost full moon shone in the clear black-blue sky overhead. We shared memories from this year’s conference and the IEC2014 when we had last been together. Then suddenly Suzanne pointed to the Face in the Fire.

We peered into the flames and clearly a face was silhouetted in the flames. What could it mean?

With all the rituals to honour the earth and the evolutionary resources we had been blessed with at the conference, I wondered if the Face in the Fire was a reflection of Suzanne herself?

She has given so much to the Integral Community deepening our understanding of psychological development. She had shared at IEC2018 views of Storytelling as a universal human characteristic and the ego’s insatiable striving to explain, to find coherence, and survive amidst the strong influence of the cultural container.

Yet amidst the infinite possible differences that have evolved from human experience, have emerged nine self-stories, representing the 9 levels of human emergence.

Suzanne had warned that ego can both attract and use content to inflate itself and that Pride and Shadow can emerge at the 7^th Level named Teal (just as it can at lower levels, but with even wider potential for damage and/or mis-direction). All the more reason, Suzanne suggested, that as we contemplate our evolutionary development we should embrace the wisdom of “Foo-Ling” who reminds us never to take ourselves too seriously.

Perhaps Suzanne was uniquely gifted to spot the Face in the Fire and witness its all too speedy conflagration. Funny I notice in retrospect that it was the face of the old puppet Punch – surely an early member of the Tribe of Foo-Ling?

This blog series celebrates presence of Integral City at Integral Europe Conference 2018.

The series includes: