Summary: Joe Perez - Soulfully Gay. Part 1. Out of the Closet, Into an Integral Embrace. (click here for free sample) The author of one of the most searing, courageous personal memoirs of our time shares how an Integral Approach helped him reconcile a life of fierce inner struggles with what it means to be a gay man in today’s culture, the difference between genuine spiritual experiences and psychotic episodes, and the thorny intersection of homosexuality and Christianity. In the foreword to Soulfully Gay, Ken Wilber writes: "Joe Perez’s book is perhaps the most astonishing, brilliant, and courageous look at the interface between individual belief and cultural values that has been written in our time. By a homosexual, or a heterosexual, or any other sexual I am aware of." Ken wrote this foreword without even having met Joe—probably one of the strongest complements one writer can give to another—and Soulfully Gay is the second offering from our Integral Books imprint at Shambhala Publications. In this dialogue, we are introduced to this "rip-roaring wonder of a writer," and hear Joe share the first part of his journey towards reconciling and integrating a life very nearly torn to shreds. This rather extraordinary chronicle unfolds around several conflict-inducing facts, one of which is that Joe is indeed gay; another of which is that Joe was raised Roman (homophobic) Catholic; another is that Joe tested HIV positive at age 24; another is that he often has authentic mystical states; and yet another is that Joe is, but only occasionally, clinically psychotic. It is the jolting collision of those items, held together by Joe’s courage in the face of them all, that makes his story so incredible in so many ways. But all those items didn’t merely collide; they coalesced, through agony, and euphoria, and sheer determination into a deeply Integral life. Joe’s story is a shining example of why an Integral Approach is far more than "just a map," or "just cognitive head-stuff." Integral helps one find a place for everything in one’s life. Integral helps find the patterns that connect. In an Integral life, there’s room for everything... even all the things that one has disowned, shoved into the shadows, pushed away; and because all these parts of one’s own being are held at arm’s length, one can never feel truly whole. As Ken so beautifully summarizes, "Joe’s life is being artfully lived in the very fact of its truthfulness, its deep embrace, shadows and warts and worms and all, woven unhesitatingly into the tapestry of a lustrous display, a deep peace, an abiding love... and therein, surely, a lesson for us all...." We invite you to meet this extraordinary man, and listen in to this extraordinary story.... "I didn’t know who I was anymore. Any sense of meaning or purpose had come crashing down around me. Then, one ordinary day, I was preparing for bed, and I became overwhelmed by this sensation of euphoria and bliss that permeated everything in my awareness...." click here for full audio
