In today’s cultural climate, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to talk about complex things in the mainstream media without being reduced to a caricature or a talking point.  This is one of the things that makes The Daily Show so extraordinary—it walks the line between laughter and learning in a really fascinating way, often using irony, snark, and cynicism as a “trojan horse” for authenticity.

Warren Farrell was recently featured on a controversial segment of The Daily Show, in which he, the very notion of male inequality, and “men’s work” as a whole were hilariously lampooned by Daily Show correspondent Samantha Bee (watch the full five-minute clip on the right).  This clip has caused a bit of a stir in many online communities, drawing fire from almost every conceivable angle, from “why does The Daily Show hate men?” all the way to “when will men just stop whining and learn how to man up?”

Warren was kind enough to share with us his own reaction to the sendup, the first public response he has offered since the clip aired nearly three weeks ago.

What follows is an intriguing and highly entertaining discussion about what it was like to be interviewed by The Daily Show, the many levels of humor at play in the clip, and a clarification of many of the points that ended up being turned into punchlines. Furthermore, Warren reminds us how important it is to live our lives adventurously and to be able to laugh at ourselves at all times—even when we see ourselves being skewered on national television.

At its best moments, The Daily Show fully lives up to, and even adds to, the rich legacy of satire that Jon Stewart’s desk rests upon.  We look to comedians to see what others might not see, to say what others cannot say, to hold a funhouse mirror up to reality—reflecting the truth by distorting the facts, releasing us from the absurdity of existence into the tonic bliss of laughter.  Which is really the only sane response to being human, isn’t it?

Considering the controversy and even outrage this clip provoked throughout many online “men’s group” communities, this might be the most important lesson of them all: hold everything lightly; especially the stuff you take most seriously.

So sit back, watch this clip, and just let yourself laugh for a few minutes. When you are finished, take a listen to Warren’s response below for a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes, behind the controversy, and beyond the laughter.

Click here to see the Daily Show clip.

Listen to Dr. Warren Farrell’s Response Right click to download Duration: 44 minutes

Come on, let’s say it together: “Men are being oppressed.” It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it? It sort of sticks in the back of the throat, and we almost need to look around to make sure no one is listening before we say it out loud. In today’s academic and cultural climate, it’s not easy to make a point like this—the kindest reaction you might receive is a cynical eye-roll.

But really, why is it so difficult to admit that men could use a little help learning how to redefine themselves in today’s world, and how to “man up” in a new way to meet the challenges of our modern lives? Maybe it’s because our definitions for words like “oppression” and “power” are too limited, restricting our understanding of these dynamics to just a tiny shred of what’s actually going on beneath the surface of male/female relations. Just as our notions of “oppression” have often led us to perceive women as perennial victims, robbing them of a dignity they had never really been without, so do our notions of “power” keep our attention diverted from the very real issues men are dealing with today.

“But men do have more power,” you might say, “just look at who is running the world!” A fair argument in some circles, but somewhat disingenuous when we take a closer look. For one, the amount of power men yield in economic and political spheres has very little impact upon the average guy in the street. And while it is certainly true that throughout history men have largely dominated the “public sphere”, it should be noted that the ratio of women in the workforce and the overall income gap between men and women is rapidly approaching some degree of balance.

But more than anything, this critique of men’s power (and powerlessness) is completely missing the mark—because power is not defined by the amount of control a person has over other people, but the amount of control one has over his or her own life. In this sense, women’s power is too often overlooked, while men have yet to fully come to terms with their own power, as they are still being primed from birth to equate “manhood” with “disposability.”

Men are constantly being locked into a single option—to excel in the “public sphere”, even to the point of breaking their own backs—with very little understanding or training around the “private sphere” options available to him. Meanwhile, men continue to place an unfair amount of cultural pressure upon women to pick up the slack in both spheres, without doing their own work to spend more time with the family, to develop their own emotional availability, to become a more involved father, and to focus on the interior realities of the home life.

We are looking for new role models, new behaviors, and new ways for men to define themselves. We are looking for a path beyond the merely macho, beyond the feminized 90’s guy, and beyond the disposable hero. The goal is not to neuter men or to neutralize the sexes—quite the contrary, we are trying to find a radically improved masculinity, as well as a radically improved femininity, honoring the very real power yielded by males and females alike in both public and private spheres. We are now discovering a new generation of men and women—newly integrated men and women who can see beyond the narrow definitions of gender that have been handed to us, fluent in both interior and exterior realities, and finding new ways for both sexes and both genders to show their love for themselves and one another.

Why Be a Buddhist, When You Can Be a Buddha?

With this simple question, Lama Surya Das cuts directly to the heart of the integral spiritual impulse, hinting at a secret that lies at the center of all the world’s spiritual traditions.  It is a secret that has been hiding in plain sight for thousands of years; a secret that you yearn to discover for yourself.  You know that the world’s religious legacies represent so much more than mere codes of conduct, moral platitudes, or anthologies of myth and superstition.  At the core of every major religion we can find a treasure trove of powerful technologies for awakening, transformative practices designed to invoke in us the very same experience of fullness, transcendence, and immeasurable love as the great religious founders themselves were able to have.

That’s right—you can have the same experience that the Buddha had. You can have the same experience that Jesus Christ had.  Or that Muhammad had, or St. Teresa, or Rumi, or any other great mystic in history.  All this is abundantly available to you, at this very moment.

Why is this important?  Simple: it’s your birthright.  It’s why you are here, suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous incarnation.  This is not an invitation, nor is it an obligation—it’s who you already are, right now.  All that’s left to do is to wake up.  But first, you need to know that you can wake up in this lifetime, that enlightenment is a real possibility for you and for your loved ones.  Second, you need to give yourself permission to pursue your own enlightenment.  You deserve to be awake—because in a certain sense, you already are.

This realization forms the bedrock of the 5-year Integral Spiritual Experience event, which is rapidly becoming something like “the United Nations of world spirituality.”  It is a space where teachers and leaders from any religious tradition can share their own insights, teachings, and practices with a wide community of spiritual seekers and practitioners in a truly “trans-lineage” embrace—recognizing the timeless core shared by all religions, while celebrating the vast differences between them.  After all, each religion may represent a different path up the same mountain, but each path continues to offer its own unique vantage of our shared spiritual heritage.

We recently held our first annual Integral Spiritual Experience event in Asilomar, CA over the 2009-2010 New Year, and were deeply honored to have Lama Surya Das as one of our featured keynote speakers.  An exemplary teacher of Dzogchen Buddhism, Lama Surya delivered his presentation with diamond-tipped clarity, precision, and wit.  He suggests a few ways we can carry this realization for ourselves through our day-to-day lives, while reminding us how simple it all really is: the most sublimely ordinary experience you will ever know.

Be sure to stay tuned in the coming months for more ISE keynotes (including presentations by Jean Houston, Sally Kempton, and Marc Gafni) as well as some exciting updates around our next Integral Spiritual Experience event: The Future of Love!

Come on, let’s say it together: “Men are being oppressed.” It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it? It sort of sticks in the back of the throat, and we almost need to look around to make sure no one is listening before we say it out loud. In today’s academic and cultural climate, it’s not easy to make a point like this—the kindest reaction you might receive is a cynical eye-roll.

But really, why is it so difficult to admit that men could use a little help learning how to redefine themselves in today’s world, and how to “man up” in a new way to meet the challenges of our modern lives? Maybe it’s because our definitions for words like “oppression” and “power” are too limited, restricting our understanding of these dynamics to just a tiny shred of what’s actually going on beneath the surface of male/female relations. Just as our notions of “oppression” have often led us to perceive women as perennial victims, robbing them of a dignity they had never really been without, so do our notions of “power” keep our attention diverted from the very real issues men are dealing with today.

“But men do have more power,” you might say, “just look at who is running the world!” A fair argument in some circles, but somewhat disingenuous when we take a closer look. For one, the amount of power men yield in economic and political spheres has very little impact upon the average guy in the street. And while it is certainly true that throughout history men have largely dominated the “public sphere”, it should be noted that the ratio of women in the workforce and the overall income gap between men and women is rapidly approaching some degree of balance.

But more than anything, this critique of men’s power (and powerlessness) is completely missing the mark—because power is not defined by the amount of control a person has over other people, but the amount of control one has over his or her own life. In this sense, women’s power is too often overlooked, while men have yet to fully come to terms with their own power, as they are still being primed from birth to equate “manhood” with “disposability.”

Men are constantly being locked into a single option—to excel in the “public sphere”, even to the point of breaking their own backs—with very little understanding or training around the “private sphere” options available to him. Meanwhile, men continue to place an unfair amount of cultural pressure upon women to pick up the slack in both spheres, without doing their own work to spend more time with the family, to develop their own emotional availability, to become a more involved father, and to focus on the interior realities of the home life.

We are looking for new role models, new behaviors, and new ways for men to define themselves. We are looking for a path beyond the merely macho, beyond the feminized 90’s guy, and beyond the disposable hero. The goal is not to neuter men or to neutralize the sexes—quite the contrary, we are trying to find a radically improved masculinity, as well as a radically improved femininity, honoring the very real power yielded by males and females alike in both public and private spheres. We are now discovering a new generation of men and women—newly integrated men and women who can see beyond the narrow definitions of gender that have been handed to us, fluent in both interior and exterior realities, and finding new ways for both sexes and both genders to show their love for themselves and one another.

Why is art so important? As Ken discusses in this clip, art and creativity represent an intrinsic dimension of human consciousness itself, and developing our aesthetic sensibilities is just as crucial as our moral maturity or expanding our scientific knowledge of the world. As such, artists play a very special role in our lives as interpreters of this present moment, preservers of our shared past, and arbiters of tomorrow’s unfolding. Historically it has often been the artists who have pushed our cultural edge forward the most profoundly, simply because they have a certain freedom of experimentation that most people in other vocations simply do not have.  As the leading edge of the world’s development is now Integral, we can begin to look to artists whose consciousness is integrally informed to offer us glimpses of a more sane and inclusive future, and help unearth the radical potentials that await us there….

Avante garde—synonymous with “vanguard”—represents people at the cutting edge of any emergent cultural thought or expression. These individuals tend to function several steps ahead of the rest of the world, scouting the newly emerging territories of tomorrow and forging pathways toward the artistic, cultural, and intellectual possibilities that dwell there.

Integral Life is pleased to present a monthly showcase of truly avant garde artists—the most current embodiment of the Kosmic impulse to constantly go beyond what went before, adding brilliance and revelation to the dying forms of the previous moment.

Last year was a pretty incredible year for Integral Life. Since launching the website in late 2008, we’ve published a staggering amount of new content around almost every conceivable topic: spirituality, politics, art, business, sexuality, personal growth, etc. With such rich diversity of subject matter, it can be easy to feel lost in a sea of integral media—something we would like to help you with. So we decided to compile some data, crunch some numbers, and squeeze the results through our own patented perspectival algorithms, and are now happy to present you with your own selections for the Best Media of 2009. Enjoy!

Obama’s First Year: The Good, the Bad, and the Partial

After last week’s State of the Union Address, you may have been reflecting upon the past year of Obama’s presidency and asking yourself a few questions:

• How did he do?
• Am I feeling inspired?
• Am I benefiting in any real way from Obama’s policies and his leadership?
• Could Obama really be our first truly integral president, transcending and including the best of Democratic and Republican values?

We’ve been asking ourselves the same questions, and thought we would take a moment to offer our own integral assessment of President Obama’s first national State of the Union Address. So we posed these questions (and a handful of others) to Ken and a few other smart and savvy minds, who were kind enough to share five uniquely enlightening perspectives on Obama’s first year—the good, the bad, and the partial….

Have you ever felt like you were long on vision, but short on actually making it happen? If so, Jeff Salzman’s Integral Incubator is something you will want to dive into deeply. The first Incubator event hatched in November, attracting participants from seven different countries who all crowned it a wild success.

In this latest interview, Jeff explores the work/career themes that he noticed resonating in the first Integral Incubator pioneers, and how they will help shape the next Incubator event coming up in March 2010. Do any of these sound familiar to you?

• How do you know that your great gift actually meets the world’s great need?
• When do the many perspectives the world offers become distracting?
• Can a task perseverance practice give you a shot at entering the creative flow?
• What if the project that brings meaning to your life is… you?

So, what are you waiting for? Are you doing what you love? Does your calling support you financially? Is your success; however you define it, all that you want it to be? If your answer currently is no or you don’t know, it’s time you begin incubating your genius instead of procrastinating about enacting your unique calling in the world.

with Marc Gafni

There is nothing too big for Big Heart. But when something as overwhelmingly painful as last week’s earthquake in Haiti washes through us, it can be easy to feel like our own access to Big Heart isn’t quite big enough. How can we contain all these tears, all this suffering, and all this destruction? How can we make sense of this magnitude of devastation?

Hearing a phrase like “200,000 estimated casualties” has a way of sliding right through us: too big to understand, too big to digest, too big to let in. It’s hard enough to allow ourselves to feel a single death, let alone wrap our minds around hundreds of thousands of them.

But in a certain sense, you don’t need to wrap your mind around it. You don’t need to understand it (though it’s always a really good idea to try). All you need to do is let yourself feel, let yourself love, and let yourself act—all in full deference to the God who lives in you, as you.

Take fifteen minutes out of your day and listen as Marc Gafni offers a special prayer for Haiti. Invoking both God’s Tears and God’s Laughter, Marc’s prayer helps us to digest the overwhelming emotions, to cut through the paralysis of helplessness, and to rededicate ourselves to serving the perpetual emergence of our perfectly flawed world.

with Martin Burt and Ken Wilber

It was impossible not to feel our hearts burst as we watched the aftermath of last week’s earthquake in Haiti.  We looked on with horror as an entire nation of people already on the edge of survival had their lives and their families stripped away from them. We sat helpless and heartbroken—praying, practicing, and breathing for the victims, trying to find a point of silence still enough to contain all this pain.

What we witnessed last week was tragic, and yet tragically inevitable.  Haiti is a nation without building codes and without a modern infrastructure, because Haiti is a nation without an economy.  It is truly maddening to know that there would have been far fewer deaths last week if Haiti hadn’t been so morbidly impoverished—it is worth noting that the 1989 earthquake in San Francisco registered a 6.9 on the Richter scale, and killed 63 people.  Last week’s earthquake in Haiti registered a 7.0, with a recent estimate of 200,000 casualties.

So what is really responsible for these deaths? Tectonic plates? Or poverty itself?

This is why we are so inspired by Martin Burt, whose Foundation Paraguay is one of the world’s most innovative micro-finance organizations, used now in 27 countries and modeled by 50 institutions.  Martin employs an explicitly integral approach to poverty elimination, using 200 different measures for poverty to finally solve poverty in both its interior and exterior dimensions.

Poverty, Martin reminds us, is not only an impoverished standard of material living, but also an insidious misconception about human beingness: that we only are only rich in spirit when we are rich in wealth.  This misconception, prominent among the world’s rich nations, paradoxically exacerbates the suffering of the world’s poor because it encourages partial approaches to poverty, as if merely giving them more “stuff” will cure the poverty of dignity that always and everywhere accompanies the absence of human self-sufficiency.

Some of us had the opportunity to listen to Martin talk with Ken a few months ago, and we were all blown away by his story. It wonderful to see Integral theory being applied in such concrete and practical ways around the world—but more importantly, it was invigorating to see it used in a way that is directly improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around the world. After all, you can spend a lifetime learning all the very best philosophies in the world, but if it doesn’t actually help make this world a better place, it’s just empty words.

Poverty elimination lies at the core of the integral spiritual impulse. It is impossible to consider yourself truly “spiritual” without caring about the poor, without opening your heart to suffering in all its forms.  It’s important to remember that spirituality is more than a 1st-person experience—in order for our lives to be fully lived, we must allow our hearts to break open to the full suffering we are surrounded by, recognizing the basic human dignity reflected in every person’s eyes.  But it’s not enough to just feel it in the 1st person, or to open ourselves to love in the 2nd person—we must also act in the 3rd person, directly engaging the political, technological, and economic systems that continue to lock so many people into perpetual poverty, supporting the world with our wallets as much as we do our hearts.

by Bo Bartlett

As you may already know, art, creativity, and aesthetics have always been an essential part of an integrally-lived life. In fact, the very existence of a genuinely transformative Integral Art scene is one of the greatest indicators that we are indeed part of a bonafide cultural movement, as we have often looked to our greatest artists to scout out the unfamiliar territory ahead of us—blazing new paths through the wilderness of consciousness, while bringing the sounds and visions of a newly discovered world back for the rest of us.

This month we are proud to feature the art of Bo Bartlett, in a stunning collection of paintings that depict a seamless integration of realism and surrealism, which Michael Schwartz describes as “visible familiarity and everydayness; integrated with strange and mysterious elusiveness: elements of an uncanny and wondrous art…” As you take in the visual splendor of Bo’s art, be sure to check out Michael’s accompanying commentary The Mysterious Abundance of the Everyday.

One of the extraordinary things about these Integral Life Art Galleries is that you can choose your own level of engagement, and can go as deeply into them as you want to go. Ken Wilber often talks about the three modes of knowing symbolized by the “eye of flesh,” the “eye of mind,” and the “eye of spirit”:

• You can have a simple sensory experience of the shapes, colors, and composition of the actual artwork, just noticing the beauty and feeling how it lands in your body.

• You can also use the intellectual treatments provided by Michael Schwartz to deepen your overall aesthetic experience, learning some of the most important perspectives you can bring to any work of art.

• And you can use the magnificent beauty these artists offer as a spiritual practice, a doorway to your own timeless self, immersed in effortless appreciation of everything in this universe—as sometimes it takes something exceptionally beautiful for us to see that everything is beautiful, exactly as it is.

All three of these experiences are available to you, and we invite you to take in as much as you possibly can!

with Ken Wilber and Elle Nicolai

Do you know what Integral Art is? Would you be able to recognize it if you saw it? Does a piece of art need to have some intrinsic spiritual component in order to be considered integral? And since the word “integral” is often synonymous with phrases like “a theory of everything,” wouldn’t that require each piece of integral art to cover all possible bases—including all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, and all types in the artwork itself?

In this interview Ken shines some light on these important questions, offering a simple coherent definition of Integral Art while explaining how it both includes and sets itself apart from every other artistic movement in history. If you are new to the integral aesthetic experience and are looking for a basic introduction to the major forms and functions of Integral Art, you will not want to miss this talk…!

Take a Moment

Perspectives on Beauty: Of course, there is much more to the Integral Art experience than just sitting back and taking it all in. We are more than just idle consumers of art—we are also the enactors of art, co-conspirators in Beauty’s unveiling. Our interpretations of beauty are therefore at least as important as our actual perceptions of beauty, and certainly indivisible from the whole of our experience. As such, we want to give you the tools needed to help you more deeply perceive and interpret the beauty that surrounds you.

Take a few moments to check out Michael Schwartz’s exquisite exploration Looking at the Overlooked as he guides us through some key perspectives to help deepen our experience of art, beauty, and the creative impulse.

Image: Griffin by Mark T. Smith

The way you set your intentions at this time is critical. In the past, even your best and strongest of intentions have faltered in the face life’s obstacles. This quick 3-step technique will transform your resolution into a powerful tool for growth and clarity in the new year. Your friends will soon ask you how that resolution is going, expecting the same old answer. Instead, you will say, “It’s changing my life!”

with Larry Dossey and Ken Wilber

Have you ever had a powerful experience of intuition at one time or another in your life?  Perhaps you knew what someone was going to say right before they said it, or you had a dream that eventually came to reality.  Or maybe you have felt the electric thrill of being “in just the right place, at just the right time.”  Many (if not most) of us have had experiences like these, but find it difficult figuring out how to relate to them—or if they are actually real in the first place.  By their very nature, phenomena like premonitions, intuitions, and other paranormal experiences are so subjective, so slippery, and so hard to think critically about.  This has created a great deal of naivety on both sides of the psi divide between believers and skeptics alike, and has made it almost impossible to have an open, intelligent, and meaningful discussion of the topic.

Until now.

You are constantly being informed by your intuition.  At every moment, you are immersed in a field of subtle knowing—whether you know it or not.  And what’s really cool is that you can actually get better at it!  If you have ever been curious about the significance of these sorts of experiences, or wondered how you might be able to make yourself even more receptive to your own intuitive capacities, you do not want to miss this enthralling discussion!

with Ken Wilber

After presenting his fascinating lecture on states of consciousness, stages of consciousness, and the three kinds of “self” (see the previous videos in this series), Ken is asked to report where he is in his own growth and development, what obstacles he has faced, and where he thinks his edge currently is.

by Ken Wilber

You’ve heard it before: The whole universe is made of energy. Nothing can be created or destroyed, only changed. We’re all made of the same stuff, just stardust looking back at the stars. Observations like these have become cliche for new age spirituality–sincere attempts to divinize the universe, perhaps, but often founded upon hazy understanding of both science and spirituality.  Though it is true that there is an energetic component to everything in the universe, without defining just what we mean by “energy”, or discussing the many different kinds of energy, or how these different kinds of energy work and interact with each other, we are just reciting empty platitudes.  Fortunately, Ken Wilber has given a lot of thought to the relationship between matter, energy, and consciousness, culminating in this exquisite essay on subtle energies.  Here he presents a comprehensive taxonomy of energy, ranging from dense physical energies like weak/strong nuclear forces and electromagnetism, all the way to the subtlest energies associated with the most advanced states of enlightenment. This is a rather advanced essay, which may require some prior understanding of Integral theory, but one that may very well change the way you think about the natural world.

The following is an excerpt from the first draft of volume 2 of the Kosmos trilogy, tentatively titled Kosmic Karma (volume 1 of that trilogy was Sex, Ecology, Spirituality).  This excerpt suggests a coherent and comprehensive theory of the many approaches to subtle energies, their origin, nature, and development.  This particular excerpt comes toward the end of the volume, which means that somebody reading this excerpt will not have the benefit (or the torture) of having read the first part of the book.  I will therefore present a brief introduction, followed by an integral approach to subtle energies.

The first two excerpts from Kosmic Karma (“An Integral Age at the Leading Edge” and “The Many Ways We Touch”) can be found here; they explain the general approach itself.  “AQAL” (pronounced ah-quil) is short for “all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, all types,” which is the metatheory of the integral approach, and which will be explained as we go along.

with Michal Levin and Ken Wilber

You have committed to waking up in this lifetime. But your path to awakening may be blocked by damaged relationships with family, food, sex, money, power, etc. These damaged areas often manifest in the body as a misalignment—that is, a literal physical dislocation—of your first three chakras. Working to realign them can heal this damage and clear your way to deep spiritual opening.

Meet Michal Levin, gifted energy healer and spiritual guide.  Michal’s extraordinary story is in many ways defined by her discovery of the chakras without any formal training or study of traditional systems of chakra contemplation. Her talent manifested spontaneously, calling her into a life of deep spiritual contemplation. In her dialogue with Ken Wilber, she shares her own unique distillation of chakra alignment—resulting in growth from being unconsciously and painfully controlled by our energy, to using our energy in a conscious and mature way for the benefit of all….

What makes Michal Levin’s chakra meditation so unique is that she received it as part of her own awakening and not from studying a lineage tradition. What she is sharing in this talk with Ken is the result of eighteen years of observing what happens to the individuals and groups she has taught worldwide. As Ken says of Michal, she is “very unusual in that she brings something fresh and new that is absolutely worth studying because it extends what we have received from the lineage minds.”

In this dialogue, Michal shares her chakra meditation in step-by-step detail, and reveals not just the basic practice itself, but Michal’s distinctive opinion that we must work and release the issues of the first three chakras before moving on to any of the higher levels. Michal and Ken also align her teaching with the Integral perspective, shadow work, and the activation of our higher selves.

If you are looking for a very practical, no-nonsense approach to unlocking the power of your energetic chakras, this extraordinary interchange between Michal and Ken will surely illuminate your path.

TAKE A MOMENT

In this dialogue, Michal Levin presents her own unique system of energetic development, which shares many important similarities (and some differences) with traditional systems of chakra contemplation. Before you listen, take five minutes to sit in silence, letting your mind become like a mirror—reflecting everything, while keeping nothing for itself. Try to maintain this state of “mirror mind” as you listen, and see if her words resonate with your own life experience. Simply observe your connection to Michal’s words as she speaks, and see if you can locate the energetic dynamics she describes within your own being….

For more about chakras and subtle energies, be sure to read Ken Wilber’s extraordinary essay Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Subtle Energies here on Integral Life.

with Ken Wilber

Ken continues his discussion of the three kinds of self: the False Self (the broken or illusory self image), the Actual Self (the “authentic” or healthily-integrated self at any particular stage of development), and the Real Self (the timeless Self behind and beyond all manifestation).  He also talks about the two different vectors of growth, which he calls transformation (the vertical ascent through different stages of consciousness) versus translation (making sense of the world from whatever stage you happen to be at, in the healthiest way possible.)  This is a crucial distinction, especially for idealists who consider the goal of the Integral movement to be to “raise consciousness” and transform the world.  But forcing individual or cultural transformation is not only impossible, it’s really not very compassionate, as everyone has the right to plateau at whatever stage works for them and the circumstances of their lives.  Integral practitioners should not be focusing on transforming the world, but rather helping people better translate the world from wherever they might be—after all, the best way to foster and support people’s growth in the long run is to make them as healthy as possible in the short run.

by Ken Wilber

The Dharma is free.  No one should charge money for teaching or transmitting Dharma.  Dharma that touches money is no dharma at all.  Selling the Dharma—there is a root of all evil.  The Dharma offered freely and without charge to all who seek it: there is purity, nobility, an honorable disposition.

And so goes the strange antagonism between Dharma and dollars.  In dealing with this issue of money and Dharma—or money and spirituality in general—there are at least two very different items that need to be teased apart and addressed separately.  The first is the appropriate monetary value of any relational exchange (from medical care to education to goods and services in general); and the second is, should monetary exchange ever be linked to Dharma teaching…?

click here to download pdf

with Bert Parlee and Ken Wilber

If you shop, have a job, or own any investments, you’re a capitalist.  But are you aconscious capitalist?

Whether a CEO of a multi-billion dollar enterprise like Conscious Capitalist John Mackey (CEO of Whole Foods Markets and a board member of Integral Life) or a stay-at-home dad who does all the grocery shopping, conscious capitalists believe that capitalism can be more than a zero-sum game of winners and losers.  If you want to be on the forefront of helping business provide more meaning and goodness to society as well as great value, than here’s what sets you apart as a conscious capitalist:

1. You believe that business has a deeper purpose than just maximizing profits. You recognize that your career calling does, too.

2. You believe that the needs of all the stakeholders in an economic system should be considered, including investors, customers, employees, suppliers, society and the environment.  And you recognize that you actually represent each of these in some way.

3. You believe that “capitalism” can and will evolve as the consciousness of the people composing it evolve.  So you take your own responsibility to evolve seriously!

Now some of this may seem new.  That’s because it is.

Operating under the hood of capitalism is a fairly simple assumption: that advocating a free market economy is more productive and more beneficial to society as a whole, because everyone involved is looking after their own self interest. This forces competition, resulting in some degree of fair compromise for the sake of mutual gain.  This drive toward competition for mutual benefit has been the engine of progress in the modern Western world, and is famously characterized as Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand”, naturally guiding society through wave upon wave of increasing wealth and innovation.

But what if the “invisible hand” weren’t so invisible?

Classical economic theory is rarely concerned with what people are thinking or feeling, focusing instead upon more objective metrics like behavior and the exchange of material goods.  There’s really not much space allotted for interior motivations at all, aside from the core assumption about “mutual self interest”.  What if we had a keener understanding of what “self interest” really means, uncovering the actual motivating factors behind all of our behaviors?

What if we had the tools to both qualify and quantify the many levels of “self”—acknowledging that our identity grows and changes throughout our lives—as well as the different levels of “interest” that stem from our personal values and cultural worldview?

And what if we could combine these interior dimensions with a much more sophisticated understanding of “mutual benefit”, acknowledging how our activity in the marketplace impacts our stakeholders, our community, and our environment?

Ever since Adam Smith first penned The Wealth of Nations in 1776, capitalism has been both lauded and criticized from almost every possible angle.  On one end of the spectrum, we can see that the move to capitalist economics has been one of humanity’s greatest forces of liberation, catalyzing more progress and pulling more people out of poverty than any other social or economic movement in history.  On the other, capitalism is often vilified as an enemy of virtue, an incubator of greed, and a perpetual source of war and environmental devastation.

So who is right? Has our social experiment with capitalism been a blessing or a curse?  The answer, not surprisingly, is a resounding “both/and”. After all, capitalism is just a tool—and like any tool, it can be used to either better lives or to destroy them altogether.

Listen as Ken and Bert trace the growth of capitalism from Wealth of Nations all the way to Whole Foods, noting some of the ways we can help build a better and more conscious capitalism for today’s newly-interconnected global economy.  If you are an executive, manager, or business owner, understanding the principles and history of conscious capitalism will not only help expand and deepen your own definition of success, it will help you make better decisions that will benefit more of the world.  And even if you aren’t in the business world, a coherent vision of conscious capitalism will help you to become a more conscious consumer and bring more care and prudence to your own financial affairs.

TAKE A MOMENT

Does Your Money Own You? Becoming a conscious capitalist requires that you can see and understand your relationship to money, a that view sees abundance as a default possibility of exchange rather than always seeing scarcity and lack.  Take a quick tour of your own relationship to money:

• Do you have a scarcity mentality, where a persistent thought of having no money leaves your stomach clenching? Perhaps your “survival voice” is dominant?
• Do you have an achievement mentality, where the thought of having lots of money makes your head swoon with visions of finally reaching peace of mind? Perhaps your “accumulation voice” is dominant?
• Do you have an abundance mentality, where the thought of having enough money to live comfortably makes your heart open? Perhaps your “sufficiency voice” is dominant?

Now the truth is we each have all of these voices, feelings and capacities that operate within us all the time.  But be aware of what voice talks to you the most. When you feel yourself getting stressed (survival) or greedy (accumulation), feel the openness that comes when you relax into abundance while maintaining the confidence that you always have the capacity to survive, you always have the capacity to thrive.  That hasn’t left you. And it never will.

with Michael Schwartz and Phillip Rubinov-Jacobson

Last month we introduced Light of the Muse, an Integral Life Art Gallery featuring the work of Philip Rubinov Jacobson. Amongst the twenty-four works on display, the one many people might well overlook is this small and exquisite drawing. With Philip’s consent and support, we are going to focus on this drawing, exercising our skills at approaching a work of art in an authentically integral manner. By doing so, first we activate the various perspectives on art (including becoming aware where we are stuck in the fluidity of our perspective taking); thusly setting the stage for integrating those perspectives into higher-order aesthetic perceiving. Working with a drawing is especially germane, as drawings, in their delicacy and intimacy, demand nuanced attentiveness and discernment….

with Roger Walsh and Ken Wilber

We live in a time of unprecedented challenges and opportunities. Never before have we had the power to imperil our species and our planet. And never before have we had the power to heal our species, and to bring people to new levels of prosperity, well-being, health, and maturity. The choices our generation makes will determine whether we leave behind us an evolving civilization and a fertile earth, or a failed species and a plundered planet. We have the power to do both. Part of the power available to us is the integral vision. It is our remarkable privilege to be able to realize this vision ourselves, to embody and express it in our lives, to use it to better understand the world, and to let it use us as willing instruments to help heal our world. What greater privilege could there be than to use this profound vision to play our role to serve, help, heal, and awaken all beings?

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with Rollie Stanich and David Riordan

Many are fortunate enough to be born into a religious tradition that provides a tremendous amount of meaning for us at an early age.  But at some point in our lives, we often begin to outgrow the religious teachings of our youth.  Where do we go when these once-sacred stories suddenly appear to be little more than a collection of superstitions and hollow myths?  How do we reconcile these myths with the developmental capacity for reason and critical thinking?  Is there a way to actually deepen our relationship with our inherited religion, rather than being forced to step outside our tradition to explore more exotic paths—or worse, to abandon spirituality altogether?

These questions have been at the core of Rollie’s spiritual journey for decades now, guiding him toward more loving and more inclusive expressions of Christian scripture with each and every step.  It is clear that Rollie is going well beyond semantic interpretations of ancient words on a page.  He’s doing much more than just reinterpreting the Gospel for a new generation (an admirable and much-needed undertaking in itself)—he is actually enacting and embodying the Gospel in his day-to-day life, revealing the “uncreated light” of God’s love for all to see.

with Larry Dossey and Ken Wilber

A dream prompts a mother to remove her baby from his crib an hour before a chandelier falls and smashes it. More than a dozen people are no shows for choir practice for the first time ever at the moment their church explodes. Before his patients ever call to say they’re coming to the hospital, an OBGYN gets a pain in his chest signaling they’re ready to deliver. Visions of planes crashing into buildings causes a mother to cancel her family’s Disney World trip scheduled for 9/11. Are these coincidences, or is something happening that we need to pay attention to?
More than an examination of case studies, The Power of Premonitions reveals the world of science and research that proves the human capacity for knowing the future. Experiments consistently show that human beings are as wired to know what’s coming next as we are to see, feel, hear and think. Dossey uses cutting-edge science to prove the value of what had long been considered the provenance of mystic charlatans and to show readers how to cultivate their natural abilities. This is a book for the skeptical mind, but it’s also for the believer’s heart—because its author possesses the rare gift of having both.

“I’m not asking you to take anything in this book on blind faith, but to open yourself up to the possibility of premonitions and the evidence supporting them. Listen to the stories people tell. Explore the research that demonstrates our capacity to sense the future. Ponder the implications of mind outside of time. Invite premonitions into your life and see what happens. If you do so humbly and reverently, your life will likely become more premonition-prone, and you may touch that exquisite, infinite realm to which premonitions, now as always, are a door.” — Larry Dossey, MD

Take a Moment

Practice deep listening! Assuming that precognition, clairvoyance, and other forms of psi phenomena actually do exist, they appear to be closely related to a peculiar capacity of consciousness known as “intuition”. One way to refine our intuition is to cultivate the ability to listen deeply and to remain attentive to the world around us.  Take five minutes out of your day to sit quietly.  Without exerting any effort, simply listen to all the sounds that surround you—the wind outside your window, the hum of your computer, your own breath and heartbeat.  Do not try to quiet your mind or push away distraction—just sit and listen to everything that arises, moment to moment, becoming absorbed in the sounds of your environment.  Breathe these sounds deep into your belly, and release them as you exhale.  Allow the beauty of your surroundings to fill your heart and put a smile on your face, before opening your eyes and going about your day.

Take the Integral Life PSI survey! According to Larry Dossey, about 67% of people have had some sort of experience with PSI.  Have you?  Take the PSI poll below and find out how the Integral community measures against the general population.

Participate in an online telepathy study! Both Ken and Larry agree that the hard evidence behind PSI phenomena has already been pretty well established, and what is needed now more than anything is a good marketing plan to bring the evidence into the mainstream.  But rigorous studies are still being conducted, now more than ever.  One of the greatest proponents of these studies is Rupert Sheldrake, a scientist who has developed an entire website to help perform quick and easy studies on telepathy, precognition, and clairvoyance, many of which only take 5-10 minutes.  Interested?  Visit www.sheldrake.org to learn more.

with Rollie Stanich and David Riordan

Rollie Stanich has been a vital part of the emerging Integral movement for years, having previously worked as the Chief Facilitator of Integral Spiritual Center, as a former managing editor of Integral Naked from 2004-2005, and as an ongoing contributor to Integral Life.

Rollie’s spiritual path is one of contemplative Christianity—he is a practitioner of Centering Prayer and a longtime student of Fr. Thomas Keating and co-wrote and co-produced the 2008 Integral Life DVD The Future of Christianity.

In this remarkable and long-overdue interview, Rollie discusses the book he is currently writing, titled Who Do You Say That I Am?—a question Jesus asks Simon in biblical scripture.  When Simon responds “You are the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the Living God,” Jesus blesses him and changes his name to Peter—a symbol of the transformation of identity and spirit that can occur when we are able to meet Jesus exactly where we are.  Rollie talks about how this story has been taken for granted by the mythic church, accepting Simon/Peter’s response as the single correct answer to the question—even if we don’t really know what the words “Christ”, “”Messiah,” or “Son of God” actually mean.

But when Rollie is asked “Who do you say that I am?” he doesn’t hear it as a question with a single fixed answer, but as an invitation to reflect upon our own station in life, to see Christ wherever we happen to be, and to acknowledge the fact that our relationship with Christ can appear quite different at different points in our life’s journey.  Rollie’s practice of contemplation, prayer, and self-inquiry has helped him to see Christ everywhere he looks—a Christ in all four quadrants, a Christ for all states of consciousness, a Christ for all stages of development.  Christ is everywhere at once, loving us exactly where we are, while inviting us to step beyond ourselves.

Rollie is an extraordinary friend, teacher, and role model; an extraordinary example of clarity, compassion, and grace; and is dearly beloved by all who have been fortunate enough to feel the tender warmth of his heart.  Not to mention that he is clearly bringing sexy back to Christianity—and God knows that is a good thing!

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with Brother David Steindl-Rast and Rollie Stanich

It’s that time of year again—the leaves have changed, the birds have made their mass exodus toward the equator, and we’ve begun arming ourselves to the teeth with rock salt and ice scrapers.  As the curtain of another year begins to draw to a close, we prepare our hearts and minds for the emotional circus of the holiday season—often on a purely unconscious level, like a mammal instinctively preparing for hibernation—and we wait for the warmth and anxiety of the holidays to come over us like an old familiar blanket.

Thanksgiving is a fascinating holiday, cutting across many different generations and many different worldviews. There is a strong tribal element to Thanksgiving, directly descending from ancient harvest festivals where we sacrifice an animal to Mother Nature in appreciation for the year’s crops, and as a way to bribe her for another bountiful year (today we know that sacrifice as dinner.)  The religious undertones in Thanksgiving are fairly obvious, traditionally understood as a religious celebration to offer thanks and praise to God.  And yet despite these religious origins, Thanksgiving is primarily recognized today as a secular holiday, when modern men and women of all faiths (or no faith) can find their way home and spend quality time together arguing about trivial things.  Even the postmodernists can find something to love in Thanksgiving, when they aren’t too busy deconstructing the myth of Columbus, harping about the absence of tofurkey at this year’s feast, or making us feel guilty about the decimation of Native American culture.

How extraordinary that the unifying force of gratitude can bring all of us to the same dinner table!  Extraordinary, but not surprising.  After all, gratitude does not fall under the purview of any particular religion, philosophy, or culture, but rather infuses and informs all of these.  Gratitude is core to the human condition itself. It is the substrate of all our most meaningful relationships—with our family and friends, with ourselves, and with God.

As you look at the image above, reflect on the ancient symbolism of the cornucopia, which wonderfully captures the essence of gratitude.  We feel grateful for the feast spilling out from the harvest cone, and offer our thanks to the source of all sustenance and nourishment.  Our gratitude is the immediate and effortless response to the radical abundance offered to us at every moment, an abundance that surrounds us even during our darkest times, whether we can see it or not. But not only do we express our gratefulness for abundance—as we offer our devout appreciation, we can also feel “great-fullness” as abundance.  That is, in the act of offering gratitude we actually become the source of all abundance, feeling the infinite love pouring through our hearts like sweet syrup, an inexhaustible warmth that floods the galaxies swirling behind our eyelids.

Although Thanksgiving is a primarily American and Canadian holiday, the act of expressing gratitude belongs to no culture alone.  Acknowledging that a significant portion of the Integral Life audience lives outside North America, we nonetheless wanted to share the spirit of this holiday with you all, so that together we can all sit at the same table, break bread, and offer our most sincere thanks for the many blessings of our lives.

Take a Moment: Light a Candle! From time immemorial, people have lit candles in sacred places as expressions of devotion and gratitude. Why should cyberspace be any less sacred? Help make the internet a little more holy by visiting www.gratefulness.org. Sit in silence for a minute or two, feeling your breath while gently reflecting on the many blessings of life. Form a prayer in the center of your heart, surrounding yourself and everyone you love with the warmth of your gratitude. Then use the website to light your own virtual candle in the dark, releasing your prayer to the rest of the world. Take a deep breath, exhale, and enjoy your day!

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with Alex Grey, Marc Gafni, and Diane Musho Hamilton

How do our unique perspectives of the world color our relationship with beauty, creativity, and transcendence?

Alex Grey has become one of our most iconic and immediately-recognizable artists, and somewhat of a poster-boy for a genuinely integral approach to art, life, and spirituality.  Many of his prolific works have been featured and reproduced all over the world, ranging from magazine covers, party flyers, and blotter acid to high-profile album covers for Tool, David Byrne, the Beastie Boys, Nirvana, and Michael Hedge.

In this discussion, Alex shares his own personal path to Unique Self, describing how his creative process is directly informed by an intimate realization of radical and unqualifiable emptiness, combined with his unique and irreducible perspective of the world.  Alex talks about how his passion to create springs from an almost Bodhisattva-like yearning to serve, and how this devotion to service is one of the defining characteristics in the emergence of Unique Self.

Only by cultivating a path for ourselves that honors the paradoxical simultaneity of emptiness and perspective can we discover the real potential of our artistic gifts.  In Alex’s case, this path has allowed him to fully and fluently express a deeply personal vision of the universal—illuminating a spiritual anatomy that is common to all of us, but uniquely recognized and rendered through Alex’s distinct perspective.

Whether you are an artist trying to carve out your own creative path, or just a casual admirer of beauty in its many effulgent forms, you will not want to miss this intimate and insightful discussion!

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by Vanessa Fisher

The history of women’s beauty is written in bodily gestures that express both the constraints of their culture as well as the unfolding desire of their interiority. Embracing the power of beauty has always been problematic for feminism and for good reason. We have yet to create a language for our own yearning or find an expression for our own radiance that could also embrace other women rather than attempt to outshine them. We have yet to acknowledge that our expression of beauty itself has an evolution that continually expands our embodiment through a process of reclaiming gestures. This article offers an AQAL analysis of the current views that dominate feminist discourse on women’s beauty. It is also a personal story of my own ongoing journey as a young woman trying to reclaim my beauty, for the benefit of all beings.

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Is Bill Maher too smart for God?  Or not smart enough?  Listen and find out!

Duration: 1 hr 17 min

Bill Maher, host of the HBO talk show Real Time With Bill Maher, often asks his guests: “How can someone as smart as yourself actually believe in this religious stuff?”  It’s fair question, one that a great many people ask themselves every day, and forms the premise of Maher’s recent comedy/documentary Religulous.

To many, religion seems quaint, anachronistic, even childish in today’s modern and post-modern world.  To others, it is downright dangerous—particularly when religious fundamentalism begins to infect our modern-day political, academic, and scientific systems.  Or worse, when it gains access to advanced technologies and devastating weaponry.

But there is something crucial missing from Bill Maher’s criticism of religion, which would prompt us to ask him, “How can someone as smart as yourself not realize that there is so much more to religion than just fairy tales?  If we take a truly intelligent look at religion, wouldn’t we find something we can salvage from these great and enduring traditions?”

Here’s the irony: by virtue of their critiques against religious fundamentalism, Maher and other rational atheists are demonstrating capacities that can actually be more spiritual than the people and beliefs they are criticizing, in the sense that their rational world-views are more developed than the mythic world-views held by the fundamentalists.  And it is true that we need to keep a cautious eye on these mythic, absolutistic, “us vs. them” expressions of religion, which have indeed been (and continue to be) some of the greatest sources of pain and suffering in history—and to this end, Religulous and other contemporary atheists are playing an important role in the overall cultural conversation.

But when we face religious fundamentalism with scientific fundamentalism and dismiss religion altogether, we are also dismissing history’s greatest source of liberation, compassion, and transcendence—the powerfully transformative practices and interpretations of spiritual reality that form the esoteric core of all the world’s religious traditions, east and west.

Listen as Ken and David discuss what Bill Maher (and the rest of the “New Atheist” crowd) are missing in this otherwise provocative and entertaining film.

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Also, be sure to check out InformationIsBeautiful’s gorgeous info-graphic separating 2012 facts from fiction. Link.

Is the Future Spinning Out of Control?

“Is everything spinning out of control?” asked an Associated Press article in Summer 2008. Between rising flood waters in the Midwest, drowning polar bears in the far North, skyrocketing gas prices, plummeting home values, and endless wars on multiple fronts, the future does not seem to be living up to its promise—a promise envisioned since the détente of the Cold War and the proclamation of George H.W. Bush’s “New World Order.” From an Integral altitude, what can we make of the future?

The Ever-Nearing Apocalypse

Each altitude sees the apocalypse differently: Magenta is awaiting the return of Quetzalcoatl and the completion of the “long cycle” of the ancient Mayan calender. Red is currently stocking ammunition and digging bunkers in Montana. Amber is eagerly anticipating the Rapture just before the arrival of the Four Horsemen. Orange prognosticates a very gloomy future after the total collapse of the global economy. While Green just hopes we make it to 2012 before we all boil alive in our own atmosphere.

Are we facing the inevitable end of everything? Or are we experiencing an entirely new set of global life conditions which—painful and chaotic as they are—will nonetheless lead to a more sane and integral future? Repent, the Beginning is near!!!

2012, the Aquarian Age, and the Nature of Evolution

From the Mayan prophecies of 2012 to the Aquarian Age, ever since the sixties many of us have felt that something big is about to happen in human consciousness—indeed, in human history—and that we are lucky enough to be a part of that monumental transformation. So what’s going on here? Is this simply the narcissistic fantasy of our time, or are we truly fortunate enough to be participating in the culmination of 15 billion years of evolution? As might be expected, the truth seems to be somewhere in the middle: no, we are not going to “go up in light” any day now—but the evolving universe has become conscious of itself, and it’s only through the precious human vehicle that this understanding is realized—that is, if we survive long enough to engage the glorious possibilities before us. As with any evolutionary step forward, the promise of the good to come is weighed against the new terrors hidden in this nascent power. Ken goes on to discuss his work-in-progress, The Many Faces of Terrorism, and how, with the advancement of pluralistic values on a global scale, and the implementation of worldwide one-person-one-vote electronic democracy, only 50% of the population may survive this brave new world….

“What I learn and feel, and what I artistically express all reflect an underlying spiritual quest. My work is concerned with the mysteries of life and the perennial questions that arise from such a pursuit. Art is a spiritual practice that casts aside the fallacies of dogma and tenet, expresses Goodness, Beauty and Truth and is never satisfied with anything substitute or counterfeit. I would describe myself as an “creatuitive artist’, that is, I combine creativity and intuition in my search for spiritual revelation….”

Written by Corey W. deVos

At the 2009 Integral Theory conference, Roger Walsh led a presentation titled The State of the Integral Enterprise, offering a critical appraisal of the “Integral movement:” where it is, where it’s going, and what kinds of obstacles stand in the way.  For those who have been following the emergence of Integral perspectives and worldviews for any time at all, Roger’s presentation served as an important reminder that we need to live every day of our lives with the fullest authenticity, passion, and purpose.

In the first installation of Roger and Ken’s discussion, Current Status, Roger gave a realistic summary of the condition of the Integral movement today.  In short, his observation is this: it is still coalescing, still trying to find enough traction to grow from a “cognitive minority” to a viable force in the academic and cultural mainstream.  Though we can already see signs of this occurring around us, it is a slow and organic process and cannot be hurried by any artificial means.

That said, there are certainly things you can do to help: learn the integral tools – like Integral Life Practice – that can help you live an extraordinary and whole life and that will help you take broader and more encompassing perspectives in every domain you touch.  Obviously this can be a sometimes painful path beset with its own breed of lions and tigers and bears (oh my!).  In this installation, titled Potential Traps, Roger outlines some of the afflictions common to Integral living—including complacency and stagnation in our growth, shadow games and ego posturing, developmental allergies and aversions, and the dangers of when our knowledge and conceptual understanding begins to outpace our wisdom, experience, and insight.

(On a personal note, I have been working with Ken Wilber, Integral Institute, and Integral Life for over six years, and have been a vigorous student of Integral theory and practice for more than twice as long.  As I was editing this dialogue and listening to Roger’s laundry list of possible pathologies, it didn’t take long for me to realize that I had fallen into almost every single trap at one point or another—many of which I continue to fall into today.  As such, Roger’s presentation offered a much-needed shot across the bow for my own growth, practice, and personal embodiment of the Integral vision—awakening me to many of my own missteps and misgivings, while provoking me to deepen my own practice and recommit myself to my work, my relationships, and my art.)

One of the extraordinary qualities of integral consciousness is the ability to simultaneously challenge yourself to be something greater than who you are, while loving yourself exactly as you are.  If we can muster the strength and compassion to be both completely honest with ourselves and kind to ourselves, not only can each of these traps eventually be overcome but they can be seen for what they actually are: stepping stones that can take us from our potential to our purpose, from our brokenness to our wholeness, from our fragile humanity to our unbreakable divinity.

The second part of his article, Key Ideas for a World at Risk, will be available next month.  Here Roger shifts his attention from helping us look at ourselves as a community to helping us engage with the world as people leading integral lives. He offers an interesting set of ideas (e.g., perspectival range) and practices (e.g., transforming motivation) to support each of us in responding to global crises. Stay tuned!

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When you look at someone like Bill Harris, who has been wildly successful at creating and marketing the Holosync product, you assume that he must have gathered a crack team of experts, promotion gurus, and product technologists and carefully mapped out a plan for success. But when we look into the story of what really happened, we find something entirely different. Not to give it all away, but Bill’s “success story” begins more modestly than you might expect, with little more than an early TM practice and a cassette tape that he initially thought was a complete scam.

In Part 2 of our Bill Harris profile, he further describes his unlikely journey,  that eventually led to Holosync. Bill reveals himself in a very personal way in his own relationship with failure, and how he was eventually able to shift his perspective and begin stepping more fully into his own life.

Finally, be sure to pay particular attention to the last segment, when he directly addresses the question “is it wrong to market spirituality?” Regardless of how you would answer this question yourself, you won’t want to miss Bill’s provocative thoughts!

Here Ken discusses two very different approaches to spiritual practice, both of which need to be recognized and honored in order to bring ourselves into the fullest possible relationship with ourselves, each other, and the world around us.

In the majority of the world’s mystical literature dealing with concepts of the divine, we almost always find two descriptions of God—or rather, one description and one non-description; or one set of qualities and one set of non-qualities. Buddhists describe the “Two Truths Doctrine,” differentiating between relative and ultimate truths—what many identify as the distinction between form and emptiness. Hinduism, meanwhile, labels these two approaches as Saguna Brahman (“The Absolute with qualities”) and Nirguna Brahman (“the Absolute without qualities”). In Judaic and Christian traditions this can be seen in distinctions between God and Godhead—the former referring to the living God we can see, feel, and characterize, and the latter referring to the ineffable, unknowable aspect of God that exists beyond all possible thoughts and concepts. Finally, the well-known Taoist verse probably offers the simplest way of approaching these two different realities, from the very first words in the Tao te Ching: “The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.”

As we continue to deepen our spiritual practices, we are able to notice both the Absolute perfection at the center of this and every moment, as well as the twisted, flawed, deeply imperfect manifestation of the entire relative world. Only by practicing “on both sides of the street” can we fully understand the difference between the relative and the Absolute, slowly dislodging us from our attachments to this or that in the manifest world. After all, sometimes Absolute perfection can only be seen through a dirty bathroom mirror, through the grease and grime of human perception and ambition.

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In this video, Bill offers us an intimate glimpse into his personal spiritual path. He traces the arc of his own awakening from his early roots in the Presbyterian church to an early encounter with TM (Transcendental Meditation) when he was 19, all the way to his current work with Genpo Roshi’s Big Mind process. We are sure that you will find Bill’s description of the various pains and pleasures of his own practice to be deeply edifying as you travel your own road to the Infinite….

“It’s a very exciting time in nursing,” says Barbara Dossey at the beginning of Part 1 of this dialogue. She’s right, of course—many people are unaware of the internal pressures that have been building within the healthcare system for years, often originating from a wide network of nurses who are passionately devoted to dramatically raising our standards of care. It is an often-cited (and often-overlooked) fact that nurses are responsible for nearly 80% of the healing in the healthcare system, and that some of our most radical developments in treatment have been pioneered by the full-hearted efforts of nurses and healers around the world….

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Jeff’s perspective on homosexuality and gay rights continues as he turns his attention to the hot topic of same-sex marriage and what gay people really want. Also included in this exceptional piece is Jeff’s review of Sacha Baron Cohen’s gay lifestyle film Bruno, his thoughts on how members of straight society relate to gay men and women differently, and finally his feelings about the lasting impact of the AIDS crisis and why gay people may be pioneering the “future of love”.

It has often been said that there is a central paradox in the role of religion throughout history: on the one hand, religion has been the single greatest cause of war and suffering. On the other, religion has been the single greatest source of redemption, salvation, and liberation for humanity. How can we possibly make sense of this double-edged dagger? How can we reconcile the very best qualities of religion with the very worst?

Father Thomas Keating, Rollie Stanich, and Ken Wilber offer their own insight as they discuss the “inside” and the “outside” of the Christian tradition, exploring the rich contemplative legacy that exists at the core of the world’s largest religion….

A provocative documentary, For the Bible Tells Me So attempts to reconcile homosexuality and biblical scripture while exploring whether Church-sanctioned anti-gay bias might be based entirely upon a misinterpretation of the Bible’s original text. Dan’s stated intention with this film is to offer healing, clarity and understanding to anyone caught in the cross-hairs of Christian scripture and their sexual identity. Join us as we explore this film’s perspective on gay rights, same sex relationships and the role of the Christian church in today’s world….

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The current cultural dust-up around same-sex marriage has certainly made gay rights a hot topic, but what Jeff shares about his own journey as a gay man—and the immense personal value he found in taking an Integral perspective on an issue as complex as this one—is extremely powerful. We think you will find that Jeff’s candor, humor, and depth of inquiry into the topic of homosexuality and gay rights to be an extremely moving and provocative assessment of the “future of love.”

A pièce de résistance in its own right, here Ken Wilber walks us through his integral process of art interpretation and takes an in-depth look at a famous painting by Van Gogh of a pair of worn shoes.

Whether you’re an artist or not, we invite you to listen in on the ways we can all bring a more comprehensive, integral, balanced approach to life as a human being. And balanced doesn’t mean boring—you can rock the boat all the more wildly, because you’re aware of all the things keeping you floating.

Be sure to check out Bryce’s Widom’s exclusive interview with Stuart Davis in which you can find insight into his creative process and some of his own personal struggles eking out a living as an artist.

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Our debut gallery features the work of Bryce Widom, an accomplished painter, designer, and illustrator as well as a beloved part of the Boulder/Denver integral community. His gallery is titled 1000 Views of God, and we are sure you will find it as breathtaking as we did….

Here Ken deepens his exploration into states of consciousness. He discusses some of the crucial distinctions between states and stages, most notably the fact that while stages of development are inclusive (each new stage building upon the last), states of consciousness are not—they are exclusive in the literal sense of the word, meaning you cannot be happy and sad, drunk and sober, or liberated and contracted at the same time. Furthermore, while we cannot skip stages of development (you must grow through stage 3 before you can hit stage 4), states of consciousness are much more fluid, and any state can be experienced at just about any time….

Here Ken Wilber offers one of his finest presentations on states of consciousness, bringing a great deal of clarity to one of the most important conceptual maps of our time. Many of us have long intuited that the world’s great spiritual traditions must share some common core—that is, despite the significant differences on the surface, every religion is an expression of some universal source, which is then interpreted through the cultural lens of a particular society at a particular point in history. And more importantly, we know that this isn’t a matter of belief, but of experience—this universal source can itself be tasted in a direct and immediate way….

The State of the Integral Enterprise is the headline article in the latest edition of JITP, based on Roger Walsh’s keynote address at the 2008 Integral Theory Conference. At the conference, Roger was asked to provide some reflective comments that would help the field see itself, especially its blind spots and shadows. Roger delivered in spades! Not only were his points and illustrative stories poignant, but he also gave a dynamic and entertaining delivery. (It turns out he spent some time as a stand-up comic. Who would have guessed?). He covers topics that will interest the entire Integral Life community, including how we can optimize the impact of integral ideas, fighting developmental complacency, and what kind of traps await us at each stage.

click here to download PDF

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How should you use integral philosophy to lead others? Walking on the map is when we confuse integral philosophy as the destination of our leadership efforts rather than as a toolkit to get to new places in our own lives and organizations. Cindy Wigglesworth and Robb Smith invite you to join them and a stellar group of experts at Integral Leadership in Action IV where this and many other real-world challenges of integrally-informed leadership will be explored….

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How useful would it be during any communication in your personal or professional life to know who you were really talking to? We know it’s a big claim, but if you play with the Better Relationships Part 2 exercise, we think you can learn to spot the perspective of the person you are engaging with and learn to communicate more skillfully with the people around you.

The name of this second discovery exercise is “Who Are You Talking To?” It is the next step in understanding the importance of being aware of your native perspective to your communication skills. The technique for translating the native perspectives of others was developed by Joanne Hunt and Laura Divine of Integral Coaching Canada, and was adapted for this exercise by Huy Lam and Robb Smith. It is based on the premise that there are four primary ways of relating to the world—inner experience, action, systems, and relationships—and everyone has one that they go to first. This exercise will teach you to correctly translate the perspective of the person you are interacting with and more skillfully communicate with them.