Kenwilber.com

BLOG: A (Very) Brief History of Ken Wilber

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 18:35:00 PST

A (Very) Brief History of Ken Wilber

In this short video, originally produced for the Ken Wilber Tribute earlier this month, we present some hard-cutting photographic evidence that once and for all dispels many of the rumors surrounding Ken Wilber's origin. Contrary to popular belief, he was not cultivated in a test tube or assembled in a top-secret cybernetics laboratory, nor did he arrive upon this world as a fully-formed bald ectomorph from the planet Uranus (though we cannot entirely rule out the Krypton hypothesis—Ken may or may not derive his powers from the light of our yellow sun, but has so far proven to be completely impervious to Kryptonite.) No, Ken's origins are quite ordinary indeed: he has a loving mother and father, he attended public school, he...

BLOG: The Coming Interspiritual Age: An Integral View (Plus Bonus Essay: Integral and Interspiritual by...

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 18:33:00 PST

The Coming Interspiritual Age: An Integral View

Kurt Johnson and Ken Wilber

In November 2012, Ken Wilber and Kurt Johnson sat down to discuss integral spirituality and interspirituality, a decade after Ken's substantial discussions with the founder of the modern interspiritual movement, Bro. Wayne Teasdale (author of The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World's Religions). Kurt is co-author of a new book, The Coming Interspiritual Age, which joins the vision of interspirituality with the integral paradigm. The book's foreword includes the views of over fifty major spiritual and world transformation leaders. After a ringing endorsement by The Parliament of...

BLOG: Kermit the Frog's Tribute to Ken Wilber

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 20:46:00 PST

One of the greatest highlights of the recent What Next conference was a very special 3-hour tribute to Ken Wilber on New Year's Eve, where many of us who have been so touched by Ken's work and friendship had the opportunity to express our love, admiration, and gratitude. Today we thought we would share one of our favorite moments with you all: Kermit the Frog's Tribute to Ken Wilber.

BLOG: NEW WRITING: Response to Critical Realism in Defense of Integral Theory

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 13:10:00 PST

The following are two long endnotes, and one excerpt, from my recently finished book, Sex, Karma, Creativity, which is volume 2 of the Kosmos Trilogy, whose first volume is Sex, Ecology, Spirituality. They were written, in part, in response to recent articles on Critical Realism and Integral Theory, and, while appreciating certain aspects of Critical Realism, come out strongly in favor of Integral Theory.

Response to Critical Realism in Defense of Integral Theory

BLOG: Integral City: A Guided Tour with Marilyn Hamilton and Ken Wilber

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 17:08:00 PDT

Today's cities are without a doubt the largest and most complex adaptive systems that evolution has ever produced, buzzing and bustling with millions of individual perspectives, psychologies, lifestyles, activities, and behaviors. For countless generations our cities have sheltered all of our inherited cultures, beliefs, traditions, and histories, sustained by a finely-tuned symphony of intermeshed systems—transit systems, legal systems, economic systems, political systems, energy grids, telecommunications networks, and so on.

It's hard to fully comprehend the extraordinary complexity and magnificence of today's globally-connected cities. This dialogue offers you the most comprehensive bird's-eye view of city living, city planning, and city governance that we've ever seen—a beautiful and sophisticated new vision of the...

BLOG: Evolution's Purpose: A Creation Story for Our Time with Steve McIntosh and Jeff Salzman

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 17:02:00 PDT

Steve McIntosh and Jeff Salzman discuss Steve's new book, Evolution’s Purpose: An Integral Interpretation of the Scientific Story of Our Origins—a powerful and exciting argument for the progressive nature of evolution in matter, life, culture and personal development. He demonstrates how these fundamental dimensions of life are called forward into more complex and intelligent forms by the gravitational pull of Goodness, Truth and Beauty. Ultimately Evolution’s Purpose reveals a radical spiritual teaching, and it succeeds not by relying on established religious lineages but by pointing out the profound creative forces that are demonstrably at work in our world and in our lives.

Evolution's Purpose: A Creation Story for Our Time

BLOG: INTEGRAL POST | Tord Gustavsen's Vision and Praxis: The Dialectics of Jazz Improvisation by Greg ...

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 16:58:00 PDT

Back in early July 2012 Greg Thomas attended the Montréal Jazz Festival, the largest such event in the world. Greg especially looked forward to meeting and hearing artists new to my ears. One such musician was the Norwegian pianist-composer-band leader Tord Gustavsen, 41. While his music certainly intrigued me, his intellectual background piqued Greg's interest too after having the conversation below. He wondered where Tord's depth of insight into himself and his music came from, because he very fluidly articulates a clear conception that we may well call Integral.

Tord Gustavsen's Vision and Praxis: The Dialectics of Jazz Improvisation

by Greg Thomas

BLOG: Integral Cinema Studio: A Comprehensive Guide to the Cinema Experience with Mark Allan Kaplan and...

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 16:55:00 PDT

For over a year now, Mark Allan Kaplan has been producing a groundbreaking monthly Integral Post series: the much-acclaimed Integral Cinema Studio. In this remarkable exploration, Mark walks us through all of the main elements of Integral theory—using some of our favorite movies to illustrate the basics of the Integral approach, while noting how each of these elements has shaped the cinema experience since the invention of film itself. Not only does this series offer a wealth of perspective and insight to film, filmmakers, and audiences alike, but it also brings more color, more sound, and more awesome explosions to Integral thought and practice! Listen as Mark and Ken Wilber take an in-depth look at one of Integral Life's longest-running series...

BLOG: ART GALLERY | Untamed by Michael Welch

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 16:52:00 PDT

We are very happy to feature a new Integral Life Art Gallery by Michael Welch.

Allowing the creative process to uncover questions regarding my own true nature and my relationship to the world has become a freeing experience. Through the recognition of my personal role as an artist, I have learned to trust in the varied and unpredictable ways my work manifests itself. Although my skills have evolved since childhood, my communion with form and color has remained consistent and beyond explanation.

Birds and the human figure have been appearing in my work of late. I find birds vulnerable, mysterious and beautiful; and, like people, they are varied in their shapes, sizes, color and personalities. It's our shared vulnerability that interests me. We are all dependent on circumstances that are beyond our control. While people...

BLOG: INTEGRAL POST | Keeping in Touch When We're Out of Touch by Robert Augustus Masters

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 16:48:00 PDT
Being close to our partner feels so good, so heartwarming and enlivening, that it’s easy to make a problem out of times when we don’t feel close to him or her. What we’re telling ourselves at these times we need to learn not to take so seriously — unless there’s physical or emotional abuse involved — for it is mostly just the voice of hurt or self-importance in reactive headgear. Our challenge, our ongoing labor of love, is to be as intimate as possible with whatever is occurring, including our and our partner’s stuckness, reactivity, or closed-off-ness. It is, of course, easier to spot the other’s stuckness and hold it accountable for ours. Why this is not funnier simply highlights the stickiness of our stuckness.

BLOG: INTEGRAL POST | What Olympians Show Us About Zen and Leadership by Ginny Whitelaw

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 16:44:00 PDT
"Follow your dreams." "Believe in yourself." "Never give up." Such were the themes of stories we heard again and again from the great Olympians who thrilled us through the first half of August. Most of us love that message—it resonates with our optimism and models strong personal leadership. Some of us are skeptical, knowing it’s much easier said than done. Judging from the numbers of Olympic spectators versus participants, on the whole, we’d rather watch others put themselves on the line than do it ourselves. Brain research tells us that watching others perform sports gives us about 20% of the neural thrill of victory (or agony of defeat) as if we were doing it ourselves.

What Olympians Show Us About Zen and...

BLOG: The Zen Leader with Ginny Whitelaw and Ken Wilber

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 16:44:00 PDT
Ginny Whitelaw talks to Ken Wilber about her new book, The Zen Leader, which offers an exceptionally simple guide to help maximize your health, happiness, and productivity. What's remarkable about The Zen Leader is that it doesn't just present useful concepts to help you think about leadership in a new way, but offers practical ways to continuously check in with your own body—right here and right now—to gauge whatever resistance and self-contraction you may be experiencing, and follows with simple practices to help you sustain a more open and creative state of mind.

The Zen Leader

Ginny Whitelaw and Ken Wilber

BLOG: Buddha Standard Time with Lama Surya Das and Ken Wilber

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 16:40:00 PDT
Most of us stay obsessively stuck in the past or future, running our mental trains backward and forward on that track every minute of the day. We have a limited view of ourselves and our capacities. And nothing will change unless we stop the train and get off. Emaho! (That's Tibetan for "Hallelujah!") We can stop the train. Buddhist wisdom teaches that the minutes and hours of our days do not merely march from future to present to past—looming, engulfing us, passing us by forever. Rather, each moment is intersected by a realm of infinite spaciousness and timelessness, known in Tibetan as shicha, the Eternal Now. This is the precious awakened dimension that I call Buddha Standard Time, and it is available to us every instant. –Lama Surya Das

BLOG: INTEGRAL POST | Turtles Up and Turtles Down: Depth and Altitude in the Planet of Cities by Marily...

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 16:38:00 PDT
More than 50% of the world’s population now lives in cities. If for no other reason than to contemplate a statistical tipping point of the evolution of the human species shifting from rural-centred to urban-centred, we should consider what an integral perspective can bring to considering some implications of a planet of cities.

Turtles Up and Turtles Down: Depth and Altitude in the Planet of Cities

by Marilyn Hamilton

BLOG: Patterns of Being: Introducing the Narrative Enneagram Tradition with Helen Palmer

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 16:37:00 PDT
Watch as Helen Palmer sets the context for the nine-hour Patterns of Being video collection that we will be releasing early next week, which offers an in-depth exploration of the intersection between the Narrative Enneagram Tradition and Integral thought and practice. She introduces the nine ancient "patterns of being" documented in the 4th century in various monastic communities, which have since evolved into the Enneagram system that we know today.

Patterns of Being: Introducing the Narrative Enneagram Tradition

Helen Palmer

BLOG: INTEGRAL POST | Yes, Virginia, Consciousness DOES Go All the Way Down! by Michael Zimmerman

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 16:31:00 PDT
Although the apparent confirmation of the Higgs Boson, the so-called God particle, has been attracting attention recently, the most vexing problem in science and philosophy remains the mind-body problem: What relation is there between material brain states and conscious, first-person experience? In the past few years, as we shall see in a moment, some neurosciences have now arrived at an answer that was anticipated by Ken Wilber’s version of integral theory. According to Wilber, meager versions of interiority—the antecedents of consciousness—are found at the atomic level, as Alfred North Whitehead suggested in the early 20th century.

Yes, Virginia, Consciousness DOES Go All the Way Down!

Part 1: Integral Thinking in Cutting-Edge...

BLOG: THE DAILY EVOLVER | On the Risks of Cultural Devolution with Jeff Salzman

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 16:28:00 PDT
Jeff received a stimulating comment from a regular reader who wrote, “We don’t talk enough about the ‘one step back’ that often precedes the ‘two forward’”. He writes, “Germany’s Third Reich was a nation-state’s ‘one step back,’ and illustrates the suffering and calamity that comes from lack of vigilance and courage-in-action, but also the pain inherent in progress.” There’s a lot in that statement, and Jeff attempts to address it in the following video. His basic thesis is that we probably worry more than we need to about the “one step back” that cultures sometimes take....

On the Risks of Cultural Devolution

Jeff Salzman

BLOG: INTEGRAL POST | The Case for Certainty by Andrew Cohen

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 16:26:00 PDT
People with deep spiritual conviction—from religious fundamentalists to high Himalayan mystics—possess the greatest existential gift of all: certainty. But these days, it’s not a gift that we find it easy to appreciate. And for good reason. For the last 60 years or so, ever since the unthinkable devastation of the two great conflagrations of the twentieth century (World War I and World War II) certainty has been seen by sophisticated intellectuals as being inherently dangerous and a sign of blatant ignorance. Communists were certain, as were Hitler’s fascists.

The Case for Certainty

by Andrew Cohen

BLOG: INTEGRAL POST | A Dialogue with Living Jazz Great Wayne Shorter by Greg Thomas

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 16:25:00 PDT
In April 2012 Greg Thomas interviewed Mr. Shorter for a feature story for publication in the Daily News. He was to about to perform at Jazz at Lincoln Center with his quartet, and soon thereafter at the United Nations for the first International Jazz Day, launched by his friend, musical mate, and fellow Buddhist Herbie Hancock. As usual in instances like this, where a master musician’s life and career, past and current, has to be whittled down to less than 1,000 words for a print newspaper piece, there was great material that ended up on the cutting room floor.

A Dialogue with Living Jazz Great Wayne Shorter

by Greg Thomas

BLOG: ART GALLERY | Meditation Garden by Diana Calvario

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 16:19:00 PDT
We are very happy to feature a new Integral Life Art Gallery by Diana Calvario.

I started feeling the urge to use digital art as a way of expressing my thoughts and feelings in a period of my life when I discovered the integral philosophy and spiritual teachers like Ken Wilber, Andrew Cohen, Don Beck, and Eckhart Tolle. My first contact to the integral world was made via Integral Naked some 4 years ago where I had the chance to meet the most amazing people and where I definitely started not to feel alone with my thoughts anymore and I had one AHA experience after the other. My art reflects a lot of this period of my life and its main purpose is to provoke thinking and meditation. –Diana Calvario

Meditation Garden

by Diana Calvario

BLOG: Chrysallis: An Integral Approach to Business with Robb Smith and John Montgomery

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 16:19:00 PDT
Chrysallis co-founders John Montgomery and Robb Smith discuss how they architected Chrysallis’s corporate structure from the ground up as a vehicle for human development.

Written by Robb Smith

Chrysallis is a company I co-founded 18 months ago to support healthy, happy and productive lives by using digital networks to support the changes and goals people want to achieve. Though we’re not yet launched, Integral Life’s David Riordan recently sat down with co-founder John Montgomery and me to discuss how we architected Chrysallis’s corporate structure from the ground up as a vehicle for human development.

The background of the discussion are four astounding facts that confront us in this early part of the 21st century:

First, the human family is almost fully interconnected for the...

BLOG: INTEGRAL POST | Multinaturalism and the End of Old Time Environmentalism by Michael Zimmerman

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 16:11:00 PDT
In a nutshell, multinaturalism claims that there are many different natures, perhaps as many as there are different cultures. We are naïve, then, if we think—as I once did—that there is One True Nature to which everyone is referring when speaking of nature. Multinaturalists maintain that there is no universally agreed upon concept of nature; instead, specific ideas, histories, values, and beliefs are always helping to construct what shows up as and counts for “nature” in any particular culture.

Multinaturalism and the End of Old Time Environmentalism

by Michael Zimmerman

BLOG: INTEGRAL POST | The Three Facets of Embodiment by Rob McNamara

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 16:11:00 PDT
Recently I spent an afternoon with Ken Wilber down in Denver to discuss the important issue of embodiment. Ken and I first met over a decade ago and our early connections circled around the rich and often misunderstood discipline of strength training. You could say embodiment is, and has been, a central concern for both of us. As we settled into conversation at his loft, we kicked around some of the major issues: why embodiment is essential for all of us and how it is critical for many to grow into what I am calling mature integral consciousness. Here are a few dimensions of our conversation that I would love to share with you.

The Three Facets of Embodiment

by Rob McNamara

BLOG: INTEGRAL POST | The Zen Leader and the Art of "And" by Ginny Whitelaw

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 16:09:00 PDT
A famous Zen koan presents the case of two monks rolling up a blind—imagine it: someone on each side, rolling, rolling. The Zen teacher in the case, Hogen, comments, “One gain, one loss.” In our ordinary way of looking at things, this is an apt description of paradox: most decisions present more than one right possibility, and to decide for one thing is to decide against others. For example, do we focus on short term or long term in running our business? An extraordinary push to make this quarter’s numbers may bring us short term gain, but we’re almost certainly sacrificing long term sustainability. Do we decide in favor of work or family when a crucial business meeting collides with the school play? One gains, one loses. The student of Zen further penetrates this koan to realize, beyond the dualistic challenges of everyday life...

BLOG: The Integral Guide to Healthy Living with Roger Walsh and Ken Wilber

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 16:04:00 PDT
Roger Walsh and Ken Wilber share a detailed exploration of Integral health and wellness. Together they outline a comprehensive guide to healthy living, offering some incredibly simple and practical ways to help increase your overall health, happiness, and vitality.

"One of the things that we want to do is give a sense about just what the ingredients are in our makeup that can get sick—and therefore get well. Integral theory introduces a radically new notion, a concept whose term was first introduced by Arthur Koestler, and the term is 'holon'. And what we find is that the universe is not rally composed of things or events or processes or systems—it's composed of holons, a whole that is part of another whole. And there is fundamentally nothing in the universe that is not a holon. So classically we have things like:...

BLOG: From ObamaCare to Integral Care with Simon Senzon and Ken Wilber

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 16:03:00 PDT
In this dialogue, Simon Senzon talks to Ken Wilber about the five keys needed to fully unlock the potential of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. "ObamaCare"), ushering in a new set of Integral principles and perspectives that can truly revolutionize the healthcare industry. Listen as Simon and Ken discuss each of these five keys in detail, revealing a clear path from a broken healthcare system to a genuine Integral system based on compassion, efficiency, and ever-increasing wholeness.

From ObamaCare to Integral Care

Simon Senzon and Ken Wilber

BLOG: INTEGRAL POST | Bringing Sex Out of the Closet by Robert Augustus Masters

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 16:00:00 PDT
Sex is arguably still in the closet.

Yes, it’s wearing a lot less and showing a lot more than was the case forty or fifty years ago, but it’s still not truly out in the open, except in mostly superficial ways. Its ubiquitous exposure, highlighting, and pornification simply camouflage it. However brazenly explicit sex now is, it nonetheless remains largely hidden, its depths mostly untouched, its heartland still largely unknown, obscured by the tasks to which we commonly assign it, especially that of making us feel better.

Just as getting openly and passionately angry does not necessarily bring us any closer to truly knowing our anger, being frequently expressive of and/or pervaded by things sexual does not necessarily bring us any closer to truly knowing—or being intimate with—our sexuality.

BLOG: Sex, Ethics, Spirituality with Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 15:56:00 PDT
What should the relationship be between sex, ethics, and God? How can we move beyond our cultural influences and attitudes about sex? Why does it seem so difficult for spiritual leaders to demonstrate any sort of example or leadership? And we're not just talking about the Catholic Church here—this has as much to do with many of today's “leading edge” thinkers and practitioners of the spiritual life, including many of the most highly respected and coolest spiritual teachers around. Listen as the Guru and Pandit help us discover some much-needed sanity!

Sex, Ethics, Spirituality

Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber

BLOG: ART GALLERY | Secret Domain of the Forest Yogini by Jennifer Baird

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 15:52:00 PDT
We are very happy to feature a new Integral Life Art Gallery by Jennifer Baird.

I have painted all my life. Its the way I best express my feelings for the numinous. Over the past 30 years I have been living a very simple life in the West Indies and have produced a large body of work, influenced by many cultures, mythologies, philosophies and metaphysical ideas which become woven as a continuum in my work. But most important are the direct experiences and insights which arise from living primitively and alone in wild and completely natural surroundings, spending many hours in meditation and spiritual practice—I have been a vajrayana buddhist practitioner since the early seventies, and although that is still my main spiritual practice—I'm aligned one pointedly with the world movement into a higher stage of evolution. One of the...

BLOG: INTEGRAL POST | Gallup Poll: "In U.S., 46% Hold Creationist View of Human Origins" by M...

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 15:46:00 PDT
If half the American population is composed of people who believe that God created the world 10,000 years ago, how can climate scientists and activists persuade people to pay attention to human-caused climate change, given that such change is projected on the basis of complex scientific models? The poll raises questions for people interested in Integral Theory as well. Before turning to those, let’s review some of the poll’s findings.

Gallup Poll: "In U.S., 46% Hold Creationist View of Human Origins"

BLOG: What Is the Integral Movement?

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 15:45:00 PDT
In this promotional video, Corey deVos offers a brief overview of a new cultural, artistic, and philosophical movement that is currently taking shape all across the planet. Features dozens of breathtaking images from the Integral Life Art Gallery, as well as music by our own Stuart Davis.

Something amazing is happening right now.

All around the world, a new culture is beginning to emerge.

It's a culture of people like you—people who are bringing more beauty into the world, more love to our human family, and more wholeness to lives. People who understand that we are all still evolving, and that growth and self-discovery is a life-long journey.

It's a culture of people who are creating an entirely new vision of who we are and where we are going—a positive, inspiring...

BLOG: From the Big Bang to the Big Three

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 15:41:00 PDT

In this installation of the Loft Series Ken Wilber takes us on a blistering guided tour through the evolution of the universe, describing how each of the "three faces of Spirit" has evolved from the Big Bang to this present moment.

There's a lot of talk and a lot of interest in evolutionary spirituality—and there's a fair number of different approaches, different types, and so on. But one of the fundamental things that we need to remember before we start talking about it is that Spirit itself can be looked at through 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-person perspectives. And so an evolutionary spirituality needs to be looked at through all three of those perspectives. And you're going to get a very different view every time you do it!

The point, though, is that you want to include...

BLOG: A Brief History of Integral

kenwilber.com@gmail.com — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 13:59:00 PDT
In this free 20-minute clip, Ken Wilber chronicles the emergence of integral consciousness and culture in recent decades. Ken describes this emergence as the latest in a historic series of transformations stretching all the way back to the birth of humanity, bringing humanity through several distinct stages of consciousness—namely archaic, magic, mythic, rational, pluralistic, and integral stages. These major transformations have successively redefined our understanding of the human condition each and every step of the way. bringing more consciousness, more complexity, and more compassion to just about every dimension of human knowledge and activity. And this one is no different....

http://integrallife.com/video/brief-history-integral