As Albert Einstein famously said, “science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind”. The same can be said for the imbalance we sometimes see between the Integral Mind and and the Integral Heart.
The Integral mind differentiates, carefully separating reality into its most fundamental structures, factors, and patterns that help us better understand the staggering complexity we are surrounded by. But without the Integral Heart, this understanding can easily become cold, distant, and brittle — and if we allow ourselves to identify with the products of mind, it more often than not ends up creating more division between us, because no two people will ever enact this complexity in the exact same way.
The Integral Heart integrates, bridging the gaps between perspectives by pulling all of the differentiated pieces back together into a coherent whole, while also preventing us from succumbing to the grasping tendencies of mind that often cause us to maybe take ourselves just a little too seriously and dismiss each other’s points of view. Without an equally Integral Mind, this heartfelt wholeness we feel can easily become directionless and undiscerning, resulting in unwise displays of sentimentality, inaction, and idiot compassion.
And of course, while we want to consciously work to keep our heart and mind integrated, they are also are in many ways inseparable. The Integral Heart is the natural emanation of an awakened mind, and is given its shape by the many natural intelligences we possess — our cognitive intelligence, emotional intelligence, our interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence, our moral and ethical intelligence, etc. All these multiple intelligences intersect in the innermost core of the Integral Heart, and each offers a unique vehicle that allows us to express our heart in the world, and expand that heart to include the vast multitudes of the Kosmos, however we conceive of it.
The Integral space is inherently a multi-perspectival space — meaning a place where we can exchange perspectives freely, and then do our best to fold these perspectives together so that we can walk away with a deeper and hopefully more comprehensive understanding of a given topic. When our minds and hearts are integrated together, we naturally try not to be hostile to each other’s views or insulting to each other personally, as we can recognize that there is a very good change that each of these perspectives has something valuable to be included, something that the rest of us are missing — and also some parts that may need rethinking. Which is why we try to engage with each other in good faith, with both open minds and open hearts.
The goal of an integralist is not to “be right”, but rather to “get it right” through an ongoing process of examination in all four quadrants, constantly pulling in new data and new perspectives as they presents themselves. This requires both a rigorous Integral Mind that very much wants to get it right, as well as a brave and curious Integral Heart that isn’t afraid to admit when we might be getting it wrong.
So this discussion is an invitation to continue opening your own most Integral heart, and allow it to infuse and inform all of our actions and interactions together — to lead our lives with both wisdom and compassion, with both discernment and tenderness, with both insight and humility — so that we may use our integral minds and hearts to recognize, appreciate, and incorporate the partial truths that each of us are trying to bring to each other.