Everyone Is Right

In this classic dialogue — so classic, in fact, it was the very first dialogue we ever published! — Stuart Davis discusses his music and creative process in intimate detail and offers an intimate performance of 8 of his songs, including a incredibly touching version of “Swim”, based on the death of Treya Killam Wilber.

We live in an infinitely creative universe — and with every passing moment we have the option to actively and consciously participate with that creativity. We can either follow the familiar rhythms of our own habituations and comforts, or we can make a different choice altogether — we can do something new, something unpredictable, something that allows this creative novelty to work through our own nervous system and spill new forms of beauty into the rest of the world. Because we are all artists at the end of the day. We are constantly creating new realities and conjuring new possibilities, both for ourselves and for the rest of the world. Every decision we make is a creative act, whether we are aware of it or not. Sometimes we live our art in unconscious ways, following a path of least resistance as far as we think it will take us. But we are also invited to bring more embodied awareness to our creative expression — harnessing the untamed sounds, colors, and energies of nature and willing them to bend in the service of beauty, meaning, purpose, and connection. This is what Ryan and I explore in this special episode of Inhabit — how to more fully align ourselves with our own deepest source of beauty, inspiration, and creative emergence. Watch as we discuss: - The creative confluence that exists between beauty, evolution, and spirit, - The importance of a 2nd-person perspective to your creative process, - How the neoliberal commodification of art influences and/or limits our own creative expression, - How the integral mindset allows us to increase our enjoyment and enactment of art, - How our immersion in entertainment culture can make us overly critical of art, - The importance of beauty and aesthetics for the healing process, - How work with our own creative blocks and ruts

Habituation is the enemy of growth. It is rare for any circumstance to force us completely out of our accumulated habits, patterns, and comfort zones — which is exactly what is happening right now, as people all over the globe are having to drastically alter their lifestyles and livelihood in response to the corona pandemic. The good news is, when this happens and our normal day-to-day inertias are interrupted, it’s also an opportunity to make new choices: to recognize the patterns that haven’t been working for you, and to begin cultivating new patterns that work better, that take you farther, that bring you greater resilience, deeper compassion, and more skillful responsiveness. In times of extreme fragility such as these, it becomes all the more important to find new ways to practice our own anti-fragility. In this episode of Inhabit we are joined by special guest Keith Martin Smith, an acclaimed author, teacher, and dear friend to the show, in order to explore key practices and postures to help us maintain our physical, mental, and spiritual health while enduring the painful realities that all of us are so immersed in right now.

Robb Smith and Corey deVos discuss what's really going on deep in the heart of the world system as we get ready for The Transformation Age.

Jeff Salzman takes a look at the Coronavirus pandemic, humanity’s response to it, and how the integral lens helps us see more clearly the myriad forces and opportunities rising out of this crisis — which increases our wisdom, compassion, and resilience while dealing with it.

“I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain … In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar.” —Richard P. Feyman “Let go of certainty. The opposite isn't uncertainty. It's openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow.” —Tony Schwartz “We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!” —Douglas Adams Human beings abhor uncertainty. Ego and civilization are both built upon the illusion of certainty, cushioned by pleasure and comfort and designed to reduce uncertainty wherever possible. We try to rationalize uncertainty, placing ambiguity into discrete mental categories like “worst case scenarios”. Our society has become so addicted to predictability that, when predictably unpredictable events shake the foundations of our reality, we suddenly feel like we no longer have any place to stand. And when that happens, our ego’s first reaction is usually something like panic, fear, and self-preservation. Sound familiar? Have you had any trouble finding toilet paper recently? But there is another way to manage uncertainty — to surrender to it, to fully inhabit it, to embrace ambiguity and discover the incredible source of wisdom, curiosity, and anti-fragility that can only be found in the heart of the unknown. Because when the ground opens beneath our feet, there’s an opportunity to make contact with a far deeper and more enduring ground — the Ground of All Being, the unmovable mountain at the very center of you. Watch as Ryan and Corey invite us to deepen our practice in the face of uncertainty, finding strategies in all four quadrants to help us better acclimate ourselves to the massive pressures, social responsibilities, and societal realignments that are coming to the surface as we plunge into the opening act of the Transformation Age.

All politics are personal. But does that mean we need to take it so personally? In this episode of Inhabit, Ryan and I explore ways to bring more embodied awareness and skillful discernment to our political lives, overcoming the corrosive and often paralyzing effects that both our cynicism and our idealism can have upon our political decisions and our willingness to engage our most fundamental civic responsibilities. Watch as Ryan and I discuss: - How to remain an idealist when the world constantly refuses to live up to our ideals. - What happens when our mechanisms of enfoldment completely break down, both in our governing systems and in our media platforms. - How lack of enfoldment leads to mistrust, misinformation, false equivalence, epistemic collapse, and aperspectival madness. - How to relate to postmodern media platforms where contradictory truths are no longer enfolded with each other, but instead slide frictionlessly across one other. - How to develop a more anti-fragile sensibility that can begin reducing fragility in the world. - How the left has created a culture of fragility, and the right a culture of resilience — and why both are anti-growth. - Why Trump, and not Hillary, was seen as the transformation candidate in 2016. - Why we need another genuine transformation candidate for 2020 — and who we think that is. Join us in this exceptionally rich and hopeful exploration of our inner political landscapes!

Jeff Salzman talks to Bence Ganti, the driving force behind the upcoming Integral European Conference, a major six-day event for the Integral community which will commence on May 26th at the Azur Resort at Lake Balaton in Hungary. This fourth biennial conference will be the biggest and most comprehensive yet, with over 700 participants from 50 countries. Titled Global Integral Awakens, the conference will offer 250 programs on a wide range of integral issues, from contemporary politics to organizational development to art, culture and spirituality, in a potent goulash of presentations, workshops and experiential processes. And there’s goulash night too, the Hungarian specialty cooked in cauldrons over an open fire … then trance dance … then a firewalk! To extend your integral immersion, consider the pre-conference training on human development with Dr. Robert Kegan, as well as a post-conference 3-day sightseeing tour by bus. Click here to find out more about the Integral European Conference: https://integraleuropeanconference.com/

Without wisdom, knowledge becomes dangerous. This is as true for integral knowledge as it is any other. When our knowledge so far outpaces our wisdom, we can fall in all sorts of traps — including know-it-all arrogance, spiritual bypassing, self-aggrandizing mysticism, bad interpersonal hygiene, and possibly even diabetes and tooth decay. This can be a challenge for all communities, including the integral community. Especially when we are living at a time when information is so overabundant. We are drowning in information, and most of it is bad and broken information, and it takes a fair amount of wisdom just to be able to tell the good from the bad. Which is why Ryan and I wanted to do this special episode of Inhabit — to take a fuller look at what exactly “integral wisdom” means, and what sorts of wisdoms tend to naturally fall out of the integral map itself — quadrant wisdom, stage wisdom, shadow wisdom, type wisdom, polarity wisdom, etc. — all of which help us to enact that integral map in increasingly skilllful, friendly, and effective ways. Watch as we explore a number of practices and perspectives to help you bring your own wisdoms to the surface, allowing you to move through the world with more skill, compassion, and humility.

In this free discussion, Ryan and Corey offer some simple practices and perspectives to help keep us grounded and engaged during this transition not only into a new year, but into a whole new decade, with a whole new set of possibilities, challenges, and life conditions emerging all around us. Whenever our environment changes around us, even something as simple as the calendar moving into a new year, it’s an opportunity to also do some work to change our interiors. We tend to move naturally into a more reflective space, reviewing the previous year and imagining the one to come, cycle through this process of making an entire year’s worth of accumulated subjects into objects — all of our decisions, all of our successes, all of our regrets, etc. It’s a chance to take inventory of our own lives — where we’ve been, where we’re at, and where we would like to go next. Just because the world around us seems to be in more turmoil than ever before, doesn’t mean our inner lives need to feel that way too. And as the world continues to become more and more chaotic, conversations like these invite you to discover the unmovable subject within yourself, so that you can cultivate the resilience, equanimity, and stamina required to bring your gifts more fully into the world. Because now more than ever, the world needs you. Something new is trying to emerge. And it can only emerge through you.