Everyone Is Right

How do we better manage the inherent fractures and fragmentations of the digital world while bringing more embodied wisdom and compassion to our online interactions? One of the central dilemmas facing the integral generation is the fact that the integral project is largely taking place via the internet, using platforms like Facebook that are ill suited to healthy integral discourse — a sprawling flatland where misinformation spreads like wildfire, where the loudest voices dominate the discussion, and where narrow views receive more attention than nuanced arguments. Platforms like these are designed from the top down to provoke strong emotional reactions among its users, governed more by extractive social engineering algorithms than by the natural nexus-agency of the communities that convene there. It’s no wonder that we are seeing study after study about the deleterious effects social media is having upon our culture, our lives, and our own sense of happiness and belonging. Which is why Ryan and Corey wanted to take a closer look at this issue, and try to provide some fairly simple perspectives and practices that might help you inhabit and engage your digital life with more skillful authenticity, resilience, and kindness. Watch as they speak to the challenges many people experience around both managing and participating in today’s online communities, and how to overcome the seductive pull toward unhealthy polarization and disembodied reactions.

Need help shifting gears from mental map-making to actually inhabiting the spiritual territory? Watch as Ryan Oelke and Corey deVos explore what it means to truly inhabit and integrate our contemplative practice and our moment-to-moment experience of life. Perhaps you’ve experienced this for yourself — you are sitting on a meditation cushion, eyes closed, and you ask yourself, “am I meditating right now? Or am I only thinking about meditation?” This conversation helps bring bit more discernment around questions like these, as Ryan leads us in a practice to help us to shift from a predominantly mental or imaginal enactment of spirituality to an authentically lived spirituality that can respond to the various pains and pressures of existence with greater presence, empathy, and skillful action. Corey also shares how his daughter’s medical journey helped to fundamentally transform his own spiritual life, stripping away so many of the ornaments and embellishments of the “spiritual mind” and leaving him with a deeper and more intimate sense of what really matters. If you are also struggling to bring more embodiment, more grace, and more discernment to your own spiritual life, you don’t want to miss this wonderful conversation between Ryan Oelke and Corey deVos.

From the foundation of the American union through the War of Independence, to its near dissolution during the Civil War, to the open frontiers of the Wild West and the digital frontiers of video games and first-person shooters — America has always had a deeply complicated relationship with the gun. Firearms are woven into the very fabric of American life, society, and history, enshrined in our founding documents. Which makes the question of how to reduce gun violence in America an exceptionally difficult one to answer. America’s pathological relationship with gun violence is what is often called a “wicked problem” — a deeply complex, multifaceted problem that cannot be fully seen or understood from any single point of view, and therefore requires an integral multidisciplinary approach in order to solve. Unfortunately, when it comes to gun violence, there are very few discussions out there that are even trying to put all the pieces together, choosing instead to politicize the brutal deaths of innocent children and families, and allowing the narrative to become dominated by these narrow biases, ideologies, and objectives. In the meantime, nearly 100 Americans die from gun violence every single day. Because few people can fully see all facets of this incredibly complicated problem, our relationship with the gun — as a deadly weapon, as a defensive tool, and as a deeply-embedded cultural archetype — has become shrouded by shadow. On the one hand it is the ultimate equalizer of power, allowing the most vulnerable among us to defend their lives and land from those who would take them away. On the other hand they are machines designed for only one purpose, to kill other living creatures — and we are seeing far too many senseless killings in America today. For some they are a symbol of independence, individual freedom, and personal sovereignty. For others they are objects of obsession and even fetishization, a substitute gratification for our felt lack of inner power and control over our lives. In this discussion Ken and Corey try to identify the root causes of gun violence in America, and suggest some innovative solutions that might help us turn the page on this terribly wicked problem.

Revolutionary training program designed by Beena Sharma teaches integral thinking. Importance of recognizing and managing polarities. Understanding the true nature of polarity. Balancing self-criticism and personal transformation. Excitement and benefits of practice. Integral thinking and polarity training program discussed.

Today’s guest, Sebastian Siegel, is the screenwriter and director of the upcoming movie, Grace and Grit. The film tells the true love story of iconic, Integral philosopher Ken Wilber and his wife Treya. Based on the acclaimed book that chronicles Treya’s journals, they fall madly in love in 1980’s California and are immediately faced with illness and challenges that tear them apart. They overcome by finding a connection beyond this world, and love beyond life. The film stars Mena Suvari and Stuart Townsend as Treya and Ken, and features supporting performances by Frances Fisher, Rebekah Graf, Nick Stahl, and Mariel Hemmingway. In our conversation, Sebastian, who is an integral practitioner, friend, and long-time fan of Ken’s work, talks in depth about many elements of making the film from writing, development, and casting, to directing, storytelling, and production, and his overriding mission to serve not just this epic love story, but also the emergence of Integral consciousness itself. Sebastian Siegel is author of the book, “The Consciousness Revolution”, and is the creator of two documentaries: “Awakening World” and “Spirit of Evolution.” You can find out more about Grace and Grit at the movie’s website, Sebastian’s instagram account. , and his website.

The universe — it’s big. No, that’s an understatement. It’s very big. It can be a bit much, really. There’s just a whole lot of it, and it’s got a whole lot of stuff in it. Way more nothing than stuff, truth be told, but still. It’s more stuff than you can shake a stick at. It’s a pretty weird place too. Like how we can only see 5% of it. What’s up with the other 95%? Nobody knows. That’s weird. And even the stuff we can see is weird. It grows, it shines, it twists and dances and undulates and sometimes makes other weird stuff like love and helicopters and neckties. And that’s just the stuff that we know about. Who knows how weird the other stuff is? Fortunately, not too long ago, a bunch of weird talking monkeys started poking around in an otherwise unremarkable corner of the universe, and over the years those monkeys have come up with all sorts of weird explanations in order to to make sense of the whole ordeal. We are here today with one of those talking monkeys, a particularly hairless hominid named Ken Wilber who has gathered all of those different explanations of the universe and combined them all into one really big explanation of the universe — something he calls “a theory of everything”. But if you remember from a few sentences back, the universe is a terribly big place. So let’s see just how much “everything” we can actually fit in there.

Welcome to INHABIT — a monthly practice-based series with Ryan Oelke and Corey deVos, designed to help you embody your own unique expression of integral being and more fully inhabit the territory of your life, your relationships, and your world. Integral itself can often feel like such a cognitive and intellectual pursuit. Although the map itself invites us to practice integral consciousness in our hearts and bodies as much as our minds, we often tend to lead with our heads, and it can take a great deal of practice and rewiring of our lifestyles before we really feel like we are beginning to embody our own fullest integral power. It’s not hard to find ourselves stuck in the endless abstractions of our own mental models, which can limit our fullest possible expression of integral consciousness. Adding to the challenge, Integral is coming of age during the era of social media, where the dominant mode of discourse is often so disembodied and sometimes even dehumanizing. This is why Ryan and Corey are doing this show — to help create more embodied practice, more embodied relating, and more embodied methods of showing up as fully as you can in order to make a positive dent in this world. Every month Ryan will lead us in guided practice to help strengthen the link between your mind and your body, between your knowledge and your wisdom, between your being and your doing. All so you can show up as the super-charged integral powerhouse you know you are.

David Sloan Wilson is SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University. He is widely known for his fundamental contributions to evolutionary science and for explaining evolution to the general public. Listen as David talks to Ken Wilber about his recent book, This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution, in this fascinating discussion of conscious, cultural, and biological evolution — and how we can use the fundamental patterns running through all three in order to create a more adaptable and sustainable future. It is often said that humanity represents the process of evolution becoming self-aware. We are a universe awakening to itself — and part of that awakening is a capacity to reflect upon the various core design principles and strategies that have been guiding our evolutionary emergence ever since the Big Bang, and to then consciously employ these same strategies in order to create a genuinely multi-cellular society for the human superorganism.

Ken Wilber and Corey deVos explore the path of Waking Up, taking a guided tour through the many temporary states of consciousness that include everything from emotional states to chemically-induced states to the direct, immediate experience of timeless reality. Watch as Ken and Corey explore these states of consciousness in detail, revealing an infinitely renewable source of energy, resilience, and creative inspiration that rests at the very center of you.

Today we are talking to Ryan Oelke, a gifted integral coach, co-founder of Buddhist Geeks, and the creator of our incredible new training program, Embodied Success. Listen as Ryan and Corey enjoy a far-ranging discussion about integral embodiment, self-actualization, and the call to make a meaningful impact in the world.