Everyone Is Right

Find the rest of the 2-hour discussion here: https://integrallife.com/in-pursuit-of-wholeness-making-room-for-everything/ Today we are going to talk about one of the most important and central ideas in all of integral theory: holons, which are wholes that are simultaneously part of other wholes. This notion of holons — the idea that the universe is fundamentally made of whole/parts within whole/parts within whole/parts, turtles all the way up and turtles all the way down — this isn’t just important in a theoretical or philosophical sense. Understanding holons also helps us make better sense of the world that we live in, and our inner worlds as well. It’s immediately relevant to any number of culture war issues that we see these days, from abortion to immigration to vaccination to the various rights and responsibilities we have as national and global citizens. And it’s an idea that helps us recognize the many different kinds of “wholeness” we can see in the universe, and that we can pursue in our own lives — in our interiors and in our exteriors, both personally and collectively — and helps guide our own growing up, waking up, and cleaning up process. Ken introduces the topic by describing the major themes of his latest book, Making Room for Everything, recently submitted to Shambhala to be published in 2023. This new book works directly with these different kinds of wholeness, and the different ways we can pursue wholeness in our 1st-person experience, in our 2nd-person relationships, and in our 3rd-person work and environments. Watch as Ken describes how the paths of Waking Up, Growing Up, Cleaning Up, Opening Up, and Showing Up all lead us to different kinds of wholeness. Find the rest of the 2-hour discussion here: https://integrallife.com/in-pursuit-of-wholeness-making-room-for-everything/

This week I share our collective outrage and heartbreak over the shooting of the Texas schoolchildren and teachers, and manage to offer some hope that this time it will be different, that this shooting will heighten a social pain-point – unstable young men equipped with weapons of war – sufficiently to transcend political polarities. In this episode I ponder: - America’s enneatype, frontier culture, “traditionalism with guns” - Integrating the MSNBC and FOX News worldviews - Recognizing budding criminality - Matthew Yglesias’s positivity blowback - How about the first part of the second amendment? - The ever-widening circle of moral consideration - What our grandchildren will know - Blessings to all

Sometimes in our psychological development the way forward requires us to go back, to re-explore earlier stages of life to see what is distorted or left unintegrated. This is the theme of the work of my guest today, developmental psychotherapist Kim Barta. He discusses his approach to personal growth, which is based on the STAGES Model of Development created by well-known developmental theorist Terri O’Fallon (who is also Kim’s sister.). Using psychotherapeutic practices, shadow work and meditation, Kim has devised a comprehensive system of self-exploration with stopovers at every stage of development, designed to bring the gifts and powers of that stage online. Shoring up our developmental scaffolding in this way makes us able – and worthy – to grow into the higher stages of integral consciousness, which Kim and the STAGES model also beautifully illuminate. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Kim Barta! – Jeff Salzman

For the second episode, we discuss the distinction between absolute and relative in traditional and modern metaphysics, the Two Worlds mythology, and the Ascender and Descender paths, and we consider some historical and contemporary approaches to reconceiving their relations. In the second half of the dialogue, we turn towards the emotional or 'felt' dimensions of a fundamental shift in perspectives, including David Michael Levin's notions of 'crying for a vision' and gelassenheit as the resolution of dualism; and we begin to touch on the importance for a Religion that is Not a Religion of 'moving into the lack' and fully grieving the death of God. You can find other parts of this series here: https://integrallife.com/re-thinking-religion-integral-postmetaphysical-spirituality/

What are the unique challenges that prevent you from inhabiting your most authentic and embodied voice, and how can integral thought and practice help us to overcome those challenges — in our society, in our communities, and in our own consciousness? Ryan and Corey begin by taking a look at some of the central cultural, technological, and behavioral challenges that take us further away from our most authentic expression, wonderfully illuminated by Jonathan Haidt’s recent article, “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid”. We were both very excited about Jonathan’s piece, which deeply resonates with so many of the critical themes we’ve explored in the Inhabit series over the months and years. In his article, Haidt identifies three primary factors that bind society together — social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories. He then explores how each of these became so compromised in our civilization, and suggests some possible interventions (what I often call “enfoldment mechanisms”) in order to get things moving in the right direction again: “We must harden democratic institutions so that they can withstand chronic anger and mistrust, reform social media so that it becomes less socially corrosive, and better prepare the next generation for democratic citizenship in this new age.” —Jonathan Haidt In our conversation, Ryan and I try to pick up where Jonathan left off, suggesting that we actually need to install these sorts of enfoldment mechanisms in our own interior operating systems, as much as in our exterior/collective operating systems. In other words, we cannot transform these systems “out there” unless we work to transform our own consciousness and communities “in here”. How do we do so? Ryan and I try to answer this question by looking at two fundamental lines of development — the intrapersonal line (how we relate to ourselves), and the interpersonal line (how we relate to each other). We begin with the intrapersonal, distilling some timeless wisdom from two different spiritual lineages — the notion of “Right Speech” in Buddhism, and the Quaker practice of “letting your next words come from your highest Self” — two complementary micro-practices that can help us to better align ourselves with our own inner source of wisdom and compassion, to communicate with greater authenticity, and to bring as much conscious embodiment to our online engagements as we unconsciously do when we are face-to-face. Next we take a look at our interpersonal capacities, and how we can use Integral ideas to facilitate more healthy and rewarding community experiences. When I was interviewing Stefan Schultz for our Journalism in the Disinformation Age discussion, he included some different strategies that each developmental stage uses for what he calls their “conference culture”, which Ryan and I unpack in this episode. All of us have likely seen each of these strategies playing out in our various online community spaces, and therefore may be helpful to make some of these nested subjects into objects in order to create more shared agreement around the sorts of standards we want to hold ourselves to when interacting with each other.

In this episode of the Shrink and the Pundit, Dr. Keith Witt and I discuss a powerful realization emerging at the leading edge of culture regarding the role of trauma in our lives. Dr. Keith is writing a book on the subject and has mined various psychotherapeutic modalities to create an integral approach to using trauma as a portal to health and higher consciousness. In our wide-ranging conversation we address: Trauma and resilience as forms of memory * The differences – and similarities – between ongoing trauma and “major event” traumas such as accidents, violence and illness * Trauma through human history * Sensitive vs sensitized: the healthy and unhealthy poles of postmodern consciousness * What child-centered parenting misses * The biological drive to have a spiritually-awakened brain * Updating your autobiographical narratives * Trauma and the self-transforming mind. I really loved this conversation and I hope you do, too! – Jeff Salzman

The sexual evolution continues! This week I look at the controversy raging over the dramatic emergence of transsexual identity and gender fluidity, particularly among young people. I place it in the context of the stage transformations of sex and gender through history, and even get a little personal. I hope you enjoy the episode! –Jeff Salzman

John Vervaeke joins Bruce Alderman and Layman Pascal to explore possible points of contact and confluence between their respective approaches to religion and spirituality. For this inaugural episode, we feel into some of the commonalities and differences between Integral Postmetaphysical Spirituality and Integral Life Practice, and John's "religion that is not a religion" and his work around developing an ecology of practices suitable for addressing the meaning crisis. We touch on a number of related themes: - the creative deployment of mythic or literary figures, from Cthulhu and zombies, to the Centaur, the Minotaur, and the khora - the importance of wrestling with existential and epistemological limit conditions - the role of ambiguity in higher forms of rationality - the relation of non-theism to classical theism and atheism - the history of integrative practices - the 'traps' in conventional practice that can thwart balanced development ...and much more. John Vervaeke is a professor of psychology at Toronto University and creator of the popular YouTube series "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis."

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.

In this series of discussions, Daily Evolver host Jeff Salzman talks to Corey deVos and Nomali Perera about some crucial perspectives and practices to help us bring more clarity to our thinking, and more depth to our hearts, as we witness the brutal realities of war in Ukraine.