Everyone Is Right

We are blessed to live at a time when virtually all of the world's practices from all of the world's cultures and spiritual traditions are freely available to us. In fact, we have so many different kinds of practices it can be downright intimidating: Which should I do? How many should I do? How do I know they're working? Where do I begin? How am I even going to find time for all this? This is what makes this week's discussion so important, as Terry Patten and Ken Wilber take an in-depth look at their book Integral Life Practice: A 21st-Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening. ILP is a highly distilled, easily customizable, and radically inclusive approach to practice, based on the most comprehensive map of human potentials we currently have. It is neither "map" nor "territory", but the vehicle by which we find, refine, and deliver our unique gifts to the world.

We are blessed to live at a time when virtually all of the world's practices from all of the world's cultures and spiritual traditions are freely available to us. In fact, we have so many different kinds of practices it can be downright intimidating: Which should I do? How many should I do? How do I know they're working? Where do I begin? How am I even going to find time for all this? This is what makes this week's discussion so important, as Terry Patten and Ken Wilber take an in-depth look at their book Integral Life Practice: A 21st-Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening. ILP is a highly distilled, easily customizable, and radically inclusive approach to practice, based on the most comprehensive map of human potentials we currently have. It is neither "map" nor "territory", but the vehicle by which we find, refine, and deliver our unique gifts to the world.

We are blessed to live at a time when virtually all of the world's practices from all of the world's cultures and spiritual traditions are freely available to us. In fact, we have so many different kinds of practices it can be downright intimidating: Which should I do? How many should I do? How do I know they're working? Where do I begin? How am I even going to find time for all this? This is what makes this week's discussion so important, as Terry Patten and Ken Wilber take an in-depth look at their book Integral Life Practice: A 21st-Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening. ILP is a highly distilled, easily customizable, and radically inclusive approach to practice, based on the most comprehensive map of human potentials we currently have. It is neither "map" nor "territory", but the vehicle by which we find, refine, and deliver our unique gifts to the world.

Our dear friend Terry Patten has completed his human journey, and has now passed on from this world. By all accounts Terry made his transition with tremendous grace and courage, guided as he was by his many years of integral and spiritual practice. We miss this man enormously, and feel deeply grateful for his friendship, as well as for the limitless passion, care, and spirit that he brought to the integral movement over the last two decades. So that Terry’s life and death can continue to be a source of meaning, inspiration, and awakening for us all, we want to release the following meditation to the world. Listen as Terry offers a short guided meditation to help you reduce the existential fear, dread, and anxiety surrounding death, by shifting your attention and identification to the indestructible presence at the very center of your being. We love you, Terry Patten. Your light will continue to shine in our hearts, in our spirit, and in our practice. Blessings to you, our cherished friend, teacher, and partner.

Full episode here: integrallife.com/the-science-of-subtle-energy/ In this episode of The Ken Show we take a look at an essay by Ken Wilber titled “Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Subtle Energy” (available to download for free!) which offers an elegant summary of how these energies might be accounted for by integral metatheory and integrated with our scientific understanding of the universe. Throughout Ken’s career, he has been very careful to include only those dimensions of experience and reality that have a rigorous body of evidence behind them (and of course that evidence can come through any coherent methodology in any of the four quadrants/eight zones, and can be enacted by either the “eye of flesh”, the “eye of mind”, or the “eye of spirit”.) But when it comes to things like subtle energy, it’s much more difficult to find this sort of repeatable and rigorous evidence. We have tons of interior-based anecdotes from people throughout history about their experiences with subtle energies — however, because the field is also littered with all sorts of magical thinking, charlatans, and snake oil, we need to be that much more careful about how we go about collecting evidence. What’s more, because we are discussing exterior-quadrant realities here (we’re really talking about various forms of matter-energy) this means that we ultimately require exterior-quadrant methodologies in order to verify and/or falsify the existence of subtle energies. Which means that, until we are able to produce instruments capable of registering and measuring these phenomena in a clinical setting, the question of whether or not subtle energies exist seems to remain largely unverified and unfalsifiable. But that doesn’t mean we can’t use the evidence we do have in order to come up with some strong hypotheses about how these energies might work, as Ken does in this essay. Who knows, perhaps these hypotheses will help guide the future of subtle energy science — simply by telling us where to look, and what to look for. Full episode here: integrallife.com/the-science-of-subtle-energy/

What does it mean to be a bodhisattva in the 21st century? In the Buddhist tradition, a Bodhisattva is someone whose pursuit of enlightenment has become inseparable from the enlightenment of other beings, and have dedicated their lives (multiple lifetimes, in fact) to practicing compassion and helping others to wake up — even postponing their own “final” enlightenment until all other beings have become similarly awakened. In this episode Ryan and Corey are joined by our very good friend Vincent Horn, co-founder of Buddhist Geeks, in order to discuss Ryan and Vince’s decision to fully embrace the Bodhisattva Vow in their lives and in their spiritual practice. What unfolds is a fun and fascinating conversation about compassion, commitment, purpose, meaning, and skillful means — as well as some much-needed guidance to help us bring ourselves into deeper alignment with our own inner Bodhisattva, regardless of whatever spiritual tradition (or lack thereof!) that we find ourselves in.

Watch as Lisa and Corey preview the new season of Integral Life Practice Experiences now available on Integral Life, taking you deeper than ever before into your own growth, awakening, and life purpose. Lisa also discusses her exclusive new program, which she is calling Live Your Deepest Yes, a 12-week live group coaching series that will help you better align yourself with your innermost truth, your passion, and your own unique contribution to the world. What is your Deepest Yes? Deep within, at your very core, there is a voice. This voice is the guiding wisdom that we all have access to. When you clarify and attune to that place inside, you gain access to that voice – learning first how to listen and then speak and act from it. This is the source of right speech, right action and right livelihood. It is the ground from which your purpose, values and ethics arise organically across the various domains of your life. When your heart, body, mind and soul are aligned, you experience a profound sense of rightness all the way down. This is your truth. The truth about who you are, what you want and why you’re here. This truth is the very thing that has been guiding your quest for authenticity, purpose and meaning. When you touch this truth, you experience it like a tuning fork sounding from the core of your being that reverberates out to dynamically interact with life. I call this truth your Deepest Yes.

In this very special episode of The Ken Show we are joined by Aissatou Diallo, Zoe Tray, and Noah Delorme, students at Choate Rosemary Hall who have been studying Ken Wilber’s seminal book, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality for their senior year project. Watch as Ken, Aissatou, Zoe, and Noah unpack many of the core insights of SES and discuss the unique value Integral work holds for a new generation of thinkers, leaders, artists, and scholars. We were absolutely blown away by the depth, care, and curiosity that shone through these students’ questions, as well as the obvious enthusiasm they have for the integral project. We are always trying to find new ways to bring integral ideas to new generations, and presenting these ideas in a way that speaks more directly to the unique life conditions each generation is facing. Seeing these young faces light up behind their masks as they engaged with Ken was a pure delight, and offers a new source of hope for the ongoing unfolding of integral ideas, as well as for our shared future on this planet. Topics include: 0:00 – Ken’s writing process while working on SES 10:43 – Why is spirituality important to the integral model? 26:52 – How do we know how many people are at each stage? 42:09 – How important is community for spiritual awakening? 53:45 – How can Integral help people become better activists? 1:10:22 – How do we integrate relativity? 1:16:01 – Can Integral help people with poverty and substance abuse? 1:29:37 – How does emotion influence our development? 1:40:36 – How do we communicate integral spirituality to non-religious people? 1:43:24 – How does awakened love influence our relationships? 1:52:00 – How does Ken manage fear?

Listen to the full discussion here: https://integrallife.com/practice-the-wound-of-love/ “Real love hurts; real love makes you totally vulnerable and open; real love will take you far beyond yourself; and therefore real love will devastate you. I kept thinking, if love does not shatter you, you do not know love. We had both been practicing the wound of love, and I was shattered.” —Ken Wilber Watch as Ken and Corey explore the ongoing unfoldment of love along the paths of Waking Up, Growing Up, Opening Up, Cleaning Up, and Showing Up. What follows is one of the most powerful, transformative, and touching conversations that Ken Wilber has ever recorded. We begin this long discussion about the Integral path of conscious love with a heartfelt discussion of the Grace and Grit film that just released, as well as the underlying and undying love that Ken and Treya shared — bringing us right into the heart of this conversation and setting the tone for everything that follows. Part 1: The Timeless Love of Ken and Treya Part 2: Waking Up to Love: Spirit in 2nd-person Part 3: Growing Up to Love: The Unfolding Heart Part 4: Opening Up to Love: Multiple Intelligences Part 5: Cleaning Up Our Love: Obsession, Narcissism, Fear, Pain, and Resentment Part 6: Showing Up as Love: Inhabiting the Heart Listen to the full discussion here: https://integrallife.com/practice-the-wound-of-love/

Watch the video version here: https://integrallife.com/inhabit-your-perspective/ Most of us are already familiar with Ken Wilber’s Four Quadrant map, but this presentation goes one step deeper — we aren’t just looking at the quadrants themselves, but the “inner” and “outer” dimensions of each quadrant (i.e. looking at each quadrant from the 1st-person, and from the 3rd-person). Taken together, these eight zones refer to the most fundamental perspectives that we can take on any phenomenon, and are most often used to organize and situate all of the major methodologies and schools of thought that we use to generate and confirm our knowledge. But these aren’t just boxes on a piece of paper; they represent the fundamental perspectives that are available to you right now. We unconsciously slide through these perspectives all the time, and all we need to do is recognize what sorts of perspectives we are taking, so that we can use and inhabit them more consciously. Which is why we wanted to do this episode — to step beyond a mere cognitive understanding of these zones, and instead help find a way to feel into these perspectives and to experience them from the inside out. We want you to become more fluent in this sort of perspective-taking, without requiring a working knowledge of Foucault, Varela, Luhmann, etc. In other words, this isn’t another hyper-cognitive discussion of integral theory. This is more of a “perspectival yoga”, and we hope that by the time you have finished watching this episode you will be more familiar with these fundamental dimensions of your experience, right now in this very moment. One of the very best and most common applications of the eight zones is to art, as has been very thoroughly explored by minds like Ken Wilber, Michael Schwartz, and others. In this episode we are doing two things simultaneously — using these perspectives in order to more fully appreciate the art we love, while also using art in order to more fully understand and inhabit these perspectives. We do so by boiling these perspectival zones down to some very fundamental questions we can ask about any artwork or object we happen to be looking at. Listen as Bruce, Ryan, and Corey help make these perspectives a bit more intuitive by noticing how often we are already taking them in our daily lives, how to apply them to any of our experiences.