The Daily Evolver

Stuart Davis has been on the integral scene since before there was an integral scene. His art and music spring from the rich realizations of integral theory with nary a line or a quadrant mentioned. Two years ago the family packed up and moved from Boulder to Amsterdam, along with Stuart’s intention to turn inward—less time touring and performing, more time gestating and writing. Jeff invited Stuart onto the podcast so we could all catch up with him and find out what’s been going on in that ingenious brain and sweet heart. It’s a fun conversation that veers between American and European culture and politics, integral art and the struggle to produce “depth-oriented” entertainment, and the blossoming of a worldwide integral community. A decade and a half after the publication of Ken Wilber’s Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, and the founding of the Integral Institute, it’s fun to listen to these two gossip, reflect, and look ahead to what’s coming. Find out more about Stuart Davis here. Stuart’s song “The Ladder” is about the evolution of consciousness. This version has lyrics and photos:

A while back the folks at the Integral Center here in Boulder asked me to deliver an integral sermon for a Sunday morning service they were conducting at the center. I was excited about the opportunity, as I believe that the story of evolution is not just the story of the development of matter and life, but is also the story of the development of intelligence and spirit and love. And that evolution reveals spiritual insights that not only include the inspiration of the great religious traditions, but also the hard truths of science. I truly believe that evolution will provide the basis for the spiritual practices of the sacred world to come. So here’s my stab at a little bit of integral evangelism. Have a listen and let me know what you think. I love to hear your comments and questions. You can either write a note or record a voice memo on your smartphone and email it to me at jeff@dailyevolver.com. Thanks again for listening!

Today I’m sharing a conversation I had a couple years ago with my dear friend Cindy Wigglesworth, right when she released her really terrific and influential book SQ21: The 21 Skills of Spiritual Intelligence. One of the key premises of integral theory is that people evolve in multiple lines of development or what we call intelligences. We evolve in our cognitive intelligence, emotional intelligence, social intelligence and of course, spiritual intelligence. Now this last line of development, spiritual intelligence, is kind of tricky. What does it actually mean to be spiritually developed? How do spiritually developed people think, act, feel, and understand this great adventure of life? These are some of the questions I ask Cindy in this interview. I think you’ll be inspired by her answers. I certainly have been. Have a listen and let me know what you think–I love to hear your comments and questions. You can either jot a note or record a voice memo on your smartphone and email it to me at jeff@dailyevolver.com. Thanks again for listening!

Today I’m sharing a talk I did a couple years ago at a conference that Integral Life produced in Boulder called “What Next”. I chose this talk because it is a succinct expression of what has become one of the central themes of my work with the Daily Evolver: that I’m heartened by the state of our world. Through the integral lens, I see the evolution of consciousness and culture creating more goodness, truth and beauty in the world than ever before in human history. And it’s a process that is accelerating. I argue that to realize this is an integral move, however difficult considering the cultural currents of doom, cynicism and anxiety–a.k.a. the postmodern malaise. Seeing the positive trajectory of history not only creates a happier life, but also empowers us to be truly helpful in solving the problems and healing the suffering that persists. Because we operate less from fear and more from love. And we know we’re riding the updraft of history. I hope you have a listen. And I’d love to hear your comments and questions. Jot a note or record a voice memo on your smartphone and email it to me at jeff@dailyevolver.com, (or use the Speakpipe tab on the right).

This week, a gem from the archives: an early talk between Jeff and Dr. Keith Witt–part of a series that eventually became The Shrink and The Pundit. Dr. Keith Witt has been practicing psychotherapy in Santa Barbara for over 40 years, and is also a master martial artist and devoted spiritual practitioner with experience in many traditions. Who better to talk to about integrating psychotherapy and spirituality, the two major approaches to human development? It’s a topic that causes so much confusion and consternation among seekers of higher consciousness. Spiritual teachers and psychotherapists are often at odds and people who participate in both modalities often reflect that conflict in their own minds. Which is the best way to go? Is it more fruitful to work with our personal history and iron out the stuck points in our lives (psychotherapy) or to work to transcend them by seeking enlightenment (spirituality)? Do we work with our story or drop our story? Most spiritual traditions are rooted in pre-modern schemas that see dysfunction as a spiritual problem, whether possession by evil spirits or a separation from God. Even a non-theistic religion like Buddhism perceives the manifest world as a fallen and corrupt place that is to be transcended (and in more advanced Buddhist thought, re-embraced) through meditation. A lot of spiritual teachers, because they deal so much in metaphor, begin to think you can transcend biology, like giving up all critical judgment and stuff like that. No, we can’t give up all critical judgment, because human nervous systems are making critical judgments regularly. But we can alter the way we habitually process them, and that’s spiritual growth. ~Dr. Keith Witt Psychotherapy, on the other hand, works with the circumstances of our lives, and we are encouraged to look deeply into our own dramas and traumas, and even to re-experience them in the controlled psychotherapeutic container created with the therapist. Anyone who has practiced both systems can see the value of each, yet their trusted guides, the spiritual teachers and psychotherapists, often deny the veracity of the other approach. The integral solution, as you might expect, is to find the “piece of the truth” revealed by both spiritual practice and psychotherapy, to map the territories that each inhabit (and the territories they don’t), and to work with both in an integrated and harmonized way. That way the benefits are multiplied. I know of no more qualified (and stimulating!) guide to this endeavor than Dr. Keith Witt. Check out our conversation below, as well as an essay Keith wrote on the topic.

This week we’re bringing you an episode from the archives: Jeff’s conversation with Charles Eisenstein, visionary, activist, and author of the books Sacred Economics, The Ascent of Humanity, and The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible (love that title). Charles and Jeff agree on a lot, including that a sacred world is coming and that humanity is on an ascending path. They disagree on how we got here, and that disagreement captures the difference between even leading edge progressive thinking and an integral, evolutionary perspective. Did humanity go wrong, and do we have to fix it? Or are we just growing up?

In the following excerpt Jeff asks Ken Wilber a question about magical thinking vs real psychic phenomena. Whether we’re talking about near-death experiences, precognitive dreams, telepathic communication, bizarre synchronicities…they all defy materialistic explanation, and yet they also seem to communicate deep truth and meaning. What are we to make of this when science says no, but we intuit that something more is going on here? Listen to this clip of Ken Wilber as he clarifies the difference between pre-rational magic and trans-rational subtle energies, and what he refers to as “the realm of transformation.”

Elegance is the word that author and coach Rob McNamara uses to refer to the experience of higher, post-autonomous stages of development, or what we might call integral consciousness. Listen as he talks to Jeff about embodying elegance in life, love and leadership.   Rob stopped by a couple months ago to catch up with Jeff and tell Daily Evolver listeners about a leadership course he produced with Ten Directions called Commanding Influence. Full disclosure: Rob has alternately been my professor, trainer, therapist, sangha brother and friend over the years, and sometimes all of those things at once. I’ve experienced Rob’s loving guidance firsthand so I wasn’t surprised to find out that his conversation with Jeff went from interview to therapy session about halfway through! In Rob’s own words, the overarching purpose and trajectory of his life has been “inspiring and facilitating…and demanding more elegance in the world.” Elegance is his way of describing higher stages of development, such as Kegan’s “Self-transforming Mind” (which many of us loosely refer to as “integral” and roughly corresponds to teal/turquoise in Ken Wilber’s altitudes of development–yellow in Spiral Dynamics). Rob’s book, The Elegant Self, never explicitly defines elegance. It’s a finger pointing to the moon. That’s partly because elegance evades a fixed meaning in a developmental sense, and partly because research has demonstrated that purely conceptual narratives about development can erode happiness and well-being in the long term. So Rob shies away from conceptual teachings in favor of embodiment. Whether it’s a world-class athlete or a powerful executive, his coaching is meant to bring about a felt sense of these post-autonomous stages just beyond our habituated ways of constructing meaning. There’s a bouyancy and a vibrance that is always holding us if we can get outside of the steel trap of our more autonomous mind. ~Rob McNamara Rob is the coach’s coach. Listen as he explicates some of the core features that allow elegance to emerge in your life and relationships, and helps Jeff embrace life on the other side of laziness.

Theo Horesh is a Boulder social entrepreneur, philosopher and a familiar face in the integral community. Last year Theo published a series of insightful essays on the Middle East, inspired by his time spent with the Palestinians and the Yazidi refugees. I invited him over to talk about his travels, only to find out that he has also released a new book on a broader topic: Convergence: The Globalization of Mind. I enjoyed our conversation, and hope you do, too. Theo and I talked about his travels, and his heart-to-heart connections with people under siege, particularly with the youth in whom he finds much to admire. We talked about how these kinds of connections — in both real space and virtual space — can bring on a more worldcentric mind for all involved. Excerpt: If you see more you’ve got to be responsible for more There are many examples of how this is already happening—the internet, international agreements and cooperation, travel and communication. But in a world where entire cultures span multiple levels of development, gaining consensus about what we can create, and how, can be a tricky proposition. The feeling of being overwhelmed is prevalent, as first tier structures of consciousness are mostly motivated by fear. How does integral theory transcend this thinking, and help us think about these vastly complex systems? Listen as Theo discusses how each of us can call forth a worldcentric mind, so we can be a more awake and effective as we become more plugged-in and connected. Global consciousness did not simply arise from seeing the world from outer space or from some mass of the population attaining certain spiritual states. It has taken a long process of social evolution, which has been supported by a wide array of institutional and technological developments, to produce global consciousness. Like the nationalism of the 20th century, it is a consciousness suited to a new form of human organization. We are globally conscious because global consciousness is needed to comprehend the world in which we reside. Without it we would be lost in spaciousness. ~From “Convergence: The Globalization of Mind” by Theo Horesh

Repressed anger, hidden fears, unwanted impulses and compulsions…our psyches contain parts of ourselves that are concealed but which can deeply affect our lives. “We’re bigger than we know, literally,” says Jeff. “There are parts of ourselves that we’re not aware of but that are still there, and often they’re running the show. At a certain stage of development our practice becomes the process of shining a light on the areas that are in the dark.” The discovery of the unconscious mind was a major achievement of human psychology, and has revealed powerful new therapeutic approaches to human health and happiness. The basic premise is simple: if dissociating from parts of ourselves keeps us from developing, then integrating those parts will accelerate our development. The extent to which we acknowledge our shadow is the extent to which we allow our development into whole people with rich relationships. Primal drives and instincts don’t stay quietly locked away in the basement until we invite them up for tea. And the more complex we become, the more elaborate our defenses. But in the same way we gauge the wind by looking at the leaves on the trees or the waves on the water, we can see the effects of our shadows. It’s a pretty good bet that you’re operating from shadow when your emotional response is way out of proportion to the circumstances at hand. You may see yourself get angry, defensive or fearful for no good reason. You catch yourself lying and you’re not sure why, or you find yourself in the same difficult situation or unhealthy relationship over and over. Excerpt | Transforming shadow is a tantric practice in relationship Dr. Carl Jung famously said “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” If we’re not aware of the forces in our psyche — physiological, psychological, emotional—then shadow is organizing us. Dr. Keith tells us that the only difference between a destructive shadow and a constructive shadow is our willingness to engage with it. Not a pleasant task in the best of circumstances, let alone when we’re in the defensive states that arise when our shadows are activated. We have to trust others to help us—our partners, friends, support groups, and of course, our therapists. It takes courage to be vulnerable and open enough to confront these lost parts of ourselves.  And since the world is our mirror, it’s always going to happen in relationship. That is the difficulty, and it’s also what saves us. The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge. ~C.G. Jung We can learn to look within, to identify destructive shadow and then metabolize it and transform it. “When you’re dealing with destructive shadow, you have to feel it and accept it and simultaneously bring embodied moral discernment to bear on it,” says Dr. Keith. “That combination of acceptance and moral discernment is sometimes paradoxical, they’re often reciprocal inhibitors, and so part of development is getting better at bringing those forces together and reconciling them with the drives and impulses that arise.” Those drives and instincts are expressed differently at the various altitudes of development, as is the embodied moral discernment that can transmute them. As usual, it helps to have an integral view — which is what you’ll get in this conversation from Dr. Keith Witt and Jeff Salzman: AKA, The Shrink and The Pundit.