The Daily Evolver

On the left, a Shoshone berdache from the 1800’s. On the right, a young Rupaul, contemporary drag queen and star of the hit show Rupaul’s Drag Race on Logo TV. After generations of persecution, gay people are achieving equality with remarkable speed in the developed world. Yet there was a time when gender variant people were not only equal but were honored and respected members inside their larger tribal societies (such as the berdache in Native American culture). Raymond Rigoglioso, author of Gay Men and the New Way Forward, says it’s time again for gay men to recognize, and be recognized for, the special contributions they make to society. “Gay men, as a group, contribute to the human family and serve an evolutionary function,” Ray tells Jeff. “We play special roles that contribute to the welfare and vitality of humans, and to the expansion of consciousness.” Ray puts these contributions into three basic categories: 1) re-inventing manhood, 2) serving and healing humanity, and 3) freeing and enriching the human spirit. Excerpt | The evolution of gay men in a straight world One of the “foundational gifts” that Ray talks about in his book is the ability to flow back and forth between the polarities of masculinity and femininity with ease, which naturally creates a fuller range of human expression. And as gay men (and women) become more accepted, we can also see gender expression shifting in the larger culture. The way that our great grandparents expressed masculinity and femininity is very different than now, says Jeff. “Men and women in general are integrating the gifts of the opposite pole.” We love our masculine and feminine. We use both with aplomb, and we celebrate them. ~Raymond Rigoglioso Many gay men think the distinguishing characteristic of their identity is sexual orientation, but Ray explains that they also have a different social orientation—an orientation towards service. You can see it in the roles of tribal ancestors—shamans, healers, visionaries, and artisans—and you can see it today, with the contemporary shamans in music and dance, the arts, spiritual leadership. And let’s not forget sexual leadership; after all, gay men have been enjoying “friends with benefits” for decades! In the podcast, Jeff and Ray take us on a quick tour of the cultural climate for gays at each stage of human development. In the last few decades, postmodern values have allowed sexual minorities to claim some dignity and equality in the culture and in the eyes of the law. So what’s next? Where does gay culture go from here?  Is there even such a thing as gay culture going forward? “I believe so,” says Ray, “if we expand what it means to be gay from just having a different sexual orientation to our larger role in society. We have a future if we claim the social roles that we play.”

Pop culture is much maligned. But human beings have always told simple stories, stories that show us who we are, how to act, and all of the places we can go. For the vast majority of our history these stories were told around the fire. Today they are told in the glow of many billions of screens, our access points to a worldwide mediaverse that is telling every story, and connecting everybody with everybody. Judge Judy moves people from red into amber…Dr. Phil moves people from amber into orange…and Oprah moves people from orange into green. I think there are some shows that move people from green into integral. One of them is Mad Men, which just had its finale. ~Jeff Salzman Oprah Winfrey expands our identity into world-centric, even spiritual dimensions.  And sophisticated serial dramas like the Sopranos, Breaking Bad and Mad Men (which recently completed its six year run) provide morality tales as complex and powerful as classic literature. New research out of the University of Southern California reveals that Americans consume media, both digital and traditional, for over fifteen hours per person per day. Waste of time? Much of it perhaps, but oh what a window we have on our world and each other.   “Why is Judge Judy so popular? Because she kicks ass. From an integral perspective what she is doing is civilizing people who are at the red, or egocentric, level of development.”

[That] the Earth is a human planet becomes truer every day. Humans are made from the Earth, and the Earth is remade by human hands. Many earth scientists express this by stating that the Earth has entered a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans. We write with the conviction that knowledge and technology, applied with wisdom, might allow for a good, or even great, Anthropocene. ~An Ecomodernist Manifesto There is a debate going on among geologists about when the Anthropocene began. As recently reported in Aeon Magazine, some are recommending a start date in the 1950’s due to the proliferation of thermonuclear test explosions which left a radionuclide signature across the planet. But also because the early 1950’s “coincides with the beginning of the Great Acceleration in the second half of the 20th century, a period of unprecedented economic and population growth with matching surges in every aspect of planetary dominance, from the damming of rivers to fertiliser production, to ozone depletion” and of course, greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. In the integral world, we often emphasize the miracles of development and the evolution of consciousness, culture and technology that arise through it. But development also exacts great costs in the degradation of the natural world, atmosphere and oceans. We also suffer a psychological toll of being alienated from the natural cycles of the earth, and oftentimes from each other. And of course some say that development is much worse than that—it is our doom. But it may be more accurate to say that something new is being born. As societies develop populations become more urban and have fewer children, which results in a smaller ecological footprint. We see that in first world countries carbon dioxide emissions are beginning to drop, the air and water is ever cleaner, trees and biomass are increasing, and the number of wild animals is stable —  even as human populations increase (through longer life spans and immigration) and economies grow. It’s not all bad news. We have to make the wellbeing of everyone a top priority. We have to give everyone the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of modernity, or else we don’t get to enjoy them ourselves. It’s the Bodhisattva vow: nobody gets enlightened until everybody gets enlightened. This commitment naturally comes online as we develop. God is good at keeping us focused not only our where our individual growth lies, but the growth of humanity as a whole. ~Jeff Salzman Historically, we see ecological awareness come online as an effort to protect one’s own tribe, clan or country (thus the U.S. Clean Water and Clean Air Acts of the1970’s, as well and the clean-up efforts in China and other 2nd world countries today). This impulse matures as we become world-centric, and begin to see the all the earth and all the life it supports is sacred and worth preserving. “But didn’t early cultures also have a sacred relationship with the earth?” you might ask. Well, they may have engaged in nature worship, but that was about nature protecting them, not them protecting nature. As An Ecomodernist Manifesto points out, “Early human populations with much less advanced technologies had a far larger individual land footprint than societies have today.  Consider that a population of no more than one or two million North Americans hunted most of the continent’s large mammals into extinction by the late Pleistocene while burning and clearing forests across the continent in the process. Extensive human transformations of the environment continued through the Holocene period. As much as three quarters of all deforestation globally occurred before the industrial revolution.” This challenges a basic tenet of postmodern, green-altitude environmentalism, the “pre-trans fallacy” that says the way forward for humanity is to go back to the way it was in premodern and even pre-agricultural times. This is of course is completely unachievable short of the collapse of civilization and a major human die-off — which is why there are some people in the environmental movement that actually wish for a “great collapse.” As we push up against the limits of a finite planet, there are two competing views: 1) the modernist view that development is constructive and 2) the postmodernist view that development is destructive. What we see as integralists is that both sides of this pole reside in the first-tier altitude stack. As such, they think that their view is the only correct one and that people who hold the other view are co-opted, deluded, naive or stupid. Welcome to the politics of environmentalism! But from an integral perspective, again, it’s not all bad news. We see that the powerful conflict in these polarities is fruitful. Indeed, it is the engine of the dialectic of progress. We fight with our ideas but we have sex with them as well, creating more sophisticated, integrated perspectives. Excerpt | Tidying up: Enlightenment in the third person An Ecomodernist Manifesto presents just such an integrated perspective. As Slate Magazine says, “After decades of hearing environmentalists rally against things (no Keystone pipeline!), the change in tone coming from ecomodernists is palpable and welcome. It’s inclusive, it’s exciting, and it gives environmentalists something to fight for for a change. Plus, the ecomodernist focus on people and planet gives the broad middle of the American public a way to embrace ethical economic growth, without having to chain themselves to a pipeline.” So now, people who care about the planet can debate what we are going to say yes to, and how we are going to create a great Anthropocene—because there’s no going back. Humans are a geological force, as powerful as any other on the planet. We are Nature Herself, and no, Gaia is not mad at us. The Anthropocene posits a worldview in which humans are not just relevant but actually responsible for the fate of the planet. “What is important is that we see that we don’t have to fight something or correct something as much as we have to support something that is happening under its own power,” says Jeff, “This is the continued development of first-person consciousness, second-person culture and third-person technology.” Listen to the podcast for more details of Jeff’s integral analysis of An Ecomodernist Manifesto, and join the conversation. FULL TRANSCRIPT

After the last week’s podcast about the protests in Baltimore, Corey deVos, editor of Integral Life, put us in touch with a friend who lives there. “He’s an integral practitioner, a former member of the Black Panther party, a Buddhist meditation teacher and a therapist.” Do you want to talk to him? Um … yes! It seems like the people making most of the noise—the protesters and the pundits—are the either/or voices, trying to blame or exonerate. So Jeff was excited to talk to someone with an integral perspective on the African American experience at a time when the conversation is so ripe. …if we somehow can turn our attention towards our internal worlds, then we’ll find the strength to stand up in the face of injustice, and stand up in the face of the injustices that we commit against ourselves. ~Justin Miles Justin Miles shared a piece on Facebook that he called “Meditation for Militants” which stands out as an integral voice, calling not only for a look at the economic, political and social systems (the exteriors) but equally important, self-reflection among a community that feels so much anger that it can turn on itself. While some voices insist they should use that rage and bring down the system, others assert that “violence is not the answer.” As John Paul Brammer wrote this week in Blue Nation Review, the protests in Baltimore are “not a random, unprovoked outburst by a group of opportunists. This is how the unheard speak when words prove to be useless.” Indeed, anger has a lot of energy in it. That is why, from a tantric perspective, it can be useful—but only if you have the anger, and the anger doesn’t have you. Justin tells Jeff: “I think care and concern are a part of the nature of anger. They’re part of the usefulness of anger, wanting to go out and expand this feeling of wanting to improve things in Baltimore city. “The other side of that, I think, the part that maybe we’re not seeing, is the aspect of needing the anger in order to go beyond the anger. We don’t need to see anger as something that’s not useful or something that somehow we feel bad about. I say…let’s go with it. Let’s use that as our fuel.” To be effective, an activist needs to know his own mind and heart. Otherwise he will not be able to tell the difference between his own demons and the injustices inflicted upon him by a system that is uncaring, and he will burn everything indiscriminately. This is where contemplative practice comes in. When you take a step back and look within, says Justin, “what is discovered is clarity, strength and mental stability, qualities that all revolutions are based on at their core. The ideas of social movements arise out of deep concern and connection with our heartmind.” Justin’s big heart really comes through in this conversation, and we hope to have him back on  the show. Also in the podcast, Jeff looks at cynicism, and the role it plays in our political discourse. The integral perspective provides some relief from this tiresome outlook. Being aware of the fourth dimension (time) and taking multiple perspectives, “we become essentially post ideological. We become friends with life as it is, the world as it is, and we’re no longer comparing the world as it is unfavorably to some ideal…” And lastly, questions from listeners: Mark in Tennessee is wondering about the ontological reality of visions, and Suzanne from North Carolina is questioning the legitimacy of astrology in light of her integral awakening. FULL TRANSCRIPT

On the surface, the story of the unrest in Baltimore recently is a familiar story about police brutality and racism. But the glowing embers of civil unrest that were fanned into flames last week by Freddie Gray’s death is likely a systemic problem in America whose karma can be traced back to slavery. And more recently, four decades of middle class and working class jobs leaving American cities and the economic devastation that’s caused. In West Baltimore, where Gray lived and was arrested, more than half of people between 16 and 64 are unemployed. In this podcast, Jeff feels into the anger and hopelessness in impoverished communities stripped of opportunity, and how that resentment is expressed at different stages of development, as well as responded to by the powers that be. Excerpt | The media’s role in the story of the Baltimore protest The long game of overcoming racism isn’t just a matter of how people are treated by the police or how the laws are written or enforced.  The final piece happens in our hearts and minds as we really, really look into what it is to be like another person, and engage the venerable spiritual practice of exchanging oneself for other.   ~Jeff Salzman Measured in terms of death, destruction and injury, Jeff points out, the violence last week was about one tenth what it was during the riots in 1968. We can talk about how bad things are, and we can talk about how far we’ve come, and both perspectives are true. A funny thing happens as we develop–we become more sensitive to injustice, and act to rectify it. As we act to rectify it, we become ever more sensitive to it, and on it goes, so that the gap between our ideals and our reality never closes. The result is that less and less violence gets more and more attention. The news on TV is intended to hook our nervous system so we stay tuned, Jeff says… “Obama talked about the peaceful protesters, and how sad it was that one burning building will be looped on television over and over and over again, which is what happens. Yet, thousands of demonstrators did it the right way. Obama said, ‘The overwhelming majority of the community in Baltimore has handled this appropriately. Expressing real concern and outrage over the possibility that our laws were not applied evenly in the case of Mr. Gray, and that accountability needs to exist.’” The unfortunate fact about violence is that it actually works—in the short term. A week of protests in Baltimore didn’t get near the level of attention as they did when they started to turn violent. It was announced on Friday that the state attorney of Baltimore has brought homicide, manslaughter, and misconduct charges against the six officers involved. Hopefully justice gets done in this case, both in regards to the police officers, as well as the looters and arsons. But the larger conversation this engenders is the engine of our evolution. “What’s ultimately going to overcome racism on this planet is the increased ‘mongrelization’ of the human race, which is well underway” says Jeff. “That will continue with the increasing number of bi- tri- and multi-racial babies. I think this is a characteristic of the sacred world to come.” FULL TRANSCRIPT (RIGHT CLICK TO DOWNLOAD)

People are always sending Jeff questions, which he loves. Some of them he answers privately, others make for good podcasting and are worth sharing. The common thread running through most of them is an inquiry into: how are we to live more consciously and integrally? Not surprisingly, this is Jeff’s favorite topic of conversation! “We’re exploring this new territory intellectually,” he says, “but we also have integral awakenings that we can feel in our own bodies. We experience living in a new worldspace.  But what is it?  What does it feel like?  How does it call us to act? How do we settle here, become stabilized and take up residency?”  That’s at the core of the listener questions Jeff ponders this week … Is fundamentalism fundamental? Graham from British Columbia writes, “I’m curious if perhaps a certain level of fundamentalism is a necessary part of development across the spectrum and primarily shows up when a new level of development is achieved.” How do we encourage development? Peggy from New England is asking the perennial question in the integral world. “What’s the line between inviting and forcing? Is it possible to make anyone grow up?” What’s up with the whole Illuminati, alien, reptilian shape shifting conspiracy? Rob from Frankfurt’s friends send him videos and he’s baffled.”I don’t understand the draw to it, but a lot of my relatively developed friends are really into this stuff.” How do we engage with young people who are often despondent about the state of the planet? “They’re all so aware of what’s going wrong,” Marie from Montreal says. Integral theory provides a way of putting things in context for a more realistic (and hopeful) view. “As we move into a turquoise value system and the concept of evolutionary spirituality, what does the ‘it’ and ‘we’ spaces of Integral spiritual community look like?” This question from Beth, a Methodist minister in Minnesota who participated in the recent Christian conference here in Boulder. Thank you to everyone who sends in questions and comments. Please keep them coming! Our favorite way to get them is through Speakpipe, the orange tab to the right. You can also write to Jeff at jeff@dailyevolver.com. FULL TRANSCRIPT FULL PODCAST (PLUS EXCERPTS OF EACH QUESTION)

As the P5+1 reached the outline of a deal with Iran to roll back its nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions, modernists (orange altitude) celebrated in the US and in the streets of Tehran. Traditionalists (amber altitude), on both sides, warned that the other couldn’t be trusted. As Dr. Phil points out to heartbroken lovers trying to reconcile, you may not be able to trust the other to do what they say, but you can trust them to be who they are. In this podcast Jeff points out that governments have evolved into greater complexity and cooperation—from clans to tribes to empires to nations. We are seemingly on our way to a federation of nations, a de facto world government, and you can see it happening now in many spheres, including the way the world has cooperated to keep the pressure on Iran, from the US and Europe to China and even Russia, a formal ally of Iran. …there’s a modern America and a traditional America, and there’s a modern Iran and a traditional Iran. And all of four of these entities are negotiating with each other in a very interesting way. ~Jeff Salzman Nobody wants more nuclear weapons on the planet, but especially nobody wants one in the hands of the theocratic Iranian government, so much so that it has trumped other geo-political considerations. Maybe Tehran wouldn’t consider using them as official policy, but the possibility that they could find their way to someone who would is terrifying. In the podcast, Jeff invites us to feel into the scenario of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Chilling, no? Excerpt | Why are you negotiating with the devil? The premodern mind and the dangerous other Modern technology in the hands of premodern cultures is one of the greatest challenges of our time (ISIS, North Korea, etc.). A pre-modern mentality is ethnocentric and is organized around defending against an enemy. At the traditional/pre-modern stage, Jeff says, “we are in a cosmic struggle with those who are on the wrong side of things. Not only other people but other powers, including transcendent powers.” The traditionalists in Iran and in the US want to dig in their heels and fight the good fight. Meanwhile, the modernists are engaging with sanctions and diplomacy, which seem to have worked well enough. A deal was reached and thousands of people in Iran were celebrating on the streets and on social media. They are about to get relief from sanctions that have crippled Iran for a decade. A staggering 63% of Iran’s population is under 30 years old and they are dying to fully participate in the modern world, to share their “Persian-ness” as Jeff puts it — and we want them to! While the keyhole view that the West has into Iranian culture via social media can skew our perceptions, according to New York Magazine the “tiny hardliner counterprotest” outside of the Iranian Parliament—200 men carrying handwritten signs—was “lifeless by comparison.” Celebrations last night after #IranTalks #Tehran (AFP) pic.twitter.com/EfRM15gcvZ — Sanam Maher (@SanamMKhi) April 3, 2015 The tension is clear in Iran. But the key question is: can this deal delay their progress towards a nuclear weapon long enough for cultural evolution to deliver a decisive political tilt toward modernity? Theocracies are tough to change, and even tougher to change peacefully. Jeff talks about all of this in detail, and brings in a spiritual perspective. Plus, don’t miss the birthday dedication at the end from Ken Wilber, the crew at Integral Life, and a host of friends and fans… Check it out, and join us on Tuesday evening for The Daily Evolver Live on Integral Radio. FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jeff begins this first podcast of the 2015 Spring season by talking about the relationships we have with every precious form of life, from his garden tulips with their sensual unfolding in his ikebana arrangements … to the Great Mystery, the loving intelligence at the center and circumference of the Kosmos. “One of the projects of being an integral spiritual practitioner is to re-enchant the world. To see that everything that is alive is also conscious; it has awareness, volition and yes, even longing,” Jeff says. He reports on last weekend’s Return to the Heart of Christ Consciousness conference, put on by Integral Life, which drew over 250 people (plus several hundred more via the web) to the St. Julien Hotel here in Boulder, all of them looking at this question of how we humans relate to a personal divinity. The 2nd person relationship with Spirit changes dramatically as individuals and cultures develop. Generally, our connection to the spiritual realm is lost when we move from the traditional stage of development (the amber altitude) to the modern stage of development (the orange altitude). We are unable to reconcile God’s presence with science and rational thought. And then comes post-modern (green altitude) spirituality, which embraces first-person, nondual spiritual practices like meditation. It also embraces third-person spirituality such as deep ecology and nature mysticism. But God as creator, friend, lover? Not so much. There are still a lot of allergies, even with integralists, to the idea of a personal God. Excerpt | Losing your religion In the second half of the show Jeff is joined by Steve McIntosh, author of Integral Consciousness, Evolution’s Purpose, and his new book The Presence of the Infinite, which will be coming out later this year. Steve describes post-modern spirituality as progressive spirituality, and explains that it favors the nondual conception of ultimate reality. Evolutionary spirituality, which emerges at  integral consciousness, is a dialectical step beyond the postmodern worldview, and reintroduces us to a theistic, 2nd person relationship with the divine — but one that is post-mythic and trans-rational. Steve says, “… nonduality is based on a very deep, real, replicable, and ancient spiritual experience. But the theistic side also has its own sort of spiritual experience, which is not the same thing. This is the experience, as I argue, of the love of God. The love of a universe that cares. The love of a higher transcendent form of reality that exists within you. It’s immanent and transcendent.” But then, if God is so loving why is there so much suffering? Jeff wants to know. Steve says “the shadow of consciousness is suffering,” and does his best in the last part of the show to address the philosophical problem of evil–in five minutes! Check it out, and join us on Tuesday evening for The Daily Evolver Live on Integral Radio. FULL TRANSCRIPT

Look at the Perfect One At the Circle’s Center: He Spins and Whirls like a Golden Compass, Beyond all that is Rational, To show this dear world That Everything, Everything in Existence Does point to God. ~From “A Golden Compass”, by Hafiz The bloody, incendiary conflict between the modern world and radical Islamism has captured the world’s attention, and Steve McIntosh’s new paper for the Institute for Cultural Evolution (ICE) shines an integral light on this challenge. Fostering Evolution in Islamic Culture is a good example of just how powerful the integral perspective can be in sorting this stuff out. Muslim societies in the Middle East, that once carried science through the Dark Ages, are now entrenched in a dialectical antithesis with modernity. In Christianity, the reformation preceded the enlightenment, and it’s time, many argue, for Islam to have its own reformation. Excerpt | The problem of reverse orientalist in Islamic scholarship Is there is role for us to play in helping traditional Islamists to reform their religion and reclaim a reason-friendly Islam like the one that flourished in the Golden Age? “The majority of peaceful Muslims who love their religion may very well be persuaded to come up with a more modernist friendly version if they were assured that secularism was not going to be the end result,” Steve tells Jeff. Secularism and atheism are not the end of history, but that’s not clearly visible in the Islamic world. ~Steve McIntosh There is a deep, heroic impulse in many Muslims to rescue Islam from modernity, because they can’t see past the secularism and atheism that modernity ushers in. To traditionalists, cultural evolution feels like an existential threat. But God survives, and we meet God again on the other side. As Steve says: “Evolutionary spirituality reclaims the notion of a loving creator, but at a post-mythic, post-secular, and post-postmodern level. It can begin to recognize the deep theistic truths of Islam with new eyes and at a new level.” An integral perspective reveals Islam to be an ancient, venerable, necessary line of spiritual development within human history. We can begin by acknowledging this truth, and making room for a robust theism so moderate reformers can evolve Islam for the better, not just for Muslims, but for all of humanity. Enjoy the podcast. If you’d like to know more about the work of ICE, including a panel discussion at the Integral Center next month with Islamic scholars, visit the website.

On this episode of The Shrink & The Pundit, Jeff and Dr. Keith talk about one of the oldest and most dreaded of human afflictions. They consider not just the suffering, but also the wisdom and growth potential that depression offers. They look at the qualities of modernity that magnify the condition, the mixed blessing of pharmaceuticals and neuroscience, and how depression is experienced and best treated at different stages in the developmental journey. It seems that humanity is paying a heavy price for the “spectacularly tangible” achievements of modernity. The current generation has four times more depression than the last one, and ten times more than the one before that. Part of that story is increased self-awareness and over-diagnosis, but only part of it. Antidepressants are the most widely prescribed drugs in America. There is so much of these drugs in our waste that we’re actually poisoning the fish. What’s going on here? Generally, if you’re sufficiently bummed so that you can’t live the life you want to live, you could be depressed. But that includes a huge spectrum, says Dr. Keith. “When therapists talk about depression it’s like Eskimos talking about snow. There is a panoply of experiences that fall within the zone of depression.” All mammals have the capacity for it, but humans are particularly vulnerable because of genetic mutations that gave us an awareness of ourselves in the stream of time. The tradeoff for remembering a past and imagining a future is an increased capacity for depression and anxiety. Trusting your feelings only works when you are centered and connected with your higher self. ‘Trust your feelings’ does not work when you’re anxious, depressed or frightened. ~Dr. Keith Witt In the upper right quadrant of the AQAL maps (the physical body) there are many things that can contribute to depression—low testosterone, hyperthyroid, hypoglycemia and other endocrine imbalances, as well as chronic lack of sleep. The integral view is that there are causes of depression in each quadrant. It’s a bio-psycho-social condition, with genes, culture and individual choices all in play. Put any mammal into a situation of learned helplessness and they’ll get depressed, so groups of people with low socio-economic opportunity and a sense of oppression become very susceptible. Another way to depress people is to gradually give them more and more stuff to do so they never feel they have enough time to do what has to be done. Excerpt | Mammals have a natural capacity for depression, humans especially But the number one cause of depression is a sense of isolation. It’s an oft-remarked irony of the modern age that as connected as we are, we also experience more loneliness.  With increasing numbers of the population living in urban centers, uprooted from family and culture, there is a more pronounced sense of social isolation. So what to do? One in ten people are diagnosed with major depression at some point. Only about half of them get treatment and the most common treatment is drugs. In the podcast Dr. Keith tells Jeff how the drug companies hijacked the neuroscience back in the seventies to sell us the idea that depression is a biochemical imbalance, which is a partial truth. It was an easy sell, of course, because who wouldn’t want to believe that taking a pill could make everything better? Yet, they work barely better than placebos. “In 2007 the drug companies spent 23 billion dollars promoting antidepressants and 16 billion of that were free samples that they spread to doctors around the country,” he tells Jeff. And once you’re on them, it’s not so easy to get off. Of course, occasionally they do work. And when they work, they work really well. “If you’re at a ten on a 1-10 depression scale and they can take you down to an eight so you’re functional, that’s how they should be used—only for severely depressed people,” says Dr. Keith. An integrally informed psychotherapy is becoming the standard of the 21st century. It includes the possibility of pharmaceuticals but it will look at the issue from all four quadrants, with a developmental perspective, and the realization that different types of people are coming from different states of consciousness. People at different stages of development deal with different flavors of depression and anxiety. The source and the remedy depend upon your worldview. In addition to bio-psycho-social treatments, an integral approach can reframe the issue to include a larger embrace of all the aspects of being human, of being alive in a wonderful and difficult time. “At every stage in development there is a dark night,” says Jeff, “this is well mapped in the mystical traditions … and you’re supposed to be depressed, you’re supposed to be unhappy. It’s part of the path. In some ways we need to be friendlier to that.” In this way an integral perspective not only includes more, it can completely reframe the issue. Dr. Keith says there are many different kinds of depression, but in general, “if we see depression as a sign that the current worldview is breaking down, and that we need to push through to a new worldview, then that completely reorganizes our thinking around the experience. It’s not a sign of disease under that circumstance, it’s actually a reflection of development.” If your center of gravity is at an integral altitude, and you’re depressed, either you’re in the process of resolving that depression or you’re recognizing that you’re neglecting a major personal responsibility. ~Dr. Keith Witt In more developed stages we resolve to turn toward these emotions with more consciousness and more love, while staying connected to others. This is crucial. “People who try to get happy just to get happy are rarely successful,” says Dr. Keith, “people who do their best to engage in meaningful relationships, they get happier.” Find past episodes of The Shrink & The Pundit here, and more about Dr. Keith Witt here.