The benefits thus far have been far-reaching and extreme in their applications towards the living of my life. When I first began to read Ken's work, I remember being filled with enthusiasm and wonder at the implications of it all. One particularly poignant moment was when I was researching Wilber for a paper in school. I was sitting in a coffee shop on Pearl Street. It was a beautiful autumn day where the sun hits you just enough to keep you warm in the face of the colder winds blowing in to welcome winter. As I read about Integral philosophy with a cup in my hand, my energy began to raise in wonderment. For some amount of time I just sat there in deep contemplation feeling blessed to have received worldly confirmation of ideas that I felt deep within my heart but could not yet express. This single moment propelled me into a revolutionary way of living my life that continues its waves of delight to this day.
Since that moment a few years ago, I have had the great benefit to further my studies in Integral philosophy in school and to blend that with my spiritual practice of Siddha Yoga. Combined, these two streams in my life have created a flow of power that has allowed me to become free to be fully human. What this means for me is that I allow myself the full range of human emotion, feeling, intellect, spiritual power, experience, and potential. I feel intensely, express intensely, and am intensely mindful of the entire process. I no longer have predisposed notions towards what it means to be spiritual. Perhaps this is the greatest boon, because the entirety of my life is now spiritually-minded. When I listen to hip-hop, I listen intently. When I hold the hand of the woman I'm in love with, I do it knowing that I'm living my dharma. If I decide to go to a club for late-night, then it is a time of honoring the divine. When I engage in sitting practice, I do so with an easeful heart full of my own humanity.
The integral approach is vast in its possibilities. In my view, it is a new map for exploring what it means to be human in a world experience unlike any other in history. The benefits have been many so far, and I am intuiting that as I grow more experienced in the terrain and lay of the map, the benefits will move to being multi-dimensional in their scope and practice--stretching my freedom to be fully human past any of the present boundaries.
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"Free to be fully human........"
Posted July 1st, 2008 by Ken FreemanThe benefits thus far have been far-reaching and extreme in their applications towards the living of my life. When I first began to read Ken's work, I remember being filled with enthusiasm and wonder at the implications of it all. One particularly poignant moment was when I was researching Wilber for a paper in school. I was sitting in a coffee shop on Pearl Street. It was a beautiful autumn day where the sun hits you just enough to keep you warm in the face of the colder winds blowing in to welcome winter. As I read about Integral philosophy with a cup in my hand, my energy began to raise in wonderment. For some amount of time I just sat there in deep contemplation feeling blessed to have received worldly confirmation of ideas that I felt deep within my heart but could not yet express. This single moment propelled me into a revolutionary way of living my life that continues its waves of delight to this day.
Since that moment a few years ago, I have had the great benefit to further my studies in Integral philosophy in school and to blend that with my spiritual practice of Siddha Yoga. Combined, these two streams in my life have created a flow of power that has allowed me to become free to be fully human. What this means for me is that I allow myself the full range of human emotion, feeling, intellect, spiritual power, experience, and potential. I feel intensely, express intensely, and am intensely mindful of the entire process. I no longer have predisposed notions towards what it means to be spiritual. Perhaps this is the greatest boon, because the entirety of my life is now spiritually-minded. When I listen to hip-hop, I listen intently. When I hold the hand of the woman I'm in love with, I do it knowing that I'm living my dharma. If I decide to go to a club for late-night, then it is a time of honoring the divine. When I engage in sitting practice, I do so with an easeful heart full of my own humanity.
The integral approach is vast in its possibilities. In my view, it is a new map for exploring what it means to be human in a world experience unlike any other in history. The benefits have been many so far, and I am intuiting that as I grow more experienced in the terrain and lay of the map, the benefits will move to being multi-dimensional in their scope and practice--stretching my freedom to be fully human past any of the present boundaries.
-- Ken Freeman
Community Leader
Integral Life, Inc.