Toward a truly integral discourse: Part 1

Clint, thanks for sharing this story of your academic and visibly creative tour de force, its judged non-fulfillment of the prescribed task, and your subsequent feelings and recognitions.

This appears especially poignant since it seems that you are such a force, a creative force, and to have accomplished as much as you have I am guessing that you have had to be carried by your powerful expressive energies. I hope that this characterization isn't too presumptuous, but I get what you say here about the products of your work, have seen your very well-done introductions to integral here on ILC and in the video archives, as well as having seen you and, I forget his name at the moment, do the dynamic multi-perspectival exploration at the biennial conference. Were I so riding such a multi-year wave of momentus creative blessedness (which I can barely imagine), I would have trouble momentarily "being humbled", corralled by the surprise constraint of some unexpected scholarly discipline.

What a trip; and I'm glad you mention it. This does seem to bear on integral discourse and what might sometimes be required in order to have it be 'real' and deeply and broadly, humanly relevant. The flights of possibility being made honest by the firmness and density of the earth and of man, and by the heat of the sun.

As with now, as I begin to say more in verbal flourish than that in which I am more truly grounded in my response to your post.

I got to meet and talk with you for a few minutes at the conference and it felt good to feel a 3 dimensional personhood to go with the virtual images of you and your work.

I don't know much about music and the music industry either, if that's what you were saying, but I get that this direct and simple response by Ottmar was clear and friendly. Yeah, good stuff, ambo

Clint, I'm responding to what I saw as the juice of your post, at least for me: "Why am I going off on all of this?  Well, frankly, I question if I’m alone in this silly charade of self-assessed integralness masquerading as the truth while really just peddling an unseen “I’m integral, so what I say, what I think, what I write must be integral too” bullshit—all without stopping for half a second to authentically investigate my assumptions, my biases, my background, my context, my behaviors, my truth claims, my sources….and what all of it them are really constructed on." 

Thanks for drawing attention to one of the Integral "elephants in the middle of the room" regarding the/our "Integral Community".  At least as I see it, I wholly agree that it would serve us all if we not only were willing to look at ourselves regarding how authentically Integral we're being (and not), but were open to doing so with each other.  Why?  Because Integral, by definition (so far), means 2nd tier, at least (per Wilber).  I assume that being Integral means more than just our ability to "talk about" or discuss Integral theories and name drop high profile Integral theorists.  And two central characteristics of "being Integral", as I understand and experience that territory, is 1) being authentic (i.e., being truthful about ourselves and our lives, "what is") and also 2) being opened into the Agape orientation (oriented back toward the world), and not only into the Eros orientation (beyond the world).  As such, and since "Integral" also means "integrative", "to integrate" (and such), our willingness to engage each other about the authenticity or validness of our Integrality would seem like an obvious expression of those two characteristics of "being Integral", expressing/behaving integrally. 

Of course this begs the question, "What does 'being Integral' mean?"  Assuming none of us are going to determine this only in isolation while meditating and such, it has to be a collaborative discussion at least, having an interpersonal explorative dynamic regarding "behavior", by whatever signifiers or forms of expression and engaging.  That said, I know I often make the mistake of generalizing and projecting what I've experienced meditatively in 2nd/3rd tier territory as being "the stuff" of Integral reality (all assuming I'm actually in 2nd/3rd tier), what "Integral is", by whatever term and regardless of any particular Integral author's maps.  I've learned that until those inner zone 1 awarenesses are enculturated through interpersonally engaging each other consciously in it as well as about it, that I'm left with just "my zone 2 takes" on it.  That is, many of us might have cognitive agreement about Integral theory, but when it comes to enacting Integral, be it experiential-based understandings from innerworks  or theory-based understandings from reading and discussions), many of us "Integralists" don't seem to have much agreement about it, and are even at odds about it "how it looks and acts".  There is much need for an interpersonal experiential dynamic and agreement, beyond just any cognitive alignment about theories.  We need more mutuality and alignment about the "action" of it: how it looks, sounds, feels (and beyond concrete/rigid formulas, patterns, of such). 

Being part of the planning committee that's putting on the upcoming "Integral Leadership in Action" conference in Boulder next week (at the BCIL), I decided to head up an inquiry subgroup: "What is Integral leadership in action?".  My intention was to help us get interpersonally clearer about such notions as "how do we know we're "being/doing Integral", and not just talking about it, at best, while still actually "being/doing Green" (or Orange or Amber)?  (I'll also be moderating a session at the conference on Saturday afternoon, 4:15, and doing so Integrally, at least in my understanding to date, open to change).  My sense is we need to be more willing to put ourselves out there and give each other feedback about it.  Otherwise our blind spots stay blind spots.  Granted, many of us would rather not do this kind of "relating" in realtime like I would, but would rather withhold such interpersonal dynamics for structured classes and workshops.  That's understandable given the Green proclivities that we've become quite entrenched in over the years.

For what it's worth, to walk my talk and to be an exemplar (taking the lead by putting my Integral stuff out there), and at the risk of taking on more arrows myself (and thanks in advance to anyone feeling a need to lighten their quiver) my sense is that I'm relatively steeped in Turquoise, and still learning to allow Indigo to "come through" (rather mystical and amorphous in nature to me, in my zone 2 grasp of it, compared to 2nd tier dynamics anyhow, and especially 1st tier).  I also have a fair amount of Orange that plays out, but not so much Green (and not much Amber or Red, that I'm yet aware of).

As such, I'm relatively well opened into my authentic self (beyond hiding behind what I call my persona-self, my projected idealized self-image mask), willing and able to look at myself (and others), doing shadow work not only alone but interpersonally, even on the fly in realtime (for the help of others with my blind spots), living and learning, accepting the bumps and bruises, the awkwardness (and even embarrassment) of the happenings that occur on this Integral/spiritual journey we're all in.  In my experience, this certainly requires some degree of capability at being meta to myself while engaging others.  Transparency, and its occasional rawness, is part of all this, and the courage to be so.  I've found it helps to have this courage paired with some capability for it (I have a big background in interpersonal labs and such), otherwise the number of arrows I take on gets overwhelming, and I shut down.  I'm getting better about this kind of exposure, hence this post.

So why am I "positioning" myself here as an Integral person, about where I'm at Integrally, what I "know", or think I know, and not?  And what does it have to do with your post? 

For one, by making statements about how I know myself (as Integral to other Integral people), it sets me up to get feedback from others about it (because the Green, at least, in us seems to get easily triggered and is quick to give some form of feedback), especially feedback about any blind spots I'm still unaware of.  Like with anything, some feedback is more hearable by me than other feedback, all helpful, ultimately (I also get to see which feedback I resist and which I accept, better learning about "me", my self identity (btw, I hold that ego is not a bad thing since we're going to "have" one, evolving as it is, at least until we reach a Super Mind stage perspective; even before then if attaining nondual states).  In case it needs saying, I don't claim to be an expert at Integral theory, nor practice, but an avid aspirant of truth, fumbling my way to "One", by whatever term. 

For another, any of us that are sufficiently beyond Green (or 1st tier in general) must be, as I see it, more open about where we see ourselves, including with each other, in the Integral "paradigm" (and not just while in "safe" places like therapy, workshops, and such).  Actually, again, as I see it, if we are in fact Integral/authentic/transparent we WILL express such so we CAN get feedback (especially on our blind spots), and if we don't want to address them, how Integral/2nd-3rd tier could we possibly be?!  How Integral are we if we won't "out" ourselves about it, ESPECIALLY with other self-proclaimed Integral people (I suppose it's a bit more understandable if we don't want to do so in predominantly 1st tier company)?! 

We need to get more honest, well, that is, if we ARE Integral, about how the Green in us holds us back.  We all have Green, and its resistance/suppression of Integral dynamics, of Integral's ways and means, even our own Green in ourselves.  Hanging out in Green, we don't we have to acknowledge how we resist our facing the feelings of being challenged, or of being in conflict (conflict is only natural, not bad, that is, many differences will occur as conflicting), or getting over our fear of fear (generally resisting situations that elicit fear in us)? 

On a related note, as long as any of us are attempting to come across as "rather perfect" in our Integralness, I'd say we're NOT being Integral.  We're being our persona self, masking as perfect Integral, instead of our authentic self (which embraces but isn't run by our persona self, in my thinking).  That said, know that I'm not saying that I'm a fan of conflict, messiness, confusion, or chaos.  I just have learned the value in engaging it all because the other side of it is "heavenly".  My soul smiles, but my ego winces (some days more than others), but I've learned that wincing isn't a bad thing, just a sign of discomfort.  And where there's discomfort there's learning (if we don't contract unduly).  Which begs the question, how long are we going to avoid wincing and the like, and go on talking the Integral talk at the expense of not better walking that talk?  Since the walking of it is concurrently a process and an outcome, always, we never have to worry about fully "arriving".  We're never perfect at it (well, we're perfect in our unperfectness, as it were; whatever).

Anyhow, I feel like going on about related issues, sub-issues and considerations here, but I think I said enough to convey my point, and not suggesting I did so adeptly.  Just expressing and looking for some resonance about "getting out there" and discovering the "authenticity" of our Integral expressing, and hoping for only a tolerable amount of arrows in the process (whatever). 

Clint, thanks for expressing your concerns and thoughts about the this authenticity and validity issue around being Integral, and giving me an opportunity to express my echo and flesh out the issue a bit for myself.  I wholly support you here.  And best of luck with your grad work.

Thanks Clint for a very real and refreshing post, it's this kind of disclosure that makes Integral authentic. I too went through a similar transition when doing my PhD (also heavily sourced on KW), and can also affirm that the first step on the path to self-knowledge is to know how ignorant one is - it's definitely one of the great blessings of doing philosophy at this level.... And paradoxically, becoming more aware of ones unexamined assumptions, ones interpretive fore-structures and acknowledging that "I've got nothing" actually unleashed a lot of creative energy and new insights... My dissertation was written start to finished in just over 3 months after this confession of not-Knowing.

So your post is a precise expression of the Integral impulse - advanced perspective taking, making subject into object, widening one's frame of reference and opening a space in which more and more phenomena can arise... And although I can't judge my own success on this one, it's a great relief to drop the grandiose persona of "being perfect", or knowing everything, etc... So personally, now I just love ambiguity, paradoxes, the objective uncertainty of faith, the contingencies and oddities - and have less and less concern as to whether or not that makes me "second-tier". I appreciate your honesty and transparency in sharing this...

- "Become passers-by" (Jesus of Nazareth)