Reflections on the Integral Theory Conference 2008

My reflections from the Integral Theory Conference at JFK August 7-10, 2008, from this Integral Leaderhip Review - http://www.integralleadershipreview.com/archives/2008-08/2008-08-toc.html

Reflections on the Integral Theory Conference 2008

Gayle Karen Young

I'm reminded of Caroline Myss who said that we evolve at the rate of the tribe we are plugged into. For those of us who have spent time wandering, driven by ourdualistic seekers, the coming together of tribe in any form is beautiful.Thursday evening was the streaming in of the caravans from twenty-nine different countries to gather together, laden with precious gems of thought and the heady incense of open heartedness. The fluidity of definition of tribe was beautiful—in moments, it shifted from self, individual, teams, organizations, global world to kosmic and danced amidst all those constructs in the spaces between keynotes.

In Roger Walsh's Fridaynight keynote, he made the point that the antidotes to stagnation are an awareness of complacency and an orientation to growth-related relationships. This conference also acted as antidote, a smack to the self to be awake. Rumi talks about moments of wakefulness "that will eventually startle us back to the truth of who we are", and also says, “The doorway between worlds is round and open; don’t go back to sleep.”

During a session with Bill Torbert and his esteemed colleagues, Diane Musho Hamilton raised the question of the presence of the shadow and the keen awareness of it that seemed to linger and weave throughout various conference proceedings. In that, I was remindedof the nature of the shadow to arise where great light is. If the conference was meant to bring luminous beings together, and to strike sparks and kindle flames, then it is no surprise that darkness also arises.When striking a lamp in the darkness and the subsequent sudden deepening of shadows, it sometimes takes awhile for that newrelationship to the nature of the darkness itself to soften, to become penetrable, so we can again leave the light and journey into those shadows.

Susanne Cook-Greuter, in her keynote on Saturday evening, named the shadows we face beautifully. I know my ego felt naked and ashamed forhaving itsarrogantly more "sophisticated" issueson display, wanting to hide. Fortunately, Susanne halted my freefall into anxiety with an invitation, an opening, to experience beholding our collective beauty through the visage of the glowingly radiant face of a baby and the weathered, wise depths of the face of an elder.

Another metaphor that arose during the conference was that of birthing. It made me wonder if Ken Wilber as a singular entity is a paternal archetype for us. Is not this community with its multiplicity of voices, different faces,and its fluid nature the maternal aspect? We could get really Freudian and talk about his seed in the vast womb of our overbeings, but I think that's stretching it a wee bit far.

It is undeniable that seeds bore many fruits in this conference. The intellectual horsepower was awe-inspiring. Behind the papers, the rigor, the numbers, and the abstracts were the stories of love—love of truth, love of beauty, love of people and the more-than-human world. We move through these multiple worlds, and frequently other worlds get reduced to the merely tangible. While papers, posters, panels, and presentations (fun with alliteration!) formed much of the tangible structural spine for the conference, they also formed windows into personal and then collective stories of tenacity and courage, of descents into the ambiguous and into uncharted territories.

I enjoyed the panels a great deal, particularly the Integral Feminism panel. How lovely it is to dream together of a world in which each of the primordial tensions of the universe might get to live in full partnership, communion, and intimacy with each other. One point that was keenly made by the panel is that, regardless of the status of women in countries where we are privileged to not have had to fight for our status as human beings, there are places where women are denied that status. I found my rage evoked on behalf of women, but as keenly, my sadness on behalf of men for the caricature of masculinity it forces on them. And sadness for myself for the caricatures I have and can be when my relationships to the masculine and feminine in myself go unheeded. Discussing this later in conversation with Robb Smith, he embodied integral masculine in saying, “We just love you”, in a bighearted, open way, intensely direct way. So many young women (including myself at various times) want to be loved differentially"for who we are", the ego-affiliated being. There was something in the way he said it that encompassed something greater and personal. I got in that moment that he included his wife, me, every woman, and it made me cognizant what a great gift it is to be loved for the aspect of me as embodiment of divine feminine. In some ways, this quest to be loved as individual just doesn't work—the great funny paradox in that being that if we let ourselves relax into our own being enough, that which is more than individual can shine out and be loved and love, and we can be more loved “for who we are”.

In the spirit of multiplicity, the panels exemplified the capability necessary to have as a community to evoke our individual capacities for complexity, to hold and respect multiple viewpoints in a spirit of mutual exploration, from a place informed by a spectrum of experiences, research, information, perspectives, and sensitivities. The panels were but one microcosm of a community dancing with and enhancing its skill incontaining different viewpoints with an underlying commitment to life lived more freely, more presently, and more intimately.

People danced throughout, figuratively and literally. (I can officially say that there's nothing like getting down and boogying with the likes of Bill Torbert, Terry Patten, Diane Musho Hamilton—what great fun!) More than just the grooving, there was the tangible expression of joy in the bodies, the weaving of people unafraid to make eye contact, unafraid to revel in the joy o fbeing with others, and a great spirit of play.

I'm reminded of flowers and the ephemeral nature of them, of Paulo Coelho's work in speaking about flowers. Because it's not meant to be, it can never be lost, part of all the things we'll always have because of the very inability to possess them. As Paulo Coelho said in the book Brida, "I will always remember you, and you will always remember me, just as we will remember the evening, the rain on the windows, and all the things we’ll always have because we cannot possess them.” The conference was like that to me, something beautiful to behold, to experience and savor with the senses and then to let it go.

On one level, I felt keenly the ending of the conference approach, and yet when it happened, it seemed to me to end as naturally as leaves falling from trees. Perhaps that had something to do with the grace of ending in the Big Mind process for me, of the reminder of being non-linear beings caught in moments of linearity and reconnecting with that which doesn't end but shifts forms. Our own diaspora back into the world after this new birthing will be an interesting one, and I look forward to seeing what happens. When I think of scattering seeds, I think of this invitation from a poem by Dawna Markova, who says:

I choose to risk my significance
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom, goes on as fruit.