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Request Guidance on my four quadrant approach

Posted November 10th, 2009 by Kathy Sprinkle in AQUAL Guidance

Greetings! I just joined the integral life community. I am excited to be here and wanted to check in and see if I am on the right track with something... I have a little blog Everyday Bliss where I explore a topic each week that I believe will contribute more bliss to one's life. This week my topic is Community and I thought it would be fun to do so in an integral/four quadrant way...  I would be most grateful to hear from members of Integral Life to determine if I have actually GROKed the four quadrants correctly and or if ther is anything you think might be useful as I consider my query this week. I copied my blog post below and I welcome your feed back here and/or over at the Everyday Bliss Blog. Thank you in advance for any and all consideration!

Looking forward,  Kathy Sprinkle

Integral Community, a four quadrant approach to this week's Bliss Initiatives

COMMUNITY - Sharing, participation, and fellowship.



So when I hit upon my idea to use the four quadrant approach to community I figured that someone out there must have already done the same thing and I would use that information as a type of template as I go forward. Unfortunately this just doesn't seem to be the case or the examples I have found seem to be called four quadrants but really have nothing to do with

Ken Wilber's

Integral approach. So I guess it is up to me to do some actual thinking!



Click on Graph to find out more about what looking at the world through a 4-quadrant lens provides.


  • Upper Left Quadrant (I) Bliss Initiative: Identify what is important to me when considering my participation in a given community. What am I interested in getting, giving, creating, sharing etc. I realize I have generally been pretty random about community and am interested what some intention can provide. I've noticed that since moving to my new neighborhood I haven't felt like jumping in with my usual vigor. I want to be selective about how I spend my time so considering what I want out of my community participation will be vital before I start forming new attachments!

  • Upper Right Quadrant (IT) Bliss Initiative: Identify all of my physical communities. In this exercise I will identify all the communities where I currently participate and determine in what new communities I want to participate. This should be a very fun exercise. Some communities are obvious like families, neighborhoods but others like park users, performing art center patrons aren't always at the forefront of our minds but are still part of the world we operate in.

  • Lower Left Quadrant (WE) Bliss Initiative: Enjoy some community. This is a simple one for me since I will be attending the monthly potluck dinner with my play date mommy group and their families. If you don't already have an event planned consider hosting a little gathering with/for one of your communities.

  • Lower Right Quadrant (ITS) Bliss Initiative: I'm going to find a global community initiative that I want to see realized and see what I can do to forward the action. I'm specifically thinking of some environmental project... more to come later in the week!

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Quadrant Basics

Posted November 11th, 2009 by Stanley

Your post remided me to reflect on my understanding of quadrants and their application. I think that the basic practice is to keep in mind how all four quadrants are always already at play regarding the object we are considering. The concept of community seems a little complex for me this morning so I will consider something simplier. Let's pick on poor old Stan. As I was collecting my thoughts it came to me how the four quadrents do not have firm boundaries between each other. So let's look at Stan.

In upper left he experiences various feelings and states; serenity and agitation, courage and fear, joy and sorrow, hope and despondency.  etc. He has various beliefs and thoughts but these are influenced or even created by his culture, lower left. This is a good reason for him to try to feed his mind and heart with the cultural influences of people who are opereating from a level of a degree of wisdom and compassion. This culture here at Integralllifee seems like a good and helpful influence overall.

Stan is also influenced by the environment he finds himself in. The influence of being in a noisy, ugly, dirty , run down ghetto  feels very different than being in beautiful setting in nature - lower right. Stan feels bad for all the children who spend 24/7/365 in the former.

Stan's brainmind is influenced by his inhereted psychoneural system and by the substances he takes into his body like clean or dirty air and water; nourishing food, and toxins - upper right Thanks for reminding me to reconsider the basics. I'm glad you are as excited about the value of this theory as I am. Bliss (Ananda)  is very good.

Stan