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ITC 2010 Update

Posted July 30th, 2010 by Robb Smith in Integral Post

Dear friends,

Thank you for your interest in what we’ve been up to at Integral Institute and Integral Life since my last update at Integral Theory Conference 2008. We are humbled that we can continue to serve as a hub in this community of leaders. We hope to continue to earn your trust and respect and we work hard everyday to contribute in whatever small ways we can to the evolution of our young, global integral effort.

The past two years have been trying given the extent and breadth of the economic downturn. It is no secret that donor giving is dramatically down for non-profits worldwide and many have had to close their doors. And most commercial enterprises have cut capacity and slashed growth plans as they have stockpiled cash reserves for the long harsh economic winter ahead that most are forecasting. We have seen these results across the integral field as various efforts have stalled for lack of funding and idealism has been forfeited in the face of brutal economic realities; indeed, 83% of Integral Life community members cite economic security and more material prosperity as their top concern in 2010.

Though we didn't fully anticipate the depth and scope of this economic downturn, we were prepared. We have structured the Institute with high-leverage partnerships with academic partners and by shifting the capital requirement of Institute-supporting overhead on to Integral Life as a commercial entity. By doing so our team was able to structure the Integral Institute with a high degree of resilience in its operating and overhead structure to withstand this kind of downturn. We have done so first so that the Institute is not economically reliant at all on outside donor support and second in order to provide as much leverage as possible to the donor support that we do get. We want our donors to be thrilled at our results for every dollar they invest with us.

Therefore I am very pleased to report significant progress and activities across the Integral Life + Institute ecosystem the past 24 months:

Established the first international chapter of Integral Institute. Integral Institute Australia is conducting an in-country research effort to gauge the needs and desires of stakeholders in Australia and New Zealand on their way to what we hope is a full formal chapter approval starting January 1, 2012
At Integral Life, investing several hundred thousand dollars in the complete rebuilding of the Integral Life content and community platform to broaden and deepen the member experience
In the past 24 months, tripled the size of the Integral Life community, which before year-end will exceed 100,000 people from over 30 countries
At Integral Institute, established a new academic book series in partnership with SUNY Press which over the next 12 months will publish 5 academic books applying Integral Philosophy, including several released today including Integral Education and Integral Psychotherapy
Moved the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice to SUNY Press, which is now distributing the journal worldwide through academic libraries and is experiencing double-digit month-over-month subscriber growth
Established “Integral Without Borders” as a new center housed within Integral Institute to focus on integral international aid and development with Paul Schaik, Emine Kiray and Gail Hochachka as directors
Published and promoted key integral experts’ work through Integral Life, including dedicated series like the free “Future of Love” teleseries featuring Deepak Chopra and Ken Wilber; Integral Spiritual Experience Media Collection featuring Marc Gafni and Diane Hamilton; free “Home for the Holidays” teleseries featuring Integral Coaches
Developing web training courses with featured integral teachers like the upcoming “Future of Being Christian” web course featuring Leslie Hershberger and the upcoming “Spiritual Intelligence” course featuring Cindy Wigglesworth
Exposed integral experts’ work and dialogues through Integral Life to a much broader non-integral audience of almost 50,000 unique visitors monthly (targeted to hit 150,000 unique monthly visitors within 18 months) fostering the economic sustainability of the wider integral teachers’ community
Started fundraising and pre-production work in partnership with Director Steve Brill and Screenwriter Stuart Davis on a major integrally-informed Hollywood motion picture
In partnership with JFK University, tripled enrollment in the graduate degree programs over the past 3 years and held two full-capacity integral academic conferences with 500+ attendees
In partnership with iEvolve, established a flagship spiritual celebration with the multi-year Integral Spiritual Experience at full-capacity of 500 attendees
Released innovative new offerings to deepen the at-home integral theory learning experience with Core Integral’s Essential Integral course and to deepen integral aesthetic appreciation with featured integral artist walkthroughs on Integral Life by Aesthetics Editor Michael Schwartz
Worked with global leaders to cultivate leadership skills and integral meta-perspectives and methods across domains and organizations, including Fortune 500 and Inc. 500 executives, Conscious Capitalism and State of the World Forum organizations, the United Nations and the Obama Administration, Wall Street investment fund managers and others
Continued to actively support, promote and evolve various communities of practice across the integral field

As you can see it's been a busy time for us despite the general economic downturn. We're committed to continuing to build the Integral Life + Institute ecosystem for supporting the integral field globally. Thank you so much for your ongoing support as members of Integral Life, teachers and scholars in the integral field, and friends and colleagues along the way.

Warm loving regards,

Robb Smith

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Aligning Expectations

Posted July 30th, 2010 by Jennifer Grove

Hi, Robb. Blessings to you and thank you for all you do to keep this all solvent. You can walk on the water of economic disaster. Of that, I have no doubt.

I just want to get some things clear in my mind because I've been seeing somethings happening and, well, y'know. I'm just trying to figure out if I'm crazy or if it's really happening. "Yes" to both questions is fine.

I'm feeling progressively more and more advertised to here. And the advertisers are shutting out meta-conversation. They don't seem to want to be transparent to us. They seem to want us to be less conscious and less free and to let our unconscious appetites do the clicking.

This goes for IL as well.

Are you guys thinking we've all got alot of money in here or are you thinking that these advertisers are actually going to end up seeing one another's advertisements and do business with each other or what?

Obviously I've got big feelings around this and I'm sorry for all my lack of skill around it. It will help me alot if I just knew what to expect. Up until recently I've expected this to be a relatively ad-free and spam-free zone where it is safe to discuss all manner of things freely with as much meta-mind as we can muster and while it is obviously "a free country" and we can say whatever we want, I'm really not comfortable doing my integral thinking in a space that is compromised by the anti-consciousness of advertising.

For just $14.95 a month, YOU TOO can reduce your Karma Footprint by becoming a Member of Integral Life!

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Not sure

Posted July 30th, 2010 by Robb Smith in response to Aligning Expectations

Hi Jennifer,

I'm not sure how to reply. It is true and will increasingly be the case that the more that we build a portfolio of offerings the more options our members will have to engage with these options - some are free (e.g., FOL teleseries) and some are not (e.g., ISE 1 Media Experience). This will be true merely as a matter of passing time because our library of offerings will increase over time. Obviously we do not want anyone to feel overloaded with sales pitches so that discernment and listening is something we'll have to watch and be aware of. We need to balance access with annoyance. I get it.

Having said that, the fact is that despite our growth we're still losing money. We currently do not run any real advertising on the site for members other than the left-hand column medallions. But we don't have Ford advertising, for example. So we have to try to offer our greater community options which are appealing to them and hopefully gets us to sustainability because we produce things they want. Obviously the alternative would be that the site and the dozens of projects we support can't sustain themselves, which is not an acceptable option for us. But I want to hear if there are specific suggestions of what we can improve. I can't promise we'll follow them but I can promise we'll listen very carefully.

As far as your unconscious appetites, I am pretty confident in how conscious your's are! :)

Love,

Robb

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LOL Wait! Wait!

Posted July 31st, 2010 by Jennifer Grove in response to Not sure

That's not what I meant. I don't mean the ad bar down the left side of the page or more features which will draw needed income to Integral.

I'm talking about IN THE FORUMS. More and more people are using their blogs to display their wares to us, wether it be Coaching, Training, Technology, Books, Education, or even Political Representation. Some use it even more subtly to display their writing on topics that aren't Integral related and/or which are meant to draw traffic to another site where they prolly get paid.

I feel bit confused by this as I thot this space was reserved for people to gather to interact about Integral Thot and Practice and discuss the media and offerings here at IL. Part of that includes creating a Lower Left or Community Interior which is totally disrupted by the presence of, what I consider, Forum Spam.

When I say, "This goes for IL as well." I'm talking about such things as the Big Fat Advertisement at the top of the Share page right now for IU. That is not a conversation. It is not a blog post. It is blatant and shameless Social Media Marketing. When I tried to push awareness into that, he slimed me.

I'm clearly not objecting to Integral figuring out ways to get money. I can do basic math. That's not my issue here. My issue is awareness and freedom.

I've been spending quite a bit of time the last week thinking about what an "Integral Marketing" would look like. I remember Corey once asking us, "How do you want to be marketed to?" and the question struck me as ironic and.... well.... oxymoronic.

I want an inquiry done into this. I'll start it, but I would like to see some participation by Leadership, if any y'all have time. It seems obvious that it has to be a win-win situation, but not at the expense of awareness and freedom. So something new has to be created here. The way it's being done is ... not satisfactory to my Integral sensibilities. And I know I'm not alone.

Thank you for your kind response (and compliment). You're a dear.

For just $14.95 a month, YOU TOO can reduce your Karma Footprint by becoming a Member of Integral Life!

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search

Posted July 31st, 2010 by stefano

It is fascinating and inspiring to hear just how much work is underway!

Something I'm curious about: is it a case of finding all the people whom already have some integral cognition?

[ In other words, only those with integral cognition would turn their attention to these ideas and practices, so all efforts are directed at those places where this wave is starting to emerge? Like, Western University and College students? ]

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My neice...

Posted July 31st, 2010 by Mark Davenport in response to [Comment Deleted]

...fits this description to a "T" and it blew me away when I visited her and her husband this summer. She is a very conservative church-going city council memeber in a small Washington (state) town in the shadow of Seattle...and got the Spiral at once!

We both had to revise some thinking. It was a great visit!

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next level?

Posted July 31st, 2010 by Mark Davenport in response to [Comment Deleted]

I'm not sure she needs to be led "up" to any level as she's pretty much over the doorstep already. For "horizontal expansion" I left her with several intro materials, charts, colorful graphs, etc. that I had on my laptop. From her emails to me since then, she seems to be taking it in. Busy labeling others' behaviors, she seems to be off much like I began. And we'll be in regular touch so it''s all good.

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altitudes, models, and complexity

Posted July 31st, 2010 by stefano in response to [Comment Deleted]

Hi, your insights remind me of the paper that Robb posted recently, indicating for our benefit that this is required reading:

Operationalizing Altitude.pdf

[ I was going to try a blog post about it once I'd felt more comfortable with it, but it seems relevant here. ]

We know from Integral Theory in general that holons are transcended and included by higher holons, and this gives us the vertical axis in many AQAL diagrams. That vertical axis is represented as a spectrum of colours. It is very lovely and elegant, but it is nonetheless very abstract -- it is just a vertical axis.

We also know that many researchers have studied human development, and they do it specifically by choosing a method and applying it to people. So there's something like, they write a specific question on a paper form, and then people provide answers to that question. This is the actual data. Then the researcher looks at data and analyses it for patterns. They perhaps notice that the data can be grouped into a number of classes of answers, and they might call each of these classes, a stage or order or level or station. Now every answer provided by people was of course individual and different, but the researchers identified common structures in the data. These structures become the model.

However, we have several researchers each with their own model, so we have several models. So the next question becomes, how do these models relate to each other?

I think this is where the notion of altitudes and their content, becomes quite tricky, and I think this is what the paper is trying to unentangle.

Remember that, whilst each model offers us a diagram with a set of levels -- in effect, each gives us a vertical axis -- each model was only created in response to the specific question that the researcher posed to their subjects. I suppose we could have a "wine taster's" model and ask people what tastes they like, and see whether those tastes evolve over time. But even if that did reveal a line of development, it would only be about taste. The question is directly tied to the data. In effect, this is the observer and the observed, the model and the content, being directly united in a perspective.

So if we take something like Spiral Dynamics, which is a perspective on values, it can get awkward if we then use Spiral Dynamics in the context of a different perspective altogether.

Nevertheless, we intuit that the direction in all these models, which are different perspectives, is always the same -- if goes from "low" to "high" of something, although what that "something" is has been an open question. The paper looks to answer this, and it points out that every model seems to go from low complexity to high complexity. Also, from low abstraction to high abstraction. These are the core structures apparent in every model they've examined.

So we have this rather nice set of distinctions:

the surface structures become apparent in the analysis of the questions and answers of a model (its perspective and the content that perspective revealed)
the core structures that are common to all developmental models (they are all about successive levels unfolding, each new level exhibiting increasing complexity and abstraction)

The second point is really about altitude in its most abstract sense, and the first point is about specific content when seen from a particular perspective.

I think this shows that first of all, someone's politics, their goals, their lifestyle, are much more about content, and so if that content is to be looked at developmentally, we would need to use the most fitting model (the one that most resembles the perspective that we are taking on that person, ie. if we're looking at values-content, we could use SD, but if we're looking at cognitive-content, we could use Kegan, and so on.)

It also shows that, because altitude in its abstract sense, is about increasing complexity and abstraction (of whatever content), then even Spiral Dynamics, because it is looking at values-content... isn't a good metric for other kinds of content. The models even use different words for altitude: level, order, stage, station... etc.

Overall, it does support very nicely, I think, the notion that there are many people out there whom we wouldn't recognise (from the content of their lives), what their altitude is, or at least, we could easily pigeonhole them because they superficially appear to match some superficial structure. (Which isn't to deride the models, as we haven't even asked the person to take the formal test which the model relies on for validity and consistency).

So the question becomes, perhaps, not so much, how do we find the people who are "yellow" or "teal" (ie. superficially seem to exhibit features that match the content of SD's description of yellow), but rather...

how do we find the people who's life experience has been of such complexity (and they have grown to meet that complexity) -- a complexity that could involve a myriad collection of content -- and their general altitude is now, in the abstract, intuitively recognisable as being high complexity and high abstraction?

A particularly interesting point, I thought, about that paper is that, they say that people can recognise complexity and abstraction just intuitively, even if they can't tell you in any formal way what the structures are or why it is more complex, ie. they can't analyse the content. But the altitude itself, complexity, abstraction, are intuitively recognisable.

PS. obviously this is my take on the paper, and people are better off reading it for themselves (then you can tell me where I messed up!!)

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I don't have time for a long answer but...

Posted July 31st, 2010 by Federico Parra

...there is always time to be grateful!

THANK YOU Robb, thanks to Corey, thanks to Clint, all the people in the I-life and I-I back stage...
and thank you Ken!!!

for taking care of this tree...

Our tree!

man kind little tree! being born, delicate, slowly, from the middle of the dust.

a big hurraaaa! for Integral Life! a big hurraaaa for Integral Institute.

That a myriad of angels take care of you day and night.

blessings for you and your beloved ones.

Fede

PD: Hey! Robb, What about an "Integral day"? like a celebration day? :-)

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Thank You

Posted August 1st, 2010 by Balder

Thank you, Robb, for your update on the inspiring range of activities you have been involved in or facilitated, and for your moving talk at ITC 2010 yesterday! Much appreciated. Rock on.

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What's Our Mission?

Posted August 2nd, 2010 by Stanley

This seems like a good time to reflect on what our mission is. Given our present talents and resources how can we best serve the World and the evolutionary impulse?

One possibility could be to work towards overall development especially from green to integral. Another possibility could be to try to steer the direction the integral movement takes.

This weekend I had the opportunity to visit a Spiritual community and speak with some fine people; many of whom had been meditating for over thirty years. Each one seemed to be riding the integral wave but had never heard of the integral movement or integral terms. Each one felt like they were inventing the integral movement on their own. Not one person had heard of our integral community including one person who lived in Boulder, Colorado!

This gave me the insight that there must be millions of people like this in the World. It seems to me that the most important mission we could perform would be to inform all of these people of what is already going on and then to try to draw together all of us so we could combine our minds and hearts to make this World a much better place. If this was our mission and we were not yet reaching and working shoulder to shoulder with millions of integrally informed people then we would not be doing our job right yet.

In the meantime just to survive these difficult times is quite an achievement. Thanks for your help and hard work Robb.

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