Meditation, Life Conditions, and Flow States

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Eleanor Roosevelt once said that "poor minds discuss people, average minds discuss events, and great minds discuss ideas."  Integral minds, we might add, discuss all three. 

In the Integral Profiles series, host Jeff Salzman sits down with some of today's most notable thinkers, teachers, and leaders, discussing the many ways they are catalyzing the Integral vision in their lives, in their hearts, and in their work.  These men and women are collectively defining the leading edge of evolution in today's world, their thoughts and actions actively influencing the shape and scope of tomorrow's possibilities. 

Why do people transform?  Short answer: we have no idea!  We might have a sense of what sorts of factors, pressures, and practices can help facilitate personal growth, but the actual mechanics of change are still mysterious and elusive.  Here Don and Jeff discuss just a few elements of personal development that we should keep in mind: the first being meditation, the only practice empirically proven to accelerate our growth through both vertical and horizontal stages of consciousness.  The second is called "Life Conditions", which refer to the general problems of existence that people encounter—problems which, to quote Einstein, "cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them."  Finally, Don talks about the vital importance for preparation, drawing from his experience in athletics to demonstrate how we can be carefully primed for peak performance and states of effortless flow, and how familiarizing ourselves with these states can go a long way to create a collective atmosphere of transcendence and transformation.

"Graves would say 'Don, you can't change people!'  All you can do is relate what you are doing to their natural motivational flow.  Over time, certain things happen that indeed will change.  But if you think you're in charge at that point, you're really pretty naive." -Don Beck

Don Edward Beck, Ph.D., is Co-founder of The National Values Center in Denton, Texas, and President and CEO of The Spiral Dynamics Group, Inc.  Beck co-authored The Crucible: Forging South Africa's Future (with Graham Linscott, l991) and Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership & Change (with Christopher Cowan, l996). He also writes a "Sports Values" column for the Dallas Morning News and appears often in the media regarding issues related to values, sports, and racial divides.

Jeff Salzman is cofounder and lead teacher at Boulder Integral, a conference center dedicated to integral development. He worked with Ken Wilber for three years in building Integral Institute. Jeff is cofounder of CareerTrack, one the world's leading professional-development companies. A long-time spiritual practioner in many traditions, he has a Masters Degree in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism from Naropa University.