Friends, it is time to return to holding a good old fashioned book in our hands by taking a bit of a break from the endless YouTube videos, podcasts and streaming TV. Instead, let’s commit some time to engage in Ken Wilber’s Integral teachings, which are best absorbed as a psychoactive process of reading. And there is no better way to do this than by coming into community to study, inquire, practice together and generate collective wisdom.

Starting in January 2023, we will begin a deep dive into Wilber’s work at Integral Life in the format of a study group. We will use the book, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: the Spirit of Evolution (SES) as our study guide to explore his key ideas. By the way, to avoid any potential disappointment, there is no sex in this book!  SES is arguably Wilber’s magnum opus, and often intimidates people when it comes to actually turning the pages of this heavy book. So, let’s get into it together in a supportive online community. You are welcome to join this study group whether you are a beginner to Integral Theory or are somewhat crazy enough to repeat SES.

Ken Wilber, a visionary thinker and author, is the developer of a bold “theory of everything” that converges into relevance via history, cultural studies, anthropology, systems theory, developmental psychology, biology and the world’s great spiritual traditions. It is then powerfully applicable and practiced in fields as diverse as ecology, sustainability, psychotherapy, coaching, education, business, medicine, politics, art, international development and self development in an elegant multi-aptness that avoids both triviality and far-fetchedness. Having published over 25 books, Wilber’s writings have been translated into over 15 languages, with many of his early works still in print. Ultimately, Integral philosophy is a highly effective psychotechnology for sense-making, meaning-making and wisdom-embodying through the goodness, truth and beauty of both Eros and Agape.

Meeting times: Thursdays 11:30am PT, 2:30pm ET, 7:30pm GMT, Fridays 6:30am AET

Meeting dates (subject to change with advanced notice):

• Jan 5 – Welcome session, with a discussion on Holons. Please watch “Holons: The Building Blocks of the Universe” (Video by Corey DeVos, with some of the most important fundamentals of Integral Theory)
• Jan 12 – Intro and Chap 1: The Web of Life (36 pages from 3-39)
• Jan 19 – Chap. 2: The Patterns That Connects (45 pages from 40 – 85)
• Jan 26 – Chap. 3: Individual and Social (28 pages from 86 – 114)
• Feb 3 – Chap. 4: A View From Within (42 pages from 115 – 157)
• Feb 9 – Chap. 5: The Emergence of Human Nature (51 pages from 158 – 209)
• Feb 16 – Chap. 6: Magic, Mythic and Beyond (51 pages from 210 – 261)
• Feb 23 – Chap. 7: The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (24 pages 262 – 286)
• Mar 2 – OPEN FORUM + SMALL GROUP DISCUSSIONS
• Mar 9 – Chap. 8: The Depths of the Divine (38 pages from 287 – 325)
• Mar 16 – Chap. 9: The Way Up Is the Way Down (27 pages from 327 – 354)
• Mar 23 – Chap. 10: This-Worldly, Otherworldly (24 pages from 355 – 379)
• Mar 30 – Chap. 11: Brave New World (38 pages from 380 – 418)
• Apr 6 – Chap. 12: The Collapse of the Kosmos (58 pages from 419 – 477 – there are about 2.5 pages of pictures 🙂
• Apr 13 – Chap. 13: The Dominance of the Descenders (41 pages from 478 – 519)
• Apr 20 – Conclusion: Chap. 14: The Unpacking of God ( 31 pages from 520 – 551)

Please Note:

• The first 2 sessions of this series are FREE and open to all.  After that, a Partner level membership is required if you are not already a member of Integral Life. Click here to become a member. Once you become a member, you have access to all other live events for free for the year + discounts on courses.
• SES contains about 240 pages of notes which are optional reading. We will not be discussing those notes during meetings. Pages ix – xxv (Preface to the Second Edition, Revised) is also optional.
• Although these sessions are sequentially building up, drop-ins are welcome. However, please be caught up with the material as we won’t be going over chapters we have already covered.
• Ken Wilber is not attending these sessions, but don’t be surprised if one day he does!
• Follow Ken Wilber’s instructions for reading SES: “Read this book a sentence at a time. People who try to skip around get completely lost. If you simply read each sentence, the text will carry you along, and any problems encountered are usually cleared up down the road.”
• The page numbers above align with SES, second edition. However, other editions can be used just as well.
• This is an interactive group, therefore we highly encourage to join with video on so that you contribute to the sense of community and participation. There will be elements of practice and breakouts for certain chapters.
• You are highly encouraged to facilitate any chapter/s that you may find interesting to you. It gets boring if groups are only being facilitated by one person (Nomali).
• For questions regarding this study group, please contact Nomali through www.practicalintegral.com/nomali-perera.
• Optional: Join up to 10 minutes early to chit-chat with others, meditate or engage in some music together.

Hailed as “one of the most significant books ever published,” this work of far-reaching vision is a comprehensive exploration of the evolution of human consciousness. In this tour de force of scholarship and vision, Ken Wilber traces the course of evolution from matter to life to mind and describes the common patterns that evolution takes in all three of these domains. From the emergence of mind, he traces the evolution of human consciousness through its major stages of growth and development. Wilber particularly focuses on modernity and postmodernity- what they mean; how they impact gender issues, psychotherapy, ecological concerns, and various liberation movements; and how the modern and postmodern world conceive of Spirit. (source)

Reviews for Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: the Spirit of Evolution (SES)

• “The twenty-first century literally has three choices: Aristotle, Nietzsche, or Ken Wilber. This book, written with remarkable scholarly breadth and depth, is exactly the medicine we need for the new century and the new millennium: not because it will make us feel good, which it surely might, but because it can jolt us awake.”-Jack Crittenden, Ph.D., author of Beyond Individualism
  
• “A timely and bold wake-up call for humanity.”- San Francisco Chronicle
• “Hugely informed, outspoken, and deeply illumined, Ken Wilber’s penetrating insights uplevel the whole game of understanding human beings and human history.”- Branches of Light
• “The scope of the work is extraordinary. Only a handful of thinkers, such as Aurobindo in the East and Hegel in the West, have assembled such vast evolutionary visions. Yet Wilber’s view is unique not only in providing a far-reaching vision but also in grounding that vision in contemporary research in fields such as cosmology, biology, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and ecology.”- Roger Walsh, author of Essential Spirituality and The World of Shamanism
• “Wilber possesses the rare combination of a deep, advanced spiritual practice with a sharp wit, brain power and scholarship to rival the finest Princeton Ph.D. . . . Sex, Ecology, Spirituality rewards the reader with a comprehensive, nondualistic, and sophisticated analysis of our world and consciousness.”- Green Living
• “Wilber’s book is essential reading as a transplanetary survey of our problems and our possibilities. This is a book to live with for the next five years, and carry with you long into the next century.”- David Boadella, Journal of Family Life
• “Wilber is without a doubt one of the most significant thinkers of our time and brings a fresh understanding to our cultural situation and the prospects for an integral worldview in the next century. He displays a staggering erudition . . . a profound intuitive understanding and a highly developed analytical capacity. The combination is breathtaking. . . . Any thinker concerned with the big picture will find Wilber’s work a gold-mine of insights which make compulsory reading for the 21st century.”- Network: The Scientific and Medical Network Review
• “I think the most significant recent development in the field [of Transpersonal Psychology] is the publication of Ken Wilber’s book, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality . I would encourage anyone interested in exploring the field in depth to read this volume.” – Gnosis Magazine

Meet Your Facilitator

Nomali Perera, MA, PCC, has been in the field of leadership development coaching, facilitation and teaching since 2007. Nomali is a certified facilitator of Polarity Management, the Immunity to Change™ process, and an Integral Master Coach through Integral Coaching Canada. Nomali has also been a professional consultant in people development and training in Brazil and Mexico. She was a staff member of Integral Institute in the early to mid 2000’s and was a co-founder of the Boulder Integral Center.