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Start building your big picture mind & support the global emergence of Integral consciousness
“Integral Life is the most important and globally-relevant platform for the leading edge of Integral consciousness evolution”
– Eugene P.
Perspective Shift:
- Spirituality doesn’t begin with certainty — it begins with rupture. The real path didn’t start with incense, meditation, or transcendent states — it started with the tragic murder of Alexander’s father. That moment didn’t offer enlightenment; it shattered meaning entirely. And that shattering became the gateway to real spiritual work — not to escape pain, but to learn how to stay with it.
- Meditation isn’t always a sanctuary — it can be a battleground for unintegrated grief. Spiritual practice without shadow work becomes a container for unresolved trauma. For years, Alexander’s meditation was filled not with peace, but rage at a God he didn’t believe in. He wasn’t transcending; he was projecting. The practice wasn’t wrong—it was incomplete. Healing required including the very wounds he was trying to transcend.
- Don’t just transcend your pain — include it. Spiritual practice can become a polished form of avoidance. We aim for higher states, but leave our grief behind. Meditation fills with rage, devotion masks despair, and the path becomes performance. Transcendence isn’t wrong — it’s just incomplete. Real healing begins when we turn toward the very pain we’re trying to rise above. Inclusion doesn’t interrupt the path — it is the path.
- Love isn’t at the top of the ladder, it’s in every rung, waiting to be recognized. Development isn’t vertical. It’s musical. Like a harp, every note is present in every person. Later stages don’t “replace” earlier ones—they deepen and include them. The illusion of altitude collapses when we realize that love, clarity, and divinity express themselves through every note, every stage, and every moment.
- Later stages hurt more, but bother you less. As consciousness evolves, you don’t become immune to human suffering — you feel it more deeply, while simultaneously resting in the freedom that transcends it. You’ll cry harder over loss, while recognizing the super-illusion nature of what’s happening. The paradox resolves itself through embodied wisdom rather than conceptual understanding.
In this deeply touching conversation, Evolving Spirit host Kimberley Theresa Lafferty is joined by teacher, guide, and Chinese medicine practitioner Alexander Love for a profound exploration of the spiritual path — one that begins not in clarity or bliss, but in tragedy, grief, and rupture.
Alexander opens up about the formative trauma of losing his father to a violent death at age 20, a moment that didn’t launch him into enlightenment, but into unrelenting grief and the long arc of spiritual maturation. From early psychedelic experimentation and immersion in Zen texts to 15 years of unwavering devotion to Surat Shabd Yoga (a tradition of uniting with the primordial sound current), Alexander charts his journey through states of divine longing, spiritual projection, and existential rage — all the way to a transformative realization: the love he was seeking had always been there.
But this isn’t a hero’s journey of neat resolutions. It’s a rich inquiry into what happens when spiritual practice becomes an escape route from pain rather than a container for it. Alexander speaks candidly about how it wasn’t until shadow work entered the picture — through teachers like Kim Barta — that his spirituality shifted from transcendence to integration.
Together, Kimberley and Alexander dive deep into the ethical terrain of developmental models, questioning how tools like the STAGES model (developed by Terry O’Fallon) can either help us rank people or love them more precisely. Alexander advocates for a humble, heart-first approach to development, one that sees stages not as hierarchies to climb but as harmonics in the larger melody of becoming.
The conversation weaves through parenting, trauma, spiritual states, bilocation, tantric wisdom, Mahamudra, Dzogchen, integral theory, community ethics, and the living architecture of consciousness. At every turn, the question remains: Are we using our maps and models to separate, classify, and divide, or are we using them to bring us closer to love?
This is a conversation for seekers, parents, mystics, skeptics, therapists, and truth-lovers alike. It reminds us that no stage is better than another, that love doesn’t care about our altitude — and that the path forward isn’t a ladder, it’s a symphony.
Key Questions
Here are some questions you can contemplate while listening to this discussion. We suggest you take some time to use these as journaling prompts.
- What pain have I tried to transcend instead of integrate? Have I used spiritual practice, personal growth, or even productivity as a way to bypass deep grief or disconnection? What would it mean to turn toward the hurt instead of away from it?
- What am I projecting onto my spiritual teachers — or onto God? Do I carry unmet needs from early relationships into my spiritual life? Is there a “father figure,” guru, or inner critic I’m secretly still arguing with? What am I asking divinity to give me that I haven’t yet given myself?
- Do I recognize the sacred in the ordinary? Have I ever had an experience—however fleeting—of love, awareness, or clarity permeating a mundane environment, like an airport or a grocery store? What might help me become more available to those moments?
- Where in my life am I resisting the reality of “what is”? Am I still trying to get “out of here” in some way—out of my body, out of this moment, out of this culture or relationship? What would it mean to let divinity show up right here?
- When I encounter someone who triggers me—can I see the unbroken part of them? Can I practice seeing through someone’s trauma, confusion, or reactivity into the deeper wholeness that animates them? And can I do the same for myself?
Previous Episodes of Evolving Spirit
Become a member to access the full episode
Start building your big picture mind & support the global emergence of Integral consciousness
“Integral Life is the most important and globally-relevant platform for the leading edge of Integral consciousness evolution”
– Eugene P.
About Alexander Love
Alexander M. Love, M.Ac., PCC, is an internationally renowned facilitator, developmental coach, and acupuncturist. He is the creator of the Lumina Process, a coaching modality that parts work, eastern wisdom, and polarity work into a model of practice which evokes deep-seated transformation. Alexander is senior faculty at the Newfield Network and facilitates Newfield’s US coach training, their advanced training in Chile, and has created several on-demand courses. Alexander is a leading voice in defining the coaching field in this era. He emphasizes wholeness and is a leader in supporting humanity to access and live from our brilliant human potential.
About Kimberley Lafferty
Kimberley Theresa Lafferty is a seasoned teacher-practitioner specializing in constructive developmental psychology and Indo-Tibetan Vajrayana. She leads multi-year, private spiritual education cohorts with the Confluence Experience. Kimberley co-leads, with Terri O’Fallon, the penultimate Minds I year-long developmental course of Stages International. She is an active Board member for the Association for Spiritual Integrity. Kimberley is also a wife and mother to a young son, living in a remote valley of the North Cascades of North America which deeply impacts her worldview and practice.