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Overflowing Purpose: An Inside Look

In this short 14-minute video, we give you an exclusive inside look at Overflowing Purpose, a transformative new course that brings together renowned thinkers like Ken Wilber, John Vervaeke, Robb Smith, Cindy Wigglesworth, Gail Hochachka, Peter Merry, Greg Thomas, and others to address the complex challenges of our time — and your unique role in meeting those challenges.

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Spiritual Intelligence: 21 Skills for Wisdom, Compassion, and Love in Action

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Cindy Wigglesworth, trailblazer in the field of spiritual intelligence, has created an assessment tool that identifies our spiritual strengths and weaknesses — qualities that fall outside the traditional IQ or emotional intelligence (EQ) parameters — in order to provide a guide for determining which skills we as individuals need to develop in order to show up in the world as love in action.

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The Wonderful (But Flawed) Ideals of DEI

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Keith Martin-Smith takes a careful look at the diversity, equity, and inclusion movement when he began to notice the damage it was causing people he knew under the guise of progress, or equity. Putting his keen mind to the task, Keith identified seven key areas where the DEI movement goes markedly astray from the values it aspires to.

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How America Got Here: A 50 Year Journey to Polarization

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Robb Smith and Josh Leonard look at the deep structures — in the form of actual events, policies and decisions between 1970 and 2024 — that radically shifted America from one form of system “regime” and associated equilibrium, that of relative national coherence in the early 1970s, into a new, radically- and qualitatively-different regime and equilibrium of extreme polarized decoherence of 2024.

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Democracy in Decline? The Supreme Court and the Threat to Public Morality

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How did the democratic process and the values it represents — equality and liberty for all — come to be teetering on the brink? Mark illuminates the fact that the Constitution is not a set-in-stone document, but eminently open to interpretation, and explains that its interpretation is a direct reflection of the worldviews of the Supreme Court justices. In fact, the whole process of democracy needs to be aligned with a certain level of development in order to deliver…

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From Four Quadrants to Eight Zones

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Corey deVos offers a simple tour through the 8 zones of Integral metatheory, resulting in a profoundly comprehensive and holistic view of reality. Whether applied to relationships, social justice, or personal development, the 8 zones offer a powerful tool for enhancing our capacity to address and resolve conflicts, enrich our connections, and create a more inclusive and harmonious world.

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IAM: Organizing Big Pictures For The Transformation Age

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Josh Leonard and Robb Smith discuss the founding and evolution of the Institute of Applied Metatheory (IAM). They explore the urgent need for an organization that networks and supports scholar-practitioners in applying integrative metatheory to complex 21st-century challenges. The conversation reflects on the integral movement’s stages and challenges, societal shifts necessitating IAM’s emergence, and the four foundational hypotheses underpinning its work.

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Ken Wilber’s Map of Everything

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Brad Reynolds gives us a beautiful distillation of Ken Wilber’s work, starting from the beginning and spanning decades. Not only does Brad elegantly relate the major themes of Ken’s work, he also makes clear the value of Ken’s contributions—the way this knowledge can be understood and applied to literally expand our notion of reality and evolve our consciousness

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Sex, Pronouns, and Prepositions: How an Integral Mathematics of Perspectives Can Stop the AI Apocalypse

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Bruce Alderman introduces an expanded version of Ken Wilber’s integral mathematics, a notational system for mapping the complex interplay of perspectives in communication and meaning-making. He demonstrates the potential applications of this enhanced system across various domains, from modeling ethical decision-making in AI to facilitating transdisciplinary collaboration, while acknowledging the need for further testing and collaboration to fully realize its potential.

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Inhabit: Your Awakening

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Corey deVos and Ryan Oelke explore the nature of integral awakening, drawing on their own experiences and the insights of integral theory. They discuss how awakening is a universal human potential, but one that is profoundly shaped by the unique “Kosmic address” of each individual – their particular stage of development, state of consciousness, typologies, cultural contexts, social conditions, and so forth.

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The Psychology of Climate Change

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Climate change researcher, sustainable development expert, and activist Gail Hochachka works on the front lines of climate change research, asking—and answering—questions like: How does the way we make meaning, at all our different stages of development, relate to the ways we act on climate change? How can we foster more engagement with climate change? Is climate action scalable? And how are we going to show up for the people who are facing the greatest impacts?

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Bringing Soul and Integrity to American Politics

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More than a political talk, Marianne reveals a psychological and spiritual portrait of the United States, referencing the brilliant vision of our founding fathers, Martin Luther King’s goal of Beloved Community, and telling a stirring story of the way Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration reflects the high morality of the populace at that time.

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Integral Cinema Studio

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In this remarkable exploration, Mark walks us through all of the main elements of Integral theory—using some of our favorite movies to illustrate the basics of the Integral approach, while noting how each of these elements has shaped the cinema experience since the invention of film itself. Not only does this series offer a wealth of perspective and insight to film, filmmakers, and audiences alike, but it also brings more color, more sound, and more awesome explosions to Integral thought and practice.

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The Holonic Lens

The first Integral lens I will explore is the HOLONIC lens. This lens helps us look upon everything we perceive as a HOLON; a whole that is part of another whole. Holons are the essential building blocks of our reality. A whole atom is part of a whole molecule, which is part of a whole cell, which is part of a whole organism

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Buddhas in Blue: Enlightened Ways to Make Policing Work For Everyone

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In this moving, illuminating, and impassioned discussion, retired Police Lt. Chris Orrey and San Bruno Police Chief Ryan Johansen open our eyes as to the realities of policing in today’s world and offer solutions as to how the entire institution of police work could be transformed to become more effective and sustainable, both for police officers and for the communities they serve.

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Diversity, Empathy, and Integration: Reframing and Reclaiming a Movement Toward Healing and Wholeness

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Brad Kershner offers a deep and detailed criticism of standard DEI approaches (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion), highlighting the complexities of ethnicity, race, and cultural evolution. He challenges prevailing educational metaphors grounded in the postmodern perspective, advocating for a more universal application of modern liberal values, and emphasizing the need for a nuanced understanding to forge a more genuine and generative path forward for social justice.

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The Essence of Awakening: Who Are We Really?

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Lama Surya Das, beloved meditation teacher, scholar, pioneer of bringing Tibetan Buddhism to the West, and author of the bestseller Awakening the Buddha Within among many more, shares bright gems of wisdom from his extensive experience practicing Dzogchen, his long immersion in meditation retreats, and studying in person with the great spiritual teachers of Asia.

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Building a Just World: How Our Laws Express Our Collective Values

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Constitutional law expert and criminal justice professor Mark Fischler has a thirst for justice and a gift for teaching. With cogency and passion, Mark explains that law is not the absolute that we perhaps thought, but an ever changing reflection of the values we hold as a society. Law is a developmental process, and will benefit from our own dedication to inner moral development.

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From Race to Culture to Kosmos

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Join cultural analyst and co-founder of the Jazz Leadership Project, Greg Thomas, as he explores the transformative power of culture, using his knowledge of jazz and blues as a conduit to greater understanding and connection. Greg tackles layered issues of race through a systemic lens, suggesting a shift from racial to cultural worldview, offering an enlightening dialogue filled with anecdotes from music history and a rich exploration of how shared cultural experiences can dissolve boundaries and unite us all.

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Grappling with the Metacrisis

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In this dialogue, the world of metatheories comes alive with urgent, purposeful meaning, because as Sean and Nick point out, integrative metatheories like Ken Wilber’s integral theory and Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism are the only tools that provide a useful framework for us to talk about and confront the vast web of interrelated and wicked problems we face on every level at this time.

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Illuminating the Integral Vision: A Metatheory for Understanding Self, Life, and the World

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Corey gives a terrifically lucid explanation of what the term Integral encompasses: a stage of psychological development, a description of Ken Wilber’s life’s work, and a comprehensive map that comes alive for people, guiding their way and making sense out of enormously complex issues. Corey also describes Integral as a gateway between two massive phases in human history — the “adolescent” phase of collective development now starting to fall behind us, and an integrated phase quite possibly ahead.

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The Edge of the Future: Education, Civilization, and the Metacrisis

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Educator, author, philosopher, and futurist Zachary Stein gives a startling account of the effects the digital age already has on education and where this is headed. Zak sees education in a deeply philosophical sense as fundamental to the sustainability of our civilization, with implications for each component of the metacrisis. Who will be driving the technology stack that actually leads to a viable civilization? Can we maintain our psychological sovereignty in a sea of digital propaganda and know the truth?

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No Beginnings, No Endings: A Dialogue with Living Jazz Great Wayne Shorter

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Wayne Shorter, likely the greatest jazz composer since Thelonious Monk, was also one of the most influential tenor and soprano saxophonists in the post-John Coltrane period from the mid-1960s onward. His death on March 2, 2023, at the age of 89, marks the end of a musical life that spanned a panoply of styles and configurations, from hard bop to electronic fusion and funk to Brazilian and Caribbean to orchestral and the avant-garde, all suffused his own idiosyncratic melding of sounds and sensibilities which seemed to reach from the heat-center of the earth to the infinite expanses of the cosmos.

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Tapping Into Divine Guidance

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“Tapping into Divine guidance” is a term most of us in the Integral family are familiar with. But what is the difference between that and prophesy or prophesizing? And what would practicing a prophetic modality entail? Join Lisa and Kevin with guest practitioner Rodrick Chambers, an ordained minister and spiritual coach, as we dive into the role of prophesy in the 21st Century.

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Nature as Teacher: Finding Beauty, Wisdom, and Self in Everything

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Adult psychology pioneer and ego development expert Susanne Cook-Greuter introduces us to her favorite wisdom teacher: Nature. Susanne explains how Integral Theory’s 3-2-1 Process can be practiced with elements in nature to gain greater insight into the teachings of nature—evolution, cycles of life and death, the transience of life, the beauty that is everywhere—and to experience oneness with all.

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Awakening Joy: Life Skills for Living, Loving, and Serving Life to the Full

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James’ teachings take us deeply into states like gratitude and compassionate presence, to where we can focus our attention on how it feels to feel good somatically, thereby creating new neural pathways that strengthen awareness and aliveness. James has witnessed a lot of people learn to love themselves and turn their lives around as a result of this teaching.

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The Source and Heart of Judaism and the Great Religions

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In this remarkable conversation, Zvi describes how he found ways to map and interpret his own profound mystical experiences, how the teachings arise from the ground of being, about how they might become accessible to us all, regardless of religion or spiritual tradition, and how they are especially relevant for young people today, seeking to find a structure for their spiritual journey.

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Vertical Development’s Many Gifts

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Beena Sharma, president of the Vertical Development Academy (VeDA), gives a beautifully cogent explanation of the 8-stage, full spectrum model of adult psychological development, Vertical Development — illuminating us not only to the characteristics of each stage of development, but the implications and ramifications of each stage, the process of human development as a whole, and how this model can help us face our current metacrisis.

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Personality as the Base Note of Change Work

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Watch as Dr. Keith offers a “Psychotherapy Masterclass” that helps us work with various personality types as a foundation for healing, change, and self-actualization. While intended for other psychotherapy professionals, this discussion offers valuable insight for all of us, and can be immediately applied to our personal transformational work, whatever that may be.

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Blue Pearl: A One World Oratorio

The world premiere of Blue Pearl: A One World Oratorio, composed by Steve Banks and performed on 14th May 2022, at St Giles’ Cripplegate, London.

Blue Pearl is an ground-breaking new oratorio for choir, four solo singers and orchestra. It is inspired by the writing of American mystical philosopher, Ken Wilber, and his Integral vision.

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How to Heal a Culture That Has Lost Its Soul

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Rebel Wisdom co-founder Alexander Beiner has his finger on the cultural pulse of our times. Here he explores key challenges we face as a global community: sensemaking and truth finding in an culture that has lost its coherence as well as its sense of the divine, and what role psychedelics might play both therapeutically and spiritually in healing our culture. He discusses the need to go beyond the intellectual to find clarity and coherence, using embodied practices like meditation and inquiry, and explains how modalities such as these are an essential container for therapeutic psychedelic experiences.

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Healing Collective Trauma: We Are All Shareholders in a Traumatized World

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Thomas Hübl, renowned spiritual teacher, author, expert on collective trauma, and creator and facilitator of The Collective Trauma Integration Process, shares fascinating, life changing information about the dynamics of collective trauma — how it is embodied and perpetuated in the language we use, and how we are bound together in a sort of “mutual collusion” that predisposes us to repeat our past, and to repeat over and over the things we would much rather leave behind.

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Illuminating Our Stage Structures

Sometimes in our psychological development the way forward requires us to go back, to re-explore earlier stages of life to see what is distorted or left unintegrated. This is the theme of the work of my guest today, developmental psychotherapist Kim Barta, who joins us to discuss his approach to personal growth.

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Re/Thinking Religion: Integral Postmetaphysical Spirituality

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John Vervaeke joins Bruce Alderman and Layman Pascal to explore some of the commonalities and differences between Integral Postmetaphysical Spirituality and Integral Life Practice, and John’s “religion that is not a religion” and his work around developing an ecology of practices suitable for addressing the meaning crisis.

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The Moral Imperative to Help Ukraine

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Integral leaders Kateryna Yasko, Vytautas Bučiūnas, and Bence Gánti illuminate many of the most poignant and pressing questions of our time, brought to the fore by the ongoing war in Ukraine: Can postmodern people embrace a warrior consciousness when necessary? Are Russians who explicitly support the war worthy of compassion? Can people remain sane and humane while at the same time taking up arms? How can we handle the effects of the psychological trauma that will cascade over generations? And how do we prevent the mass delusion and psychosis that is so easily propagated via modern media technology?

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Inhabit: Your Speech

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What are the unique challenges that prevent you from inhabiting your most authentic and embodied voice, and how can integral thought and practice help us to overcome those challenges — in our society, in our communities, and in our own consciousness? Watch as Ryan and Corey take a look at a recent article by Jonathan Haidt, and explore how we can bring more “enfoldment mechanisms” to our activities in all four quadrants.

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Beyond the Culture War: Consciousness Evolves, Politics Can Too

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Steve McIntosh outlines an extraordinary framework to make sense of our political conflicts—extraordinary in that it points to ways through and out of our persistent polarity consciousness. Steve convincingly argues our opportunity is right now: to create a synthesis, a cooperative agreement space, that transcends and includes thesis and antithesis, left and right, individual and community.

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The Essence of Zen: One Heart, One Mind

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Zen teacher Diane Musho Hamilton brings us home to the simple essence of Zen: to practice as one, without reference to past or future. This heartfelt conversation covers many topics: waking up to our true nature, grief and practices that help us work through it, the tension of “difference,” healing the rift between female and male, the role of ayahuasca and peyote, the ever more subtle process of purification, and a beautiful recitation of 14th century Sufi poet Hafiz’s poem, “I Have Learned So Much.” Allow yourself to be reminded how simple things can get if you let them and how, as Diane says, “We’re all just growing up together.”

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Facing the Metacrisis: Conflict, Metamodernity, and Construct Awareness

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Jonathan Rowson, brilliant, driven, articulate, shines a bright light of understanding on the metacrisis we face today, what feeds it, and what could help us find our way through. What is metamodernity and what does it have to offer? Is the ecological crisis fundamentally an educational crisis? Can we grow into our problem rather than thinking of ourselves as “failing beings” as the climate collapses around us?

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Facing Death: A Call to “Get Real”

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An extraordinary, heartfelt conversation with spiritual practitioner, teacher, activist, Integralist, and author Terry Patten, who was at the time facing his own mortality following a recent diagnosis of a rare and aggressive cancer. An inner radiance shines forth as Terry, with much graciousness and candor, discusses the call to “get real”—not only personally but also collectively; his deepened perception of the “amazing grace of existence;” the directionality that has guided much of his life; and action inquiry: working on becoming next-stage human beings by experimenting with being the best people we can be. A touching and transformative talk, Terry conveys the deepening understanding coming from living on the edge and transmits a “radical okayness” with everything.

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Inhabit: Your Heart

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Watch as Corey deVos, Ryan Oelke, and special guest Rollie Stanich explore the vast and tender territories of the Integral Heart. This is an invitation to continue opening your own most Integral heart, and allow it to infuse and inform all of our actions and interactions together — to lead our lives with both wisdom and compassion, with both discernment and tenderness, with both insight and humility — so that we may use our integral minds and hearts to recognize, appreciate, and incorporate the partial truths that each of us are trying to bring to each other.

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How We Can Hack Our Brain to Become Happier, Healthier, and More Transcendent

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In this inspiring and empowering conversation, Rick Hanson spells out how we can use positive, self-directed neuroplasticity to hardwire our brains in order to become happier, cultivate virtues, deal with cravings, become deeply grounded, turn our desired states into stable traits, and more.

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Ukrainian Integral Perspectives on the Ongoing Invasion of Ukraine

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Kateryna Yasko and Vytautas Bučiūnas crossed the border into Lithuania three days before this conversation took place, after a five-day exodus from Kyiv, following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. This conversation is a call for action and support of the incredibly brave Ukrainian people, and illuminates their willingness to fight to the death to throw out the invaders who are there to crush their freedom and make Ukraine a colony of Putin’s Russia.

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Responding to Suffering and Evil: Integral Principles

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Suffering and evil challenge us all, but several principles may help Integral practitioners to respond effectively. These include appreciating the role that unrecognized, limited perspectives (and corresponding worldviews) play in creating suffering and evil, and learning to recognize and release such limitations into more integral stances. Doing this skillfully requires taking up effective, authentic psychological and contemplative disciplines, and especially the disciplines of awakening service or karma yoga, whose central elements are described.

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Russia Is Catalyzing the Transformation Age

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not just a violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty, it is a coordinated attack, with China’s cooperation, on the dominant late Information Age global network, especially the US dollar as global reserve currency. And while it likely counts on a devastating financial counterattack from the western alliance—after all, Putin is a Judo master and wants to use his opponent’s weight against them—it underestimates the global values coherence of the “Green” structure of sociocultural evolution that will yet hamper a serious bipolar Russo-Sino block from gaining momentum. But it may come to represent a signal opportunity for the US to lead much-needed reform in the global order in the very areas continuing to be exposed as structural flaws, including the power of UN’s peacekeeping mission, total nuclear disarmament, the US dollar’s role in foreign policy, and the structure of the UN security council.

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Polarization, Being Woke, the Universal Agenda, Mindfulness Going Bad, and the Integral Vision

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Culture wars, polarization, discernment versus condemnation, how our psychological development determines political attitudes and values, and how Integral perspectives help us understand them all. A candid conversation, ranging from global current events to personal spiritual turning points, with endearing, brilliant, and optimistic Integral pundit Jeff Salzman.

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Wang Huning: The World’s Most Influential Intellectual?

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To understand this century, we have to understand the geopolitical and philosophical power struggle between China and the United States and the differing global “Operating Systems” they’re fighting for. And to better understand that struggle, we have to better understand whether the cognition of China’s leaders are integral or not: are they capable of bringing the Teal “Power to Integrate” to bear on the world system?

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Inhabit: Your Humility

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Corey and Ryan discuss the importance of cultivating and inhabiting a “confident humility” with relation to our own physical bodies, mental processes, and spiritual health. We also have a fun segment at the end designed to put your own humility to the test, by looking at 10 common integral caricatures — stereotypes that many of us fall into at one point or another during our Integral lives.

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Integral Life Practice: Enough Talk, It’s Time to Live!

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Terry Patten and Ken Wilber take an in-depth look at their book Integral Life Practice: A 21st-Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening. ILP is a highly distilled, easily customizable, and radically inclusive approach to practice, based on the most comprehensive map of human potentials we currently have.

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Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Subtle Energy

Common to many traditions is the idea that, in addition to a spectrum of consciousness, there is also a spectrum of gross, to subtle, to causal forms of mass-energy. But what exactly is subtle energy? How does it work, where does it come from, and how does it fit into our scientific understanding of the physical universe? This excerpt suggests a coherent and comprehensive theory of the many approaches to subtle energies, their origin, their nature, and their development.

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Inhabit: Your Vow

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Ryan and Corey are joined by our very good friend Vincent Horn, co-founder of Buddhist Geeks, in order to discuss Ryan and Vince’s decision to fully embrace the Bodhisattva Vow in their lives and in their spiritual practice. What unfolds is a fun and fascinating conversation about compassion, commitment, purpose, meaning, and skillful means — as well as some much-needed guidance to help us bring ourselves into deeper alignment with our own inner Bodhisattva, regardless of whatever spiritual tradition (or lack thereof!) that we find ourselves in.

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The Art of YES

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Watch as Lisa and Corey preview the new season of Integral Life Practice Experiences now available on Integral Life, taking you deeper than ever before into your own growth, awakening, and life purpose.

Lisa also discusses her exclusive new program, which she is calling Live Your Deepest Yes, a 12-week live group coaching series that will help you better align yourself with your innermost truth, your passion, and your own unique contribution to the world.

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Ken Wilber Goes to High School: Sex, Ecology, Spirituality

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In this very special episode of The Ken Show we are joined by Aissatou Diallo, Zoe Tray, and Noah Delorme, students at Choate Rosemary Hall who have been studying Ken Wilber’s seminal book, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality for their senior year project. Watch as Ken, Aissatou, Zoe, and Noah unpack many of the core insights of SES and discuss the unique value Integral work holds for a new generation of thinkers, leaders, artists, and scholars.

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The Art of Practice: Forgiveness Made Easy

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To authentically forgive — what Barbara describes as “the absolute refusal to hold ill will against someone for what they did or didn’t do” — can actually be tremendously challenging. Fortunately Barbara Hunt is with us to help make it simple. Watch as Barbara talks to Lisa and Corey about forgiveness as an integral “master practice” — a practice that scaffolds and supports the rest of our various waking up, growing up, cleaning up, and showing up practices.

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An Integral Age at the Leading Edge

This is the excerpt that started it all — an extraordinary 200-page introduction to Ken Wilber’s updated integral map, kicking off a stunning new evolution in his meta-theoretical work (often refered to as his “post-metaphysical” or “Wilber V” phase). Excerpted from the still-unpublished followup to Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, in this free ebook you will be introduced to some of the key ideas that emerged from this new phase of integral thinking.

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Grace & Grit — ILLUMINATE Film Festival

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Watch as Ken Wilber, Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Sebastian Siegel, and moderator Maia Monasterios have a lively discussion about the power of love to transcend time and to overcome our greatest challenges and suffering. Learn how we can honor death and loss by transforming grief into a profound appreciation for life.

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Getting Over Ourselves

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Nomali talks to Lisa and Corey about the many opportunities and obstacles we face in our practice, and how to deepen our commitment to our own process of waking up, growing up, cleaning up, and showing up. We follow the subtle threads of love, death, and vitality that weave through each of our practices and connect us together as a community, while reminding each other that we can only truly be ourselves if we are willing to actually get over ourselves.

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Inhabit: Your Practice

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Why is Integral Life Practice so important? What is truly unique about the ILP approach that other approaches are missing? How do we bring more depth, elegance, and embodiment to whatever practices we might already be engaging in? Watch as Ryan and Corey offer some practical advice to help you deepen and enrich your practice, helping you shift your attention from the integral map to an actual lived experience of the integral territory.

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Sitting in the Mystery: Aliens, Artists, and the Experiencer Group

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Belief in UFOs and alien contact continues to find more and more legitimacy. In this fun and fascinating discussion, Stuart and Corey take a deep dive into these cosmic mysteries, exploring the many ways the Integral framework helps us illuminate and interpret the full enchilada of human (and non-human) experience, from the ordinary to the extraordinary to the extra-extraordinary.

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VisionLogix Woodworks

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In recent years, much of my creativity has been focused around my woodworking. It has become an all-consuming passion for me, and over the last year or so I have created a number of custom-designed carvings that try to bring integral ideas and iconography out of the abstract and into solid material form.

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Inhabit: Your Game

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In this continuation of our “integral media” series, Ryan and Corey take another look at the major stages of human development, this time using a series of 33 video games in order to illustrate the qualities and characteristics of each stage. All of this allows you to not only observe these stages within you, but to actively inhabit, engage, and play with them as well.

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The GameStop Revolution Has Started. It Won’t Be Televised.

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The revolution won’t be televised, it will be Reddited. And it has started. In a four year run of incredible, historic events, it’s hard to objectively recognize which and when the most significant of them occurs. But I think it possible that one of the most important events of the past several years is playing out as we speak: the deep structure of society has just phase-shifted into a state of conditions necessary for Teal to emerge and without which it cannot: the GameStop Revolution is putting in place a demand by the crowd that will force Green-platform power holders to either evolve to Teal or become increasingly irrelevant.

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Inhabit: Your Fear

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You don’t need to push away your fear, neither do you need to surrender to it. All you need to do is to consciously inhabit your fear – allow it to freely move through you, allow yourself to respond however you need to respond in the moment, and notice any interior frictions as it passes through your system so you know nothing is getting “stuck” or pushed into shadow.

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Grace and Grit: An Interview with Sebastian Siegel and Julia Ormond

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Julia Ormond interviews Sebastian Siegel at the 2020 Integral European Conference about the film adaptation of “Grace and Grit”. Bence Ganti facilitates with an introduction to Ken Wilber. They discuss book-to-film, acting, directing, producing, characters and set, filmming, and pivotal elements of production.

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Power, Privilege, and Fragility: Leveling Up Our Conversations About Race and Racism

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Diane and Corey are joined by guests Greg Thomas and Mark Palmer in this groundbreaking discussion about racism, anti-racism, and racial integration, highlighting a number of critical views that have been largely missing from the larger conversation that’s been taking place culturally in recent weeks, months, and years.

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Inhabit: Your Resistance

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Spiritual conversations often emphasize the importance of overcoming our resistance and accepting the world for what it is, exactly as it is. However, there are times when we don’t need to overcome our resistance, we need to fully inhabit our resistance. We can’t simply accept what is, we need to put ourselves on the line for what can and should be. How can we bring more mindfulness, skillfulness, and embodiment to our resistance, even while seeing everything as always-already perfect?

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Inhabit: Your Truth

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Ryan and Corey devote an episode to the theme of fully inhabiting, embodying, and enacting truth — how to find it, how to wield it, and how to avoid the false certainties fed to us by both mainstream and fringe media. They don’t try to tell you what to believe, but rather try to help you avoid overly identifying with the contents of our views and to liberate yourself from your beliefs, whatever they happen to be.

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Sacrilegious and Sexy AF

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In this special Devil’s Night interview, our good friends Bruce Alderman and Layman Pascal talk to Hofman and Daemon, former members of The Satanic Temple in New York, and founding members of the Satanic organization LORE: The Satanic Collective of NYC, about the history of Satanism and the new Integral and Metamodern-ish forms that are currently emerging.

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Polarities in Human Development

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Beena Sharma and Corey deVos explore the important relationship between polarities and adult development — and how polarity thinking not only helps accelerate our development toward integral stages of maturity, but also helps us to be more of ourselves, wherever we happen to be in our developmental trajectory.

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Watch the Grace and Grit Film Trailer!

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Ken Wilber’s acclaimed and globally popular book, Grace and Grit, has been made into a feature film starring Mena Suvari and Stuart Townsend, with Frances Fisher, Rebekah Graf, Nick Stahl, and Mariel Hemingway – produced, written, and directed by Sebastian Siegel. The film adaptation explores Ken and Treya’s courage, commitment, transcendence… and their discovery of love beyond life.

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Grace and Grit: The Movie

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Today’s guest, Sebastian Siegel, is the screenwriter and director of the upcoming movie, Grace and Grit. The film tells the true love story of iconic, Integral philosopher Ken Wilber and his wife Treya. Based on the acclaimed book that chronicles Treya’s journals, they fall madly in love in 1980’s California and are immediately faced with illness and challenges that tear them apart. They overcome by finding a connection beyond this world, and love beyond life.

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Trauma and the Unbound Body: The Connection Between Embodiment, Nondual Realization, and Healing

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Ryan Oelke speaks with Judith Blackstone, a teacher in the contemporary fields of nondual realization and spiritual, relational, and somatic psychotherapy, about her new book, “Trauma and the Unbound Body: The Healing Power of Fundamental Consciousness”. They chat about the connection between embodiment, nondual realization, and healing, and how all three help deepen one other.

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Rebel Wisdom: Integral Meets the Intellectual Dark Web

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Today’s guest, David Fuller, is at the center of the intellectual Dark Web (IDW) having founded Rebel Wisdom, a YouTube station that has attracted over 60,000 subscribers in less than two years. David Fuller is committed to the further evolution of the intellectual dark web and enthusiastic, as I am, about what integral theory can bring to that project. I hope you enjoy our conversation!

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Angry and Vulgar: The Fruits of Incivility

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Donald Trump’s coarseness has proven to be more powerful than most people thought possible. In act two of his presidency he is being met with reciprocal incivility from his opposition, exemplified by newly-elected Congressperson Rashida Tlabid, who promised at a rally to “impeach the motherf*****”. In this episode I explore where and how this “new incivility” is arising, its evolutionary potency, and how it can be – and is being — engaged with more wisdom and intention.

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The Koan of Chronic Illness: A Father’s Story

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Corey deVos talks to Lynn Fuentes about his daughter’s Biliary Atresia diagnosis when she was just a few months old, her subsequent liver transplant a year later, and her ongoing recovery today. Corey also shares some of the little wisdoms that have ripened for him during his family’s journey. It was a fantastic and very touching interview, and we invite you all to check it out.

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The War Among Progressives

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Today Jeff and Corey take a close look at an fantastic new article by Valerie Tarico, published to Alternet with the title “Here’s Why Some Progressives Are Tearing Each Other Apart”. In the article Tarico argues that today’s left is largely split into two major factions, each of whom are operating with two very different narratives around social progress and our collective wellbeing.

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Trump’s War Cabinet Drops a Developmental Level

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Today Jeff and Corey consider the choice of John Bolton to become Donald Trump’s national security advisor (replacing Gen. H.R. McMaster), as well as the promotion of Mike Pompeo to be Secretary of State (replacing Rex Tillerson). The shakeup represents a major worldview shift from orange modernity to amber traditionalism in the war cabinet of a President who often operates from the red power stage.

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What Jordan Peterson (and His Fans and Foes) Can Learn from Integral Theory

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Through subsequent postings critical of “leftist radicals,” Jordan Peterson has become a hero for advocates of free speech, and a idol to people who are opposed to the postmodern promulgation of multiculturalism and gender fluidity. So where does Peterson fit in the integral schema? In these two episodes of the Daily Evolver Jeff examines Peterson’s message as expressed through his book and his most popular lectures and interviews.

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An Ethos for Revolutionaries: Terry Patten on Activism at the Integral Stage

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Terry is pioneering a robust and dynamic new form of activism that fuses the “inner work” of personal transformation and awakening with the “outer work” of service and commitment to social justice. In this episode Jeff and Terry explore how we can deploy it to bring about the profound transformation of self and world that our era requires.

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From F#@king Up to Waking Up: A Tale of Addiction, Volition, and Liberation

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Today our dear friend Chris Grosso talks to Jeff and Corey about his latest book, Dead Set on Living: Making the Difficult but Beautiful Journey from Fucking Up to Waking Up, which pivots around Chris’s provocative and profoundly moving journey out of the shadows of addiction and the endless empty parade of substitute gratifications, and into the light of spiritual awakening and healthy living.

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Can Virtual Reality Create a More Virtuous Reality?

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Jeff and Corey explore the exhilarating emergence of virtual reality technology and the far-reaching implications it has across the full spectrum of human experience, from entertainment to education, to medicine, art, journalism, spiritual practice, sexuality, communication, and any number of other exciting and potentially groundbreaking applications.

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Ralph Ellison’s Integral Insight into Race and Culture

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To kick off Black History Month, Jeff connects with Greg Thomas, an integral thinker who is pioneering a new way forward in race relations in the U.S. Greg advocates transcending the postmodern emphasis on racial identity in favor or embracing what is a broader American cultural identity, of which all Americans are an inextricable part.

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The State (and Stages) of the Union: 2018

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In this episode we look at President Trump’s State of the Union address, where he made opening moves toward a grand bargain to overhaul the U.S. immigration system and rebuild the nation’s infrastructure. What are the policy and political ramifications? Can we trust the guy who brought us birtherism? Are Democrats willing to give Trump victories they themselves want (and Republicans would never give them)?

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Star Wars: The Force Evolves

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Jeff is joined by Cindy Wigglesworth and Corey deVos, and together they dive deeply into the rich mythology and mysticism of the Star Wars universe — sharing their personal connection to Star Wars, their integral appreciation of its central themes and principles, and their best guesses as to where the Force may be taking us next.

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Urantia: A Spiritual Vision with Evolution at its Core

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Welcome to The Urantia Book, a spiritual revelation that came into being in the early 20th Century and has inspired generations of adherents since. Today Jeff talks with Byron Belitsos, author of the new book, Your Evolving Soul: The Cosmic Spirituality of the Urantia Revelation, about the principles of these deep and beautiful (and controversial!) teachings, and how they can illuminate our spiritual development.

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When the World’s Largest Investor Wakes Up

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In this episode we look at the continued emergence of postmodern consciousness (green altitude), using a current example from the U.S. financial sector: last week Laurence D. Fink, founder and chief executive of BlackRock, the world’s largest investor fund, informed business leaders that if they want any of the the $6 trillion he invests they are going to have to serve a social purpose.

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A New War for Power

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Black Lives Matter. MeToo. North Korea. Robert Mueller. Fake news. What do these and dozens of other headlines have in common? Join Robb as he explains how they all point to a new war for power that is currently underway: how power is being used and misused, how power is changing, and who will have power when the momentous leap into the transformation age is done.

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Never Been Better, Never Felt Worse: Inside the Rise of an Integral Global Operating System for the 21st Century

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Integral Life CEO Robb Smith puts the tumult of 2016 into historical perspective and looks ahead at the “momentous leap into the transformation age” that he believes is underway right now. Taking a long view of history, evolutionary dynamics, culture and economics, Robb argues that we’re at the peak of a Green, pluralistic global operating system, with Orange modernism slipping into our rearview mirror, and Teal integralism just beginning to emerge, holding all the promise of overcoming the evolutionary contradictions that gave rise to populism and leaders like Donald Trump.

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Re-Mystifying Christmas

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Jeff and Corey welcome as their guest Father John Forman, Rector of the Burien, Washington Episcopal Church. Father John shares his teachings on how we can embrace the birth of Jesus as a beautiful mystery, thereby accessing its spiritual potency in real time and enabling us to shine the light of Christ Consciouness into the world.

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The Last Gasp of Late-Stage Capitalism: An Integral Look at the Republican Tax Plan

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The rise of capitalism, starting a couple hundred years ago, has been a spectacularly positive development for humanity, creating enormous material weath that raised billions of people out of poverty. In the last 40 years, however, it has been tuned so that the vast majority of economic growth flows to the elites who own and manage the systems of wealth creation.  The Republican tax plan doubles down on that trend, reducing taxes for corporations and the rich at the expense of social programs that help the poor. Jeff and Corey discuss the ramifications.

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The Energetic Properties of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness

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Steve McIntosh joins us for an in-depth exploration into the energetic qualities of the three primary virtues of Goodness, Beauty, and Truth. Steve describes how these virtues can both enrich our cognitive understanding of the universe around us, while also deepening and reinvigorating our own ongoing spiritual practice.

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Finding the Rhythm of Improvisational Leadership

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Greg Thomas talks to David about what is moving him as our cultural disruption continues to unfold, particularly concerning the issues of race and culture. Listen as Greg outlines his improvised response to all that is arising. He is particularly noticing a lack of moderate voices on both sides of the conversation. Although, Jazz Leadership has been his practice for some time he, like the rest of us, he is experiencing an acceleration and intensity to the cultural conversation since the 2016 election.

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The Gift of Gratitude

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Jeff and Corey explore one of the most powerful and universal practices available to us: the practice of gratitude. In times of peak stress, peak fear, and peak anxiety, gratitude is more important than ever. Which means that this year, perhaps more than any other year in recent memory, we could use a nice dose of gratitude to help remind ourselves of the incredible goodness, beauty, and truth that we are all surrounded by. This in turn helps us relax our cynicism, loosen our negative fixations, and make our “skin-encapsulated egos” just a little bit more porous.

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Cultivating an Integral American Identity

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Today Jeff reflects on the conversation he and Corey had on Monday with African American scholar Greg Thomas, where they explored what a more integral approach to race relations might look like. Greg is influenced by his mentor, Albert Murray, who, writing in the 60’s challenged the postmodern narrative that reduced race (and much of human relations in general) to hard constructs of victim and oppressor.

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Roy Moore Wants to Date Your Daughter

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American politics is riveted on bombshell accusations involving Judge Roy Moore, who is running for U.S. Senate from the state of Alabama. In a story reported in the Washington Post, he is accused by five women of molesting them when they were 14 – 16 years old. Watch as we explore this extra-icky story, and try to provide a more integral point of view.

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Saudi Arabia’s Wild Weekend: Corruption Crackdown or Power Grab?

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On Saturday, Saudi Arabia’s 32 year old ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, arrested dozens of the country’s most influential political and religious figures, including 11 of his royal cousins.  It was, according the the New York Times, “the most sweeping transformation of the Kingdom’s governance for more than eight decades.” In this episode we bring an integral lens to the unfolding situation.

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An Integral Response to Terror in the 21st Century

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Jeff and Corey make an effort to wrap their integral hearts around the tremendous pain and sadness of yesterday’s tragic terrorist attack in New York City (and all other terrorist attacks around the world) while trying to ground the very real fears, anxieties, and resentments these attacks generate into a much more hopeful and optimistic enactment of our world.

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The Art of Being Unique (But Not Special)

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Today Jeff and Corey take a look at a paradoxical move in vertical development: where we embrace our own radical uniqueness and express it in relation to other beings who are also utterly unique. It’s a new and more vivid integration of the individual and collective realms of reality, and out of it emerges a possibility for a more fruitful, happy and fulfilling life. Once again we are helped out by Sarah Silverman!

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Mueller, Trump & Collusion: The Rule of Law Pushes Back

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In today’s Daily Evolver Jeff, Corey and Robb look at today’s groundbreaking headlines to explain how Red and Amber-centered populism, led by President Trump, gained power in order to combat the stagnation brought on by too much cultural and economic power consolidated in too few hands. Today, with indictments being leveled at three people working for the Trump campaign (one of which confirmed collusion with the Russian government), the Orange, Constitutionally-centered rule of law fought back.

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Building Bridges: How to Talk to Trump Supporters

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In the wake of the Trump election, many progressives are realizing that one way forward is to reach out to their political opponents, at least to establish a basic human connection. Today Jeff looks at four recent attempts to do that: by comedian Sarah Silverman, philosopher George Lakoff, Vox political correspondent Liz Plank and New York Times columnist David Brooks. Corey also adds some of his own integral tips for good interpersonal hygiene.

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“The Witch” and the Evolution of Horror

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Jeff offers a review of the film The Witch: A New England Folk Tale, noting how much it resonated with his own integral sensibilities. He and Corey then turn the discussion to a broader discussion of the evolution of horror as a genre and its utility as a “release valve” for both cultural anxieties and the persistent existential dread we are all born into. SPOOOKY!!!!!

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Politics, Addiction, and Mental Health: The Path to Recovery

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In this interview Chris recounts some of the surreal feelings he’s having as the Trump administration continues to disrupt the social, political, and cultural status quo. He speaks to the impact Trump is having on the mental health communities that he serves — as safety net budgets for social services are eliminated, those with mental health issues are often the first to feel the pain.

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The Acceleration of Crazy

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Terry touches on what he calls the “acceleration of crazy” as our current reality show unfolds. He also has some interesting insights on how he is navigating the chaos, while noting that major stage transitions like the one we are currently living in are, by their very nature, revolutionary, calling us to a higher, richer, and more sustainable human commons.

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DJ Qbert: Alien Octopus Genius

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Part mystic, part alien, part genius, and part octopus, Q was the perfect person to talk to about subjects that seem out of place in a conversation about djing. He’s delightfully bizarre and I knew talking with him would make for some great conversation. For me, interviewing him was a form of deity practice (how do you talk to a God about being God?) and I am genuinely appreciative for him allowing me to see through his eyes for a minute.

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The 4th Spinning of Hip Hop

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Hiphop is largely studied from the outside in. We enjoy the music, the art and the dance. We judge, argue, evaluate and rank it, but not much attention is paid to what happens inside the artist. The 4th Spinning is an attempt to look at Hiphop from an Integral perspective, which simply means exploring the inside-and-outside of individuals (behavior, psychology and spirituality), and the inside-and-outside of groups (culture and society), to not only understand but to manifest Hiphop in all of its fullness.

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The Debt Collective

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Doug Rushkoff interviews Astra Taylor and Thomas Gokey, co-founders of Strike Debt, Rolling Jubilee and most recently the Debt Collective. The Debt Collective is a direct action campaign that leverages the collective power of debtors, united together, against exploitative for-profit education and lending institutions in the US. Astra and Thomas give Team Human listeners a template for hacking real world systems and tapping into the power of solidarity.

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WTF is CryptoMind?

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What exactly is “cryptocurrency”, and why should you care? In this inaugural episode of the new CryptoMind podcast, our good friends Ryan Oelke (from PowerUp Productions) and Vincent Horn (from Buddhist Geeks) answer these questions, offer their own big-picture reflections, share their stories, and talk about the larger significance of the cryptospace as they see it.

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The Four Faces of Truth

In an era when our collective notion of “truth” is being weaponized, balkanized, and smashed to smithereens, it’s important to remind ourselves how we go about discerning truth in the first place. In this introductory chapter from The Eye of Spirit, Ken Wilber explores the four primary methods we use to acquire and verify our knowledge, allowing us to escape our current “post-truth” quagmire by bridging the ever-widening divide between conflicting views, values, and verities.

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Integral Semiotics: The Language of Liberation

How do we derive meaning from the words we use? An integral approach fundamentally changes how we understand the nature of language, communication, and shared meaning. Integral Semiotics offers a comprehensive map or framework of most of the known worldspaces available to humans. Since most of these worldspaces do not possess simple location or material form, they are likely to be denied reality by most realist, empirical, or behavioral schools—where in fact they are home of the vast majority of those things most humans hold valuable. Integral Semiotics is thus a matter, not just of linguistics, but of emancipation.

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Making Sense of Trump’s Exit from the Paris Accord

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Last week, Trump stated his decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement regarding climate change. Trump announced that the USA will withdraw based on the sense that it will negatively affect US jobs. To explore this, I turn to Integral Theory, which is a comprehensive transdisciplinary theory developed by contemporary philosopher Ken Wilber and applied by others across several professional fields. We can draw upon these ideas regarding the dynamics of social groups to make sense of Trump’s exit from the Paris agreement.

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Irritation as a Spiritual Path: The Zen of You and Me

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For many progressive spiritual practitioners it no longer feels like enough to merely follow an individual meditation practice, as valuable as that is. We want to apply our enlarged selves, skillfully and in real time, to the circumstances of our complex lives, and particularly to our relationships with others. The spiritual potency of relationship is a subject Diane Musho Hamilton explores in her new book, The Zen of You and Me: A Guide to Getting Along with Just About Anyone.

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The Great Release

Rising populism and the election of President Trump are symptoms of massive irresilience that has been building in the U.S.-led world state since 1945, and may reflect the end of the fourth cycle of economic hegemony of the past 800 years. The Great Recession of 2008 was just a tremor. We wind toward a coming global breakdown, a great release that threatens regression across our lives.

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Trump and a Post-Truth World

The election of Donald Trump is an evolutionary self-correction that has been decades in the making, a backlash against the failure of the leading edge of consciousness–postmodernism and pluralism–to acknowledge the lie underlying the progress they’ve pursued: it’s not equal, it’s not consistent and it doesn’t make room for everyone. But a new integral force is emerging that can move beyond the narcissism and nihilism of political correctness to offer genuine leadership and a move towards a developmental-based wisdom of greater wholeness.

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We’ve Elected a Wartime President

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I’ll get to the point. The United States has just elected a wartime president, a Commander in Chief who is already on a wartime footing and was on a wartime footing from the moment his campaign began last year. And he won because a significant portion of the country were the war’s first casualties and they wanted a president who could help them stop losing. This isn’t a military war. It’s a jobs war.

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Right Bucks: Money and Spirituality

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In dealing with this issue of money and Dharma—or money and spirituality in general—there are at least two very different items that need to be teased apart and addressed separately. The first is the appropriate monetary value of any relational exchange (from medical care to education to goods and services in general); and the second is, should monetary exchange ever be linked to Dharma teaching?

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The Morning After

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Americans have just elected Donald Trump as President-elect of the United States of America. I know that a few of you are elated and many more are terrified. I can understand both emotions. I am far from a natural-born Hillary Clinton advocate, but during the course of the campaign there was simply no possibility that I would be voting for Trump, a man who who speaks against many of my deepest principles. And yet he won — by the slimmest of margins — but a clear win nonetheless.

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The Great Divide

Populism is on the rise. Too many people feel left out of the march of prosperity and more people than ever believe that the future will not see their kids better off than they are today. The rich get richer while the middle class remains stagnant. There is a growing and robust backlash to political correctness and immigration. And artificial intelligence threatens to make the coming jobs war even worse than previously anticipated…

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Cleaning Up the Future with Phil Toledano

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In this fascinating New York Times Op-Doc, noted photographer Phil Toledano takes us on precisely this 3-year journey within himself, confronting all the various ways he can grow old, disease, wither, and die. At first blush it seems like Mr. Toledano’s project was custom-designed to address only his deep fears and neuroses. But don’t blink, or you might miss the ways his project speaks to what is universal in each of us.

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Beauty and the Expansion of Women’s Identity

The history of women’s beauty is written in bodily gestures that express both the constraints of their culture as well as the unfolding desire of their interiority. Embracing the power of beauty has always been problematic for feminism, and for good reason. This article offers an integrative analysis of the current views that dominate feminist discourse on women’s beauty, as well as a personal story of Vanessa’s own ongoing journey as a young woman trying to reclaim her beauty for the benefit of all beings.

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The Soul of Jazz

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Art is often the leading edge of cultural and conscious evolution, and jazz today continues to lead the way. Listen as Greg Thomas takes us through the history of jazz — from its roots in the magic, mythic and traditional interiors of African Americans at the turn of the last century, through the modern and postmodern strains of the mid and late 20th Century, to the more wild wooly contemporary scene.

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How to Create a More Fulfilling Sex Life

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In a healthy intimate relationship, the partners don’t have to be turned on by each other all the time, says Dr. Keith, “but they do need to be turned on by each other regularly.” Every couple has a balance of how much sex is needed to keep things vibrant, and it’s the responsibility of each partner to make it happen. For many couples, this is something that must be learned and practiced. Here’s how.

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The Spectrum of Brokenness: What to Do When You’re Dealing With a Personality Disorder

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Nearly 1 in 10 people possess some form of personality disorder. Which means there’s a very good chance that you will encounter someone with this disorder at some point in your life… if you haven’t already. They might be your boss, your lover, your parent, your spiritual teacher, or even your presidential candidate. How can we engage these personalities with care and compassion, while remaining fully attentive to our own personal boundaries? Listen to find out!

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Sex, God, Rock ‘n Roll

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Sex, God, Rock ‘n Roll is sort of a mashup of Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show, and standup comedy monologues, all with a decidedly Integral twist. Stu has assembled some incredible talent—not to mention an incredibly talented production team—and together they have put together one of the most bizarre, unique, and consistently hilarious programs on television.

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FUCT: A Love Story

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Some love stories are simply timeless. Titanic. Romeo and Juliet. And now… FUCT: A LOVE STORY joins their ranks. This unforgettable, magical masterpiece absolutely must be made, and when you see this short promotional video, you’ll rush to be a part of this crowd-funded blockbuster of love and loss among divergent species.

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A Tribute to Ken Wilber

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They say we are all standing on the shoulders of giants. In this video we celebrate one of the biggest and most important giants around: the one and only Ken Wilber. This was our chance to say thank you for all the truth, goodness, and beauty that Ken continues to bring into the world. Ken’s work has ignited the hearts and minds of so many, and we are honored to walk this path with him.

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Brave New Future? An Integral Look at Super Artificial Intelligence

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These days, discourse about intelligent robots—thinking machines—is as widespread as discourse about zombies. Both have been the subjects of recent bestsellers, which are the basis of two forthcoming films. Popular culture’s depiction of humankind under attack by either the undead or by the never alive (autonomous machines) suggests widespread anxiety about and fascination with technical developments that may generate a future out of human control (as if the future ever were under our control!)

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Soulscapes

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“Lets try an experiment. Feel into who You really are for a moment. Relax into You. Imagine we are holding a conversation and you are telling me all about You. You may start telling me about what you love, when you feel alive, or some of the rich life experiences you have had. You may end up telling me some of your story. As you speak, I am using every sensory faculty I can muster to feel into the fullness and freedom of who You really are. Im listening beyond the words you say. I’m stretching out to feel You. I’m also listening to God. Then, I feel you inside me as a cascade of colour and form: I sense the unique symphony of light and the quality of energy that is you and You alone.”

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Six Varieties of Christians and Their Churches: From Tribal to Integral

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Christians and their communities of faith exist in rich diversity today. Why are there so many different kinds of Christians and churches? There are historical aspects, political factors, matter of taste, and personality types. However, from an integral perspective of evolutionary stages we can see a quite remarkable tendency for churches to fall into one of perhaps six different altitudes of understanding.

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Kosmic Wonder

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“I used to do some research before creating an artwork, now I only “submerge” and begin working, knowing and trusting the magical force that operates this awesome universe. I make the analogy that I have never seen a bird taking a flying course, it comes with all the equipment and skills it needs to cross an ocean without fear of getting lost. I believe if we consider that our origin is beyond our human comprehension, then we need to trust our “heart’s compass”. At the end we are travelers passing by. As someone stated, “we are spiritual beings having a human experience”.

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Untamed

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For artist Michael Welch, the myth of being pierced by love’s arrow is an allegory of a shift in consciousness beyond one’s control, Desire taking hold and pointing one into Mystery. If we are too literal about the myth, he warns, the power of the arrow “loses its transformative power and becomes lethal.”

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Yes, Virginia, Consciousness Goes All the Way Down. But Does It Go All the Way Up?

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Although the apparent confirmation of the Higgs Boson, the so-called God particle, has been attracting attention recently, the most vexing problem in science and philosophy remains the mind-body problem: What relation is there between material brain states and conscious, first-person experience? In the past few years, as we shall see in a moment, some neurosciences have now arrived at an answer that was anticipated by Ken Wilber’s version of integral theory.

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Meditation Garden

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Diana Calvario’s art weaves stunning imagery of nature, culture, divine beings, dream states, macro and micro scales of order, into remarkable evocations of creative emergence. Within the Kosmic flows of nested holarchies, what might be the interactive, energetic, and meaningful interplays of these various elements? Calvario’s art shows us the ever emergent circuits of this dance, and does so with profound invention, beauty and grace. Hers is an art that has the unique power to rewire and enhance one’s integral soul—a great achievement and singular aesthetic gift.

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Simply Love: An Integral Prayer

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“Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being. Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves.”Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Simply love. This …

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Death, Rebirth, and Meditation

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Some type of reincarnation doctrine is found in virtually every mystical religious tradition the world over. Even Christianity accepted it until around the fourth century CE, when, for largely political reasons, it was made anathema. Many Christian mystics today now accept the idea. As the Christian theologian John Hick pointed out in his important work Death and Eternal Life, the consensus of the world religions, including Christianity, is that some sort of reincarnation occurs.

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An Integral Take on the Blues Idiom

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From an integral perspective, the blues has many dimensions, from the personal to the bio-behavioral aspects of the individual, to the cultural and social dynamics of collectives. The blues can be experienced from an egocentric, ethnocentric, and world-centric value level or stage of development. We can view the blues as a musical or cognitive or aesthetic line of intelligence or development also, and even as a philosophical proposition—an existential response to life in the late-19th through the 20th century.

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Living an Ethical Life

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How do you live your life free of regret? How do you take the wisdom of the Integral vision and exercise it in your day to day life? How do you move beyond the blame and guilt that so often festers in the basement of your psyche? And why can it be so hard to simply be good? Roger discusses this and more in his presentation on Integral Ethics, delivered at the 2010 Integral Theory Conference.

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Demons & Deities

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Kelli Bickman’s art is characterized by vivid shapes, dynamic patterning, minimal modeling, and luminous color, all of which generates a childlike style of directness and immediacy. This is an art that weaves together religious, natural, and popular imagery, written characters from various languages, archetypal figures, and diagrammatic signs into coherent communicative wholes. Diverse modes of symbolization are integrated into scintillating orders of revelatory meaning.

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Albert Murray Defines Art

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Whether or not Albert Murray’s thought and frameworks of analysis are Integral remains to be seen and decided by Integral readers and scholars; however, what’s indisputable is his deeply pluralistic and interdisciplinary approach to knowledge. A prime example, in which he elaborates definitions of art and aesthetic statement, follows.

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She

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“My art is a true expression of the creativity that lives inside of me. This creativity is a gift, and I am honored to have been chosen for it. My hope is that my art identifies with the creativity that lives within you, and that it somehow inspires you to seek your creative self.”

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The Extraordinary Commonplace

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“An Artist romps around in the mystery like a child plays alone in his own backyard, imagining and making up his own rules and reality. An Artist romps around in the mystery like an animal roams the woods, curious and wide-eyed and alert. An Artist romps around in the mystery like an explorer traversing an unknown land, excited, careful and fully alive.”

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Technology, Evolution, and God: Exploring the Technium

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Wired magazine’s own “Senior Maverick” talks with Ken Wilber about some of the ideas behind Kevin’s blog The Technium, which explores the various ways humanity defines and redefines itself through the interface of science, technology, culture, and consciousness. Kevin also shares some of his own thoughts about the role of spirituality in the 21st century, going into considerable depth around his own spiritual awakening several decades ago.

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Integral Trans-Partisan Politics

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We do not live in two Americas, but in a single America composed of at least four or five different sets of values, all crammed together into a two-party political system that is becoming increasingly incapable of representing these wildly different perspectives. Many are beginning to recognize this systemic inadequacy and are searching for a genuinely integrative “Third Way” politics.

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The Many Meanings of The Matrix

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The Matrix trilogy is the most successful cinematic venture of the past several decades — together, all three films have grossed over three billion dollars worldwide, an impressive accomplishment within any genre (let alone science fiction.) The attention of audiences worldwide has certainly been captured by the mind-bending storyline and phenomenal special effects, but the perennial question remains: What does it all mean?

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Centering Prayer: Its History and Importance

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Distilled from the profound teachings of the Christian contemplative heritage, Centering Prayer has aimed to bring a living spirituality into an age where God is typically reduced to the New-Age vicissitudes of emotionality, if not simply pronounced dead. Listen as Fr. Thomas Keating and Ken Wilber discuss the remarkable history and importance of Centering Prayer.