Karma & Creativity

Karma & Creativity

Karma and Creativity represent a dynamic interplay that exists at every level of existence, from the physiosphere to the biosphere to the noosphere and beyond. Karma signifies the principle of cause and effect, where every action has consequences that shape experiences. Creativity embodies the capacity to generate novel ideas and bring them into reality. Together, they reflect a universal process where past actions inform and enhance future innovations.
Toward an Integral Cinema: The Application of Integral Theory to Cinematic Media Theory and Practice

Toward an Integral Cinema: The Application of Integral Theory to Cinematic Media Theory and Practice

Defining characteristics of what may constitute an integral cinematic work are mapped out and developed into a set of evaluation criteria using the works of Dulac, Gebser, and Wilber. A test of these evaluation criteria with the viewing of several motion pictures is summarized; the results suggest that several past and recent films demonstrate qualities that could be said to constitute an integral cinematic work.
From Race to Culture to Kosmos

From Race to Culture to Kosmos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.
Songs of Peace, Grace, and Awakening

Songs of Peace, Grace, and Awakening

Barbara Hunt talks to host Stephen Banks about her personal musical journey, the different effects of major and minor chords in music, the One Taste of pain and suffering as it is expressed in our creative expression, and more.
Holons: The Building Blocks of the Universe

Holons: The Building Blocks of the Universe

Join Corey deVos for this fun, fascinating, and far-reaching exploration of one of the essential cornerstones of integral theory — holons, or the apparently endless series of “part/wholes” that fundamentally compose reality as we know it.
Putting the “Art” in Artificial Intelligence

Putting the “Art” in Artificial Intelligence

What is art, at its most fundamental level? This is one of those perennial questions that we have been asking and re-asking at every stage of the human journey, from the first cave drawings all the way to the emergence of sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithms like MidJourney that are once again blurring the lines between art, beauty, and perspective and forcing us to find new ways to answer this timeless question. Watch as Ken and Corey take a fun and fascinating look at the intersection between art, semiotics, and technology.
Stuck in Development: Bringing Depth to the Postmodern Media Age

Stuck in Development: Bringing Depth to the Postmodern Media Age

Filmmaker, life coach, and long-time Integral friend Jason Lange sits down with Corey deVos to talk about his new television series, Stuck in Development, now available on all major streaming platforms.
Inhabit: Your Bardo

Inhabit: Your Bardo

Ryan and Corey explore the idea that every moment is a bardo, a transition from one state of being to another state of being — and within these ubiquitous transitions there are opportunities to transcend the karmas of our conditioning, and to channel new kinds of creativity into the world.
Spiraling towards Perihelion

Spiraling towards Perihelion

A stunning collection of hand-drawn imagery by Markus Pintzinger, detailing the evolutionary journey through the major stages of development (as depicted by Spiral Dynamics).
The Remarkable Practice of Dream Yoga

The Remarkable Practice of Dream Yoga

Lucid dreaming expert, author, “curiouist,” and integralist Andrew Holecek explains how lucid dreaming opens the door to a greatly expanded understanding of our minds, our perception of reality, and human potential altogether.
VisionLogix: Bringing Integral Iconography to Life

VisionLogix: Bringing Integral Iconography to Life

Corey deVos talks to Steve Banks about his integral approach to woodworking, and how he tries to transform beautiful ideas into beautiful art. Corey and Steve go on to have a robust discussion of integral art as a whole, as well as their shared appreciation for music.
Blue Pearl: A One World Oratorio

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.
The Integral Storycreator: Using Integral Methodological Pluralism to Create Fictional, Narrative Prose

The Integral Storycreator: Using Integral Methodological Pluralism to Create Fictional, Narrative Prose

The intention of this paper is to explore using Integral Methodological Pluralism (IMP) to construct a fictional, narrative story as part of a greater consideration into using the distinctions of Integral Theory in creating any kind of story or character driven work of art. The key component is using the mixed method information, especially the developmental knowledge, in combination with one’s own experience to make up the personality content of the characters and the moments of decision, discovery, and tension of the story; making sure to touch all the dimensions of the character’s life and the story’s world. The paper...
Music and Personal Experience: Flows and Peaks

Music and Personal Experience: Flows and Peaks

This article investigates music’s ability to facilitate flow states of consciousness as peak experiences. The research first uses two first-person methods, phenomenology and structuralism. The results of two second-person methods, hermeneutics and ethnomethodology, are then detailed. The final research section uses two third-person methods, empiricism and systems analysis. The empirical section utilizes a survey, while the systems analysis section investigates factors that contributed to the phenomenological research method. Results focus on tracking a conceptual understanding of the terms flow state and peak experience.
The Kosmic Vitality of Poetry and Music

The Kosmic Vitality of Poetry and Music

Brooke McNamara and Stephen Banks explore integral art as an expression of Integral spirituality, with its embrace of every dimension of our humanity. Includes a 20 minute performance combining Brooke’s poetry with excerpts from Steve’s Blue Pearl: A One World Oratorio.
Sex, Death, and the Creative Mystery

Sex, Death, and the Creative Mystery

Stuart Davis talks to host Steve Banks about his own creative process, the central themes that inform his art, and how he unpacks the radical unknowable mystery at the center of the creative furnace. Stuart and Steve focus on two themes in particular: sex and death (aka eros and thanatos, creativity and destruction, the self-transcending and self-dissolving drives shared by all holons in the Kosmos). They also explore how these themes are all expressions of a single primordial creative lineage running through all of our human activities, and indeed through all manifestations in this universe.
An Integral Writing Tour: Through the Four Studios of Your Own Awareness

An Integral Writing Tour: Through the Four Studios of Your Own Awareness

Using Integral Theory as my framework, I explore the four quadrants or fundamental perspectives of reality with respect to writing. This consists of inquiry into the use of subjective, objective, intersubjective, and interobjective perspectives to better understand and express writing. My thesis is that together these interrelated perspectives comprise the whole writing space: an Integral writing space. I also identify three developmental levels within each quadrant (e.g., three increasingly complex subjective perspectives, objective perspectives, etc.). This results in a total of twelve unique perspectives that map the horizontal breadth and vertical depth of the territory of writing. I offer experiential...
The Journey of Sound: Music, Spirit, and Creativity

The Journey of Sound: Music, Spirit, and Creativity

Santiago Jimenez, a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and music producer, talks to host Steve Banks about his remarkable composition, The Journey of Sound Through the Stages, as well as the many influences and inspirations that went into its creation.
Learn Integral by Watching Movies (and Playing Video Games!)

Learn Integral by Watching Movies (and Playing Video Games!)

Take a cinematic journey through the major stages of human development, using a series of 22 carefully-curated film clips (and more than 30 video games) to illustrate some of the most important qualities of each stage.
Grace and Grit: From Book to Film to Practice

Grace and Grit: From Book to Film to Practice

Explore the topic of grace and grit as something we all need in order to live purposefully, face challenges, and birth our dreams in the same way Ken and Treya exemplified in this profound story of transcendent love.
Inhabit: Your Entertainment

Inhabit: Your Entertainment

Corey deVos and Ryan Oelke explore how to more fully inhabit our art and entertainment. We tend to think of “recreation” as a passive activity, but we actually share an active symbiotic relationship with our art and entertainment, both personally and culturally. We create art, which in turn re-creates us.
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