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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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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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Can Integral Theory Actually Help the World?

Keith Martin-Smith explores the potential and pitfalls of integral theory in addressing global challenges. He argues that while integral thinking offers valuable tools for understanding complex systems and human development, it often falls short in practice due to misapplication and ego-driven superiority complexes. Keith proposes a more nuanced approach: treating people as unique individuals, communicating integral ideas more skillfully, and focusing on practical applications rather than theoretical grandstanding.

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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.

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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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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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Awaken Your Integral Heart

In this profound presentation by Brad Reynolds, we explore the essence of integral consciousness and its implications for personal and societal transformation. Delving deep into the heart’s role in spiritual awakening, the conversation emphasizes the interconnectedness of the head, heart, body, and spirit, with the breath as a conduit for circulating spiritual energy. The discussion touches upon the rich tapestry of human development, drawing from the wisdom of ancient traditions and modern integral thought. Brad’s emphasis on love as a transformative force is particularly moving, with the assertion that to truly be integral, one must embody love.

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Why Greater Depth Means Greater Responsibility

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Watch as Dr. Keith Witt and Corey deVos delve into the profound interdependence between human development and responsibility, exploring how our deepening self-awareness shapes our relationships and societal roles in an ever-evolving world. At the heart of the discussion is the compelling notion that as we evolve in our understanding and self-awareness, we bear a greater onus to guide, uplift, and positively influence those around us. This responsibility is especially important in the realm of relationships, where the path to trust and understanding is often fraught with challenges, yet rich with opportunities for growth.

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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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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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Integral Spiritual Explorations: What Is Integral Spirituality?

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What exactly do we mean by spirituality, and what do we mean specifically by “integral spirituality?” In this discussion, Nomali Perera presents a brief but vast array of ways in which we can explore this topic of integral spirituality. Her guests, longtime integral spiritual teachers and practitioners, Lama Pema Dragpa, Jeff Salzman & Rollie Stanich share their own inquiries and ideas of practices as well as answer questions from event attendees. At the end, you’ll also find a great integral anthem, “Universe Communion” by Stuart Davis, which beautifully captures the theme of integral spirituality.

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How to Build a Conscious Community

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Keith Martin-Smith talks with Dr. John Churchill about the themes in Keith’s latest book, When the Buddha Needs Therapy: shadow and awakening, the problem and promise of spiritual communities, the state-stage model as it relates to trauma and growth, narcissism and other personality disorders inside of spirituality, the power and trap of lineage, and what a fully Western version of an awakened spiritual path might look like.

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Psychedelic Therapy and the Politics of Consciousness

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In the recent 2022 midterm elections, Colorado joined the state of Oregon in its decriminalization of psychedelic substances for therapeutic use. Here Dr. Keith and Corey explore some of the major implications of this profound legal shift, both in terms of our overall emotional, psychological, and spiritual health, as well as our rapidly evolving “politics of consciousness” — those states of consciousness that are sanctioned by the state, versus those that are not.

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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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An Integral Approach to Parenting in the First Three Years of a Child’s Life

This article provides an introduction to the possible span and depth considered when applying an Integral approach to parenting during early childhood. The relationship between Integral Theory and the practice of parenting is addressed, and key principles and concepts that underlie Integral Parenting are discussed. The task of parenting is placed within an evolutionary context and presented as a possible Integral practice. Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory serves as an inspiration and organizing matrix.

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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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From Bodhisattva to Ecosattva: Integrating Personal Practice and Global Activism

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David Loy, Zen teacher, scholar, and prolific author, reveals his acute understanding of the crises we face today, the psychology at the root of the problems, and how we can make our way forward in this in-depth discussion. He has adopted the term ecodharma to focus attention on the challenge Buddhism faces now: integrating personal transformation with global activism and social transformation. As David points out, the focus needs to be on this world, with transcendence being a metaphorical understanding but not an excuse to abandon the problems we and our planet face today.

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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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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 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 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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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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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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Zero to Awake

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Join a multi-dimensional guided meditation and pointing-out instruction tour led by Integral Practice Leader Jogen Salzberg, Sensei through awareness in its various extra-ordinary modes. The tour encompasses the 3 Faces of Spirit through the practice of sparking Wonder, resting into Calm-Abiding, recognizing Spaciousness, orienting to Timelessness, affirming Selflessness and finally being the Clear Light Nature of Mind itself.

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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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Israel/Palestine: Where Do We Go From Here?

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Watch as Magdalena, Mark, and corey explore the long and complex history of the region, offer their own thoughts on whether Israel qualifies as an “apartheid state”, and suggest some next step solutions in order to inch ourselves closer to genuine peace, stability, and justice for the men, women, and children on all sides of this seemingly intractable conflict.

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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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Calling All Integral Practitioners! Responding Effectively to the Crises and Craziness of Our Times

We are in a race between consciousness and catastrophe, and the potential catastrophes keep multiplying. But the outcome is not predestined and our fate is in our hands. As integral practitioners, the question becomes: How can we use our integral skills to contribute most effectively? Of course, beneath this lies another question: How do we discover our most effective contributions?

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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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The Heart of Conversation

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Diane talks to Ken Wilber about her new book, Compassionate Conversations, which takes an intimate look at many of these cultural fault lines — power, privilege, identity, systemic racism, political correctness, collective shadows, etc. — and suggests a more skillful, artful, and heartful way to facilitate these conversations, to honor our unique differences, and to reaffirm our underlying unity.

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The Four Energies: Turn Your Energy Into Things That Matter

Ginny Whitelaw helps you experience the four energy patterns that show up in the human nervous system. All of us possess these four patterns, and though most of us have our favorites, all four are available to us at all times. Each is good at different things, and here you will learn what each one is good for, which ones you might use or overuse, and how you can tap into any of them at the right time in order to lead with your fullest and most authentic purpose.

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Life as Practice: Karma Yoga and Awakening Service

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Anyone who is deeply committed to contemplative practice and to cultivating the qualities it enhances—such as empathy, compassion, clarity and insight, to name only a few—will want to practice as continuously as possible. This means finding a way to use our daily activities and work as part of our practice. Fortunately, such a way is part of the world’s major religious-spiritual traditions, and it is formulated most explicitly in Hinduism as karma yoga.

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Intersubjectivity, Social Justice, and Climate

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Join us as we take a look at climate change through the lens of 2nd-person intersubjectivity — how we live together, how we grieve together, how we create meaning together, how we relate with each other in the midst of crisis, and the many other ways that we are all in this together.

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The Varieties of Integral Spiritual Experience

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Watch as Ken and Corey explore the path of Waking Up — a guided tour through temporary states of consciousness that include everything from emotional states to chemically-induced states to the direct, immediate experience of timeless reality, revealing an infinitely renewable source of energy, resilience, and creative inspiration that rests at the very center of you.

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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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The Many Ways We Grow

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Human development is uneven, which means that we are better at some things than we are at others. Some skills come more naturally to us, and others are more difficult to acquire. Watch as Ken and Corey explore each of these developmental capacities in detail, offering a powerful summary of human potentials, talents, and intelligences — a comprehensive map of the territory of “you” that will help guide your own ongoing growth and development.

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Hope for the Christian Contemplative Movement (with Fr. Thomas Keating)

We are deeply saddened for the loss of our beloved friend, Father Thomas Keating, who passed away peacefully last Thursday, October 25th. We at Integral Life are immensely grateful for the incredible kindness, grace, and wisdom that Father Keating has shared with us over these many years, for inviting us to discover the brilliant silence at the very center of our own hearts, and for shining his light upon the path that so many of us find ourselves walking. Father Keating’s remarkable life has made an immeasurable impact upon our inner and outer worlds — and though he has finally saw fit to release himself from his mortal body, we know that the work he accomplished with the time he had, as well as the luminous presence of his timeless spirit, will both continue to radiate through our lives and our hearts for countless generations to come.

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Lead With Purpose

Are you feeling an urgent calling to make an impact with your life? Then share the next few minutes with Ginny Whitelaw, a Zen Master & NASA-trained executive who trains people from all over the world in how to lead with purpose, and to feel the difference when they do.

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Lead With Purpose

Are you feeling an urgent calling to make an impact with your life? Then share the next few minutes with Ginny Whitelaw, a Zen Master & NASA-trained executive who trains people from all over the world in how to lead with purpose, and to feel the difference when they do.

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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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A New Republic of the Heart: The Art and Practice of Sacred Activism

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Terry Patten talks to Ken Wilber about his new book, A New Republic of the Heart: An Ethos for Revolutionaries, inviting us to align our “inner work” with our “outer work” and establish sacred activism as both a fundamental component of our ongoing Integral Life Practice, as well as the ultimate expression of that practice.

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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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Customize Your Mindfulness for Resilience and Impact

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Mindfulness can feel like swimming upstream against your own mind. Yet the benefits are clear: enhanced attention, empathy, and resilience, and reduced anxiety, stress, and even insomnia. Unfortunately, too many people don’t find a practice that works for them and their daily lives. This series comes in five parts: an introduction and four follow-on sessions, each with a sample mindfulness practice based on the four primary ways of relating to the world.

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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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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 Religion Of Tomorrow

In this exciting new course, based on his first synoptic book in over a decade, Ken Wilber lays out the path for a religion of tomorrow that incorporates both Waking Up (meditative states) and Growing Up (human developmental stages), as well as Cleaning Up (shadow work) and Showing Up (working with quadrants), and explores how we can practice the religion of tomorrow today, expanding our potential for growth and realization.

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Hardcore Spirit: Wisdom for a New Generation

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Chris Grosso and Ken Wilber explore a radical new evolution of the spiritual life — one that is so all-inclusive, nothing gets left out. So all-embracing, it literally has no opposite. So all-pervading, even sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll can find their rightful place on the altar of transformation. This is not your grandma’s spirituality. These aren’t the crusty moralizations of traditional religion, or the saccharine pablum of New Age narcissism. This is Hardcore Spirit.

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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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Spitting Out the Bones: Why “Waking Up” Is Not Enough

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In February of 2011, Genpo Roshi stepped down as a teacher of Zen Buddhism after admitting to numerous extra-marital affairs. Since then, Genpo has been taking a long, hard look at his own culpability and his own personal demons, while trying to find his own way forward on the path of redemption — a fascinating case study in the importance of bringing together the paths of Waking Up, Growing Up, Cleaning Up, and Showing Up, all of which are necessary to be an effective spiritual teacher in today’s world.

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Real Yoga: Liberate Your Posture

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Most yoga programs promise to bring you more strength, more endurance, and more flexibility. Real Yoga does too, but goes several steps further, helping you cultivate these very same qualities on the inside as much as the outside. Not just in your body, but also in your heart, mind, and spirit. Sofia Diaz leads an exquisite 1-hour yoga practice, excerpted from her full Real Yoga web course.

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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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Integral Spirituality: A Deeper Cut

These are some of the most important and insightful conversations Ken Wilber has ever recorded. Featuring the most cutting-edge theory, the most intimate stories, and the most meaningful applications of Integral thought to our lives and to our world, you will not find spiritual conversations as intelligent and as sophisticated anywhere else in the world. Includes 94 audio lessons, separated into 14 chapters — a staggering 40 hours of material!

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Okay, I’m Dead… Now What?

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“Practice dying.“ This was Plato’s famous final lesson to his disciples, given just before his own death. But what does it mean to practice dying? Okay, I’m Dead is a 30-part exploration of conscious dying, offering a comprehensive guide to the many stages of the death and dying process, based largely upon the timeless teachings of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

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Searching for Wisdom in the 21st Century

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Climate change, wealth inequality, ideological polarization, terrorism, religious radicalization — these are some of the truly wicked problems of the world. And none of our most pressing global challenges can be navigated or overcome without a momentous leap of collective wisdom, as well as a commensurate increase in our ability to recognize and leverage that wisdom. But what exactly is this wisdom that so many of us are searching for? Where can we find it? How do we cultivate it in our own lives and make it available to more people?

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What’s So Important About Enlightenment?

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What is “enlightenment”, and why should we care? What does “oneness with all form” and other mystical-sounding states of mind have to do with our ongoing search for happiness and fulfillment? Listen as Ken makes a stunning case for spiritual awakening, while clarifying the important differences between the integral approach to enlightenment and many of the classic definitions that have been handed down through the millennia.

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Rumi: Dancing in Fullness

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There are few experiences in life as satisfying as the poetry of Jalal ad-Din Rumi, which for many is the spiritual equivalent of enjoying a piece of rich delicious chocolate, listening to Bach, or perhaps sipping a glass of fine red wine. In this extraordinary performance you will hear Rumi as you never have before — through the resonant, whiskey-and-syrup voice of Coleman Barks, a preeminent poet, scholar, and interpreter of Rumi’s work, and the music of Grammy-winning artist David Darling.

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The Healing Wisdom of the Christos

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Joan Borysenko takes us on her personal journey from Judaism to Yogananda to Jesus. Melding ancient wisdom, modern neuroscience, and positive psychology, her journey begins with a serious mental illness that remits after an experience of Divine Union as a 10 year old. It continues through the Judaism of her childhood, the discovery of the welcoming heart of Yogananda and her years of exploring mystical Christianity, Eastern meditation practices, and Judaism, all while running a mind-body clinic at Harvard.

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Integral Healing: A More Complete Path to Wellness

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Lynne Feldman is a long-time student, supporter, and practitioner of integral living. Several years ago, she was diagnosed with two particularly nasty forms of cancer. This is her story, a remarkable and inspiring journey through some of the deepest, darkest, and most liberating regions of the heart. Listen as Lynne talks to Ken Wilber about her experience, weaving her personal story with a step-by-step breakdown of a far more comprehensive approach to healing that she crafted over several years — invaluable insights to aid you on your own path to wellness and wholeness.

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Patterns of Resistance: What Stands Between You and Spiritual Experience?

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What is preventing you from fully experiencing your own timeless divine nature, right now in this very moment? Watch as Helen Palmer presents the Enneagram as a means to recognize and rehabilitate the conditioning of the everyday ego — reducing the opacity of our everyday habituated minds, transcending the illusion of separation, and allowing the self-liberating light of God to shine through more clearly.

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Resurrecting Jesus: Embodying the Spirit of a Revolutionary Mystic

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The story of Jesus has not waned in its power to change lives. Yet today, even though the majority of us grew up in a culture suffused by the mythos of Jesus, many of us feel disconnected from the essence and vitality of His teachings. In this presentation Adyashanti invites us to rediscover the life and teachings of Jesus, recounts his own personal encounter with Christ, and offers some much-needed guidance to help you transform your own relationship with the Christian story.

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Building a Transformative Friendship with Jesus

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One of the finest presentations on Integral Christianity you will ever see. Recorded during the 2015 Return to the Heart of Christ Consciousness event, this was far and away one of the most talked-about highlights from the entire conference. Watch as Paul Smith takes us beneath the crust of evangelical extremism and beyond the noise of outdated belief systems into the very heart of Christ Consciousness itself.

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The Goddess Returns: Deity Mysticism for the 21st Century

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There is a crucial aspect of feminine wisdom that has largely been lost in today’s world—a “sacred feminine” which, if reclaimed, could help relieve a tremendous amount of conflict and suffering all across the planet. In this 13-part Goddess Returns series, acclaimed teachers Sally Kempton and Ken Wilber discuss one of the most powerful ways we can reconnect with this divine feminine: by invoking and internalizing the energetic qualities of eleven different Hindu goddesses.

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Mary Magdalene and the Christian Path of Conscious Love

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Far beyond sensationalized conspiracy theories or pabulum reclamation of the feminine, Rev. Bourgeault’s intriguing portrait of Mary Magdalene recognizes her distinct yet intertwined roles as Jesus’ disciple, apostle, and intimate beloved. Discover the transformative wisdom embodied in this mysterious, often misunderstood feminine figure at the heart of Christianity.

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Allergies and Addictions: States of Consciousness

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From the lowest depths to the highest peaks, there is no place our shadow will not follow us, even into the heart of nonduality itself. Listen as Ken Wilber offers a guided tour through the major states of consciousness described by all the world’s spiritual traditions, while pointing out the many ways that our shadows can impede or even sabotage our efforts to contact and stabilize these states.

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The Sound of the Singing Waterfall: Celebrating the Mystical Poetry of Ken Wilber

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Music and poetry come together in an arousing celebration of Ken Wilber’s mystical writings, performed by Arni Karlsson, Ed Sarath, and Jeff Salzman. As Jeff says in his introduction, “Let these words wash over you; they are true pointing-out instructions — that is, they point out the True Nature of life and reality, as only Ken can.”

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Inside the Super Brain: Integrating Mind, Matter, and Consciousness

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Deepak Chopra talks to Ken Wilber about his new book, Super Brain: Unleashing the Explosive Power of Your Mind to Maximize Health, Happiness, and Spiritual Well-Being—exploring how we can train our brain to reach beyond its present limitations, and how our subjective "mind" and objective "brain" co-arise and even co-create one another. Deepak also discusses his experience engaging and debating "new atheists" such as Richard Dawkins, and how he has dealt with the sometimes unkind and mean-spirited attacks from many of these popular modern thinkers.

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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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A Heart Blown Open: A Tale of Enlightenment, Debauchery, and Infinite Jest

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In this provocative and exhilarating dialogue, Jun Po Roshi and Ken Wilber take an in-depth look at Keith Martin-Smith's new book: A Heart Blown Open: The Life and Practice of Zen Master Jun Po Denis Kelly Roshi. For most of us, we would need to reincarnate at least 50 times in order to attain such an incredible volume of experience. But for whatever reason, it seems that Jun Po went a slightly different route, and chose to live all 50 of those lives at once. Here is his remarkable story—a riveting tale of enlightenment, debauchery, and infinite jest.

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Strength to Awaken

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This discussion of strength training goes way beyond the conventionally-stated benefits of slimmer waist lines, well-toned arms, or being able to bench press your own body weight. Your physical health and vitality are absolutely fundamental for a happy and well-lived life—your body truly is a temple, and you want your temple to be as strong and solid as possible. But a more contemplative approach to strength training (such as the one developed by Rob) not only helps you rebuild your temple from the ground up, but can also have as much of an impact upon the interiors of your temple as it does upon the exteriors.

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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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Integral Christianity: Answering the Call to Evolve

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Paul Smith talks to Ken Wilber about his latest book, Integral Christianity: The Spirit’s Call to Evolve, laying the groundwork for a truly integral approach to Christianity that identifies, honors, and includes the very best of all previous interpretations of the Gospel, while clearing the space for radically new understandings, expressions, and experiences of Christianity to emerge.

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Nature Mysticism: The Re-Enchantment of the World

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Many of us already know Susanne Cook-Greuter as one of the Integral movement’s most beloved scholars and authorities on mature adult development. But it’s not all developmental structures and tiers and fulcrums for Susanne, as she also has an exquisite, life-long appreciation and reverence for the world of Nature. In this dialogue, Susanne and Ken have some very interesting things to say about the role of Nature as a spiritual teacher, and as a source of mystical state experiences that can irrevocably transform us from the inside out.

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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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Atlas Evolved: The Life and Loves of Nathaniel Branden

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Nathaniel Branden, Ayn Rand’s former lover and the inspiration for her famous John Galt character, was at ground zero during the rise of the Objectivist movement. Listen as Nathaniel offers an intimate insider’s view of the origins, major contributions, and inevitable limitations of Rand’s philosophy and the intellectual movement it sparked. Masterfully hosted by Ken Wilber, this talk offers invaluable insight into Ayn Rand’s legacy, the human potential movement, romantic love, self-esteem, self-transcendence, and the art of conscious living.

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Meditation for the Love of It: Enjoying Your Own Deepest Experience

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In this extraordinary dialogue, Sally Kempton helps us to approach meditation from a position of abundance—as an expression of abundance—rather than from a position of lack, need, or obligation. If you are a long-time meditator, this dialogue will offer some key perspectives to help deepen and strengthen your practice. If you happen to be new to meditation, or have perhaps experienced a lapse in your daily practice, this dialogue will give you the jump-start you need to take the next crucial steps toward recognizing the radical freedom and eternal spaciousness that rests at the heart of everything you have ever known.

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Spirituality, Purpose, and Meaning in Higher Education

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Alexander and Helen Astin are the some of the most widely-quoted authorities in the field of higher education—as Ken alludes early in the dialogue, whenever these two talk it’s generally a good idea to pay attention. Listen as Ken, Alexander, and Helen discuss the complex role of spirituality among college students, the important differences between religion and spiritual life, and the effects religion, spirituality, and academics have upon our worldviews and political ideologies.

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Living the Apostles’ Creed

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Brother David Steindl-Rast offers a fascinating re-interpretation of the Apostles’ Creed. In his carefully thought-out, lovingly rendered, phrase-by-phrase translation of the Creed, Br. David liberates the hidden meaning of the text from the yoke of mythic symbolism, revealing the silent, timeless, esoteric core at the heart of the Christian tradition—the very same core that lies at the heart of this and every other moment.

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Love and Evolution

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In order to uncover love’s future, we need to explore love’s past. So Ken Wilber looks all the way back to the Big Bang, retracing love’s role throughout the history of evolution. Rather than just a mere human emotion, love is cast as a central driving force in the Kosmos—the force of Eros itself, pushing all of us along our inevitable return to Spirit.

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Divine Pride and the Integral Movement

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“Divine Pride” is a simple recognition of our holy heritage, and an acknowledgement of the tremendous responsibility that comes along with this recognition. This is not the braggadocio of a new age narcissist — it is a pride stripped of all arrogance, tempered by humility, and held with unwavering devotion to an intelligence infinitely greater than our own.

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Full Enlightenment — Now What?

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In Zen Buddhism, the Ten Ox Herding Pictures is a series of short poems and images intended to illustrate the various stages of enlightenment. The very last image of the series is often called the “return to the marketplace,” as it represents the final stage of enlightened living when the individual returns society with open hands and an open heart, seeking to spread the clarity of ever-present consciousness with as much of the world as possible.

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Why Be a Buddhist, When You Can Be the Buddha?

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Why be a Buddhist, when you can become the Buddha? With this simple question, Lama Surya Das cuts directly to the heart of the integral spiritual impulse, hinting at a secret that lies at the center of all the world’s spiritual traditions. An exemplary teacher of Dzogchen Buddhism, Lama Surya delivered this presentation with diamond-tipped clarity, precision, and wit, suggesting a few ways we can carry this realization for ourselves through our day-to-day lives while reminding us how simple it all really is: the most sublimely ordinary experience you will ever know.

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Religulous: The Baby and the Bathwater

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When we face religious fundamentalism with scientific fundamentalism and dismiss religion altogether, we are also dismissing history’s greatest source of liberation, compassion, and transcendence — the powerfully transformative practices and interpretations of spiritual reality that form the esoteric core of all the world’s religious traditions, East and West. Listen as Ken Wilber explores what Bill Maher (and the rest of the “New Atheist” crowd) are missing in this otherwise provocative and entertaining film.

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Jimmy Eat World: Hells Bells and the Dangers of Rock and Roll

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Zach Lind from Jimmy Eat World offers a fascinating glimpse into some of the inspiration behind the band’s distinctive sound, as well as a personal tour through his own upbringing in a conservative Baptist household. He and Ken then discuss an Integral approach to understanding spirituality, religion, and fundamentalism, paving the way forward for Christianity in the 21st Century. Zach and Ken also talk about his experiences touring with bands like Green Day and Blink 182, expanding Jimmy Eat World’s already distinctive sound in the studio, and balancing his stardom with his life at home as a husband and a father.

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Lucid Dreaming and the Causal Body

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Here a seminar participant describes a recent state experience he had, in which he was suspended in the empty, limitless release of the [glossary_parse]causal body[/glossary_parse], and watched his own thoughts and intentions crystallize right before his eyes. The tone of the experience was somewhat similar to lucid dreaming, during which we can actually witness ourselves manifesting our dreamscape in the moment, so he asks Ken whether there is any relationship between these sorts of experiences as they manifest in the causal body and in the subtle body.

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My Morning Jacket and the Search for Meaning

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Jim James and Ken Wilber discuss the spectacular rise of My Morning Jacket, examining the circumstances and intentions behind each of their albums, tracking the band’s career from their humble beginnings to their latest forays into rock stardom. They take a look at the personal side of Jim’s career, exploring some of the more difficult aspects of maintaining one’s relationships, sanity, and integrity amidst the mania of the rock and roll lifestyle, and reflect on the role that rock music often plays as the primary source of spiritual experience and connection for a great many people in the world.

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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 Zen

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Diane and Ken discuss the ways the Integral vision has helped enliven and enrich Zen practice by taking a multi-perspectival approach to spirituality, culminating in the “1-2-3 of Spirit” and the “3-2-1” shadow process. They then explore the potential dark side of evolutionary spirituality — most notably the threat of “spiritual fascism” — as well as the dangerous collapse of hierarchical thinking and the rampant anti-intellectualism that can be found in today’s modern and postmodern spiritual practices.

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The Secret to Transformation

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Mike Murphy, the co-founder of Esalen Institute (America’s pioneering center of transformation) shares his leading-edge thoughts on growth, transformation, and the fascinating life of Sri Aurobindo, a pioneer of Integral consciousness. Mike and Ken then go on to discuss personal transformation, the possibility of reincarnation, and the necessity of an integral approach to fully explore both.

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Integral Mahamudra: The Mandala of Awakening

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Patrick Sweeney, the holder of the Karma Kagyü lineage, offers a powerful mahamudra teaching. The term mahamudra literally means “great seal” or “great symbol”, a body of teaching that represents the culmination and fulfillment of all the practices of the new schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Mudra refers to the fact that each phenomenon appears vividly, and maha refers to the fact that it is beyond concept, imagination, and projection.

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A World in Crisis: Practicing For Peace

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AIDS, global warming, terrorism—how do we respond in an Integral way? Few issues are as crucial as those discussed in this conversation. And almost nothing is more important than meeting the world’s problems with truly integral consciousness and action. In a world gone slightly mad, how do we begin to cultivate sanity and peace? One of the world’s most successful spiritual teachers offers his own answers….

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Centering Prayer: Origins, Practice, and Contributions to an Integral Spirituality

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Father Thomas Keating and Ken Wilber discuss the scriptural and historical roots of contemplation within the Christian tradition. They also talk about the history of Fr. Keating’s spiritual path, and how while he was abbot of St Joseph’s he invited Eastern meditation teachers to instruct Christian monks in meditation.

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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.

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The Supermind

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In this fast-paced and demanding dialogue, Mike and Ken discuss the nature of the “supermind”: its meanings, why it has not appeared previously in history on any sort of widespread scale, and why glimmers of its emergence are starting to happen now, today. This dialogue is warm, witty, loving, and vibrant. It is not, however, for the intellectually faint of heart.