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An Integral Metatheory of Conservatism

In a time of political upheaval and societal change, understanding the deeper currents that shape our worldviews is more crucial than ever. Join Robb Smith in this enlightening presentation recorded during our recent election watch party, where he delves into the rich tapestry of conservatism through the lens of integral theory.

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SALT for Climate: Redefining Urgency and Transformation in Climate Leadership

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Josh Leonard sits down with Gail Hochachka and Lisa Gibson, leaders of the SALT for Climate initiative, to explore their pioneering approach to climate action. They discuss the often-overlooked psychological and social dimensions of climate work, share insights from their work on collective sensemaking and leadership training, and explain why a focus on human dynamics may be the missing piece in our response to the climate crisis.

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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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Faces of X: Making Peace with the Culture War

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Stephanie Lepp talks with Corey deVos about her Faces of X project, which models how we can transcend culture wars by integrating opposing perspectives. The discussion explores how the polarization we see in society mirrors unresolved polarities within ourselves, and emphasizes the need for both personal and social integration. This discussion highlights the limitations of binary thinking and the importance of synthesizing conflicting viewpoints to create more inclusive, nuanced solutions.

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The Myth of Evil: Why Polarities, Not Villains, Drive Injustice

Barry Johnson introduces the concept of polarity thinking, offering a revolutionary framework for addressing complex societal issues like poverty, racism, and climate change. Rather than viewing problems as having singular solutions or evil sources, Barry explains how mismanaged polarities—such as justice vs. mercy and freedom vs. equality—are at the heart of many dysfunctions. By adopting a both/and mindset, we can break vicious cycles, foster balance, and create more sustainable solutions in our personal and collective lives.

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Sexual Healing: A Beginner’s Guide to Integral Sex Therapy

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Dr. Keith Witt and Corey deVos explore the transformative world of integrally informed sex therapy—a holistic approach that combines romantic, scientific, and spiritual perspectives to address the unique complexities of modern relationships. This episode offers profound insights into creating and sustaining a fulfilling, dynamic love affair that extends beyond physical intimacy, tailored to the unique needs of every relationship.

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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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The 8 Horizons of Love

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In this episode of Witt and Wisdom, Corey deVos introduces a comprehensive relationships framework he is currently developing, designed to help partners navigate the staggering complexity of our relationships — whether romantic, familial, or platonic. Corey highlights the eight fundamental territories or horizons within which all relationships unfold, detailing the common factors, everyday examples, key questions, common challenges, and the risks of neglecting each of these horizons.

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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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Integral Diversity Maturity: Toward a Postconventional Understanding of Diversity Dynamics

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This article outlines the authors’ ongoing study of diversity, focusing particularly on the AQAL model as a linchpin in an evolving theory of “diversity maturity.” Recognizing the limitations of non-integral approaches to understanding and negotiating diversity dynamics, the authors explain how an integral perspectives come to inform their postconventional understanding. The authors share their preliminary theory of the diversity maturity process in which the integral vision/theory that unites diversity, complexity, and creativity is the dynamic relationship among and between quadrants, levels, lines, states, and types. The article concludes with an agenda for further theoretical and empirical inquiry.

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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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CANCELLED: The Battle for Free Speech in the Integral Age

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Keith Witt and Corey delve into the complex and contentious issue of cancel culture, examining its implications for free speech, academic freedom, and social cohesion. They explore why understanding the nuances of cancel culture is crucial in today’s polarized environment, and how an Integral perspective can provide a more comprehensive view that embraces complexity, encourages growth, and seeks balance.

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The Seven Deadly Sins of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion)

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Join Keith Martin-Smith as we question whether DEI initiatives are achieving their intended goals of increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion, or whether they may be perpetuating any number of unseen biases that take us further away from those shared goals. Are we oversimplifying the narrative around privilege and diversity? How do factors like poverty impact issues like police violence? How might we rethink and reshape the DEI discourse, moving towards more skillful (and more integral) approaches?

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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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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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Meta-Ideological Politics: Bridging the Gaps Between Us

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Ryan’s presentation delves into the complex nature of ideology and its profound impact on our perceptions, interactions, and behaviors. He underscores the human brain’s inherent tendency to seek patterns, elucidating how ideologies aid us in deciphering the world but can also misguide us. Ryan describes the three definitions of “meta” he uses to elucidate the concept of meta-ideological politics: “meta” as transcending, “meta” as between, and “meta” as self-aware or self-referential.

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From Socrates to Social Media: Renewing Our Commitment to Free Speech

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Mark Fischler and Corey deVos are joined by Nadine Strossen, a renowned advocate for free speech and former president of the ACLU, to traverse the rich history and the evolving frontier of free speech — a legacy that reaches from the philosophical debates of ancient Greece to today’s dynamic platforms of social media. Together, Nadine, Mark, and Corey illuminate the journey of free speech (a crowning achievement of the rational/modern (Orange) stage) celebrating it as a beacon of individual rights and a testament to the unyielding human pursuit of truth and expression.

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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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Sex, Identity, Gender: Beyond Wokism and Trumpism

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Join us as we push even further into the front lines of the culture war skirmishes that have become so plentiful over the last several years. Corey deVos joins Keith to discuss how our notions of sex, gender, and identity apply to some of the most contentious and pressing issues of our time, and how they can be integrated into a more integral dialectic.

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The Art and Science of the Intentional Love Affair

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Dr. Keith Witt and Corey deVos delve into the intricacies of intimate relationships, exploring the concept of “intentional love affairs” and how they can be cultivated to deepen connection and intimacy. They discuss the importance of fostering better friendships, nurturing love affairs, and developing the ability to solve problems so effortlessly that they may not even appear as conflicts to others.

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When Therapists Go Woke

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Dr. Keith and Corey examine a troubling new trend in psychotherapy, where woke ideologies are being imposed in the therapist’s office and interfering with client-based approaches to mental health. Prompted by Lisa Davis’s insightful article “How Therapists Became Social Justice Warriors” in The Free Press, Keith and Corey delve into the evolving role of therapists in the current sociopolitical climate.

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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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How Self-Hatred Can Lead to Self Transformation

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Dr. Keith and Corey explore how feelings of self-hatred and self-loathing, when combined with compassionate self-awareness and the natural resilience of Witness consciousness, can help us overcome our resistance to change and put us back on the path of increasing wholeness, happiness, and self-acceptance. It’s an incredibly powerful discussion that we hope will help you better navigate some of these darkest corners of your own psyche.

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Transform the Police: A More Integral Approach to Law Enforcement

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Mark and Corey are joined by Chris Orrey, a retired police lieutenant with over 30 years of service with the Hayward, California Police Department, to discuss the abuse and resulting death of Tyre Nichols, who was severely beaten and ultimately killed by five Memphis police officers after a routine traffic stop. What allowed this tragedy (and others like it) to take place? What sorts of personal, cultural, and institutional transformation are necessary to prevent something like this from occurring again?

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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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Taking Justice Personally

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Mark and Corey offer an intimate sharing of their personal stories, reflecting on some of the most formative experiences in their own lives that influenced their interest and enactment of justice. It is a tender and heartfelt conversation that we hope not only allows you to better understand their own passions and perspectives, but also invites you to reflect in a similar way on the critical fulcrums in your own life, and how these experiences continue to shape your standards of goodness, integrity, and justice.

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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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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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How to Teach Kids About Sex and Gender

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What exactly are “developmentally appropriate, age-appropriate” ways to teach kids about sex, gender, and identity, not only for kids in kindergarten through third grade, but throughout the rest of childhood and adolescence? Which aspects are more appropriate to teach at home, and which are appropriate to teach at school? Watch as Dr. Keith and Corey share their thoughts.

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An Integral Approach to Constitutional Interpretation

The following article outlines the major approaches to constitutional interpretation and explains how either approach on its own ultimately leads to a narrow and incomplete understanding of the law, which ignores the rich reality that both interior and exterior perspectives carry. The author will introduce Integral Legal Theory as a method of interpretation that will allow each perspective its day in court while offering coherence to a jurisprudence gone slightly mad.

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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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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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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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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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Transforming Trauma Into Resilience

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Watch as we take a look at several different kinds of trauma — micro-traumas, big traumas, “pre-verbal” traumas, generational traumas, etc. — and explore how we can shift into a “post-traumatic growth” mindset which, like the kintsugi vase in the image above, allows us to remake ourself into a more resilient, unique, and elegant vessel.

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Wicked Problems: Bringing Wisdom and Compassion to Immigration

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Immigration matters have been viewed by many as a “wicked problem” — implying a complexity that has sets of values in tension, something societies have dealt with since the very dawn of civilization itself. Watch as Magdalena, Mark, and Corey offer their own ideas and reflect on the reasons this issue has become one of the central fault lines in the culture wars.

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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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Integral Politics: A Spiritual Third Way

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In this time of ideological upheaval, when the old ideologies of left and right, of socialism, liberalism, and conservatism, no longer capture the political imagination as they once did, new political visions are required. Some have tried to formulate a “third way” between social democracy and conservatism. Others have proposed a more spiritually-oriented approach to transcend left and right. In what follows, Gregory Wilpert presents another vision — Integral Politics, based on Integral Theory.

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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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Integral Epistemology

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How do we know stuff? Like all of the great philosophical quandaries, it’s a fundamentally straightforward question that can lead us into an endlessly branching series of chicken-and-egg meditations on the nature of existence (ontology) versus the nature of knowledge (epistemology). In this fascinating episode of The Ken Show, we take a look at a dozen of the most popular schools of epistemological thought — idealism, pragmatism, empiricism, constructivism, etc. — noting their respective contributions and limitations, and how they can all be pulled together into a more Integral epistemology.

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What’s Wrong With Policing in America?

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Why do we see so many cases of apparent police abuse being recorded so frequently, but punished so rarely? What are some possible solutions that can help create more social trust for our police organizations, and a more peaceful society for all of us? Watch as Mark and Corey take a careful look at the Derek Chauvin verdict — and at the state of policing itself in America — as they offer their own personal views and try to sort through the conflicting narratives surrounding this tragically controversial cultural fault line.

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Divided Minds, Divided Societies: How ILP Can Help Heal Social Division

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In this compilation of highlights from Divided Minds, Divided Societies: How ILP Can Help Heal Social Division, Integral Life CEO Robb Smith’s session at our recent exhale online retreat, Robb argues that it is partly our responsibility to help others reduce their fears in a world that’s getting more complex and feels more threatening to tens of millions of people — particularly those at earlier stages of development, education and openness.

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The Metacrisis is Giving Rise to the Transformation Age

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How can we contribute to the rise of the Transformation Age? We first need to understand what’s driving the emergence of the Transformation Age out of the Information Age: a global metacrisis, occurring amidst a great release of global power, which as it becomes more acute is exposing the limitations of the current era’s structures, sensemaking, key contradictions (all pluribus, little unum), scarce resources (meaning), and the sources of power themselves (convening power).

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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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#EnoughIsEnough: Overcoming Racism in America

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In light of the recent violent deaths of three black Americans — Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd — at the hands of current and former police officers in the United States, we wanted to deepen our discussion of race and racism and how we as Integralists can contribute to change by becoming powerful anti-racists in our own circles of influence.

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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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The Four Quadrants: A Guided Tour

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Ken and Corey take a in-depth tour through one of Ken’s most well-known contributions to integral philosophy: the Four Quadrants. Watch as Ken shares his personal story about the origins of the Four Quadrant model — the day everything came together — as he weaves 3rd-person theoretical descriptions of the model with his own 1st-person experience and creative process.

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Corona, Climate, and Crashes: Welcome to the Transformation Age

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Robb Smith and Corey deVos explore the rising disruption caused by a brand new set of global life conditions emerging across the planet, why only an integral sensibility is capable of managing these many challenges and crises, and how we can begin to cultivate the inner resilience and anti-fragility we need in order to endure and even thrive in the midst of extreme volatility.

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Integral Social Justice

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In this stunning 3 hour discussion, Ken Wilber offers his own views around healthy and unhealthy forms of social justice, praising the healthy and legitimate efforts to enact social justice over the generations while noting how much of today’s broken discourse around social justice is helping to perpetuate multiple forms of injustice.

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Creating a Coherent Life Story

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Dr. Keith and Corey discuss the primary goal of psychotherapy — to help people experience themselves every day as living a happy ending to their life so far, and at the very beginning of a wonderful and exciting new chapter. This goal, of course, requires a more integrated self in order to meet the inevitable challenges, triggers, and opportunities that we will encounter on the path of growing up, and for us to be able to create a cohesive and coherent life story for ourselves as we move forward

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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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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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Growing Up: A Guided Tour

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In this episode of The Ken Show we explore one of the most central elements of integral metatheory: growing up through multiple stages of developmental maturity. Watch as Ken and Corey offer a guided tour through each of the major stages on the Path of Growing Up — an exploration of your own greatest, deepest potentials — and offer some simple practices to help you actualize those potentials.

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Immigration, Postmodernism, and Feminism: An Integral Reckoning

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Ken Wilber responds to questions about immigration, the dangerous excesses of the political right, and the regressive tendencies we are seeing in the postmodern left. Ken and Corey then offer a fascinating exploration of feminism and the need for both men and women to better harmonize the public sphere of politics, career, and religion with the private sphere of family, hearth, and home.

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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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The Stages of Leadership Maturity

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Beena Sharma and Susanne Cook-Greuter offer a stunning overview of their Leadership Maturity Framework, which offers leaders, coaches, and change agents of all stripes a far more thorough understanding of human development and human potential, as well as a far more robust toolset to help others thrive at whatever stage of life they find themselves at.

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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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Heal Thyself: How to Repair Interpersonal and Cultural Injuries

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The Buddha had it right with “life is suffering”! We all regularly feel injured by other people, our own interior struggles, cultural events, or random chance. Repairing these injuries is a big deal! Luckily, Integrally informed psychology can help us recognize and repair injuries. In this upcoming episode of Live with Dr. Keith we’ll talk about how we all become injured and the steps we often need to take for effective repair.

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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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Race, Rooted Cosmopolitanism, and Hope in the 21st Century

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The political storm that has visited the United States over the past few years have exposed a number of crises: cultural, political, and environmental. One of these crises is our society’s ongoing struggles with how we define and treat one another according to our ideas of “race.” The moment is ripe for bringing together healthier understandings of ethnic identity that can replace the largely toxic idea of race from our past. In this episode of Psychology Now, special guest Greg Thomas joins co-host Mark Forman to discuss these issues.

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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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The Rise of the Benefit Corporation: Bringing More Sanity, Sustainability, and Success to Big Business

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In a world where corporations often act like psychopaths and seem steered by barely more than greed and avarice, is it possible to transcend their sociopathic pursuit of profit and bring more care and consciousness to our economic system? Listen as corporate lawyer and conscious business leader John Montgomery explains how we arrived at the corporate oligarchy in which we now find ourselves, and how we might be able to steer ourselves toward a more sane and sustainable future.

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Into the Void and Back Again: Understanding and Recovering From Depression

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Depression is a powerful mood disorder and – after anxiety – the most prevalent of all mental health challenges. In this episode of Psychology Now, Dr. Witt and Dr. Forman dive deeply into the topic of depression, and how our struggles with depression can lead to deepened commitment to change, heightened self-understanding, and increased empathy for the suffering of others.

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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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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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The Darth Vader Move

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The brighter the light, the darker the shadow. The “Darth Vader move” is what happens when someone with an exceptionally high level of development uses the skills and capacities of that level for purposes generally deemed to be “wrong” — often the result of a highly developed cognitive intelligence combined with a poorly developed moral intelligence (Nazi scientists being the classic example). What happens when our higher angels get hijacked by our lowest demons? What is the cause of the Darth Vader move, and how can we prevent ourselves from being seduced by the Dark Side of the Force?

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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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Human 101: The Psychology of the Future

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How can we formulate an approach to psychology that honors and embraces every legitimate aspect of human consciousness and pulls these multiple aspects together into a single coherent model of the human mind? Watch as Ken Wilber offers one of the finest and most complete summaries of an Integral approach to psychology he has ever recorded, while suggesting how a more comprehensive understanding of human consciousness can help shape a better, kinder, and more sustainable future.

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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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Knowing Your Shadow: Healing the Broken Self

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Exploring the full spectrum of disassociated shadow material in our lives (pain, shame, guilt, dark emotions, sexual shadows, spiritual shadows, etc.) and the ways that we can begin cleaning up and reintegrating these splintered pieces of our psyche, Robert Augustus Masters talks to Ken Wilber about his recent audio course, Knowing Your Shadow.

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Telling the Story of Development

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Susanne Cook-Greuter, one of the most important developmental psychologists working today, shares her path from a working-class family in Switzerland to academic excellence and innovation at Harvard University, exploring the higher stages of consciousness available to us all. She then shares her thoughts on the current state of academia and the culture at large, and why it‘s so important to encourage flourishing at every stage of development alongside the invitation to keep growing.

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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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Introduction to Ego Development

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Susanne Cook-Greuter is an internationally recognized researcher in mature ego development and self-actualization. You may have noticed her name alongside Robert Kegan’s, Clare Graves’, and Jane Loevinger’s in Ken’s book, Integral Spirituality. Her sentence completion tests are sophisticated enough to tease out the subtle differences between Teal, Turquoise, Indigo, and Violet altitudes of development.

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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….