Two Decades. A Thousand Conversations. One Integral Journey.

From Ken Wilber’s earliest dialogues to today’s explorations of the global Metacrisis and The Transformation Age, our ever-growing library offers the most complete story of human wholeness available online. Welcome on this transformative path.

Become a member

Categories

Integral Basics

25+ posts

Whether you’re new to Integral or returning for a refresher, this collection is your doorway into how Integral Theory works, with core teachings from Ken Wilber, Jeff Salzman, Corey deVos, Roger Walsh, and others.

Editor's Picks

90+ posts

Some of the very best practices, perspectives and presentations available in the Integral Life archives.

World Affairs

140+ posts

In this collection, you’ll explore the global Metacrisis and the deep causal structures behind the geopolitical, economic, and ecological challenges of our civilization.

Psychology

140+ posts

In one of our biggest and richest collections, you’ll navigate the human psyche in all its complexity—motivations, drives, shadows, traumas, relationships, practices, and much more.

Perspectives View all

The Sacred Mandala of Being: A Spiritual Journey with Kabir Kadre

The Sacred Mandala of Being: A Spiritual Journey with Kabir Kadre

Kabir Kadre   October 23, 2025  
What if awakening isn’t the absence of limitation, but the presence of love within it? In this luminous dialogue, Kabir Kadre and Lama Kimberley Lafferty explore the path of embodied realization — where vulnerability becomes a teacher, the body becomes a mandala, and compassion becomes the clearest expression of truth.
The Highest Stages of Human Flourishing

The Highest Stages of Human Flourishing

Alexander Love   October 17, 2025  
Keith Martin-Smith and Alexander Love explore Terry O'Fallon's STAGES model of human development, focusing on the rarely-discussed MetAware tier where transpersonal awareness becomes a structural feature of consciousness, leading to the dissolution of boundaries and recognition that all meaning is constructed.
Cybernetics and the Intelligence of Love

Cybernetics and the Intelligence of Love

Dr. Keith Witt   October 10, 2025  
Dr. Keith Witt and Corey deVos explore how cybernetics — the science of self-correcting systems — reveals the hidden logic of love, power, trauma, and societal evolution. Through the lens of integral theory, they trace feedback loops across all dimensions of life, showing how everything from personal healing to political dysfunction is shaped by the quality of communication and coherence in our systems.
The New War on the First Amendment: Words as Violence, Jokes as Crimes

The New War on the First Amendment: Words as Violence, Jokes as Crimes

Keith Martin-Smith   September 30, 2025  
Keith Martin-Smith tackles America's free speech crisis in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination—examining how both left and right have abandoned principled commitments to the First Amendment in favor of tribal speech enforcement.
Nocturnal Meditations: How to See in the Dark

Nocturnal Meditations: How to See in the Dark

Andrew Holecek   September 25, 2025  
Andrew Holecek presents dark retreat—extended periods in complete sensory deprivation—as a transformative meditation practice that accesses deeper levels of consciousness typically obscured by our light-obsessed, distraction-heavy culture. He argues that conventional "waking" awareness is actually humanity's most contracted state, while nocturnal practices like lucid dreaming and sleep yoga offer profound opportunities for shadow work, creativity, and spiritual development.
Don’t Just Transcend Your Pain — Include It

Don’t Just Transcend Your Pain — Include It

Alexander Love   September 19, 2025  
After the tragic murder of his father at age 20, Alexander Love began a decades-long journey through grief, spiritual practice, and shadow work — seeking not just to rise above his pain, but to finally and fully include it. In this deeply personal conversation, he shares how real healing began not with transcendence, but with embracing the very wounds he had tried to escape.
The Dopamine Revolution: From Human Evolution to Modern Crisis

The Dopamine Revolution: From Human Evolution to Modern Crisis

Dr. Keith Witt   September 12, 2025  
Dr. Keith Witt traces how dopamine-driven evolution shaped human consciousness from ancient seafood consumption that triggered civilization's "Big Bang" 80,000 years ago to today's hyper-stimulating culture that exploits the same neurochemical reward systems for profit. While our dopamine-flooded modern world creates unprecedented pathologies like addiction and isolation, it also sets the stage for the next evolutionary leap: conscious integration of our reward systems with relational wisdom and ecological awareness.

Podcast Series

Witt & Wisdom Series Banner

Dr. Keith Witt

Licensed Psychologist, teacher, and author

Dr. Keith Witt and Corey deVos explore the rich terrain of the integral mind.
Evolving Spirit Series Banner

Kimberley Lafferty

Teacher, practitioner

Kimberley Lafferty explores the often unspoken world of spiritual experiences—those profound, extraordinary moments that connect us to something beyond the ordinary. Reflecting on her own journey and cultural taboos around sharing such experiences, Kimberley invites us to break the silence, embrace vulnerability, and discover the transformative power of sharing our stories.

Integral Edge Series Banner

Keith Martin-Smith

Award-winning author, writing coach, and Zen priest

Keith Martin-Smith brings a deep, multi-perspective lens to the chaos, cutting through the noise to find what actually matters. This isn’t just another commentary on the world. It’s a guide to seeing—and living—beyond the divide.

The Ken Show Banner

Ken Wilber

Philosopher, writer, creator of Integral Theory

In Zen Buddhism, the word kensho describes a sudden glimpse or insight into the nature of reality. At Integral Life, the “Ken Show” intends to offer you a very similar opportunity.

Recorded between 2018–2023, these are some of the most important and far-reaching dialogues in Integral Life’s history.

How to Think Integrally

How to Think Integrally

Ken Wilber   September 19, 2018  
Ken and Corey explore some of the major qualities of integral thinking at the “vision logic” or “construct aware” stages of development.
The Major and Minor Scales of Integral Politics

The Major and Minor Scales of Integral Politics

Ken Wilber   November 13, 2018  
Ken Wilber and Corey deVos take an in-depth look at the “major and minor scales” of integral politics — an inventory of the most critical elements, polarities, and patterns of self-organization that are at play within all of the major political systems across the world, from the rise of civilization to today.
The Baby and the Bathwater: Saving Liberalism

The Baby and the Bathwater: Saving Liberalism

Ken Wilber   January 17, 2019  
In this episode of The Ken Show we explore five themes near and dear to the liberal heart — tolerance, nonviolence, power, privilege, and gender — celebrating the healthy aspects of each that we want to include in a more integral embrace, while weeding out the unhealthy regressive narratives that most of these have devolved into.
On the Front Line of the Culture War — Give Me Some Real Examples, Not Just Theories!

On the Front Line of the Culture War — Give Me Some Real Examples, Not Just Theories!

Ken Wilber   February 15, 2019  
Watch as Ken and Corey offer their views on some of the most controversial policy debates of our time, each of which has become a battle line in our constantly escalating culture wars.
The Four Quadrants: A Guided Tour

The Four Quadrants: A Guided Tour

Ken Wilber   March 20, 2020  
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.
Integrating Shadow

Integrating Shadow

Ken Wilber   July 16, 2020  
Ken and Corey offer a stunning overview of the psychological shadow. Ken describes several different kinds of shadow, how shadow can show up differently in all four quadrants, and the relationship between shadow, violence, and social transformation.
Ken Wilber Goes to High School: Sex, Ecology, Spirituality

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

Ken Wilber   September 28, 2021  
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.
View all →
Witt & Wisdom Series Banner

Robb Smith

Founder of IAM, Co-founder of Integral Life

Series of written articles and accompanying webcasts that Robb Smith hosts for the Integral Life community in real-time as the Great Release unfolds, giving rise to the Transformation Age.
Inhabit Series Banner

Ryan Oelke

Co-founder of Buddhist Geeks, teacher

Practice-based series with Ryan Oelke and Corey deVos, designed to help you embody your own unique expression of integral being and more fully inhabit the territory of your life, your relationships, and your world.

Integral Edge Series Banner

Mark Fischler

Professor of Criminal justice

Join Mark Fischler and Corey deVos as they bring integral justice into focus on today’s pressing cultural, legal, and societal issues.

Integral Edge Series Banner

Lisa Frost

Integral Master Coach, facilitator

Between 2021 and 2023, Lisa Frost and Corey deVos recorded a podcast series that continues to offer timeless guidance for deepening Integral Life Practice, with powerful ways to Wake Up, Grow Up, Clean Up, and Show Up in life, relationships, and work.

Watch Our Youtube Channel

Image
Watch the full 2-hour conversation here (members only): https://integrallife.com/the-sacred-mandala-of-being-a-spiritual-journey-with-kabir-kadre/ An intimate dialogue on embodiment, compassion, and the great perfection. Lama Kimberley Lafferty and mystic teacher Kabir Kadre step beyond frameworks into the living field of realization. What unfolds is not a conversation about spirituality, but an intimate transmission of it — spoken through bodies shaped by devotion, constraint, lineage, and love. Kabir, a quadriplegic practitioner living with profound physical limitations, reflects on the sacred paradox of his path: how his reliance on caregivers, his suffering, and his longing are not obstacles to awakening—but portals. With fierce honesty and reverent clarity, he explores the texture of compassion when it meets the friction of real life, and how true realization must become conduct in the face of everyday humanity. In response, Kimberley opens vulnerably about her own role as a Lama in the Indo-Tibetan tradition. She shares the challenge and grace of holding the seat of teacher while staying rooted in her own humanity, her family, and her relational humility. Together, they model a new kind of spiritual leadership—awake, embodied, and fiercely tender. This dialogue is a mirror and a medicine. It invites us to reconsider what awakening really means—and what it asks of us now, in this world, in this moment. 00:00 Introduction: Living as a Quadriplegic 01:40 Reflecting on Personal Spiritual Journey 06:59 The Role of a Lama 08:17 Balancing Humanity and Spiritual Leadership 12:06 Challenges and Realizations 18:22 Awakening and Compassion Watch the full 2-hour conversation here (members only): https://integrallife.com/the-sacred-mandala-of-being-a-spiritual-journey-with-kabir-kadre/
Embracing Compassion: A Spiritual Journey with Kabir Kadre
Integral LIVE
Over the last 50 years, globalization poured wealth into the U.S. — but instead of lifting the productive classes, it flowed upward. In the late phase of America’s hegemonic cycle, capital shifted from trade and production into high finance, concentrating profits in the hands of elites. The result? The 1% and 10% became the biggest winners of globalization, while the middle hollowed out. Watch the full analysis here: https://youtu.be/eDTFzP-VCRI?si=kj3p_kx67W68nANG #shorts #capitalism #globalization #wealthgap #finance #USChina
How Globalization Fueled the Rise of America’s 1%
“How do you love the person you don’t understand? That question is the heart of development.” – Alexander Love In this expansive and illuminating conversation, developmental coach and shadow work facilitator Alexander Love returns to Integral Edge to guide us through one of the most important — and least understood — frontiers of human development: the MetAware tier. Building on Terry O’Fallon’s STAGES model, Alexander and host Keith Martin-Smith explore how meaning-making evolves across six distinct person perspectives, each with its own epistemological frame, relationship to space and time, and capacity for self-reflection. Moving from early concrete stages into the subtle and post-integral realms, they reveal how development is not just about personal growth — it’s a complete restructuring of reality itself. At the heart of this episode is a powerful distinction: states of consciousness (like boundlessness, nonduality, timelessness) can arise at any stage, but the way we interpret and integrate them depends on our developmental maturity. This makes the MetAware tier uniquely challenging — and liberating. As identities, maps, and meanings begin to dissolve, we are invited into a space where ontology and epistemology collapse into each other, and the self becomes a field rather than a point. The discussion unfolds with uncommon nuance and precision, covering: - How each person perspective reorganizes the self in space and time - The shift from identity-driven development to perspective-driven awareness - Why 5.0 can feel like spiritual vertigo — and why that’s a good sign - What 5.5 reveals about the constructed nature of all worldviews - How 6.0 initiates the sacred dance between the Absolute and the Relative - Why spiritual realization doesn’t always mean developmental maturity - The difference between socially constructed reality and direct transpersonal knowing - What it really means to “see through” the world — and why it can’t be faked - Why complex language is often a clue to deeper integration, not confusion Whether you're a student of Integral Theory, a developmental coach, or a contemplative practitioner navigating your own unfolding, this episode offers rare insight into the architecture of inner transformation. Alexander’s compassionate brilliance makes even the most esoteric concepts feel embodied, accessible, and immediately relevant to the human journey.
The Highest Stages of Human Flourishing
We are living through the 4th great crisis of capitalism in 700 years — a rare terminal crisis where the reigning financial hegemon fights to hold power as the world system demands reconfiguration. The U.S. is resisting the rise of Asia and China, even as both economies remain locked in mutual dependence: American consumer demand fuels Chinese growth, while Asian capital finances U.S. debt and social contracts. It's an historic struggle over who will shape the next global order... Watch the full clip here: https://youtu.be/eDTFzP-VCRI?si=v80eW60WjPu2pfSx #shorts #economy #capitalism #geopolitics #usvschina
We’re In the 4th Great Crisis of Capitalism 💥
Corey deVos names three major challenges facing the online integral community: the over-identification with political identity, an unexamined sense of integral superiority, and a subtle Dunning-Kruger effect among highly intelligent people. Together, these dynamics shut down the feedback loops that make growth, humility, and real community possible. ✨ Subscribe for regular insights and wisdom! ✨
3 Problems Afflicting the Integral Community
Watch the full discussion here: https://integrallife.com/the-dopamine-revolution-from-human-evolution-to-modern-crisis/ What if love isn’t just a feeling — but a feedback loop? In this powerful excerpt, Dr. Keith Witt and Corey DeVos introduce the concept of cybernetics as a universal principle of self-regulation and coherence. They explore how systems — from the body to the brain to our most intimate relationships — stay healthy through open, adaptive feedback. And they propose a radical insight: love is the felt experience of coherence returning, whether in a nervous system, a couple, or a culture. They also dive into what makes relationships truly evolve: the presence of warmth, flexibility, firmness, and resolve — four qualities that mirror cybernetic health across all quadrants of human experience. Trauma, by contrast, is described as a frozen feedback loop, and healing becomes a process of restoring adaptive flow. Blending psychology, systems theory, and spiritual insight, this conversation is a brilliant entry point into understanding how feedback shapes everything we care about — including each other. --- Free Email Course on Building Your Integral Life: https://bit.ly/byim-integrallife Participate in our daily Integral Life Practice sessions: https://integrallife.com/calendar Watch all episodes of The Ken Show: https://integrallife.com/category/perspectives/the-ken-show/ What is Integral? https://integrallife.com/what-is-integral-approach/ Follow our news on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IntegralLifeOfficial/ Integral thoughts on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RobbSmith Integral Life is a member-driven digital media community that supports the growth, education, and application of Integral Philosophy and integrative metatheory to complex issues in the 21st century. Integral Life offers perspectives, practices, analysis, and community to help people grow into the full capacities of integral consciousness in order to thrive in a rapidly-evolving world.
What Cybernetics Can Teach Us About Love, Trauma, and Politics
✨ Subscribe for regular insights and wisdom from Ken Wilber, the "Einstein of Consciousness" ✨ Every moment of reality has four dimensions — interior and exterior, individual and collective. Together, they form what Ken Wilber calls the 4 Quadrants: I (inner experience) It (behavioral/outer) We (culture/shared meaning) Its (systems/social structures) Whether you see it as metaphysics or just a powerful heuristic, this framework reveals why no single perspective can capture the whole truth.
Reality Has 4 Dimensions — Here’s Why | Ken Wilber
The Dunning-Kruger effect isn’t just in your head — it can show up in your body too. Here’s how overconfidence and self-doubt reveal themselves when we tune in through meditation and body awareness. #shorts #DunningKruger #CognitiveBias #Psychology #ShadowWork #meditation
The Cognitive Bias You Can Actually FEEL in Your Body
Two watchmakers, two very different fates. One collapses under complexity, the other thrives by building in stable sub-assemblies. Arthur Koestler called these “holons” — the building blocks of evolution, mind, and reality itself. Discover why “turtles all the way up, turtles all the way down” explains more than you think. 🕰️🐢 #Holons #SystemsThinking #Evolution #shorts
The Two Watchmakers: Why Nothing Exists Alone
Virtual Reality isn’t just a game. And lucid dreaming isn’t just sleep science. Together, they open a window into the future of awareness: a direct way to study consciousness, perception, and freedom. Spiritual teacher Andrew Holecek and cognitive neuroscientist Jordan Quaglia explore how VR and lucid dreaming reveal the hidden mechanics of mind and reality. From the neuroscience of perception (why 80% of what you “see” comes from your brain, not your eyes) to ancient Buddhist teachings on lucidity, you’ll learn how awareness itself can transform your relationship to life’s biggest challenges. Instead of being trapped in the “oh sh*t” reaction to the world’s problems, these practices can help us shift into an “oh wow” relationship — cultivating new perspectives, dissolving reactivity, and discovering freedom inside the dream of waking life. Discover: ✨ Why lucidity (awareness) is the key to psycho-spiritual growth ✨ How VR and lucid dreaming act as laboratories for studying reality ✨ The hidden process of reification — and how we project solidity onto a dreamlike world ✨ Why “the world isn’t hard, we are” — and how to soften our relationship to reality ✨ Practices for dereification: unsubscribing from appearances and waking up in both dreams and daily life. PLUS: 🎧 (FREE) Listen to this conversation between Andrew Holecek and Ken Wilber as they explore the frontiers of human consciousness: https://bit.ly/48HN1gi 🧘 (members) Andrew Holecek offers guided instructions for two fundamental forms of meditative practice: Shamatha and Vipashyana meditations: https://bit.ly/4nVCLW7
What If Waking Life Is Actually the Dream? And Technology Can Wake Us Up...
Keith Martin-Smith tackles America's free speech crisis in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination—examining how both left and right have abandoned principled commitments to the First Amendment in favor of tribal speech enforcement. The statistics are alarming: 34% of college students now believe violence can be justified to stop speech, while 70% think shouting down speakers is acceptable. Meanwhile, the right—once positioning itself as the defender of free speech—now threatens broadcast licenses (Jimmy Kimmel/ABC) and the Attorney General openly vows to prosecute "hate speech," which is constitutionally protected. Keith traces how we got here: the left's evolution from 20th-century free speech champions to 21st-century speech police, driven by sophisticated insights about power and identity that collapsed into "words are violence" when absorbed by pre-rational minds. The Biden administration's coordination with social media during COVID. Universities where 90% of faculty self-censor. A generation taught that disagreement equals danger. But the right offers no alternative. Trump's threats against critics, state laws punishing boycotts, banning books and classroom content — all wrapped in freedom rhetoric while furthering authoritarian control. The real issue isn't left versus right. It's developmental. Can we grow into people capable of holding the tension between freedom AND responsibility? Between protecting dissent AND attending to impact? Between defending speech we hate AND building cultures of care? The question isn't whose speech should we suppress. It's whether we can mature into people who can hear each other even when it hurts. 0:00 - Introduction 3:05 - First Amendment 14:50 - The Great Inversion: When the Left Turned Censorious 29:25 - Trump Era: Chaos as Catalyst (2016–2020) 34:00 - Post-George Floyd: The Norms Collapse (2020–2023) 46:25 - Right’s Reaction 1990-2020  50:04 - Illiberal Turn on the Right (2020–2024) 55:58 - Developmental Analysis  1:01:10 - What’s Needed Now
The New War on the First Amendment: Words as Violence, Jokes as Crimes
Subscribe