Quotes about Integral

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

To journey into our paranoid thoughts and feelings without getting significantly paranoid is basic sanity in the courageous crunch. To go into our madness without becoming unhinged is a sign of relatively advanced development. To enter our pain without turning it into suffering is a gift to all beings. To pass into our lovelessness without losing heart is a great art, out of which healing cannot help but arise. To move into the Unknown without having to know what’s going to happen once we’re “there” is real freedom in the making. The way toward basic sanity is not that of rising above, trying to transcend, marginalizing, or otherwise avoiding our insanity, but rather that of going into and through our insanity, letting all that arises, however hellish or scary, awaken us to who and what we really are.

The problem with following a religion is that you're being led by followers.  Followers don't know their own path.  How the heck do you expect them to know yours?

It’s not that we need to form new organizations. It's simply that we have  to awaken to new ways of thinking. I believe it makes no sense to spend a lot of time attacking the current realities. It is time to create the new models that have in them the complexity that makes the older systems obsolete. And  to the extent that we can do that, and do that quickly, I think we can provide what will be necessary for a major breakthrough for the future.

The exterior of leadership is behaviors. Also, a leader is like the builder or the architect of the ship in developing the social and business systems of the company. In the interior dimension the leader works in a transformational way, touching people’s personality and their interiority. As a cultural icon the leader influences the stories and the shared values and the community.

Start as a human being in this culture, toss in madness, toss in mystical states, toss in being gay, toss in being HIV-positive, toss in religion that assures you God hates you for all of that - and then look me in the eye and tell me you can feel ok about yourself.  I dare you. I just dare you.

I am love, I am loveable, I am loved, and I love.

The ultimate liberation is to be liberated from the identification with being a woman.  My womanhood is not the deepest thing that can be said about me.  The deepest thing is that I'm a living trajectory of divine purpose and compassion moving through this time and space dimention in this form, and one of the names that I bear is woman.  But it is not the whole of the consciousness.

FIFTEEN

Leaders of tomorrow-if they are to be at all-will be subtle, embodied & responsive.

Their leadership knowledge beyond measure.

Because it is beyond measure, all we can do

Is describe their behavior.

Connected in relationship to all things

Yet standing alone.

Exploring the depths of the outer

While plumbing the space of the inner

Until outer and inner become one.

Far beyond flatland.

Do you think that you can clear your mind by sitting constantly in silent meditation? This makes your mind narrow, not clear. Integral awareness is fluid and adaptable, present in all places and at all times. That is true meditation. . . . The Tao is clear and simple, and it doesn't avoid the world.

Conscious means "having an awareness of one's inner and outer worlds; mentally perceptive, awake, mindful."

So "conscious business" might mean, engaging in an occupation, work, or trade in a mindful, awake fashion. This implies, of course, that many people do not do so. In my experience, that is often the case. So I would definitely be in favor of conscious business; or conscious anything, for that matter.

Response-ability is the source of power and integrity, the power to influence your situation and the integrity to do so in alignment with your values.

Response-ability is not guilt.  You are not responsible for your circumstances; you are response-able in the face of your circumstances.

Unconditional response-ability is self-empowering.  It lets you focus on those aspects of the situation that you can influence.  When you play cards, you have no control over the hand you are dealt.  If you spend all your time complaining and making excuses for your cards, you will feel disempowered and will most likely lose the game.  But if you see yourself as having a choice in how to play those cards, your feelings will change.  You will have a sense of possibility.  Even if you don’t win, you can always do your best with the cards you’ve got.

Training with states can also allow an artist to energetically resonate with audiences, regardless of whether or not those audience members understand the message or informational component of an artwork.

...a benefit for both artists and viewers is that every time a person changes states—whether intentionally or spontaneously—it can serve as a microtransformative event that loosens one’s current level of self-identity, thus encouraging development.

Training with states can also allow an artist to energetically resonate with audiences, regardless of whether or not those audience members understand the message or informational component of an artwork.

Artists can also practice entering a variety of states as a means of broadening and deepening the subject matter conveyed thru their artworks.

For viewers, the notion of levels and lines can help explain that sometimes jarring experience of encountering a fabulous artist who is also a miserable human being: How could Leni Riefenstahl revolutionize cinema yet glamorize the Nazis? Understanding levels and lines can help a viewer “free” an artist by limiting them. In other words, you become a better critic when you can acknowledge any failures an artist might have as a human being without trashing their achievements as an artist.

To be “integrally developed” does not mean that you have to excel in all the known intelligences, or that all of your lines have to be at level 3. But it does mean that you develop a very good sense of what your own psychograph is actually like, so that with a much more Integral self-image you can plan your future development.

Human beings have a variety of intelligences, such as cognitive intelligence, emotional intelligence, musical intelligence, kinesthetic intelligence, and so on. Most people excel in one or two of those, but do poorly in the others. This is not necessarily or even usually a bad thing; part of Integral wisdom is finding where one excels and thus where one can best offer the world one’s deepest gifts.

In a special sense… the three great natural states of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep contain an entire spectrum of spiritual enlightenment.

"Harmonious Emotional Engagement is the tool that allows leaders to take

full advantage of these three simple but profound principles:

People respond emotionally to every situation that occurs in an organization.

People's negative emotions reduce their performance in an organization.

People's positive emotions enhance their performance in an organization."

Throughout my years of working with individuals and organizations, and

as a result of my two-and-a-half year journey of researching and writing

this book, I have discovered the Five Core Problems that leaders face

today. They are:

1. Organizations pay an enormous price when leaders ignore

emotions.

2. Organizations suffer when leaders mistakenly believe there is only

one right way to lead people.

3. Organizations fail when leaders refuse to believe there are wrong

ways to lead people.

4. Organizations flounder when leaders think that there are easy

answers to leading people.

5. Organizations lose viability when they follow the old structures that

serve people at the top first.

Hugging till relaxed is elegant and simple. THe basics require four sentences: stand on your own two feet. Put your arms around your partner. Focus on yourself. Quiet yourself down - way down.

The real power of hugging till relaxed comes in realizing that it's both a window offering a clear view of the level of differentiation in your relationship and a useful tool for developing more differentiation. It's a perfect example of using touch to grow yourself up by learning to enjoy togetherness and separateness...

Differentiation is your ability to stand on your own two feet, physically and emotionally, when you are close to others. It allows you to stay close while your partner 'bounces off the wall.' If you can quiet yourself while your partner is flooding with anxiety, you don't have to move away or make him or her feel differently in order to control your own emotions. You can stay near - all you need to do is calm yourself down.

Conscious business--business that is conscious of inner and outer worlds--would therefore be business that takes into account body, mind, and spirit in self, culture, and nature.  Put differently, conscious business would be mindful of the way that the spectrum of consciousness operates in the Big Three worlds of self and culture and nature.  This means very specifically that integral business leadership would use the tools that have been developed to best navigate and master self, culture, and world.

    And what You are is the great Unborn, timeless and eternal, in its 1st-person perspective as the great I-I, the great Self, the Witness of this page, and this room, and this universe, and everything in it, witnessing it ALL with a passionate equanimity that leaves you alone as the Unmoved Mover. You are likewise the great Unborn, timeless and eternal, in its 2nd-person perspective as the Great Thou, the Great Other, before whom you bow in an infinite act of complete release and savage surrender and ecstatic submission, and receive in return the entire Kosmos as your blessing and your forgiveness and your eternal grace. You are likewise the great Unborn, timeless and eternal in its 3rd-person perspective as the Great Perfection, the Holy Spirit, the Great web of Life in all its infinite perfection and dynamic chaos, its pulsating pulsars and exploding nebulae, its stars and galaxies and planets and oceans, through which runs the common blood and bears the single heart of an Eros seeking its own higher wholeness, and always finding it, and seeking yet again, and always finding it yet once more, because You always know that You are here, don't You? And so in fun and sport and play and delight, and remorse and terror and agony and respite, You throw yourself out to start to play all over again, in this, the deepest part of You that gives birth to galaxies within Your heart, lets the stars light up as the neurons in Your brain, sing songs of love and delight to the submission and surrender of Your own good night, and all of this within the space that is You, the space that You feel as Your own I-I, or this ever-present Witness of the forms of Your own play.

    And in the great I-I, as You witness the Forms of Your own play as the entire Kosmos - in that very moment, which is this timeless Now, a Now that has no beginning and no end, there is simultaneously Spirit in its 1-st person and 2nd=person and 3rd-person forms, the Great I and We and It feel each other, and in that unitary seamless sizzling Now, which is this very moment before you do anything at all, it is, quite simply over.

    Which means, it has, quite simply, begun.

I don’t think we’ve found a way to promote economic and political integration in a manner that benefits the vast majority of people in all societies…

In the end if you want to promote democracy and you believe in it, then you have to understand that voters usually see these grand political issues through the prism of their own experience, how it impacts themselves, their families, their communities, how they imagine their children will live. … If ordinary people don’t perceive that our grand ideas are working in their lives, then they can’t develop, the higher level of consciousness, if I can use a kind of touchy-feely word, that American philosopher Ken Wilber wrote a whole book about, called A Theory of Everything. He said, you know, the problem is the world needs to be more integrated but it requires a consciousness that’s way up here, and an ability to see beyond the differences among us. So I worry about that.

One Taste is not some experience you bring about through effort; rather, it is the actual condition of all experience before you do anything to it. This uncontrived state is prior to effort, prior to grasping, prior to avoiding. It is the real world before you do anything to it, including the effort to "see it nondually".

This is the world of One Taste, with no inside and no outside, no subject and no object, no in here versus out there, without means, without path and without goal. And this, as Ramana said, is the final truth.

Joy is always an integral part of loving. There is joy in every act of life, no matter how menial or repetitive. To work in love is to work in joy. To live in love is to live in joy... Why not choose joy?... Why not live in joy?