What is Integral?

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[jimtzu]

from the robert masters newsletter, aptly titled:

WHAT IS “INTEGRAL”?
“Integral” is fast becoming a very loosely applied term, supplying a bit
of contemporary heft to otherwise pedestrian nouns, while it slides
ever further into that once-was-fashionable territory that has swallowed
up such terms as “holistic.” This does not mean that we ought to
dump “integral” or start dumbing it down or hoist it up onto a postpostmodern
soapbox, but rather that we define it as clearly as possible,
both directly and through comparison with related terms.
“Integral” to me basically means inclusive in a radically comprehensive
manner. I say “radically” for a number of reasons: (1) What’s being
brought together constitutes not just parts of a totality, but also as much
as possible of that totality’s presence, in as many directions and depths as
possible; (2) such a bringing-together is far more than just a get-together
or reunion or conference of partially connected items or qualities; and
(3) the circle of extension that reaches from within out beyond every
part illuminates and deepens the connections between all the pieces or
qualities being brought together, literally integrating them without any
requisite homogenization or dilution of individual differences. (Implicit
to this is the fully embodied realization that everything exists through
relationship, along with the invitation to become intimate with it all.)
“Holistic” (and “wholistic”) was the pseudo-hippyish ancestor of
“integral” (even though Aurobindo was using “integral” long before
the 1960s), as full of New Age, anemically grounded optimism as it
was lacking in genuine practicality. “Holistic” meant well, but didn’t
rise for long from the kind of sloppy/fluffy thinking and metaphysical
quicksand that made it an easy target for probing minds that didn’t give
a damn about spiritualized cognition and its sidekick clichés. “Integral”
is a more sober term than “holistic,” more imbued with a sense of true
inclusiveness, but nevertheless is in growing danger of shipwrecking
itself on overly intellectual reefs, especially as it busies itself theorizing
about its theorizing. Where “holistic” had an anti-intellectual quality
The Crucible of Awakening
~ 14 ~
to it, “integral” can tend to lean too far the other way. In both cases,
however, there is a lack of real embodiment.
“Integral” is an increasingly popular adjective. Placing it before words
like “parenting” or “cooking” or “dog-grooming” tends to give them
a touch more respectability. It’s easy to stick “integral” in places where
it may not belong. So use it sparingly. Don’t trivialize it. Be discerning
in your use of it.
An integral approach is not just sophisticated eclecticism or a neatly
mapped mixture of applied methodologies. We may be meditating,
working out, doing a bit of shadow-work, and keeping up with the latest
in integral theory, but this does not necessarily mean that we are actually
being integral. We can only say that we’re being integral if our various
practices and ways of being are functioning together (and not just in
our eyes!) as a consistently embodied, more-than-adequately functioning
whole, through which we are, however gradually, cultivating intimacy
with all that we are. We may not have fully arrived yet, but are on our
way, and have the momentum to back this up, along with an integrity
that runs more and more deeply through all that we do.
Being truly integral means, among other things, developing intimacy
with everything that constitutes us. A genuinely integral consciousness
lives such intimacy both conceptually and nonconceptually.
An integral approach works with our physical, mental, emotional,
spiritual, and social dimensions, level upon level, consistently taking all
of it into more-than-just-intellectual account, without losing touch with
the totality that includes and pervades it all.
Overly intellectual approaches to being integral pay insufficient attention
to emotions, in part perhaps because emotions are just too messy and
too nonlinearly inclusive of the rest of our dimensions to be able to
be neatly mapped. Emotions implicate us as a totality. They obviously
involve the physical/physiological and the cognitive, but also include
THE CRUCIBLE OF AWAKENING
~ 15 ~
the social, and sometimes also the spiritual. (Very briefly, affect is the
intrinsic, biological dimension of emotion; feeling is our conscious
experience of affect; and emotion is the framing and dramatization of
feeling. Where affect is reaction, and feeling the recognition of affect,
emotion is adaptation.) Emotion involves feeling, cognition, social
factors, related action tendencies, and perspectival capacity, all of which
interact and work together. Any integral approach that only superficially
deals with emotions is only superficially integral.
An integral approach is not going to be much of a reality for us if we
ourselves are not already living, to a significant degree, in an integral
fashion. Part of what is needed is a clear recognition of where we are
not integral, not in healthy relationship to some aspect of ourselves, not
in integrity. Facing our fragmentation rather than trying to rise above it
or only superficially deal with it is a step toward integrity. “Integral” is
a bit like “love,” in that both terms are actually quite profound in their
meaning, but are often used too readily or superficially. The intention
to be integral is not in itself integral.
May we do whatever is needed to make “integral” a fitting term for how
we are actually living. May we align ourselves with what-really-matters
in every area of our life, so that “integral” becomes not something we
believe in, but rather something that we cannot help but live.

[Jana]

Can anyone be integral in a fractured society...I do think that people are pulling back from "externalization" and reducing the "noise" down to some mode that is more flavored with themselves than the multivoice...but I have yet to see the deep self-esteem of the core self, nor do I see any ONE person in my daily life that is working toward a sustainable future and the mystic civilization. People are still caught up in the surface-trash culture. RAM is talking to an elite that has time to read him and pay for his services after paying their bills, increasingly people will have trouble just surviving, at that point what happens to "integral"...perhaps RAM would say they are having trouble because they are not integral enough. I think integral left humanity when the city state was born and everyone had to run around trying to prop up a defunct human structure that destroyed them. Can anyone be truly integral in a fractured society?

[Michael]

Very nice Jim.  Thanks for posting that.  RAM is good with words.  I doubt much will stay with me though with this exception:

(Very briefly, affect is the intrinsic, biological dimension of emotion; feeling is our conscious experience of affect; and emotion is the framing and dramatization of feeling. Where affect is reaction, and feeling the recognition of affect, emotion is adaptation.) Emotion involves feeling, cognition, social factors, related action tendencies, and perspectival capacity, all of which interact and work together. Any integral approach that only superficially deals with emotions is only superficially integral.

That's a sweet formulation, or synthesis IMO, and may be useful.  The rest of his essay is fairly standard stuff.  Stuff many people I know need to hear, and probably can't.

Integral is interesting in that it becomes a sort of Holy Grail, an ideal of inclusion that becomes an attractor, and which needs to maintain the purity of a Grail ideal, at the same time as being fully available and attractive to the masses, so as the heal the world.  So there is the ever-present tension of the ideal purity, available to only the elite, vs the dilution of purity, the trivialization attendant on popularization.  And there we have yet another dualism.  Another dichotomy to be healed via integration.  The primary business of Integral.

Creating, discovering, seeing and inventing meaningful, useful distinctions.  Then creating, discovering, seeing and inventing meaningful, useful integrations, which in turn serve to make the Whole even more WHOLE.  What could possibly be more important than that?          

[jimtzu]

yes he does have a way with words, it seemed to sum up what we've all been saying, only a little better worded than I (we) could, except for one notable exception 
it was filtered thru his intamacy lens, but seemed to work pretty good.  and of course the newsletter had a chapter from his new book and links to sign up for his latest workshops. but it was a nice breath of sunlight shinning thru.

this is the part that stuck out for me the most:

Where “holistic” had an anti-intellectual quality
to it, “integral” can tend to lean too far the other way. In both cases,
however, there is a lack of real embodiment.

i would say that if there is any sort of integral "movement" it is in the interiors and any exterior effects are like ripples in the pond.

[Jana]

Yea I liked this also:
"Where “holistic” had an anti-intellectual quality
to it, “integral” can tend to lean too far the other way. In both cases,
however, there is a lack of real embodiment."

These zeitgeist, whether it be "hang loose" "holism" "integral" or "sustainability" reflect an unconscious desire in the collective to swing the pendulum back toward something that makes greater sense as we are battered about on the sea of chaos. "Integral" is the emotional movement toward a deep feeling sense of alignment and truth, having spent 50 years unpacking the interiors that we weren't supposed to look at back in the 1950's.

RAM is still part of the "therapy culture" which I am slowly learning greater distaste for...when I consider that Real men and women throughout history where made "despite" of their lives, and through significant meetings, and through their genius-work and through adventure. I doubt Real people can be made through therapy, ashrams, gurus or even through our human efforts to become Real. Real men and women are made through a conviction in their heart that is greater than the inertia and gravity of culture.

Don't get me wrong I think RAM is the best, however I am so sick of the therapy culture...and those most adament about therapizing being the rudest. I want to live in a new realm with people that an't obsessed with these things. Where you don't have to ask for permission to be ok from a certified granter of okness at $ an hour. Where you can just be where you are at until you are ready to move on to the next thing. I don't think any of us has time or money for therapy anymore, we just need to do the right thing.

[Jana]

In an audio on Michael Brown’s website he said that everything that was wrong with his life was due to the fact that he was “not here.” In 1987 he developed an acutely painful neurological condition called Horton’s Syndrome and to deal with the pain of his condition he developed a method of increasing Presence to overcome pain. www.thepresenceportal.com/  —Michael Brown, The Presence Process: A healing Journey Into Present Moment Awareness. He is especially fabulous on audio: A Walk Through the Presence Process.
www.definingmoment.tv/       Piles of video of Brown etc....

http://worldonenetwork.info/oasis/  —John-Michael Dumais (fantastic), talks, meditations, journeys.
www.commonwealthclub.org/  —Public Affairs Forum
www.definingmoment.tv/  —Spiritual TV interviews
http://meaningoflife.tv/  —David White interviews with dignitaries

[Nickeson]

Hey   

What is Integral?

Integral = NEW AND IMPROVED!

Creating, discovering, seeing and inventing meaningful, useful distinctions.  Then creating, discovering, seeing and inventing meaningful, useful integrations, which in turn serve to make the Whole even more WHOLE.  What could possibly be more important than that?          

Michael, this is a nice little take on interior dialectics. Over on the Integral Journal forum they are making a big deal of dialectics and I think it just spilled over onto the Open Integral site. Your two sentences are all we need to know on the matter though.

The two sites I just mentioned represent the home turf of the Integral Idealist Philosophers who seem to be able to out-intellectualize Wilber, though that might not be too hard to do. If you go through the Integral Wiki list of integral sites you find there are two kinds; the few that are theoretical and intellectualizing and a great deal more that are therapeutic (for individuals and the cultures) and emotionally centered. Masters is big in the latter type. And the latter type always feels a little put out and neglected because they are for ever complaining about how excess intellectualization is just ruining the party. All the alpha males are hanging out in the kitchen posturing their brains for one another instead of sitting in the circle on the living room floor and sharing. Now neither side has noticed (and if they did they didn't care) that a couple of sensualists showed up with the best food of the evening and some really good wine, but left early because the only music in the house was Air Supply and Stuart Davis so dancing was not an option for neither of those two can make music that will come close to touching the floor or anything between the floor and the solar plexus. And the kicker is that absent couple will be the only party goers who will end the evening getting what every other one hoped they were going to the party to snag. The thinkers and emoters will all be a little let down because they never remember that you don't always get what you want, but you always get what you need.

I'm working on something along these lines for the blog and maybe it will be out in a couple of days.

[henry]

how i would love to be a fly on the wall during a round table of murphy, leonard, rick tarnas, stan grof and william irwin thompson discussing this phenomenon. not likely,they may be interested in other stuff.... is there a there there? ..henry

[Michael]

...not likely,they may be interested in other stuff.... is there a there there? ..henry

May we align ourselves with what-really-matters in every area of our life, so that “integral” becomes not  something we believe in, but rather something that we cannot help but live.

...growing danger of shipwrecking itself on overly intellectual reefs, especially as it busies itself theorizing about its theorizing.

And commentating on commentators who like to theorize about the theorizing of the theorizers...

 

[jimtzu]

Now neither side has noticed (and if they did they didn't care) that a couple of sensualists showed up with the best food of the evening and some really good wine, but left early because the only music in the house was Air Supply and Stuart Davis so dancing was not an option for neither of those two can make music that will come close to touching the floor or anything between the floor and the solar plexus. And the kicker is that absent couple will be the only party goers who will end the evening getting what every other one hoped they were going to the party to snag. The thinkers and emoters will all be a little let down because they never remember that you don't always get what you want, but you always get what you need.

does that mean an enlightened sensualist is a trans-integralist?
    

[Michael]

Good stuff:
http://www.integralworld.net/index.html?visser19.html

[henry]

so tempting to chime in, but as a heartminder i'll try to follow my advice to pay close attention and pretend not to notice ..henry

[Jana]

Amazing strength of these guys to keep going on like that...I think that Visser piece a good summation of the last few decades perhaps. Still I think he has further to go as a philosopher in that he is still wearing wilberian dark glasses on the back of his head. Why can he not just drop the Wilberian lens (in both its positive, negative forms), drop the integral lens entirely, and put his brain juice to work on solutions for a sustainable world. Nuff of this banter already. KW is not coming back at his critics anymore cause he is too dog tired, he has already left the boxing ring.


"fan, student, biographer, critic and finally... outcast (hey, let's call it Visser-5)"

So Visser-6 would be self-originating, autocratic, non-derivitive, genius...then self-realized.

Hey I think I found the link between Kabalah, Theosophy, Aurobindo and KW...
Max Theon
www.kheper.net/topics/Theon/Theon.htm

[Michael]

I agree that the integral project is only partially relevant to our collective situations, and is more luxury than necessity.  It's nice to be able to have such luxurious freedom; to be able to spend your time playing integral chess.  But barely relevant to the real world.

But it does make for a nice diversion from time to time.  And in that spirit, I continue to opine.

My opinion, is that Wilber's critics are doing good work, in that it may help bring some intellectual honesty to the Wilberian integral project.  In a symmetrical fashion, in the ways in which Wilber and his legacy fail their claims to truth, beauty and goodness, critics must arise to point out genuine discrepancies.  Vissor seems well suited to that role.
http://www.integralworld.net/index.html?visser18.html

I think that Wilber's system is an aesthetically pleasing one (at first glance), which mistakes the values of beauty, - with truth and utility.  It SEEMS like it should be useful and practical, and it SEEMS like it's true, but what it mostly is, is meaningful, and aesthetically pleasing.

My biggest beef with it, is that the AQAL developmental system is about consciousness, which is mistaken for WISDOM development.  It is all too easy to assume that development of consciousness, (whatever that is), is identical to MATURITY. 

-Or at least the fruits of consciousness development, or "altitude", are the same as the fruits of maturity.  They are clearly not the same at all, and Wilber himself is a shining example of this discrepancy.  So I suppose we can thank him for that...

 

[Jana]

Yes most definitely they are doing good work...but they have to see that what they are doing in derivative it is not causal. If they can see that they are using Wilber to define a greater truth for themselves then that is fine...it is good work, but they should be conscious of what they are doing.

What these critics aren't taking into account is that reality is a not "either/or" kind of truth but an "and" kind of truth. Each person is a universe unto themselves. Ken's universe is whole unto itself, and makes perfect sense within the context of Wilberland. Now as a parallel universe, if you go study Michael Brown you will encounter plenty of material that doesn't fit the template of Wilberland, and yet within Brownland Michael's cosmic system is perfect and complete.
Maturity is very deceptive, perhaps we don't even know what that is yet. Michael Brown would probably say that since most of us have stunted emotional bodies, still struggle at around 7 years old, that our intellectual maturity is shaky...and you could say mostly concerned with catering to, assuaging, pandering and consoling our vulnerable emotional 7 year old.
www.healyourselftalk.com/the_presence_process.html  —Audio of Michael Brown on how The Secret of “mind over matter” is limited if one believes that we can create what we want via thought alone. Michael says that it is “emotion” that is causal and that thought “follows” emotional state.

“Man is unhealthy and pathological because society has crippled him in many ways. You are not allowed to love totally, you are not allowed to be angry; you are not allowed to be yourself. A thousand and one limitations are enforced.” 57
“Society cannot allow ecstasy. Ecstasy is the greatest revolution…If people become ecstatic, the whole society will have to change, because this society is based on misery.”17 Body Mind Balancing, Osho

http://sandraannetaylor.com/  —Best Secret advocate.

http://jeff.zaadz.com/blog    www.williamjames.com/BlogIndex.htm —Jeff Mishlove
www.williamjames.com/PDS.htm  —Psi Development Systems-Jeff Mishlove