What’s my philosophy of life? Being awake, alive, and aware. This is a tricky topic to talk about in our contemporary world because the way we use language around philosophy, spirituality, and belief systems has become so confusing. Nevertheless, it is a good jumping off point for a conversation about some awfully important matters. Today I want to talk about awake-ness.

For starters, the dictionary definition of “awake” implies a rousing from sleep which stirs us into action and cognizance. As a philosophy of life, it’s clear I’m saying something more than that I get out of bed in the morning. I’m saying that all my life I have blessed or cursed with a desire to know things and to live according to what is true. As a precocious child raised Roman Catholic, I thought that life is a great school, God is the teacher, and we are all pupils who will be graded on how well we performed on life’s test after we die.

Not every philosophy of life values the intellect, and there are even certain schools which claim that knowledge itself is a construct which cloaks the will to power or delusional wish-fulfillment in an essentially quality-less universe. I have gone through times in life when I was tempted by these postmodern philosophies or tried to give up on seeking foundations. I have found post-postmodern styles of holding foundations in a lighter way (a story I told in my spiritual chronicle Soulfully Gay).

Since writing that book, I have also gone through times when the pursuit of meaning itself lost a grip on me. I immersed myself more deeply in mysteries without cognitive content. And I learned and am learning to distinguish cognition-less content from cognition-transcendent content. But now I’m getting ahead of the story. Today we’re just talking about one word.

Let me suggest simply that those anti-intellectual philosophies were not right for me. At the same time, once I emptied my mind of pre-conceived notions of what awake-ness is about, I turned to insights beyond those found in the dictionary. In terms of the Abrahamic religions, I surrendered to the inspiration of Allah. A deep place within which already possesses knowledge of awakeness looked to language not for clues to ascertain meaning, but for a trans-mental picture or story of the reality so described by the word “awake,” a picture which is not believed in as separate from the Self, but is itself a sort of  ”Quran” or “linguistic face” of All-That-Is.

Language, I discovered, possesses a wisdom only glimpsed darkly by the New Age books on numerology which promise to tell you how your destiny is determined at birth by your given name. Language is magical, but not in that sort of way. Everything essential about awakeness that I already knew was already available to me simply by listening to the sound of the word broken down into its parts (called phonemes), and then feeling carefully into my body as it pronounced the word. I began to recover lost knowledge of the word by feeling proprioceptively.

The phonosemantics (sound symbolism) of the word “awake” align with the story I will tell you about awake-ness in the English language. The word begins in a neutral /ə/ vowel, in linguistics, schwa, a term meaning that an unobstructed breath is pronounced in the middle of the mouth’s vertical axis and the center of the mouth’s horizontal axis.

From there, out of absolute neutrality, it finds its “way,” a sound symbol that begins with /w/, the labio-velar approximant consonant, meaning that it is made by articulating with the lips and dorsum, the back part of the tongue. In my comparative studies of sound symbolism in conjunction with a wide variety of cross-cultural maps of subtle energy, I concluded that in terms of the traditional Chinese vocabulary for subtle energy, there is no English vowel more yin than /ə/.

Thus, at the outset, the phoneme connotes something which begins in utter neutrality or formlessness and then begins a process. The sounds are labial (articulated with the lips), which my study of sound symbolism suggests that being at the front of the mouth convey the undertone of beginnings to things. For instance, when /b/, the voiced labial fricative, starts a word it symbolizes such things as “Big Bang,” and “Begin” and “Be.”)

Once sound is “awakened” in the mouth through the /əw/ phoneme, the sound story continues along on its merry “way.”  The second vowel in the word is /e/, the same sound in “Bang,” “Aim,” “Ace,” “Base,” “Baby,” “Creative,” “Yang,” and “Agency.” Linguists call /e/ a close-mid front unrounded vowel for three reasons: because the tongue is positioned in the upper middle of the mouth, the tongue is placed as far forward as it can possibly go, and the lips are more flat than rounded. My study of sound symbolism suggests that this position in the mouth conveys a very strong, agentic quality.

The /e/ vowel is the aim of a line, not the flow of a circle. Stepping into this energy can be “painful,” as anyone who has ever wrestled with an alarm clock after burning the midnight oil can attest.  Again, in terms of traditional words for subtle energy, there is no English vowel more yang than /e/.

The word “awake” ends in an “ache.” The /k/ phoneme is called the voiceless velar plosive. Airflow in the vocal tract is obstructed. The back of the tongue touches the soft palate. The vocal chords are still (unlike /g/, which “goes” when /k/ “carries” instead). It is produced centrally, by pushing air over the middle of the tongue not around its sides. Thus, the /k/ sound symbolizes an “obstru-k-shun” or “blo-ck” in the path.

When /k/ ends a word, it is not a permanent ending, but merely a “brea-k.” It is not a death, but just means getting down to “wor-k.” My analysis of the sound symbolism of the /k/ phoneme informs me that the consonant is perhaps the most “k-ommunicative” and “k-ommunal” of all consonantal phonemes. In terms of traditional words for subtle energy, there is no English consonant more yin.

So now let me clarify what I mean by saying that my philosophy of life means being “awake.” I mean to say that the story of the Self, myself uniquely and everyone universally, is told by the story of “awake-ness,” if we have the ears to listen:

1. The One appears in formless neutrality, absolute Yin energy, inert but not absent of potential, just as the /ə/ arises in the middle and center of the mouth, the human body’s meaning-making factory.
2. Co-arising with the One is The Way. The Way unites the forces of fronts and backs, beginnings and endings, just as the /w/ is articulated with lips and dorsum.
3. The power of Way is agentic or masculine, aiming for fulfillment, just as the vowel of the Way is /e/.
4. However, the One is not fulfilled in its aiming or seeking. When the One awakens, its absolute Yang vowel finds its absolute Yin consonant: /e/ is married to /k/.
5. The loop of utter neutrality, utter masculinity, and utter femininity are united in a holy holistic trinity of sound symbols.
6. And yet “awake” makes possible not only creativity but its companion “pain,”  an “ache” which is a way of representing samsara or the fallen nature of the One.
7. The beginning of the One’s unfolding is a reversal or involution of its evolutionary essence, just as One begins with a dense version of the /wə/ sound and reverses into /əw/ as it awakens.
8. Evolution unfolds by reading a word forward. Involution’s essence is revealed by reading the word backwards.

And so my philosophy of life begins with being awake. And knowledge of awakeness begins with the Integral practice of Phonosemantic Meditations (PhMs) on the kinesthetics of speech production in conjunction with an adequate cross-cultural map for the most essential representations of subtle energy. There’s no need for metaphysics in this variation of World Spirituality built on Integral principles.

There’s no need to import ideology or theory into my innate knowledge a priori. I simply reflect on the esoteric wisdom of phonemes when investigated in their symbolism as comprehensively as possible (i.e., reading an awful lot of dictionaries in a particular fashion), plot the symbols on a scaffolding gesturing towards a Symbol of Everything, and then I can tell a pretty good story.

In this way, the mysteries of life reveal themselves to me. They open, I imagine, in a way not unlike the manner the Quran was opened to Muhammad, and in a way accessible to all who not only see with the eye of spirit but speak with the innate and universal human capacity which is the holy tongue of fire. Then the emptiness of silence reveals itself in what Marc Gafni has brilliantly termed the enlightenment of fullness.

Spirituality is schooling ourselves in mysteries which are already revealed by God/Allah, knowledge of which we gain through awakening. In future columns, I’ll talk about alive-ness and aware-ness. Today I am telling the story of awake-ness, which is the beginning of the story of Self: my own self, the True Self, and in my own distinct voice, a Unique Self.

“Occupy Integral!” was originally published in the online magazine Beams & Struts by my friends Terry Patten and Marco Morelli.  In Part 1 of the interview I asked them to describe what’s really happening to our world from an integral perspective.  Here in Part 2 of the interview, I ask them to elaborate on how the Integral Movement might have a greater impact for positive change during this time of significant transformation.

Brett: Historically, the “integral movement” has been largely characterized by people interested in spiritual/philosophical/psychological theories, maps and models, along with a large focus on personal development. Your blog at IntegralRevolution.com suggests that integralists might play a significant role in the changes we are seeing on the planet. What mental or attitudinal shift, or what realization do you think integralists need to make in order to move from “watching from the sidelines” to getting “out onto the field” and into the action?

Marco: As we point out in “Occupy Integral!”, there is nothing inherent in the content of integral theory that should limit the integral movement to being merely concerned with the themes of evolution, self-development, and spiritual awakening in the abstract. In a way, it’s just a historical accident. The “Four Quadrants” map covers objective and subjective realities, in their individual and collective manifestations, and the very notion of evolutionary unfolding suggests a radically transformative process with implications for all levels and dimensions of our being — our being-in-the-world.

Yet the history of the movement grew out of Ken Wilber’s books and the people who were first attracted to them, which tended to be spiritual and thinking types, more so than activist types. Moreover, the economics of the movement have tended to center on professions or activities that are more about personal change, healing, awakening, and creativity, and less about broad-scale, hard-core social transformation. That’s why we have so many coaches, therapists, consultants, and teachers among us, but fewer politicians, business leaders, and social activists (with some notable exceptions). And of course, demographically, integralists have tended to be white, Western, and relatively affluent—which is a big limitation. This is definitely changing. . . .

As you know (but many in our community do not know), people like Barrett Brown, Gail Hochachka, Mick Quinn, Yene Assegid, and of course you and your colleagues at Stagen have been using the integral map (and more importantly, the skills and practices implied by the map) and applying it “on the ground,” building real communities and sustainable systems, working with people who are radically removed from our culture of self-help and personal development, and doing so, it seems to me, with lots of humility and respect. I’d love to see much more of that!

What motivates such action generally? I think it comes from hearing and responding to a call—not just the call of your higher self, or your teal (or turquoise or indigo) self or what have you (though that may be there too)—but the call of the real world, which is also simply the call of loving your neighbor, like that guy from Nazareth said. We can easily feel this in relation to family or friends, but we can also feel it “world-centrically.” This involves witnessing the suffering on a global scale, and tracing back the cause not just to personal fault or illusion, but also to systems that are broken, approaches that haven’t been as effective as they could be, and the still very real oppression of humans against humans (and other sentient beings) — and knowing that there’s gotta be a better way.

Terry: I think what’s called for is better understood as a maturation or deepening of practice, rather than a mere shifting. What’s needed isn’t a change of emphasis from self-actualization to activism, but a deepening and enlargement of our humanity, to include self-actualization and activism, to an understanding of self-actualization and personal growth that appreciates that it’s impossible to fulfill it without a kind of activism.

Another way to say it is that additional essential “modules” (or to use the term I prefer, “spheres”) of Integral Life Practice or Integral Spiritual Practice are the relational spheres. It’s not enough to practice in terms of the personal domains of Body, Mind, Spirit, and Shadow. A truly Integral practice must also express itself in relationship. I divide this into two key spheres: The sphere of intimate relationships (with your spouse or significant other, your children, parents, and most intimate friends) and the sphere of public relationships (at work, as a citizen of your local community, and as a planetary citizen).

It was a big step to articulate an integral practice that anyone could take up for their personal growth and awakening. And now we’re deepening into a richer, more fully integral practice that is also relational. Our community is developing, deepening, maturing. Some want to characterize this as though there was an error that we’re now discovering. (As though the original move to practice was a mistake.) I don’t see it that way. I prefer to regard it as a natural developmental process, one we’re undergoing together, as a community.

However you view it, we’re in a moment where true integral practitioners are facing and embracing the necessity of a truly integral practice, including the sphere of public service, civic responsibility, and (r)evolutionary activism. And the challenge is to do so in a way that is not reductive, reactive, careless, or destructive. We’re growing up and encountering a new developmental obligation—to manifest a loose yet coherent, worldwide virtual sangha, a community of practice that also understands its responsibility to enact broader transformative service to our world.

Brett: The terrific Integral Trollz video “Meta-Doing or Integral Inaction?” suggests that the Integral Community is not really a community, and that while we have shared values and a common language, as of yet, we have no real structure, hierarchy or leadership. My question to you is “What is the integral community?” What is your “Occupy Integral” angle and advice on our integral community? And what is our next step for the development of our integral community? 

Marco: I think we are something. “Community” might be too strong a word, if the definition requires an obvious structure, hierarchy, and leadership — but I don’t think it necessarily does. I would describe us first of all as a “discourse community,” which is a term I first read in the writings of the philosopher Jurgen Habermas, but it appears elsewhere too. According to Wikipedia, a “discourse community”…

1. has a broadly agreed set of common public goals [in our case, this would include a striving for conscious evolution; body-mind-spirit health; goodness, truth, and beauty; and other goals and ideals]
2. has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members [such as our many websites, facebook connections, seminars, conferences, etc.]
3. uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback [yup]
4. utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims [I would take this to mean the kinds of books written, courses offered, and other products created, including integral art, music, etc.]
5. in addition to owning genres, it has acquired some specific lexis [e.g., our shared AQAL terminology, which includes numerous linguistic constellations that Ken Wilber helped popularize, like the idea of “I, We, and It” dimensions, the “We Space,” and so on]
6. has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise. [I’m not sure what “threshold level” means, but I’d guess we number in the tens of thousands or more.]

So I do think we qualify as a “community” given the above criteria, and with the qualification that we’re actually a pretty heterogeneous bunch. Nobody is only an integralist. All of us also have many other interests, identities, and affiliations, and they don’t always overlap. But there’s definitely something in common, which is why I’m beginning to think of the integral community in terms of a new kind of tribalism. In “Occupy Integral!” we envision a 21st-century tribe that’s “global, diverse, permeable, and hyper-linked; coexisting with our many other identities and affiliations; forgiving enough to allow for disputes and dissent; yet also cohesive and loving, pulsing with the vibe that we’re rooting for each other and that we’ve got each other’s back.” That’s probably the only kind of tribe I could be a part of.

The criticism has always been that integral can be just a “head trip,” a way of seeing reality that’s amazing and liberating, especially in the cognitive and spiritual spheres, but that hasn’t really been actualized as a way of being that’s truly embodied, relational, and significant to the wider world. Our invitation to the integral tribe (and to ourselves) is to really, deeply, and relationally become not just thinkers and talkers, but doers — in other words, practitioners. And as Terry says, to be an integral practitioner means doing both the “inner work” of waking up, as well as the “outer work” of changing the world. The great potential we see is for a global movement of integral activist-practitioners to rise up, lay claim to our potential for influence and leadership, and have some damn effect on the fate of this world!

Brett: As you know, I’m fascinated with the phenomenon of leadership, and especially the nascent practice of Integral Leadership. Can you speak  to the phenomenon of leadership and how you see this playing into what is happening on the planet, and how you see leadership emerging? I’m seeing courageous leadership from young Arabs; I’m seeing collaborative and transformational leadership from the Occupy movement. How might integrally informed people add their leadership energies to the mix? Do integralists have an opportunity or even obligation in some sense to offer some kind of leadership as our world transforms?

Terry: Absolutely. But that’s easier said than done. Our first wave of leadership has taken the form of integrally-informed enactments of existing kinds of leadership that were generated out of Modernist and Post-Modern values and structures of mind. How could it have been otherwise? But we face a world of enormous complexity, in which every initiative we might lead is powerfully connected to everything else, in a fast-changing multidimensional matrix. Targeted work that helps real people in real time extends hands to touch hearts and visible suffering, thus cutting through the paralysis, but it is all-too-often swamped by huge structural forces operating on systemic and meta-systemic levels. Integral sensibilities long to address the larger patterns. So far we have reached towards a grand synthesis that has continued to elude us.

Leadership courageously faces into these contradictions, cares about them, and doesn’t oversimplify things in order to be relieved of the painful tension. (This is what I mean by it being a kind of Koan practice, that transforms us.) It fiercely holds the necessity that we find better answers to these Big Questions, ponders the possibilities, and does the practice of action-inquiry — leading in ways that are true-but-partial, inquiring into how to close the gaps that show themselves. Adapting and changing as we learn from the process, and never hiding from the implications — AND doing all of that in relationship, in mutuality, with each other.

The new leadership is not “heroic” in the classical sense. Like Jim Collins’ “Level 5 Leadership,” it’s skillfully catalytic, and humble. Such leadership submits the leader himself/herself to the larger overarching cooperative enterprise that engulfs and subsumes the position and the immunity of the elevated “leader” who otherwise presumes to stand above and beyond the fray. And this kind of leadership requires a community of practice. It has never existed before. It’s arising in the “in-between” among those who dare to take responsibility. So we’re subject to our own injunctions as we’re articulating them. Like you, we’re just entering into it, and in doing this, we’re in it together. And together, if we persist, we will co-create that leadership, and that transformational movement.

This redefines leadership, opening it up. In this cultural experiment, the leaders aren’t just the ones who look outwardly like old-paradigm Alpha-male “leaders.” All of us who are co-creating this new cultural mode share this new integral leadership. In any moment that we provide strength or clarity or harmony to the cooperative enterprise, we lead.

Brett: I love the Banksy mural image that you included in your Occupy Integral essay of the protester throwing flowers. I think it appeals to me as an integralist who finds complexity intriguing. It seems an apparent contradiction or paradox:  the frustration/anger/action orientation of a protester combined with flowers which may represent beauty/gentleness/love. What does this image mean to you and in what ways does it illustrate, perhaps, an integral perspective on protest/revolution/activism?

Marco: It’s funny you ask. We envision a revolution of love of sorts, with a preference for non-violence in almost every context. And yet, we didn’t want to be limited to the same old hands-linked-around-planet-earth type images either. A revolution takes confrontational energy and shaking things up! So I did a quick Google image search. I think I searched for “flowers + revolution.” The Banksy image was one of the first results that came up. I had never seen it before and I thought it was perfect. I found the artist’s website and given his revolutionary orientation, it seemed like he would be fine with our using it. Now I also use it on my twitter page (@madrush), I love it.

Brett: I’m  very resonant with your suggestion to “Let’s build bridges with individuals and groups that are doing good work in the world, whether or not they explicitly share an integral orientation.” Are you suggesting we get involved with the Occupy movement, the Arab Spring, the political process in our countries, protests or activism of various kind? Can you say more about how we integralists can resolve our “we’re beyond postmodernism” or “occupy is too ‘green’ for our preferences” attitudes? How can integralists join in on these other movements and what orientation would you recommend? How might we actually help and be of service? What gifts can we bring (insight/perspective/leadership styles)?

Marco: Yes, we’re definitely suggesting that integralists get involved with “non-integral” projects and movements. In fact, we say that the very distinction between what’s “integral” and “non-integral” is not actually that useful, except in certain contexts where everyone is on board. What we’re suggesting, therefore, is not to judge these movements (or decide on your involvement) based on whether or not they’re “integral,” but rather to look integrally at the big picture of what’s happening in the world — or the small picture of what’s happening in your local community — and then look at who is actually doing the real work to address the problems. 99% of the time, it won’t be “integral” groups. But very often, these groups will be working towards goals that you would certainly share. In fact, in many cases, they know a lot more than you do and already have a sophisticated set of strategies, tactics, and skills to be effective advocates for change. We can’t just wait around for more “truly integral” groups to emerge, when there’s so much good work already being done. I think we should get off our integral high horse and pitch in!

Back in 2008, I knocked on thousands of doors and made a zillion phone calls to help Obama get elected. I would not describe most of the people I worked with as “integral” or “non-integral” — in fact, I would feel wrong doing so. They were my simply neighbors and fellow citizens, and many of them became my friends. This kind of direct connection goes deeper than any philosophical concept. Yet in my own small way I felt like I offered some integral leadership to my community, mainly because I could hold space for different points of view and I wasn’t too ideological or reactive. I never talked about “integral” — though I did introduce our precinct leader (a very stressed out guy!) to meditation.

Now in 2012, the collective energy has shifted. It’s finding expression in the Occupy movement, Transition, and countless other places (including the Arab Spring, the uprisings in Spain and Greece, and so on). In the American context, Obama’s effectiveness has been limited, and people feel frustrated and impatient. They also recognize much more clearly that change must come from the bottom up, not just top down. As integral practitioners, I think we can bring a fuck-load of clarity, balance, and big-picture thinking to any group we get involved with, but only if we first drop any pretensions to being “higher,” “wiser,” or “more evolved,” and simply act as human beings in solidarity with our neighbors. Then we’re free to let integral theory work its way in, in whatever ways feel appropriate — or not. We can keep our meta-perspectives, but they will be transfigured by and expressed through the reality of our human connections.

Terry: I so agree, Marco. And let’s make sure to state explicitly that “action” is not just the province of progressive political activism. Or radical and even revolutionary activism. It’s also the province of “Orange” and “Green” leadership, a la “Conscious Capitalism” and other forms of more enlightened business, such as the kind that you’ve been working on for years, Brett, among your many other integral projects. True integral leadership is necessarily “all of the above.”

In the comments that appeared after we posted “Occupy Integral!”, some commenters eloquently claimed that we need radical disruptive activism rather than incremental reforms. I don’t disagree with what they are proposing to enact. But I want both/all. This is game time, folks. It can’t be “either-or” anymore; it’s got to be “both-and.”

I see the time ahead as likely to be turbulent, chaotic, and therefore thoroughly unpredictable. We can’t “predict and control” events and outcomes as though our maps are sufficient to enable us to anticipate the patterns of the churn of the surf. No way we can hope to do that! This is a time where we need “everybody all-at-once” and “every-strategy-at-once.” We must aspire to embody an all-embracing meta-sangha, a brother- and sisterhood of practice that includes and encourages and respects every kind of approach, incremental and radical, subtle and gross, interior and exterior, financial and spiritual, personal and systemic.

We can’t predict which of these diverse approaches, undertaken with consciousness, skill, and heart, will prove to most crucially empower and boost the health and flexibility of the systems in which we are participants. Many seemingly contradictory initiatives might ultimately play necessary roles in a complex or chaotic sequence of developments leading to the emergence of a non-linear leap to a higher order.

Even without being able to predict, however, we can practice a way of being that is open, and flexible, and self-transforming, a way of being that is courageous, caring, smart, and flexible, and attuned to a higher intelligence and ordering principle. We can learn and then practice the moves, the modes, the states of consciousness and energy and interconnectivity with one another that have some promise to enable us to show up more adequately. It’s action-inquiry. Thus cooperating, such practitioners may be able to enact the unpredictable martial-arts-like inner-and-outer “moves” that will be required to “surf the churn” of whatever chaos accompanies the transitions ahead.

That’s what I think we’re already beginning to do. Whatever else it may include, integral leadership does involve choosing and re-choosing to embody and align with what’s most alive, good, true, beautiful, free, loving, generous and happy in each moment and situation. And it involves being a stand for vitality, coherence and efficacy — on every scale. That means choosing to enact our own health and sanity and creativity — as well as that of our communities, our organizations, our species, our planet, and our Kosmos. That’s the integral evolutionary meta-project to which we’re all discovering we are dedicated. In any moment, to whatever degree we choose to enact that stand, we practice, serve, and lead.

Terry Patten and Marco V Morelli are the co-authors, with Ken Wilber and Adam Leonard, of Integral Life Practice: A 21st-Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening.

Terry and Marco are currently working on a new book called The Integral Revolution: The Future of Consciousness, Culture, and Society in the Planetary Age.

In this two-part interview, Brett Thomas asks the authors of Occupy Integral to explain what’s really happening to our world from an integral perspective and how the Integral Movement can have a greater impact for positive change. [Occupy Integral! was originally published in the online magazine Beams & Struts by Terry Patten and Marco Morelli.]

In Occupy Integral! Terry and Marco write :

We post this manifesto in what feels like a moment of calm before the storm… it seems to be the quiescence or exhaustion following a complicated year. From revolutions in the Middle East to the Occupy protests in the US and globally, there is an upheaval brewing . . . and spilling over. We are four years into the global economic crisis, yet the fundamental issues relating to sustainability, debt, inequality, and so on have not been truly addressed, let alone resolved. Our political systems are in stalemate. Environmental signals are growing more distressing. Not only melting ice caps, but also the nuclear disaster in Japan highlight the size of the hole we are digging for ourselves. It would be fair to say that people are stressing out.

No doubt, there are plenty of encouraging things happening too. New technologies, new awakenings, new forms of creativity and cooperation, and all that jazz. That’s what makes it such an incredible time to be alive. Of course, we can look back 10, 500, or 2000 years and find similar stories of humanity on the edge of crisis and transcendence. Yet there’s an exponential intensity to the way in which our situation has been complexifying and accelerating (in other words, evolving) in recent decades, and there’s little doubt we’re on a steeper slope now. This might be why it seems like a moment in which consciousness is bracing or conserving its energy for the unknown that’s to come—that strange X that’s conjuring a higher order out of the chaos.

Brett: On your Integral Revolution website you write, “People everywhere are waking up to the reality that the world as we know it is dying, and a new world is struggling to be born. Across the globe, the streets are filled with people demanding change. Some are even giving their lives. And millions more are working for change more quietly, yet no less profoundly.”  I think some people intuit that big changes are brewing, others wonder if this is really that different (given that there has always been conflict and change in every decade), and others are just puzzled, wondering, “What’s really happening?” My question to you is, “What IS really happening?” Can you describe what’s happening in the world in a way that is integrally informed yet comprehensible to an intelligent mainstream audience that may be unfamiliar with integral terminology?

Terry: That’s a pretty big question, Brett. To do it justice will likely require a whole book (underway), and even then we’ll leave out many important details. But a few things can be said, and need to be. I think we’re currently well into a “perfect storm” of epochal changes. On one hand, we human beings are learning to live with unprecedented connectivity to vastly expanded and rapidly-morphing virtual peer groups. Yet at the same time, our cultures, nations, institutions are colliding with others all over the world with incommensurate values, mindsets, structures of meaning-making, and states of consciousness. We also know that the current global economic crisis is not just another cyclical event, but rather an expression of fundamental shifts in our energy usage and availability, population and demographics, productivity and technology, and even the viability of the monetary system itself.

It’s no wonder billions of human beings are experiencing unprecedented stresses. Our connectivity and cultural freedoms (at least in some places) empower us more than ever before, but the dizzying pace of change, the sheer density of stimuli, the rancor of our politics, and the demands of a hyper-competitive global economy are like the tightening of an existential knot.

Meanwhile, those of us with enough advantages and education are integrating and synthesizing mankind’s ancient, modern and postmodern wisdom and scientific knowledge as never before, via integral theory, evolutionary awareness, and various other meta-systemic, meta-perspectival frameworks and practices. So there’s this countervailing upsurge into free awareness that senses new possible ways of being, individually and collectively, locally and globally. And the question is, how to make good on that intuition?

Take it all into account, swallow hard, and take a deep breath: This is your life, our shared life. We’ve been given a “genjo koan” by Life — a natural (not artificial) question that’s presented by our everyday experience — and it will change us, mature us, transform us if we “live” it (instead of trying to simply answer it with our minds). If we enter into it whole-bodily and authentically, and truly take it seriously. And since we’ve been given this Big Question together, we’ll only rise to meet it and be changed by it together — in mutuality.

So we’re being asked to become a community of practitioner-activist-leaders, each of whom dedicates him/herself passionately to a personal practice that includes active service, civic responsibility, and maybe even a little friendly agitation. Certain aspects of the world, certain nodes in the holographic Indra’s Net we call this world, absolutely need to be served. And we’ll only begin to succeed to serve them if we learn to cooperate in new ways, if we become faithful, trustable brothers and sisters to one another, sangha, practitioners enacting our connection with one another — each of us growing and serving and all of us being changed by the process of cooperating even while we pursue diverse approaches. But such cooperation is unprecedented.

And in the midst of all this, some of us have learned to speak the language of Integral theory, and we’re seeing the value of choosing to try to make everything described here explicit and conscious. We sense the process can only fulfill itself in a self-aware mode. That’s what is happening.

So this very dialog is an expression of that self-aware, self-actualizing emergent process, an expression that we hope will help enable us and everyone to find healthy places to co-create the healthy transformational cultural emergence our crisis is calling for.

Marco: Thanks, Brett, for giving us this opportunity to riff a little on a topic we’ve been thinking about, discussing, researching, and feeling into for a long time. And I think, fundamentally, Terry’s point about this world being a koan is how I’m practicing in relation to the question — in other words, I think a big dose of epistemological humility is called for. At some real and irreducible level, the truth is we have no fucking clue what’s “really” happening! Anyone who forgets that risks falling into ideology and self-delusion, and can even become a scary and dangerous person. On the other hand, it seems pretty obvious that we, as humanity — and even the Earth itself — are in the midst of a radical transformation. All it takes to see this is to look at the evolutionary story . . .

In the 4.5 billion years that Planet Earth has existed, our species homo sapiens has been around for approximately 200,000 years. On a 24-hour clock, that would be less than a minute. Most of this time, we were primitive hunter-gatherers. Only 10,000 years ago did we begin farming and building cities. Less than 3,000 years ago, the first mass-scale religions and empires arose. Just over 200 years ago, our modern nation-states were born, and the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions transformed not just our ways of life, but literally the face of the planet itself. Now, in the last 50 years, we’ve entered the Information Age, making communication, travel, and trade virtually immediate and global.

So what’s next? Following some great thinkers, we’re saying that the next chapter in the human story is a Planetary Age. This is a time when we’ll be charged with creating systems and ways of beings that are much more fully integrated, not just horizontally for global trade and communications (which is what Tom Friedman describes in The World is Flat), but vertically as well. That means integrating our global techno-economic and political systems with the Earth’s beautiful biosphere and with our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being and aspirations. And not just for the lucky few, but for anyone who wants it.

While holding the koan and the not-knowing simultaneously in our hearts, I think we can also describe a pretty amazing story, which is that a new world really is possible. It’s not guaranteed, and God knows, there may be dark and violent times ahead. But I think we can hold the vision (lightly, yet with boldness and passion) of a more just, good, true, and beautiful world to come, and realize that it’s up to us (not just integralists, but any human being who feels called and inspired) to do all we can to help birth it into being.

Click here to read Part II of the interview…
How can the Integral Movement have a greater impact for positive change

Terry Patten and Marco V. Morelli are the co-authors, with Ken Wilber and Adam Leonard, of Integral Life Practice: A 21st-Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening.

Terry and Marco are currently working on a new book called The Integral Revolution: The Future of Consciousness, Culture, and Society in the Planetary Age.

Christ! Where was God when Tim Tebow and the Broncos lost so badly? Did Jesus take the night off or has he forsaken poor devoted Tebow!

USA Today asks, “When Tebow loses, does God too?”  I’m so confused!

For some, the answer to this question lies in the now-famous Saturday Night Live Skit featuring Tim Tebow and Jesus Christ.  If you haven’t seen it, it is highly recommended.

Perhaps my favorite is this recent national poll of over 1,000 registered U.S. voters that reveals that 43 percent of people polled think Tim Tebow’s success is due to divine intervention… including 54 percent of Republicans.

We have written extensively here at Integral Thinkers, and in other publications, about the power of worldviews. There are four primary worldviews in the developed world: Modern, Postmodern, Traditional and Imperial. Tim Tebow’s biblical worldview seems at odds with modern sports in a postmodern media environment.

Why is it so fascinating?  The answer to that question is reflected in the different ways that people with different worldviews see it. These and hundreds of other headlines about Tim Tebow’s “relationship with Christ” and Christ’s apparent relationship with the Denver Broncos (American football team) is hysterical to people with modern and postmodern worldviews. Yet for the estimate 30% of Americans that share Tebow’s Traditional worldview, they don’t think its very funny. What’s funny about “Truth” they ask with a puzzled look on their faces. Jesus Christ is the only Son of God and if the rest of the National Football League players and coaches, heck, the rest of the world would only recognize that, the world would be a much better place.

In my Introduction to Worldviews article here on Integral Thinkers, I summarize the four primary worldviews. To people who think like Tim Tebow, the world is an ordered existence governed by a higher authority.  People who view the world through this lens perceive a concrete, literal, dualistic world of right and wrong, insiders and outsiders, believers and non-believers, and good and evil. The key to life is obey authority, pray to God for salvation, and hope like hell that he (always a “he” of course) answers your prayers.

Wherever in the world you encounter the Traditional worldview, it will define acceptable and unacceptable gender roles, sexual orientations and practices, food and drink consumption, and of course spiritual practices based on the long-standing traditions endemic to that culture. There is one and only one right way to think and behave. Conforming to authority’s prescribed “right” way to think and behave is the key to ensure future rewards. It is very important to understand that while the details of the local customs and culture (including religious practices) will differ, the broad-based core values and universal beliefs that comprise a Traditional worldview will be identical anywhere on the planet, whether it be Tehran, Turkey, Thailand or West Texas.

If you ever watch American cable television’s Fox News, then you already know that advocates of this worldview use claimed moral authority to galvanize loyalty and motivate followers for political and economic gain. In the U.S., books such as Sean Hannity’s Deliver Us from Evil and Bill O’Reilly’s Culture Warrior make a convincing case that Modern and Postmodern values are a dangerous threat to our traditional way of life.

Compare this with the modern and postmodern worldviews and the whole, integral picture starts to come into focus.

If you want to learn more about worldviews and how they explain
so much about our puzzling world, below are several great articles:

• Reaction to Gay Marriage as Litmus Test for Traditional Worldview
• Judgment Day: the End of the World Prediction in the News
• Why Democracy and Freedom in Egypt Leaves Out Women
• Worldviews and Integral Leadership
• Very Brief Introduction to Worldviews
• Or click here to see all Integral Thinkers articles related to worldviews

Many of my friends and colleagues have weighed in on this important question in recent weeks. Jason Digges just published a thoughtful, nuanced article on this very question in Beams and Struts. He suggests, “In short we need to take personal responsibility for formulating integral philosophy in a way that exemplifies simplicity beyond complexity.” I couldn’t agree more. In fact, simplicity beyond complexity is a theme I wrote about in my recently published online Integral Leadership Manifesto.

Robb Smith has suggested some possible reasons why Integral isn’t more popular in the Facebook discussion group Integral Institute Global Design. Not entirely satisfied with Robb’s answers, Joe Perez offers a point-counterpoint analysis, and some reflections of his own, on his excellent blog Awake, Alive & Aware.

I’d like to take this opportunity to offer another point of view on this question. In this case, I will offer a metaphor for what we might be doing wrong (and how we might think differently). The metaphor I will use is the popularization (and market domination) Apple’s iPod. (Some readers familiar with my writings about Integral Leadership will recognize this perspective, as I am excerpting text from my manifesto.)

What is Integral anyway?

For those not familiar with it, we should first clarify what we mean when we use the term integral. The dictionary definition of integral is “possessing everything essential or significant; complete; whole.”

Integral approaches (whether to medicine, education, psychology, ecology, politics, etc.) seek to incorporate all of the essential perspectives, approaches, and schools of thought into a unified, comprehensive, inclusive, and empirically accurate framework.¹

There are many books and publications on Integral Theory but only a few on its application (Applied Integral Theory). While these are all excellent resources for our friends and colleagues who are involved in integral theory and methodology, these publications are generally less accessible, and less useful, for the general public due to their perceived “complexity.”  The field of Integral Theory is often experienced by newcomers as highly technical, at times difficult to understand, and frequently difficult to apply.

Simplicity on the Other Side of Complexity

Apple’s ubiquitous iPod provides a useful analogy to help explain the expression simplicity on the other side of complexity.

As you may recall, back in 2001 the late Steve Jobs led Apple into the crowded portable digital music (mp3) player market by introducing the iPod and iTunes. Within a few years, Apple dominated the portable music player market, decimating more than 50 competitors, and achieved a 74% market share for his iPod player. Even more significantly, he transformed the way music was distributed and used by consumers. He went on to leverage his success with the iPod to create a halo effect for the entire Apple product line, spurring unprecedented traffic into Apple’s retail locations, and ultimately leading to the dominance of the iPhone and more recently the iPad.² Prior to its release, experts, pundits and manufacturers of portable music player technology emphasized the technical capabilities of these remarkable little devices. They would speak of transfer rates in megabits per second, IDE hardware breakthroughs, mp3 vs. mp4 audio compression schemes, and remarkable miniaturization manufacturing innovations. And they believed that consumers cared about these things.

We recognize a very similar phenomenon with our friends and colleagues who are experts, pundits and providers of Integral Theory and Methodology in and around our Integral community.

Those of us who are enthusiastic advocates for applied Integral Theory can be a lot like the early mp3 player manufacturers.

We often speak of the technical capabilities of this new “technology.” But rather than talk about transfer rates, megabits per second, and miniaturization, we speak of quadrants, lines, levels, states and types. We rave about remarkable innovations such as integral methodological pluralism. We are enthusiastic advocates for second-order adaptive change methodologies that move sentient holons out of gamma traps, through flex states into new alpha configurations.

As integral enthusiasts, like the early mp3 manufacturers, we sometimes naively believe that consumers care about those things.

Its not that Steve Jobs didn’t care about the technology as much as his peers. Clearly, he possessed a deep and nuanced understanding of the technology that he intended to use to transform his industry (and other industries, as we have now seen).

What set Jobs apart was his understanding of what consumers cared about.

The people who would really benefit from an iPod didn’t care about file compression, transfer rates, or IDE miniaturization. They cared about music.

What Jobs understood was that if you give people something they can use, something easy and enjoyable to use, something they can begin using immediately, then they will use it!

As anyone who owns one can tell you, the design of the iPod is elegant: form meets function at the next level. For me, the iPod is a good illustration of simplicity on the other side of complexity.

It is my goal in my work popularizing Integral Leadership (and Integral approaches in general) is to provide something useful, something easy and enjoyable to use…. something people can begin using immediately.

I think that us integralists should focus less on Integral Theory and more on solving real-world problems. I’m not very interested in teaching Integral Theory. I’m interested in offering solutions and tools that help people address their concerns and achieve their goals.

I hope the iPod metaphor is helpful as we continue to figure out how we can all contribute to bringing more Integral solutions to our world.

Comments are welcome!

___________

Footnotes: 

Organizational leadership is a dynamic process involving a number of separate yet interconnected activities such as evaluating a situation or state-of-affairs, envisioning a desired future state and objectives to work toward, creating some kind of plan and/or strategy to achieve those objectives, coordinating efforts of various people and processes, evaluating progress and current conditions, and continually adjusting the strategies and tactics until the desired objective (or change) has been accomplished.

Clearly, hundreds of books have been written on various aspects of management and leadership theory that address the nuance of these activities. Like all things integral, there are many legitimate and valid ways to render an idea. A number of models of Integral Leadership have been proposed, and in the years to come, many new models will emerge. There can be a lot of merit in complex, detailed, nuanced models; and there is much merit in simple, memorable, actionable models. In this section, I am going to introduce a simple model of Integral Leadership that I developed with the help of Ken Wilber and the Integral Institute Business and Leadership Center in 2006. During this brief presentation, I am going to review the core elements of AQAL Integral Theory which underlies much of my work and the work of many of my integral colleagues.

Three Fundamental Leadership Perspectives and Three Questions to Invoke Them

For the purposes of simplicity, the list of dynamic activities involved in organizational leadership can be roughly grouped into three broad groupings that fall under the headings of Awareness, Approach, and Action.

1. Awareness – This category includes activities that involve perceiving the relevant details of the current situation, desired situation, and gaps. In military leadership, this is sometimes called “situational awareness”—a term that I have also found useful in training corporate leaders.
2. Approach – This category includes the activities associated with developing objectives and strategy. Here the leader(s) determine what is important and needed given the reality of the situation along with relevant resources and constraints. In many situations, the most important factor in this category is selecting the appropriate “leadership style” for the circumstances.
3. Action – Of course, once leaders select an approach, it is then necessary to translate that approach into specific action. This final category includes the specific tactics, interventions, and action steps to be performed by the leader(s) and the individuals in the group. In simple terms, this is what the leader actually chooses to do or not do.

In our training programs we teach leaders to ask three fundamental questions in every “leadership situation.”

These are:

1. What is really happening?
2. What is most important and what is most needed?
3.  What is the most helpful action I can take?

If you were to survey a group of people with these three questions about the exact SAME situation, you would get wildly different answers!

The answers to these questions reflect what these individuals are aware of and not aware of, what they emphasize and focus on (biases) and what perspectives they valorize or marginalize.

While many things influence a person’s answers to these questions, no single factor has more influence than a person’s worldview. A person’s worldview (values and beliefs) determine in large part: a) what facts they notice (and ignore) in the first place, b) how they interpret those facts (inevitably in a way that reinforces their pre-existing beliefs), c) what they value most and therefore deem important, d) what approaches and actions they think are warranted (or even acceptable), and e) what immediate action is called for now.

Note that this is true of leaders, followers, and all other stakeholders associated with any given situation. Different people perceive different details of a situation (awareness), hold different values about what is most important and what is needed in a particular situation (approach), and what behavior or action is appropriate and helpful and what is not (action).

An integral leader who has adequately developed her capacity for perspective taking will recognize that the way the other individuals involved in any given situation might answer these three questions is, itself, crucial data that must be taken into consideration for the leader herself to accurately answer the first question: “What’s really happening here?” Therefore, the answers to these three deceptively simple questions are both interdependent and recursive. If you recognize that each person involved in a situation has their own point of view, and therefore, their own answers to these questions, it’s easy to see how these questions can be used to reveal (and more adequately account for) tremendous nuance and complexity that conventional leaders generally overlook. (Conventional leaders rarely account for the complexity of different perspectives, much less the profound influence of worldviews on theirs and other people’s conclusions.)

While worldview is the most fundamental factor influencing how people answer these questions, integral practitioners recognize that there are numerous additional factors to consider. A person’s cognitive, emotional, social, and moral stages of development also impact how they will answer these questions. Typology plays a role as well. The integral principle of “native perspectives” shows us that some personality types emphasize the tangible/objective details of a situation while others emphasize the intangible/subjective factors. Similarly, some pay more attention to individual behavior while others notice group dynamics. Of course the economics, infrastructure, processes and systems, and the physical environment are all crucial factors that influence a person’s answers to these three fundamental questions. Clearly, if we are to account for all this complexity, we need a reliable map, or framework, that can make sense of it. This is where “integral” comes in.

AQAL Stands for All Everything

As mentioned in the introduction, the dictionary definition of integral is: “possessing everything essential or significant; complete; whole.” An integral approach (whether to medicine, education, ecology, or leadership) incorporates all of the essential perspectives, schools of thought, and methods into a unified, comprehensive, inclusive, and empirically accurate framework.

There are a number of helpful frameworks researchers can draw upon to architect an “integral understanding” or an “integral approach” to a given field.  My ten years in the trenches designing and delivering intensive integral leader development programs have led me to conclude that the AQAL Integral Framework developed by Ken Wilber and the Integral Institute is, by far, the most precise map currently available for this purpose. (Note AQAL, short for “all quadrants, all levels…” is pronounced “ah-kwool”.)

For those not familiar with it, the AQAL acronym, as originally articulated by Wilber, was short for: All Quadrants, all Lines, all Levels, all States, all Types. Note that only the first two elements (Quadrants and Lines) are specifically indicated in four-letter acronym. In the practical application of integral theory and methodology, the specific names of the core elements of AQAL are articulated in different ways depending on the application (e.g. business, education, sustainability, etc.). For example, Levels are sometimes referred to as Stages. Styles are sometimes singled out as a distinct element and other times they are simply considered a subset of Types. Similarly Lenses (worldviews) are sometimes emphasized as we do in the practice of Integral Leadership while in other applications they may be treated as simply a derivative of Stages and Types. I realize this quickly gets rather technical. I briefly mention it here so that new students of integral have a basic orientation to these essential elements and so that my experienced integral readers can recognize the specific AQAL configuration being used here in the service of Integral Leadership.

In my experience using the AQAL framework for Integral Leadership, it has been most useful to configure the elements as:
All Quadrants, all Lines, all Levels, all Lenses, all States, all Styles, all Types.

To make the AQAL model specifically relevant and applicable to the practice of leadership, and to provide a fresh perspective on this framework for my readers who are already familiar with integral theory, I will describe AQAL in the context of awareness, approach, and action.

As mentioned above, awareness refers to the leader’s ability to assess a situation. Specifically, how does a leader assess the current conditions—what’s happening—as they relate to some desired future set of conditions? History is replete with cases of leaders who were successful because they were aware of an emerging dynamic (externally in the culture or marketplace or internally in their organization) as well as cases of leaders and organizations that failed spectacularly due to a lack of awareness of an impending threat. Because much of my work is with CEOs, I’m reminded of several familiar CEO examples that make this point. Steve Jobs (CEO Apple) was aware of the need for music lovers to have a way to carry their record collection with them leading to “1,000 songs in your pocket” (the iPod). Howard Schultz (CEO Starbucks) was aware of a social need for a “third place” between work and home for people to socialize. Ken Lay (former CEO Enron) was apparently unaware of the impact that unethical individuals and unethical business practices (and a culture that allowed them) could have on the organization, its employees, and shareholders.

Quadrants

I will begin with the most fundamental element of integral theory: quadrants. To understand integral quadrants, one must first consider the obvious fact that every leadership situation can be considered from the perspective of the individual (the leader or the follower) or from the perspective of the collective (the group, team or organization).  The illustration below lists some specific examples.

Next, you must consider that every phenomenon can be considered from an objective or a subjective point of view (also referred to as external and internal). The illustration below gives examples.

Now, by simply bringing together the individual and collective on one axis and subjective and objective on another axis, we have four quadrants (a familiar x/y diagram). These quadrants represent primordial, universal perspectives. They are irreducible, meaning that you can not collapse one into the other and simply pretend that those dimensions do not exist (as reductionistic thinkers / theories attempt to do). See illustration below.

In integral theory, the four quadrants are labeled based on what is most useful for the domain in which they are being used (e.g. ecology, politics, military, business, leadership, etc.)  I am using four labels that are useful for applying these fundamental perspectives to leadership: the psychological lens, the behavioral lens, the cultural lens, and the systems lens. Regardless of the domain of application, all integral practitioners are familiar with the simple acronyms UL, LL, UR, LR (Upper left, Lower Left, and so on) and the universal pronouns of I, We, It, and Its.¹

To answer the questions “What’s really happening here?” and “What’s important and needed?” with any hope of comprehensiveness or accuracy, a leader must consider all four quadrants. An integral leader considers the environment, organizational infrastructure, processes, and systems seen in the Lower-Right quadrant; the group’s culture (shared beliefs, values, expectations) seen in the Lower Left; the worldview, abilities, and feelings of individual people in the group revealed by the Upper-Left quadrant; and finally, the behavior and applied skills/competencies of individuals seen in the Upper-Right quadrant.

Lines/Levels

Lines and levels can be found in all four quadrants. However, it is not always necessary to conduct a detailed investigation of lines and levels in all quadrants; it depends on the nature of the leader challenge and/or goals. Here, I will provide a few examples of how lines and levels can be observed in typical leadership situations.

Developmental lines, or lines for short, (in the UL individual interior quadrant) represent an intelligence, capacity, competency, or complex skill. Level refers to the level of complexity represented along any one of the specific lines. For simplicity’s sake, think of lines and levels as a person’s ability. A common example is a person who has a very high level of IQ (an aspect of the cognitive line) but a very modest level of EQ or Emotional Intelligence (a different line which means a different kind of intelligence).

To truly understand what is really happening in a given situation, and what is needed, an integral leader should consider the various abilities of the people involved (their lines and levels). For example, let’s say the situation is that an employee is underperforming in their role, making frequent mistakes that most people would not make. What’s really happening here? Could this be because of a cultural, environmental, process, or tool issue impeding their performance?  Maybe they lack the right tools? Maybe the environment is distracting? Maybe they haven’t been given correct training or instruction on the proper process? Or could it be that this person fundamentally lacks the ability required (e.g. the cognitive, emotional, or relational capacity) for this job (a line/level function)?

If leaders are unaware of the lines and levels (the abilities) of the people involved, how would they be able to know what is really happening and what should be done about it?²

Lenses

I believe that the widespread lack of awareness about this thing called “meaning making lenses” is at the heart of why many so called “solutions” to society’s most pressing problems meet with disappointing failure. This is true across nearly every aspect of human society: education, business and economic development, governance and politics, and interpersonal/ideological/ethnic/military conflict. Yet there is no area that I’m aware of where meaning making lenses is more relevant than the domain of leadership.

Integral psychology has much to say about meaning making lenses. For purposes of a popular, accessible, and practical model of Integral Leadership, I will use the term “worldviews” in place of “meaning making lens.”³ The vast majority of conventional approaches to leadership (and management, and the other societal problems and solutions) fail to adequately take into account the fact that people with different worldviews interpret the same facts very differently and will—or will not—tolerate different leadership styles and approaches that can be closely correlated with those same worldviews.

The American Psychological Association defines worldview as: A way of describing the universe and life within it, both in terms of what is and what ought to be. A given worldview is a set of beliefs that includes assumptions regarding what objects or experiences are good or bad, and what goals, behaviors, and relationships are desirable or undesirable.⁴

While the above academic definition is useful for reference, a simpler layman’s definition is sufficient for our purposes here: A worldview is “the overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world.” This “overall perspective” is, in its essence, made up of values and universal beliefs. By values, I mean what a person considers “most important” (their priorities in life), and by universal beliefs I mean broad-based beliefs about self, people, and how the world (the system) works. Meaning making lenses, or worldviews, are the subject of the Understanding People section.

States

Unlike stages which are permanent, states are temporary conditions that can quickly transform into entirely new conditions. The most obvious example is weather conditions (hence the cloud-like icon I use for states). One of the fundamental concepts used in business planning is the consideration of the “current state” and the “desired future state” along with a gap analysis between the two states. A quick tour of the four integral quadrants reveals how states can be seen through all four quadrant perspectives:

• The state of mind (including emotional states) of the leader and the individuals in the group. Individuals in a given situation may be influenced positively or negatively by emotional states of conflict, fear, excitement, or hubris  (UL)
• The measurable state of health, fatigue, or capability of a person’s body (UR)
• The state of the physical infrastructure or electronic information technology systems. Also states of growth, stability or instability, profitability, and various states of change in the infrastructure and systems (LR)
• The state of collective morale of an organization’s culture (LL)

Styles and Types

The notion of “styles” is a central feature in Integral Leadership. Human behavior is influenced by every single element in the AQAL Framework. When all these factors come together, over time, people develop various “styles” in which they engage the world and the people in it. These styles are essentially behavior patterns related to the different ways that people think and act in various situations. I introduce four universal leadership styles in The Leadership Rosetta Stone and further elaborate in the Understanding People section.

The element of “Types” is important for any truly integral approach. Simply put, types are categories. Clearly styles and types are closely related. You could say that styles are types of interpersonal/leadership approaches. This is one reason that many integral theorists lump styles under types. In terms of types, it is easy to see that all fields of knowledge have “distinctions.” It is fairly well known that a person with more distinctions about a field, area or situation will be able to draw more accurate conclusions about what is happening. Learning the various types (or categories) of information in a given field gives a practitioner more distinctions. To illustrate, I’ll mention a few commonly cited example of types. Perhaps the most obvious is male/female (and masculine/feminine).  Another familiar type seen in the natural world is, of course, species. If you are familiar with biology, then you are already familiar with the notion of types and sub-types. If you have some familiarity with psychology, you know about “personality types” (typologies). There are many psychology-based typologies in use in organizational settings such as the DISC Model or Myers-Briggs (introvert/extrovert, thinker/feeler, etc.).  Many management theorists categorize cultures into various types. Finally, types are used to describe kinds of organizational structures, infrastructure, financial mechanisms, and investments.

Now that you are familiar with the major elements of the Integral Framework, you can begin to see how integral leaders can use these perspectives to gain visibility into critical dimensions of situations that conventional leaders often overlook.

Its not hard to see how the application of these AQAL elements to leadership results in greater awareness, better approaches, and more skillful action. And this precisely describes the difference between integral leaders and their conventional leader counterparts: integral leaders are more aware, choose better strategies, and act more skillfully.

Footnotes

Worldviews can be thought of as lenses through which we perceive and interpret our subjective experience. This “worldview contact lens” advertisement spoof highlights how worldviews color our interpretation of reality. For readers less familiar with the concept of worldviews… a handy worldview primer is offered below that correlates them with the style of leadership each prefers. This is a central aspect of Integral Leadership.

These crucial lenses are a primary way human beings filter subjective experience (of objective reality) and interpret those experiences in terms of:

• how things appear to be;
• how things should be;
• what’s right and wrong with how things are, and
• what, if anything, should be done about it.

Clearly then, this is of paramount importance if we are interested in understanding how people make sense of the world we share, and especially as leaders, how we can better understand what people care about, their priorities, their motivations, and the style of leadership that is likely to be most effective with them.

Much has been written on this topic. As a very, very brief introduction, the four lenses illustrated above can be characterized (in simple, non-academic terms) as follows:

MODERN WORLDVIEW

The world is a playing field full of opportunity to achieve

People who see the world through this lens tend to value opportunity, achievement, success, winning, status, and recognition and tend to follow leaders who are perceived to have the most expertise and ability to achieve goals. In other words, people with this mindset tend to prefer leaders with aStrategic Leadership Style.

POSTMODERN WORLDVIEW

The world is a diverse ecosystem where cooperation leads to synergy

People who see the world through this lens tend to  value personal growth, emotionally intimate relationships, equality, dialog, consensus, interdependence, inclusivity, sustainability, collaboration, and making a difference and tend to follow leaders who are perceived as being aware, sensitive to the wellbeing of others, value consensus, and always treat others as equals. In other words, people with this mindset tend to prefer leaders with a Collaborative Leadership Style.

TRADITIONAL WORLDVIEW

The world is an ordered existence governed by a higher authority

People who see the world through this lens tend to value belonging, stability, order, security, conformity, and morality as defined by traditional values (in whatever tradition they were raised and socialized in—frequently religious but not necessarily) and tend to follow leaders who are perceived as having positional and/or moral authority. In other words, people with this mindset tend to prefer leaders with an Authoritarian Leadership Style.

IMPERIAL WORLDVIEW

The world is a jungle where the strongest survive and impose their will

People who see the world through this lens tend to value safety, protection, respect, self-expression, dominance, and gratification of desires, and tend to follow leaders who are perceived as having the most power (in terms of being the strongest, toughest, and most cunning). In other words, people with this mindset tend to prefer leaders with an Autocratic Leadership Style.

Much more to follow on leadership styles (strategic, collaborative, authoritarian, and autocratic) and which situations, and with which people and groups, those styles are best suited.

Check back in the coming weeks and click on “Leadership” under topics. Or visit our topics page to see all current topics of discussion.

Experience has shown that if you survey a group of people with these three questions about the SAME situation, you will get wildly different answers.

These answers will reflect what these individuals are aware of and not aware of, what they emphasize and focus on (biases) and what perspectives they valorize or deliberately ignore (privilege or under-privilege).

The most obvious factor that influences how a leader (or person) answers these questions is his or her worldview. Integral leaders use a simple model of four worldviews: Modern, Postmodern, Traditional and Imperial. These worldviews correspond with four corresponding mindsets: Strategic, Pluralistic, Traditional, and Power-centric. Worldviews and mindsets reflect people’s values and beliefs, therefore significantly influence what they deem important and what approaches and actions they think are warranted. (See link at bottom to read more about Worldviews.)

Of course, other factors (seen in the integral model) also influence a person’s answers to the above three fundamental leadership questions. A person’s cognitive, emotional, social, and moral stage of development significantly impacts answers to these questions. Also, typology plays a critical role. The integral principle of “native perspectives” shows us that some “personality types” emphasize the exterior or tangible factors while others emphasize the interior or intangible factors. Similarly, some are more oriented toward the individual and others toward the group perspectives.

The individual and collective dimensions of the interior/subjective and exterior/objective aspects of a given situation are also known as the Integral Quadrants. Without considering all four dimensions (or perspectives), it is difficult or impossible to answer the question “What’s really happening here?” with any confidence that the answer is either complete or accurate.

Background on Integral Leadership

The practice of integral leadership was pioneered by the Integral Institute Business and Leadership Center team with formal field-testing at the Stagen Leadership Institute in it’s intensive Integral Leadership Program (now in its 10th year) with hundreds of CEOs and executives and thousands of their employees. Integral Leadership has also been formally field-tested with success by Notre Dame’s Executive Integral Leadership Program. Integral leadership has also been informally field-tested worldwide by the various faculty members of Integral Institute’s Business and Leadership Center along with hundreds of integrally-informed organizational development consultants that have attended international integral leadership trainings hosted by the Integral Institute.

* Advanced students of integral leadership recognize that the AQAL matrix arises in each of these frames. So a more technical rendering would be AQAL Awareness + AQAL Approach + AQAL Action.

Click here to read a more detailed article on the AQAL Elements Applied to Leadership,
click here for my article explaining worldviews or click here to read more about Integral Leadership.

In what Mayor Michael Bloomberg called “a historic triumph for equality and freedom,” New York joined the growing number of states that have legalized gay marriage, including: Massachusetts (2004), Connecticut (2008), Iowa (2009), Vermont (2009), New Hampshire (2010), and Washington, D.C. (2010). Modern, postmodern and integral thinkers nationwide celebrate New York’s decision to take its place on the “right side of history.”

Traditional thinkers obviously don’t agree with this view—which I will elaborate on below.

Bloomberg also offered support to the Republicans who voted for the measure, stating that he believetheir actions were consistent with GOP ideals of liberty and freedom, “The Republicans who stood up today for those principles I think will long be remembered for their courage, foresight and wisdom” He added, “Ten, 20, 30 years from now, I believe they will look back on this vote as one of the finest and most proud moments in their life.”

Indeed.

The Human Rights Campaign released a new video in the “New Yorkers for Marriage Equality” campaign featuring Barbara Bush, the daughter of President George W. Bush. In the video she says, “I’m Barbara Bush and I’m a New Yorker for marriage equality. New York is about fairness and equality and everyone should have the right to marry the person that they love. Join us.”

HRC President Joe Solmonese, said “Americans from all walks of life are increasingly supportive of the basic right to equal marriage, Barbara Bush’s advocacy shows that equality knows no party label.”

True. Marriage equality is not the exclusive domain of either American political party but it is certainly a reliable test for a “Traditional worldview.” Unlike her father, Barbara Bush does not share the Traditional view that discrimination should be written into the U.S. Constitution.

Several courageous Republicans supported the predominantly Democratic lawmakers who voted for the bill. Senator Mark J. Grisanti, a Republican from Buffalo who had sought office promising to oppose same-sex marriage, told his colleagues he had agonized for months before concluding he had been wrong. “I apologize for those who feel offended,” Mr. Grisanti said, adding, “I cannot deny a person, a human being, a taxpayer, a worker, the people of my district and across this state, the State of New York, and those people who make this the great state that it is the same rights that I have with my wife.”

The reaction from people with Traditional worldviews is, of course, predictable. New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan and bishops around the state released a statement condemning the passage of the law by the Legislature, saying they were “deeply disappointed and troubled.” The statement read, “Our society must regain what it appears to have lost—a true understanding of the meaning and the place of marriage, as revealed by God, grounded in nature, and respected by America’s foundational principles.”

I can hardly wait to hear what the Traditional worldview pundits (Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Pat Robertson, Ann Coulter) and many socially conservative American politicians (e.g. Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Michelle Bachman, and Sarah Palin) will say about this marriage equality progress. Upon reflection, it has become clear to me that as much as any other topic I’ve come across recently, a person’s reaction to marriage equality is a solid litmus test that accurately detects a Traditional worldview.

A Traditional worldview can cause pre-rational fears and prejudice to override rational thinking and common sense.

Most Americans, including those with traditional views, hold freedom and liberty as core values and high ideals. This country was founded on these values and people with a traditional worldview tend to be highly patriotic. Yet, the Traditional worldview is a powerful lens capable of distorting reality to the point of overriding not only these deeply held values but also rational thought and common sense. Under the influence of traditional beliefs, some otherwise intelligent and compassionate human beings actually think that freedom and liberty only apply to people who adopt their chosen lifestyle, and that prejudice, intolerance, and discrimination is somehow justified.

So pay attention to people around you and how they react to this idea of marriage equality or gay marriage. It is a very clear indication of worldview. Positive reaction to marriage equality reflects a Modern or Postmodern worldview. A negative reaction is a reliable indicator of a Traditional worldview.

Many readers of this blog are already familiar with worldviews. In case you are not, here is a very brief primer….

Worldviews can be thought of as lenses through which we perceive and interpret our subjective experience. These crucial lenses are a primary way human beings filter subjective experience (of objective reality) and interpret those experiences in terms of:

• how things appear to be;
• how things should be;
• what’s right and wrong with how things are, and
• what, if anything, should be done about it.

Modern worldview
The world is governed by scientific principles revealed through rational thought

People who see the world through this lens tend to value scientific progress, opportunity, achievement, and success, and tend to follow leaders who are perceived to have the most expertise and ability to strategically leverage rational thinking to achieve worthwhile goals. (See wikipedia “Modernism” and “Modernity” for historical perspective.)

Postmodern worldview
The world is a complex, diverse ecosystem that thrives on cooperation and synergy

People who see the world through this lens tend to value human rights, inclusivity, sustainability, and interdependence, and tend to follow leaders who are perceived as being conscious, treat others as equals, and are concerned for the wellbeing of others (including those who don’t share their beliefs). (See Wikipedia “Postmodernism” and “Postmodernity” for historical perspective.)

Traditional worldview
The world is an ordered existence governed by a higher authority

People who see the world through this lens tend to value stability, order, security, conformity, belonging, and socially conservative morality as defined by tradition (in whatever tradition they were socialized into) and tend to follow leaders who are perceived as having positional and/or moral authority based on the traditional belief systems of their ancestors. (See Wikipedia “Traditional Values” or “Traditional“ for historical perspective.)

For more information about worldviews:

See my humorous introduction to worldviews here, or
A listing of all Integral Thinkers posts related to worldviews here, or
Read my more in-depth description of how worldviews relate to leadership here