I find these days that I’m becoming less and less interested in this thing called “integral.” It seems like a fad that has come and is now going, fading into the sunset with bellbottom jeans and long sideburns. It was all so glorius, a new worldview that was the most comprehensive, the most inclusive, that gave me a sense of meaning and place in the universe, that fed my desire to be “on top” with the best and the brightest. Yet now it seems like so much ado about not much, more about an in-crowd religion than a useful tool for making the world a better place. It seems to have served its purpose for me but I’m feeling it’s time to move on to the next phase or level or whatever. Or maybe there is no “next level” at all and I need to branch out wider, more like a network or rhizome than a hierarchy or holoarchy. I don’t know. What I do know is that trying to fit all knowledge and experience into an integral framework has lost its magic for me. I’ve lost the need to make sense of and control the world. I think it’s ok now to just reside in ambivalence and uncertainty and relativity (with qualitative distinctions). It does lack security, not knowing what road one is on or where it is going. But it also makes for an open adventure, not knowing what is next.
i think it’s important to not let our waning interest on integral, as well as our projections on integral, be mistaken for what integral really is. saying integral is a fad is like saying that the previous level of consciousness we’ve inhabited is just a fad. you have a better understanding of integral than that, my friend.
~C
“I’ve lost the need to make sense of and control the world.”
Good! Was that Integral to you? Smash that idol down.
I suspect that those people who are able to sustain a longtime commitment to the Integral philosophy are those who are busy applying a new approach to one or more given dimensions of their life — technology, sex, religion, politics, what have you — and bringing new insights from those dimensions back into the stew to help shape and define what Integral is all about. Not sure if this fits with your own experience or not, but best wishes in defining your own best space for growth in the future
I think the market is waiting for a second generation of integral theory.
The pool of source material is too small, and there is not yet an effective system for producing more source material or original data.
That produces a sense that the existing “ore” has been mined, that there is no more gold, just shops to service the goldminers.
Wether or not that sense is true, it’s too early to tell.
No “Integral” would be complete without “The Life Divine” by Sri Aurobindo. Neither you nor your friends have so far cared to go through it. Until then one has but to suffer “ambivalence, uncertainty and relativity.”
I’ve come to realise that the whole thing is more complicated; there isn’t just an “integral movement”; there is a series of overlapping or not overlapping movements – Aurobindonian, Wilberian, New Age, New Paradigm, etc etc, which make up the “global mindshift”.
As for Open Integral blog, it really doesn’t have a common theme (apart from Wilber criticism, which i now find boring). For me all this stuff is too intellectual. It’s necessary to go beyond words. If you want to talk about integral consciousness, that’s integral consciousness. Going beyond mental perspectives. Both Jean Gebser and Sri Aurobindo, each in very different ways, mention this. So do all the mystics; it’s the perennial philosophy.
I am not a bit surprised that there are people who are “becoming less and less interested in this thing called “integral.— Because “this thing called integral” is a collection of movements with various living or long expired leaders – whose thoughts are expected to fill up the gap left after an old belief-system has proven itself inadequate and fallacious – and a lot of hopeful followers looking for the new answers. As it happens to all movements they turn up finally just fads, “in-crowd religions”, that come and go, the leaders are criticised or crucified, and the followers, who are incapable to be anything else but followers, become hungry again for some new spiritual medicine of salvation, from whoever is the supplier.
As long as the word “integral” will refer to movements or theories of semi-exclusive groups with exclusive leaders, that are ephemeral by nature; and not to a way of thinking – consisting of full-spectrum perceptive and intuitive information input rationalized through intellectual processes – which is enduring; the wheel of quest for “a useful tool for making the world a better place” will continue rolling. The undiscovered fact is that the world is a wonderful place, if only man would make himself worthy and fit to inhabit it.
The right step is (if anyone is interested at all in somebody’s opinion who has practiced it all his life, also in his wide-angle profession) “to branch out wider, more like a network or rhizome”. An “open intellectual adventure, not knowing what is next”, that “lacks security”, is the only “integralism” that works and pays off on the end. But it is an individual and lonely process.
As long as integral is only a theory or intellectual exercise without any practical use in the worlds we occupy, it will end up just that, an exercise. One has to come down from the ivory towers and be willing to get their hands dirty mining the veins of ore that need to be excavated and shore up the work that’s been done through the ages. The bringing together of different internal, subjective methods of awareness seems to be the bright spot of the “integral movementâ€Â. It is in the realization that we’re not in control that we can be open to the changes that need to be made. Movements, maps, meta-theories come and go and they will all wane, they are all two dimensional representation of a 3 dimensional world. Blinded by intellectualism we stumble through a world that is already whole.
The movement is still making its mark on the rest of the world, these things take time after all, but philosophy- our collective wisdom- is always working there in the background…
I suppose your being bored of integral could be a sign of a couple of things:
- the concept ‘integral’ is being hyped, used too much and in to many different ways so that the concept looses its attraction, meaning and depth, just like a record that is played too much.
- the boredom could be a sign that you are starting to experience the underlying emptiness of the concept, since boredom often is an entrance to emptiness or space.
- we are not reponding enough on your interesting postings and as a consequense you get bored
Outstanding comments by all!!
I think an ‘advanced’ perspective might suggest we forget about the word or concept integral and think hard – as you are all doing – about the POTENTIAL actions and discourses that might be ‘behind’ such a signifier.
Eg., the practical applications of more complex, more inclusive, more critical ways of being, becoming and communicating.
The is what we help facilitate at Integral Praxis.
HINT: I would suggest that “Integral” in its present modalities is a Yellow (SDi), or Teal (Wilber), or Level 5 (Kegan) abstraction (set of concepts) – that looks a lot different when it is operationalized (absorbed and enacted) in the Real world… The aesthetics of the Wilberian strains is very indicative of ‘hyper-logic’ and not true ‘vision-logic’ – Turquoise – integration per say…
But what would Integral look and feel and BE like on teh other side????
Lets find out!
cheers~
Hi ALL!
Just letting you guys know that two essays – one NEW! – at Integral Praxis talking about getting to the heart of the so-called “Integral movement” / worldview!!!
GO TO: http://integralpraxis.blogspot.com
Is it a paradigm of higher consciousness?
Is it a scam?
Is it all about Wilber?
Or is CAN it be more?
What the heck is INTEGRAL?
GO TO: http://integralpraxis.blogspot.com