I clearly haven't been posting a lot here - mainly because I've been pretty busy.

But also, this particular blog has focused on the "basics", of integralism (when not veering to tech stuff and philosophy!)

For various dimensions, it is now pretty clear what the basic practices are.

Physical - I've blogged before - but 2 to 3 times a week, cardio, stretching, and weighlifting for exercise.

For diet - barring special circumstances - less carbs, and balanced eating.

Meditation - while there is a lot around the map here, the basic practices involved for integral involve:

Basic Zen/Vipassana sitting
BigMind/Advaita training
Compassion/Heart work


Now, of course, I'm missing a lot of the I-Thou meditations.  Perhaps I could blog them.

In terms of professional, career - one of the best books out there for this is Pathfinder, and What Color Is Your Parachute?

Both are passionate and practical, and give a very good sense of what are the gifts one has to GIVE, in terms of skills, abilities, and desires.

Psychological/interpersonal- while there are a lot of books out there, self-assessment is fairly easy to use, and I have also used this site to point to inexpensive therapeutic options.  And then there is the Shadow Work of the 1-2-3, as well as Byron Katie's work.  I could write more about relationship as well, but it is so easy for this to become narcissistic, in my opinion.

Now - community - this is probably one of the biggest lacks that I personally have, or have not written a lot about, and I've been attempting to address this through the Ken Wilber MeetUp, and organizing the San Francisco ILP Group. 

And then, when you do all the above, do you have time for rest, play, and creativity? Where is the balance?

I still believe there are things that are important for an "integral practitioner" to deal with - deeper delving into the interpersonal, dealing with MOTIVATION and destructive subpersonalities (just because all the practices are out there, doesn't mean you are doing them!), and also re-introducing some concepts into the integral community with ethics - such as "duty", "community commitment" etc.  A community is defined by the individuals that "take on" the duties of that community, and it is duty and volunteerism that is the glue of community.  Which conflicts a bit with "my/your integral growth".  And you want to keep away from any cultism, as such.

At any rate, opening up for questions - what integrally, needs to be worked on?  My integral growth, rather than "our" integral growth? 

Good PDF on emotional intelligence, covering different dimensions of emotional intelligence.

Getting to Integral Work.

I may comment more later, but life is busy busy busy right now...

This is a bit technical, but the "standard" specfications for e-portfolios has been released.

Once this specification is combined with what coolmel calls algorhythmic match-making services (and remember, the matchmaking doesn't have to apply only to romance - can apply to friends, jobs, skills)), and then you combine THAT with a deep and comprehensive mode of assessing skills and GAPS in those skills, and then this is combined with open source repositories of knowledge, and then you combine this with sophisticated recommendation engines, and then combine this with Google Maps+GPS,

well,  guess what?  It's a whole new ballgame! 

Imagine your personal e-portfolio being "recommended" for and against.  Imagine querying your interests, passions and skillsets - embedded in your eportfolio - matched up with others who possess similar eportfolios - 60% match?  80% match?  Then you run your Google-GPS against that portfolio, and discover that there is this guy down the street who matches your portfolio interests to 98%?

Should you IM him - through your cell, with your "eportfolio match" being your calling card?

Imagine running that portfolio against a job opening, and coming back with a match on both sides of 75%? 

It's both exhilarating, and quite scary, depending on how this is used.  Definitely Big Brother esque, if we're not careful.

Imagine running your own portfolio against the ideal job - assessing the training you require on the spot, with recomendations FOR that training (numbers, locations, etc) coming up immediately.

It's a a brave new world, again and again,isn't it?




 

Here's a wonderful link to a variety of assessments.

The "BodyMind" collection at the bottom is a good one - if you click through, you will find a "values" assessment - I haven't taken it yet, but it lools pretty good.

I quick link to the JobHuntersBible site page on personal assessments, with a large variety of assessment tools.

This has a lot of good information, with personality tests, skills assessments, I've been looking around at a variety of pages, and this is one of the better ones.  I particularly like that the Myer's Brigg's personality assesssment test is mentioned.  For me, this was a pretty accurate tool, when I did the self-assessment.

the small "test and advice" commentary is well-done.  With a wry sense of humor, but practically grounded.

It's interesting to experiment with a couple of these.  You can get a good sense of common themes that come up for you,  again and again, with different tests.

One of the main things that we do in life is work. While some people have no problems identifying their interests, aligning these interests with their abilities, and then turning these abilities into skills, many people are not so lucky. For those that the above is a challenge, this is breaking apart the analysis of the challenge into four parts:   more »