I’ve been watching the development of the Integral Institute with great interest and excitement. The founder, Ken Wilber, has been a writer of integral theory books that I have devoured over the years, from Atman Project, to his latest (which I should get soon) Embracing Reality. Basically, I’m a huge fan.
Also, living in the SF Bay Area, I am familiar with other organizations that are ostensibly devoted to integralism – California Institute of Integral Studies, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Noetic Institute, etc.
So I consider the integral movement my “team” if you will, and I have been “integrally practicing” for quite awhile.
So now I’m going to act like one of those radio show sports caller fans, calling in on Monday morning, freely giving his “all-knowing” advice to the coach and quarterback, team, etc. Like the sports fan, my advice will and should be ignored. But, hey, I’m a fan, I’m entitled to spout off!
Through the years I’ve loaned out my Ken Wilber books to friends (sometimes loaned –“forced on” in some cases, might be a better description). In some cases, people love reading him. However, in a disturbingly high number of others, after about 10-30 pages or so, people say, “the book is too intellectual” or “it’s too complicated”, and then happily go back to reading Conversations with God or Deepak Chopra. (There’s nothing wrong with Conversations with God or Deepak Chopra of course, I’m getting to a point…)
In web design, we throw around an acronym – KISS – that stands for Keep It Simple Stupid. Know-it-all integral fan that I am, I want to suggest a version of this for integralism.
KISI – Keep It Simple, Inspired!
Say what you will about Ken Wilber, he is not simple. He is brilliant, inspired, deep, multi-faceted, spiritually mature – but simple is not on the list. And it shouldn’t be. You don’t grow a whole integral philosophy by not being complex.
But simple is necessary. Not only because it is easy to understand, but also because simplicity is absolutely necessary to any type of transformative practice.
As an example of brilliance reduced to simplicity, there is brilliant engineering and design around the Apple Ipod – but to the end-user, what matters? It’s cool and easy to use.
Another great example of this as it applies to people is Alcoholics Anonymous. The process of confronting and dealing with alcoholism is boiled down to the 12 steps. Which when combined with fierce community support, has been fairly successful.
In my own life as well, after all the various weekend workshops, retreats, visualizations, encounter and meditations experiments (which have all been great and interesting) – in my spiritual practice, what is it that I fall back on?
Sitting (zazen), heart visualizations, a core set of prayers, and reading/listening to Big Mind/non-duality teachings.
That’s about it – a single person can’t do everything, after all.
I think the same rule of success holds for most “how to live” programs. If you look at Conversations with God, or Deepak Chopra – and on the other end of the spectrum Christian Fundamentalism –the tenets are simple, but suffused with inspiration.
So, I go to the Integral Institute website, or the sister website Integral Naked and get a sense of what is coming – all these fabulous conversations, this wonderful ferment and interplay – brilliant speaking to brilliant.
But I fear the loss of the simple – who over at Integral Institute is going to, like Apple design whizzes, bring the complex brilliant innovations, and turn them into an ipod, making the insights useful to the practices of schmucks like me?
So I ask Integral Institute to -
