An important  article by John Edwards, regarding social and political realities.

Help me out on this, but from an integral perspective, isn't this an example of a financial system obeying the directives of an "unhealthy", or corrupted, Traditional society?

UPDATE: 

Here's an old article from Catallaxis, on "authoritarian economics".  Don't think this really addresses this situation, but it is a start in integral economic analysis.

Via the hard-charging  Duff, a look at the Academy of Achievement's "Meet Your Mentor" feature.  Get biographies of high achievers who have similar impulses as you, and may have had similar challenges.

I have posted an article on Generation Sit, titled The Mysteriousness of Will, and Impediments to Practice. Since this applies so well to any type of practice (health, diet, meditation, career development) I thought I would follow up here.   more »

Interesting article on Mimics from Wired News.

How to Win Friends and Influence People, indeed.

What do you get when you mix fame, cutting-edge commercial health and wellness products, and a mystical spiritual path?

Why you get the Kabbalah Energy Drink, brought to you by Ashton Kutcher!

I put the question out there - is this the future of integral?

You know I was IN Los Angeles earlier this month - I could have gottten this drink!!

Ah well - next time!

Hat tip to my 12 year old cousin, Rita.  She keeps a close eye on what Ashton Kutcher is up to - why do you think that is?...

Came across this article today, even though it is an old article from the end of 2004.


Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism

Since I've been putting some things in the Integral Commons, and have been seriously contemplating how to get a productive multi-contributor project going for integral, that is licensed for Creative Commons, it is good to keep in mind.

I also particularly liked this comment:


No one I know in academia (at least in the technical fields) bother contributing and I know many people in academia (including Jackson from E&M fame and van Trees from signal processing). Why would an expert bother contributing his valuable time to a project that can be ruined any random idiot on the 'net? People love to compare Wikipedia to Open Source but guess what: bad, incorrect code doesn't compile. Bad, incorrect information on the 'net lives on and non-experts hardly ever notice the mistake.

I've added a couple of links to the right link side.

Center of Integral Science has an explosion - way too much, actually - of ways of thinking in integral ways between science and spirit. 

I've also added the full list of integral blogs I'm keeping track of, thanks to Kosmic Blogger being out there.  (I'm assuming this will simply get larger and larger as time goes on)

I've been noting with interest, the beginnings of different voices and views regarding an integral perspective, politics, and culture. Being a fairly classic liberal, although a pretty morally based one (according to this Taboo Evaluation Questionnaire my moral quotient is .5, which supposedly means I have a middling sense of a universal sense of good - universal in the sense of what is good for one is good for everybody ). I have the (admittedly) unreflective assumption, that the Rational-Pluralistic perspective of a liberal, was, and is, "clearly" a higher point of view, than the Traditional-Rationalist perspective of conservatives. But I've been noticing, actually, quite a variety of opinion on how the integral worldview deals with politics "as it is", so to speak.   more »

Another entry/advice in the productivity area of life.

I guess Shawn's been eating his wheaties or something, because he is banging on all cylinders in terms of pointing to some incredible online resources.

I'll link to his site, and then please link through

Integral Leadership Review. 

Wilber JFK audio files

Society for Research in Adult Development -  I'm particularly interested in this one, given my current project with skill assessments/evals/recommendations applied integrally.

Feel, taste, see the difference.

Guerilla marketing at its best.

UPDATE:  Seeing a similar post from coolmel, made me go "oops!".

I forgot to say - from Wired:

Completely my bad.  This is what happens when you are doing thee things at once.  Apologies to Wired!!

A good article for exercise freaks.

This is a somewhat technical posting, but goes with some of the assessment project area I've been posting on.

Here's a link to The Life Effectiveness Questionnaire. 

If you are made of intermediate strong stuff, click the link to the PDF file, and read. If you a psycho-numbers freak, read the appendices! 

But here's a key graph:

This chapter briefly reviews the problematic history of evaluating the outcomes of outdoor-based experiential education programs.  One of the key criticisms is the lack of theoretically and psychometrically sound instruments to assess changes in the self-perceptions of participants in such programs.  Consequently, this chapter explains the development of a practical, easy-to-use self-report instrument designed to measure changes in key areas of “life effectiveness”.

As I have mentioned previously, the collaborative energy we spend here on the web (witness Ryan's response to a previous post here), will hopefully be utilized to creating sound, pragmatic, and effective ways to evaluate "life effectiveness" in practice - for body, mind, spirit, utilizing feedback from all quadrants. 

Another reminder to Take the Poll!  The poll is on the right - please choose an option, and add your thoughts.

What's interesting is the spread so far - I guess all of these projects are equally worthy.

Any other comments are appreciated!

If you look to the RIGHT sidebar, you will see a poll that ANYONE (don't have to be logged in) can take.

At the beginning of May, I had a post  that was a list of "Integral bloggers" (culled from Kosmic Blogger). I define "integral" as recognizing the existence of the trinity of body/mind/spirit, and also recognizing that all three of these dimensions develop. The bloggers I indentified (and there were something like 80) are conerned with the different aspects of these three dimensions, from a variety of personal, social, and developmental perspectives.

That was 18 days ago.  Since that time, there have been 9 more entries at Kosmic Blogger.

Wow!  An entry every other day!  Such explosion, such diversity!

Since this type of growth is happening, I have an urge to use some of the other internet applications that are available to "pool" or centralize/manage some of the explosion of information that is happening. 

I don't know if there is enough "mass" yet, or even a necessity, to have resources outside of Integral Naked.  (And since Michaeul Dubois still, very helpfully, has Integral Visioning available, some of these resources already exist.) 

So - please take the poll to the right!  Let's have a transparent accounting of the online integral community wishes!

Anyone who reads this, first, try out the poll - help me make sure it is working the way it is supposed to.

If it is working, then please let people know!

(Note - if there is enough response, I hope to either setup a completely different site, that will be used exclusively for integral polls, or use Integral Visioning for a variety of polls.)

Go read

This is going to be a bit of a naive post - more of a set of questions, than an answer. I have a feeling that readers will be able to help me out by pointing me to information. I've spoken before about how feedback works, and how for some areas (such as science) feedback works really well, and how for other areas, feedback is quite a challenge.   more »

Joe Perez (of Soulful Blogger) is now back and blogging individually, at Rising Up.

I had kept up a faithful readership with him, as he is making a sincere and productive attempt to take integral INTO the wider world of social and political commentary. 

In his STEAM post, he presents one of the first attempts at Keep It Simple, Inspiring. 

How do you think he does?

Here's another description of someone's integral practice.

Rick has started to blog, A very comprehensive description of an integral practice in this post, and a lot of other good posts on the site as well. 

I've discussed this before, but I particularly agree with the idea that for an individual's creation of an integral practice it is best to simplify, and one of the best general category simplifiers is  "body, mind, spirit".  Rick speaks of this in his first post.  It works for me to then add "the Other", because it is easy to get involved with "my body, my mind, my spirit" (practice).  When I add The Other, for me, it keeps in mind the duties, service, and care for friends, family, and community.

I think this makes the most simple graft of AQAL, on a personal level - "body, mind, spirit, other". 

And then for myself, I add "professional".  Which, in the post I link to above, Rick adds as well.

It's a bit different when you are contributing to advancing Integral Knowledge, Theory, or fleshing out a certain line, level, or state of awareness and practice.  That can, and does, need a lot of detail, complexity, research and feedback, analysis, deep reflection, etc.

But individuals need to KISI - preferably they will KISI me!!

First, take a look at the Wired article.

Then take a look at the application itself.  Play around a bit, have a party.

This is simply UNbelievable stuff.  If I want to move, here's where I'm looking. 

Who knows what else will come out of xml and .net services like this?

It's going to be amazing to see.

Hat tip Hyperguru

Not sure how to pay for that expensive college education?  Not sure how to engage in continuing education, in this fast-pace world, where you need to keep your skills sharp?

Well now there's a place - go to Wikiversity!

(Note - still in pre-beta - but if you have are a teacher in any way, feel free to contribute!)

Also, OpenContent is a good place to go!

For example, any contributor to integral theory, or integral practice, should really be grounded in a good understanding of statistics (however boring you may personally find it - it's necessary).

Now there are places to go, where you can learn, free!

1. All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.

2. All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.

3. "He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me,"--in those who harbour such thoughts hatred will never cease.

4. "He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me,"--in those who do not harbour such thoughts hatred will cease.

5. For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule.

6. The world does not know that we must all come to an end here;--but those who know it, their quarrels cease at once.

From the beginning of the Dhammapada.

After the ongoing reading I do of the Stuart Davis website, it worked out that I was on business in Los Angeles, and as it happened, at the same time, Stuart Davis was playing at The Knitting Factory. So, Amy and I went to see him!   more »

Some guidelines to keep in mind when collaboratively getting feedback on "soft skills" practices, that I think would also be effective for meditation practices.

In the coming years, it will be interesting to see if the teachers of various LGAT's  - from the big ones such as Tony Robbins, to smaller ones such as various Qi-Jong training, or "embrace the inner male" weekends, or whatever - start to embrace a collaborative and transparent approach in the feedback component of their various workshops. (This can even be utilized for meditation retreats.)

To the point where each particular workship or practice will have open surveys, fully publishable and searchable, on the web. 

Once we have put together (and professionalized) the various open source components (the survey tools, the LMS, the CMS, etc), the individual development paths, we can make the environment so attractive that the target audience of self-improvement/spiritual/community focused, will flock to the site.  Most workshop teachers/practitioners will have to embrace the model, as a cost of entry/advertisement.  This will have a self-reinforcing loop of improvement, as the best teachers will share openly results for practitioners, and improvements will come naturally out of that.

The basic premise behind open source:

"With enough eyes, all bugs are shallow" - Eric S. Raymond

Two premises behind Integral:

AQAL - all quadrants, all levels

"Each valid mode of knowing consists of an injunction, an apprehension, and a confirmation." - Ken Wilber

Actually, that last one isn't so much Ken Wilber's but a clear restatement of what has been understood in some schools of  philosophy for quite awhile.

These three are the fundamental positions necessary to begin a collaborative, but deep, investigation  into related realms of knowing, being, feeling, acting.

But the questions becomes - how to collaboratively "measure" or evaluate goodness or truth, in a less defined field than programming? 

In programming, you can both "see" well written code, in the actual programming, and you can also immediately see the effect when you run the code.  Instant feedback.

To collaboratively measure the result of practices not so easily seen, what is the feedback that is relevant?  What can be seen?

I would suggest we start with rich, well-thought out surveys.  If you look down to the Quality of Life survey, you will see that these type of surveys, given the quality of the questions in a survey, is the primary mode to enable quality feedback in a collaborative quest to know the truth, in human realms of practice. 

And, as I mentioned previously, the software exists to support the generation of good surveys.  We simply need to enable this correctly.

For those keeping track, I've almost finished the vision statement for the Skillful Means project.  I'd like to get feedback on it, before I publish it to everyone, so if you are interested (it's a 20 page document at this point), let me know.

I thought I would give a bullet point preview, however:

1.  Login to site
2.  Select one of several pre-existing profiles (with structured competencies).  These profiles will have associated functions, and then at a lower level, associated competencies.  These profiles will be embedded with functions for self, society, and spirit.
a. Or, take assessments, to determine closest fit for profile
b. Select functions , and create own profile.
3. Evaluation based on profiles selected or created.
4. Self-assessments measured against profiles. 
5. Levels of "lower" assessment, recommend various training
6. Links to this training on the site.
7. Various ways to communicate and participate, in projects.

All of the above - functions, competencies, skills and profiles, contributed by the community.

The above requires at least  four pieces of open-source software.


A Community Management System
A Learning Management System
A Performance Management/human development System.
An Information Managment System.

A buddy and I have installed Drupal, for the community piece.  It wasn't that difficult, actually, and this also takes care of the Wiki.

We also installed ATutor.  The relevance of ATutor is that you can, say, create an open-source online course or podcast - say with a content creation tool, and wrap a SCORM wrapper around it, and then you are publishing - IT courses, or financial courses, or meditation courses - on the LMS.  And then it will run on the system.  And this created content can be hosted (I hope) over at OurMedia

I haven't forged connections between these two softwares yet, however.  Still working on that.

The thing I haven't found is an open-source performance management piece - and really in this case, this is talking about managing the competency aspect.

If anyone could please forward this on to technical people you know - because the performance management aspect is what will distinguish a real "practice" community from a "talk" community. 

But I am so excited right now, you have no idea. 

All of the roles, functions, skills and competencies can be contributed by anyone. 
The knowledge will be contributed by anyone.  
The online practice modules will be submitted by anyone. 
The assessments will be created by anyone. 
It stays free. 
It improves - fast, with the collected pool of human wisdom - faster than can be imagined.

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.

A couple of technical articles I thought I would pass on.

15 things you can do with RSS

The New Digital Divide

Myself, I'm wondering who will be the 1st independent Integral Podcaster?

And why aren't there any Integral Institute podcasts on Podcast?

Matthew Dallman offers a useful correction to my "State of the Integral Blogosphere" post of the other day. 

Here's an excerpt:

Every marking, scratching, or material stroke in every part of a piece of art should properly be considered as an extension of the artist's consciousness. This is how Spirit works in caldron of artwork production. When the artist does not realize this, then their art can suffer from a lack of self-awareness of this fact. They think some or all of their artwork is not their consciousness extended, and thus that part of the artwork suffers from, metaphorically, a lack of life. There isn't the buzz of consciousness. Missing it that 'IT' quality that marks artwork produced by self-aware artists (or narcissists of various levels of undifferentiation).

He also usefully points out to watch for the pre-trans fallacy, when evaluating artists.

I will most likely respond later, when I have more time - but for now, I'm glad to have had my original post spark such a clear commentary, with useful distinctions, on integral art and artists.

Back from a 4 day trip in LA - was a good trip - productive from a business perspective, as well as fun personally. I did get to see Stuart Davis, as well as do a couple of other cool things, and a good amount of sightseeing.  Sometime over the next week, I'll attempt to use te "review" features of blogharbor, to review the performance. 

Finally, go check out the group of photos posted at The Human Bean when you have a chance (simply scroll down until you find them).  A wonderful perspective of the Divine Feminine, in it's many manifestations.  (At least that's my take - but I have incredibly pedestrian taste, so don't trust my art opinions...)

For those who have paid attention to the side columns of this site, Greg at Blogdigger was able to restore the "Integral Voices in the Moment" list of bloggers.

It looked likee they worked pretty hard to restore this, so thanks a bunch to the techs at Bloggdigger!

Okay, here's rumination that you were all waiting for (all three of you!) regarding the state of play in the Integral Blogosphere.   more »

I've noticed a couple of German sites, that actually have a lot of interesting posts (I speak a little bit of German).

I thought others might find this interesting, however, so here are a couple of links to the german sites, through Google translator. 

Das Tastentagebuch (The Key Journal (or Key Diary))

Fundamental Integral

Now, the translations are FAR from perfect - but still it is interesting.

I especially like the cartoon on Fundamental Integral, with the following tagline:

"P.S.: "if you do not hear, then here the ass is off! equal". :)

Since I received 40 google hits yesterday from my one Erik Erickson post, I figured I may as well direct a little more information to these google surfers passing through - so here's a link to a summary chart of the eight stages, and here is the definitive site that this chart is a part of.

May as well use my powers of google attraction for good, don't ya think?

As I reached 6 months of post, I thought it would be worthwhile to take a look around at the Integral/Spirit blogger landscape. It's getting pretty crowded out there! Coolmel did us all a favor of creating KosmicBloggers, so that interested people can find favorites. I went ahead and created a "master list" of these blogs, and I list them below, but I would like some feedback: 1. Would anyone find it worthwhile for me to create a master page of these sites, and, once a month, update this page? 2. Another possibility is to add all of these pages to the blogroll at KosmicBlogger (again setup by our good buddy coolmel!) and then anyone can view new posts, based on the way Coolmel has set this up. I'll also have some thoughts about the direction of integral/spirit content in a later post. At any rate, feedback would be appreciated! Here's the list.    more »