Here is a great link that delineates the organizational nature of communities that come together for practice.
Something to keep in mind, and something for us to consider while starting to form loosely connected - to eventually more deeply connected - communities of interest around Integral Practice.
For the most part, the Stage of Development for Integral Practice is Potential, and Coalescing.
There are some significant difficulties right now for forming communities of practice however:
1. Significant overlap with similar entities. There are already several spiritual and health organizations that do similar things. Is Integral simply a larger mental superstructure, that actually contributes nothing unique, in the way of skillful means?
2. Diffusion of goals - is it personal practice? Spiritual growth? What methods? Is everything allowed? What is the container of practices that everyone can coalesce around?
3. Responsibilites of the core community - do these exist? Is there buy-in?
4. Inspirational leadership leading to a collective action plan. There is a large gap here for the Integral Community. After reading one of Ken books, you are fired up, ready to go and "be integral", and then...um...well, I guess I can start meditating?
These begin to be answered by the Integral Life Practice kit. These are practices that people can begin to coalesce around. But there is a lot of refinement work to be done here.
Really, what integral can contribute is the following:
a. Agency of discernment - THIS practice - of the hundreds of practices out there, is reliable.
b. Exercises and research into cross-training - combining THIS daily exercise with THIS daily exercise - gives cumulative beneficial effects.
For myself, this is about joining with others:
a. meditation
b. advaita
c. skillful means for body, mind, community.
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Integral Community as Community of Practices - Best Practices
Comments
Re: Integral Community as Community of Practices - Best Practices
by
Rosi
on Fri 17 Mar 2006 09:46 PM PST | Profile | Permanent Link
I completely agree with what you're saying and agree.
For me, it seems that Integral Transformative Practice (http://www.itp-life.com/practice/index.html), from Leonard and Murphy, is the simple tool to follow for an integral transformation. And Ken Wilbur provides all the background philosophy that helps you with the transformation. I'm curious about ILP, but don't want to get confused with all the different methodologies from the various sources that it includes. ...but looking forward to joining with others, too! Rosi Trackbacks
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