I invite you to listen to a dynamic and thoughtful conversation I had recently with Jeff Salzman on the Daily Evolver, where we discussed “Activism at the Integral Stage”.
Integral
“Integral” — What’s in a word?
Assumptions about Organizational Hierarchies
The word “integral” evolved etymologically from the Latin root “tangere.” This same root is also the source of words like “tactile,” “tangible” and “tangent.” It means “touch.” The first syllable of the word Integral, “in” is a negation. So, etymologically, “Integral” at its root then, means “that which is untouched.”
Something can be untouched only if there’s nothing else to touch it. That which includes everything (so that there is nothing “else”) is that which is untouched. Thus, Integral means radical inclusivity. This is the essence of Integral – wholeness.
As used commonly, though, this word Integral appears has two aspects.
One aspect can be seen in related words like “integrated” or “integrating.” We use these words to describe what happens when some individual or group, some aspect, element, or idea, which has previously been excluded, is now included in a greater wholeness, and everything shifts, and all the parts then have a new and right relationship to each other. There is integration. It’s about parts coming together rightly and making a more perfect whole. They connote something like “including all the parts and rightly relating them to each other.”
Then there is another rather different category of related words, words like “integer” and “integrity” (in the sense of both structural integrity and personal integrity.) These words don’t have connotations that even acknowledge parts or their relationship to each other. They connote onlywholeness. In fact, they refer to a wholeness that is so strong, that what stands out to notice is wholeness instead of parts, right. Integrity means that because the parts are not in conflict, the wholeness stands forth and functions without contradiction or fragmentation.
Integral theory, Integral consciousness, and Integral Life Practice are essentially about a vision of inherent wholeness. They are all expressions of a way of seeing the world that sees inherent wholeness and at the same timeseeing all the parts, illuminating all the perspectives that focus on aspects of reality, but in the context of inherent wholeness.
This is the spirit of Integral consciousness – the capacity to be present to all the parts of reality while grokking their indivisibility from the inherent wholeness. The Integral spirit lets wholeness be appreciated always, and sometimes even in the context of larger wholes
You may have heard another simple definition of the spirit of Integral: “Every perspective is both true and partial.” This simple statement summarizes the spirit of Integral consciousness because it implicitly calls forth awareness of the greater wholeness that exceeds what can be seen from any single perspective, while appreciating those perspectives. (This reminds me of Adi Da’s teaching question: “Apart from every point-of-view, what is actually there in the mirror?” It’s a koan, calling forth various answers while confounding the mind. What is there in the mirror? All possible reflections from every possible vantage point, simultaneously? Light itself? An opening into the paradox of point-of-view? The question, like any good inquiry, is richer than any and all possible answers.)
Both of these summaries of the Integral spirit (etymological and perspectival) say the same thing in different ways. The simultaneous appreciation of the truth and partiality of every perspective is the essence of the Integral Spirit. This appreciation absolute reality and inherent wholeness doesn’t fall into a “spiritual bypass” of relative realities. It is present to radical prior Unity, and is still is able to appreciate relationships, learning, and change. This “integral” appreciation of the relative stuff of life is transformed because it’s framed in the conscious field of the overarching wholeness in which it all arises.
Having clarified the radical context, then, what will we do next? What will we have for dinner? Shall we meditate? Exercise? Surf the web? Read a book? This is where Integral Life Practice picks up the conversation.
Iran 2009 — A New Kind of Revolution (3)
Integral Perspectives on Iran’s Cultural Divide
In Integral terms, the demonstrators can be distinguished from the regime’s supporters by cultural qualities relating to states, stages, and relationships to shadow.
High states are part of the ethos both of the demonstrators and of the regime’s true believers. Most of these high states are evoked by acts of self-transcendence, whether they be self-abnegation or self-sacrifice, whether they be gross physical acts or subtle emotional or mental acts.
Persians are poets and revolutionaries, a heartfelt, brooding, noble, and passionate people. Each year, on Ashura, faithful grassroots Shia men go into a trance and beat themselves bloody to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Hosayn Ibn Ali, in memory of whom Shiism originally emerged. Sufi mystics go together into trances in which they dance and sing and enter into ecstatic communion with Allah. Ancient Persian poetry is full of ecstatic mystic language, expressing a rich and passionate love affair with God. Modern Persian poetry is full of ecstatic emotional language, expressing a rich and passionate love affair with life, and pain, and death.
The structure of Iranians’ values are still centered in traditional agreements about symbols, tones, morés and resonances. But their values also now include certain modern and postmodern values like common sense, respect for the dignity of others, thinking for oneself, and the curiosity to observe the modern world directly. Their values are not altogether modern; but they are not exclusively conformist.
Their eyes have noticed a myriad of details and evidence and colors and shades of grey that the regime is telling them aren’t there. “Are you going to believe me or your lying eyes?” Everyone “in their right mind” knows the regime has lied to them.
The demonstrators include people with modern and postmodern and even integral values, but the center of gravity that divides them from the traditionalists is just a half-step beyond traditional, the early “expert” interest in taking a critical perspective on the evidence they have, not the modern “achiever’s” inclination to interpret experience in terms of a modern or postmodern systemic or paradigmatic analysis.
But Iranians will see the images of themselves reflected in the eyes of the outside world. And this will affect the dynamics. The excitement that comes from so much positive attention will be combined with the implicit meta-perspective that comes from imagining how you look to others. How much new evolutionary depth will this catalyze in Iranian thinking and perspective-taking?
A shadow most fiercely denied is usually projected. This happens at the level of individuals but also at the level of whole cultures. Cultural projection has been at the heart of the psychology behind the regime’s propaganda for years. By pointing to foreign enemies, by projecting its own xenophobia, the Islamic Republic has been able to coerce national unity.
The demonstrators want to take a new look at all that, to restore their connection to the larger world. They want Iran’s internal narrative to evolve, to reflectively discard what is not working and make new moves that will produce better results. They are taking the first baby step toward re-owning their cultural projection.
Postmodern nonviolence has been playing an important role in the resolution. Iranian society is sufficiently interconnected and self-reflective for this to have powerful impacts, even if Iran is not sufficiently modern in its values and conscience for nonviolence to succeed as directly it did for Gandhi in his struggle against the British Empire.
I hope that in the days ahead the Iranian people are able to get through to their cousins and friends in the police, armed services, Revolutionary Guard, basij, and government ministries. I hope that the institutions of Iranian society will reflect and flex in response to this horror, and shift its stance and nature. I hope that there can be a transition of values and behavior within the Islamic Republic with a minimum of violence and destruction.
However, cultural freedom may not come to Iran until those who “get it” are not just the most conscious members of Iranian society, but the most effective actors — in the institutions (of government, religion, and society) and on the streets. Moral authority needs elemental strength. The change the Iranian people are calling for so eloquently will not complete itself until trustable leaders are able to grasp the levers of power.
New levels of consciousness sometimes don’t replace the old until they can take more effective responsibility for all the brutal facts of life. Good-hearted Iranians cannot cede the military, the government, and the clerical institutions to fanatics and realistically expect to retain their own freedom. This will become a passionate and frank conversation in thousands of homes and offices across Iran. It will be worked out by the Iranian people, on terms we can only partially comprehend.
Click here for part 4.
Integral In Iran – 2009
In spring 2007 I visited Iran as a member of a citizen’s diplomacy delegation. The day after we arrived in Tehran, our meetings with former President Khatami, Grand Ayatollah Saanei, peace activist Emmadin Baghi, and Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi were abruptly cancelled. Our cell phone calls and emails had been (and would continue to be) monitored; our activities were reorganized and were strictly controlled by Ahmedinejad’s faction.
Most of the government officials, citizens, clerics, students, professors and wounded veterans, with whom I was able to meet were conservatives. Our every move was monitored by the Ershad secret police. Big brother was definitely watching. And yet this “curse” turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I confronted and explored the much wider gulf that separated the perspectives of Ahmadinejad’s faction from my western sensibilities. (And of course, I had encounters with many much freer spirits here and there along the way.)
In the process, I learned much more about the Iranian soul than I could have dreamed going in. I encountered the intense spiritual passions of the Shia ways that catalyzed startling insights. It humbled me to see how a vast amount of what is under the surface of contemporary Iranian culture and politics tends be opaque to modern Western eyes.
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