What is an Inquiry?

Inquiry

What does an Integral life mean to you?

Are you living an Integral life?  What can you do to move closer to living an Integral life?  How can you help others to live an Integral life?  

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10 out of 10 members found this useful.

Bringing Awareness to Perspectives

Posted October 24th, 2007 by devin
The world is a vast terrain of perspectives and potential perspectives. However, perspectives alone exist in a state of confusion, crashing into one another in cycles of mindless conflict. Awareness is the act of holding multiple perspectives in a space that nurtures their value and constrains their short-sightedness. Such a space allows depth to emerge in our understanding and actions.

The integral life is the life that aligns with and seeks out this act of integrative awareness. The result of living this life is a profound fruition and conscious identification with the evolution of Spirit in all its complexity and beauty.

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1 out of 1 members found this useful.

Integral Life - transcend

Posted October 25th, 2007 by Kees Steeneken
tran·scend

  (trān-sÄ›nd')  Pronunciation Key

v.  

tran·scend·ed

,

tran·scend·ing

,

tran·scends

v.  

tr.
  1. To pass beyond the limits of: emotions that transcend understanding.
  2. To be greater than, as in intensity or power; surpass: love that transcends infatuation. See Synonyms at excel.
  3. To exist above and independent of (material experience or the universe): "One never can see the thing in itself, because the mind does not transcend phenomena" (Hilaire Belloc).

v.  

intr.

To be transcendent; excel.  

Integral Life is both a quest and a realization to transcend.  In the human life most every person faces this urge to transcend.  Sometime young, sometimes old, sometimes in quiet introspection, sometimes in desperate throws. Each person choses their own path to appease this muse; be it growth (ex. personal development), appeasement (ex. religion, power), denial (ex. addiction).

To find Integral Life is to have already chosen your path.  To chose your path you intrinsically know your path. Integral Life is the celebration of the path, the sharing of a way, the lighting of torches going forward.  

Integral Life is powered by what in Japanese are called "sensei" or literally "person who is born before", or those with wisdom to be shared with all who will listen.  This wisdom is the helping hand, the pointing finger and the nodding head to a path of transendancy. 


-- Kees CTO Integral Life

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4 out of 4 members found this useful.

Integrity, integration, interface...

Posted October 24th, 2007 by Robert MacNaughton

I remember as a child an encounter I had with my father when he caught me lying.  He was noticeably upset and emphasized that "Integrity is all that we have."

This moment stuck with me over the years and an inquiry emerged in my mind as I wondered "what is integrity?"  My ears would perk-up anytime someone mentioned the word as I attempted to define it.  

My current stance is that having integrity directly relates to having a comprehensive awareness of self.  The more I know about how I function and how the vairous aspects of my life interface, the better I can appropriately commit myself--and therefore function with strength, honesty, and wholeness.

My search for integrity has led me to a process of integrating my abilities, intentions, community, and work so they all go in one direction; and this defines what it means to me to live an integral life.

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2 out of 2 members found this useful.

Integral Self-Effort and Integral Grace

Posted July 1st, 2008 by Ken Freeman

For me an integral life well lived is one that simultaneously honors the Self within and the Self without.  It's moving deep into the reaches of the UL while finding that depth in the reaches of the other quadrants.  It's exploring the strengths of my developed lines while at the same time developing my shortcomings.  It's seeing and experiencing the grace of my own heart while I find that grace in the suffering and happiness of my mind and the world that it comes into contact with.  An integral life is embracing all that life has to offer in its chaotic and messy gloriousness while moving within the still backdrop of ultimate reality.

Constantly developing my mind's capacity to understand the integral map while constantly developing my heart to understand the spiritual truths of my lineage is what I do to move closer to a fuller experience of an integral life.  Living this by example is how I help others.

--

Ken Freeman

Community Leader

Integral Life, Inc.

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6 out of 6 members found this useful.

Lake and Maple

Posted August 15th, 2008 by Gayle Karen Young

What arose in me when I thought about this question is a beautiful poem by the poet Jane Hirschfield. There are elements in it that resonate in me in terms of what it means to live life in an integral manner. The first element is the sense of life lived intimately, the sense of giving it all and yet the sense of acceptance of it all without a judgment the way a lake does, "in the still heart that refuses nothing." I also love the mirroring of experience named here, that the beholder sees the world and the world is both experienced outside oneself and within. Beyond all of this, I feel and appreciate the sense of longing of a life lived this way paradoxically without longing. :) 

 Lake and Maple

I want to give myself
utterly
as this maple
that burned and burned
for three days without stinting
and then in two more
dropped off every leaf;
as this lake that,
no matter what comes
to its green-blue depths,
both takes and returns it.
In the still heart
that refuses nothing,
the world is twice-born -
two earths wheeling,
two heavens,
two egrets reaching
down into subtraction;
even the fish
for an instant doubled,
before it is gone.
I want the fish.
I want the losing it all
when it rains and I want
the returning transparence.
I want the place
by the edge-flowers where
the shallow sand is deceptive,
where whatever
steps in must plunge,
and I want that plunging.
I want the ones
who come in secret to drink
only in early darkness,
and I want the ones
who are swallowed.
I want the way
this water sees without eyes,
hears without ears,
shivers without will or fear
at the gentlest touch.
I want the way it
accepts the cold moonlight
and lets it pass,
the way it lets
all of it pass
without judgment or comment.
There is a lake,
Lalla Ded sang, no larger
than one seed of mustard,
that all things return to.
O heart, if you
will not, cannot, give me the lake,
then give me the song.

 

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4 out of 4 members found this useful.

Integral Life

Posted August 18th, 2008 by Kristian

1. We consume energy.

2. Energy is in us transformed into complexity and awareness.

An Integral life to me is: Most bang for the buck!

Meaning: Don't consume more energy (impact on the environment, food, heating, transport etc) than you have to, and try to transform as much energy as possible into an increased awareness, in you and and in others.

We are containers of awareness. Nature invests a lot of energy in us. Use it wisely. It's our job!

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1 out of 1 members found this useful.

Integral Life Design

Posted August 29th, 2008 by JP Jakonen

My take on it, after much reflection and even asking Ken Wilber about it in a phone conversation, is very simple. For me, Integral theory is becoming more and more a praxis revolving around the three main components of my life: my practices (for body, shadow, spirit and mind), my work (studying in order to contribute with my understanding + translating A Brief History of Everything into Finnish - published early 2009!) and my hobbies.

These components correlete with Nature, Culture and Self, or the Big Three, or the Four Quadrants. Nature is the area of Objective Reality with its objective responsibilites; Culture is the area of intersubjective responsibilites; Self is the area of subjective responsibilites. More simply: I have to do good towards the Kosmos, Other Beings and Myself. These three areas must be in balance.

And, in order to realize my true potential, I try to excercise my body, emotions, mind and spirit in every area. I try to include every stage in my work, in my hobbies and in my practice. That is: hobbies that are just fun for the body (a glass of Scotch) balanced with hobbies that are fun for the spirit (reading Osho, for example). And same goes for work and practice.

All in all: each area (quadrant) and each level is the same undivided Reality manifesting. That's why it's good to high-five that reality by re-cognizing it in every one of its dimensions: body, mind and spirit in self, culture and nature. Or like I see it: every level (or stage) used at every area of life. Now that's good life, the pursuit of Integral living, the ongoing exploration of Integral Life Design for me.

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2 out of 2 members found this useful.

We are all living, however phrased, with integrity...

Posted September 15th, 2008 by Michael Maskow

Remember to sit Quietly from time to time.

Think about it as much as you wish.  Whatever it is.

Recognize you cannot think it up.  It just is.

Stumble into your awareness of everything.  Let your awareness be.

Accept the freedom to find guidance everywhere.

Listen as though you are speaking.

Respond as though to yourself.

Meet the opportunity to respond arising everywhere.

When overwhelmed, remember step one.

--

~MfMaskow~

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Being with Whole.

Posted October 21st, 2008 by Lynn Doiron

One who mindfully considers, incorporates, and transcends the multifaceted complexities and perspectives of self, of others, of groups, and of organizations whilst in their daily interactions and participation with said others, groups, and organizations; and thus, grows into increased understanding of Existence and Self, and continues to grow into evolution of consciousness for the ultimate attainment of Being in Oneness.

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living integrally

Posted October 21st, 2008 by sensei

experiencing a healthy balance of solitude and community...through global and tribal visions...on a path of one's choosing...for example, the bodhisattva vow...

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Every on of us

Posted December 2nd, 2011 by Kurt Johnson

Every on of us is like living in integral life where there are ups and downs, trying to survive against all odds, fighting for a right we think we've been abused, solving different problems, and most of all they way we live freely or with temptation. All these burdens are with an end if we always think positive and be God fearing.

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Clarity, Wholeness and NEXT: Purposefulness

Posted March 17th, 2009 by Jeffrey Quintero

Breakthrough TIME/SPACE duality by the new awareness of spirit. Make sense in a new and integrative way. Become whole. NEXT: Realize our purposefulness...

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As simply as I can state it.

Posted April 14th, 2009 by Matthew Flowers

An Integral life "to me" means learning how to become aware of the next stage of development as it is occurring.  In this way I and future I's will be able to transcend and include an Integral Consciousness in higher developments.

I don't know what I can do to move closer to living that life, but I'll try all sorts of things and hopefully some of them will work.  I know that different states of consciousness can open up different perspectives, so that will have some effect.  It does occasionally become the case of I-don't-know-what-to-do-but-I-must-do-something, and this is frustrating when I realize it.

How I can help others live an Integral life is the most difficult aspect of living an Integral life.  I bring awareness to them of their developing nature, hopefully as it is happening, but this is nearly impossible.  I can barely see it in myself even with access to my own interior.

I receive the most rewarding awareness when I hold it loosely.

--

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I want...

Posted September 27th, 2011 by angela75

I do want to live an integral life.  I just don't know how to start.

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