Inquiry

What motivates me is a desire for wholeness out of a frequent experience of fragmentation. Being born to traditional Chinese parents and raised in American society, there have been the times of great confusion but also the great gift of seeing that there were multiple ways to view the world that were downright paradoxical unless one enlarges one's own context. The experience of internal fragmentation is mirrored in the worlds I walk in, as a woman, in business, as a spiritual being in very secular environments, being rewarded for mental acuity while the embodied aspects of self weren't as fully developed, being a non-linear being in the linear loops of daily schedules, having kinesthetic and intuitive sensory expeirences in a world where the language to communicate about them has felt limited...the list goes on. In all of these places, an integral approach has just created some room to breathe.

I've been fortunate to have many mentors and teachers, but not so many peers, so much of my learning has occured in self-reflection and solitude. I'd really love the community aspect more, which is what was so appealing about the Integral Theory Conference at JFK last weekend and also draws me to this website

In being able to relax into being more rather than strive into being, there's a greater sense of fluidity and ease, spontenaity and play, and also a greater capacity to hold what is painful and challenging without "being bothered by it" as another mentor phrased it.

Hope my language won't be a wall for your understanding.

What motivate me to engage myself and my Self in the integral framework is to feel harmony all around me.  By the framework I got to understand the place that everyone plays in the big picture of the evolution. I love to look at everyone in the street and feel that wholeness. Therefore, everyone has their own place in this whole.

As a teacher, I need to include everyone and this framework is awesome to make it works. I also think that I need an experience of harmony myself before I could created it in  my work. This is why I came into this web site and share with you my motivation.

Sunlight

Wilber's work blew into my life with the book, "A Brief History of Everything".   It was a heavy time in my life when I was suffering  from existential depression, long before I even knew the term. 

In further exploration of his work, I found the depression lifting as I began to understand the scope of the vision he has shared with us.  The word that kept recurring in my spinning brain over the first months was, "clean".  As in non-toxic, without egocentric or ethnocentric hidden agendas.  Inclusive.

Wilber's work also  gave me a framework through which to teach Art to suffering university students, long before there was Art Therapy.  I drew upon it heavily in a county jail where I volunteered time to teach art and ended by introducing the inmates to quadrant information that gave them hope for their own immediate future and recovery upon release.  I have drawn on the foundational information as framework for groups in Inpatient Psychiatry, Inpatient Substance Abuse, and Inpatient PTSD Treatment.  I find it utterly compelling and practical at every level of my life and throughout all my personal and professional life. 

I come here to seek community, to talk to others, mostly to listen to others and to learn.  (I once met a man who was familiar with Wilber's work, but he didn't have time to talk...  We did gaze comprehendingly at one another for a few seconds, and that was nice.)     Thank you all, for this opportunity.

What motivates me to engage the Integral framework?  Well, it happens to be the best brand of pudding on the shelf right now. 

When I was younger, I clung to a quote Harry Chapin gave (while quoting Pete Seeger), in that, "The people with the live hearts, the live mind, the live ears....are usually the people that are commited to something.  So in a final analysis, Commitment, in and of itself, irrespective of whether you win or not, is truly something that makes your life worthwhile."  But after awhile, that idea of life didn't hold mustard.  You CAN be committed to the wrong thing, and this type of philosophy (although well intentioned, and sometimes even lucky, if you're on the good side of "The Force"), can certainly turn into something truly detrimental.

Eventually I learned to appreciate models that more clearly allowed for unfolding, inclusion, change, evolutionary growth, and yet still had the backbone to call itself an "It" that could comfortably still be defined with an undeniable identity.  You can see Wilber's work transcending from being a footpath, to a Highway, and yet the footpath's he set forth in earlier writings, still have the same thrust.  

But what draws me to the Integral framework the most, is that it tastes good.  It's not because it's the "latest thing" and I can dazzle the less informed with complex concepts (in fact, that never works).  It just simply, tastes good.  I can use it, I can feel it, it makes my life better, it makes me want to communicate better, it helps me understand others better, as well as myself.....It is beautiful music I need to hear, and appreciate when I do.  And what an added bonus when you do find people that are responding to the framework with open arms, are people that you already respected in earlier contexts, in different genres.....like Ed Kowalcyzk (music I've loved from song one), or Stuart Davis (who I heard and kept demo tapes from back when my sister went to Mankato State..."Suburban Ignorance is Bliss"), and on and on. 

And now if I can find a community, through Integral Life, then this would truly be the icing. 

I'm the pre-medical student that didn't drop out and become a dishwasher, but was writing penetrating essays on the meaning of freedom, the consequences of building a system of ethics on the principle of survival, reading Plato, Hegel, Hume etc etc even when those weren't class assignments. Then I went to medical school. Ah -- but that's another story. It certainly messed with my mind. I have a clear vision of myself holding a half filled wine glass in the air as I held forth to an atheistic friend of mine about the double blind placebo crossover trial being the only way to Truth. Even my atheist friend thought I was a bit over the top.

Then life took my by the hair and dragged me around a little bit, and I began to think for myself again. By 1995, I found my motivation for using the integral framework -- which was simply the "yes"   "yes"    "yes"  that kept coming to me, often times with laughter, as I read Sex, Ecology and Spirituality.

I was reading part of it on an airplane, and my seat mate finally had to ask me what could be so humorous in a book that thick. It was hard to explain. Just, sometimes when you re-encounter something that is as close to truth as you can get your mind to comprehend, it makes you laugh.

Integral helps me understand my life, my place in life, my decisions. It helps me counsel and work with others, as I do every day. It increases my empathy and compassion. I am able to language things in ways that work for people, no matter where they are on spiral, thanks to the integral framework. My motivation is that it works, my life is more fun and fulfilling when I use it. And thanks to all who keep organizing this, putting it out there for us, making a community for us.

Thank you Jeff, your comment was beautifully and eloquently described

now maybe I'm a bit too obsessed with food, but to keep to the theme of edibel analogies, ever since I stumbled apon "A Brief History of Everything" in 2003 I have had no choice but to witness my current bodymind endlessly gorge its self on both the map and territory of the Integral framework. It's really a matter of letting it arrise. the very fact that i am here has become motivation in it's self. that is the only way i can describe it. also I'm not as elloquant as some of the other people who have commented.

One thing that seems to be demonstrated again and again, AQAL is a helpful heuristic device at the very least, and as an opening to your own self and Self, AQAL or IOS (Inegral Operating System) for myself at least, can be summed up in six words which I will risk in stealing from a well known consumer product;

Once you pop, you can't stop.

and after all, as its all an ornament of ones own true Self, theres nothing like a little (healthy) self-love every now and then.

Consumer advice: the (3p) AQAL framework artifact is not a substitute for a full and balanced diet and should be taken in conjunction with living the teritory.  if symtoms persist please seek advice from your Integrally informed GP.

P.s. the new Integral life web site kiscks ass guys!! you have exceeded my expectations in every way. well done and thanx for all the hard work!

with gratitude, respect and love

For me,

Being integral empowers me to strive to be the best that I can be.. but in this case, it's not doing it on an egoic level, not even at an ethnocentric level or worldcentric level, it's being the best manifestation of Godhead in this world; at this time.

It's about pushing limits, not for our own sake, but for the sake of the entire universe...  God, I'm starting to sound like Andrew Cohen =D.

But yes; that's what the framework provides for me, an intensive map that enables one to optimize performance and fulfilment not only for one's own personal sake, but for eternity.

Cheers.

- Ju

--

juliusko.hubhub.org 
"Where ONE person can change the world..."

 I like the Integral framework because you can be honest and reverent at the same time. What a breath of fresh air that is.

--if they carry the world on their own.

'That' is what motivates this engagement with the Integral framework. It runs everything 'I' do. Don't even really want to be here as its way too intellectual for me. I mainly live in the spiritual world - its simplicity itself- but 'That' wants to engage in this !

Most of the engagement happens of its own accord. Ken's books keep falling into my hands and 'That' wants to eat them ! Its operating in my mind like a processer. The only effort on my part is concentration and contemplation.

Most of the learning happens by myself but I have a very receptive friend who is very developed in the 'cognizing' line. This helps me understand more as I try to explain 'AQAL' - teaching always deepens one's learning.

It benefits all areas of my life in ways that are impossible to explain - its seems like a natural way of being and seeing - but the most important thing is the compassion and patience that arises for 'myself' and 'others'. The love and pain for 'all of us' is overwhelming at times.  

Everything else asks me and others to show up partially in the world, fragmented. Every other framework makes truth claims that are partial, but claim to be universal. I grew tired of all the voices telling me to follow them, because their way are the only valid way. I grew tired of making myself smaller than I am, in a broken, incoherent word, conveniently fitting and enacting a broken image of who I am.

I cannot do what it is done. I cannot pretend I haven’t seen what I saw, an integrative framework that builds bridges and allows for dialogue and invites me, us, all of us, to fully show up in this world. I can’t shrink back into a fragment of me, and return to navigate through life with crappy maps, or no maps at all. My feet don’t fit into those old, smaller shoes anymore.

What motivates me to engage with the Integral framework is Love, this tremendous force that shows up through how I enact it in the world, and seeks fulfillment through my living fully. This Eros that kicks me in the butt to go out there and commune with wider and wider circles; this Agape that wants me to embrace All That Is, and shows me, on the map, exactly how to do that.

It’s uncompromising Love - this irresistible, awesome, infinite and eternal force that sweeps me off my feet, making me fall in Love, and raise in Love with the Integral framework, wanting me to study it, apply it, practice it, teach it, live it, breathe it.

And how can I say no to that which I AM?

Tana Saler

www.tanasaler.com

Thinking of all positive works you really wanted to do,,, This is a big motivation...

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