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Integral Community Event
Ken Wilber
In May of 2007, Integral Institute held a very special event for the core Integral community, including staff, donors, and special friends. It was an extraordinary occasion, featuring a medley of intersubjective experientials, perfomances by Willow Pearson and Stuart Davis, an afternoon of Big Mind with Diane Hamilton Sensei, lots of yogic dancing with Sophia Diaz, as well as a special Q&A session with Ken Wilber, which we present here.
Consciousness, as we know, is constantly evolving through deeper and deeper waves of care and complexity, bringing our hearts and minds ever closer to the limitless depths of our souls’ potential. And as consciousness continues to evolve, there are always individuals who are riding the crest of that wave—which is actually not quite as glamorous as it may sound, as these people typically find themselves feeling alone and alienated in a world which simply cannot speak their language. Therefore, when these people are finally able to find each other, something truly amazing happens—like an intersubjective supernova, the Miracle of We is born anew and a new cutting-edge culture begins to emerge, forging a path which may very well play a central role in the future of the human species.
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It's really quite ironic: if you have achieved any degree of integral consciousness at all, you are most likely feeling pretty lonely in the world, like the only cube in a world full of squares. At the same time, integral consciousness allows you to better understand what it means to be human, enabling you to more authentically connect with people, have a deeper impact across more disciplines, and to more easily recognize your own Original Face dwelling behind every set of eyes. Feeling so isolated from the world, despite feeling infinitely more connected to the world, is exactly what makes community as profoundly sacred as it is, and so desperately needed....
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You hear it all the time: you can't talk about genuine spiritual experiences, because they are ineffable, beyond the limits of language altogether. While it is understandable why a person might feel this way, the equation of mysticism with the ineffable has in actuality hindered acceptance of the spiritual in the modern and post-modern worlds, which tend to only regard some form of the "effable" as real. But the problem is not that it is impossible to communicate mystical insight, but that the language to contain it is still emerging, and not immediately accessible to many people. All experience is "effable;" and anything that can be experienced can indeed be communicated—though of course we cannot mistake fingers pointing to the moon for the moon itself. Here is the crucial challenge to the still-fledgling integral community: to develop the language as we develop the ideas, collectively naming the face of tomorrow, moment by moment.
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When we think of the relationship between shadow and technology, the implications are usually pretty dire—after all, the most advanced technologies can be used by the least advanced consciousness, to the detriment of us all. It is therefore very refreshing to consider the ways that technology can actually help us work with our shadows. Here Ken discusses the benefits of Holosync, an audio technology that uses binaural beats to influence brain wave patterns, generating a variety of creative and meditative states—just one example of the many wonderful tools that can assist us along our transformative paths.
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