In this captivating and deeply personal dialogue, Sharon Stone shares her experience as a high-profile actress turned international activist, and how an integral impulse has guided both her personal and professional life.  Her story is truly an inspiring one, because through it all, people have said "You can't do that,"—and all along, she's done it anyway, literally saving thousands of lives in the process....

Who:  Sharon Stone, Golden Globe and Emmy Award winner and Academy Award nominee, and Ken Wilber, founder of Integral Institute and the man behind the idea of Integral Actors Studio.

Summary:  Why, in the broader scheme of things, would it matter that an award-winning actress has been living an intuitively integral life?  Because, not only will an integral approach make one a better actor, but it will inform all of one's off-screen activities—and if you're Sharon Stone, that includes raising $1 million in five minutes to help prevent malaria in Tanzania, publicly supporting an AIDS research institution back when that would have been a career-killing move, and becoming a minister so that she could help her homosexual friends gain access to their lovers in the hospital.  For Sharon, celebrity has been a tool that she's used to help as many people as she can, both in her local community and across the globe—and because she has approached each situation from an integral, comprehensive, and embracing viewpoint, she has done admirably at "touching on all the bases" for each endeavor, and therefore helping each one succeed as much as possible.  And she was doing it years before activism became chic amongst the Hollywood elite, almost a full decade before Bill Gates, Angelina Jolie, and Brad Pitt began making headlines for their philanthropic work around the world.

After exploring how an integral approach has manifested in her public work in the world, Ken asks her about the more personal dimensions of how she's brought together and integrated all the aspects of her own being.  First of all, Ken offers, Sharon is living proof that a stunningly beautiful woman can have a heart, a mind, and a spirit to match.  Then, in perhaps the dialogue's most revealing and touching moment, Sharon shares that perhaps the one area of her personal life that needs the most healing and integration is with her intimate relationships.  Having had several failed relationships, including a divorce in 2004, she mentions that she hasn't really allowed herself to even consider that there might be, somewhere, a "perfect partner" for her—not, as both Sharon and Ken laugh, another "fixer-upper."

Finally, Sharon and Ken talk with excitement about the third Integral Spiritual Center gathering coming up this October 29 -31, where along with Sharon, Michael Crichton, Scott Glenn, and Chantal Westerman have been invited to come, with most of them planning to do so.  Integral Spiritual Center brings together thirty of the world's finest contemplative teachers, all of whom are actively applying an integral approach in their own tradition or lineage, and then has "teachers teaching teachers," so that the wisdom of each and all comes together in an integral framework and embrace, co-creating a "trans-path path" to the future of spirituality.

Why Integral?:  An Integral Approach, as mentioned above, allows one to touch on all the bases of one's life—a quick summary of which is body, mind, and spirit, in self, culture, and nature—engage them in a conscious manner, and therefore help one to live the most fulfilling life possible.  Integral doesn't change the content of one's life—it simply helps find the patterns that connect all the elements of one's life, and then suggests how to make each element, and each connection, stronger, healthier, and more conscious. 

The best place to start to learn how to simply, easily, and practically apply an Integral Approach in your own life is with the Integral Life Practice Starter Kit.  For an introduction to the Integral model itself, we recommend the essay " What Is Integral?," and Ken's latest book, The Integral Vision.  To learn more about how an Integral Approach can be applied to spirituality, check out the essay " What Is Integral Spirituality?," and Ken's book Integral Spirituality.  To discover more about how an Integral Approach relates to the art of acting, see Ken's dialogue with Julia Ormond, and Part 1 of this dialogue.