The Daily Evolver

After taking the summer off from the live show, Jeff dives into the Fall season with an analysis of the American political scene, currently dominated by The Donald, of course. Could he really be president? Jeff says no, but he is performing a great evolutionary service. Much is made of the problem of the polarization of the left and right in American politics, and Donald Trump may be part of the solution. After all, polarization is a stage on the path of development. As Jeff says: "The interesting thing about polarities is that once you get your thesis and antithesis well clarified then the next step is to create new synthesis. Thus you have Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders coming from opposite sides of the political spectrum arriving at a two similar political goals. The first is a tax hike for the rich; the second is an end to cheap labor and trade deals. The other Republicans, financed by the wealthiest Americans, will not take these stands." [NOTE: since this recording, Jeb Bush has said he is open to higher taxes on the rich, strengthening the new synthesis.] One reason for Trump's success may be that we are craving candor and authenticity in our political candidates these days--or at least someone who's really good at faking it. Hillary Clinton just wants a chance to show us her spontaneous side, her relatable personality. But is it really there? What is the "X factor" that Bill Clinton has, and even George W. Bush has, that Hillary and Jeb seem to lack? Speaking of lines of development, Ben Carson has gained a surprising lead in the polls, and many are wondering: how is it possible for a brilliant neurosurgeon to believe that the earth is 5000 years old? Integral has an answer for that. Also, a sympathetic perspective on Kim Davis, the clerk in Kansas who has become a right-wing hero for refusing to comply with the Supreme Court's ruling and issue marriage certificates to same sex couples. And we end with a three and a half minute prose poem of sorts from Hank, one half of the popular YouTube duo the Vlogbrothers, sent to us by friend of the show Max Johnson. It's a great meditation on impermanence. Send Jeff your comments and questions for the show. Record a voice message using the orange tab on dailyevolver.com, or just use the voice memo function on your smart phone and send to jeff@dailyevolver.com.

Stuart Davis has been on the integral scene since before there was an integral scene. His art and music spring from the rich realizations of integral theory with nary a line or a quadrant mentioned. Two years ago the family packed up and moved from Boulder to Amsterdam, along with Stuart's intention to turn inward—less time touring and performing, more time gestating and writing. Jeff invited Stuart onto the podcast so we could all catch up with him and find out what's been going on in that ingenious brain and sweet heart. It's a fun conversation that veers between American and European culture and politics, integral art and the struggle to produce "depth-oriented" entertainment, and the blossoming of a worldwide integral community. A decade and a half after the publication of Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, and the founding of the Integral Institute, it's fun to listen to these two gossip, reflect, and look ahead to what's coming.

A while back the folks at the integral Center here in Boulder asked me to deliver an integral sermon for a Sunday Morning service they were conducting at the Center. I was excited about the opportunity, as I believe that the story of evolution is not just the story of the development of matter and life, but is also the story of the development of intelligence and spirit and love. And that evolution reveals spiritual insights that not only include the inspiration of the great religious traditions, but also the hard truths of science. I truly believe that evolution will provide the basis for the spiritual practices of the sacred world to come. So here's my stab at a little bit of integral evangelism. Have a listen and let me know what you think -- I love to hear your comments and questions. You can either write a note or record a voice memo on your smartphone and email it to me at jeff@dailyevolver.com. Thanks again for listening!

Today I'm sharing a conversation I had a couple years ago with my dear friend Cindy Wigglesworth, right when she released her really terrific and influential book SQ21: The 21 Skills of Spiritual Intelligence. One of the key premises of integral theory is that people evolve in multiple lines of development or what we call intelligences. We evolve in our cognitive intelligence, emotional intelligence, social intelligence and of course, spiritual intelligence. Now this last line of development, spiritual intelligence, is kind of tricky. What does it actually mean to be spiritually developed? How do spiritually developed people think, act, feel, and understand this great adventure of life? These are some of the questions I ask Cindy in this interview. I think you'll be inspired by her answers. I certainly have been. Have a listen and let me know what you think--I love to hear your comments and questions. You can either jot a note or record a voice memo on your smartphone and email it to me at jeff@dailyevolver.com. Thanks again for listening!

Today I'm sharing a talk I did a couple years ago at a conference that Integral Life produced in Boulder called "What Next". I chose this talk because it is a succinct expression of what has become one of the central themes of my work with the Daily Evolver: that I'm heartened by the state of our world. Through the integral lens, I see the evolution of consciousness and culture creating more goodness, truth and beauty in the world than ever before in human history. And it's a process that is accelerating. I argue that to realize this is an integral move, however difficult considering the cultural currents of doom, cynicism and anxiety. Seeing the positive trajectory of history not only creates a happier life, but also empowers us to be truly helpful in solving the problems and healing the suffering that persists. Because we operate less from fear and more from love. And we know we’re riding the updraft of history.

This week, a gem from the archives: an early talk between Jeff and Dr. Keith Witt--part of a series that eventually became The Shrink and The Pundit. Brother Keith has been practicing psychotherapy in Santa Barbara for over 40 years, and is also a master martial artist and devoted spiritual practitioner with experience in many traditions. Who better to talk to about integrating these two approaches to human development, a topic that causes so much confusion and consternation among seekers of higher consciousness? Spiritual teachers and psychotherapists are often as odds and people who participate in both modalities often reflect that conflict in their own minds. Which is the best way to go? Is it more fruitful to work with our personal history and iron out the stuck points in our lives (psychotherapy) or to work to transcend them by seeking enlightenment (spirituality)? Do we work with our story or drop our story? Most spiritual traditions are rooted in pre-modern schemas that see dysfunction as a spiritual problem, whether possession by evil spirits or a separation from God. Even a non-theistic religion like Buddhism perceives the manifest world as a fallen and corrupt place that is to be transcended (and in more advanced Buddhist thought, re-embraced) through meditation. Psychotherapy, on the other hand, works with the circumstances of our lives, and we are encouraged to look deeply into our own dramas and traumas, and even to re-experience them in the controlled psychotherapeutic container created with the therapist. Anyone who has practiced both systems can see the value of each, yet their trusted guides, the spiritual teachers and psychotherapists, often deny the veracity of the other approach. The integral solution, as you might expect, is to find the "piece of the truth" revealed by both spiritual practice and psychotherapy, to map the territories that each inhabit (and the territories they don't), and to work with both in an integrated and harmonized way. That way the benefits are multiplied. I know of no more qualified (and stimulating!) guide to this endeavor than Dr. Keith Witt. Check out our conversation below, as well as an essay Keith wrote on the topic which we link to on the blog, dailyevolver.com. For more from Keith, see his website drkeithwitt.com.

This week we're bringing you an episode from the archives: Jeff's conversation with Charles Eisenstein, visionary, activist, and author of the books Sacred Economics, The Ascent of Humanity, and The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible (love that title). Charles and Jeff agree on a lot, including that a sacred world is coming and that humanity is on an ascending path. They disagree on how we got here, and that disagreement captures the difference between even leading edge progressive thinking and an integral, evolutionary perspective. Did humanity go wrong, and do we have to fix it? Or are we just growing up?

In the following excerpt Jeff asks Ken Wilber a question about magical thinking vs real psychic phenomena. Whether we're talking about near-death experiences, precognitive dreams, telepathic communication, bizarre synchronicities...they all defy materialistic explanation, and yet they also seem to communicate deep truth and meaning. What are we to make of this when science says no, but we intuit that something more is going on here? Listen to this clip of Ken Wilber as he clarifies the difference between pre-rational magic and trans-rational subtle energies, and what he refers to as "the realm of transformation."

Elegance is the word that author and coach Rob McNamara uses to refer to the experience of higher, post-autonomous stages of development, or what we might call integral consciousness. Listen as he talks to Jeff about embodying elegance in life, love and leadership. Rob stopped by a couple months ago to catch up with Jeff and tell Daily Evolver listeners about a leadership course he produced with Ten Directions called Commanding Influence. Full disclosure: Rob has alternately been my professor, trainer, therapist, sangha brother and friend over the years, and sometimes all of those things at once. I have experienced Rob's loving guidance firsthand so I was not surprised to find out that his conversation with Jeff went from interview to therapy session about halfway through! In Rob's own words, the overarching purpose and trajectory of his life has been "inspiring and facilitating…and demanding more elegance in the world." Elegance is Rob's way of describing higher stages of development, such as Kegan's "Self-transforming Mind" (which many of us loosely refer to as "integral" and roughly corresponds to teal/turquoise in Ken Wilber's altitudes of development--yellow in Spiral Dynamics). Rob's book, The Elegant Self, never explicitly defines elegance. It's a finger pointing to the moon. That's partly because elegance evades a fixed meaning in developmental terms, and partly because research has demonstrated that purely conceptual narratives about development can erode happiness and well-being in the long term. So Rob shies away from conceptual teachings in favor of embodiment. Whether it's a world-class athlete or a powerful executive, his coaching is meant to bring about a felt sense of these post-autonomous stages just beyond your habituated ways of constructing meaning. Rob is the coach's coach. Listen as Rob explicates some of the core features that allow elegance to emerge in your life and relationships, and helps Jeff embrace life on the other side of laziness. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review The Daily Evolver in iTunes. Thanks! dailyevolver.com

Theo Horesh is a Boulder social entrepreneur, philosopher and a familiar face in the integral community. Last year Theo published a series of insightful essays on the Middle East, inspired by his time spent with the Palestinians and the Yazidi refugees. I invited him over to talk about his travels, only to find out that he has also released a new book on a broader topic: Convergence: The Globalization of Mind. I enjoyed our conversation, and hope you do, too. Theo and I talked about his travels, and his heart-to-heart connections with people under siege, particularly with the youth in whom he finds much to admire. We talked about how these kinds of connections -- in both real space and virtual space -- can bring on a more world centric mind for all involved. There are many examples of how this is already happening--the internet, international agreements and cooperation, travel and communication. But in a world where entire cultures span multiple levels of development, gaining consensus about what we can create, and how, can be a tricky proposition. The feeling of being overwhelmed is prevalent, as first tier structures of consciousness are mostly motivated by fear. How does integral theory transcend this thinking, and help us think about these vastly complex systems? Listen as Theo discusses how each of us can call forth a worldcentric mind, so we can be a more awake and effective as we become more plugged-in and connected.

The willingness to look at the parts of ourselves that we cannot see -- or do not want to see -- is a major milestone on the path of self-actualization. In this episode, Dr. Keith Witt tells us that the difference between a destructive shadow and a constructive shadow is our willingness to engage with it. So how do we do that? Repressed anger, hidden fears, unwanted impulses and compulsions … our psyches contain parts of ourselves that are concealed but which can deeply affect our lives. “We are bigger than we know, literally,” says Jeff. “There are parts of ourselves that we are not aware of but that are still there, and often they are running the show. At a certain stage of development our practice becomes the process of shining a light on the areas of ourselves that were previously in the dark.” The discovery of the unconscious mind was a major achievement of human psychology, and has revealed powerful new therapeutic approaches to human health and happiness. The basic premise is simple: if dissociating from parts of ourselves keeps us from developing, then integrating those parts will accelerate our development. The extent to which we acknowledge our shadow is the extent to which we allow our development into whole people with rich relationships. Primal drives and instincts do not stay quietly locked away in the basement until we invite them up for tea. And the more complex we become, the more elaborate our defenses. But in the same way we gauge the wind by looking at the leaves on the trees or the waves on the water, we can see the effects of our shadows. It is a pretty good bet that you are operating from shadow when your emotional response is way out of proportion to the circumstances at hand. You may see yourself get angry, defensive or fearful for no good reason. You catch yourself lying and you are not sure why, or you find yourself in the same difficult situation or unhealthy relationship over and over. Dr. Carl Jung famously said “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” If we are not aware of the forces in our psyche — physiological, psychological, emotional—then shadow is organizing us. Dr. Keith tells us that the only difference between a destructive shadow and a constructive shadow is our willingness to engage with it. Not a pleasant task in the best of circumstances, let alone when we’re in the defensive states that arise when our shadows are activated. We have to trust others to help us—our partners, friends, support groups, and of course, our therapists. It takes courage to be vulnerable and open enough to confront these lost parts of ourselves. And since the world is our mirror, it is always going to happen in relationship. That is the difficulty, and it is also what saves us. We can learn to look within, to identify destructive shadow and then metabolize it and transform it. “When you are dealing with destructive shadow, you have to feel it and accept it and simultaneously bring embodied moral discernment to bear on it,” says Dr. Keith. “That combination of acceptance and moral discernment is sometimes paradoxical, they are often reciprocal inhibitors, and so part of development is getting better at bringing those forces together and reconciling them with the drives and impulses that arise." Those drives and instincts are expressed differently at the various altitudes of development, as is the embodied moral discernment that can transmute them. As usual, it helps to have an integral view -- which is what you will get in this conversation from Keith Witt and Jeff Salzman: AKA, The Shrink and The Pundit.

Whether they’ve been closeted or out, oppressed or honored, Raymond Rigoglioso wants us to know that gay men are, and have always been, a powerful evolutionary force in society--with distinct gifts to offer the world. But with so much assimilation in recent decades, is there a future for gay male culture? After generations of persecution, gay people are achieving equality with remarkable speed in the developed world. Yet there was a time when gender variant people were not only equal but were honored and respected members inside their larger tribal societies (such as the berdache in Native American culture). Raymond Rigoglioso, author of Gay Men and the New Way Forward, says it’s time again for gay men to recognize, and be recognized for, the special contributions they make to society. "Gay men, as a group, contribute to the human family and serve an evolutionary function,” Ray tells Jeff. “We play special roles that contribute to the welfare and vitality of humans, and to the expansion of consciousness.” Ray puts these contributions into three basic categories: 1) re-inventing manhood, 2) serving and healing humanity, and 3) freeing and enriching the human spirit. One of the “foundational gifts” that Ray talks about in his book is the ability to flow back and forth between the polarities of masculinity and femininity with ease, which naturally creates a fuller range of human expression. And as gay men (and women) become more accepted, we can also see gender expression shifting in the larger culture. The way that our great grandparents expressed masculinity and femininity is very different than now, says Jeff. “Men and women in general are integrating the gifts of the opposite pole." Many gay men think the distinguishing characteristic of their identity is sexual orientation, but Ray explains that they also have a different social orientation—an orientation towards service. You can see it in the roles of tribal ancestors—shamans, healers, visionaries, and artisans—and you can see it today, with the contemporary shamans in music and dance, the arts, spiritual leadership. And let’s not forget sexual leadership; after all, gay men have been enjoying “friends with benefits” for decades! In the podcast, Jeff and Ray take us on a quick tour of the cultural climate for gays at each stage of human development. In the last few decades, postmodern values have allowed sexual minorities to claim some dignity and equality in the culture and in the eyes of the law. So what’s next? Where does gay culture go from here? Is there even such a thing as gay culture going forward? "I believe so," says Ray, "if we expand what it means to be gay from just having a different sexual orientation to our larger role in society. We have a future if we claim the social roles that we play.”

Pop culture is much maligned. But human beings have always told simple stories, stories that show us who we are, how to act, and all of the places we can go. For the vast majority of our history these stories were told around the fire. Today they are told in the glow of many billions of screens, our access points to a worldwide mediaverse that is telling every story, and connecting everybody with everybody. In this final podcast of the spring season Jeff looks at how contemporary pop culture provides a developmental menu of fables that we can access according to what it is we need to learn. Judge Judy shows us how to shut up and pay attention. Dr.Phil provides practical psychotherapy for millions. Oprah Winfrey expands our identity into world-centric, even spiritual dimensions. And sophisticated serial dramas like the Sopranos, Breaking Bad and Mad Men (which recently completed its six year run) provide morality tales as complex and powerful as classic literature. New research out of the University of Southern California reveals that Americans consume media, both digital and traditional, for over fifteen hours per person per day. Waste of time? Much of it perhaps, but oh what a window we have our world and each other.

In this podcast, Jeff looks at our relationship to the natural world and explores the significant new thinking around climate change and other environmental issues. He focuses on “An Ecomodernist Manifesto”, the newly released 25-page essay co-authored by 18 environmental scientists, activists, and scholars. "[That] the Earth is a human planet becomes truer every day. Humans are made from the Earth, and the Earth is remade by human hands. Many earth scientists express this by stating that the Earth has entered a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans. We write with the conviction that knowledge and technology, applied with wisdom, might allow for a good, or even great, Anthropocene." ~An Ecomodernist Manifesto There is a debate going on among geologists about when the Anthropocene began. As recently reported in Aeon Magazine, some are recommending a start date in the 1950’s due to the proliferation of thermonuclear test explosions which left a radionuclide signature across the planet. But also because the early 1950’s "coincides with the beginning of the Great Acceleration in the second half of the 20th century, a period of unprecedented economic and population growth with matching surges in every aspect of planetary dominance, from the damming of rivers to fertiliser production, to ozone depletion” and of course, greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. In the integral world, we often emphasize the miracles of development and the evolution of consciousness, culture and technology that arise through it. But development also exacts great costs in the degradation of the natural world, atmosphere and oceans. We also suffer a psychological toll of being alienated from the natural cycles of the earth, and oftentimes from each other. And of course some say that development is much worse than that—it is our doom. But it may be more accurate to say that something new is being born. As societies develop populations become more urban and have fewer children, which results in a smaller ecological footprint. We see that in first world countries carbon dioxide emissions are beginning to drop, the air and water is ever cleaner, trees and biomass are increasing, and the number of wild animals is stable -- even as human populations increase (through longer life spans and immigration) and economies grow. It’s not all bad news. We have to make the wellbeing of everyone a top priority. We have to give everyone the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of modernity, or else we don't get to enjoy them ourselves. It's the Bodhisattva vow: nobody gets enlightened until everybody gets enlightened. This commitment naturally comes online as we develop. God is good at keeping us focused not only our where our individual growth lies, but the growth of humanity as a whole. ~Jeff Salzman Historically, we see ecological awareness come online as an effort to protect one’s own tribe, clan or country (thus the U.S. Clean Water and Clean Air Acts of the1970’s, as well and the clean-up efforts in China and other 2nd world countries today). This impulse matures as we become world-centric, and begin to see the all the earth and all the life it supports is sacred and worth preserving. "But didn’t early cultures also have a sacred relationship with the earth?” you might ask. Well, they may have engaged in nature worship, but that was about nature protecting them, not them protecting nature. As An Ecomodernist Manifesto points out, “Early human populations with much less advanced technologies had a far larger individual land footprint than societies have today. Consider that a population of no more than one or two million North Americans hunted most of the continent's large mammals into extinction by the late Pleistocene while burning and clearing forests across the continent in the process.

After the last week’s podcast about the protests in Baltimore, Corey deVos, editor of Integral Life, put us in touch with a friend who lives there. “He’s an integral practitioner, a former member of the Black Panther party, a Buddhist meditation teacher and a therapist.” Do you want to talk to him? Um … yes! It seems like the people making most of the noise—the protesters and the pundits—are the either/or voices, trying to blame or exonerate. So Jeff was excited to talk to someone with an integral perspective on the African American experience at a time when the conversation is so ripe. …if we somehow can turn our attention towards our internal worlds, then we’ll find the strength to stand up in the face of injustice, and stand up in the face of the injustices that we commit against ourselves. ~Justin Miles Justin Miles shared a piece on Facebook that he called “Meditation for Militants” which stands out as an integral voice, calling not only for a look at the economic, political and social systems (the exteriors) but equally important, self-reflection among a community that feels so much anger that it can turn on itself. While some voices insist they should use that rage and bring down the system, others assert that “violence is not the answer.” As John Paul Brammer wrote this week in Blue Nation Review, the protests in Baltimore are “not a random, unprovoked outburst by a group of opportunists. This is how the unheard speak when words prove to be useless.” Indeed, anger has a lot of energy in it. That is why, from a tantric perspective, it can be useful—but only if you have the anger, and the anger doesn’t have you. Justin tells Jeff: “I think care and concern are a part of the nature of anger. They’re part of the usefulness of anger, wanting to go out and expand this feeling of wanting to improve things in Baltimore city. “The other side of that, I think, the part that maybe we’re not seeing, is the aspect of needing the anger in order to go beyond the anger. We don’t need to see anger as something that’s not useful or something that somehow we feel bad about. I say…let’s go with it. Let’s use that as our fuel.” To be effective, an activist needs to know his own mind and heart. Otherwise he will not be able to tell the difference between his own demons and the injustices inflicted upon him by a system that is uncaring, and he will burn everything indiscriminately. This is where contemplative practice comes in. When you take a step back and look within, says Justin, “what is discovered is clarity, strength and mental stability, qualities that all revolutions are based on at their core. The ideas of social movements arise out of deep concern and connection with our heartmind.” Justin’s big heart really comes through in this conversation, and we hope to have him back on  the show. Also in the podcast, Jeff looks at cynicism, and the role it plays in our political discourse. The integral perspective provides some relief from this tiresome outlook. Being aware of the fourth dimension (time) and taking multiple perspectives, “we become essentially post ideological. We become friends with life as it is, the world as it is, and we’re no longer comparing the world as it is unfavorably to some ideal…” And lastly, questions from listeners: Mark in Tennessee is wondering about the ontological reality of visions, and Suzanne from North Carolina is questioning the legitimacy of astrology in light of her integral awakening. FULL TRANSCRIPT