The Daily Evolver

In today’s episode I am the guest of Stephen T. Harper as he kicks off his new podcast, “What’s Your Theory?”, where he interviews people who have “good answers to big questions about how the world works.” And do I have a theory for him!

One of the key tenets of integral theory is that human consciousness and culture evolve, and that’s where Steve and I focus. With his enthusiastic curiosity and flex-flow mind, Steve helps me map the “evolution of the interior” from the dawn of humanity to the present day where integral theory is so helpful for making sense of our world.

While this podcast is an introduction to integral theory, we use plenty of up-to-the minute topics and headlines to tell the story. Established students of integral theory will get an overview and refresher, and newbies will get a good basic understanding of a foundational integral principle. If you have friends who are interested in an integral on-ramp, this is a conversation you might consider sharing with them as well.

In this podcast we’ve spliced together the audio from three Facebook Live videos I’ve done over the last couple weeks. I’m really liking these quickie videos as they are giving me a chance to comment on current events in real time, which is particularly handy now that the news is coming at us so fast.

Here are the three topics I explore in this podcast:

In this podcast, Beena and I discuss what she and her team are learning about how adults grow through the predictable stages of adult development while still remaining true to their own journey. We examine how we can consciously participate in our own evolution and growth in a way that creates a more fulfilling, healthy, conscious and fruitful life.

In this episode I am the guest of my longtime friend and integral comrade, Jason Lange, on his new podcast Do The Evolution. We hit some juicy territory in our conversation so I’m sharing it with you here on The Daily Evolver. There are certain questions that evolutionary thinkers ask themselves and each other constantly: What does integral consciousness feel like? How is it different from the postmodern worldview? Can we develop integral capacities through intention and practice? How does integral thinking apply to everyday life and of course … sigh … Trump? Having a good conversation on topics like these is itself a form of integral practice, and I felt literally expanded by this one with Jason. I hope you do too!

Diane Musho Hamilton is at the forefront of one of the most significant spiritual emergents in contemporary culture: the realization of the power of our everyday relationships, even troubled ones, as a means of awakening.

For many progressive spiritual practitioners it no longer feels like enough to merely follow an individual meditation practice, as valuable as that is. We want to apply our enlarged selves, skillfully and in real time, to the circumstances of our complex lives, and particularly to our relationships with others.

The spiritual potency of relationship is a subject Diane Musho Hamilton explores in her new book, The Zen of You and Me: A Guide to Getting Along with Just About Anyone. Diane grounds her teaching in the enduring cosmic polarity between difference and sameness. It is the sameness we share with others that provides comfort and safety, and the differences we have with them that bring liveliness and creativity. As integralists we are called to integrate these polarities into a deeper mutuality.

Diane’s approach is particularly relevant to the contemporary social challenge of relating to our American family as it continues to polarize both culturally and politically.

I always feel a little bit wiser after a conversation with my dear friend Diane. I hope you do too!

Life is wounding. For some of us our wounds are inflicted in the form of major traumas such as a serious injury, painful divorce, career failure or act of abuse or violence. More often, however, we are merely called on to suffer the slings and arrows of everyday life, which can also leave their mark.

Contemporary psychology has revealed two major insights into trauma. One is that trauma is pervasive: two-thirds of Americans report experiencing a major trauma in their lives. The other is that trauma is toxic, often kicking off lifetime patterns of depression, anxiety and addiction. One study showed that people who suffer six or more of ten different categories of adverse events lived on average twenty years less that people who had had experienced none of those categories of adverse events.

Whether large or little, some trauma is inevitable and necessary for healthy development. Shocks and setbacks shape who we are and can provide the opportunity to develop resilience and a larger perspective.

In this podcast I ask Integral philosopher Steve McIntosh a question on the mind of many integral practitioners: how do we relate to the nationalist passions that are arising in many developed countries around the globe?

Nationalism is often expressed as “love it or leave it” nativism, or in the case of the election of Donald Trump as a promise to take America back to an era of perceived past greatness.

On the other hand many Green-stage postmodernists reject patriotism entirely. As Steve says, “it is like nails on a chalkboard for people of postmodern consciousness to contemplate the good that America has done in its history.”

Steve Bannon is Donald Trump’s favorite philosopher. Trump sometimes jokes that he doesn't know “whether Bannon is alt-right or alt-left,” but either way Bannon has given voice to the visceral impulse of populist nationalism that Donald Trump has expressed for decades.

So what does Bannon believe? A pillar of his worldview is contained in a school of history called Strauss-Howe generational theory, developed by William Strauss and Neil Howe, which states that human events can be loosely organized in terms of recurring eighty year cycles, or saecula, which unfold in four twenty year turnings.

The Trump Presidency is an evolutionary correction for a culture whose leading edge “is in a 50-car pileup.” This is the thesis of Ken Wilber’s excellent new eBook, Trump and a Post-Truth World, and the kickoff point of a wide ranging conversation I had with Ken last week. Here's Ken's argument: