The Integral Stage: Recent Episodes
Bruce Alderman / Layman Pascal
At THE INTEGRAL STAGE, we provide a platform to explore emergent integral perspectives, host innovative thinkers, communicators, and creators from around the world, and reflect the larger integrative meta-community back to itself in all its forms.
Additional Audio Podcasts: Integral Stage Sexuality Series Integral Stage Metapodcast Integral Stage Author Series
The Integral Stage is
BRUCE ALDERMAN - Creator, Producer, and Occasional Host
LAYMAN PASCAL - Interviewer, Co-Conspirator, and Digital Shaman
Layman sits down again with Middle Way philosopher and author, Robert M. Ellis, this time to discuss his new book, The Five Principles of Middle Way Philosophy -- the second book in a planned 9-part series on the Middle Way. Layman and Robert review the essential arguments of the book, exploring how a post-traditional, universalized middle-way philosophy might show up and what it might contribute to addressing the challenges of the contemporary world.From the book's description:"This second book in the 'Middle Way Philosophy' series develops five general principles that are distinctive to the universal Middle Way as a practical response to absolutization. These begin with the consistent acknowledgement of human uncertainty (scepticism), and follow through with openness to alternative possibilities (provisionality), the importance of judging things as a matter of degree (incrementality), the clear rejection of polarised absolute claims (agnosticism) and the cultivation of cognitive and emotional states that will help us resolve conflict (integration). These are discussed not only in theory, but with links to the wide range of established human practices that can help us to follow them. Like all of Robert M. Ellis's work, this book is highly inter-disciplinary, drawing on philosophical argument, psychological models and values that prioritize practical application."Robert M. Ellis is a philosopher, writer and teacher. He has produced a series of books about the Middle Way, understood as a principle of judgement that throws us onto experience by avoiding absolutes, both positive and negative. He has also founded the Middle Way Society to support the development and practice of the Middle Way understood in this way, and he has recently opened a retreat center, Tirylan House, in rural South Wales.The Five Principles of Middle Way Philosophy:https://www.amazon.com/Five-Principles-Middle-Philosophy-Experientially/dp/1800503032/
For the forty-second episode of the Integral Stage Authors Series, Layman meets with Richard Flyer, founder of the Symbiotic Culture Lab, to talk about his new book, Birthing the Symbiotic Age. They discuss Richard's early life experiences and influences, and together explore how, as the book argues, "we can emerge from our fragmented and conflicted social networks/silos and create sustainable, interconnected ecosystem networks consisting of local leaders, organizations, businesses, and local government — in parallel to our already established systems."Birthing the Symbiotic Agehttps://richardflyer.substack.com/s/birthing-the-symbiotic-age-new-bookSymbiotic Culture Labhttps://symbioticculturelab.super.site/
The question of the promise and peril of AI is a proper one for our long-running Love the System series, but we thought it deserved its own spot as a sub-series due to the rapid development and proliferation of Large Language Models and other ground-breaking AI technologies over the past six months. It may be too early to tell yet, but with the clear power of this emergent technology, its potential to take over many of the tasks we used to regard as exclusively human, and its rapid public uptake, it feels like we are on the cusp of an epochal change. How are we to secure the psychological and spiritual health of human beings in the face of such developments? How do we ethically and wisely merge living and non-living intelligences? What wisdom from this corner of the internet -- from our respective integral, metamodern, and spiritual communities -- can help us navigate the monumental challenges and opportunities ahead?For the twelfth episode of The Soul of AI, Layman sits down with Lee Chazen, founder of GliderCell AI Lab, to talk about how artists, creatives, and generalist philosophers can contribute to the development of more fruitful expressions and applications of artificial intelligence, and about his own experiments in AI-related 'meta-fiction.' GliderCell websitehttps://www.glidercell.com/glidercell
For the 12th episode of Non/duality, Layman meets with nondual teacher, Leeza Edwards, to talk about her early formative experiences, her spiritual practice and transformation, and her insights into the nature of nondual realization and its relationship to or impact on growth, sense of self, relational and communication dynamics, connection to ancestry and lineage, and much more.Leeza teaches self-awareness, embodied peace and mindfulness through the “direct path” lens of non-duality -- principally as self-inquiry and meditation via retreats, online gatherings, presentations and personal sessions. LinkedIn page / leeza-edwards-756b6742 Remember to like, subscribe, and support The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible! / theintegralstage
Several months ago, seasoned integral content creators watched with a mix of amazement and dismay as the integrally informed video, "Levels of Thinking," on a relationship and dating advice channel called Hoe_Math, blew up and got numbers in a couple weeks that no integral video in history has ever approached. Poor Corey DeVos needed to go get therapy, and I'm still recovering. So Layman wanted to find out who the guy behind the viral video is. Check it out.Hoe_math channel / @hoe_math Follow The Integral Stage on Fathom! https://hello.fathom.fm/Remember to like, subscribe, and support The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible! / theintegralstage Special thanks and big love to Shai Newman, the LIMITED HANGOUT guys, Brandon LaChance, Mike McElroy, Brandon Norgaard, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Francesca, and all of our other Patreon supporters!
In Episode 25, Layman meets with Forrest Wilson, host of The Forrest Wilson Experience, to talk about healthy, generative relationships to money; the internal and external conditions needed to shift to new, more value-centered, eudaimonic economies; the importance of the cultivation of, and a living relationship with, financial intelligence; and much more.Forrest Wilson is the host of The Forrest Wilson Experience podcast. After his father passed away in his early twenties, Forrest decided to let go of the idea he had for his life based on the expectations, conditioning, and cultural constructs he took on as a young person and dive deep into healing, developmental, and awakening journeys. After nearly a decade of playing in the unseen world, Forrest has found connection to a tremendous passion for supporting a humanity to live life more fully. By embodying a way of being that is palpably alive, clear, penetrative, and illuminating, Forrest invites folks around him to play all out.Forrest Wilson websitehttps://www.forrestbwilson.com/
The Liminal Café is where the locals of the liminal web gather for coffee and conversation. In this new series, Layman chats with the people and patrons who, for some curious reason, find themselves drawn to this sketchy corner of the internet...SHADOW-WORK, DESCENT, AND DEVELOPMENT IN EMBODIED LEADERSHIPFor episode 8, Layman sits down with Ēlen Awalom to talk about her experience as an activist, her spiritual awakenings, and her path of self-healing and development on the way to the creation of an embodied, integrally informed approach to leadership and leadership training.Ēlen Awalom is a technologist, creative (writer, exhibiting photographer, poet), human rights activist, trained anthropologist and start-up entrepreneur who lives in San Francisco, California. Born in Khartoum, Sudan to Eritrean parents, Ēlen came of age in the South Bronx and Northern Virginia.Ēlen's Professional websitehttps://www.elenawalom.com/
This is the first episode of a new series exploring the subtle dynamics of collective shadow, narrative making & our responses to how we are perceived. In the digital epoch, it is unlikely that anyone will escape confrontation with a negative image of themselves existing in the minds of others. Do we learn from it? Fight it? Absorb it? Ignore it? And how do we evaluate anything when information itself becomes dubious?
Layman is joined this time by Dr. Marc Gafni -- the world philosopher of "cosmo-erotic humanism" together with Dr. Zak Stein. Gafni is the co-president with Stein of the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, founded with Ken Wilber in 2010, where they are articulating a “new meta theory story of value in response to the meta crisis”, even as Gafni lives as a character, both beloved and controversial, in the public mind.
Our task in this episode, and in this series, is not to demonize or exonerate. We encourage people to do their own research if they are interested. Facts matter. So do feelings. But that is not our topic in this series where we are focused on something more specific. We are not exploring the content of the narratives but rather how they emerge, how they are perceived by the people inside them, how those people respond under the conditions of the emerging digital, planetary age & what they have concluded about their responses.
We are not exploring content of the narratives but rather how they emerge, how they are perceived by the people inside them, how those people respond under the conditions of the emerging digital-planetary age & what they have concluded about their responses.
Center for World Philosophy and Religion:
https://worldphilosophyandreligion.org/
For the 38th episode of the Integral Stage Authors Series, Layman welcomes fellow Canadian, fearologist, and author, Michael Fisher, to talk about his 2021 book, The Marianne Williamson Presidential Phenomenon. While the book chronicled Marianne's first presidential campaign, and offered commentary and critique on the strengths and missteps of those efforts, it is relevant now as well as she enters the US presidential race again.
Layman and Michael explore these questions in the larger context of a consideration of the difference between a politics of love and a politics of fear.Dr. Fisher, Ph.D., is an independent scholar, artist, educator and fearologist and is founder and director of In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute, The Fearology Center, and hosts the Fearlessness Movement ning as a social platform for building community and sharing resources on the impacts, individual and collective, of the culture of fear. He holds degrees in Ecological Sciences, Environmental Biology, Educational Psychology, Education (Secondary Science) and a M.A. in Adult Education and Ph.D. in Curriculum Design & Instruction (The University of British Columbia). He has specialized in futures, philosophy of education, leadership and organizational development and has long been on a healing and recovery quest, engaging in careers of artistry, research consulting, teaching and rehabilitation for youth and their families. The Marianne Williamson Presidential Phenomenonhttps://www.amazon.com/Marianne-Williamson-Presidential-Phenomenon-Evolution/dp/143317930X/
For the 39th episode of the Integral Stage Authors Series, Layman cozies up in a yurt with Simon Cox to talk about his recent book, The Subtle Body: A Genealogy.
Simon tells Layman about his history studying martial arts, including six years under a kung fu master on Wudang Mountain in China, and the path that led him to a deep, graduate-level comparative exploration of conceptions of the subtle body in Taoist and Tibetan Buddhist / Bon traditions. What are the similarities and differences between Eastern models of the subtle body and those we have inherited from the Neo-Platonists? How have these models been conflated in past scholarship? What did Crowley bring to the subject? What are the practical and onto-epistemological implications of a deep understanding of subtle body tradition and practice? What are some promising paths of future research? What does this tradition have to contribute to the rising interest in neo-animism in our time, or even the strange stories about interdimensional beings now circulating in the halls of Congress following the recent UAP hearings? Join Layman and Simon as they explore these questions and many more.Simon Cox, Ph.D., is an independent scholar and translator who works primarily in Chinese, Tibetan, and Greek. His research focuses on mysticism and the body. He is also a teacher of Chinese Martial Arts at the Okanagan Valley Wudang center, and a collaborator at the Esalen Institute.The Subtle Bodyhttps://www.amazon.com/Subtle-Body-Ge...Okanagan Valley Wudanghttps://www.okanaganvalleywudang.com/Follow The Integral Stage on Fathom! https://hello.fathom.fm/Remember to like, subscribe, and support The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible! / theintegralstage Special thanks and big love to Shai Newman, the LIMITED HANGOUT guys, Brandon LaChance, Mike McElroy, Brandon Norgaard, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Francesca, and all of our other Patreon supporters!
For the eleventh episode of The Soul of AI, Layman sits down with healer, artist, and AI entrepreneur and consultant, Cris Beasley, to talk about the interface of art and AI; the narcissistic dynamics that drive much of our modern structures, and bringing healing to those dynamics; "Letting the piranha eat us"; the difference between artificial intelligence and augmented intelligence; the potential for AI to take over the "synthesizing intelligence" and function of our leading-edge thinkers, and what then is left for humans still to develop and do; and much more.Cris founded a sustainable AI company nine years ago – well before it was the latest thing on the block. It was featured in a cover story of The Atlantic. She stopped Sequoia Capital from trying to build an AI that was obviously never going to work. It was obvious if you bothered to do the back-of-the-envelope math, which Amazon did not do. They attempted the same thing, failed, and wasted a few million bucks. They should've had someone like Cris on their team. Before that, she led the redesign of Firefox support, which resulted in an extra 7MM users per year finding the answer to their questions immediately. Cris was selected to be in the first cohort of ambassadors to the Interledger Foundation. Their $15k grant supported her project about Jungian emotional polarities, Becoming Dragon, which was covered in Forbes. She advises Earthcodes.org on strategy for their regenerative data cycles project, AI for Gaia, in partnership with the Biomimicry Institute. In her copious spare time, she convinces two mischievous black cats to come when they're called, paints with watercolors, makes AI-generated short films, and plays electronic music that takes you into meditative theta brainwave states.Cris Beasley portfoliohttps://www.crisbeasley.com/portfolioBecoming Dragon Oracle Cardshttp://www.crisbeasley.com/
The question of the promise and peril of AI is a proper one for our long-running Love the System series, but we thought it deserved its own spot as a sub-series due to the rapid development and proliferation of Large Language Models and other ground-breaking AI technologies over the past six months. It may be too early to tell yet, but with the clear power of this emergent technology, its potential to take over many of the tasks we used to regard as exclusively human, and its rapid public uptake, it feels like we are on the cusp of an epochal change. How are we to secure the psychological and spiritual health of human beings in the face of such developments? How do we ethically and wisely merge living and non-living intelligences? What wisdom from this corner of the internet -- from our respective integral, metamodern, and spiritual communities -- can help us navigate the monumental challenges and opportunities ahead?For the tenth episode of The Soul of AI, Layman meets with musician and systems change thinker and advocate, Speaker John Ash, to discuss the limitations and misperceptions common to popular discourse about AI; the morally questionable, implicit goals behind the development of artificially intelligent agents; AI and art; possibilities for better and more transparently linking AI output to its sources in training data; revolutions in voting and governance systems that AI may facilitate, and much more.
To shake things up a little on The Integral Stage, we are dropping down a few chakras to explore all the ins and outs of awakened sexuality, conscious relationship, and sensuously embodied spiritual practice.For episode 22, Layman is joined by Catherine Auman and Greg Lawrence of The Transpersonal Center in LA, to talk about the tantric arts, transpersonal dimensions of development, sexuality as a doorway to mystical or psychedelic experience, psychic integration before and after extended lovemaking, the science of creating a soulmate, the importance of friendship for intimate tantric sexuality, life as lovemaking, and much more.Professional website:https://www.thetranspersonalcenter.com/Explore The Integral Stage on the Fathom apphttps://hello.fathom.fm/Support The Integral Stage on Patreon! / theintegralstage Special thanks and big love to Shai Newman, the Limited Hangout guys, Brandon LaChance, Mike McElroy, Brandon Norgaard, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Francesca, and all of our other Patreon supporters!
Several years after the original Integral UFOlogy series was published, the Integral UFOlogy panel reconvenes to discuss the latest UAP news and disclosures, and the latest developments in their own research and experiences in these areas.Panelists: Sean Esbjorn-Hargens, Stuart Davis, Chris Dierkes, Giorgio Piacenza, Layman Pascal, and Bruce Alderman. Original Panel Discussion: • Integral Ufology Panel Discussion RESOURCES and REFERENCESSean Esbjorn-Hargens' Exo-Studies Master Course: https://www.exostudies.org/Stuart Davis' mediaMan Meets Mantis: • MAN MEETS MANTIS Stuart's episode on Weird Studies podcast:https://www.weirdstudies.com/37The IS Language: • Creating The IS Language The Art of Is: • THE ART OF IS Aliens and Artists: https://www.aliensandartists.com/Explore The Integral Stage on the Fathom apphttps://hello.fathom.fm/Support The Integral Stage on Patreon! / theintegralstage Special thanks and big love to Shai Newman, the Limited Hangout guys, Brandon LaChance, Mike McElroy, Brandon Norgaard, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Francesca, and all of our other Patreon supporters!CreditsIntro and Outro Music: Remix of Sparkspitter's "Pretty Wave"
For episode 23, Layman is joined by Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, a sex educator and psychotherapist, to explore questions around gender and sexual development; the impact of shame on sexual development, and the relationship of shame and guilt; the problems in recent and contemporary sex education in the United States; the possibilities for a hedonic education; deeper forms of sexual identity and development available through tantra and entheogens; and much more.Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers is a nationally known speaker, educator, and writer on sexual health and the biopsychosocial-sexual impact of sexual shame and trauma.
She is professor emerita of sexuality and marriage & family therapy at Seattle Pacific University. As a past board member for The American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT), Tina is at the forefront shaping change in the lives of professionals and families. As a preeminent voice on the impact of abstinence education, purity culture, and the failure to provide comprehensive sex education Dr. Sellers is frequently featured on podcasts, TV, documentaries, articles, and radio, including Spirituality & Health magazine, and NPR’s All Things Considered. In her acclaimed 2017 book, Sex, God and the Conservative Church – Erasing Shame from Sexual Intimacy, Dr. Sellers reveals how the western conservative church in collusion with American consumer-driven culture and politics, has infiltrated our core ability to attach to our partners and instruct our children to attach to theirs. Professional Websitehttps://www.tinaschermersellers.com/Shameless Parentinghttps://www.amazon.com/Shameless-Pare...Explore The Integral Stage on the Fathom apphttps://hello.fathom.fm/Support The Integral Stage on Patreon! / theintegralstage Special thanks and big love to Shai Newman, the Limited Hangout guys, Brandon LaChance, Mike McElroy, Brandon Norgaard, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Francesca, and all of our other Patreon supporters!
For the 37th episode of the Integral Stage Authors Series, Layman meets again prolific metamodern author and friend of the channel, Brendan Graham Dempsey, to talk about his latest book, "Metamodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Cultural Logics." In this much needed work, Brendan surveys the variety of "metamodernisms" that have emerged in recent years and, using some integrative distinctions, argues for their deep kinship and complementarity.Brendan Graham Dempsey is a writer whose work focuses on the meaning crisis and the nature of spirituality in metamodernity. He earned his BA in Religious Studies from the University of Vermont and his MA in Religion and the Arts from Yale University. He lives in Wolcott, Vermont.Metamodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Cultural Logicshttps://www.amazon.com/Metamodernism-...Follow The Integral Stage on the Fathom apphttps://hello.fathom.fm/Support The Integral Stage on Patreon! / theintegralstage Special thanks and big love to Shai Newman, the Limited Hangout guys, Brandon LaChance, Mike McElroy, Brandon Norgaard, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Francesca, and all of our other Patreon supporters!
Layman Pascal and Bruce Alderman meet with Terri O'Fallon to discuss her recent course exploring the intersections of Mahamudra practice and the STAGES model; the relationship of states and stages, and the role of states in higher psychospiritual development; the linguistic dimensions of development, and developmental assessment; nonduality and the embodied dimensions of language; prepositions and other grammatical forms at the subtle and metaware tiers; AI, grammar, and higher development; and much more.Terri O'Fallon is a researcher, teacher, coach, spiritual director, and designer of transformative containers. She does ongoing research on the Integral STAGES developmental model, which supports a MetAware tier with four later levels of development. Her latest research probes into the relationship between states and stages. Terri is a founder of STAGES International, offering programs based on the STAGES model. She holds Masters degrees in Special Education and Spiritual Direction, and an Integral Ph.D. in Transformative Learning and Change. The Royal Seal: An Introduction to Mahamudra and STAGES coursehttps://www.stagesinternational.com/M...Stages International websitehttps://www.stagesinternational.com/Follow The Integral Stage on the Fathom apphttps://hello.fathom.fm/Support The Integral Stage on Patreon! / theintegralstage Special thanks and big love to Shai Newman, the Limited Hangout guys, Brandon LaChance, Mike McElroy, Brandon Norgaard, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Francesca, and all of our other Patreon supporters!
In Postnormal Worldviews, Layman is joined by eco-village explorer and Fourth Way practitioner, Markus Feenstra, to inquire into the question of normalcy, how it gets socially established, and what processes, practices, and sensitivities allow for the establishment of new normals; the problem of mismatches between the 'normal' and what we might sense intuitively as what is deeply right; the shamanoid role of the edge-dwellers; the Gurdjieffian possibility for a third position between the exoteric and the esoteric, the mesoteric, and how mesoteric individuals contribute to the evolution of culture; and much more.Markus Feenstra is a resident of the Earthsong Eco-neighborhood in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and the co-developer of a fractal theory of change and underpinning worldview that assists people committed to enhancing the wellbeing of all beings to renormalize themselves, so they may better embody their gifts for the world in their natural ways of being.
Layman sits down with Aviv Shahar, host of the Portals of Perception, to explore his attempt at charting a grounded esoteric path that grows beyond our integrative metamodels.
For the 36th episode of the Integral Stage Authors Series, Layman beams Andrew M. Davis up to his orbital studio to talk about his recently published book, Metaphysics of Exo-Life. In this wide-ranging discussion, they talk about the renewed interest in and relevance of the field of cosmo-theology, as scientists are detecting possible indicators of life on remote planets and the government is apparently taking the topic of UAPs more seriously; the implications of extra-terrestrial life for human religions and soteriological models; the nature of God in an evolving universe, and whether humans and alien species could ever arrive at similar theological or moral understandings; the relevance of A.N. Whitehead’s process theology for these questions; the strengths and limitations of Steven J. Dick’s naturalistic cosmo-theology, and what Whitehead has to offer in response; and much more.Andrew M. Davis is a process philosopher, theologian, and scholar of cosmological wonder. He is program director for the Center for Process Studies where he researches, writes, and organizes conferences on various aspects of process-relational thought. An advocate of metaphysics and meaning, he approaches philosophy as the endeavor to systematically think through what reality must be like because we are a part of it. He holds B.A. in Philosophy and Theology, an M.A. in Interreligious Studies, and a Ph.D. in Religion and Process Philosophy from Claremont School of Theology. Metaphysics of Exo-Lifehttps://www.amazon.com/Metaphysics-Ex...Fathom apphttps://hello.fathom.fm/Support The Integral Stage on Patreon!https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstageSpecial thanks and big love to Shai Newman, the Limited Hangout guys, Brandon LaChance, Mike McElroy, Brandon Norgaard, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Francesca, and all of our other Patreon supporters!
For the ninth episode of The Soul of AI, Layman meets with coach and Circling facilitator, David Swedlow, to thread thoughtfully between the usual utopian and dystopian narratives on AI; and given the degree of speculation in the face of the unknown that even experts in the field are forced to do, to consider the roles and responsibilities each of us has to think these issues through carefully and creatively.David's professional websitehttps://metastorming.com/Follow The Integral Stage on Fathom! https://hello.fathom.fm/Remember to like, subscribe, and support The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible!https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstageSpecial thanks and big love to Shai Newman, the LIMITED HANGOUT guys, Brandon LaChance, Mike McElroy, Brandon Norgaard, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Francesca, and all of our other Patreon supporters!
Following on several episodes on The Integral Stage where we have discussed subtle energy, neo-shamanism, and related topics, Layman sits down with Robin, a Finnish shamanic practitioner and Jungian, to talk about the history of shamanism, the differences in its forms and manifestations around the globe, the various efforts to reconstruct lost shamanic traditions in our time, its intersections with Jungian psychology, drumming vs. psychedelics, his interest in Bon and the windhorse traditions, and much more.Robin is the host of The Moment Podcast, / @themomentpodcast
In a swanky high-rise apartment, just beyond the Thunderdome, Layman sits down with Jason the McClain to talk about the attractions and the limitations of libertarianism, Jason's early formative experiences with it, and the experiences and insights that eventually led him to leave it behind. From a meta-level, they also discuss what it means, and what it takes, to be ready to let go of one's earlier convictions and to remain open, ongoingly, to further learning, growth, and transformation.Evolutionary Companies websitehttps://evolutionarycompanies.com/Fathom apphttps://hello.fathom.fm/Support The Integral Stage on Patreon!https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstageSpecial thanks and big love to Shai Newman, the Limited Hangout guys, Brandon LaChance, Mike McElroy, Brandon Norgaard, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Francesca, and all of our other Patreon supporters!
In this special, quasi-Author Series video, Layman meets with Patrick Gac to discuss an innovative, natural-cycle based divinatory system that Patrick argues is compatible with and informed by some of the leading theory in our liminal worldspace, from John Vervaeke's 4-E cogsci to Bobby Azarian's cosmology.
Agromancy, meaning "divination of the fields", is a card deck based system that generates mandalas.The Degtras Projecthttps://www.facebook.com/Degtras86/Fathom apphttps://hello.fathom.fm/Support The Integral Stage on Patreon!https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
Layman is joined by Dr. Sally Adnams Jones & Dr. Jen Peer Rich to talk about the journey that led to the launch of their Radical Emergence podcast, and the ideas and vision that inspire it.
What is meant by "radical emergence"?
In this time of rapid change and transformation, why is it important to explore vulnerability and suffering, descent and embodiment? What are the roots and dynamics of creativity? What are the differences in the ways men and women tend to relate to these things, and what modeling or inspirational roles can they play in integral and metamodern spaces where male voices have tended so often to dominate? Listen in as they explore these and many other questions in a very rich and enlivening discussion.Radical Emergence Podcasthttps://radicalemergence.org/
In this special episode, Layman is joined by leadership expert, Alan Watkins, and psychotherapist, Durwin Foster, to explore themes from Alan's new book, Lie-Ability: How Leaders Build and Break Trust. What are the seven dark arts of deception? From integral leadership and psychotherapeutic perspectives, how are we to address breakdowns in sensemaking and coherence in a culture where deceit has become common, and will soon be even more powerfully amplified by AI and other emerging technologies? How can we better recognize, and respond to, the tactics of dark triad personalities in our political cultures, workplaces, and spiritual communities?A physician and neuroscientist, and the CEO of Complete, Dr. Alan Watkins is recognised as an international expert on leadership and human performance. Over the years he has coached thousands of individuals to greater levels of performance, transformed organisational cultures and helped leaders discover new ways to succeed. Alan has become a confidant to many of the world’s top leaders over the past 22 years. Alan believes we can create a world with enlightened leaders in all walks of life, but this requires leaders to ‘wake up’, ‘grow up’ and make better decisions. His optimism for the potential of human beings never wavers. He is also the author of many books, including Crowdocracy: The End of Politics and Wicked and Wise: How to Solve the World’s Toughest Problems.Durwin Foster, MA, CCC, has learned the science of effective therapy through rigorous academic training. Completing a Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology at the University of British Columbia, Durwin is certified at the national level through the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCPA). Durwin completed all required doctoral level coursework and trained in supervision, while performing research on the benefits of mindfulness training. A close student of Ken Wilber, Durwin has recently trained in Full-Spectrum Mindfulness, an approach that combines mindfulness with developmental psychology to help us wake up from our dreams of separation, while also growing into our greatest potentials.
For the eighth episode of The Soul of AI (or maybe this is episode 7.5), Layman sits down again with Jill Nephew to talk to her about her responses to some of the previous guests' positions on AI; the problems with scaling; and to go into more detail on her concerns about the limitations and dangers of this alluring technology.Jill Nephew is the founder of Inqwire, PBC a company on a mission to help the world make sense. The Inqwire technology is designed to enhance and accelerate human sensemaking abilities. The designing of the system required her to attempt to answer a fundamental question: how does technology interact with the mind's ability to do individual and collective sensemaking, and what are the principles that technology should follow to maximize these abilities? Jill's background includes developing tools, platforms, and meta-data-based software languages to help people find solutions to complex, real-world problems. She developed algorithms and models in the area of constraint-based optimization, drug binding, motion control, disease kinetics, protein folding, atmospheric pollution, human articulated movement, complex fluids, and most recently sensemaking.Personal websitehttps://jillnephew.com/index.htmlInqwire websitehttps://www.inqwire.io/
Layman meets with Dr. Cadell Last to talk about a new philosophy anthology that Cadell co-edited with O.G. Rose, and to which Layman contributed as well: Abyssal Arrows: Spiritual Leadership Inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Through a review of a number of the essays in this volume, they explore the potential meanings and implications of the notion of Übermensch, especially in our times; the shamanic and tantric dimensions of Nietzsche's thought; the dynamics and scope of Nietzschean education; the relevance of Nietzschean spiritual transformation and leadership in a time of AI and VR; the importance of family and childhood, often missed by revolutionary humanist and transhumanist movements; and much more.Cadell Last, Ph.D., is a philosopher with an interest in anthropology and psychoanalysis, the creator of Philosophy Portal, and the author of Global Brain Singularity; Sex, Masculinity, God; Systems and Subjects; and Enter the Alien.
Layman meets with the co-authors of Human Work, Leanne Holdsworth and Naryan Wong, to explore the leadership mindsets that can help foster more livable, humanised workspaces (British spelling of humanized optional!).
How can our work environments be transformed if learning and growth are regularly emphasized; if everyone is recognized as a leader in some capacity; if greater attention is paid to cultures of belonging, love, and care; and if we better digest the wisdom of human systems? How can indigenous ways of knowing, as Leanne is exploring with Maori colleagues in New Zealand, lead to greater connectedness between workers, and between workplaces and the rest of the living world?Leanne Holdsworth stands for a future where it is normal for work environments to be places where human beings thrive, enabling organisations to succeed whilst at the same time, building social capital through how those humans are able to show up with their families and communities. She is the co-author of Human Work: Five Leadership Mindsets for Humanising workplaces and author of the book A New Generation of Business Leaders and has spent 15 years advising organisations predominantly in the private sector (across most sectors including banking, primary sector, FMCG, tech, pharmaceuticals) as well as the public and not for profit sectors in sustainability strategy and leadership.Naryan Wong is fascinated by how individuals, teams, and organizations think and act in the world. He believes that humanity’s most complex challenges will be solved only through well-coordinated collective sensing and acting. By understanding how individual behaviour contributes to team dynamics, and team dynamics create organizational capacities, Naryan helps organizations and communities to act harmoniously to transform themselves and the world. Over the past decade, Naryan has practised the arts of systems change, network mapping, and organizational development in large corporate environments and not-for-profit community spaces. In 2018, he founded the not-for-profit ThinkBetter to better understand the feedback loops between personal growth and organizational culture. Nowadays, Naryan weaves his network at the nexus of various communities working to improve how humanity thinks and coordinates.Human Work networkhttps://www.humanworknetwork.com/https://www.amazon.com/Human-Work-Leadership-Humanising-Workplace/dp/B0C52JHK5P/
For the seventh episode, Layman meets with Game-B godfather, Jim Rutt, to talk about his recent experiments of using AI to help with screenwriting, the intersections of AI and the creative arts, the likely positive and negative impacts AI will have on human cognitive development, the alignment problem and the seven most likely challenges that AI poses to our civilization, and his ideal vision of an AI-facilitated era of human thriving.Jim Rutt is the former CEO of Network Solutions. The New York Times once referred to him as “the Internet’s bad boy” due to his reputation for creative mischief. He sold Network Solutions at the peak of the Dot Com boom and then went into scientific research. Jim has been affiliated with the Santa Fe Institute since 2002, serving as Chairman from 2009 thru 2012. Currently he hosts the Jim Rutt Show podcast, and is the gun-totin' godfather of the Game B movement.
For the 34th episode of the Integral Stage Authors series, Layman sits down with Daniel Garner of @O.G.Rose (Michelle.and.Daniel) to talk about their new book, Belonging Again -- the first in a series of explorations on the topic of "belonging" in our fragmented age.
As they put it in the book's description: "Our identities, religions, nationalities, occupations, life choices, philosophies, political ideologies, political leaders -- none of these are 'given' anymore: whatever we face, we find ourselves full of questions. 'Is this true? Is this best? Is this valid?' ... Individuals today have more freedom than ever before, but at the expense of 'givens' which would help them determine what they should do with that freedom. Choice has increased while direction has decreased, so where should we go now?"
For the fifth episode, Layman sits down with John Vervaeke to explore the topic from the three angles John considers essential: the (cognitive) scientific, the philosophical, and the spiritual. John discusses why the initial announcements about LLM breakthroughs left him concerned and dismayed; why he is distrustful of both the apocalyptic and utopian claims around AI; what his greatest concerns and hopes are, and what the best paths forward are for mitigating the alignment problem; and why he thinks theology, surprisingly, will become central and relevant again.
John Vervaeke is a professor of psychology at Toronto University and creator of the popular YouTube series "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis" and "After Socrates."
AI: The Coming Thresholds and the Path We Must Take https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-_RdKiDbz4&t=0s
Fathom app https://hello.fathom.fm/
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For the fourth episode, Layman sits down with Tada Hozumi to explore his thoughts on how a Shinto, animist approach to the world of living intelligences might help us wisely interface, also, with new AI systems, and to recognize some of their affordances perhaps not as readily apparent within our pervasive, materialist and reductionist worldviews. As their discussion deepens, they also get into tantric and Kabbalistic dimensions of AI, and an exploration of the possibilities of a techno-shamanist ethics and etiquette for our technological and social media landscapes.
Tada Hozumi launched his career in 2017, when he started doing coaching work around undoing racism through somatic approaches. This piece of work evolved into something he referred to as ‘cultural somatics’, which is an approach to both individual and cultural change that posits that cultures are in fact bodies made of bodies. Because of this, individual change and collective change are necessarily embodied processes that have a fractal relationship. One of the great benefits he saw in this kind of ‘cultural-somatic’ approach was that it showed us that everything we learn about our own somatic process can be applied to an understanding of how to work with social transformation. Through these efforts, he met Dare Sohei, who had a great impact on his work as they introduced him to foundational concepts of what he could call contemporary liberatory animism, which led Tada to develop a cultural somatic framework that saw the ancestors and other intangible presences our cultures speak of as beings that live in the ‘cultural nervous system’ of our ‘cultural somas’.
Professional website https://tadahozumi.com/
Remember to like, subscribe, and consider supporting The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
Special thanks and big love to the Limited Hangout guys, Shai Newman, Brandon LaChance, Mike McElroy, Brandon Norgaard, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Francesca, and all of our other Patreon supporters!
Layman sits down with Branden Singletary, aka Nexumorphic, to talk about his metatheoretical model, Metaforma, and the philosophical and psychospiritual influences behind his singular and highly creative work.
Branden is a designer and creator, focused on the demonstration of meaningful design – deliberate, purposeful construction, rich with context and meaning, executed with wondrous precision.
Personal website https://www.nexumorphic.com/
Fathom app https://hello.fathom.fm/
Support The Integral Stage on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
The queer, liminal, and shamanic all point in their own ways to working fruitfully with 'betweens' and 'crossings,' and yet the possible relations between these worlds and their sensibilities are seldom discussed in the liminal / metamodern communities. Layman sits down with Rachel Hayden to explore these overlaps and to consider what might follow from their more conscious integration.
Rachel tends to fret about what to write on a bio. Fortunately, her Personal Medicine of doing tai chi to become calmer is helping her at the moment. She has long been fascinated with mind-body practices, and uses many of these regularly - tai chi, Eastern and Western meditation and philosophy, and karate, to name a few. These have gotten her through some rough patches, kept her generally healthy, and pointed her toward greater insight and meaning. One of her other favorite things is music - listening, playing guitar, singing, and writing songs. Three years ago Rachel switched from being primarily a bodywork therapist and co-op grocery manager to being primarily a peer supporter. It has become part of who she is, and is probably the job she has loved the most, being with people through life's ups and downs. Being a queer trans woman herself, she often works with LGBTQIA+ people and others who are marginalized by society. Rachel became a CPMC to deepen and expand her approach to peer support, and help people find connections to their inner wisdom. She has a profound faith in authentic Personal Medicine, having realized its power in her own life.
Remember to like, subscribe, and consider supporting The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
Special thanks and big love to the Limited Hangout guys, Shai Newman, Brandon LaChance, Mike McElroy, Brandon Norgaard, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Francesca, and all of our other Patreon supporters!
21st CENTURY HUNTER GATHERERS
For episode 7, Layman sits down in the Mumbai branch of the Liminal Café with author and podcaster, Hemant Gupta, to talk about his life and work - in particular, his writings and reflections on the new 'hunter gatherer' roles many of us find ourselves in, in an information ecology which is still in its wilderness stages; and a distinctive, quadratic heuristic he uses to nuance and think through complexity. Together they discuss what good next steps might be to bring a more globally expansive liminal community into being.
Hemant Gupta is an author, illustrator, and podcaster residing in Mumbai, India.
Meditations of a 21st Century Hunter Gatherer book https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BRWQ3WHS
https://www.youtube.com/@ThisJourneyDialogues
For the third episode of The Soul of AI, Layman sits down with Fionn Wright, the creator of an integrative metatheory that draws on Chinese as well as Western integral models, to explore how AI might be leveraged to develop ecosystems of tools and practices for midwifing a Metamodern culture through and beyond the looming poly-crisis. They discuss the importance of tuning these tools, or at least the use of the tools, towards the cultivation of wisdom, and Fionn makes a case for focusing on the benefits this technology can deliver, and the developmental roles it can serve -- without ignoring or downplaying its real existential and social risks as well.
Fionn is the Wellbeing Head at Qineticare. Having grown up in a family business in Europe and Africa, he earned his Bachelor in International Business from UBC while learning to speak fluent Chinese. Seeing gaps in Shanghai’s traditional market for corporate training, children’s education and language learning, Fionn founded and ran 3 innovative coaching companies, and led a team to develop the first Holistic Wellness Programs in China. Fionn is also trained in Neuroscience for Coaching, NLP Master Practitioner, Mindfulness-based Somatic Therapy, STAGES Developmental Coaching, Leadership Circle Assessment, Business Coaching, Transformative Leadership and with a Masters in Leadership Coaching, he now teaches over 40 types of meditation.
Personal website https://fionnwright.com
Universifying website https://universifying.com
Qineticare website https://qineticare.com/
Fathom app https://hello.fathom.fm/
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Layman sits down with Steve March, the founder of Aletheia coaching, to talk about the challenges and rewards of reading Heidegger; his radical focus on the phenomenology of the "everyday" world; his concept of breakdowns in obviousness, and the opportunities such events afford us individually and collectively; being-unto-death; the influence of Heidegger and the concept of 'ontological design' on the Aletheia coaching method; the intersection of technological and poetic attunements in this time of AI; Heidegger's problematic history and associations; and much more.
Steve March became a professional coach in 2000, and in 2003, he became a coach trainer, leading coaching certification courses in the United States, Asia, and Europe. He is the founder and originator of Alethia Coaching, which offers a new paradigm in self-development that helps people move away from a focus on 'improvement', and instead uses a methodology that allows us to 'unfold' into the essence of who we already are.
Aletheia website: https://integralunfoldment.com/
Layman meets with two of the co-founders of ChinookX Technologies, Trevor Jang and Lee White, to talk about their efforts to establish and insure indigenous data sovereignty for tribal groups on the west coast of Canada, and to discuss the possibilities and the process of the decolonization of the internet.
ChinookX Technologies website https://chinookx.ca/
Layman is joined by Matt Segall, this time to discuss his new book, Crossing the Threshold: Etheric Imagination in the Post-Kantian Process Philosophy of Schelling and Whitehead. Matt describes his book as "a philosophical experiment in thinking, feeling, and willing beyond the transcendental threshold of Immanuel Kant's critical philosophy" -- an exercise in opening to a "descendental aesthetic ontology," which places us back into participatory relation with reality, and roots us again in cosmic creativity. In thinking together with Schelling, Whitehead, Nietzsche, and other philosophers, Matt is interested in showing that there are resources for transformative spiritual practice, for a new shamanism, here but often overlooked within the Western philosophical tradition.Matthew D. Segall, PhD, received his doctoral degree in 2016 from the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at CIIS. His dissertation was titled Cosmotheanthropic Imagination in the Post-Kantian Process Philosophy of Schelling and Whitehead. It grapples with the limits to knowledge of reality imposed by Kant's transcendental form of philosophy and argues that Schelling and Whitehead's process-oriented approach (described in his dissertation as a "descendental" form of philosophy) shows the way across the Kantian threshold to renewed experiential contact with reality. He teaches courses on German Idealism and process philosophy for the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at CIIS. He blogs regularly at footnotes2plato.com.Crossing the Threshold bookhttps://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Thres...Follow The Integral Stage on Fathom! https://hello.fathom.fm/Remember to like, subscribe, and support The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible!https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstageSpecial thanks and big love to Shai Newman, the LIMITED HANGOUT guys, Brandon LaChance, Mike McElroy, Brandon Norgaard, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Francesca, and all of our other Patreon supporters!
The question of the promise and peril of AI is a proper one for our long-running Love the System series, but we thought it deserved its own spot as a sub-series due to the rapid development and proliferation of Large Language Models and other ground-breaking AI technologies over the past six months. It may be too early to tell yet, but with the clear power of this emergent technology, its potential to take over many of the tasks we used to regard as exclusively human, and its rapid public uptake, it feels like we are on the cusp of an epochal change. How are we to secure the psychological and spiritual health of human beings in the face of such developments? How do we ethically and wisely merge living and non-living intelligences? What wisdom from this corner of the internet -- from our respective integral, metamodern, and spiritual communities -- can help us navigate the monumental challenges and opportunities ahead?For the second episode of The Soul of AI, Layman sits down with Jill Nephew, an engineer and software developer, to explore her unique take on the hype and dominant discourse around artificial intelligence and large language models. Most of the commentators in this area, she argues, have fallen prey to a game of smoke and mirrors: there are no emergent properties, there is no latent intelligence or spark of consciousness, there is no "there" there at all -- nothing nutritious for the human spirit or human society, and certainly no basis for an emergent wisdom culture. She explains why she regards LLM developers as profit-motivated illusionists, and why we should give a hard "no" to this dazzling but ultimately empty and misleading technology.Jill Nephew is the founder of Inqwire, PBC a company on a mission to help the world make sense. The Inqwire technology is designed to enhance and accelerate human sensemaking abilities. The designing of the system required her to attempt to answer a fundamental question: how does technology interact with the mind's ability to do individual and collective sensemaking, and what are the principles that technology should follow to maximize these abilities? Jill's background includes developing tools, platforms, and meta-data-based software languages to help people find solutions to complex, real-world problems. She developed algorithms and models in the area of constraint-based optimization, drug binding, motion control, disease kinetics, protein folding, atmospheric pollution, human articulated movement, complex fluids, and most recently sensemaking.Personal websitehttps://jillnephew.com/index.htmlInqwire websitehttps://www.inqwire.io/Follow The Integral Stage on Fathom! https://hello.fathom.fm/Remember to like, subscribe, and support The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible!https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
Layman meets with the co-creators of the we{collective} social media platform, James Weir and Laurence Currie-Clark, to talk about their vision for a collectively owned, holarchically-organized, play-and-learning focused social media platform, and to reflect on the technological and AI revolutions that appear to be upon us.WeCo social media platformhttps://weco.io/Follow The Integral Stage on Fathom! https://hello.fathom.fm/Please like, subscribe, and support The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible!https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
Layman meets with Dr. Karen Jaenke, a holistic educator and dreamworker, to talk about the somatic dimensions of dreamwork, the nature of the subtle body, the importance of dreamwork for navigating the metacrisis, and her unique integration of the insights and practices of Eugene Gendlin, Arnold Mindell, and Robert Bosnak.Dr. Jaenke is the former Chair of the Consciousness and Transformative Studies program and former Director of the Ecotherapy Certificate program at John F. Kennedy University. From 2001-2008, she served as Dissertation Director and Core Faculty at the Institute of Imaginal Studies. Currently an Executive Editor of ReVision: Journal of Consciousness and Transformation, she has edited and published journals on the topics of Imaginal Psychology, Shamanism and the Wounded West, and Earth Dreaming, as well as numerous articles on these topics. In 2000, she founded Dreamhut Consulting to offer consulting services for dissertation and thesis writing, dreamwork, hypnotherapy and mentoring. Her dissertation was titled: Personal Dreamscape as Ancestral Landscape. Her creative vision synthesizes dreamwork, indigenous ways of knowing, subtle body awareness and Gaian consciousness. Dr. Jaenke's professional websitewww.dreamhut.orgFollow The Integral Stage on Fathom! https://hello.fathom.fm/As always, remember to like, subscribe, and support The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible!https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
For the inaugural episode of The Soul of AI, Layman sits down with Soryu Forall, an ordained Zen monk and the head teacher at the Monastic Academy in Vermont, to talk about the ethical and spiritual challenges that confront us with the advent of this civilization-transforming, and potentially civilization-destroying, technology. Soryu discusses what he sees as an emerging (fanatical) religion of data-ism, the compulsion to summon a digital superintelligence or deity at all costs, and the existential risks this poses; and together they explore the concept of the cyborgregore, and the potential to build an Artificial Wisdom system to temper, balance, and constructively direct AI.Soryu Forall has decades of intensive monastic training, a degree in Economics from Williams College, and extensive experience in social and environmental justice. As a teen, upon learning that monasteries are built for such a purpose, he traveled to Japan in order to study suffering and the end of suffering. Forall was ordained in 1998 at Sogen Temple under the tutelage of the Zen Master Shodo Harada. After training at Sogen Temple for five years, Forall trained further at Hemis Gompa, a Kagyud Tibetan monastery in northern India; Xue Feng Si, an ancient Ch’an monastery in eastern China; and at the Sariputta Ambedkar Monastery in southern India, where he served as head monk (Ambedkar Buddhism is an influential sect that defines spiritual training as social engagement and economic justice). While there, he led peaceful protests and organized community efforts to overcome the injustice of the caste system. He also helped to raise thirty boys with the understanding that all are inconceivably valuable, regardless of family circumstance. Forall, a native Vermonter, returned to his home state in 2008 and has continued to fight against systemic injustice and promote youth empowerment. He has created successful curriculum for mindfulness in education, trained professional mindfulness teachers all over the world, worked with high level athletes and business people on using mindfulness for high performance, and founded the Center for Mindful Learning, where he currently serves as President and head teacher. At the Monastic Academy Soryu dedicates his life to creating the next generation of awakened leaders.The Monastic Academyhttps://www.monasticacademy.com/Follow The Integral Stage on Fathom! https://hello.fathom.fm/
In Re/thinking Religion, a new Integral Stage series, John Vervaeke joins Bruce Alderman and Layman Pascal to explore possible points of contact and confluence between their respective approaches to religion and spirituality.
For the eleventh episode, Layman, John, and Bruce explore the question of subtle energy -- its nature, its scientific or religious status, and the roles that subtle energy cultivation and awareness may play in transformative processes. They discuss a number of the major paradigms on subtle energy, including one John has offered; its capacity to bridge subject and object, and psychological and contemplative domains; its moral dimensions; and towards the end of the talk, the reasons this topic is more important than ever for our communities to begin to explore.
Layman is joined by expressive arts therapist, transformative educator, artist, and author, Dr. Sally Adnams Jones, to talk about Eros, Yin-Yang polarity, gender non/duality, boundaries and consent, agency and communion, and the integral Tao of creativity.Sally Adnams Jones is Director of TransformArta and has taught art education at The University of Victoria, Canada. Her Ph.D. research explored how survivors of the HIV/AIDs pandemic in Africa transformed through their art practice. Currently she participates on Integral forums on Clubhouse, leads retreats and workshops, offers counseling and creative coaching, and is an artist and author.Professional websitehttp://sallyadnamsjones.com/Fathom apphttps://hello.fathom.fm/Support The Integral Stage on Patreon!https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
In 2021, Layman conducted a Salon of the Banned interview with Son of Korg and Ezekiel-73 about their experimental online magazine, the Limited Hangout, which was dedicated to exploring a host of paranormal, parapolitical, and "conspiracy"-related themes from an integral perspective. That experiment is now coming to a close, so Son of Korg and Ezekiel-73 (who outs himself in this video) return to talk about the origins and original intentions of the project; what they learned during this several-year journey; the amplification of the uncanny they experienced as COVID unfolded and fringe topics came more to the center of mainstream discourse; the challenges and gifts they experienced navigating alternative sensemaking circles; the reasons why conspiracy or parapolitical thinking now seems to be related to "Right-wing rabbit holes," and why that wasn't always the case; and much more.Limited Hangout websitehttps://limitedhangout.wtf/
CATALYZING CONNECTION: A CONVERSATION MID-STREAMFor episode 6 at the Liminal Café, we drop in mid-stream on a conversation between Tim Adalin and Layman Pascal. Although we drop in on the couch as eavesdroppers after the conversation has already begun, we can pick up soon enough that this is a rich conversation on conversation itself ... on cultivating the field, working with emergent criticality, and catalyzing connection across challenging boundaries. Towards the end of the conversation, they discuss the religion that is not a religion, dreams of pilgrimages and new formats for collective events, and Tim gets Layman closer than he's ever been to admitting his alien origins.Tim Adalin is the founder and producer of the Voicecraft podcast and a transformative philosopher. Tim's work focuses on the relation between participation and transformation, and integrates metaphysical and scientific modes of understanding. The primary medium of this work lives in embodied relationality with friends, family, and peers. He is concerned with the vital connections between psyche, culture, and nature, and is developing networks and communities that support wiser contexts for education, contribution, and belonging.Voicecraft Podcasthttps://voicecraft.io/about/
Cognitive neuroscientist and science writer, Bobby Azarian, returns to the Integral Stage for a deep and wide-ranging discussion of the emerging scientific paradigm -- the complexity science paradigm arising out of the intersections of physics, biology, neuroscience, and information theory -- that will likely shape self, culture, and society for the next century. If the universe is now known to be self-organizing through levels of developmental emergence, and if we are, as Carl Sagan once said, "a way for the cosmos to know itself," what really are the implications of such a view for all the domains of life that matter to us? This perspective, of course, is in its general outlines very similar to the one Ken Wilber outlined in Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, but the science has developed since Wilber published SES; so Bobby and Layman explore those developments, and how they further reinforce, and in some cases update, the synthesis Wilber offered several decades ago.Bobby Azarian is a cognitive neuroscientist (PhD, George Mason University), a science journalist, and author of the book The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity. He has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, BBC Future, Scientific American, Slate, The Huffington Post, Quartz, The Daily Beast, Aeon, and others. His research has been published in peer-reviewed journals like Human Brain Mapping, Cognition & Emotion, Acta Psychologica, and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. His Psychology Today blog (Mind in the Machine) has received over 8 million views, making it one of the most popular blogs on the website. He has been a guest on The Joe Rogan Experience, the Michael Shermer Show, The David Pakman Show, The Jim Rutt Show, The Young Turks, the Singularity University podcast, and many others. He helped develop multiple episodes for Season 2 of the YouTube Premium series Mind Field, which won the show its first Emmy nomination. He is a pro at audio and music production, and is currently working on an educational podcast based on his new book.
Bruce joins Layman Pascal under the Wayne mansion to explore Layman's infamous Facebook group, Pascal's Integral Batcave, and the art of metaphilosophical meme-ing.
Pascal's Integral Batcave https://www.facebook.com/groups/162945624115898
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In the Integral community, we tend to show too little love to the Lower Right quadrant. In this new series, Love the System, Layman Pascal and his guests will take deep dives the nature of living and man-made systems, and explore the most promising systemic approaches to managing the challenges of our day.
In Episode 22, Layman meets with James Redenbaugh, the founder and creative director of Iris Co-Creative, an integrally informed, international team of website designer, artists, and branding experts. IRIS stands for Intuitive, Relational, and Intersubjective, and Layman and James explore what is meant by each term, how they relate to creative work, and how they inform emergent ways of working in the world.
James Redenbaugh is a director, facilitator, and designer. He directs creative processes for paradigm-shifting organizations around the world. He has 10+ years experience working with globally recognized thought-leaders, game-changing companies, and high-impact NGOs. Iris Co-Creative website https://www.iris-cocreative.com/
Recently, we released a discussion titled, "Things That Integral Has Not Done Well," looking at a number of missteps the integral community and leadership has made, and at some of its most controversial associations with spiritual figures. Among the figures discussed was Andrew Cohen, and he joins us today to respond to that video, to offer some counter critiques, and to discuss possible things both he and the integral community can do going forward to correct for those mistakes and to open possible ways forward for greater transformation and integral flourishing.
Andrew Cohen is an American-born, internationally known spiritual teacher and writer, and the founder of Evolutionary Enlightenment. He has been teaching meditation for over three decades, and created the magazine, What is Enlightenment?, one of the most successful publications ever in its genre. His teaching work grapples with the challenges of bringing the revelation of enlightenment to a contemporary Western audience, integrating postmodern cultural and scientific understanding with an original and sophisticated non-dual philosophy. After his organization, EnlightenNext, dissolved in 2013, he went on sabbatical for several years, but now has returned to teaching and is leading an online spiritual community called Manifest Nirvana. Links and Resources Personal Website https://www.andrewcohen.com/
In Re/thinking Religion, a new Integral Stage series, John Vervaeke joins Bruce Alderman and Layman Pascal to explore possible points of contact and confluence between their respective approaches to religion and spirituality.
For the tenth episode, Bruce, Layman, and John reflect on the groundbreaking work of 4E cognitive scientists, Francisco Varela and Evan Thompson, especially their perspectives on the role of the imaginal in perception, healing, self-transformation, and the development of wisdom; the five criteria for the wise use of the imaginal in education, therapy, and religious practice; the need to rehabilitate the 'place' of the imaginal in common understanding; and the potential risks of the exploitative commodification and commercialization of the fruits of the cognitive scientific study of religion and spirituality (along the lines of "McMindfulness"), and how that can be avoided with a fuller, more integral understanding and practice of cognitive science.
John Vervaeke is a cognitive scientist, a professor of psychology at Toronto University, and the creator of the popular YouTube series, "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis."
For the 30th episode of the Integral Stage Authors series, Layman sits down with evolutionary enlightenment teacher, Andrew Cohen, to talk about his most recent book, "When Shadow Meets the Bodhisattva: The Challenging Transformation of a Modern Guru."
Ten years after his public fall from grace and the dissolution of his spiritual community, Andrew talks about the lessons learned -- his understanding of what went wrong; his confrontation with shadow and the need to take responsibility for what transpired; the shame and regret of failing those who had counted on him; the wise counsel he sought and received from others; and the personal and spiritual insights, and the new vision of spirituality, he developed through this process.
Andrew Cohen is an American-born, internationally known spiritual teacher and writer, and the founder of Evolutionary Enlightenment. He has been teaching meditation for over three decades, and created the magazine, What is Enlightenment?, one of the most successful publications ever in its genre. His teaching work grapples with the challenges of bringing the revelation of enlightenment to a contemporary Western audience, integrating postmodern cultural and scientific understanding with an original and sophisticated non-dual philosophy. After his organization, EnlightenNext, dissolved in 2013, he went on sabbatical for several years, but now has returned to teaching and is leading an online spiritual community called Manifest Nirvana. Links and Resources
When Shadow Meets the Bodhisattva https://www.amazon.com/When-Shadow-Meets-Bodhisattva-Transformation/dp/1644115905/
Personal Website https://www.andrewcohen.com/
For the 29th episode of the Integral Stage Authors series, Layman is joined by friend of the channel and creator of the Unified Theory of Knowledge (UTOK), Dr. Gregg Henriques, to talk about his new book, "A New Synthesis for Solving the Problem of Psychology: Addressing the Enlightenment Gap."
In their dialogue, Gregg clarifies how the new synthesis he proposes critically examines mainstream academic psychology and highlights its fragmented nature; offers a new vision for the field, a unified system of knowledge for understanding both animal and human behavior; and explores how this vision makes sense of the relations between matter, mind, and social and scientific knowledge. What is the Enlightenment Gap, how is it related to the hard problem of consciousness, and how does UTOK reorganize the onto-epistemological field to make room for genuine progress and consilience? What impacts will this new model have on the practice of therapy?
Dr. Henriques is a Full Professor and a core faculty member in James Madison University's Combined-Integrated Clinical and School Psychology Doctoral Program. He is also a leader in the Unified Psychotherapy Movement, which attempts to use meta-theory to achieve an effective integrative scheme for the various psychotherapy paradigms.
https://www.amazon.com/Synthesis-Solving-Problem-Psychology-Enlightenment/dp/3031184920
Layman meets with the founding framer of The Reconstitution project, Ari Allen, to talk about the genesis and goals of The Reconstitution: a collective experiment in revising the United States' Constitution and drafting a series of amendments responsive to some of the deepest challenges confronting the country, its people, and its governing bodies: polarization and corruption, the influence of money in elections, limitations to meaningful participation in government and self-governance, imbalances in representation, the status of corporations and the need to address corporate influence on democratic process, the role of advertising in a free society, and much more. Ari reflects on the historical justification for such an experiment, what he has learned through convening this imaginal Constitutional Convention, and how the resulting document might be used going forward, to foster dialogue, stimulate creative thinking, and hopefully catalyze meaningful change.
Ari Allen earned his JD from Georgetown Law and has worked at Sidley Austin, representing clients on Capitol Hill during the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform. He holds a Masters in Psychology degree from the California Institute of Integral Studies, and currently works in the education technology industry. He is also a writer, philosopher, and a DJ.
The Reconstitution Project https://www.thereconstitution.com/
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Special thanks and big love to Shai Newman, Brandon LaChance, Mike McElroy, Brandon Norgaard, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Francesca, and all of our other Patreon supporters!
Spiritual teacher, Nikola Anandamali Ristic, returns to talk about his new book, "Spirit X: Playful Presence," a practical, experientially oriented follow-up to "Spirit X." This spiritual guidebook consists of 10 meditations, 17 prayers and 10 contemplations, and is enriched with images to evoke reading with the whole being and the Heart.
Layman and Nikola explore the meaning and importance of playfulness in one's spiritual approach; the practical differences between meditation, prayer, and contemplation; the influence of Ken Wilber's work on his teaching and vision; working with fixation and negativity; simple methods for contacting presence and intrinsic happiness; the role of "place" and ecological grounding in one's spiritual practice; and much more.
2Nikola Anandamali Ristic is a Serbia-born, California-based author, philosopher and spiritual teacher. After earning his Ph.D in philosophy and gaining rich and vast life and spiritual experience, he has fully focused on creating Spirit X, a vision of spirituality for our simultaneously challenging and inspiring times. Nikola offers talks, classes, workshops, retreats, online content and programs, and private sessions. He lives in Santa Cruz, CA with his wife Shawna, son Neven, cat Luna and pet rock Oso.
Professional website https://www.anandamali.com/
Follow The Integral Stage on Fathom! https://hello.fathom.fm/ Please like, subscribe, and support The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
Layman meets with returning guest, Aydan Connor, to discuss the global problem of food waste, the shortcomings of the modern food production system, Aydan's experience in the craft beer industry, and his thoughts on personal and systemic steps we can take to reduce waste and promote greater abundance of healthy, locally sourced foods.
Follow us on Fathom! https://hello.fathom.fm/
Subscribe, and support The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
Special thanks and big love to Shai Newman, Brandon LaChance, Mike McElroy, Brandon Norgaard, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Francesca, and all of our other Patreon supporters!
In Re/thinking Religion, a new Integral Stage series, John Vervaeke joins Bruce Alderman and Layman Pascal to explore possible points of contact and confluence between their respective approaches to religion and spirituality. For the 9th episode, Bruce, Layman and John continue the themes from the previous discussion and focus in on the roles of art and the imaginal in state training and cross-cultural mediation; the question of normativity and rationality in ritual and contemplative aesthetics; the importance of the participatory dimension of art, and the need to emphasize shifts in tonality, rhythm, time, and structured performance, beyond the typical emphasis on the visual, in religious art and practice. They also touch on the broader social roles (to be) played by integral spirituality or the religion that is not a religion.
John Vervaeke is a cognitive scientist, a professor of psychology at Toronto University, and the creator of the popular YouTube series, "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis."
After Socrates playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIJuIN6kUcU&list=PLND1JCRq8Vuj6q5NP_fXjBzUT1p_qYSCC&index=1&t=0s
Voices with Vervaeke: Metamodern Wisdom about Religion with Layman Pascal: https://youtu.be/bPy6W-c5_9Y
Vervaeke and Hall Begin to Design the Religion That is Not a Religion: https://youtu.be/nl48eFZGRq8
Support The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
Special thanks and big love to Shai Newman, Brandon LaChance, Mike McElroy, Brandon Norgaard, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Francesca, and all of our other Patreon supporters!
For the twenty-seventh episode of the Integral Stage's Author Series, Layman meets with author and artist, Brian George, to talk about his book, Masks of Origin: Regression in the Service of Omnipotence; about speaking the unspeakable; and about his creative life and work in general. From the book description: "Brian George’s debut collection of personal essays invites the reader on a journey beyond the normal categories of space, time, and narrative structure, toward a further shore of multidimensional and more-than-human experience.
These are 'essays' in the sense of attempts or explorations of a subject which is too vast, and too profound, yet also, paradoxically, too familiar (to some deepest part of us) to be exhausted by any one expression or approach. As George puts it, 'The book is not quite a collection of essays, or the fragments of an autobiography, or a record of inter-dimensional journeys, or a work of metaphysics, or a sociopolitical critique, or an attempt to formulate a contemporary mythology—although it has elements of all of these.'"
Brian George is the author of five books of poetry and two books of essays. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts College of Art, an exhibited artist and former art teacher at several Boston area middle schools, a former member of the Boston Visionary Cell, and a former organizer for Evolver Boston. He was a founding member of MAAP SPACE, a multimedia performance series, as well as of the Revolving Arts Salon and the current Cedar Square Arts Salon. He often tells people first discovering his work that his goal is not so much to be read as to be re-read, and then lived with. Links
Masks of Origin book https://untimelybooks.com/book/masks-of-origin/
Masks of Origin blog https://masksoforigin.blogspot.com/ Fathom app https://hello.fathom.fm/ Please consider supporting The Integral Stage on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage Special thanks and big love to Shai Newman, Brandon LaChance, Mike McElroy, Brandon Norgaard, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Francesca, and all of our other Patreon supporters!
What is Black Metamodernism? What distinguishes metamodernism from modernism, postmodernism, and hypermodernity? In this special Integral Stage episode, Layman sits down with metamodernist thinker and writer, Germane Marvel, to explore these questions, and to take a deep dive into Germane's thoughts on diunital cognition; the role of emotional intelligence in both/and thinking; nihilism and the meaning crisis; the concepts of meta-existence and metatheology; metamodern spirituality, Taoism, and Ifa; the nature of light surpremacy; and the contributions of the global south to the resolution of the postmodern aporia.
Germane Marvel's Medium page https://medium.com/@germanemarvel
Layman's write-up of Marvel's work https://www.whatisemerging.com/profiles/black-metamodernism
Fathom app https://hello.fathom.fm/
Support The Integral Stage on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
Special thanks and big love to Shai Newman, Brandon LaChance, Mike McElroy, Brandon Norgaard, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Francesca, and all of our other Patreon supporters!
For the twenty-sixth episode of the Integral Stage's Author Series, Layman sits down again with Middle Way philosopher and author, Robert M. Ellis, this time to discuss his new book, Absolutization -- the first book in a planned 9-part series on the Middle Way.
Layman and Robert explore the essential arguments of the book; the many ways absolutizing tendencies in thought show up psychologically, culturally, and politically; and the relationship of Middle Way philosophy to integral postmetaphysics and Layman's Metaphysics of Adjacency.
From the book's description: "What do dogma, repression, and conflict have in common? They all result from human judgement blocked from wider understanding by a false assumption of completeness. This book puts forward a theory of absolutization, bringing together a multidisciplinary understanding of this central flaw in human judgement, and what we can do about it. This approach, drawing on Buddhist thought and practice, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, embodied meaning, and systems theory, offers a rigorous introduction to absolutization as the central problem addressed in Middle Way Philosophy, which is a synthetic approach developed by the author over more than twenty years in a series of books. It challenges disciplinary boundaries as well as offering a substantial framework for practical application."
Robert M. Ellis is a philosopher, writer and teacher. He has produced a series of books about the Middle Way, understood as a principle of judgement that throws us onto experience by avoiding absolutes, both positive and negative. He has also founded the Middle Way Society to support the development and practice of the Middle Way understood in this way, and he has recently opened a retreat center, Tirylan House, in rural South Wales.
Absolutization on publisher's website: https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/absolutisation/
Fathom app https://hello.fathom.fm/
Support The Integral Stage on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
Special thanks and big love to Shai Newman, Brandon LaChance, Mike McElroy, Brandon Norgaard, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Francesca, and all of our other Patreon supporters!
In a previous video, Everything You Think You Know About Integral Theory Is Wrong, we met with Mark Forman to talk about and address a number of the commonly heard criticisms of Integral Theory and the Integral community. In this follow-up discussion, we are joined by Mark Forman and Nomali Perera to take a candid look at a number of the teacher-related scandals that have impacted the community, and a number of the community's missteps over the past two decades as it transformed from a small gathering of interested individuals to a global movement.
Dr. Mark Forman provides psychotherapy in San Jose and online throughout California, as well as developmental consulting for individual adults worldwide. He is the founder and lead trainer of the Certified Integral Psychotherapist (CIT) Global Training Program and actively teaches and supervises both therapists and coaches interested in the direct application of Integral Theory. He is also the organizer of several previous Integral Theory Conferences, and the author of several books on integral psychology.
Nomali Perera, MA, PCC, joined the integral world in Colorado in the early, exciting days of 2002 as a volunteer and, later, co-director of the Integral Spiritual Center at the Integral Institute. Professionally, Nomali is an executive coach, certified facilitator of Polarity Management and the Immunity to Change™ process, and is a Master Coach through Integral Coaching Canada. Currently, she’s in a year-long course in trauma-informed Compassionate Inquiry with Gabor Maté’s school. Currently she also leads study and practice groups through the Integral Life organization.
Anticipated for several centuries by prescient individuals, the Meta-Crisis is the defining challenge of our time -- the convergence of multiple wicked problems, at global scale. In this special Integral Stage episode, Dr. Roger Walsh, a renowned transpersonal psychologist, integral scholar, and Professor of Psychiatry and Philosophy at UC Irvine, sits down with Layman Pascal to discuss the wisdom skills needed to apprehend, navigate, and respond to the daunting complex of issues, challenges, and changes that confront us.
Roger Walsh, M.D., Ph.D. DHL. graduated from Australia’s Queensland University with degrees in psychology, physiology, neuroscience, and medicine, and then came to the United States as a Fulbright Scholar. He is now at the University of California at Irvine where he is professor of psychiatry, philosophy, and anthropology, as well as a professor in the religious studies program.
Professional website https://drrogerwalsh.com/
Fathom app https://hello.fathom.fm/
Support The Integral Stage on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
Special thanks and big love to Shai Newman, Brandon LaChance, Mike McElroy, Brandon Norgaard, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Francesca, and all of our other Patreon supporters!
On The Meta-Podcast (formerly Integral Podcasters), we talk with podcasters, YouTubers, and other media producers who are trying to offer, or who can't help but offer more integrative perspectives. Who are these people, what do they collectively understand and point towards, and how can they be interlinked, mutually supported, clarified, and amplified?
Layman is joined by Paul Bloch, the co-founder of Fathom.fm, an AI-driven podcast app, about this innovative new technology (which allows you to search for content inside, and identify themes across, multiple podcasts, and much more); about the promise and risk of AI generally; about the present and future of social media platforms; and about the inner skills necessary to navigate our complex, contemporary information landscape.
Fathom app https://hello.fathom.fm/
Supporting us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
Having lived in a cave so long, the puppet hermit Adyahanzi sometimes leaves unseemly messes when he goes out in public ... at hotels, restaurants, restrooms ... anywhere, really. And it is the task of poor Brendan Graham Dempsey to follow behind him and do the dirty clean-up work. Such is the case with this video. Listen in as Brendan gives Layman the (re)overview of Emergentism that it truly deserves!
Emergentism book: https://www.amazon.com/Emergentism-Religion-Complexity-Metamodern-Spirituality/dp/B0BF28PC2L/
Brendan Graham Dempsey is a writer whose work focuses on the meaning crisis and the nature of spirituality in metamodernity. He earned his BA in Religious Studies from the University of Vermont and his MA in Religion and the Arts from Yale University. He lives in Wolcott, Vermont. Professional website: www.BrendanGrahamDempsey.com
Support The Integral Stage on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
In this new mini-series, Layman Pascal talks with Marc Gafni about an emerging model he is developing together with Zak Stein and others, which they call Cosmo-Erotic Humanism.
For episode one, Layman and Marc discuss the origins of this project, and Marc's work on exploring and unfolding a model of Certainty and Uncertainty for addressing the meaning crisis, grounding moral value, and wrestling with perennial theodicies.
Dr. Marc Gafni is a visionary thinker, social activist, passionate philosopher, and author of ten books. He is the co-founder of The Center for Integral Wisdom, and a rabbinic lineage holder in Bible, Talmud, and Kabbalah. He self-describes as a “citizen” of both Integral World Spirituality and classical Hebrew practice. He has been an editor of the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice on issues of Integral spirituality and a faculty member of J.F.K. University. In 2014, Dr. Gafni co-initiated the Success 3.0 Summit and Rise Up movie, with John Mackey and Kate Maloney whose method and movement is to bring together key thought leaders and change-agents to collaboratively evolve a bold new Integral vision of Success, rooted in the entrepreneurial values of Wake Up, Grow Up, Show Up, and Evolutionary Love.
Professional Website https://www.marcgafni.com/
The Center for Integral Wisdom https://centerforintegralwisdom.org/
Please consider supporting The Integral Stage on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
EVERYTHING? Well, maybe not everything...
But, as integral psychotherapist and leader Mark Forman will argue, there are a number of criticisms of the integral movement and community that continue to circulate, that could be put to sleep with a better understanding of many of the changes and developments within, and the many accomplishments of, the movement over the past two decades. Do integralists think integral begins and ends with Ken Wilber? Is the integral movement a cult? Are integralists disembodied eggheads? Do integralists ignore politics and social issues? Has integral failed to impact the world? Tune in as Mark discusses these and other questions with Bruce and Layman.
Dr. Mark Forman provides psychotherapy in San Jose and online throughout California, as well as developmental consulting for individual adults worldwide. He is the founder and lead trainer of the Certified Integral Psychotherapist (CIT) Global Training Program and actively teaches and supervises both therapists and coaches interested in the direct application of Integral Theory. He is also the organizer of several previous Integral Theory Conferences, and the author of several books on integral psychology.
Mark Forman's Professional Website - www.drmarkforman.com
Please like, subscribe, and consider supporting The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
In episode 3 of this unexpected mini-series, our Anonymous Host hops on the couch with Miss Rabbit, an integrally informed sexologist-in-training, to talk about the nuances of porn use, psychosexual development, and spirituality. There's a lot that could be said about this very fine, simultaneously sensitive and explicit conversation, but if you'd like to know why "there's a weird analogy between gang bangs, orgies, and Integral Theory....," well, look no further. This is the discussion for you.
In TYPOLOGIES OF MEDITATION, Professor Rick Repetti joins Layman & Bruce again for an open dialogue on philosophy, meditation, and the philosophy of meditation. In this episode, they discuss typologies of meditation -- considering the nature of meditation, its transformative functions, its possible psychological and neurological mechanisms, its possible evolutionary roots, and how to conceive of the relationship of the many forms of meditation and contemplative practice across world religious traditions. What kinds of taxonomies can make sense of the field? The dialogue opens more questions than it answers -- a first pass at identifying the complexity of the field and some of the challenges ahead to approaching the topic scientifically and philosophically.
Andrew Rawlinson's "Model of Experiential Comparative Religion" https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1303&context=ijts-transpersonalstudies
Rick Repetti, Ph.D., is a professor of philosophy at CUNY/Kingsborough, a meditation teacher, a philosophical counselor, and an author. Buddhism, Meditation, and Free Will by Rick Repetti https://www.amazon.com/Buddhism-Meditation-Free-Will-Repetti/dp/036758848X/
Rick's professional website https://www.rickrepetti.com/
Please consider supporting The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
For the twenty-fifth (!) episode of the Integral Stage's Author Series, Layman gets together with Hanzi Freinacht representative, Daniel Görtz, to talk about the forthcoming, and now formerly titled, book, "12 Much Better Rules for Life."
But while the title may be different on the date of publication, the content remains the same: a Metamodern homage, parody, incorporation, and principled transcendence of the kind of reflections and advice found in Jordan Peterson's recent bestselling self-help publications. If you've ever wanted to hear some really good reasons why you should live in a mess, fuck like a beast, and make a practice of quitting, this is your chance!
Pull up a chair and listen in as Layman and Daniel take a tour of the book's rich and insightful lessons, and find out why Layman thinks this is the most enjoyable and practical of the Hanzi books.
Daniel Görtz, PhD is a political philosopher, sociologist and author. He is a leader of “the Nordic school” of metamodernism, and one-half of the Hanzi Freinacht character. Daniel lives in Sweden and works for Metamoderna, the publisher of metamodern books, and for Glimworks, an IT-company where he is In-House Philosopher.
Medium article introducing "12 Much Better Rules for Life"
For the twenty-fourth episode of the Integral Stage's Author Series, Layman sits down with the very animated, Adyahanzi, to talk about his latest book, Emergentism, which he co-authored with that rather sneaky post-Kierkegaardian writer, Brendan Graham Dempsey. As a cave-dwelling hermit, Adyahanzi doesn't get out much -- you might be able to tell that from his unkempt beard and his enthusiastic oracular bursts -- but he's found a good listener in Layman, and soon spills all the book's secrets.
"The new sciences of complexity have completely revolutionized our understanding of the universe as well as our place in it. At a time when nihilism and meaninglessness are affecting more people than ever, the new cosmic story of complexification comes as a genuine revelation. Evolution, we now know, is not some senseless meandering, but part of an ever-deepening learning process by which the universe is waking up to itself. And, as highly complex, conscious beings, we have a unique role to play in this cosmic drama."
Emergentism book: https://www.amazon.com/Emergentism-Religion-Complexity-Metamodern-Spirituality/dp/B0BF28PC2L/
Brendan Graham Dempsey is a writer whose work focuses on the meaning crisis and the nature of spirituality in metamodernity. He earned his BA in Religious Studies from the University of Vermont and his MA in Religion and the Arts from Yale University. He lives in Wolcott, Vermont.
Professional website: www.BrendanGrahamDempsey.com
For the eighth episode, after discussing the translative (horizontal) and transformative (vertical) functions of religion, and the importance of (re-)rooting religious imagination and practice in a robust ecological sensibility going forward, they turn to an extended exploration of the likely most salient principles in the design of effective religious ritual. Is the purpose of ritual more to open us to discovery and the enactment of new insight, or to allow us to "conform to a masterpiece," to let ourselves be made in the image of something higher?
For this special Integral Stage episode, Layman and Bruce sit down with Steve March, the founder of Aletheia Coaching, to talk about the revolutionary promise of memory reconsolidation techniques to effect lasting transformation in coaching and therapy, and to discuss the history, theory, and practice of his "integral unfolding" work. In recent decades, neuroscientists have uncovered mechanisms for naturally unlocking affective memories, and either modifying or erasing emotional conditioning.
While some psychotherapists and EMDR practitioners have put this knowledge into practice, it is still quite new in the coaching world. Steve discusses how these insights undergird his unique, contemplatively oriented program, which creatively integrates perspectives and techniques from Internal Family Systems, the Diamond Approach, Integral Theory, process therapy, and nondual traditions such as Mahamudra and Dzogchen.
Steve March became a professional coach in 2000, and in 2003, he became a coach trainer, leading coaching certification courses in the United States, Asia, and Europe. He is the founder and originator of Alethia Coaching, which offers a new paradigm in self-development that helps people move away from a focus on 'improvement', and instead uses a methodology that allows us to 'unfold' into the essence of who we already are.
Aletheia website: https://integralunfoldment.com/
For this episode, Layman hooks up with Metamodern writer and process theologian, Jared Morningstar, to talk about Islam -- its ritual practices, its history, its internal and external movements and divisions, its theological and metaphysical insights, its social challenges, its relationship to ecology and care for the earth, its potential futures, and much more.
Jared is a writer and educator with academic interests in philosophy of religion, Islamic studies, comparative religion, metamodern spirituality, and interfaith dialogue whose work in these areas seeks to offer robust responses to issues of inter-religious conflict, contemporary nihilism, and the "meaning crisis" among other things. You can find his work on YouTube and Medium.
Jared works for the Center for Process Studies and the Cobb Institute where he supports these organizations promote a process-relational worldview and flourish in a digital world through aiding in a variety of marketing and communications tasks. He also works for the Psychedelic Medicine Association where he helps communicate the latest insights in psychedelic research for mental health conditions to an audience of clinicians and other healthcare professionals. Jared is also the founder and director of 'Alif: Traditional Wisdom in Review, a digital Islamic studies publication which seeks to build intellectual and spiritual bridges between the Islamic tradition and Western cultural, religious, and philosophical sources.
Professional Website https://jaredmorningstar.com/
Please like, subscribe, and consider supporting The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
Special thanks and big love to Shai Newman, Brandon LaChance, Mike McElroy, Brandon Norgaard, Brendan Graham Dempsey, Francesca, and all of our other Patreon supporters!
John Vervaeke joins Bruce Alderman and Layman Pascal to explore possible points of contact and confluence between their respective approaches to religion and spirituality. For the seventh episode, they reflect on the koanic and emotional dimensions of Christ's cry from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"; grief and the feeling of God-forsakenness in a time between worlds; the failure of legacy religions to grapple adequately with our greatest challenges; the death and resurrection of tradition; propositional truths as limiting and enabling constraints; and in light of all of these concerns, some possible expansions and additions to our ecologies of practice.
"Awakening from the Meaning Crisis" Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLND1JCRq8Vuh3f0P5qjrSdb5eC1ZfZwWJ
Voices with Vervaeke: Metamodern Wisdom about Religion with Layman Pascal: https://youtu.be/bPy6W-c5_9Y
Vervaeke and Hall Begin to Design the Religion That is Not a Religion: https://youtu.be/nl48eFZGRq8
Please like, subscribe, and consider supporting The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
In The Surplus Spiritual Enjoyments of Rayan Magon, Layman sits with University of Toronto Pearson Scholar, Rayan Magon, to talk about the insights Lacanian psychoanalysis might bring to the issues of neurodiversity and postmodern spiritual practice. Does Lacan, with his distinctively elusive language, have something profound to teach us about the deep structures of our many ways of being in the world, or is he even saying anything at all?
Rayan and Layman open up the concepts of jouissance in relationship to the austic experience of energetic excess; the Big Other; the Logos, and languaging the sacred; the Borromean knot, and the real and symbolic orders; objet petit a; the ego ideal versus the ideal ego, and much more, to see what insights they might yield for both psychospiritual and even theological understanding.
Rayan Magon on Neurodiversity, Empathy, and Life https://youtu.be/MzD9yWP_p0c
Rayan Magon's TEDx Talk: How Self-Realization is the Key to Freedom https://youtu.be/TYvd9kavekc
Layman meets with M. Rako Fabionar, director of the Innovative Learning and Living Institute (ILALI), to talk about his work with indigenous communities along the Pacific coast of the United States, and more generally around the world.
Rako recalls early formative experiences with his Filipino relatives, his work on issues of justice and equity for indigenous communities in university, and his training in the healing arts by teachers of the African Dagara lineage; and then together they explore a range of issues and concerns affecting the Salmon Nation and many other indigenous communities up and down the Pacific coast. How have these communities integrated and been impacted by modern and postmodern conditions and values? How has Rako's extensive work with these communities impacted his understanding, and use of, various developmental schemas? What might contemporary metamodern and integral communities learn from various indigenous practices such as land listening? What sorts of imaginal, ritual healing, and subtle energetic practices are used by these communities? What most distinguishes Pacific Coast communities from each other, and what unites them? And much more.
M. Rako Fabionar is a consultant, facilitator, and healer who creates learning environments for people to experience deeper connection, insight, and well-being. He is sought after for his powerful presence and capacity to support folks during times of transition. Rako has created transformative programs and equity focused initiatives for businesses, universities, retreat centers, and NGOs for twenty years. He has trained social entrepreneurs, cultural workers, activists, spiritual teachers, and political leaders within the USA, Central America, UK, and Middle East. Rako has also worked closely with leadership from Google, Dignity Health, Adobe, Facebook, Skywalker Ranch, Impact Hub, IONS, and Climate Action Network International. Rako’s graduate studies focused on multi-generational social change. He also brings to his work insights from his professional training in organizational design, and years of spiritual practice, including initiation into two indigenous lineage traditions.
Innovative Learning and Living Institute https://www.ilali.global/
Salmon Nation https://salmonnation.net/
Guild of Future Architects https://futurearchitects.com/
Layman meets with integrative psychotherapist, spiritual practitioner, and musician, Willow Pearson Trimbach, to talk about her early experiences of the significance of dreams; her concept of dreams as nested and ongoing; the importance of protecting the unconscious; the relationship of the natural states to the classically sacred dimensions of reality; the nature of the dreaming self and its relation to the waking self; her use of the concept of the caesura - a kind of bidirectional membrane - to indicate the nonseparateness of waking and dreaming life; and much more.
Dr. Pearson is a licensed clinical psychologist. She is also a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and a nationally board-certified music therapist (MT-BC). In fall 2017, Dr. Pearson joined the full-time faculty in the Clinical Psychology Department at NDNU. In May 2018, Dr. Pearson became Director of Clinical Training. Previously, she taught doctoral students at Alliant International University in San Francisco, undergraduate and graduate students at Naropa University, and graduate students at John F. Kennedy University. Dr. Pearson’s 18 years of licensed clinical work includes experience in private practice, as well as at medical centers and hospitals (serving inpatients and outpatient clients), community clinics, and mental health centers. In these settings, she has worked with adults, children, adolescents, couples and groups.
Her clinical background includes training in psychoanalytic, psychodynamic, integral, relational, humanistic, cognitive behavioral, expressive arts, somatic, existential, contemplative and transpersonal therapy, and brief approaches with children, adolescents, adults, couples, and groups. Across a range of clinical settings, Dr. Pearson has provided crisis intervention, assessment, brief therapy, group therapy, music therapy and depth psychotherapy, from an integral relational perspective. Dr. Pearson’s private psychotherapy practice is in Oakland, on the border of Emeryville, in the East Bay.
Professional website https://drwillowpearson.com/
The Spiritual Psyche in Psychotherapy (book)
Layman meets with Martin Ucik to talk about his new book, Integral Relationship Practice. At 800 pages, and with abundant exercises and illustrations, the book is a manual for singles and couples who are interested in the theory of integral relationships, but also in the deep understanding that can only be gained through embodied practices and experiences.
From the book's description: "[Integral Relationship Practice] is for those who realize that to become fully human means to develop the capacity to be simultaneously whole in ourselves AND part of healthy, sustainable love relationships and nuclear families, who then form the foundation for thriving communities and flourishing societies. And it is for those who understand that cultural and biological evolution are intertwined—that we need to raise conscious children if we want to raise consciousness on the planet to create a better world and a peaceful, sustainable future for humanity. This manual is also intended for helping professionals who want to support their clients in co-creating healthy love relationships, and for group facilitators who feel called to lead events, workshops, and trainings in which the participants sharpen their relationships skills together with others in their local communities through experiential exercises."
Martin Ucik is the author of Integral Relationships: A Manual for Men and Sex, Purpose, Love: Couples in Integral Relationships Creating a Better World, which Ken Wilber calls “terrific,” as well as Sex Purpose Love. He now trains Integral relationship practitioners, professionals, and group facilitators, and offers private trainings and consultations for singles and couples.
Integral Relationship Practice book https://www.amazon.com/Integral-Relationship-Practice-Professionals-Facilitators/dp/B0B5KVD6DH/
Integral Relationship website https://integralrelationship.com/
Please consider supporting The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
Layman Pascal talks with author and expressive arts therapist, Sally Adnams Jones, about the integral dimensions and the transformative, healing power of creativity. How does it show up across the quadrants, and across the stages of the spiral of development? How is it related to Eros and kundalini? How are we to better cultivate and develop it, in ourselves and our children, and what are the risks of its greater expression?
Sally Adnams Jones is Director of TransformArta and has taught art education at The University of Victoria, Canada. Her PhD research explored how survivors of the HIV/AIDs pandemic in Africa transformed through their art practice. Currently she participates on Integral forums on Clubhouse, leads retreats and workshops, offers counselling and creative coaching, and is an artist and author.
Professional website http://sallyadnamsjones.com/
In this special Integral Stage episode, Layman meets with feminine empowerment and leadership teacher, and Integral Semantics facilitator, Adriana Forte, to talk about the menstrual cycle -- the ways it is misunderstood, repressed or denied; its cosmic, biological, and psychospiritual dimensions; and the power and transformation that can attend aligning more closely and consciously with its rhythms. Together they explore the dimensions and dynamics of cyclical life; the importance of attending to cycles in embodiment practice; indigenous wisdom on the menstrual cycle; the stages of reclamation of menstrual consciousness; the 'magic' and subtle states associated with the menstrual cycle; the possible forms future society might take when we learn to better align with individual and natural cycles; and much more.
Adriana has been teaching workshops on feminine empowerment and leadership for years. In the last years she has been focusing her work and studies on Adult Development and Vertical Growth. One of her main areas of interest is on the cross-over between the feminine aspect of consciousness and Adult Development: how it shows up in the later stages (as a natural bi-product of growing up) how it flowers in men and women and how it can be used to spark/deepen the process of both waking up and growing up. She has a Bachelor Degree in Communication, a Diploma in Holistic Kinesiology and in Shamanic Womancraft.
She is a coach and a qualified Integral Semantics Facilitator and is now training to become a scorer of the Stages Assessment (still unavailable in Portuguese). Her work (both with individuals and groups) is deeply influenced by Integral Theory (Wilber), Stages (O'Fallon), Action Inquiry (Torbert) and by the work of pioneers on Feminine Wisdom as Janine Parvati Baker and Jane Collings. She currently facilitates developmental retreats in Brazil.
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What is the Enneagram? Where did it come from, and what the heck happened to it?
In a special Integral Stage episode, Marshall Æon, a student of the Diamond Approach & creator of a popular online Enneagram test, sits down with Layman (who is notoriously skeptical about typologies) to discuss the origins of the Enneagram, the twists and turns of its development, the problem or hidden purpose of its watering down, some of its strongest or most useful formulations, and much more.
At the end of the talk, Marshall gives an overview of the 9 types.
Marshall's Enneagram Test https://enneagramtest.net/
Please consider supporting The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
Layman is joined by Sean Kelly to discuss his book Becoming Gaia.
They take a deep dive into the themes of the book, discussing the possibilities of considering Gaia not only as a hyperobject, but a hypersubject; the nature of the ecological and other crises confronting us at this time; the notion of planetary shamanism and the initiatory threshold our planetary crisis represents; the key ideas of Complex Thought; the gaianthropocene and the emergence of Axial Age 2.0; how to speak to children and others about the potential losses we confront; the paradoxical nature of time; the conceptual resources and gifts offered to our time by Nietzsche, Hegel, Morin, Bhaskar, and Wilber; and much more.
Sean Kelly received his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Ottawa in 1988. Before coming to CIIS, he taught religious studies at the University of Windsor, the University of Ottawa, and Carleton University (Canada). He is the author of Coming Home: The Birth and Transformation of the Planetary Era and Individuation and the Absolute: Hegel, Jung, and the Path toward Wholeness. Sean is also co-editor, with Donald Rothberg, of Ken Wilber in Dialogue: Conversations with Leading Transpersonal Thinkers and co-translator, with Roger Lapointe, of French thinker Edgar Morin's book, Homeland Earth: A manifesto for the New Millennium.
Along with his academic work, Sean has trained intensively in the Chinese internal arts (taiji, bagua, and xingyi) and has been teaching taiji since 1990. Along with his abiding interest in the work of Jung, Hegel, and Morin, his current research areas include the evolution of consciousness, integral ecologies, and transpersonal and integral theory.
Becoming Gaia https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Gaia-Threshold-Planetary-Initiation/dp/1947544284
Stuart introduces his Aliens and Artists project and discusses the inspiration behind it, and the interview then quickly turns into a conversation, as Layman and Stuart share experiences and reflections, riffing on shamanic consciousness, the nature of time, Western esotericism, Terrence McKenna and Alan Watts, encounters with UFOs and "alien intelligences," paranormal phenomena, nature mysticism, the effectiveness of hypnotherapy for accessing the unconscious and healing trauma, and much more.
STUART DAVIS is a contemporary musician, songwriter, filmmaker, and podcaster. He has been performing throughout the United States and Europe since 1993. Davis regularly works with music producer Alex Gibson, who produced his last five studio albums. In 2009, TV channel HDNet broadcast the first six-episode season of "Sex, God, Rock 'n Roll," a comedy sketch show written, directed, and hosted by Davis; a second season with Davis and co-host Kandyse McClure began airing in 2012.
Davis is a contributing member of philosopher Ken Wilber's Integral Institute, and appears as a fictionalized character in Wilber's novel Boomeritis. His single Already Free (2008) was featured as the end theme of the Showtime series I Can't Believe I'm Still Single, and was also used in the feature film Drillbit Taylor. A precursor to the HDNet series "Sex, God, Rock 'n Roll" existed in the form of a 12-part web series, The Stuart Davis Show (2007), select episodes of which were co-written with Steven Brill.
Stuart is currently the host of the Aliens and Artists podcast. Links and Resources Stuart Davis: https://www.stuartdavis.com/Aliens & Artists podcast: https://aliensandartists.podbean.com/Man Meets Mantis: https://youtu.be/Zi_8W0qCUH0The Art of Is: https://youtu.be/q3cpAS9xU8o
How do we cultivate robust, ethical, convivial human beings who have access to their full cognitive, emotional, and motivational resources? How can we better live functional, enjoyable lives, contribute to our societies' health and evolution, keep growing internally, and maximize the potentials of our best states?
Layman is joined by Integral practitioner, author, and therapist, Mark Forman. After discussing Mark's journey to becoming an integral psychotherapist, they explore the unique contributions of Integral Theory to psychology and therapeutic practice, the indispensability of reflective listening, the particular importance of states and stages, shadow work and the unconscious, dream work, the challenge of healthy development in the internet age, and much more.
Dr. Mark Forman provides psychotherapy in San Jose and online throughout California, as well as developmental consulting for individual adults worldwide. He is the founder and lead trainer of the Certified Integral Psychotherapist (CIT) Global Training Program and actively teaches and supervises both therapists and coaches interested in the direct application of Integral Theory. He is also the organizer of several previous Integral Theory Conferences, and the author of several books on integral psychology. Please consider supporting The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible!
Professional Website www.drmarkforman.com
Drawing inspiration from the Salon des Refusés, the French "exhibition of the rejected," The Integral Stage brings you Salon of the Banned. In this series, we check in with individuals who have been kicked out, de-platformed, or threatened with suppression in ostensibly advanced philosophical, spiritual, or political discussion forums, or putatively free modern communication media. In the age of cancel-culture and anti-cancel-culture, we explore the thorny questions of who should be in which conversations, and why?
In Episode 3 of Salon of the Banned, Layman Pascal welcomes systems thinker and Game B co-creator, Jim Rutt, to The Integral Stage to discuss his recent banning from Facebook. Several weeks prior to this recording, Jim and other administrators of a Game B Facebook group found their accounts suddenly suspended, without warning, explanation, or chance for appeal...until a sizable protest led to their reinstatement.
In the following conversation, Jim talks with Layman about the problematic AI technology likely responsible for these mass bannings; the inability of present-day AI to differentiate ungrounded conspiracy or hate speech from actual thinking; his choice words for Zuckerberg for deploying such indiscriminate hunter-killers; his efforts to create an alternative social media platform based on Game B principles; his history with the origins and evolution of the world wide web and the internet; his work with Jordan Hall and others to create or foster various Game B ventures and communities; his thoughts on religion, spirituality, mystical experience, and consciousness; and much more.
The Jim Rutt Show https://www.jimruttshow.com/
In episode sixteen, Layman Pascal convenes with the six witches of High Pitch -- Bonnitta Roy, Nora Bateson, Ria Baeck, Miriam Mason Martineau, Schuyler Brown, and Ece Utkucan Anderson -- to talk about their new podcast series on the Stoa. Together they feel into just what it is they are brewing in their magical dialogical cauldron, where boundaries are porous and much of what happens, happens between.
The Stoa's "High Pitch" Series https://youtu.be/YBnG_rsqOEw
In the seventh episode of the Integral Stage Authors Series, Layman Pascal is joined by Lonny Jarrett to discuss his new book, Deepening Perspectives on Chinese Medicine. The conversation is rich and wide ranging, touching on Lonny's early fascination with the Chinese classics as a child, and his concurrent educational journeys in Western science and medicine, Chinese medicine and martial arts, and entheogenic experimentation and the contemplative arts.
Together they explore Western and Eastern conceptions of health, the importance of care for the body and its organ systems in cultivating integral development, the nature of chi and the chakra system, the potential emergence of a truly integral, world medicine that integrates the strengths of East and West, and much more.
Lonny is recognized worldwide as a leading practitioner, author, scholar and teacher of East Asian medicine. Throughout his career he has been devoted to advancing the practice of this medicine. Lonny has been practicing Acupuncture and Herbology in Stockbridge, Massachusetts since 1986. He holds Master’s Degrees in Neurobiology (University of Michigan) and Acupuncture (Traditional Acupuncture Institute) and studied Contemporary Pulse Diagnosis with Dr. Leon Hammer for 10 years. Personal website https://lonnyjarrett.com/ Books https://www.spiritpathpress.com/
For the sixth episode of the Fire from Heaven series, we are joined by Frank Marrero, a long-time student of Adi Da and the curator of several web resources on Adi Da's teachings including the incomparable Beezone. Frank talks with Layman Pascal about his experiences of transmission with Adi Da, his understanding of the nature of consciousness, and some of the unique characteristics of the spiritual transmission process.
Additional Resources and Links:
Frank Marrero: http://www.frankmarrero.com/
The Beezone Library: https://www.beezone.com/
A Monkey's Tale on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Monkeys-Tale-Divine-Person-Beloved/dp/0967326591/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=A+Monkey%27s+Tale+Marrero&qid=1585389957&sr=8-1
In the second episode of this Integral Stage reboot of Point/Counterpoint, Bonnitta Roy challenges Layman Pascal again to a debate, this time on the nature and existence of free will. Inspired by Rick Repetti's writings on free will, they take up the philosophical question of determinism vs. indeterminism, and consider what possibilities might exist beyond that impasse.
Bonnitta and Layman fail pretty badly to have an actual ("side-taking") debate, but they do have a great discussion on free will in light of complexity science; Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Reich; contemplative experience; integrative metaphysics; magickal practice, and more.
In this Integral Stage reboot of Point/Counterpoint, Bonnitta Roy challenges Layman Pascal to debate the nature of nature.
When we say "human nature," do we mean something different from "nature," or not? Is there a gap between "us" and everything else?
Welcome to Liminal Point/Counterpoint, the game show where Layman does his best to try to disagree with someone and the results become... increasingly subtle.
Following their individual discussions, the Integral Ufology project convenes a group discussion with panelists Sean Esbjorn-Hargens, Stuart Davis, Chris Dierkes, Layman Pascal, & Bruce Alderman for a deeper dive into the topic.
For the first episode of our Sexuality Series, Layman Pascal talks with Paths of Transformation tantra teachers, Jon and Rose Skelton Pearson. Together, they explore a wide range of topics, including the stages of sexuality, sex as practice and conscious play, the concept of masculine-feminine polarity, working with thresholds and subtle energy, preparatory steps for tantric practice and conscious sexual relationship, and even more arousing topics than you can shake a stick at.
Rose has a background in massage therapy and also as a teacher of ‘Heart in Motion’ therapeutic dance. She began her tantric journey in 2007 and has studied with John Hawken since 2014, when she undertook a year-long training in Tantra Massage. Since that time, she has facilitated workshops both in the UK and Australasia as a teacher of the Paths of Transformation. Currently she lives in Brighton, UK, and offers workshops and sessions with her husband, Jon. J
on’s experience is a braid woven of many strands. As a UKCP Registered Psychotherapist, he trained, lectured, supervised and practiced for 20 years, from the Manchester Institute for Psychotherapy in the UK. He has practiced and taught yoga and meditation since 1983 and ran the Calderdale Yoga Centre for eight years. He has undertaken extensive trainings in Buddhism and Western Hermeticism. Active in Ken Wilber’s Integral Movement since the 1990s, he is an Associate Integral Life Coach. He has been a student of John Hawken since 2017 and is a Teacher of the Paths of Transformation, which he considers to be the most integrated, effective, and enjoyable system of psycho-spiritual development for anybody wishing to explore what it is to be a human being in the 21st Century. He brings a deep knowledge, warmth and humor to the workshops and individual sessions he offers with Rose, his wife.
Shiva Shakti Embodied Awakening
https://shivashaktiembodiedawakening.com/
For this special Integral Stage episode, Layman meets with process philosopher and theologian, Andrew Davis, to discuss the import and impact of Whitehead's thought on contemporary philosophy; his nondual (panentheistic) conception of the relationship of God and man; the priority of becoming over being; the ontological status of value; the nature of religion; the importance of contemplative practice, psychedelic experience, and the cultivation of flow states for the embodiment of process insights; process cosmology and the question of the multiverse; and much more.
Andrew M. Davis is a philosopher, theologian, and scholar of world religions. He holds B.A. in Philosophy and Theology, an M.A. in Interreligious Studies, and a Ph.D. in Religion and Process Philosophy from Claremont School of Theology (CST). He is a poet, aphorist and author or editor of four books including How I Found God in Everyone and Everywhere: An Anthology of Spiritual Memoirs (2018, with Philip Clayton); Propositions in the Making: Experiments in a Whiteheadian Laboratory (2019, with Roland Faber and Michael Halewood); Depths as Yet Unspoken: Whiteheadian Excursions in Mysticism, Multiplicity, and Divinity (2020, with Roland Faber); and Mind, Value, and Cosmos: On the Relational Nature of Ultimacy (Lexington).
For more about Andrew’s work and research interests, visit his website at www.andrewmdavis.info
Please consider supporting The Integral Stage on Patreon to make more of these conversations possible! https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
For episode 22, Layman welcomes David Fuller, the founder of Rebel Wisdom, to the Integral Stage to discuss the troubling lack of high-level discussion and informed sensemaking around charged social or foreign policy issues, even in our purported "higher discourse" communities. David leads with a rant on the contentious and often misinformed debates about Syria, and together they explore the challenges of informed and responsible sensemaking in our contemporary media environment -- where we all frequently suffer from the lack of access, time, and/or skill to meaningfully navigate our polluted and war-torn information ecologies.
Throughout the discussion, David also reviews the "journey" of Rebel Wisdom over the past several years, from an early focus on Jordan Peterson and the IDW to a broadened field of engagement within the 'meta-community,' and answers some common criticisms about the platform's conservative leanings. David Fuller is a multi-skilled journalist and filmmaker - having worked for the UK's top news programme Channel 4 News for ten years as reporter, producer and director. He was the first mainstream TV journalist to cover the renaissance of psychedelic science back in 2008, and has consistently focused on the revolutionary ideas and technologies on the fringes of the culture, and attempted to shift the cultural conversation. He began making documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4 in 2011, primarily for the Emmy award-winning series ‘Unreported World’. His documentary ‘The Invisible People’, about the plight of disabled Syrian refugees in Lebanon was shortlisted for the "Royal Television Society awards in 2015. This experience, combined with his intense interest in the evolution of ideas and philosophy (he studied philosophy at University in Manchester) – led to the birth of Rebel Wisdom – through which he and his partner, Alexander Beiner, have explored philosophical, transformational and cultural topics, making films about the problems with Sensemaking, the crisis of Meaning, and the necessity for inner growth. He also blogs frequently about politics and the inner world, and has written for publications including the Guardian and Buzzfeed.
Professional website http://davidfuller.tv/
Rebel Wisdom website https://rebelwisdom.co.uk/
In SWEDENBORG FOR A TIME BETWEEN WORLDS, Layman meets again with political advisor and pastor, Rich Tafel, this time to discuss Rich's deep personal and family connections to the Christian mystical visionary, Emanuel Swedenborg; the proto-integral nature of some of Swedenborg's teachings; the wedding of mysticism and social engagement, and the ways that Rich has tried to realize this in his own life; the challenges of working within what appears to be a dying lineage; drawing on the gifts of tradition while facing an open and ambiguous religious future; how the inner practices and experiences of his Swedenborgian path have sustained him and helped him to deal with the shortcomings and disappointments of mainstream Christendom; and much more. Rich Tafel is a transformative leader in the areas of faith, politics and social impact.
As the Managing Director of Raffa Social Capital Advisors he matches impact investors to vetted social ventures. Partnering with investors his team provides back office support, public policy and strategic coaching to social ventures. Rich is also the Director of the American Project a new Democracy Fund supported effort to bring together leading thinkers to imagine new solutions to America’s broken political system. The project is housed at Pepperdine School of Public Policy. Tafel is also pastor of Church of the Holy City in Washington DC, where he is launching a spiritual entrepreneur hub. Tafel is the founder of Log Cabin Republicans. Before moving to Washington DC, Tafel was Adolescent Health Director for the State of MA and served as Assistant Minister at Harvard’s Chapel.
Professional website https://www.richtafel.us/
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In the third episode of our Integral Authors series, Layman Pascal talks with Theo Horesh about his new book, The Fascism This Time. Theo reflects on the similarities of the rightwing populist movements sweeping the globe to earlier fascist uprisings, and explores together with Layman the integral ways we might understand their emergence and respond to the deep challenges to modern democracy that they represent.
The Fascism This Time https://www.amazon.com/Fascism-this-Time-Global-Democracy/dp/0578732939
You may have noticed that, as with "Integral" back in the day, the label "Metamodern," is a bit of contested real estate. It appears to mean something pretty specific to the cultural metamodernists, Vermeulen and van den Akker, who first applied it back in 2010 to certain emergent post-postmodern sensibilities in art and media. But does it mean the same thing to the Hanzi Freinachtian political metamodernists, or to the integrally influenced Metamodern Spirituality crowd?
In this special Integral Stage dialogue, Layman Pascal meets to speak -- and, perchance, debate -- with Metamodern cultural theorist Greg Dember about the historical emergence and cultural situatedness of the term, the validity of its accumulating associations and uses, and possible ways forward to avoid misuses of the term while still allowing for proper evolution, expansion, and development. They take time to carefully distinguish it from postmodernism, to explore a number of artworks and films that most clearly embody it, and to consider the multiple forms of spirituality to which it might give rise.
What Is Metamodernism? (by Greg Dember & Linda Ceriello) https://whatismetamodern.com
What is Metamodern? (YouTube channel) https://www.youtube.com/c/WhatIsMetamodern
After Postmodernism: Eleven Metamodern Methods in the Arts https://medium.com/what-is-metamodern/after-postmodernism-eleven-metamodern-methods-in-the-arts-767f7b646cae
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A WHEEL OF PERSPECTIVES Panel Discussion on the topic of evil and the shadow, with statements by Layman Pascal, Rev. Trevor Malkinson, Gaia Orion, Meister Wagoner von Porter (of the League of Rebel Eve), and Colin E Davis & Melissa Mari.
Cover Art: B. Alderman, public domain image run through Prisma art filter Transitional Art Meditations: Christopher Padgett Hunicutt and The 01Experience Music: The 01Experience
For further information on the panelists:
Rev. Trevor Malkinson: https://independent.academia.edu/Malkinson
The League of Rebel Eve (LORE): https://www.lorenyc.com/
Gaia Orion: https://gaiaorion.com/
Shadow Tech: https://www.shadowtechtheory.com/
The 01Experience: http://01experience.com/
Christopher Padgett Hunnicutt: https://www.artofchristopherpadgetthunnicutt.com/
Although the Liminal Web community aspires towards rooted cosmopolitanism and worldcentric values, many of our social media conversations nevertheless tend to privilege or confine themselves to a limited set of cultural perspectives and geopolitical concerns. In this new Integral Stage series, Global Voices, we would like to hear from members of our extended community who inhabit, or hail from, cultures and regions of the world that are not as frequently highlighted, and may be poorly understood, in these general dialogue spaces.
For the inaugural episode of the series, Layman sits down with integral leader and teacher, Nomali Perera, to talk about the current crisis situation in her home country of Sri Lanka, and to get her sense -- from both personal and integral perspectives -- of the history, challenges, and emergent potentials of this ancient Buddhist island nation. Nomali shares openly her disappointment about the provincialism she has encountered here in the west, even among professing worldcentric integralists, and speaks poignantly to the mixed feelings and concerns of many like her who have left their homes and "abandoned" their cultures to make their way in a new world.
Nomali Perera, MA, PCC, joined the integral world in Colorado in the early, exciting days of 2002 as a volunteer and, later, co-director of the Integral Spiritual Center at the Integral Institute. Professionally, Nomali is an executive coach, certified facilitator of Polarity Management and the Immunity to Change™ process, and is a Master Coach through Integral Coaching Canada. Currently, she’s in a year-long course in trauma-informed Compassionate Inquiry with Gabor Maté’s school.
Practical Integral website https://www.practicalintegral.com/
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In this episode of New Education Systems, Layman sits down with Brad Kershner to talk about his extensive experience working for and managing alternative and progressive schools; the strengths and unique contributions of the Waldorf method; the challenges of education in a time of media saturation and rampant disinformation; the qualities of a good teacher and student; the need to get away from "teaching to the test"; the importance of a developmental understanding for sensitive and transformative pedagogy; balancing complexity and simplicity; and much more.
Brad Kershner reads books, teaches meditation, leads a school community, and loves a lot of people. He writes and speaks about a wide range of interdependent topics, e.g. education, parenting, integral theory, metamodernism, Buddhism, human development, complexity, and sociocultural emergence. Some of his public lectures are available on YouTube. You can learn more about his work and access recordings of his guided meditations on Patreon.
Guided Meditations, Lectures, Podcast Interviews, and Updates https://www.patreon.com/bradkershner
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In THE ABS-TRACT (or, BRENT COOPER IS JESUS), Layman sits down with Brent to discuss his Abs-Tract project, the importance of critique, the alignments and tensions between Metamodernism and other adjacent communities, the "Fliminal Web," Metamodern politics and the problem with reactionaries, mindfulness and spiritual practice, and a number of Brent's recent writings. At the end of the discussion, he offers a devastating critique of Layman that leaves him bloodied, gasping for breath, and asking for more.
Brent Cooper is the Executive Director of The Abs-Tract Organization, a meta think tank and transmedia project specializing in abstraction and meta theory/ metamodernism. Abstraction is at the root of everything in life, from mental, physical, social, and material processes, spanning various fields from philosophy to art to artificial intelligence. And it is at the root of our meta-crisis of capitalism, how finance is abstracted, and politics are abstracted.
The Abs-Tract website http://abs-tract.org/
Brent Cooper's Medium page https://medium.com/@brentcooper
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For episode 18, Layman is joined by bird-woman hybrid, Philosopher Queen and Dark Renaissancer, Raven Connolly, to talk about erotica; working with darker impulses and taboo; bravery to explore, push boundaries, and constructively embrace conflict; the archetype of the Fool; power literacy, and the social manipulation of desire; adult development, sexual maturity, and Raven's own journey towards these things; male-female polarity, and the interplay of the shell and the core; embracing the Void; the moral and social consequences of unhinging sexuality from reproduction, and reproduction from biology; gender roles, and hard and soft power; the repeated refrain in Liminal Web communities of "Where are the women?"; and much more.
Raven Connolly is a socialite in a mosaic of independent intellectual milieus, ranging from Justin Murphy’s IndieThinkers, to Peter Limberg’s The Stoa. She hosts and interviews guests at The Stoa, and is currently developing a philosophy of the ovum, secrecy, and marriage.
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Music
Gurdjieff's teachings have had a significant impact on Layman's thought, but they are often mentioned more obliquely than directly in his conversations. Recently, however, several people approached Layman to talk about Gurdjieff's influence on their own work, so we recorded a few conversations, as well as conversations with a few guests on other important historical visionaries, and a mini-series began to assemble itself.
For this episode, "On the Surrealistic, Sci-Fi Masterpiece, 'Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson,'" Layman meets with long-time student of the Work, Trevor Stewart, to discuss the origins, historical value, artistic influences, and unique pedagogical properties of this challenging and enigmatic book. Although they focus throughout the conversation on the novel, this isn't just a book review. Over the course of their explorations, they open up many important and often under-appreciated aspects of Gurdjieff's life and work, and touch on how this text was written, not for its time, but for a future generation that would be better prepared for it ... perhaps our own.
LUCID CUBED https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9fEwt0FSjCZ6S8_KlNAEJQ
For episode 2 of The Dreaming Arts, Layman Pascal meets with Bruce Alderman to talk about their early, formative dream experiences; the four most common approaches to working with dreams; the qualities of an integral approach to dreams; techniques for inducing lucidity in dreams; and the nature, scope, history, and practices of the Tibetan yogas of dream and sleep.
Beginning in the 1990s, Bruce worked with and studied under Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, the author of The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep, and later offered several workshops on dream yoga in 2005 and 2007.
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For episode 1 of The Dreaming Arts, Layman Pascal meets with teacher, dream guide, and co-author of Integral Dreaming, Daniel Deslauriers, to lay some of the groundwork for this new Integral Stage series. Together they discuss Daniel's early formative experiences with dream work; his work on developing an integral approach to dreaming; dreaming as a relational practice; the cross-cultural history and multiple methods of dream work; the somatic and neurochemical dimensions of dreaming; lucid dreaming; Freudian dream analysis; the dream lives of non-human beings; dreaming as philosophy; and much more.
Daniel Deslauriers, PhD, received his doctorate (1989) in Psychology from the University of Montreal (Quebec) and conducted research at the University of Auckland (New Zealand) and the Chronopsychology Laboratory, Carleton University (Ontario). He lived in Indonesia and has studied the religion and sacred arts of Bali, and trained in Gamelan music and Balinese dance.
He was co-founder of the Montreal Center for the Study of Dreams. Daniel co-authored Le rêve: sa nature, sa fonction et une methode d'analyse (P.U.Q., 1987), has published articles on epistemology and narrative research, and and has co-authored (with Fariba Bogzaran) Integral Dreaming (SUNY Press, 2012). His professional interests in consciousness studies include: traditional and contemporary approaches to dreams and imagination, altered states of consciousness, spiritual intelligence, and integral psychology. He is also a practitioner and teacher of Unity in Motion, a bodymind integrative practice.
Integral Dreaming https://www.amazon.com/Integral-Dreaming-Holistic-Approach-Studies/dp/1438442386/
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Bruce and Layman assemble with other Austin Emerge attendees to reflect on their experiences, learnings, appreciations & criticisms, and thoughts for moving forward. Joining the discussion are Roger Walsh, Ph.D.; Ivo Mensch; Nomali Perera; and Ēlen Awalom.
In Re/thinking Religion, a new Integral Stage series, John Vervaeke joins Bruce Alderman and Layman Pascal to explore possible points of contact and confluence between their respective approaches to religion and spirituality. For the fifth episode, they reflect on an ecological reading and extension of Nietzsche, the nature of virtue and the virtues needed for navigating the meta-crisis, and the kinds of vision and practice systems necessary to contain and process the trauma of our grief for the world.
Jim Rutt joins Layman Pascal on The Integral Stage to talk about his recent essay, Musk and Moderation.
Does Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter represent a threat or opportunity for social media and the freedom of speech? That isn't clear yet, but Jim Rutt has some advice for Musk, and he discusses it with Layman in a convivial, insult-filled exploration of the challenges of free speech in radically pluralist environments; the new oligarchs and their threat to democratic values; social media and the evolution of public squares; "decorum" moderation versus "point-of-view" moderation; opportunities to move towards GameB values; incentivizing companies to better caretake and preserve free discussion spaces; and much more.
"Musk and Moderation" essay: https://quillette.com/2022/04/27/musk-and-moderation/
Jim Rutt is the former CEO of Network Solutions. The New York Times once referred to him as “the Internet’s bad boy” due to his reputation for creative mischief. He sold Network Solutions at the peak of the Dot Com boom and then went into scientific research. Jim has been affiliated with the Santa Fe Institute since 2002, serving as Chairman from 2009 thru 2012. Currently he runs the Jim Rutt Show podcast, and is the gun-totin' godfather of the Game B movement. Additional Links and Resources
Jim Rutt Show Podcast https://www.jimruttshow.com/
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For the fourth episode, they turn from reflection on grieving the death of God and the loss of the transcendental sacred, to grieving the state of the world and the impending loss of the immanent sacred. They discuss Nietzsche's insights into the pervasiveness of affective nihilism in modern cultures, and the strengths and shortcomings of his prescriptions; the problem of "god surrogacy," in a world that has lost its center; the dynamics of a culture of make-believe and the impediments to facing collective cultural shadow; the process of grieving the state of the world and our implication in many of its crises, environmental and otherwise; the radical challenge of moving beyond anthropocentrism in our social organization and self conception; and much more.
For the third episode, we continue our discussion of griefwork and reflect on the meaning of the "death of God," the factors that have forestalled many in the modern world from properly grieving this loss, and what such a grief process would look like.
Is Integral Theory a "poisoned chalice" -- wondrously made in some regards, but poisoned from within? Has it failed in its promise and become unusable? Bruce and Layman sit down with Daniel Görtz, one half of the metamodern avatar, Hanzi Freinacht, to discuss both the strengths of integral theory, but also the criticisms that have driven a number of people to abandon it -- whether in rejecting it altogether, or in forming counter projects (Hanzi's Metamodernism, various Integral 2.0 efforts), or just in the gradual dispersion of the "integral diaspora." What is the future of the integral movement? Will it fade in influence going forward, or is its full promise still yet to come?
Layman is joined by Jason Medland to talk about the wisdom and insight from both software engineering and long-running Western esoteric traditions, such as the Free Masons, for organizing effectively, preventing system stagnation, maintaining high-level sensemaking and moral commitment, promoting the continued growth of members, and much more. Jason Medland is an OpenSource Software/Systems Architect, Free Mason, firearms and combat sport enthusiast, a Natural Born Psychonaught, and a Meanderthal.
Jason's Medium page: https://jasonmedland.medium.com/
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In Re/thinking Religion, a new Integral Stage series, John Vervaeke joins Bruce Alderman and Layman Pascal to explore possible points of contact and confluence between their respective approaches to religion and spirituality. For the second episode, we discuss the distinction between absolute and relative in traditional and modern metaphysics, the Two Worlds mythology, and the Ascender and Descender paths, and we consider some historical and contemporary approaches to reconceiving their relations.
In the second half of the dialogue, we turn towards the emotional or 'felt' dimensions of a fundamental shift in perspectives, including David Michael Levin's notions of 'crying for a vision' and gelassenheit as the resolution of dualism; and we begin to touch on the importance for a Religion that is Not a Religion of 'moving into the lack' and fully grieving the death of God.
John Vervaeke is a cognitive scientist, a professor of psychology at Toronto University, and the creator of the popular YouTube series, "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis." "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis" Playlist:
In this episode of New Education Systems, Layman is joined by Bonnitta Roy to talk about her new experiment in serial, transformative education: The Pop-Up School. They discuss her inspirations and intentions for the school; her life-long history as an educator; the shortcomings of many current educational models; her ideal transformational curriculum; and the importance of education for the senses, the stages of the self, grief and 'dark nights,' and much more.
Bonnitta Roy is a process philosopher, the founder and president of Alderlore Insight Center, an associate editor for Integral Review, and a consciousness studies and transpersonal psychology professor at The Graduate Institute. She is also the inspiration and instructor behind The Magellan Courses and the Pop-Up School.
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In this special Integral Stage episode, Layman Pascal is joined by Cadell Last to inquire into the concept of self-relating negativity; the place of lack and the 'gap' in our thinking; the importance of Hegelian and Zizekian perspectives for emerging integrative and metamodern worldviews; the status and problem of the "One"; the question of suffering and our relationship to psychopathology and the symptom; Osho, mysticism and psychospiritual development; and much more. For, as Hegel observed, "The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk."
Cadell Last is a philosopher (Ph.D.) with an interest in anthropology and psychoanalysis, and the author of Global Brain Singularity, and Sex, Masculinity, God.
Philosophy Portal https://www.philosophyportal.online
Home page https://cadelllast.com
YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCtCqYQFPhnU1OnHPveEnYw
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John Bunzl joins Layman to take a deeper look into Simpol, following his Integral Stage presentation for the Eutopia series. What was the origin of the Simpol idea? How does it relate to evolutionary process? How can it serve worldcentric and healthy nationalist interests simultaneously? How does it manifest in all four quadrants? How can it serve global health and flourishing, without triggering concerns about the over-reach or oppressive dynamics of a 'one world government'?
Bunzl is a global political activist and businessman. In 2000, he founded the Simultaneous Policy (Simpol) campaign, a way for citizens to use their votes to drive politicians towards global cooperation. It has supporters in over 100 countries and enjoys the support of a growing number of Members of Parliament around the world. He has authored or co-authored a number of books including The Simpol Solution, Monetary Reform – Making it Happen!, People-centred Global Governance – Making it Happen!, and Global Domestic Politics. He has published numerous articles on global governance in the Journal of Integral Theory & Practice. He has lectured widely, including to The Schumacher Society, The World Trade Organisation, The Lucis Trust, and various universities.
The Simpol Website: https://www.simpol.org/
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https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
For episode 15 of LOVE THE SYSTEM, Layman is joined by Welf von Hören to talk about his work co-founding the company, and launching the app, Potential, which aims to transform users' phones to help them unlock better choices. Together they explore the potential for technology to help individuals strengthen agency, set and keep intentions, outgame the attention economy, and interface with AI to make omni-win decisions. How can social media, wisely used, help individuals and communities develop and transform? What is the role of profiling, and how can already-pervasive data collection be refined and improved, and turned towards individuals' and communities' health and benefit? For Integral, GameB, and Metamodern communities, what is the right relationship to money, and how can these communities be empowered to really impact the world?
Welf von Hören is the co-Founder and CEO of Potential company, which produces an app to transform users' phones to help them unlock better choices. He is an applied philosopher, product designer, and software engineer. He studied at CODE University of Applied Sciences, trained with Human Systems, and co-hosts Humane Tech Berlin.
Personal website https://welf.co/
Potential app https://potential.app/
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Layman is joined by Krishna Gauci, a spiritual teacher and a disciple of HWL Poonja, to discuss the traditional and contemporary value of satsang; his experience and understanding of the nature and dynamics of spiritual transmission; the qualities needed in students and teachers to amplify and most benefit from satsang or other 'transmissive' contexts and encounters; healthy, unhealthy, and difficult student-teacher relationships; and much more.
Krishna Gauci was born in Monterey, California, and was raised in New York City. Thirty-four years ago, he moved to the Pacific Northwest. He presently lives in Portland with his wife, Vivian. While pursuing his spiritual endeavors, he has worked as an auto assembly line worker, a New York City taxi cab driver, a cabinetmaker, and a bus driver. Krishna has a background in the practice of Buddhist Meditation and has been a devotee of the Spiritual Master HWL Poonja (Papaji) since 1993. He has been a part of (what is now) the Trillium Awakening Community since 1998, and is a founding member of the Trillium Awakening Teachers Circle and the Institute of Awakened Mutuality. He has been holding Satsang since 2000.
Krishna Satsang website http://www.krishnasatsang.com/
Trillium Awakening website https://trilliumawakening.org/
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Layman is joined by Charlotte Cecil and Sophie Allen, the founders of Thrivespring, an organization dedicated to fostering community resilience and disaster preparedness. Layman introduces his new Ontario Depth Adaptation (ODA) project, and then discusses with Charlotte and Sophie the genesis and mission of their Thrivespring project, and the practical, political, and psychological dynamics of preparedness for an uncertain future and the likelihood of systemic disruption or collapse.
Charlotte Cecil studied emergency management at George Brown College in Toronto, Canada. She has been a volunteer responder with various response and recovery groups, and worked for many years as a security consultant in the UK. Following a life-threatening incident in her early 20s, she became interested in emergency preparedness and security, which evolved into a passion for community resilience. She strongly believes that communities which engage in inclusive resilience-building help create safer, healthier and more cohesive societies.
Sophie Allen studied Climate Change, Development and Policy at the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, and Environmental Hazards and Disaster Management at Kingston University, London. Her professional experience includes disaster risk reduction and response, sustainable development and volunteer management. Having been involved in a wide range of community projects, Sophie is continually inspired by what people can achieve when they work together toward a common goal.
Thrivespring website https://thrivespring.com/
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In Re/thinking Religion, a new Integral Stage series, John Vervaeke joins Bruce Alderman & Layman Pascal to explore possible points of contact and confluence between their respective approaches to religion and spirituality. For this inaugural episode, we feel into some of the commonalities and differences between Integral Postmetaphysical Spirituality and Integral Transformative Practice, and John's "religion that is not a religion" and his work around developing an ecology of practices suitable for addressing the meaning crisis. We touch on a number of related themes: the creative deployment of mythic or literary figures, from Cthulhu and zombies, to the Centaur, the Minotaur, and the khora; the importance of wrestling with existential and epistemological limit conditions, and the role of ambiguity in higher forms of rationality; the relation of non-theism to classical theism and atheism; the history of integrative practices, and the 'traps' in conventional practice that can thwart balanced development; and much more. J
ohn Vervaeke is a professor of psychology at Toronto University and creator of the popular YouTube series "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis."
"Awakening from the Meaning Crisis" Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
Voices with Vervaeke: Metamodern Wisdom about Religion with Layman Pascal: https://youtu.be/bPy6W-c5_9Y
Vervaeke and Hall Begin to Design the Religion That is Not a Religion: https://youtu.be/nl48eFZGRq8
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In this episode of new Education Systems, Layman Pascal talks to Jim Rutt about potential pathways to Game B models of education. Jim Rutt is the former CEO of Network Solutions. The New York Times once referred to him as “the Internet’s bad boy” due to his reputation for creative mischief. He sold Network Solutions at the peak of the Dot Com boom and then went into scientific research. Jim has been affiliated with the Santa Fe Institute since 2002, serving as Chairman from 2009 thru 2012. Currently he runs the Jim Rutt Show podcast, and is the gun-totin' godfather of the Game B movement. Links and Resources
Jim Rutt Show Podcast https://www.jimruttshow.com/
What is Game B video https://youtu.be/HL5bcgpprxY
The Story of Game B video https://youtu.be/Glgcl9AVWbA
Layman is joined by Creston Davis, Ph.D., to discuss his innovate, blockchain-modeled higher education project, The Global Center for Advanced Studies (GCAS). They discuss the genesis and intentions for the project; the problems of the debt-strapping of so many students, and the overwork of faculty, under our current system; the promise of P2P, decentralized approaches to education going forward; the nature of truly liberative education, and the need for the promotion of post-ideological, critical thought; the potential promise and problems of the Austin University project; the difference between knowledge and wisdom, and possible approaches to the cultivation of wisdom in higher education; and much more.
DISCLAIMER: Regarding Creston’s statement at 3:21 that his students reported to him their frustrations with having so much student debt while being underemployed. this is not to be taken as all of Rollins’ graduates but only the ones that talked to Creston about this situation. In other words, this statement does not reflect graduates of Rollins but only the graduates that spoke about their frustrations with Creston. Creston Davis, (Ph.D. University of Virginia, MTS Duke University) is the founder and director of The Global Center for Advanced Studies (GCAS) and the Chancellor and CEO of GCAS College Dublin. Creston was promoted to Associate Professor at Rollins College (2012) and has published books with The MIT Press, Columbia and Duke University Press. He is the creator of and co-edits the Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics and Culture series, an academic book series published by Columbia University Press. He currently researches future consciousness, sustainability, and advanced technologies.
The Global Center for Advanced Studies http://globaladvancedstudies.org
GCAS College Dublin https://gcas.ie/
Integral Stage on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/theintegralstage
Layman is joined by Rich Tafel, a conservative, gay, integrally informed and mystically inclined Swedenborgian pastor and Washington political operative, to talk about communitarian conservatism, the pragmatic dimensions of post-postmodern political change, the spiritual dimension of the American zeitgeist, the opportunities for a hybrid of healthy progressive and conservative values that just might be able to grow beyond the deadlock of polarized and stagnant modernity, and much more.
Rich Tafel is a transformative leader in the areas of faith, politics and social impact. As the Managing Director of Raffa Social Capital Advisors he matches impact investors to vetted social ventures. Partnering with investors his team provides back office support, public policy and strategic coaching to social ventures. Rich is also the Director of the American Project a new Democracy Fund supported effort to bring together leading thinkers to imagine new solutions to America’s broken political system. The project is housed at Pepperdine School of Public Policy. Tafel is also pastor of Church of the Holy City in Washington DC, where he is launching a spiritual entrepreneur hub. Tafel is the founder of Log Cabin Republicans. Before moving to Washington DC, Tafel was Adolescent Health Director for the State of MA and served as Assistant Minister at Harvard’s Chapel.
Professional website https://www.richtafel.us/
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In the early 2000s, Ken Wilber began to publish excerpts from his long-awaited follow-up to Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, tentatively titled "Kosmic Karma and Creativity" or "Sex, Karma, Creativity." In it he was no longer writing, as he said, for the general public; he was writing for serious students of his vision. That version of a promised second volume of the Kosmos Trilogy never appeared, however, and the excerpts (A, B, C, D, and G) have remained our only tantalizing glimpse of what promised to be a postmetaphysical tour de force. In their new Integral Stage series, Reading the Kosmos Trilogy Excerpts, Bruce and Layman will take a deep dive into these five thought-provoking and in many ways revolutionary documents, not only to give them some overdue attention and engagement, but to highlight them also for their prescience and relevance to many of the issues and challenges we confront in the third decade of the 21st Century.
We start with Excerpt A: An Integral Age at the Leading Edge, which discusses an emerging integrative tipping point in the culture across multiple fields; a reading of the relational and causal dynamics of the four quadrants through the lenses of Whitehead's prehensive unification and Sheldrake's morphic resonance; revolutionary integral pluralism and an AQAL reframing of Marx; the dialectic of facts and interpretations; and the promise of integral methodological pluralism for promoting transdisciplinarity and deepening holistic vision and practice.
A: AN INTEGRAL AGE AT THE LEADING EDGE
Excerpt A: An Integral Age at the Leading Edge (kenwilber.com)
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For episode 10 of the LOVE THE SYSTEM series, Layman is joined by Dr. Marc Gafni, the co-founder of the Center for Integral Wisdom and the author of multiple books and essays on integrative spirituality and spiritual activism. Marc presents his vision of what a planetary politics could and should be, and together they explore the question of AI and the enormous challenges manipulative algorithms pose not only to informed voting, but to sensemaking in general; the emergence of techno-feudalism; the problems with voting protocols rooted in rivalrous dynamics, and the possibilities for liquid democracy or a synergistic democracy; the viability and role of nation states in a globally interconnected and interdependent society; the dynamics of intimacy, and the importance of shared first principles and a shared story; and much more.
Dr. Marc Gafni is a visionary thinker, social activist, passionate philosopher, and author of ten books. He is the co-founder of The Center for Integral Wisdom, and a rabbinic lineage holder in Bible, Talmud, and Kabbalah. He self-describes as a “citizen” of both Integral World Spirituality and classical Hebrew practice. He has been an editor of the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice on issues of Integral spirituality and a faculty member of J.F.K. University. In 2014, Dr. Gafni co-initiated the Success 3.0 Summit and Rise Up movie, with John Mackey and Kate Maloney whose method and movement is to bring together key thought leaders and change-agents to collaboratively evolve a bold new Integral vision of Success, rooted in the entrepreneurial values of Wake Up, Grow Up, Show Up, and Evolutionary Love.
Professional Website https://www.marcgafni.com/
The Center for Integral Wisdom https://centerforintegralwisdom.org/
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In this episode of the Metamodels series, Bruce and Layman are joined by Ken Wilber, one of the greatest metatheorists of the past century, and a primary inspiration for many of us on this channel. Armed with vision-logic machetes, Bruce and Layman take a trek into the Wilberness to explore the guiding drive or call behind Ken's metatheoretical work for the past 50 years; his thoughts on what he would be working on now if he was just launching his career; his understanding of the difference between sense-making and meaning-making in relation to the meta-crisis; the nature and scope of cognition, and the role of 'relationality' in his AQAL model; how to cultivate communities of integrity, and navigate the culture wars; his perspective on the paranormal and subtle energies; what the Integral community should do to continue thriving in his absence, whenever that day eventually comes; and much more. Ken Wilber, a visionary thinker of inspired genius, is the developer of an integral “theory of everything” that embraces the truths of all the world’s great spiritual, scientific, and philosophical traditions. He is the most widely translated academic writer in America, with 25 books translated into some 30 foreign languages.
Ken Wilber currently lives in Denver, Colorado, and is still active as a philosopher, author, and teacher, with all of his major publications still in print. Often referred to as the "Einstein of consciousness studies," Ken Wilber is a preeminent scholar of the Integral stage of human development. Ken Wilber is also the founder of the Integral Institute, which is the first organization fully dedicated to advancement and application of the Integral Approach in relation to contemporary global issues. It was formed in collaboration with over 200 scholars and experts, specializing in education, politics, business, medicine, psychology, spirituality, as well as, law and criminal justice.
Integral Life website https://integrallife.com/
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Bruce Alderman, Layman Pascal &Gregg Henriques continue their trialogue on the meaning and promise of a sacred or sophianic naturalism for our time. In part three of the discussion, they take a deep dive into the topic of shamanism -- considering the nature and function of the shaman historically, in contemporary cultural and psychotherapeutic expressions, and as an archetype for the kind of transcultural, metapsychological wisdom figure we might need to respond adequately to the meta-crisis.
Bruce Alderman, Layman Pascal, & Gregg Henriques continue their trialogue on the meaning and promise of a sacred or sophianic naturalism for our time. In this second episode, they reflect on the relevance of insights from "The Elusive I" & "An 'I' for an Elusive I" discussions for this project, and the relation of John Vervaeke's and Gregg's models to evolutionary spirituality; the meaning and significance of 'sacred' in sacred naturalism; the notion of sacred materialism or 'matarealism'; Gregg's justification systems theory and Kierkegaardian or Zen trans-justificatory stages of development; the importance and nature of centauric development, and the contrast of the centaur (or satyr) and the minotaur; guidelines for a sacred naturalist education; and much more.
Layman is joined by Forrest Landry, philosopher of Immanent Metaphysics, a great lover of trinities, a possible mentat, and through his work on human assembly and ephemeral group processes, among other things, a serious contributor to both the theory and practice of more agile, more benevolent, and more satisfying group behavior. In their conversation, they focus on some of the core concepts of human assembly and ephemeral group process, and then broaden the lens to reflect on other topics related to the meaning crisis, spirituality, attention to the wild fringes of our knowledge systems, and much more.
Forrest Landry is a philosopher, writer, researcher, scientist, engineer, craftsman, and teacher focused on metaphysics, the manner in which software applications, tools, and techniques influence the design and management of very large scale complex systems, and the thriving of all forms of life on this planet. His research interests and activities generally center on questions and concerns in three main related areas: 1, the manner and degree to/by which product and systems design influences culture and ecology; 2, an exploration of the nature of the interface between the organic and the inorganic, particularly as realized in the relationship between concept and computation; and 3, the manner and models by which effective personal and social governance could potentially be achieved.
Immanent Metaphysics
mflb.com/uvsm_8/index_uvsm_5.html
Human Systems
www.magic-flight.com/pub/uvsm_1/sgrp_small_group_2.pdf
Layman welcomes author, entrepreneur, and psychometric AI pioneer, Avi Tuschman, to talk about the pollution of the knowledge ecology through rampant dis- and misinformation, and how Wikipedia might be used as a model for bringing greater integrity to our social media knowledge commons.
Avi Tuschman, Ph.D., is an evolutionary anthropologist, an expert on the hidden roots of political orientation, and the author of Our Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us. He began his career in politics as the youngest advisor in the government palace in Lima, Peru. While serving as the senior writer to Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006), Tuschman produced numerous articles and speeches designed to shape public opinion. In 2009, Tuschman joined hands with Toledo and seventeen other former presidents to co-write a regional policy agenda on democratic governance. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon lauded the document and called it historically unprecedented. Avi is also a Stanford StartX entrepreneur and a pioneer in the field of Psychometric AI.
Rosenbaum's Magical Entity: How to Reduce Misinformation on Social Media ourpoliticalnature.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Rosenbaums-Magical-Entity_How-to-Reduce-Misinformation-on-Social-Media_by-Avi-Tuschman_August-2020.pdf
Professional Website http://ourpoliticalnature.com/
Layman is joined by evolutionary enlightenment teacher, Andrew Cohen.
Andrew recounts his early experiences with his teacher, H.W.L. Poonja, and he explores with Layman the questions of what factors might serve to amplify transmission in certain people or places; the nature and role of subtle energy in relation to transmission dynamics; transmission in intersubjective or group contexts; the role of pomp and mythopoetic symbology in postmodern and metamodern transmission contexts; evolutionary enlightenment and the evolutionary impulse; the relationship dynamics of enlightened teachers with one another, and what might be done to overcome competitive ego dynamics and foster greater collaboration; Andrew's experiences with American Baul spiritual teacher, Lee Lozowick; and much more.
Andrew Cohen is an American-born, internationally known integral spiritual teacher and writer, and the founder of Evolutionary Enlightenment. He has been teaching meditation for over three decades, and created the magazine, What is Enlightenment? -- one of the most successful publications ever in its genre. His teaching work grapples with the challenges of bringing the revelation of enlightenment to a contemporary Western audience, integrating postmodern cultural and scientific understanding with an original and sophisticated non-dual philosophy. After his organization, EnlightenNext, dissolved in 2013, he went on sabbatical for several years, but now has returned to teaching and is leading an online spiritual community called Manifest Nirvana. Links and Resources
https://www.andrewcohen.com/
https://www.manifest-nirvana.com/
Layman and Bruce continue their trialogue with Alexander Bard, this time focusing in Nietzsche and nihilism -- the types of nihilism and its stages; its role in paradigm transition; its relationship to cynicism and enlightened false consciousness; the roles of the trickster, priest, and chief; Dionysian vs. Cybelian sensibilities; sutric vs. tantric orientations; transformation in light of the dynamics of process and event; and much more. Alexander Bard is a Swedish author, lecturer, artist, songwriter, music producer, TV personality, religious and political activist, and one of the founders of the Syntheist religious movement alongside his co-author Jan Söderqvist.
Bruce Alderman sits down with Lee Nichol to discuss some of the intricacies of David Bohm's work. In our broader integrative meta-community, and here on The Integral Stage as well, there has been a lot of concern recently with what John Vervaeke calls the 'meaning crisis.' Back in the late 70s and 80s, dimensions of this crisis were already quite apparent to a number of thinkers, from David Bohm and Krishnamurti, to Fritjof Capra, Joanna Macy, Ken Wilber, Henryk Skolimowski, and others. David Bohm's work is especially consonant with John Vervaeke's project. From his position as a scientist, a quantum physicist in his case rather than a cognitive scientist, Bohm began to reflect on, and attempt to address, the breakdown in meaning he was witnessing -- the fragmentations in consciousness and culture that were leading to untold, and perhaps largely unnecessary, conflict and suffering in the world. And like Vervaeke, for Bohm, one of the primary ways forward -- toward the cultivation of greater wisdom and insight -- was through the practice of dialogue. Not just regular conversation, but a deeply somatically rooted process of inquiry and transjective encounter. From fairly early on in his work on dialogue, Bohm was joined by Lee Nichol, a teacher at one of Krishnamurti's schools, and a deep thinker in his own right. Over the years, Lee helped Bohm to refine and implement the practice of dialogue, and since Bohm's death, he has attempted to take the practice further -- most recently, through exploration of, and experiments with, Bohm's notion of holomovement or the holoflux. In the discussion that follows, we will get into just what Bohm meant by holoflux, and how it relates to the process of dialogue, and to the deep transformative work needed to begin to address the roots of our present meaning crisis.
Entering Bohm's Holoflux free e-book Entering Bohm’s Holoflux by Lee Nichol - The Pari Center
Beyond Bohm: Contemplation and Creativity course Beyond Bohm: Contemplation and Creativity - The Pari Center
For the seventh episode of the FIRE FROM HEAVEN series, Saniel Bonder and Linda Groves-Bonder return for a follow-up dialogue with Layman, this time to discuss an upcoming book, and then to explore the concept of spiritual democracy; the place and dynamics of transmission in a democratized spiritual context; the importance of embodiment and ecological awareness in developing or emerging spiritual traditions; the cultivation of collaborative mutuality among spiritual teachers and adepts, not just among followers; and much more.
Saniel and Linda: http://www.sanielandlinda.com/
Free intro video, The Heart and Waking Down in Mutuality http://www.humansuninstitute.com/the-...
Free daily ‘Unshakable Joy Immersion’ meditations on Saniel's Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/saniel.bonder
Layman Pascal and Bruce Alderman offer some riffs and reflections on John Vervaeke, Gregg Henriques, and Christopher Mastropietro's excellent 12-part dialogos on the nature and function of the self, "The Elusive I." What kind of language can mediate between objective models and subjective experiences of the self, between science and clinical practice? What is the dance between the elusiveness of the I and anatman, or the emptiness of the self? How does the model of the self in The Elusive I relate to the models developed in transpersonal, integral, and esoteric psychologies? What can Kierkegaard teach us about the nonduality of the self, and what are its farther reaches of development? What is the role of the centaur in developing character? Under the pressure of so many conditioning forces in culture, how might we be served by practices of self-transgression as well as self-transcendence? Layman and Bruce consider these questions and more in developing a model of the self as a self-approximating hypersubject, a prepositional wild knot, an autopoietic living system, modulated dialogically, and described in a manner that is open both to naturalistic psychology and deep participatory spirituality...
The Elusive I - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Fnmp6UVafM
Layman welcomes Andrés Bernal, a lecturer at CUNY Queens College, to discuss Modern Monetary Theory -- how he became interested in it, its major claims, its main proponents and detractors, and what it would take to begin to put it in action. Andrés discusses his work with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; the development and implementation of the Green New Deal; the potential for South American countries to lead the way in monetary and economic reform; the role of AQAL, existential philosophy, and spiritual practice in his activism and the formation of his ideas; and much more. Andrés was born in Bogota, Colombia and immigrated to the United States as a child. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley with a focus on Existentialism, Political Economy, and Social Theory; and a Master of Arts from the University of San Diego's School of Leadership and Educational Sciences with a specialization in group learning and development and organizational leadership under the mentoring of renowned scholar-practitioner Zachary Green of Group Relations International. Andrés has over a decade's worth of experience in youth leadership development and community building and serves as the Director of Political Education for the Young Progressives of America. In the Summer of 2017, Andrés began supporting the Congressional campaign of former colleague Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a policy advisor and organizer. His work facilitated the incorporation of the Federal Jobs Guarantee policy onto the official campaign platform and helped in the vetting process of various academic resources. Alexandria would go on to become the youngest woman in history to be elected to the United States Congress. Currently, Andrés resides in New York City where he is a Lecturer of Urban Studies at CUNY Queens College and Doctoral student at The New School For Public Engagement, Division of Policy Management and Environment. His research focuses on the Green New Deal as a site of political communication and policy analysis. Andrés is a leading voice and proponent associated with the heterodox school of economic thought known as Modern Monetary Theory. He is a Research Fellow at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Missouri Kansas City Department of Economics.
https://www.andres-bernal.com/
Layman, Bruce, and Gregg Henriques convene for part one of a long-form dialogue on the meaning and promise of a sacred or sophianic naturalism for our time. In this first episode, they explore some provisional framings of sacred naturalism, from Integral and UTOK perspectives; the place of consciousness in a sacred naturalist account; the tree, coin, and garden elements of UTOK; the importance of Dionysian as well as Apollonian approaches to the topic; ecological ethics and embodied practices; and much more.
In this episode of the Integral Stage's Fire from Heaven series, Layman continues to explore the nature, significance, perils and possibilities of "spiritual transmission" -- this time with Waking Down in Mutuality teacher-transmitters, Saniel Bonder and Linda Groves-Bonder.
http://www.sanielandlinda.com/
In this episode of The Future Faces of Spirit, Andrew Cohen joins Bruce Alderman & Layman Pascal for a trialogue on his pioneering efforts in developing an integrative, evolutionary spirituality that is responsive to the unique challenges of our times.
Andrew is candid about the successes and shortcomings of his earlier work with the EnlightenNext community, and focuses in our conversation here on working productively with the genuine insights, breakthroughs, and lessons learned over the past 30 years, emphasizing the ongoing importance of spiritual awakening, the nature of intersubjective nonduality, the challenges of our contemporary meaning crisis, the indispensability of clear intention and earnestness in transformative practice, and the value of an evolutionary understanding and a metaphysics of becoming for engaging with the world instead of pursuing a mystical retreat from it.
Andrew Cohen is an American-born, internationally known integral spiritual teacher and writer, and the founder of Evolutionary Enlightenment. He has been teaching meditation for over three decades, and created the magazine, What is Enlightenment?, one of the most successful publications ever in its genre. His teaching work grapples with the challenges of bringing the revelation of enlightenment to a contemporary Western audience, integrating postmodern cultural and scientific understanding with an original and sophisticated non-dual philosophy. After his organization, EnlightenNext, dissolved in 2013, he went on sabbatical for several years, but now has returned to teaching and is leading an online spiritual community called Manifest Nirvana.
https://www.andrewcohen.com
https://www.manifest-nirvana.com/
For the Integral Stage Author Series, Layman is joined by Lonny Jarrett to discuss his new book, Deepening Perspectives on Chinese Medicine.
The conversation is rich and wide-ranging, touching on Lonny's early fascination with the Chinese classics as a child, and his concurrent educational journeys in Western science and medicine, Chinese medicine and martial arts, and entheogenic experimentation and the contemplative arts. Together they explore Western and Eastern conceptions of health, the importance of care for the body and its organ systems in cultivating integral development, the nature of chi and the chakra system, the potential emergence of a truly integral, world medicine that integrates the strengths of East and West, and much more.
Lonny is recognized worldwide as a leading practitioner, author, scholar & teacher of East Asian medicine. Throughout his career, he has been devoted to advancing the practice of this medicine. Lonny has been practicing Acupuncture and Herbology in Stockbridge, Massachusetts since 1986. He holds Master’s Degrees in Neurobiology (University of Michigan) and Acupuncture (Traditional Acupuncture Institute) and studied Contemporary Pulse Diagnosis with Dr. Leon Hammer for 10 years.
https://lonnyjarrett.com/
Layman and Bruce enter into a trialogue on mandalas & mandalic thinking -- with contemporary syntheist philosopher, author & driving force between the Intellectual Deep Web, Alexander Bard. This was an emergent topic from our original interview with Alexander for the Future Faces of Spirit series.
To shake things up a little on The Integral Stage, we are dropping down a few chakras to explore all the ins and outs of awakened sexuality, conscious relationship, and sensuously embodied spiritual practice. For the 9th episode of the Sexuality Series, sexuality and relationship coach, Pamela Joy, joins Layman Pascal to talk about desire & desire discrepancy; the importance of pleasure; working with pleasure pathways; experimentation; the nature and nurture of sexual preferences; shame, internal consent, and permission; and much more.
https://www.downtothere.com/
The Integral Stage has done several interviews with Gregg Henriques (also Layman & Bruce have both been guests on Gregg's podcast) -- generally focusing on his model of psychology and his more general attempt to produce a unified theory of knowledge (UTOK). This time Layman and Gregg sit down to explore the concept of interpersonal resonance, the deepening of human and emotional relationships within the broader spaces of integrative metatheory communities & the ways we might be able to blend more deeply.
In this episode of the Integral Stage's "Future Faces of Spirit" series, Layman & Bruce sit down with Spanish transpersonal psychologist and participatory philosopher Jorge Ferrer to discuss altered states, entities, sexuality and methods for assimilating peak experiences.
The Integral Stage's "Metapodcast" series focuses on podcasting podcaster, hosting hosting & exploring the people who are trying to bring forth higher, deeper & more transformative perspectives through online medium. My first conversation with Jim Rutt (former CEO of Network Solutions, former chairman of the Santa Fe Institute) focused on his ban from facebook and the problems surrounding higher complexity discussions and low-complexity algorithms. In this second chat, we explore the alternative social network he's put together for the "Game B" community and the stages and facets of the possible future that sees unfolding.
https://www.jimruttshow.com/
This is from The Integral Stage's "Love the System" series -- devoted to what we call the Lower Right Quadrant. That means algorithms, justice, collective intelligence, protocols, procedures, methods, networks, societies, voting systems, economics, etc. In this episode Layman Pascal sits down with Brian Robertson the founder of the Holacracy protocol for redesigning workspaces and organizations into more intelligent, more distributed systems that bypass the problems of both "authority" and "consensus."
holacracy.org
This is a brief promo we created for our YouTube channel, The Integral Stage, to mark its two-year anniversary, and now to launch also our new podcasting adventure!