To download these free samples, and many more, please go to the Integral Naked Podcast!

Neale Donald Walsch and Ken Wilber

Conversations Between Two Faces of God.  Part 1.  Making Space for Emergence.

Neale Donald Walsch, writer of the Conversations With God series, discusses the need help create "safe spaces" for each other—not only to support those already on the path toward their fullest potential, but so people who may still be "in the closet" in regard to their spirituality can recognize the fact that their higher intuitions are real, that growth is possible, and that conversations with God are anything but uncommon....

Who:  Neale Donald Walsch is a modern day spiritual messenger who's nine Conversations With God books and sixteen additional books on a contemporary understanding of God have touched millions of lives around the globe.  He is also the founder of Humanity's Team, a spiritual movement dedicated to "a civil rights movement for the soul."

Summary:  This is a dialogue of inspiration and awakening.  This is an exploration of what it means to awaken to one's True Nature, and how one expresses that understanding—because it is the action following enlightened realization that has an impact in this world that we share, and those actions can be more or less wise, compassionate, and impactful depending upon circumstances in all the dimensions of an Integral understanding of reality.

Having travelled the globe sharing "the good news" (to borrow from another tradition), Neale reports that nearly everyone he meets, from Norway to South Korea and beyond, is suffering some form of anxiety regarding their ability to enact their vision of life at it should be, in every realm of humanity—social, political, cultural, educational, you name it.  Neale explains how it feels like there is an enormous population of people ready to make real change in the world, but they are all in the closet, alone, and in that isolation they feel powerless.  For Neale, his life right now is about helping create a safe and encouraging space for people to leave their closets, and enter the common room of shared purpose, intention, and consciousness.  "Oh, I'm not the only one who feels this way?  I'm not crazy?  I'm actually a part of a very large part of the world population?  All right, let's start this party and get things moving!!!"

As Ken relates, this phenomenon is powerfully present at Integral Seminars.  When participants are asked about what they liked most about their experience, the top two response are:  1.  I loved the teachers;  2.  I really loved spending five days with fifty people with whom I could share my entire being, and leave my closet far behind.  As Neale and Ken agree, the power of creating and maintaining a safe "we-space" for those reaching intuitively towards humanity's highest possibility cannot be underestimated.  The revelations of the Western Enlightenment unfolded in the safe spaces of select universities and coffee shops—who knows what the safe spaces for the leading edge of consciousness of today may yield.

What an Integral Approach reveals is that there are two fundamental dimensions of what one's "highest possibility" actually is.  As Ken explains, by looking at the cross-cultural knowledge of what it means for consciousness to expand and grow, there are both states and structures of consciousness—the former being freely available to everybody (e.g. spiritual states, emotional states, altered states, etc.) and the latter being earned through the process of vertical growth (e.g. through magic, mythic, rational, postmodern, and integral stages of development)—and both showing the capacity, and natural urge towards, increasing depth and complexity.

"Some person once wrote me and said 'you know, there's a lie on the cover of your book. Your book is called Conversations With God: An Uncommon Dialogue—Mr. Walsch, with respect, there's nothing uncommon about it....'"

Click here for full dialogue!

Rupert Sheldrake and Ken Wilber

Integral Evolutionary Biology. Part 1. How Do We Account for Memory in Nature?

The man behind the theory of morphic resonance shares his impulse to explore the evolutionary impulse behind the Kosmos itself. From physics, to chemistry, to biology, to psychology, to spirituality and more, these two pioneers share their understanding of how Spirit is manifesting moment-to-moment in and through the leading edge of consciousness awareness….

Who: Rupert Sheldrake is a British biologist and author who has developed the theory of morphic resonance, incorporating the insights of early twentieth century morphogenetic fields, and extending the understanding of biological “fields” to entire species—not merely individual groups of embryonic cells—and where evolutionary habits of nature can explain far more than eternal laws of nature.

Summary: Einstein proposed and believed in an eternal unchanging physical universe, governed by static laws, not an integrated Kosmos of both interior and exterior dimensions, governed by Kosmic habits. The difference between the two should not be underestimated. Whereas Einstein has famously stated, “God does not play dice,” Rupert and Ken go on to discuss a universe where God does indeed play dice, but in an evolutionary and developmental context—every new game of dice builds upon the billions of games played since the Big Bang, and every new game brings, or builds upon, an aspect of novelty: something the Kosmos has never seen before. The more this novel dimension gets repeated in subsequent “games,” the more likely that we will continue to see it pervade all corners of the universe, in that particular dimension, species, or level of development. One could say it’s the snowball effect writ large, and acting nearly instantaneously across innumerable light-years.

Sounds different from your high school biology class, yes? One reason for this is that Rupert and Ken are exploring how evolution and development occurs in all dimensions of existence—from physics, to chemistry, to biology, to psychology, to spirituality, and more. As Ken would state it, there is a fundamental Eros to the universe, a drive to reach higher, deeper, and further… not to get away from manifestation, but to include and embrace as much of it as possible! Here’s the funny thing about this Kosmos of ours: there are no Platonic Ideals that we should be reaching to understand. There are no eternal Forms. What we—as humans—are given is an evolutionary space in consciousness, a certain degree of depth and complexity that is waiting to be expressed in the universe, and as conscious, sentient beings, we literally determine the form that this space-potential will take as it manifests in the Kosmos. Our intentionality, and our choices, will mold the face of our collective will atop the deep structures presented to us. Nothing is pre-given except for Eros and the possibility of depth and complexity of expression that is on the horizon of our shared consciousness. It’s not so much that humanity is created in God’s own image, but that humanity is God-in-action, and we create the next form of God-in-action based on our own image of what is possible. There is no one responsible beyond ourselves for what comes next. If that happens to be true, it might be good that we all get on the same page, yes?

But that’s another discussion. In a developmental and evolutionary context, getting all of humanity “on the same page” is far more complicated than it might initially appear. However, if you’re reading these words right now, it means you’re interested in the same degree of passionate creativity and responsibility that an Integral View helps clarify and enact. You’re not alone. For a mind that only sees surfaces, one could think that this is a dialogue merely about biology, and a pretty far-out biology at that. But this dialogue is not merely about biology. It’s about the nature of the Kosmos itself. It’s about the mechanisms of evolution, the process that brought you, personally, to where you are right now. What you do from here is up to you: will I look back and understand the Kosmic forces responsible for my existence in this very moment, or will I distract myself with other affairs? It’s not that either choice is good or bad. It’s about the nature of choice itself. Will you join us on this exploration?

The surprising fact about continued human development is not that one’s sense of “family” gets smaller, but that it gets bigger, to the edges of the Kosmos itself…. We’d love to see you there, which is only ever here, closer to home than we’d ever dare to expect….

"Classical European philosophy could deal with planets beings spheres and having ellipses as orbits, but it could not create equations for giraffes or hedgehogs or any other animal or plant—basically just matter and energy, but not form…."

Click here for full dialogue!

Previously on Integral Naked:

Stone Gossard - Pearl Jam: Restoring Idealism to Rock and Roll
Steve Whitmire - It's Not Easy Being Teal
Tim Black - Indigenous Cultures in the Modern World
James Turner - The Integral-Political Imperative
Sally Kempton - Designer Spirituality, or Discipline Disaster?
Ken Wilber - The Origins of the Integral Perspective
Sally Kempton - From Bohemian Rebel to Integral Swami
Joe Perez - The Power of Integral Reconciliation
Alanis Morissette - Healing the Ruptures
Sally Kempton - Seeing Beyond the Mythic God
Joe Perez: Soulfully Gay - Out of the Closet, Into an Integral Embrace
Dan Millman: The Peaceful Warrior's Way - The Highest Teaching
Alex Grey: Integral Art - Anchoring the Seed of Liberation
Alanis Morissette: From Jagged Little Pill to Flavors of Entanglement
Sharon Stone: Like a Fine Diamond....
Dan Millman: The Peaceful Warrior’s Way - “This Is How to Do It”
Alex Grey: Integral Art - When Psychedelics Reveal the Spirit Within
Deepak Chopra: Buddha - A Story of Enlightenment
Integral Art
Recent Guests