Integral Life Practice is a growth processindividual or collective or boththat

has only become possible in the last decade or two. It depends on some incredibly
exciting breakthroughs made by Integral Theory and other disciplines involving the ways
that human beings and organizations grow and evolve and develop. Now Im going to
throw out a few technical terms that you dont really need to pay any attention to now,
but Im just going to say them for the recordand then, when required, Ill clearly and
simply explain what we do need to know for this practice. But an overall Integral Life
Practice involves Showing Up in all 4 quadrants; Growing Up to higher levels; Opening
Up in various lines; Waking Up in higher states; and Cleaning Up, both in its positive
aspects or flourishing and in its negative aspects or shadow work. Sounds like a lot, yes?
But the point is that these various processes are all now occurring whether we know
about them or not. These arent just theories that are postulated to exist as some sort of

complicated speculation; they are evidence-based realities that are crashing into us every
single minute of every hour of every day. They arent things like deconstruction, which
is a theoretical conceptualization that you can believe or not as you wish. They are
actually existing territories that are genuine realities in our very own being, fully present
and fully active in each and every one of us.
Integral Life Practice takes all of these various territoriessome of which have
been known for centuries and some of which were only discovered in the last decade or
twoand pulls them all together into a self-fulfillment, self-development, and
self-growth experiential practice, drawing on all of these enormous potentials in
individuals and thus allowing individuals to become the best, brightest, most developed,
most caring, and most realized that they can possibly be.
Is this worth it? Does following this practice really do anything that important or
that beneficial? Well, this is for you to decide. Whats going to happen is simply that,
some of my friends and I, who are convinced of its worthiness, are going to share with
you a series of straightforward exercises and experiential practices, and let you try them
out for yourself. When we explain them, see if they make sense to you; if so, give them a
try. Youve got nothing to loseand judging from the feedback that weve gotten from
those who have tried, it will likely be very much worth your while.
So lets get started, yes? Various experts in Integral Life Practice will be
presenting exercises covering one or more areas from Showing Up, Growing Up,
Opening Up, Waking Up, and Cleaning Up. Today, Ill be focusing particularly on
Growing Up and Waking Up, starting with the latter.

Waking Up is the process found worldwide, and often going back two millennia
or more, a growth process leading to what is variously known as Enlightenment,
Awakening, Metamorphosis or Transformation, Moksha or Freedom, the Great
Liberation. Virtually all of the worlds Great Religions have at least two aspects, known
as exoteric or outside-knowledge, and esoteric or inside-knowledge. Exoteric or
outside-knowledge is usually a series of stories, often magical and mythic, purporting to
explain the origin of the universe, of human beings, and often in relation to a supernatural
being or beings full of miraculous power; and this side of the religion usually involves
learning how to assume a correct relationship with this ultimate Being. Its a belief
system based on various myths often handed down for centuries.
But esoteric or inside-knowledge is not a mythic belief-system; it is a
psychotechnology of consciousness transformation. Its an interior mental science that
aims at a direct experience of what is said to be ultimate reality, resulting in a
mind-shattering realization of Enlightenment or Awakening. Here, one doesnt merely
think about an ultimate reality, one becomes identified with that Reality in a state the
Sufis call the Supreme Identityyou, and ultimate reality or Spirit itself, are radically
one, and that realization is said to release an individual from the original sin, separation,
or dualism of identifying only with this small, finite, temporal, separate-self sense, and
identifying instead with the entire Kosmos in all its glory. This is said to be both an
ultimate Freedom because, being one with the All, there is nothing outside that could
enslave you; and its also an ultimate Fullness, precisely because you are indeed one with
the All, with nothing outside of you that you could possibly want. So this is the ultimate
goal of Enlightenment, or the Supreme Identity of ultimate Freedom and radical Fullness,

where you experience a oneness with the entire universe, ending all suffering and misery
and ushering in a world of seemingly endless happiness, wellbeing, and wholeness.
Sounds a little far-out, doesnt it? Well, lets wait and see what you think after we do our
experiential practices and you get a direct glimpse of this for yourselves.
In the meantime, we can simply note that, as we earlier said, virtually every major
Great Religion has its outside, exoteric, usually mythic components or belief systems, as
well as these more interior, esoteric, meditative or contemplative aspects. These interior
esoteric schools form the great meditative and mystical systems found all over the world
in Hinduism, we have Vedanta; in Judaism, Kabalah and Hasidim; in Islam, Sufism; in
Buddhism, core practices leading to nirvana or Enlightened consciousness; in Taoism,
contemplative Taoism; in Christianity, mystical and gnostic Christianity, and so on. And
has often been pointed out, all of their esoteric versions maintain essentially the same
basic core truth of the Supreme Identityin the very deepest part of you, you are one
with Spirit, you contain the entire universe. Tat tvam asiThou art That, as the Hindu
Upanishads put itin your very True Nature, you are one with the entire Ground of
Being.
That realization is often called an Awakening or a Waking Up, because it releases
us from the dream that we are just this small separate-self sense, this self-contraction, this
skin-bound ego, born only to live, enjoy a bit, suffer a lot, and die. Instead we awaken,
we wake up, to our real reality, a unified oneness with the entire universe. And it is this
process of Waking Up that is core to the worlds great esoteric Wisdom Traditions.
One of the best known versions of a Waking-Up practice is known as
mindfulness. This practice is becoming quite popular in the West, although it originated

in India close to three-thousand years ago. But it is a profound, simple and

straightforward, very effective form of Waking Up. It also has many very beneficial
secondary effects, from increased health, to lessened depression, to lowered blood
pressure, to significant pain management, among many othersand its being promoted
in the West mostly for these many secondary benefits, often without much mention of
Enlightenment or Awakening, although its original purpose was indeed (and remains) a
path of Waking Up. Im going to walk us through a simple version of this practice in just
a moment. But first, let me tell you where this is all going.
Waking Up points to a profound spiritual growth process in humans. And simply
note that, odd as it might sound at first, this overall practice and its results dont have to
be put in spiritual terms. They can be described simply as realizing our own highest
potentials; or awakening our greatest talents and capacities; or realizing our essential
oneness with all of evolution; or increasing our health, happiness, and wellbeing; or
finding our transpersonal and superconscious Real Self; or simply awaking from a dream
world to a higher, truer reality with a greater consciousness, focused in the timeless Now
moment. But the experience itself is usually so profound and earth-shaking that it is
often given spiritual, infinite, eternal, ultimate and absolute termsbecause thats what it
feels like. In other words, the same Enlightenment experience can be interpreted in
many, many different wayssecular to spiritual and everything in between, and thats
fine. But if youre put off by religious or spiritual terms, just dont use them, and dont
think of this in those terms. You dont want to miss this opportunity just because its
worded in a way that doesnt work for you, so please remember that. The essentially
worldwide and universal experience of this realization in the worlds great esoteric

Traditions is just a significant bit of evidence for its reality, but you dont have to get
caught up in its spiritual interpretations. Whatever interpretation works for you is just
fine. The point is simply that we do have access to this higher, deeper, truer reality, and it
is a reality that we can actually practice to realize. Very similar awakenings are often had
with near-death experiences, some kinds of psychedelics, spontaneously in nature or
while listening to music or making love. But those who have these experiences are
almost universally convinced of their profound reality; there is little doubt that they have
had an experience of near ultimate dimensionsand I think youll start to see what this
means when we get into the actual experiential exercise of this ourselves. But if youre
put off by religious or spiritual terms, just ignore them, wait till you have one of these
experiences yourself, and then choose whatever terms work best for you. Id actually like
to hear what terms you come up with; so maybe well have a little time to explore that.
Now we said that this experience of supreme reality can be interpreted in many
different ways. And thats a very important point, because the crucial role that
interpretation plays in all knowledge and experience was only realized fairly recently,
during this last century. Previously, throughout most of our history, it was common to
differentiate between knowledge and opinion. Opinion was something that may or may
not actually be trueits just based on your hunch or your guess or your, well, opinion.
But knowledge was something that was certain. To say something was knowledge and
not opinion meant that it was definitely and universally true, true for all people at all
times. It was only in the last century that we started to realize that much of what a culture
takes to be knowledge doesnt necessarily or even usually have that much certaintyits
often a truth generated only by that culture and for that cultureits more a cultural

opinion, as it were, rather than a universally true knowledge. It isnt a fact, its just an
interpretation of facts.
At the same time that that was becoming realized, the ways that human beings
create their various interpretations was also becoming understood for the first time. The
basic point here is that the capacity for interpretation is something that grows; it isnt
totally given, all complete and fully functioning, right from the start, but rather it grows
and develops over the course of time. When human beings are first born, most of their
capacities are very undeveloped and their actual knowledge, very minimal. Then the
human being goes through numerous processes of development, an overall
developmental process that takes a person from immature and poorly developed, to more
mature and more developed, and finally into stages of great maturity and maximum
developmenthopefully, anyway.
Thus a persons morals, for example. An infant at birth has little if any formed
moral principles; its ruled by instincts and desires. In moral development, these are
called preconventional stages. As the human continues to grow, it eventually moves into
a series of stages that are determined by the culture its in; it adopts what its clan or tribe
or nation considers to be right and wrong, good and evil. These stages are known as
conventional or conformist stagesmy country, right or wrong, law and order. If it
continues growing, it will move beyond what it was taught by its culture and rather start
to think for itself, using more universal and worldwide moral principles. These stages are
called post-conformist or post-conventional: they are post or beyond their more
narrow culture and are more global in outlook. Now in each of these stages, when
confronted with a moral problem or question, the human being will interpret that

problemand its solutionaccording to the moral stage of growth that they are at.
Somebody at preconventional stages will give very egocentric and self-serving responses
Whats right is what I say is right. A child at this stage will simply take toys from
other children, with no conception of right and wrong. Moving up, somebody at
conformist stages will move beyond their own selfish desires and start to identify with
the desires of their primary group, but only that groupthey will be in favor of their tribe
or their group or their nation, and all other groups can just fend for themselvesagain,
its my country, right or wrong. But this primary group can make no mistakesits
opinions are taken to be absolutely true knowledge, not even to be questioned. And
higher yet, somebody at post-conventional stages will give responses that treat all
humans fairly, regardless of race, color, sex, or creednot just their group, but all
possible groups. So from egocentric (self-centered) to ethnocentric (favorite groupcentered) to worldcentric (all humans centered); from me to us to all of usthus
our morals get bigger and bigger and bigger, so to speak. This is clearly an expansion of
awareness, an expansion of identity (me to us to all of us), and thus an expanse of
moral concern (from just me, to just my group, to all groups, all humans)and thus an
increase in capacity for love as well. Clearly, something very important is happening
with this maturation process.
Now this whole process is what we call Growing Up. A human being has a
large number of capacities and numerous different intelligences, and virtually all of them
are subject to growth and developmentall of them are subject to Growing Up. And at
each stage of Growing Up, you will interpret the world differently. We just saw that in
moral development, a person will go from selfish views to group-first views to all-groups

or all-humans-fairly. And each stage thinks that its truth and values and views are the
only true and good ones in existence; all the others are off-base, goofy, or just plain
wrong. And well come back to that point; its important.
Now starting about a century ago, these various stages of development first began
to be explored and studiedthis overall movement from egocentric (just me) to
ethnocentric (just us) to worldcentric (all of us). In our overall history, this
understanding of Growing Up was a relatively recent discovery and investigation. After
all, we saw that some forms of Waking Up, for example, were studied and practiced
going back two or three thousand years (often more); but the real study of the stages of
Growing Up are only about 100 years old. Why the big difference3000 years or more
versus a mere hundred years?
A major reason is that when you have a profound meditative or mystical or
Waking-Up experiencesuch as being one with entire universeyou know that
experience immediately and directly. Theres just little doubt about it. But this isnt true
with these stages of Growing Up; they are more like the rules of grammar in all
languages. Bear with me here for just a minute. Anybody brought up in a particular
culture ends up speaking its language fairly correctlythey put subject and verb together
correctly, they use adjectives and adverbs correctly, and in general they follow the rules
of grammar of their language quite correctly. But if you ask any of them to write down
those rules of grammar, virtually nobody can do so. They are following these large
systems of grammar, but none of them know that they are, let alone what they are.
These general stages of development in Growing Up are just like grammar.
While you are at a particular developmental stage, you will follow its rules and patterns

quite accurately, but you will have no idea you are doing so. Somebody at the conformist
moral stage of development will think that their ideas are just the way things should be;
they will have no idea that they got those ideas from their culture. And theres nothing in
their ideas that will alert them to that fact. Like grammar, you cant see these stages by
introspecting or looking within. They are hidden maps that we use to navigate whatever
territory we find ourselves in, and we have no idea we are using them. We think our
maps are the actual territory itself. We are looking at the world through them, we are not
looking at them. And so we dont really even know that theyre there. And we definitely
confuse map and territorynot good.
And this is why we cant discover these basic stages of developmental Growing
Up, these hidden maps, by looking within. We could sit on our meditation maps for 20
years, looking within, and never see any of the rules of grammar at allnor any of these
hidden developmental maps. Rather, human scientists have to study large groups of
people over many years, track and record their various developments, and then figure out
exactly what rules and patterns they are following at each stage. And precisely because
you cant see these stages by simply looking within, not a single meditative or spiritual
system anywhere in the world has any of these stages of Growing Up. Stages of Waking
Up, yesyou can see those by looking within. But stages of Growing Up, no. And
some of our models of Growing Up have 5 stages, 7 stages, 12 stages, or moreand not
a single spiritual system anywhere in the world, no matter how old or new, has anything
like any of these sequences anywhere. These detailed stages of Growing Up are indeed a
very recent discoveryanother reason no religions anywhere have anything like them.
And I think you can start to see the problem here.

Now, in all fairness, the many schools of developmental psychology that do study
these stages of Growing Upmostly Western psychological and sociological schools
although they do have a fairly detailed understanding of the major stages of Growing Up,
virtually none of them have anything like Waking Up or stages leading to Awakening and
Enlightenment. The reason for this is that, as a fairly permanent acquisition, the state of
Waking Up is usually the result of many years of a specific practicemeditation or
contemplation or yoga or contemplative prayer or self-actualization practices, and so on.
Not many people, certainly in the West, devote a great deal of their time to these practices
(if they even know about them). Thus, when Western researchers started studying the
various stages of development that were present in any typical population, they found
many examples of people at virtually all the various stages of Growing Up its a
natural, normal maturation process that will occur to some degree whether you work at it
very much or not; but researchers found very few if any people who were permanently at
a Waking-Up state (and when they did, they didnt know what to make of it, and so
tended to just ignore it). So there are very few, if any, major Western developmental
models that have anything like Enlightenment, Awakening, Moksha or Freedom, satori or
nondual unity, the Supreme Identity, and so on.
So humanity is todayand has been throughout its entire history to this pointin
a very strange situation. We have at least these two major paths of developmenta path
of Growing Up and a path of Waking Up. But never have both of those paths been
practiced togetherever. This means that humanity has actually been practicing,
working, to be partial, limited, fragmentedand virtually from day one. In short,
humanity has actually been working to be broken. And all of history is a history of a

broken humanity. It is only in the past decade or so that it was realized that we have both
of these paths of growth, and that both of them are incredibly important and truly
necessary if we want to be fully developed and truly whole human beings. And this very
possibility opens us to an entirely new and radically innovative future, the likes of which
we have never, but never, seen before.
And that, in a sentence, is the aim of Integral Life Practiceto combine the very
best of the paths of Growing Up with the best of the paths of Waking Up. Of course, we
include a few other territories as well (such as Showing Up and Cleaning Up, as well
see). But the paths of Growing Up and Waking Up are truly central, not only to Integral
Life Practice, but to Life itself, to being a fully whole and complete human being, no
matter what other activity, discipline, or path youre engaged in. And as incredible as it
sounds, it really is only in the last decade or so that humanity has had this possibility
made available to itthe possibility of including and practicing paths of both Growing
Up and Waking Up. This itself is truly rather extraordinary, even revolutionary.
Now if becoming a truly whole and complete human beingor simply
understanding what that would meanmakes any sense to you, has any appeal to you,
then lets explore it in a few more details. Then well get to actual practices in both
Growing Up and Waking Up, so you can experientially realize these paths and directly
decide for yourselves. Okay?
Lets start with looking into a few more points about this relatively recently
discovered path of Growing Up. As we said, every human being has the potential for
numerous capacities, talents, and intelligences that they are born with. Now it used to be
thought that a human being had one major intelligenceusually called cognitive

intelligence and measured with the all-important IQ test. But more recently, its
increasingly been realized that humans have what Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner
called multiple intelligenceswe have not only cognitive intelligence, but also emotional
intelligence, moral intelligence, linguistic intelligence, intra-personal intelligence, values
intelligence, and so on. These are sometimes also called lines of development, or
developmental lines, or just lines (as in, all quadrants, all levels, ALL LINES, all
states, all typeswhich is how this version of Integral Theory is often technically
referred to). But theres an equally important discovery that goes with all these
intelligences or lines. As different as these multiple lines are, they all grow and develop
through the same basic levels of development. That is, different lines, same levels.

So, exactly how many levels or stages of overall development in Growing Up are
there? In a certain sense, the response to this is somewhat arbitrary. Its like giving the
temperature of, say, a glass of water. We can give the response in the terms of
Centigrade, or Fahrenheit, or Kelvin, among others. If the water is boilng, Centigrade
will say its 100 degrees and Fahrenheit will say 212 degrees and Kelvin will say its
close to 700 degrees. Which is right? Clearly theyre all correct, it just depends on how
much detail you want, with Fahrenheit having around twice as many degrees or stages
between freezing and boiling as Centigrade does, and Kelvin 4 or 5 times as much. You
just have to say which scale you are using. The same is true of the general stages or
levels of development. There are models that give 3 basic stages, some give 5, some 9 or
12, some more. But if you take all of the available models and put them all together,
what you find most often are essentially the same basic 6-to-8 or so major levels of

development. I did a book called Integral Psychology, and in it are charts from over 100
different developmental models, and in the majority of those, the same 6-to-8 major
levels keep showing up again and again. Once more, this doesnt mean the others are
wrong; its more a matter of how much detail you want; and the most commonly used are
these basic 6-to-8 or so major levels of development. Well be going through each of
these in just a moment, so you can clearly see what each of them looks like (and which
one of these level-stages you are mostly ata discovery that might surprise you).
Right now, the major point is simply that these levels of development are indeed
very important, because in many, many ways, the very views, ideas, and experiences that
you have of reality at any moment are in large measure molded, even determined, by the
level of development you are at (in any of your multiple intelligences). Your level of
development is so important it will even help determine how you experience something
like Waking Up. And yet most of us dont even know we have these levels of
development, let alone what ours happens to bethey really are hidden maps, just like
grammar. And some people get rather angry when something like this is even mentioned
they, understandably, dont wont to be told that what they took as their own original
thoughts are in many ways largely determined by the hidden maps, gotten largely from
their culture, that govern their interpretations of reality. But variations of these levels of
Growing Up have been tested on everything from Amazonian rain forest tribes,
to Australian aborigines, to Mexican workers, to Russian citizens, to Illinois housewives,
and no major exceptions have been found to their existence. When we focus on them,
well go through all 7 or 8 major levels of development, and clearly point out how you
can understand each one of them in your own awareness right now, thus purchasing some

degree of freedom from the hold they have on you at this time. So thats a crucial reason
for us to become aware of these stages or levels in our overall path of Growing Upto
speed up our dis-identification with them or letting go of them or being free of them.
Now for this dis-identification, were going to use, in a central way, mindfulness
thus, for the first time, bringing together aspects of both Growing Up and Waking Up
into an integrated, unified practice. As in introductory overview to this, and just for the
moment, were going to temporarily set aside Growing Up and focus instead on Waking
Up (and then well return and fully and profoundly join both of them in a truly integral
or unified fashionpart of the major breakthrough of the last decade or so, fully driving
toward being a whole, complete, and truly fulfilled human being).