Dear Friends,
As winter invites inward reflection, we are blessed by the promise of spring where seeds we have been planting can begin to blossom. What is blossoming inside of you?
This issue shines light on the Heart aspect of the integral and the vast power of love - the central impulse of our practice. Our contributors take us on a journey to explore the meaning of love and the challenges we may face opening our hearts. I invite you to pause and reflect on your feeling state, as you experience what's written below. Notice what is awakening inside that can bring heartfelt sustenance into your life.
Please join us at our upcoming ITP events - so many options available to support your transformation with our community. We are grateful you are on the journey with us!
Love and blessings,
Pam Kramer
ITPI President
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Loving Humanity
by Christina Grote
ITPI Board Chair
I love mankind. It's people I can't stand. -
Charles Schultz
In a Peanuts cartoon published in 1959, Linus tells Lucy that he'd like to be a doctor. Lucy tells him that he can't be a doctor because he doesn't love mankind. Linus replies that he does love mankind, it's people he can't stand. I carried this around with me for a long time as it perfectly captured my feelings about humanity, and about people. It made me feel better. Loving humanity with a big H is easy. Loving people is a lot harder. But can you love humanity if you have a hard time loving people?
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Evolutionary Love Practice
by Christina Grote
ITPI Board Chair
Many traditions teach ways of developing our capacity for lovingkindness and compassion, such as the Tong Len, or Sending and Receiving Practice of Tibetan Buddhism. Our own Leonard Energy Training gives us a beautiful way to practice Evolutionary Love, called The Crystalline State, described fully in
The Life We Are Given.
Give it a try!
Create a mental image and a felt sense of a crystalline sphere between your hands, a space of non-judgment and no expectations, where you can experience, as George Leonard writes, "the vibrancy of the present moment. When fully achieved, this state permits awareness of the perfect rhythm that always exists at the heart of your being."
Next, after creating the sphere and moving into a place of non-judgment and no expectation, place anything you are wrestling with, even humanity, into the sphere. Now, send unconditional love into the sphere, seeing the fullest potential realized. Through this practice, you may be affirming what is already there - love that is the true ground of being, moving towards a greater disclosure of the divine.
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What is Sanctity but the Genius of
the Ethical Realm?
by Dr. David Leech, Lecturer in the Philosophy of
Religion,
University of Bristol, UK, and Journey of Practice member
I would like to offer a few reflections on supernormal altruistic behaviours, in particular focussing on the notion that they have something to do with access to resources of love of which humans are normally not conscious. By 'not conscious,' I mean that they arise from the unconscious, but understood in something like Jeff Kripal's broad and non-reductive sense as a 'secret dimension or dimensions of the human person of which he or she is not aware' (Kripal 1998: 43) rather than in the narrower Freudian sense. I will refer to the manifestation of such unconscious resources of love as ideal/anomalous experiences of love.
[1] These love experiences, which constitute a near-universal religious category, are marked by gracefulness and spontaneity rather than moral effort and are clearly distinguishable from normal human love experiences.
[1]
I have adopted the helpful category 'ideal/anomalous' from Ann Taves.
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Leading from the Heart
in the Workplace
by Sally Mahé
ITP Mastery Teacher & Integral Leadership cohort member
Maria Jose Hobday, a Native American elder, once said to me, "Lift up your heart-bone!" We can lift our "heart bone" literally. With an intentional in-breath, we can give a lift to the chest. A little inhale "push up" opens our chest and lifts our heart-strength back into action.
Leading from the heart in the workplace has to do with bringing courage to the workplace. Courage, coming from the French word, "coeur" is another name for heart-strength.
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Human Potential Chronicles, Part 4
Speculations on Our Emotional Potential
by George Leonard
ITP Co-founder & President Emeritus of Esalen
Ever since Michael Murphy and I conceived of Integral Transformative Practice™ in 1991, we've called it "a long-term program for realizing the potential of body, mind, heart, and soul." Thus far in these Chronicles, I've written about the potentials of mind and body. Now we come to the human "heart" or emotions, a subject that might seem too ambiguous or even ethereal to be addressed in terms of potential.
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Integral Ecology:
Loving the Planet
by Barry Robbins
ITPI Board Member & ITP Mastery Teacher
In Collaboration with Pam Kramer and Jill Robinson
As catastrophic events occur on our planet on a regular basis, the conversation about global warming and climate change heats up to new levels. As these worldwide changes occur, conversations are intensifying on the state of our planet and its suffering. In response, a multitude of tangible, man-made solutions have spawned, including most recently the Green New Deal. As the planet deteriorates, many are inclined to admit that a major extinction era may once again be upon us.
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Spotlight on Bob Doenges
ITPI Board Member, ITP Mastery Teacher
and Founder of ITP Tulsa
Can you share a story about how something you've learned through ITP that made a difference in your life and/or led you to take some major steps in your life?
I am reminded of meeting George Leonard for the first time and watching him tap his hara repeatedly as he walked towards the stage to present with Michael. Just to witness his level of dedicated practice was inspirational! I've been touched by the humanity and commitment of both Michael and George, which motivated me to step on the path that continues to this day.
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An Excerpt from Four Quartets
by T.S. Eliot
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing;
wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
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Make a gift of support
to help us expand
our programs and
be of greater service
to the world.
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The Path of
Integral Fitness
March 23
Westlake Performance & Fitness, Westlake, CA
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ITP Core Practice Series
Practice & Play with ITP!
March 30,
May 25
and June 8
Aikido of Tamalpais,
Corte Madera, CA
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Special Falkirk Evening
Jumpstarting
Cultural Evolution:
Key to Moving Beyond
Global Crisis
A conversation with
Emanuel Kuntzelman,
Dr. Cassandra Vieten
and Carter Phipps
April 10
Falkirk Cultural Center,
San Rafael, CA
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Special Esalen Workshop
Unfinished Business
Create Your Next Steps
from the Inside Out
April 12-14
Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA
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Weekend Workshop
Living the Integral Life
DoubleTree Warren Place
Tulsa, OK
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Benefit Gala presented by
ITPI and ITP Tulsa
For the Love of ITP
Honoring Bob Doenges
April 28
The Garden Center, Tulsa, OK
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Summer Workshop
in France!
Essential Listening
Deepening Connection to Yourself, Others, the World
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ITP International Presents
9th Annual
Golf in the Kingdom
at TPC Harding Park
Home of the 2020
PGA Championship
October 7, 2019
San Francisco, CA
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Love Something
and watch it blossom.
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