The Daily Evolver

In this episode of The Shrink & The Pundit, Dr. Keith reveals what he’s learned in over forty years as a psychotherapist about cultivating integral love relationships, what the shift to a 2nd tier “love operating system” looks and feels like, and how you go about teaching couples to love completely.   Everything is relationship. Only a small sliver of our brains has to do with our sense of individual self—we’re designed to be social, to interact. We’re designed to love. Our development depends upon it. And yet, it isn’t always easy. Lofty concepts aside, what is the most practical way to teach people how to love and be loved? In this conversation with Jeff Salzman, Dr. Keith Witt–our Doctor of Love himself–shares some of what he’s learned in over forty years as a psychologist and therapist, where, he says, “it’s always about teaching people how to love more completely.” So what does an integral view show us about love? In first tier structures of consciousness we tend to focus on what’s broken. The orienting question is how do I fix it? This extends to our relationships with our families, therapists, friends and lovers, and of course ourselves. We are biased towards looking for problems. There is a wisdom in that orientation, naturally—it will help you—but only up to a point. And then it will hold you back. On the other hand, if we enter into relationship with a bias towards showing up and seeing what arises, more often than not what arises are our strengths and virtues. The orientation here is not fixing what is broken, but asking instead what can we create? Dr. Keith calls this a positive, flex-flow approach. The bridge from a fear-based operating system to a love-based operating system is built by fostering a dialectic between these polarities. As aspiring integralists, growing into second tier structures of consciousness, we want to expand our natural curiosity into those places that keep us from loving completely and welcome the conversation between fear and love. “In higher stages of development you want to turn towards your pain, to deconstruct it until it turns into love,” says Dr. Keith, “and then you have to embody it. It takes courage, and usually a lot of help.” Freud’s seminal idea of the unconscious reveals a rich field of practice in intentional development. A hundred years ago people didn’t get that our psyches are influenced by forces outside of our awareness. But now most of us do, so much so that as Jeff says, “by the time we reach the postmodern stage we can’t stand the idea that there’s a place inside of ourselves that we can’t see.” So we get more and more interested in our shadows. The most difficult type of shadow is the kind that we resist. Defensive states cut us off from our sense of self-reflection and are the main impediment to investigating parts of ourselves that may be fragmented and unloved. Changing our defensive states into states of healthy response is one of the main areas that Dr. Keith covers in his teaching because it’s so crucial to loving completely. To learn about defensive states, Dr. Keith suggests you write down the last time you felt threatened. “What was your amplified or numbed emotion, distorted perspective, destructive impulse? Where was your empathy and self-reflection?” As you write, you may notice the balance of emotions changing. Over time your mental and emotional states start to become objects in your awareness. A little bit of daylight is all you need in there to begin making adjustments from a defensive response to a healthy response. People bridging into 2nd tier structures of consciousness begin to do this instinctively—the noticing, the turning-towards. When we think about markers or qualities of 2nd tier consciousness, we think of a radical acceptance of the human condition and an affection for all of its craziness, including our own. Turning towards awareness of self and embodying a change will put your attention less on fixing yourself or a partner and more on appreciating and cultivating both of your strengths. Like the simple Buddhist practice of noticing, it can transmute your suffering into wisdom and love. Listen to this episode of The Shrink & The Pundit podcast below. Click here to find out more about Dr. Keith’s new self-directed web course, Loving Completely, 5 Ways Relationships Work…or Don’t.

This week Jeff looks at Interstellar, the new movie from Christopher Nolan that explores love as a force in the kosmos akin to the force of gravity. Bringing love to Earth, Jeff comments on the spirit of the holiday season, and how we may be able to create a more generous and meaningful experience.

This week Jeff looks at the process by which historically oppressed people, such as women, racial minorities and gays gain full acceptance in the culture. It’s not just a matter of changing laws, but hearts and minds. This process starts in modernity and becomes one of the main projects of post-modernity. What is the integral view?

In this week’s podcast, recorded on election night in the U.S., we explore some thoughts on the big Republican gains in Congress and what might be next. Also, Jeff responds to Joe Corbett, a critic who published an essay making the case that Jeff, Ken WIlber and the integral community in general lack an appreciation for social justice.

With all the attention on the war and pestilence within trailing-edge cultures around the world, it’s easy to miss what is happening on the leading edge, as developed cultures move deeper into post-modernity (green altitude). This week’s Daily Evolver Live tours a few stories that show how we are creating a more safe, peaceful, reliable, fair and sensitive world.

This week Jeff takes a look at the Ebola crisis and how an integral view can help us relate and respond. He explores the function of fear and a time honored way that it can be transmuted into real helpfulness. The second half of the podcast is a conversation with Steve McIntosh, who is bringing an integral sensibility to the problem of political polarization in America, through his foundation the Institute for Cultural Evolution.

This week Jeff shares some evolutionary insights and encounters he had on his few weeks of hiatus. He starts with a personal story of his own development regarding communion with animals. He also examines a common sticking point for liberals, exemplified by a widely noted public argument between Bill Maher, Sam Harris and Ben Affleck regarding Islamic violence and Islamophobia.

Human beings are memory machines, for better or for worse. There is an autobiographical narrative that is alive inside all of us, and just as individual memories seem to create me, memories in the morphogenetic field create the collective culture of my family, my society. Most people are familiar with the effects that major trauma like car accidents, sexual abuse and so on, can have on a person. But our sense of self is also formed by the “little 't' traumas”, the small humiliations.

Ken Wilber is my hero. I mean that quite literally because Ken rescued me from a life of confusion, fear and frustration as I tried to make sense of our crazy, mixed up world. Ken’s insights organized life on Planet Earth from a disjointed mess into an elegant whole.

In a week that has featured an appalling display of the trailing edge of consciousness development -- the ISIS beheadings -- Jeff starts by highlighting a new, more encouraging emergent that is arising on humanity’s leading edge. It’s called being nice. Also, a good week for the Obama Doctrine?

In the vision of a future economy the motto is to think globally and act locally. Eco-localization refers to local production and consumption imbued with an awareness of how one’s actions may impact other communities. This includes global trade between local economies (hence the word “glocalization”), which means you don't import things that can be made locally but you may still share culture and “perhaps even have bananas in Hungary,” Szandra says.

This week Jeff looks at a new model of autocratic modernity that is gaining traction particularly among developing countries with weak histories of democracy, such as Russia and China. With the economically and politically stumbling West no longer held up an the inevitable example, we can see the appeal -- and even some of the intelligence -- behind this rising brand of development without liberalism.

The many crises of the world, most prominently the war in Israel and Gaza, evoke important questions for those of us who are not directly involved. What can we do about the suffering? What are we supposed to feel and think? How are we to relate and respond? This week Jeff explores aspects of the interior spaces of integral consciousness, especially those we experience in the face of suffering. But first he looks at a significant new work of integral art: the movie Boyhood.

The two global hot spots this week are, once again, Ukraine, where Russian separatists have shot down a passenger jet from Amsterdam, killing 300 people, and Israel/Gaza, where longstanding tensions have flared into a new intifada. What do these conflicts have in common and how can integral consciousness help us understand them more deeply?

The struggle between the Muslim and Western worlds is not only a clash of civilizations, but also a clash of development. I had a good conversation on this subject with Dr. Aftab Omer, a sociologist, psychologist and integralist who was raised in Pakistan, India and Turkey, and who has lived in the US for much of his life.

Sex evolves like everything else, so what's next? This week Jeff looks at the amazing, creative, pervasive phenomena of sex and how it's evolving in all four quadrants. What are the roots of our sexuality, where are we now and what is emerging? He starts with a shout out to his favorite new art form and inspiration for this week’s topic: reality TV.

In this week’s call Jeff explores the issue of cultural identity from an evolutionary point of view. He uses the examples of the World Cup and the story told about Brazil by the international media leading up to it, as well as the continuing drama in Ukraine to illuminate how, even in our globalized world, culture has a unique power to move events. His special guest is Ukrainian integralist Oleg Linetsky.

This week Jeff focuses on the situation in Iraq, where the jihadi group ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham) has taken over the Sunni area of the country. Their aim is to install a medieval caliphate throughout the Middle East (“we know no borders,” they say). What does integral theory tell us about these fighters and how to deal with their threat to the country America misguidedly attempted to liberate into modernity?

I met Graham back in the nineties when he ran a web design firm in Seattle. He’s always been on the emerging edge of culture and technology and is one of those people that has an integral mind whether or not they ever use the vocabulary or reference the maps. He has a developmental view and doesn’t see modernity as the enemy, necessarily, but as the foundation upon which a thriving postmodern culture can be built. He founded the popular Treehugger.com and is now focusing his attention on LifeEdited, which designed and built this amazing apartment in Brooklyn — just 420 square feet in size — that is an example of how we can use smart design to cut down on energy, space and resources and still create more health and happiness in our lives. Graham is a pragmatist. His TED talk Why I’m a Weekday Vegetarian, demonstrates an integral way of leading the culture forward through a change that needs to happen. Everyone on the planet can’t eat meat three times a day, but “people don’t want to have their last hamburger.” He advocates important incremental changes using education and the power of good design. Graham had just arrived to his rustic cabin in Maui when Jeff reached him last winter to talk about the view from the front lines. “America has super sized itself over the last sixty years,” he says. “We have about three times the space per person of any other Western country, and it gives us giant environmental footprints. We’re routinely living beyond our means and racking up tons of debt. “We have a twenty-two billion dollar personal storage industry just to keep all the stuff we collect. It would all make some sense if we were happier, but we’re not.” There is a name for this uniquely modern affliction: affluenza, and Graham knows it well. When he wrote an op-ed in the NYTimes called Living With Less, A Lot Less, critics pointed out that downsizing advice from a millionaire was hardly compelling when much of the world was still trying to scrape up enough calories to feed their families. But from an integral perspective, where we see all the altitudes of development online in the world at any given time, of course we’re privileged to be solving the problems of modernity, that’s what you do in postmodernity. Graham points out that in the modern age we have become so efficient at making things that hoarding doesn’t make sense anymore, though it may have at one time. “The modern mindset is a growth mindset,” Jeff reminds us, “whereas the orienting economic principle of postmodernity is sustainability.” LifeEdited is helping with that shift by building housing for singles and families that are only two-hundred to one thousand square feet, respectively, and making these units function like much larger spaces. Communal resources will include spare bedrooms that are bookable online (because you don’t always need that guest room, do you?), a “product library” for things that you may need occasionally but don’t make sense to own, communal space like professional kitchens, roof decks, fitness areas and a great room for parties and gatherings. Who needs to heat and cool a giant room in their home that gets used a few times a year? “Most design is for things that happen very rarely,” Graham explains, “like a four wheel drive truck, for instance. We’re redesigning the experience of living for what it’s like ninety percent of the time. Then you can share the things that everyone only needs once in a while.” LifeEdited are creating examples of smart communities for the future, focused in dense areas. Half of us live in cities now and that number is going up. The future is in cities, and that’s where the big changes need to happen. In this lifestyle, where your home becomes your office and the city becomes your living room, it’s an antidote to the separation and alienation of modernity in which the pendulum has swung far in favor of autonomy. Graham wonders if underneath our modern suburban lifestyles is a fear of intimacy. The modern critique: how does the economy work when we are consuming so much less? “We’re smart enough to figure that out in the time it’s going to take for these changes to take effect,” Graham says.

Lying is a subtle violence that we perpetrate against ourselves and others, and almost all psychotherapy is concerning where people lie to themselves about themselves. As we develop more self-awareness and transparency, lies become less tempting because they become less useful and actually just plain uninteresting.

Our left hemisphere learns new routines, but it is our right hemisphere where the habits are hardwired — and it changes slowly. The brain evolved to not give up habits that it has associated with a satisfactory life. We are what we repeatedly do. —Aristotle I learn the coolest stuff listening to The Shrink & The Pundit sessions. For example, as you repeat a certain action it activates a specific neuronal network in the brain. Cells go there and wrap the neurons in a myelin sheath (myelin is a white, fatty, electrically insulating substance). The myelinated nerve is up to one hundred times faster! If you practice enough those circuits become heavily myelinnated and then that action becomes habitual, like the way my fingers are hitting these keys — you don’t even need to think about it. Which is great! Until it isn’t. Habits are hard to change. We can use pain and pleasure (the proverbial vinegar and honey) but mostly it just takes time. A habit is a pattern of self-reinforcing processes. A Princeton study suggests that about forty percent of what we do during the course of each day is purely habitual. Dr. Keith thinks that’s a conservative number. In his forthcoming book, Integral Mindfulness: From Clueless to Dialed In, he explains that to change something is to first be aware of it. Observation plus compassion equals mindfulness, and that’s your primary tool for regulating existing habits and creating new ones. Keith learned from Ken Wilber that the universe is composed of habits that are including and transcending each other through the mechanism of chaos. The nature of chaos is that it seeks coherence (involution). That’s a force as powerful as gravity. Systems naturally want coherence so they create habitual ways of being. It’s life’s general shape or mode of growth. Every once in a while a stable state is disturbed, there’s a disintegration and then a re-integration into something different. The universe has reorganized and created a habit that is more complex. Those more complex habits appear simpler but they’re not. “You could say humans have a habit of self transcendence,” Dr. Keith Witt A hundred years ago, William James famously declared that it took twenty-one days to create a habit. Modern neuroscience would say he wasn’t too far off. Integrative neurons start creating hard wired circuits back to your amygdala after about thirty days of doing something different. A spiritual teacher of mine named Sylvia used to say the most powerful thing we have is our attention, and in that moment when you realize you have the power to switch the energy from point A (your habit) to point B (your new intention) it is the most powerful moment in your life. Sometimes you have to apply that attention over and over and over until it begins choosing itself. Saying no to one thing by saying yes to another is called a reciprocal inhibitor. Studies have shown that people are twenty-five times more successful if they try to cultivate a new habit rather than just resist the bad one. So instead of smoking a cigarette, do a breathing exercise. Instead of eating a bag of chips, take a walk. It’s hard work, so it helps to get excited, and have someone that inspires you and embodies where you want to go. Even better yet, get that person to coach you. If you can engage repeatedly in the process where you go to the edge of where you’re competent and you make a mistake, correct it, make a mistake, correct it…that is a growth mindset. You have to be willing to be intimate with your weakness. An integrally informed mindfulness can give you a higher quality of self-awareness. Jeff often likens it to Google Earth, where you can view the whole picture and also zoom in to a precise address. There’s just more information in that kind of granularity — lines of development, what quadrant you’re operating in, your state of consciousness. Even your typology can be likened to a bundle of habits that you’re predisposed to perform, and knowing what those are can be immensely helpful. Integral is a developmental system in four quadrants. This is where it really trumps 20th century developmental psychology. 20th century developmental psychology shifts quadrants unconsciously and it’s frankly quite confusing, but integral doesn’t do that. So you can see the healthy expression of your current developmental level and what your next developmental level is. You can adjust yourself in terms of observing your good and bad habits and start cultivating good habits that involve horizontal health, which is more healthy with your current worldview, and vertical health which encourages you to move forward. – Dr. Keith Witt That self observation, even if it has compassion in it, is still coming from a worldview, a specific perspective. But you’re aware of it and you’re aware of others that are available to you. You know what’s more healthy and less healthy and more or less what serves development. That’s a superior form of mindfulness.

This week Jeff took a look at the emergence of some radical new Green ideas in the economic conversation, with an advanced peek at the influential new book “Capital in the 21st Century”, by Thomas Piketty. He also addressed the cultural issues of climate change and a striking new way of dealing with it: give up.

This week Jeff takes a look at new research that reveals how worldview overrides evidence in determining one’s political perspective. He also explores the conservative view of the Russian/Ukraine situation by critiquing an essay by Robert D. Kaplan, Geopolitics and the New World Order in which Kaplan argues that “in geopolitics, the past never dies and there is no modern world.”

If it was just the genes talking we’d have serial marriages lasting on average four or five years, and we’d cheat on each other every chance we got. ~Dr. Keith Witt Apparently we’re kind of clueless about intimate attachment in general. According to Dr. Keith we aggrandize romantic love, we’re afraid of sexual lust and we have no idea about long-term attachment. We mix them all up, basically. Ninety percent of the people and couples that come to Keith for help present with a problem in their marriage or primary partnership. That tells us a couple things. One, like many other mammals we’re drawn to pair bond. Most people who are allowed to get married, do. And two, it tells us that marriage is challenging and most of us need some help to learn how to do it well. So why aren’t we taught how to do it? Probably because your marriage is not your parent’s marriage. It’s not even the marriage that you had yesterday. As cultures change marriages must change with them, so a successful marriage fifty years ago is not the same as a successful marriage today. I’ve noticed that the marriages of my parents, my friends, and my friend’s children are all very different. Keith says when you get married you’re not just signing up for one marriage, you’re signing up for many marriages. It’s going to change from romantic infatuation to intimate bonding, to living together, to having children. It’ll change through family, through aging bodies and changing endocrine systems. Each one of those changes is associated with new structures of consciousness around how you hold yourself in the marriage, and how you hold your partner. What makes marriage so challenging is that the relationship needs to be successfully reorganized, consistently, by both people in order to keep working. Despite the constant change, studies have shown us there are specific characteristics present in successful, happy relationships. Author and researcher Nate Bagley found the following things in common: The individuals were dedicated to self care They were committed to helping each other get through anything They trusted each other They had intentionality. They didn’t take their love for granted. They did something everyday to show love for each other There is always going to be conflict though, and couples that want to be together for the long term have to know how to navigate it. Keith says there are a lot of factors, but Bagley discovered a few very important ones: Couples that stay together don’t fight to win, they fight to resolve the conflict. They focus on trying to understand each other and lastly, they really try to be nice to each other. Imagine that! Being nice… There is a way to love. If two people want to get there and they’re willing to take care of themselves and change, they can find a way through to love again and again and again. That’s really the bottom line. If you want to take it down to just one thing, the evolution of consciousness is just getting better and better at finding our way through to love. ~Dr. Keith Witt When it comes down to brass tacks, couples that can down-regulate anger and up-regulate the positive emotions are ones that are destined for the long term. Easier said than done. Of course, if you have stable access to 2nd tier consciousness then you’re really ahead of the game. People operating at the teal altitude can observe structures of consciousness in themselves and their partners, and as we know from studying development, mindful self-observation accelerates development which gives us response flexibility. In relationship, when you are responding to your partner, to their happiness and suffering, you are definitely accelerating your development. Keith says he’s never seen this researched the way that meditation and other practices have been researched (yet!) but he’s found it to be true in his own life. The relationship itself becomes a container for the updraft of development in both the partners. How inspiring!

THE DAILY EVOLVER LIVE EPISODE 88 This week I focused on a topic that is always front and center in the culture wars: the role of the public sector and the private sector in our lives, and the tension between the two. One story that captures this tension in the U.S. is the Supreme Court hearing of the complaint by Hobby Lobby, a chain of retail stores, seeking an exemption from having to provide “morning after” contraceptives in its employee health care plan under the new terms of Obamacare. The founder of Hobby Lobby, David Green, is a devout Christian who donates half the company’s pre-tax earnings — $500 million so far — to evangelical ministry. An amber traditionalist at heart (though clearly an orange modernist in his ability to build a very successful business), Green specifically objects to birth-control medications such as “Plan B” that would destroy a fertilized egg. This detail is often missed in media reports which represent the company as objecting to providing any contraception whatsoever. In fact, they are objecting only to the class of “morning after” contraceptives, which they consider to be a form of abortion. As integral practitioners, let’s pause for a moment and enter the worldview of conservative Christians (amber altitude) which is radically different than the worldview of those of us who have become secular at heart. For them the world is an enchanted creation of Almighty God. Likewise, life itself is a gift from God and only God can create it. Being faithful means that we are grateful when God sparks a new life into being, and we joyfully make room. To do otherwise would be to disobey God. At the amber altitude the battle cry is “God and Country,” with God coming in first and country second. Humanity is corrupted, fallen, and although we have to “give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” the ultimate purpose of life is to be righteous and holy under a Law that supersedes the puny laws of man. It makes perfect sense: to whom are you going to owe your primary allegiance, the crowd in Washington or the Creator of the universe? If you are a child of God living in His enchanted creation, that decision is easy. A similar issue surfaced in a recent controversy out of Arizona, where the legislature passed a law defending the “religious freedom” of private businesses to, for instance, deny to bake a cake for a gay wedding. In this case the Republican governor vetoed the legislation. The reason? There was too much blowback from the secular business community, who feared an economic boycott of the state, particularly the upcoming Super Bowl scheduled in Phoenix next year. So it turns out that the dollar is almighty too! In fact one of the most potent evolutionary forces in modern culture is the trumping of money over traditional ideology (orange altitude over amber altitude). As a result of the Arizona outcome, similar initiatives promoting this conservative brand of religious freedom in other states have been seriously undermined. This question of corporate personhood shows up in other cases as well, most notably the Supreme Court case Citizens United, which lifted the limit corporations and labor unions can donate to independent political groups. HOW THE PRIVATE SECTOR EMERGED For most of human history, of course, there was no such thing as a private sector. The tribal elders (in the magenta altitude), the warlord (in red altitude) or the king (in the amber altitude) could control your life in whatever way they saw fit. In the middle ages, we saw the gradual emergence of charters given to various guilds who could exert some independent control over their trade: blacksmiths, farmers, weavers, barrel makers – even executioners! In the 1500s we saw the emergence of mercantilism, the creation of the first great companies including the Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company. These were important emergents in that they incorporated multiple shareholders who enjoyed a limited liability into a larger whole. It wasn’t until the late 1700s, with the emergence of mature modernist thinking (orange altitude), that Adam Smith, and other economists began laying out the theoretical justification for a completely new emergent in cultural ecology: the private sector. Fundamental to the modern private sector is the principle of the “legal person”: incorporations of people that have the right to operate in the public sphere as if they were an individual person. They have the right to own things, to buy and sell, and to enter into contracts with each other under the safeguards of a legal system that recognizes the fundamental sovereignty of the people, not the government. It’s an amazing evolutionary achievement of humanity! The history of corporations is an evolutionary tale of increasing consciousness and care. Corporations stopped selling slaves in the 1860’s, stopped working children in the 1940’s and stopped racial discrimination in the 196

I started the call this week by responding to a couple listeners who think I’ve gone a little soft on modernity (Orange altitude). The first, David O’Conner from Australia, critiqued me by saying, “you believe a little too much in the evolutionary goodness of Orange without sufficiently taking into account what is not so good about Orange.” Good point. So let me self-correct a bit. Every stage of development comes online bearing a dignity and a disaster. For instance, on the upside Red brings on the juice of individual power; on the downside it gives rise to plunder and patriarchy. Amber civilizes us, but into a conformity that ultimately becomes stultifying. Each stage experiences radical new powers that are used for both good and ill. The powers that emerge in Orange are jaw-dropping in all four quadrants: in the exterior quadrants, science and technology turn dirt into Chevys, create “the indoors” and triple life-spans. Orange becomes world-centric and modern people are able to mobilize resources from all corners of the planet. Money flows, as well as communication and travel. In the interior quadrants, humanity abandons millennia of dogma and superstition in favor of observation and reason. We wake up to our own individual sovereignty and ascribe equality of status to every citizen under the rule of law (not men). Astonishing! But the interiors and the exteriors do not always come online at the same time. People with modern exteriors often harbor pre-modern interiors that are quite provincial and even ethnocentric. This is a dangerous stage of the game: modern technology in the hands of a pre-modern mentality (think of a 12 year old with a chainsaw), and it is the source of much of the downside of Orange, particularly in its early stages: On the war front, we are able to fight at exponentially higher levels of lethality. Although genocide is old hat to us humans, modernity introduces the ability to industrialize it with gas chambers and atomic bombs. Modern economies do away with the age-old hunt for calories, but deliver this gift by means of industrial mono-farms that create disease and obesity, and meat factories where living beings are treated as units of production. Modernity does away with state-sanctioned slavery, but creates corporate fiefdoms in developing countries with little regard to the culture it is uprooting. Indeed modernity creates a new philosophy to support its new power: social darwinism, an application of the law of “survival of the fittest” to human affairs in which the exploitation (they see it as the “civilization” or “modernization”) of weaker people and cultures is justified as the march of progress. Currently, one of the most threatening downsides of our modernizing world is its global environmental impact. People have always exploited their environments to the degree that they were able. But you can only do so much damage with a digging stick or a team of horses. Bring on technology and you suddenly have hundreds and thousands of horsepower at your disposal stripping down forests, dragging mile-long fishing nets, pumping rivers dry and belching poison into the air. Modernists are able to see and rectify environmental degradation in their local environments, but they don’t see or have the will to rectify it on the global scale … until they do. Feeling into the larger global commons defines movement into the next stage: post-modernity (Green altitude). At this stage of consciousness we see that although any environmental violation may be local the larger effect is global: ocean acidification and climate change as examples. Because Green sees the finiteness of the planet system its orienting principle becomes sustainability, not growth (which is Orange’s orienting principle) and post-modernism sets out to right the wrongs of modernity. And the culture wars ensue in all their gory glory. One of the leading warriors against pernicious modernity is Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. She was recommended to me by listener Scott Bogart of Alberta, Canada as a tonic against over-valorizing modernity. Klein’s thesis is that capitalism grows by finding (or creating) social disaster then rebuilding things in an image more to their liking. In her introduction she writes, “I am writing a book about shock. About how countries are shocked—by wars, terror attacks, coups d’état and natural disasters. And then how they are shocked again—by corporations and politicians who exploit the fear and disorientation of this first shock to push through economic shock therapy. And then how people who dare to resist these shock politics are, if necessary, shocked for a third time—by police, soldiers and prison interrogators.” So far so good, and indeed all of this has happened in different proportions throughout the world as modernity has come online. But while I don’t disagree with most of her facts, I want to point out a couple things I think she misses: The

A CONVERSATION WITH DR. KEITH WITT (AUDIO) The “shadow” is a Jungian term that means the hidden aspects of our psyche that motivate us but that we are unaware of. For instance, we may experience an anger that comes out of nowhere, an inexplicable attraction or aversion to other people, a depression that descends in times of stress. In this month’s installment of The Shrink and the Pundit, Dr. Keith Witt, integral psychotherapist extraordinaire, approaches the subject of psychological shadow from an unusual angle: neurobiology. As good integralists we’re aware that for every interior state of mind (upper left quadrant) there is an exterior neurological corollary in the brain (upper right quadrant). Whatever you’ve repressed or negated, projected or idolized, it’s likely the function of a neural network that served you at one time, but is not necessarily serving you now. This explains why psychological problems can usually be dealt with more effectively when a body-based therapy is included. “When people talk about somatic psychotherapy, to me that’s a redundancy,” says Dr. Keith. “All psychotherapy is somatic.” We’re always working with a set of values (upper left quadrant) that are neurologically programmed (upper right quadrant). “I don’t decide to get excited or angry … I discover myself in the midst of that and then have to decide what to do with it.” Keith explains. Your autonomic nervous system can be rewired by a traumatic event and stay that way until you do the necessary healing work of reintegrating that memory so it has less and less trauma associated with it. For instance, let’s say somebody insults or threatens you. Your nervous system may constellate a defensive reaction instantaneously. If your pulse goes above 100 you’re in a diffuse physiological arousal and have passed a threshold where you may lose the capacity for self-reflection and empathy. A therapist who is aware of this will help you decide how best to respond: when it’s important to stay in relation to the conflict and when it’s best to take a walk. The coping mechanisms you learn in a relaxed state are not necessarily accessible in a defensive state. All shadow work requires taking parts of yourself that have become dissociated and re-connecting to them in a safe environment with positive intent. This is the basis of many of the new and very effective therapies for trauma recovery, including PTSD. “Add compassion and let it happen,” Keith says. As always, Dr. Keith is a fascinating conversation partner. Have a listen. Listen or download below. Need some help to listen on your mobile device? Click here.

Dr. Keith Witt joined me and about 100 integralists from all over the world at The Integral Living Room gathering here in Boulder a few weeks ago, where we explored approaches to creating a higher-level interpersonal space among us. Because Keith’s ideas were so influential to the design of this event, I was interested in hearing about his experience and sharing my own. The Living Room was a sophisticated flex-flow workshop where we tried to hold a framework that was tight enough to give the gathering a structure, but loose enough that it could change as needed. We wanted information and influence to flow both ways, and for the we-space to tell us what it wanted to become. The entity created by the “we” seems to have it’s own destiny. It’s a tricky thing to pull off but we had an amazing group of people present and they were up to the task! In this episode of The Shrink & The Pundit Keith and I talk a little bit about how we felt during and after the event. We talk about the difference between trans-rhetorical practice and integral trans-rhetorical practice, how to engage with other people in looking for a deeper truth that neither side knows yet, and letting yourself be influenced and led by the power of the we-space itself. We also talked about the things that didn’t work quite as well, and what we would like to see more of in future gatherings. We both agree that one of the greatest gifts of community is its ability to reflect back to individuals the truth of who they are, and especially to help people see where they are spiking into higher levels of genius in one or more lines of development. Finding ways to evoke more of this is high on the list for future events. Keith and I were both especially inspired by the young people who attended the gathering. We both see wisdom and awareness in these young twenty-somethings that we would normally associate with elders (and which was conspicuously absent in our boomer generation when we were in our youth). Integral consciousness is indeed arising earlier in individuals than ever before. Keith and I concur that these folks provide the best evidence of all that our future is in good hands. Hear the full dialog here…

A dialog on Joseph Campbell and the hero’s journey with Dr. Keith Witt Before I encountered the work of Ken Wilber, Joseph Campbell was lighting me up with his synthesis of the myths of all cultures. Like Ken, Campbell had a gift for the meta-narrative, for seeing patterns in seemingly disparate times and systems of thought. In this dialog with Dr. Keith Witt (who is also a huge Campbell fan), we discuss the gift of Campbell’s formulation of The Hero’s Journey, which is his name for the basic pattern of the great myths, and which turns out to be a guide for our own lives. Although told in wildly different ways throughout the world, the basic story is the same. It begins with the “call”, which is often a big blunder or a disaster that leads you to what Campbell called the belly of the whale. If you say yes to the calling you find yourself on the threshold where you have to leave the old ways behind and venture into the unknown. Guides will appear to help you on your journey, and though some may betray you, if you make it through you will be the master of two worlds. Most of all, you’ll have a gift to bring back and share with your people. When I first read about the hero’s journey in Campbell’s classic book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, I remember feeling a tremendous amount of relief. I stopped blaming myself so much for my problems. Life is supposed to be like this. It is difficult but those difficulties have meaning. Like most of us in the modern world, I was taught the opposite: that hardship and travails are to be avoided. If things are too challenging then you are doing something wrong. The hero’s journey is dangerous, but remaining where you are is no picnic either. Sometimes people just plain decline their “hero’s call”, which leads to a stunted life or even death. Even if you say yes there’s no guarantee that you’ll make it through. People get dismembered or find themselves in the land of the lotus eaters and decide they will never leave. But usually the transformation causes us to want to bring the gift back to our people, to share what we’ve learned. What a wonderful thing: your travails have meaning. I was also deeply inspired to realize that I myself am the hero of my own story, and that I am daily encountering magic and guides, if only I pay attention. I also realized that I can sprinkle a little fairy dust on other people, and be a guide for them. One of the characteristics of Integral consciousness is that magic comes back online. Not the gripped, “domination magic” of the magenta stage of development, but a recognition, scientifically vetted, that we are riding the updraft of 13.8 billion years of emergence toward ever-unfolding goodness, truth and beauty. And that as we realize this we are able to consciously influence our story, our evolution, and co-create our own heroic journeys with a loving and intelligent kosmos. Listen or download here:

In this installment of The Shrink & the Pundit, Dr. Keith Witt and I discuss the emotional constellations of shame. As a therapist who has worked with thousands of clients, Keith has seen the devastating effect shame can have on psychological health. “It can literally kill us,” he explains. It can also save us. Because shame is so powerful and central to our psyches, it is a great leverage point for metabolizing our dysfunctions. Shame is a social emotion and first comes on line in small children as a response to the inevitable disapproval from authority figures. It is the prime engine behind the development of the defensive states and patterns that create amplified or numbed emotions, distorted perspectives, destructive impulses, reduced empathy and inability to self-reflect. As we let ourselves see and feel into the textures of our own shame we can begin to witness the admonitions of our “inner critic,” as well as the subtle energy and somatic patterning that keep it anchored in our psyche. This awareness itself is curative (to paraphrase Fritz Perls) and is a key to the psychotherapeutic process. It is also a worthy form of integral practice. As usual, Brother Keith has thought it through beautifully, and you can listen to him explain (below)… Dr. Keith Witt is an integral psychotherapist extraordinaire, and my conversation partner for The Shrink & the Pundit dialog series. Having practiced in Santa Barbara for nearly forty years, conducting over 50,000 therapeutic sessions, Keith knows the human animal up close and personal. Keith has written several integrally-informed books, including Waking Up: Psychotherapy as Art, Spirituality and Science, The Gift of Shame, and his latest: 100 Reasons Not to Have a Secret Affair. Listen or download here:

This month my conversation with Brother Keith is on everybody’s favorite topic: sex.It turns out that Keith is indeed the Doctor of Love! Having counseled literally thousands of people on sexual functioning, as a psychotherapist for over 40 years, Keith brings a relaxed, cut-the-bull energy to the topic. Our conversation ranged all over the place, including: How our sexuality evolves, and what emerges at the integral altitude Everyday tantra: How to have hot monogamy Moving from sexual shame to radical acceptance Genetic and cultural taboos – how to know the difference Erotic polarity: the interplay between masculine and feminine arousal An integral understanding of intimacy and relationship It’s always fun to hear Dr. Keith’s transmission, but this month it’s a real turn-on. Don’t listen alone! Dr. Keith’s more detailed written notes are posted here, and you can get his full teachings at his website, drkeithwitt.com.

    My latest conversation with Dr. Keith Witt really gave me a lift! In evolutionary circles we often hear how the human brain is wired for hypervigilance. Natural selection favors people who see a saber-toothed tiger behind every bush because occasionally one is actually there. And we experience the effect of this programming today within ourselves, showing up as anxiety, worry and a bias for seeing the negative in a situation. Well it turns out that fear is not the only operating system in our brains; we humans are also programmed for love, empathy, cooperation and even spiritual growth. Yay! Brother Keith has been a practicing psychotherapist for 40 years and is an avid student of the brain sciences (the upper right quadrant in integral theory). He points out that the past couple decades have seen great discoveries in neurobiology which reveal a more complete and positive picture of the human condition. In this fun and high-energy conversation Keith and I bat around some of his key insights as to how neurobiology research is illuminating psychotherapy and spiritual practice. His more detailed written notes are also posted here. Listen Here

Brother Keith has been practicing psychotherapy in Santa Barbara for over 40 years, and is also a master martial artist and devoted spiritual practitioner with experience in many traditions. Who better to talk to about integrating these two approaches to human development, a topic that causes so much confusion and consternation among seekers of higher consciousness?

    Dr. Keith Witt is one of my favorite conversation partners. He has been an integral enthusiast for decades, and a practicing psychotherapist in Santa Barbara for nearly 40 years, conducting over 50,000 therapeutic sessions. In other words he knows the human animal up close and personal.In this audio conversation, recorded earlier this morning, we talk about some of the textures and markers of integral consciousness. Get more of Keith’s expertise and insight at drkeithwitt.com. Listen on the player or download below. Need some help to listen on your mobile device? Click here. You can also find The Daily Evolver on Integral Life or iTunes. Want to comment on this post? Click here and scroll down.

As I write this posting I can’t help but remember an incident that happened a couple decades ago when I was working with W. Scott Peck, the author of The Road Less Traveled, one of the most popular spiritual books of the era (13 years on the NYTimes best-seller list). We became good friends over time, and I remember him once asking me “what is the profession that you would most hate to be a member of?” My answer was easy: “TV preacher,” a group of cringe-inducing hucksters who I saw as the lowest of the low. He looked back at me, took a drag on his ever-present cigarette and replied, “then that is what you shall become.” And so I kinda have, albeit the internet variety, spreading the good news not of Jesus Christ (not exclusively at least), but of Emergence Itself, the upward draft of life, the procreant urge of the world, as Whitman wrote. Here’s an audio of a sermon (oh God, really?) I presented for a group on a recent Sunday morning at the Integral Center here in Boulder. It’s a basic overview of how evolutionary theory is able to integrate essentially all human spiritual paths into a larger embrace where each can be appreciated for the gifts it brings. This is the theory behind a new, indigenous form of integral spiritual lineage. The actual practice of this lineage is currently under construction by path-breaking spiritual teachers all over the planet. Interested in a little integral evangelism? Have a listen…

Fox News has itself been making news the last week or so. First was the report that their ratings have fallen, part of a two-year slide. Then a couple days ago Public Policy Polling released data showing that viewer trust in Fox News has fallen to an all-time low, down 8% in two years. This slide has been no doubt exacerbated by Fox News’ “in-the-bubble” coverage of the presidential election (culminating in the surreal, and now infamous, election night scene of Karl Rove playing the role of Republican Baghdad Bob in his refusal to believe the results coming in from Ohio). I recorded a few thoughts about Fox News and the evolving role they play in American tribal politics and culture wars. Audio is posted below…

How do we wrap our heads around the idea of progress when there is still so much suffering in the world and so much obviously wrong? We look around and see the violence in the Middle East, the rising of the oceans, the precariousness of our economic systems, the hypocrisy of politics, not to mention extreme weather, epidemics and Honey Boo Boo — the list of things to worry about is long and scary. This is progress? My thesis, of course, is yes and it has stimulated many terrific conversations with evolutionary-minded people. One of them is Jeremy Johnson, a reader of the Daily Evolver out of new New York. As founder of the blog Evolutionary Landcapes, and having just finished up a degree in consciousness studies at Goddard College, Jeremy is a worthy conversation partner, so … we decided to tape a discussion we had on the topic of progress and share it with you here.  

With everything in flux on multiple global fronts, including events in the Middle East, the budget debate in the US, and the frenzied antics of Charlie Sheen, the continuing nuclear crisis story in Japan seems to have been pushed off the front page. We wanted to be sure not to drop the ball on this tremendously important story, so David and I take a look at how an Integral perspective can help us make sense of the ongoing aftermath of the Japanese earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis. Here we discuss: How do we keep our heads in a complex crisis situation where there is so much fear and so many unknown consequences? How do we make intelligent decisions when there is so much at stake on a personal level, a national level, and a global level? Should nuclear power still be included in our energy solutions for the future, or should the nuclear crisis in Japan be considered a deterrent against nuclear energy? So what do you think? How does an Integral perspective help you sort out your own reaction to and relationship with what we have been seeing in Japan over the past several weeks? Let us know in the comments below!

The extraordinary events in the Middle East continue to unfold this week with the revolution in Libya. In a few short weeks, the forty-year-old reign of Muammar Qaddafi finds itself hanging by a thread in Tripoli. In this interview, David Riordan and I take a look at what’s been happening in Libya, asking the following questions: What makes Libya different than Egypt? (0:00) How does Libyan oil influence our decisions about what actions to take? (6:23) How can we help modernism arise in Libya? (11:50) What new muscles do the U.S. and western powers need to develop to support the rise of modernism in the world? (17:10) What do events in Libya mean to emerging global culture? (22:10) So what do you think? Are we currently seeing evolution, revolution, or regression taking place in Libya? Let us know in the comments below!

It has been an extraordinary few weeks in the life of the Egyptian people and the world as they stood up and demanded a change in leadership in their country. In this interview, David Riordan and I take a look at what’s been happening in Egypt, and where it may lead the country in the future. Join us as we try to make Integral sense of this ongoing revolution in the heart of the Arab world. So what do you think? Are we currently seeing evolution, revolution, or regression taking place in Egypt? Let us know in the comments below!