Integral Practice

Inte ral Practice from an interview with Michael Murphy ... we need to create a new culture of practice. We must draw on the collective wisdom of our spiritual traditions - the old curriculum, if you will- and imbue practice with love, wisdom and ethical awareness to handle our emerging abilities. At the same time, however, our new curriculum must be big enough to encourage creativity, improvisation and a sense of adventure ... . . .The "new curriculum" wouldn't reject the older spirituality, then, but would amplify and build on it, in the same way we don't repudiate childhood when we become an adult, but subsume it within the sphere of our greater maturity . . . .To do this, we need to develop integral practices which I define as transformative practices that address the somatic, affective, cognitive, volitional and transpersonal dimensions of human existence in a comprehensive way. Creating integral practices in the modern world is a bit like assembling a jigsaw puzzle whose assorted pieces are culled from all parts of the world. . . Creating integral practices doesn't just depend on recovering the wisdom of the past. To integrate the personal and transpersonal dimensions of life, we draw on the wisdom of modern psychology and on transpersonal psychologies such as Psychosynthesis. When we add to these "ingredients" practices and insights from the martial arts, somatics and modern sports disciplines appropriate to our age .... we need integral practices because most transformative disciplines suffer from shortcomings that militate against our wholeness. For example, ascetic contemplative practices typically fail to appreciate the body's genius for transformation, the glory of interpersonal relationship and the need for individuation and creativity. (which are frequently interpreted as assertions of the ego.) Transformative therapies generally suffer from a onesidedness that reflects their founders' biases ... While some martial arts like Aikido come close to being integral practices, most focus physically and meditatively but fall short on the interpersonal dimensions of life .... That's why I call for integral practices that balance, integrate and express our many sided nature.