INTEGRAL BUSINESS

Bill Gates


"The complacent company is a dead company. Success today requires the agility and drive to constantly rethink, reinvigorate, react, and reinvent."
Bill Gates

If you asked me as a child if I would like to grow up and be a business man, your question would have been received with silence and a blank stare. The idea of business as a likely option for my life's journey never occurred to me. Yet today, look at the proportion of books that make up a sizeable percention of the titles included in my reading list. It surprises me. But for some as yet understood reason, these titles now spark my imagination. Recently, to my utter surprise, I was awarded a full scholarship to attend the Integral Practice Seminar offered by the Integral Institute. Of the fifty or so participants for the week, at least on third of them had flown in from Europe, India and Asia to learn more about this rather recent phenomenon called "integral". Many of these men and women held positions of significant power with corporations whose names would probably be familiar to most of you. They were there, in a nutshell, because they were struggling to keep up with the pace of a global economy that threatens to leave them in the dust if they do not summon the agility and drive that Gates refers to. This week long experience was something wonderful for me, not the least factor being that I had daily personal access to some of the best corporate coaches as facilitators, men and women in the vanguard of "rethinking, reinvigorating,reacting and reinventing" what it means to be a thriving and successful business in the post-modern world. Among the many personal consequences that this event left with me is the committed determination to attend the Integral Institute's seminar, Integral Organizational Leadership within the next eighteen months. For a glimpse of the dialogue that is going on already that addresses these vast complex issues I refer you to the video interview with Ken Wilber and Tami Simon, chief executive of the publishing firm Sounds True, The Practice of Integral Business. It is a work in progress, but the intentions aimed at charting new territory are already firmly in place. Let me give you another example. I am in the midst of finding a position in engineering graphics and have been researching prospective companies with a vengeance. One on the top of my list right now is Merrick & Company of Aurora,CO. By any standards an entry level candidate such as myself would be most fortunate to be asked to join this firm. But beyond the usual factors such as the company's fiscal health and future outlook, benefits package and corporate culture and a list of professional awards that places them nationally in the top of their industry ranking, one small item at the bottom of the About Us page caught my eye and continues to hold my attention; the Colorado Parents Magazine has consistently ranked Merrick in the top ten of Colorado's Best Employers for working families. Now to me that reveals a glimmer if not a bright ray of integral thinking on the part the a company that appears to be heading in the right direction.
So, why am I bothering to read a long list of books of the genre " the care and feeding of a business in the twenty first century"? Because my livelihood and the quality of my day to day life depend on it and I want to be a part of making it work, for myself and others who make up my community. And if the executive leadership are not assuming cognitive responsibility for the future wellbeing of their enterprise, all the more reason for someone who has the courage to face the real dilemma at hand, even if it is the backroom mail clerk whose offhand comment at the coffee machine may surprisingly take on a life of its own and end up on the desk of one who can "rethink, reinvigorate, react, and reinvent". That is the call.

THE COGNITIVE

I have been listening to an audio version of Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot: Unleashing Your Brains Potential by Richard MD Restak. The title sparked my imagination and at the risk of reducing his work to a trite truism, the book could easily be subtitled, "use it or lose it". To this end I have started building a list of books as a resource to include in my cognitive development. The titles cover the "full spectrum" of the cognitive, physical, psychodynamic, spiritual and professional modules I use to design my integral path. I have drawn from a wide range of quality resources and will continue to add titles as I come across them and I feel they have merit and pertain to enhancing an integral approach to life. These are books I have not read so there are no comments or annotations; you are on your own to pick and choose what appeals to you. As I do read a title from the list, if I feel I have anything worth saying about the work I will include it in a post where you are free to agree or disagree with my opinion. You can find the list by going to "my profile" and clicking on the wish list which will take you to Amazon to make it easier to find out more about any of the titles. I hope this serves as a useful resource leading to the longterm exercise of my mind and perhaps yours as well.

A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH TO HUMAN GROWTH

Ken Wilber with Isaac


"Today we are faced with an astonishing opportunity. For the first time in history we have access to all the great transformational traditions of humanity. The introspective technologies of the mystics, east and west...The elemental power of the earth-based creeds...Body- and energy-centered practices...The deeply personal revelations of theism...The martial and aesthetic arts...all are vividly transmitted to us through the voices of their most accomplished masters. And that's not all. We also hold the priceless gifts of science: deep insight into our own physiology, psychology and social dynamics-plus the time, in leisure and life span, to make the most of it. This new wealth of opportunity calls us to a new, comprehensive approach to human growth and development. The call is to integrate, to take a panoramic view of self, culture and nature, and to embrace the insights and tools that serve the highest potential for All."

Ken Wilber
from Integral Institute

This vision statement gets fleshed out for me by using five general areas of focus or components that comprise the action centers for developing an integral path. They are; the physical, the cognitive, the psychodynamic, the spiritual and the professional. I will comment on each component here to give you (me) and idea of where I stand currently and the immediate direction in which I hope to proceed.

The Physical: Right now I try to walk each day for about half an hour. I need to lose a significant amount of weight and this aerobic exercise serves that purpose and I am making some progress. My benchmark is to lose one pound a week over an extended period of time and at some point switch my attention from weight loss to body fat percentage. As mentioned in a previous post I work with weights twice a week. If I were younger I would be using a three session per week routine, but I find I need a little more time to recover from my workouts at this stage of my life. I use framework #4 from Stuart McRobert's Beyond Brawn p.239. I also use his Weight Training Technique to learn the exercises and proper form and his The Muscle and Might Training Tracker to keep good records. Next is diet. I have cut out most of the fat I used to eat and try my best to eat six small meals a day; three of the normal type although the portions are much smaller, and three liquid meals. Because meal supplements are quite expensive I have a poor mans version using Carnation Instant Breakfast and add malted milk powder, three large scoops of nonfat dry milk and a tablespoon of vegetable oil which provides the fatty acids needed in a good diet plan. I work out at home with a starter set of dumbbells so I have no excuse for missing a workout. I have encountered a bit of a learning curve with the various exercises and need to continue improving my form and adding weight slowly on a weekly or bi-monthly basis. Doing all this underscores the need for plenty of sleep and that's at least eight hours for me.

The Cognitive: I have always enjoyed reading so I'm pretty well covered on this base. I have started to explore the use of affirmations and currently use the ones for my type in Don Richard Riso's Enneagram Transformations. I just completed a certificate program in engineering graphics and because of the speed at which software platforms are changing in this field I will remain a perpetual student in this area for the duration of my career. I recently completed the Integral Institute's workshop on Integral Transformative Practice and would like to attend their seminar on Integral Organizational Leadership within the next eighteen months. I resurrected my Gibson acoustic guitar from my closet and am resuming practice using video lessons where I left off many years ago. I would love to say that I have a mentor to accompany me on this ever expanding process, but they don't come cheap. I try to keep in touch with some key people I met during my ITP seminar to share ideas and inspiration for the work ahead.

The Psychodynamic: I continue the practice of receiving counseling on a weekly basis in the form of psychodynamic psychotherapy. I have been with my current therapist for over a year now and plan to continue that work indefinitely. As I mentioned in a previous post, the nature of our sessions is gradually evolving from a focus on pathology to one of growth and continuing development. I regard this part of my integral path very highly. As I mentioned above, I recently attended an Integral Institute seminar on Integral Transformative Practice. I won't describe that experience at this time other than to say it was magical for me. I will return to this subject in a future post. The creation of this blog came out of a motivation in the wake of the ITP seminar to share my experience and from a personal desire to give expression in images and writing to what happened during that week. Much of it still remains a mystery to me and more than once I have found myself commenting "How did they do that?" To say there were times I can only describe as facets of resurrection would not be hyperbole!

The Spiritual: Centering Prayer twice a day for about twenty minutes a period is the foundation of my spiritual practice. I want to begin to include what Thomas Keating describes as active prayer in the weeks to come. I used to read through the Bible each year for many years and then dropped the practice, feeling that I was just going through the motions and at the end of the year simply adding another notch to my belt. I'm beginning to think about taking up that devotion again but with a new perspective. There are some books on lectio devina that I want to read to this end to help me see scripture in a new light. I will keep you posted. For many years I used to spend ten days each August at St. Benedict's Monastery for an intensive centering prayer retreat. I currently am unable to afford that special time, but hope to save up for it in the next year or so. In a previous post I described my time there as very special.

The Professional: I have just completed a certificate program in engineering graphics and am in the thick of looking for a job now, so this consumes most of my energy in this module. I joined the American Institute of Architects and am hoping to arrange a mentoring relationship through that organization. I have broken the initial learning curves of two very powerful and complex programs, AutoCAD 2005 and Inventor 9. My next project is to begin learning Revit 6.1 and I have found some excellent free tutorials on line for this purpose. I am currently reading Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't by Jim Collins and have put together a very good reading list in the genre of business that I will share at a later date.

So that about wraps it up for now; a little of where I have been, where I am currently and a little of where I want to proceed in the weeks and months ahead.

THE PSYCHODYNAMIC

A. H. Almaas


In The Inward Arc by Frances Vaughan she describes the growing phenomenon of people coming to psychotherapy for reasons that go beyond the need for healing, although that may be part of their motivation. Ken Wilber repeatedly warns us that no amount of meditation can come to the fullness of transforming our lives if pathologies remain that imprison our egos. As the familiar saying goes, "you have to have an ego before you can let go of it". Vaughan describes this as growth oriented therapy. Several years ago I came to a place in my meditation practice where I simply felt stuck. I don't know how else to describe it other than an intuitive sense that I needed the help of another adequately informed practitioner to nudge me in the right direction along the path. I had just finished reading Tony Schwartz's book What Really Matters which included his survey of the many therapy options then available to those interested in spiritual growth. His conclusion at that time was that the Diamond Approach as developed by A. H. Almaas was at the top of his list. Also known as Ridhwan therapy or "work" I proceeded to read a number of Almaas's books, probably the best known being the Diamond Heart series and my favorite Facets of Unity. I was fortunate enough to find someone in my area who had a psychotherapy practice based on the Diamond Heart approach and began what turned out to be a wonderful relationship as one of his students. Today I continue along this line, although with another therapist, with weekly sessions. Unfortunately among the general public, going to therapy still has a negative connotation associated with it. I overheard a close friend of mine in conversation with an office colleague of hers refer to my cherished Ridhwan therapist as "his head guy". This off hand comment hurt, but it came from the social norm that remains to this day the world of "flatland". I want to encourage anyone who takes their personal growth and development seriously to pursue growth therapy with enthusiasm even in the face of the circle of people in their life who may not understand. The hope of a fuller and more meaningful life for others may come from our modeling such a way of being. Even though few may have the ears to hear the call and answer it, it is good for me to remember that the call nevertheless is intended for everyone. As one who has a small portion of this inner Knowing I feel a responsibility to reach out to the many who still may lead lives of "quiet desperation".