Consciousness-in-Action

I don’t know how this Dervish didn’t drop from all his twirling, anymore than I know how I’ve managed to remain steady upon my return from the gathering of Integral practitioners in Istanbul and the spiritual retreat of organizers of Color in New York. But here I am, back home in Puerto Rico, reflecting on the past two weeks.

Integral Without Borders, a gathering of international and community development workers applying integral theory to their efforts, was indeed a wonderful event. As I mentioned in my previous post, there were people from and/or working in every continent (except Antartica), doing their work through the lens of “integral” as put forth by Ken Wilber and others. During five days (April 22-26), we shared theories, approaches, feelings, lessons and questions that arise from our experiences as we each develop our own integral praxis. A lot was shared through the many presentations, workshops and scheduled activities, and perhaps even more over meals (or coffee and baklava).

It was great to make new friends from around the globe: Walberto Tejeda from Honduras & El Salvador; Fernando Bretas from Brazil & DC; Soledad Teixidó, Chile; Julian González, Argentina & Canada; Yene Assegid, Ethiopia & South Africa; Carissa Weiler and Katherine Coder from the US; Lee White from Canada; and so many others. I was delighted to finally meet Gail Hochachka, who invited me, and the other event organizers, Paul van Schaik and Emine Kiray. It was absolutely wonderful to meet and learn from both Rollie Stanich, of the Integral Spiritual Center, and Diane Musho Hamilton, teacher of Zen and Big Mind/Big Heart. I also got to spend some time with my friend and compatriota, Vernice Solimar.

And, of course, I was more than happy for the chance to share an overview of the Consciousness-in-Action approach and ilé’s work. It was nice to see practitioners recognize its contribution to integral theory and its relevance to their work. It was also nice to be able to sell a few books, too, particularly knowing they would be read and used from Turkey to Chile to El Salvador to Canada to South Africa to the US to Norway and beyond. I look forward to seeing many of my new friends and colleagues at the First Integral Theory Conference in California this August.

Needless to say, I am still integrating a lot of learnings, insights and feelings from the event, as well as from being in one of the oldest cities in the world. Though I would have needed a least another full week to see all I wanted to, I came away more than full from the experience. So much so that I’m not quite sure how I was able to engage and be present at the retreat in upstate New York.

But, I’ll get to that in my next post.