Longing for the Integral Life

This article introduces a new integral perspective on life and provides clues of what it might mean to live life as a contributionto the cultural renewal, aesthetic unfolding, and holistic develop-ment of self and society, community and institutions, peopleand planet.

It is rooted in over a decade of developing, together with RonnieLessem and a growing network of global co-creators, the IntegralWorlds approach with numerous applications worldwide. De-spite many successes, we witness a growing urge, need, and long-ing to move further beyond acognitive understanding to-wards full-fledged ‘enlivenment’and embodiment of integral life.We begin with a brief review on‘life’ and on ‘integral.’

On Life: Life is indivisible!There is only ‘one life’ permeat-ing creation. Personal develop-ment cannot really be looked at in isolation but only as ‘inte-gral’ to life as a whole. Life isneither insular nor static. It is in continuous evolutionaryunfolding, operating on theprinciple of ‘interdependent co-arising’—a term borrowed fromJean Houston. Life engages all human and non-human systems,animated and unanimated matter alike, in a ‘great play’ of con-tinuous co-learning and co-evolution. In this highly relationalprocess, we need to transcend our current ‘modus operandi’based on exploitation, control, and dominion towards a holistic,nurturing, and caring attitude to life. Such a perspective ‘re-em-beds’ humanity within creation and moves us to participate inlife’s ‘great dance’ so that our own individual wholeness flourishesin unison with all life on the planet. Gradually, humanity is open-ing up to a holistic paradigm, aspiring to rebalance and reinte-grate all that we are from within ourselves (body, mind, heart,soul, etc.) and all that we are from without (nature, culture, sci-ence, economics, etc.).

The Emergence of the Integral Age: Recent decades showed anintensive engagement with integral philosophies and models.The works of Ken Wilber and Don Beck stand out, though there

are many related thinkers and practitioners activating the ‘integral field.’ All of them are a continuation of a centuries-longif not millennia-long quest for a more integrated understandingof life. In more recent history, this quest was pursued, for exam-ple, by Henri Bergson, Sri Aurobindo, and Jean Gebser. In fact,it was Gebser who claimed in The Ever Present Origin that afterthe archaic, magical, and mythical state, humanity is currentlyin the last sparks of an overripe mental state. He predicted thatthe crucial next step is to transition into the integral state, inte-grating and transcending all prior states.

What all of these integrative perspectives have in common is theattempt to reconnect hithertofragmented perspectives on lifeand to give voice to the evolution-ary urge of the human species toevolve towards higher levels ofconvergence. Teilhard de Chardinarticulated this longing as human-ity’s move towards a so-called‘Omega Point.’ In summary, onemay well coin humanity’s next erathe ‘integral age’—and our ownIntegral Worlds approach is to beseen in this context.

On Trans4m’s Integral WorldsApproach: Ten years ago, RonnieLessem, my Zimbabwean-Britishcolleague, son of Jewish immi-

grants from Eastern Europe, and I, born into post-Nazi Germany,established our Trans4m Center for Integral Development. Whatbrought us together was our shared passion to counterbalance thegrowing cultural, economic, ecological, and political injusticeworldwide via an integrated theory and transformative practice.Since then, we have established the Integral Worlds approach asa new philosophy and practice to address burning issues in oursocieties and catalyze integral solutions.

By ‘integral’ we mean a dynamic ‘whole life’ perspective that:

• integrates the development of self, organization, commu-nity, society, and world

• includes all aspects of a living system including nature,community, and ecology; culture, creativity, and arts; sci-ence, systems, and technology; enterprise, economics,and politics; altogether connected by an inner core

feature | cultural renewal

Imago Integralis: The Aesthetics of Integral LifeAlexander Schieffer

Figure 1

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• draws on local and global knowledge and is particular to the natural, cultural, scientific, and economic life of any givencontext

• is geared to bring about holistic solutions with local rele-vance and global resonance to restore ‘dynamic wholeness’

This understanding is reflected in Figure 1.

The starting point for bringing forth any new integral solutionis always the individual transformation agent. Whether they joinour university-accredited PhD process, which we call a ‘Processfor Holistic Development,’ or enroll in a tailored transformationaljourney, each of these agents follows an inner calling that, in turn,needs to echo with the challenge perceived by his or her organi-zation, community, and/or society. Such a matching between per-sonal inner calling and collective outer challenge is vital for theformation of an innovation ecosystem within the organizationthat supports the individual agent and for the activation of theshared transformative potential.

By now, the Integral Worlds approach has been richly developed.It has been applied to enterprise, community, economics, devel-opment, research, and many other fields. Our active network oftransformation agents and centers grounded in this integral ap-proach stretches from Nigeria to Zimbabwe, from Sri Lanka toIndia, from Brazil to Paraguay, from Jordan to Egypt, from Slove-nia to Australia, and beyond. Together, we have addressed a widerange of burning issues like famine and food insecurity, disa-bility and discrimination, chronic unemployment, violence againstwomen, divided religious communities, and dysfunctional eco-nomic systems. In response, in a co-creative process with our localpartners, we have generated culturally-rooted integral solutionsfrom integral community development to financial inclusion; fromcreating an integral enterprise to an integral national economy;from empowering women to developing grassroots leadershipprocesses. Together, we have achieved some extraordinary results.

Indeed, the journey has been rewarding for many, testifying that breakthroughs are possible even in countries plagued with con-flict, like Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka, or deeply divided like Brazil and India—when they are locally grown, culturallyrooted, and innovatively integral.

However, working within transitional or industrialized countries,and working with institutions, businesses, and universities, wenotice how great the resistance to change still is. It remains diffi-cult to sustain change and turn innovative initiatives into fully embodied personal and institutional practices. The pull of oldpatterns is overwhelming. More often than not, people remaincaught in fear, doubt, egocentrism, conflict, overactive mentalprocesses and many other predicaments. Despite real progress,we are still ‘stuck in ego’ rather than ‘flourish in eco.’

‘Imago Integralis:’ A Blueprint for Embodying Integral Life

The next step for the integral age is to embody the integral per-spective more fully—make it a living reality in our own lives sothat it can become sustainable in our organizations and societies.Then it can grow into an ever-evolving ‘whole life ecology.’ Let’sbegin with a short exercise.

Tuning Into ‘Whole Life Ecology:’ Let’s get up, stretch our armsand legs as far as we can in all directions, up and down, backwardand forward; jump high and lie down, continuing the same exer-cise; get up again and turn around on our axis, embrace all we arewithin ourselves and everything around us. We begin to receive aphysical and most likely also emotional sense for a fully roundedexistence. Indeed, we have enacted huge circles and we have con-nected with all directions. We are in touch with ourselves and theworld. We may feel like a four-petalled flower, rooted in the earth,rising towards the sky, fully opening up, and offering the sight andfragrance of our fully-rounded, blooming blossom to everyone,including ourselves. We have tasted ‘whole life ecology.’

Ode to Integral Life

my little bucketis about to break

you poured yourselfso totally

into my heartthat I can’t holdmy self together

any longer

allow my cupto burst into your streamand as I join your waters

grant me unionwith your all-abundant glory

Young agents of transformation at Trans4m’s ‘Home for Humanity,’ France

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On the Inner Aesthetics of an Integral Life:Through this exercise,we have also tuned in with ancient blueprints. The cultural rootimages in almost all civilizations depict round, fourfold repre-sentations of a whole life: from the Tibetan Mandala to fourfoldcosmotheandric designs of First Peoples; from the Celtic Crossto the Buddhist eightfold Wheel of Life; from the cosmology ofthe Bakongo People in Africa to calligraphic representations ofthe Prophet Mohammed’s name, to mention but a few. All ofthese highly aesthetic circular representations provided visual,spiritual, and philosophical guidance of what it means to live lifein tune with oneself, with humanity, with earth, with cosmos. Forall civilizations, such images played a most important role. Theyimprinted an ‘imago of the ultimately possible,’ served as a ‘livinglife compass,’ and spurred the imagination for crafting a ‘full-fill-ing’ life. However, in transitional times like ours, many of thesecivilizational root images and philosophies are losing their orig-inal power for collective orientation. Therefore, we are now calledto engage in inner processes that allow us to (re)connect with anauthentic ‘imago’ of a whole life—an image that vibrates with ourinnermost aesthetics. Such an ‘imago integralis’ of who we areand can become—Jean Houston calls it the ‘optimal quantumblueprint’—is what many of us long for.

Towards an ‘Imago Integralis:’ Living an Integral Life would re-quire us to formulate this aesthetic ‘imago integralis’ of our optimalself and move towards it by co-evolving five key qualities: vitality,innovativeness, creativity, co-creativeness, and, most importantly,love. Each of these ‘integral qualities’ has a personal and a transper-sonal dimension. All of them form an integral part of our ‘imagointegralis’ (intimated in Figure 1) for a fully rounded, wholesomelife; it is itself ‘alive,’ actively expanding into ever-larger co-creativeand co-participatory spaces. As we integrate all five qualities andembody fully our ‘imago,’ gradually our personal life has an in-creasing impact on the holistic development of our social systems:our family, community, organization, society, and world.

South = Body = Vitality:We begin with the body, as our physicalform is our initial and first ‘access point’ to life. In order to live astrong purposeful life, we need to have our ‘feet on the ground,’be ‘in touch with’ body and earth, be able to listen to our bodilyintelligence, exercise and attend to our body, nourish it well and keep it healthy. If we strike the right balance, there is vitality within

us, providing a foundation for all other qualities. Our own vitality,in turn, contributes to the vitality of life in general. It is through ourbody’s vitality that we experience our all-important relationship tonature and develop that lifelong bond with the ecology we are bornand raised in. It is through our body that we feel and experience re-lationship, with ourselves and with others. We become aware of our-selves as ‘part of ’ a larger body and we feel called to not only care forourselves, but for all of creation.

North = Mind = Innovativeness: The mind is the seat of thoughtsand speech. The more we learn about the functioning of the brain,about how our thinking constructs our (usually rather limited) takeon reality, about how our thoughts often push us, against our will,from self-inflation to self-dismissal, the more we fathom how im-portant it is to learn how we think and know and how we can health-ily groom these capacities. Furthermore, the more we grasp howthoughts shape reality, the more we develop insights into the rela-tionships between mind and body, energy and matter, no-form andform. It is in these relationships that we fathom the underlying prin-ciples of life, and we observe them within as much as outside of our-selves. It is for this reason that the body-mind axis holds a crucialkey for our understanding of life. This vertical axis anchors us in thevery grounds of existence, symbolized by the material reality of‘earth’ (pulling us into embodiment and ‘enlivenment’), and it con-nects us to the future potential of life, symbolized by the etheric re-ality of ‘heaven’ (pulling us towards awakening and enlightenment).From the ancient Indian chakra systems to modern day bioenerget-ics—all knowledge systems emphasize the importance of this verticalaxis for our evolution as fully conscious human beings and as a pre-requisite for participating in life in a balanced fashion.

East = Receiving Hand = Creativity: The left and the right handrepresent the outer points of the ‘axis of participation,’ with re-ceptive creativity in the left and active co-creativity in the rightcoming into balance. Their complementarity is also mirrored inthe two-fold structure of our brain, with its right hemisphere en-abling intuition, imagination, creativity, ‘seeing the whole,’ etc.,while the left hemisphere is ‘in charge’—for example, analysis,structure, and pointed action. Modern societies overemphasizethe left side of the brain while giving insufficient attention andvalue to the qualities housed in the right cerebral hemisphere. Inan integral life perspective, this sparkling, inspirational quality

left.With a group of young integral developers from the University of St. Gallen at the UN in Geneva, Switzerland; right. Trans4m Co-Founders, Ronnie Lessem and Alexander Schieffer,with Trans4m Senior Fellow Father Anselm Adodo. Adodo’s Integral Model of Pax Africana is an example of a locally grounded ‘Imago Integralis.’ Ewu, Edo State, Nigeria.

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is ‘reinstalled’ as it is essential for our actions to adapt flexibly ina fast changing world. From a collective viewpoint, this qualityis at the center of cultural renewal, enabling locally authentic so-lutions to societal issues. It is the key quality to counteract currentday monoculturalism that inhibits the cultural diversity that hu-manity’s survival is dependent on.

West = Giving Hand = Co-Creativity: The ‘western’ quality of‘co-creativity,’ represented by a ‘giving hand,’ is a rebalanced evo-lution of the hyperactive, egocentric, and materialistic focus ofmodern western society, which led to absurd levels of inequalityand exploitation (within ourselves and in the world). Such a re-balancing is well in the making, with ever more people turningtowards cooperatively organized social systems, collaborative ac-tion, sharing economies, etc. Thousands of initiatives and socialventures for environmental, economic, gender, educational, andcultural justice have been formed. With a revival of local, cultural,and spiritual expressions, accompanied by the rise of a planetaryspirituality, we begin to attune to higher levels of balance betweenour inner ‘west’ and ‘east.’ However, on a systemic and collectivelevel, we have not yet seen fundamental changes. That requiresus to turn to the center, to the heart of integral life, as there liesthe single most potent source for fuelling the fundamental trans-formation ahead of us.

Center = Heart = Love: Joseph Chilton Pierce argues in The Heart-Mind Matrix that heart intelligence has been massively neglectedto humanity’s detriment. He describes the heart as our main sourcefor ‘coherence’ (within ourselves and with others) and our primaryaccess point to a deeper understanding of the interrelatedness be-tween spirit (energy) and matter (body, nature). Recent research(e.g., HeartMath) sees the heart as the organ with the strongest mag-netic radiance. In our integral life model, the heart serves as thecentral ‘integrator’ between the two axes: the vertical axis linkingus to ‘earth’ and ‘heaven’ and hence connects our body-seated vi-tality with our mind-seated innovativeness; and the horizontal axislinking our reflective, creative (receiving), active, co-creative (giv-ing) qualities. The role of the heart as the ‘seat of love’ cannot beoveremphasized, if love is understood as the capacity to embracethe whole of existence. Love, in this unconditional form, embraceslife as it is, and recognizes, affirms, and nurtures its wholeness,thereby creating an enabling field for healthy co-evolution.

Living the Imago Integralis: Integral Life as Care-ing Life

Now, we are ready to engage with the ‘I-CARE’ process that acti-vates the ‘imago integralis.’ It dynamically integrates all the IntegralLife qualities and serves to continuously nourish and expand them.Gradually, we ‘embody’ Integral Life within ourselves and increaseour impact on serving Integral Life as a whole.

I = Inspiration for the Call = ‘Heart / Core’ (Center):We regardthe heart as the starting point for activating the ‘imago integralis.’We are reminded that it is in our hearts where we most easily hearthe ‘call’ for transformation, evolution, and for higher levels of

union with the whole of life. The full development of an integrallife is dependent on the harmonious expansion of each quality indynamic relationship with all others—with the heart playing a cali-brating, resonance-creating, inspirational, and integrative function.

C = Cultivate Vitality = ‘Body / Feet’ (South): Following our callfor healing and ‘whole-ing,’ we learn to listen, ever deeper, to theencoded intelligence of the body. This keeps us grounded in theprocess, making us real, ‘earthed,’ and rooted in a particular placeto which we seek to contribute.

A = Awaken Creative Potential = ‘Left Hand’ (East): In touch withour call, our body, and the grounds of our reality, we now drawon our inner creative and intuitive wisdom sources. We listenwithin, allow new images to emerge, and connect with the cre-ative energy and potency such images hold.

R = Reframe Knowledge Towards Innovation = ‘Mind / Head’(North):As per Einstein, who called the intuition a ‘sacred gift’ andsaw the rational mind as its faithful servant, we only now move tothe mind, while remaining strongly connected to our heart andgrounded in our bodies to nature. We use our intellect to translatethe creative images into newly generated knowledge and innovativethinking, obtaining ‘clarity of mind’ of what needs to be done.

E = Engage Co-Creatively = ‘Right Hand’ (West):Action follows,not leads, within our ‘I-CARE’ process for a fully embodied life.Having first journeyed centerwards, downwards, inwards, andupwards, we are ready to move outwards. Staying attuned withour heart, body, and creative potential, we advance towards in-creasing levels of embodiment. Our thoughts and actions becomemore ‘original,’ sourced from our origins, rather than imitationsof the known and repetitions of the old.

Body and mind, left and right side aligned—with a fully activatedinspirational and integrative heart center—prepares us to embraceand embody a ‘whole life ecology’ within ourselves. This then servesas the necessary foundation to consciously activate such alignmentand continuous CARE in the social systems we are engaged with—from family to community, from enterprise to economy, from so-ciety to the world. As within, so without. As below, so above.

This is an opening invitation to embrace the aesthetics of an inte-gral life that renews our divided cultures while revitalizing our-selves. Let us undertake the evolutionary journey, individually andtogether, towards the ‘imago integralis’ that is calling each of us.

Alexander Schieffer is co-founder of Trans4m, a local-global movement for theintegral renewal of people and planet. A passionate integral teacher and visiting pro-fessor at various universities aroundthe world, he is author and co-authorof many books, among them IntegralDevelopment, Integral Economics,and Transformation Management.Alexander is a published poet andlives, together with his wife RamaMani, in their ‘Home for Humanity’near Geneva in the French JuraMountains. trans-4-m.com

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