Last
updated: 25 Oct 07
London Integral Circle: 'Crucible of a consciousness struggling
to be born'
•
Monthly meetings: Salon, Practice, Social and Women's groups
• Join the e-group/e-mail list
• History
• What are 'Integral Salons'?
• Topics of past meetings
 Photo
right: London Integral Circle meeting – with Dr Don
Beck, May 2005.
Top
Monthly Meetings:
• LONDON INTEGRAL CIRCLE - SALON
Meets on first Wednesday of each month in Hampstead.
All welcome! (For full details -
meeting topics etc - please join our e-list)
• LONDON INTEGRAL CIRCLE - PRACTICE
Meets monthly. Contact Gary
Hawke. All welcome!
• LONDON INTEGRAL CIRCLE - SOCIAL
Meets on the second last Friday of each month near
Piccadilly. Contact Vijay
Rana or Anand.
All welcome!
• LONDON INTEGRAL CIRCLE - WOMEN
Our newest regular group. Contact Elizabeth
or Indra.
Also
Karen Liebenguth is setting up an Integral Ecology
interest group (more info),
for London and beyond. Do get in touch with her.
 Photo
right: Dr Susanne Cook-Greuter on ‘Scoring sentence
completions: Expanding existing theory and ongoing self-discovery’,
October 2006.
“A
fabulous list”, “a very very high quality group”,
“such a modelling of a living Second Tier community...
of how it works.”
“My favourite haunt is the London Integral Circle. Father
Christmas has not yet brought me a thriving integral community
in Brussels, and what with the demands of a full-time job
and school-aged kids, I have never been able to get to the
London events. So: integral in exile.”
– Helen
Titchen Beeth, interviewed on Ken Wilber’s Integral
Naked.
“London
Integral Circle: The largest Integral Salon in the world.
They started it, we followed!” - Gary
Stamper, Seattle Integral
The
London Integral Circle has helped inspire othe salons to launch
in the UK and even in the US (eg Seattle, San Francisco and
Carmel, California).
Top
To
join in our events, join our e-group/e-mail list...
The e-list is a closed Yahoo e-group (which keeps spammers
and the potentially 'badly-behaved' out). If you would like
to join please go to the London
Integral Circle e-group page and follow the instructions.
 Photo
right: ‘Extensions to AQAL’ meeting (February 2006)
– with integral psychotherapist and Integral Institute
founder member John Rowan (on left), author of The
Transpersonal: Spirituality in Psychotherapy and Counselling.
If
that really won't work for you please send me:
• Your actual name (rather than just an e-mail alias)
• A bit about your personal interest in things integral
• Your e-mail address
We
let most people join. But not everyone, as the e-group/e-list
needs to remain a 'safe space' for discussion, not degenerate
into name-calling and predictable grand-standing, as so easily
can happen in the usual online free-for-all. Worth remembering,
too, that Wilber’s original Integral Institute itself
rapidly became a ‘Green’ organisation, apparently,
rather than truly ‘integral’ – and presumably
had to be restructured to prevent a repeat of this. (I may
be wrong about this – there is no history of the Integral
Institute written up anywhere, to consult. Though a 40-page
one was promised in summer 2007).
If
you’re thinking of coming along to a meeting do try
to ensure you’ve read some of Wilber’s recent
work, so that you know what people are referring to if they
refer to levels, lines, quadrants, Second Tier and suchlike.
Or read though the What is Integral?
page and its links.
Photo
right: London Integral Circle members (and one future member
– unless he decides to rebel against his dad) at a Christmas
party at Matthew Kalman’s home.
The
e-group has around 320 members – a fair number of them
not even in the UK, but keen to participate in integral-related
discussions and developments.
Top
A Bit of History...
The
London Integral Circle was launched in 2000 by Matthew Kalman
(following an announcement at a central London lecture by
'new paradigm' writer Peter Russell, an admirer of Wilber’s
work). It has had regular monthly meetings open to all since
January 2001. (If you want to find out about similar groups
in other parts of the world click on Communities).
Do
join us in London if you can. We also have an e-group –
open to anyone who wants to part of an integral-orientated
conversation.
The
information on meetings (eg topics, venues, times) is sent
out to this London
Integral Circle e-group, which also provides a forum for
ongoing discussions, announcements between meetings etc.
 The
London Integral Circle started off as more of a straightforward
reading group, discussing chapters from Wilber’s book
A
Theory of Everything - An Integral Vision for Business, Politics,
Science and Spirituality, but soon branched out into
a wide range of talks, workshops etc, usually led by members
of the group. (Though I was invited to be a founder member
of Ken Wilber's US-based Integral Institute, this London group
is a personal initiative, not 'officially' directly connected
to the Institute's work in the US).
The
group even had a different name at its launch, Politics and
Spirit, partly as I was keen to encourage an interest in wider
social issues and make sure it wasn't swamped by navel-gazing
New Agers. I should, of course, have guessed that it would
instead move to the other extreme and be swamped at the outset
by progressive social activists who were rather weak in the
navel-gazing department, or 'line of development' –
to use an official integral term ;-)
(But
that had largely been my own background, so little wonder
it happened. It’s also worth noting that it can only
take one or two intolerant members to pull an integral group
towards self-destruction. Your best hope is probably that
such people leave. Encouraging democratic participation probably
worsens such situations, as Green – egalitarian/communitarian/sensitive
– values are likely to be prevalent, and suspicious
of the needed rules/moderation etc.)
 Photo:
Rabbi Michael Lerner at 'The Globalisation of Spirit vs the
Globalisation of Capital - a new strategy for radical social
transformation' lecture, organized by Matthew Kalman. Also
pictured, far right: Matthew Taylor (then Director of leading
UK think-tank IPPR, later Tony Blair's Chief Political Strategist)
– who introduced the event – with award-winning
Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland (October 2001).
I
organised a first public lecture in London for Integral Institute
member Rabbi Michael Lerner, who advocates a ‘Politics
of Meaning’ approach which attempts the tricky task
of melding left and progressive politics with more spiritual
and psychological concerns. Rabbi Lerner once even had the
Clintons' attention, before the press mauled them over it.
Lerner believes that this was partly as the Right knows the
threat if the Left joined it in talk about morals, ethics,
values and spirit.
The
lecture included an introduction by Matthew Taylor, then head
of leading UK think tank the Institute of Public Policy Research
(and later the Labour Party's Chief Policy Adviser). It included
a response from award-winning Guardian columnist
Jonathan Freedland, whose report on Lerner in The Guardian
(2/1/02) mentioned the large crowd – about 300 people
turned up – drawn to hear Lerner: "the large London
venue was crammed – with an overflow crowd pressed up
against the windows outside."
Unfortunately
the alliance between Lerner and Wilber couldn’t be sustained.
Perhaps the Left is still just too far from yet embracing
an integral approach? Perhaps they just cramped eachothers’
styles, who knows...?
Top
Integral
Salons
Recently Wilber has written about the integral ‘salons’
worldwide – of which the London Integral Circle is one
example: "the integral salons that are now springing
up around the world, crucibles of a consciousness struggling
to be born",
he writes.
For
Wilber, they are playing a role akin to the salons
of the French Enlightenment: "This shift from blue to
orange, or from traditional values to modern values, was presaged
in the salons or “small gatherings of moderns”
(the word salon is French, but these gatherings were
also occurring in England, Scotland, and Germany, among others),
where the social practice of dialoguing
according to orange values was carefully exercised."
"A
similar process is now at play, I believe, in the nascent
integral salons spontaneously forming around the world",
argues Wilber.
Ken
Wilber continues: "But by whatever name and in whatever
context, integral salons are in fact already forming around
the world, pockets of care and consciousness where individuals
exercise second tier potentials in an ongoing effort to embrace
as gracefully as possible all dimensions of the radiant Kosmos.
The more one actually practices an integral meta-paradigm
(in personal life, in business, in education, in politics,
in medicine, in spirituality), the more Eros is set rumbling
through the system, agitating and pulling toward a second-tier
transformation that explodes the legitimacy crisis inherent
in all first-tier waves and throws them open to an enrichment
beyond their first-tier imprisonment, an enrichment that is
their own inherent potential and divine birthright set free
in the deeper and wider spaces enacted by integral practices".
Wilber
estimates that the currently tiny proportion of the population
– less than 2 per cent – that is already at the
integral stages which follow the postmodern-pluralist stage
– may rise to 10 or 15 per cent future decades, leading
to “a major cultural revolution, comparable at least
to that of the sixties”.
Such
a major catalytic role is certainly something worth aspiring
to (if one doesn’t lapse into arrogance and ungrounded
espousals of higher stages) – I would certainly suggest
from my experience that being part of a face-to-face group
which is slowly learning how to think and act in a more integrally-informed
way can be a rewarding and illuminating experience.
So,
join your nearest group – or set one up yourself.
Here
is a page about other groups/salons
worldwide, which includes some marketing ideas on how to find
like-minded people if you want to launch a new group but are
worried by a lack of much sign of local 'integral shoots'
in your neck of the woods.
Top
Topics of past London Integral Circle salon meetings include:
**
NB Do please e-mail
me your good examples of integral salon structures,
exercises, discussion formats, workshop topics etc that you
have used or come across - and I’ll post them on the
Integral Salons
Best Practices page, so the London Integral Circle
and other groups around the world can use and develop them.**
•
Integral Institute founder member and author of Spiral
Dynamics: mastering values, leadership and change
Dr Don Beck (see photo) spoke with the group on integral/Second
Tier applications (at a special seminar at a larger venue).
•
Integral Institute founder member Dr Susanne Cook-Greuter:
‘Scoring sentence completions: Expanding existing theory
and ongoing self-discovery’; co-editor of Transcendence
and Mature Thought in Adulthood - the further reaches of adult
development.
• A ‘Big Mind’ experiential workshop –
working with our personal and transpersonal subpersonalities/selves
and glimpsing ‘non-dual’ altered states. (Led
by Manu Bazzano, Zen monk, trainee psychotherapist and (then)
student of Genpo Dennis Merzel Roshi, the developer of this
intriguing synthesis of Zen Buddhism and Jungian voice work).
I think most of the group certainly experienced it as a powerful
and revealing method.
• A transformation workshop based on Prof Robert Kegan
and Lisa Laskow Lahey’s book How
the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work – Seven Languages
for Transformation (Led by Rob Paton, Professor of
Social Enterprise at the Open University).
• "Extensions to AQAL", with Dr. John Rowan
(Britain's leading integral/transpersonal psychotherapist
and counsellor, a founder member of the Integral Institute
and author
of The
Transpersonal: Spirituality in Psychotherapy and Counselling).
• Outline of an integral-influenced project revisioning
social work across Scotland. Led by Indra Adnan and Pat
Kane – of the think-tank New
Integrity.
• "Stan Grof's 'full-spectrum' practice" –
with Marty Boroson. This recent talk and discussion many of
the group found particularly profound – it was based
around Marty’s article ‘Radar
to the Infinite - Holotropic Breathwork and the Integral Vision’.
• AQAL workshops to deepen understanding of problems
and potential solutions on all levels and in all quadrants.
Topics have included education and health. Involves AQAL charts
and lots of meme-coloured post-it notes! Led by Matthew Kalman,
Jonathan Daniels (Department for Education and Skills).
• Spiral Dynamics 'Value memes' workshops – assessing
the 'Value meme' stack for the group as a whole and for the
wider world. Led by Matthew Kalman.
• A ‘Full Spectrum’ approach to the couples
relationship, with couples counsellor Beatrice Millar. (Largest
attendance of any of our regular meetings, 30+ if I remember
correctly).
• AQAL sharing discussion of our personal Integral Transformative
Practices (led by Matthew Kalman).
• Integral and the ‘Play Ethic’ with Pat
Kane, musician, commentator, visionary.
• Experiential workshop tasting a range of practices
drawn from Roger Walsh’s book Essential
Spirituality - The 7 Central Practices to Awaken Heart and
Mind – Exercises from the World’s Religions to
Cultivate Kindness, Love, Joy, Peace, Vision, Wisdom and Generosity
(strongly recommended by Ken Wilber). Led by Michael Brookes.
• 'How your Shadow can help you manifest your Integral'.
Experiential integral groupwork session with Rex Brangwyn
and Peter Clifton.
• A formal debate (including votes by the 'audience',
Proposers, Seconders etc) about whether or not there could
be an ‘Integral’ justification for the US-led
invasion of Iraq. This was the largest ordinary meeting in
our early years (25+) and was probably the most, er, polarised.
We were, effectively, discussing the Wilber/Beck view (possibly
justified) vs the Cowan view (definitely not justified; 'down
with Bush' and the neo-cons etc).
• Workshop with bodymind awareness exercise and Witnessing
exercise (see The
Essential Ken Wilber - An Introductory Reader) with
trainee counsellor Andrew Tacey and Birkbeck College Psychology
lecturer Oliver Robertson.
• Talk on ‘The Integral Nature of Kabbalah’,
by consultant and futurist Keith Bellamy.
• 'Leaders along the Spiral' interactive workshop, led
by Matthew Kalman.
• Talk on Patanjali (with yoga exercises) by Michael
Brookes.
• Integral Transformative Practice and coaching, with
Stuart Black.
• 'Psychosynthesis & Postmodernity – The Challenge
of the Postmetaphysical' talk, with Keith Silvester, Director
of Programmes of the Psychosynthesis & Education Trust.
• Talk on integral organisational transformation initiatives,
by Kari Kron.
• Discussion of chapters from Ken Wilber's A
Theory of Everything - An Integral Vision for Business, Politics,
Science and Spirituality (The text of these two online
introductions to volumes of Wilber's 'Collected Works' here:
Intro.
to Vol 7 and here: Intro
to Vol. 8 seem largely indistinguishable from the text
of his book A Theory of Everything).
These were the very first meetings of our Integral salon,
when it was more like a ‘book group’.
• Listening to extracts from tapes of Prof Clare Graves,
followed by discussion.
• Integral art discussion, led by Sara Rogers.
• Myers-Briggs personality type workshop, led by Martin
Egan. Included plotting the types present in the group. Guess
what, loads of 'Big Picture' iNtuitive types, and almost no
Sensing at all. The most common types in our group were ENFP,
followed by ENFJ, then INTJ and ENTJ.
• Integral technology futures talk, by Keith Bellamy
of Pragmatic Futures.
• Pierre Teilhard de Chardin talk by Victor Anderson,
then an elected Green Party representative on the Greater
London Authority.
• Discussion about extracts from Ken Wilber's Kosmic
Consciousness (The Ken Wilber Sessions - An Unprecendented
Audio Learning Experience) CD set.
• Meditation practice, led by Giles Oliver.
** Please
remind me about any other meetings I have missed off (why
didn’t I make a list of meetings as we did them...!?)
**
Top
Integral Ecology interest group
Karen Liebenguth writes: "Through my work at Friends
of the Earth and my interest in how we can (re)-connect to
the Natural World I'm interested in exchanging experiences
and ideas about different ways of applying Integral Ecology
in our daily lives. Please contact me, Karen, if you are interested
in exploring and discussing this field further. Long-term
I would be delighted if we could get an Integral Ecology network
and/or discussion forum going in London and beyond. Contact:
kliebenguth@gmail.com
Top
Structure of the group
The London Integral Circle is organised by Matthew Kalman,
backed up by a relatively informal core group of regulars
(with particular help from Michael Brookes in the months immediately
after I became a father). We once sought to have a number
of ‘Quadrant Champions’ (or ‘Quadrant Conveners')
– to help plan and organise the programme of meetings.
Right now that particular approach hasn’t taken off.
Earlier
in the group’s history, much of the planning was done
through group-wide brainstorms in our regular meetings, though
that eventually seemed to lead to diminishing returns and
Matthew Kalman went back to doing the planning and programming
– before the core group approach was initiated.
**
I’d love to hear about successful and sustainable
structures that other groups may have come up with to organise
themselves – I know that others (like Gary Stamper in
Seattle) struggle with the eternal problems of ensuring sustainability
and reducing over-reliance on one person, usually the founder.
**
A
short-running early experiential off-shoot group came and
went, as its leader – Gary Hampson – emigrated
to Australia. More recently a regular London Integral Circle
practice group has formed, led by Gary Hawke and Scott Thomas.
The Practice group was followed by a monthly Social (led by
Vijay Rana) and monthly Women’s group (led by Indra
Adnan and Elizabeth Jane Dunn).
There
was once a suggestion to set up an organisation-focused 'Developmental
Action Inquiry' (ie Bill Torbert-influenced) group in parallel
and also to initiate some structured ‘beginners’
meetings to focus on foundational integral writings by Ken
Wilber. Neither of these reached fruition, though they certainly
still sound like good ideas to me. (I’d love to know
more about what the activities of a Torbert-inspired ‘Developmental
Action Inquiry’ group might be. Do e-mail
me if you have any experience of this.)
One
member of the core group is currently considering launching
a ‘London Subtle Society’. There has also been
talk about a local David Deida-influenced Men's group becoming
part of the London Integral Circle – but this hasn’t
happened, though it has had a meeting with the London Integral
Circle’s Women’s group.
Only
one thing’s for certain, the London Integral Circle
keeps evolving... :- )
Top
Copyright
© 2007 Matthew Kalman |
