A Deeper Understanding of Integral Spirit

A New Learning Adventure ~

We're calling it a journey. And we're inviting individuals to join with us and a

band of fellow explorers to travel into regions of enormous beauty and deep

spiritual experience, and to engage the hard challenges of the "great work."

We'll be together for a year of intense learning, adventure, and heart-opening

wonder.

We both believe that the most important thing we can be about today is the

strengthening of our spiritual lives coupled with the capacity to be leaders on

behalf of the work that needs to be done in our time. This has been the calling of

our own lives and has been the heart of our work both in Chinook and in the

Whidbey Institute for 39 years. The Integral Spirit journey, a program we've been

incubating for the past several years, is our way of now bringing personal story,

spiritual practice, cultural concerns, community spirit, and Earth and cosmos

into a coherent and compelling pattern of faith and life.

The pressing context for Integral Spirit is the new Universe/Earth story, our

interfaith global community, and the environmental imperative. Yes, this is a

very big picture. And to us nothing smaller is adequate for the work that lies

ahead. We believe that a living, pulsing communion with all life around and

within each one of us is what will give us the psychic energy to participate

creatively in humanity's perilous evolutionary process and to deepen our

commitment to service on behalf of a healthy natural world.

Some of us come from historic religious traditions, and some have little formal

religious background. Most of us are very inspired by an emerging spiritual

upwelling in our world today that crosses all religious lines and indicates the rise

 of a new cross-cultural spiritual understanding. Integral Spirit is a means to    

develop this emerging spiritual perspective and the practices that will strengthen

our ability to learn from the diversity of spiritual expression, to act from a      

universal higher guidance, and to enable each of us to fulfill our unique calling

and contribution in the world.

Why "integral? We looked it up: in-te-gral adj, necessary to the completeness

of the whole. Maybe it is not the easiest word, but it seems to come the closest to

what we feel is so critical for us to learn these days. Some developmental      

theories, like spiral dynamics, see humanity moving into a higher state of  

consciousness identified as "integral." We mean by this word the urgent     

necessity of developing and following our deep instinctive desire for wholeness,

or our creative belonging to all of life. This means following a path that  

expresses greater and greater coherence and holds all of life in an integral      

embrace. This is the path of love and compassion. We believe that personal    

health and happiness, as well as the sustainability of the planet, depend now on

a new integral pattern of thinking and acting.                      

Integral Spirit is a call to journey together for the following reasons:           

This list could continue and will. It will be part of our journey together as a

group of learners to discover and refine our deepest reasons for being on this

adventure together.

A Central Guiding Image ~

A dozen years ago on the Island of lona Fritz received in an extended period of

meditation a compelling image. It served as a way to draw together into a unity

seemingly separated dimensions of personal faith and life. Over the succeeding

years this image has remained vivid and instructive and during this last year

especially we both have worked to understand and articulate the value of this

image and create it as an imaginative base for Integral Spirit. We will work

therefore with this image — the ancient and universal archetype of a wheel with

4 quadrants and 16 "choice points" or units of exploration and affirmation. This

wheel, or mandala, contains major experiences of faith and life including: the

physical and "numinous" universe, guidance and wisdom, the earth community,

personal gifts, calling, power of limits, transformation, dark night of the soul,

vision, adventure, community, compassion, service, the challenge of opposition,

social transformation, release and the end of this life.

The center of the wheel represents the mystery at the heart of life, God/Spirit,

the source from which everything flows and where all life is integrated, and is

the source of love, truth and energy. There are other deeply intriguing aspects of

this central image that we will work with including the intersection of the

timeless with time, and the relationship of chaos and order.

This wheel is nested in the larger circles of Earth and cosmos. We will deepen

our experience and understanding of the summons today to think and act with a

deep love for the Earth and with active communication with the life-giving

sacredness of the natural world. We will open to the story of the universe and be

energized and guided by the greatest of all powers and dimensions available in

human experience that emanate from the reaches of cosmic mystery.

Over the past few decades many of us have traveled far on individual spiritual

quests including leaving, reinterpreting or rediscovering historic traditions.

Many people are now sensing the need to share together our new

understandings. Many would like to weave together the most positive and

relevant aspects of our search and discoveries. Integral Spirit is intended to

further this inquiry and encourage us as individuals and as a collective to weave

a new "pattern of coherence." The wheel and its encompassing curves represent

such a basic pattern and intention.

The 16 choice points on the wheel will each have a set of readings, songs, poetry,

helpful resources, and assignments. Booklets in a spiral binding will be given

out at the beginning of each quadrant (or we will make them as we go).

The Interplay of Quest and Affirmation ~

Integral Spirit is about discovering and learning what we have not known but

need to learn for the "great work" of our time to be undertaken successfully. We

will learn with one another and from one another. We will be a community in

question. It will not be adequate for us simply to repeat for each other what we

essentially already know. We will proceed with hearts and minds open and

eager to think, reflect, and integrate new knowledge, perspectives and ideas.

There will be modest amounts of selected readings for each session and some

guided exercises. We will draw from cultural historians, philosophers, spiritual

leaders, environmentalists, and poets. A primary source will be Thomas Berry.

There will also be a richness of additional resources for each participant to

pursue as they wish.

While this journey has the spirit of a quest. Integral Spirit is most about

affirmation. It is designed to urge each of us to formulate a personal "credo,"

meaning literally "that to which we give our hearts," shaping beliefs and

understandings that are worthy of our trust. A strong spirit of informed hope

lies at the heart of this work together. Integral Spirit is itself founded on a set of

affirmations or declarations. These central affirmations are:

Practice ~

Personal spiritual practice means many things these days. This will be the

subject of real exploration and will receive thoughtful experimentation. We will

develop a set of everyday practices during the journey that can help form a

participant's personal practice. The sharing of personal spiritual practices and

learning from each other will be central to our work together. The four quadrants

of the wheel provide a means for us to focus on specific spiritual practices

including gratefulness, confidence, creativity and generosity. In addition to a

focus on personal practice we will work with group practice. As we meet

together we will create practices that include music, poetry, creative writing,

movement, time in the forest, walks, symbolic art, meditation, prayer, ritual and

ceremony.

Sacred Responsibility ~

One of the chief purposes of Integral Spirit is the giving of ourselves in "sacred

responsibility" to the work of transformation, the healing of the Earth and

understanding the requirements of a sustainable future. This program is about

going deep within ourselves and wide to the world. It is crafted in the motif of

in-breath and out-breath, each natural and essential to the other. The Earth

Charter calls us "to care for the community of life with understanding,

compassion and love." This deep motivation for action in the world will lie at

the heart of how we understand our unique responsibility. We will constantly

encourage and help each other to choose our creative means of being involved.

Action filled with sensitivity, creativity and the capacity to sustain commitment

over the long haul will be what we continually lift up among ourselves as a

learning community.

Story House ~

Integral Spirit will have its own home base in the Story House now under

construction on the 30-acres at the east side of Chinook. We will gather and

learn in the quiet and remarkable beauty of the surrounding meadow and forest.

We want to feel the world of nature as much as possible, frequently gathering

outdoors. New trails will connect this area with Chinook lands to the west, with

a special trail descending into the wetlands and rising up to the sanctuary. We

will sometimes use the sanctuary during our gatherings. We want all our ways

of meeting and structuring this program to be as simple as possible and to keep

costs low.

How It Will Work ~

A typical Integral Spirit day at Story House will include arriving at 9:00 am.

Beginning at 9:30 sessions of content and interaction. 12:30 lunch. At 1:30

guidance-seeking activity outdoors, and creating collective wisdom. At 3:00

using the new rock circle for the grounding of affirmations. At 4:00 walk/drive

to the sanctuary for meditation and song. At 5:45 final blessing, and at 6:00

dinner at Story House if we choose. Participants will bring their own lunch.

Dinner to be determined.

A group of 16 individuals will take this journey as a "pilot group," and lead the

way for many others to follow in the days and years ahead. This trail-blazing is

therefore very significant and all parts of our experience will be evaluated,

materials revised, resources discovered, dimensions added.

The pilot group will gather for ten all-day sessions with one overnight in

November 2004, and one in the summer 2005. Two new groups of 16 each will

commence in Fall 2005, dates to be selected: Regular participation is,, of course,

very important.

During the first year or two there will be no established fee for Integral Spirit. We

ask that each participant attune to what they feel led to contribute.

We will add options to the program as we complete initial planning and as we

revise the program over time. One such option will be individual pilgrimages to

wild places here in our region and to the Island of lona in Scotland where we

have been conducting annual pilgrimages for the past 25 years. We will also

invite participants to spend additional time on the land exploring the trails,

camping in the forest, walking the labyrinth, and using the new sanctuary.

Participants will be invited to make the Chinook 100-acres a personal learning

environment and spiritual home.