The Power is Ronda Byrne’s follow up book to The Secret, the hugely successful self-help book on the Law of Attraction released in 2006. In The Power, Byrne reframes the Law of Attraction as the Law of Love. By giving love you are fulfilling your deepest purpose in the world, according to Byrne. By giving love you will get everything you want. The universe will submit to your every whim. Flowers will fly out your ass. Cherubs will sing. You get the picture. The universe revolves around you.

Now, to be fair, I like the idea that giving love is our reason for being. I am totally on board with it, in fact. I guess I just don’t like the way this book presents it. It’s incredibly long, drawn out, and repetitive. At 250 pages, I kind of expected a bit more. I kept thinking that it could have been 1/3 the size. Take As a Man Thinketh, by James Allan as an example of the brevity I am talking about. 100 pages. It’s all you need for a simple idea.

Another major complaint that I have about this book, and new thought material in general, is the propagation of the belief that, “if we can all just get along, everything will be fine”. I wish it were true. But the simple fact is that there are people out there who don’t give a crap about everyone getting along. The world could burn, and as long as these monsters are safe from it, they wouldn’t care. There are terrorists and serial killers, people with almost zero morality. We will never ever “just get along”. But that isn’t reason to give up. In fact, the realization of that fact can inspire one to action for positive change. It will never be perfect here, but the pursuit of a better world is an ideal worth acting on. “If only everyone could get along”, however is a perspective detached from action. It’s delusional, and The Power is rife with this kind of delusion. Anyway…

So, let’s dig into the big idea of the book. What is the Law of Love? Here’s what Byrne says on the subject. “Love is the positive force of life! Love is the cause of everything positive and good. There are not a hundred different positive forces in life; there is only one”. Skip to the end. Byrne is stating that our greatest gift is our capacity for giving love. A quote in the book from Mother Teresa sums it up quite nicely. “It’s not how much we give, but how much love we put into giving”.

Okay, so what does that mean? Why is our greatest gift our ability to give love? Well, according to Byrne, love is the thing us humans most want. Every single one of us wants to be loved…more than anything. But most people have a fear of giving love without first receiving it. This means that everyone is walking around really wanting to be loved but scared of giving it first. Those rare individuals, who are brave enough to step out and give love before they get it, end up being rewarded for their courage. They tend to attract everything they want in return. Byrne says, “The beauty of life is that when you put love first, all the money you need to live a full life comes to you”. There you have it.

Bottom Line

If the book is lying around and you have nothing better to do, give it a read. However, I suggest just skipping to the end of each chapter where the “points of power” sum up the preceding section. You can pretty much get the “point” of “the power” from there, and it will take you a fraction of the time to get through. Put simply; rich idea, poor presentation.

The Shadow Effect was developed by Debbie Ford and stars Deepak Chopra, Mark Victor Hansen, Marianne Williamson and others. The movie introduces the subject of shadow work, a psychological technique for uncovering and re-integrating disowned or neglected parts of the self. According to Ford, we all have these disowned parts or “shadows”, and when we become aware of them we can unlock our full potential.

The concept of the shadow is pretty simple. In fact, The Shadow Effect stretches on a bit longer than it needs to. Once the idea of the shadow is firmly explored, the film-makers explore it some more…and some more. I kept expecting the film to get to the part where I learn how to explore my own shadow, but it never got there. I got the wrong DVD version, I later found out.

Get the interactive version of the movie. That’s important. It is exactly like the regular version, except there is added footage where Debbie Ford guides the viewer in exploring her own shadow self. That’s really where the value is.

If you take the interactive journey, you’ll find there are some surprising and inevitably emotional parts to the process. You might even have a few revelations about your shadow, as I did in going through the process.

Bottom Line
The Shadow Effect is the perfect product for introducing and getting familiar with the parts of your self that you are unconscious of. Get the special interactive edition, set aside a few hours, and dive in. It’s a movie guaranteed to uncover many psychological jewels that have been buried in your mind for some time. And who doesn’t like jewels?

Note: There are some other products out there that explore the subject of shadow work. One that I really love is the Integral Life Practice Starter Kit. It’s damn good but horribly expensive. If you want to have your mind blown and can afford it, get that. However, if you want to dip your feet into the dark waters of your own psyche one toe at a time, the Shadow Effect is the best bet. It’s geared toward a more mainstream audience and significantly less debt inducing.

Is Esther Hicks talking to some non-physical group consciousness, or is she just accessing some deep level of her own consciousness? I don’t care. There really is no way to know, so in my opinion, it isn’t worth focusing on. What I will focus on in this review, however, is the message that is touched upon in the Getting Into the Vortex DVD.

The movie is really quite enlightening. I came across the Vortex book first, and that was pretty good. But this DVD really gets to the heart of the matter. What is the Vortex? How does it work? How does it relate to the Law of Attraction? By the end of the DVD I felt like I had solid answers to these questions and more.

What is the Vortex? The Vortex is potential. It is the culmination of all your desires you have ever sent out into the universe. All of those “rockets of desire” as Hicks calls them are gathered together in this swirling vortex of attraction. This vortex is pulling you towards it like a magnet. In fact the more contrast you see in your life between your current situation and this storehouse of potential, the more you will be attracted to it. Put most simply, the vortex is the self within that is waiting to be realized.

So how does the vortex work? Well, it’s pretty simple really. Say, for example, I am in a dead end job. I hate my boss, and I barely make enough money to pay my rent. If this experience is painful for me, which it undoubtedly will be, that pain will cause me to imagine myself in a better situation. I might have a fantasy about quitting and starting my own business, where I am my own boss and where my financial success is in my own hands. Well, the teachings of Abraham suggest that these idle thoughts are adding up to something. They are creating a contrast between where I am and where I want to be. That contrast is creating an intense desire to make that fantasy a reality.

Once a desire has entered my mind, it will never go away. I may be distracted from it for a bit, but as long as my current situation is still painful, that fantasy will have a magnetic pull on me. The longer I resist moving toward that fantasy, the more painful it will be to me. Finally, I will reach a threshold and act. I will step out and move toward that potential I want so intensely.

Since I can’t possibly do something greater without being someone greater, to reach for my desire I must grow. The continuous attraction of higher unrealized potential is what Abraham celebrates. It’s all about growth. It’s all about the thrill of the ride, the joy and bliss of an ever expanding sense of self.

So, how does the vortex relate to the Law of Attraction? If the vortex is pure potential, and that potential is stored in non-physical consciousness, and if all consciousness is one, then our desires are connected to infinite intelligence. Thought is essentially a direct line to the mind of God. Anything you want will be given, as long as you are willing to receive it.

Receiving something the universe offers is a challenge. This is because most of us are under the false impression that we need to get rid of contrast in our lives. We think that the ideal life would be one where everything is rosy and bright and nothing bad ever happens. We need to realize that the painful things in life are there to incite growth. The suffering is there to encourage us to want more. It’s that creation of a better future that is so joyful, not the realization of that future. Heaven isn’t a destination. Heaven is a journey.

Bottom Line
If you are interested in the Law of Attraction, personal development, or conscious living please check out Getting into the Vortex. It’s a fabulous movie, and one hell of a fun ride. Oh, and if channeling seems a bit too woo woo and new agey for you, don’t worry. The elves at the center of the earth tell me this DVD is all backed up by hard science.

In simple language, here’s how development works. When we are born we start at square one. We have a small undeveloped sense of self. But as we are exposed to more things in life, and if we are open to them, we grow through stages or waves of cognitive development.

One simple model of this development goes like this:

Egocentric Stage – Sense of care for self and immediate family (culturally this stage was dominant 10000 – 5000 years ago with tribes and small villages).

Ethnocentric Stage- Sense of care for my country, my religion, etc. (culturally this stage emerged around 5000 – 500 years ago. Think of organized religion up to the renaissance. “Good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell”).

Worldcentric Stage- Sense of care for all people regardless of what country they are in or what religion the have. Care for all animals, belief in equal rights for minorities, etc. (Culturally this emerged around 300 years ago with the scientific revolution but exploded in the last century with woman’s rights, the eco movement, PETA, etc. i.e.: “Give peace a chance”)

Cosmocentic Stage- Care for everything including the process of life itself. This stage is currently the leading edge of awareness and it only just started to emerge 50 years ago.

Notice how each stage is more loving, more good. We are progressively evolving to embrace more. Evolution is not a chaotic, random, uncaring process. It is moving in a clear and obvious direction….expanding in love.

From this new stage we see the answer to the worldcentric question of why people don’t give peace a chance? The answer is that because people in our culture are not all at the highest stage. 70% of the world’s population is at the ethnocentric stage or lower! So, although we culturally have access to these higher, more loving, more good stages, most people haven’t got there yet on a personal level, but they can.

The world is genuinely a good place and only getting better (we don’t have ritual sacrifice anymore, or slavery, thank God). In fact, a lot of the major atrocities of our time are from lower level people getting their hands on higher level technology. This is why it is really, really up to us, people operating at these higher levels, to spread the good. We are creating the future and the evolution of our cultural consciousness is up to us, quite literally.

I feel empowered that the positive difference I can make in people’s lives, even if it is just one person, makes an impact on the future of all mankind. Helping people to evolve their perspective will literally make the world a better place…and that makes me feel really, really good about the world and my place in it.

Most people approach life without a clear goal in mind. They have many desires, but most of the time don’t consciously move towards any one of them. When a decision is formed, it’s usually weak, and most often leads to self-sabotage. When you do what you don’t want to do in the first place, you can’t possibly achieve what you want.

Earlier in life I heard a quote from Woody Allen. He said, “Eighty percent of success is showing up”. I thought it was pretty accurate, because I knew that a lot of my success up till that point was from being in the right place at the right time. Now I think there is much more to it, though. Showing up is not just about being somewhere physically. Showing up means being there with every part of yourself. To really show up is to be conscious and clear, to have intention.

In any situation, ask the question, what do I want? Then go deeper. What do I really want? Get clear about why you are doing what you are doing. Then form the intent as a phrase. For example, “My intent is to be fully conscious in this moment”. Speak your intent out loud with as much awareness as you can bring. The more you can engage your mind and body, the more you will align yourself with your intent.

A lot of us feel as if we have been thrown into this world without a choice in the matter. We do our best to deal with events as they arise, but deep down we mostly feel lost. It takes courage to face reality as it is and consciously decide to be here now. That is the choice everyone is faced with at all times. Every time we choose to be conscious, we move from a life of reaction to a life of intention. Then we move towards what we want, and what we want moves towards us.

A lot of us have the false impression that we need to do something in order to enjoy happiness. Because of this reason, we hold off happiness until we meet the criteria that we have set up for ourselves.

About 5 years ago, I thought that if I could optimize my schedule I would complete my goals faster and as a result experience more happiness. However, the more I put in my day-timer, the more that new tasks seemed to pop up. I was always just a bit away from reaching all my goals. One day I had a realization. I was never going to arrive at the end, because the end kept getting pushed farther into my future. I was denying myself joy by putting it off with ever bigger goals.

There was no way i could continue to delude myself. I needed a new strategy for feeling joy. Soon after my search began I realized the obvious answer. I didn’t need to do something to be happy. I could be happy regardless of where I was in relation to my goals. It was a major breakthrough. In the book Happy for No Reason, Marci Shimoff says of this idea, “When you’re Happy for No Reason, you bring happiness to your outer experiences rather than trying to extract happiness from them. You don’t need to manipulate the world around you to try to make yourself happy. You live happiness, rather than for happiness”.

This is echoed in Eckhart Tolle’s book A New Earth. He says, “Being at peace and being who you are, that is, being yourself, are one. The ego says: Maybe at some point in the future, I can be at peace–if this, that, or the other happens, or I obtain this or become that…The ego doesn’t know that your only opportunity for being at peace is now”.

Where does happiness arise in your awareness? It always comes from within. This means that happiness is not something to get, but something that is a part of your inner landscape. It is a part of you. This can be felt very intensely by closing your eyes and identifying with happiness directly, as if it is your essence. The same way that you feel like your body is you, you can feel like happiness is you.

To experience this, sit in a comfortable position and close your eyes. Remember a time when you last felt really happy. As the feeling of happiness comes back, begin to focus on it. Now, while feeling happiness, imagine becoming happiness. There is a vast difference between experiencing an emotion and being that same emotion. The purpose of this practice is to be happiness. Let the emotion fully suffuse your body. Sit with this awareness for at least five minutes.

By sitting as happiness, soon a sense of relief begins to wash over you. It is the relief that you can be happiness at any time. Even in the most depressed state, when the body is in pain, and the mind is lost, happiness is there. To a mind starved of deep happiness, this experience is truly refreshing.

Happiness is the experience of accepting and embracing what is. By becoming open and accepting of whatever is in your awareness you can begin to feel a profound and natural joy. True happiness is the emotion that naturally arises when we let everything be as it is. True happiness is you.

There is a popular story of five blind men in a room, all feeling different parts of an elephant and disagreeing about what kind of animal it is. The one feeling the head of course has a radically different experience than the one feeling the tail, yet both are valid in their description of what they feel. The important step is integrating all the parts of their stories into a coherent whole story. Only then will it be clear what the animal really is.

We are in a privileged position. For the first time in history we have access to all the world’s religions, philosophies, and spiritual paths. This gives us the unique ability to view the subject of God under the light of this vast wealth of knowledge. This knowledge helps reveal a far more accurate picture of reality than any one before it, and from that comes a surprising answer to our question.

We all have the ability to take multiple perspectives at any given time. The big three are “I”, “we”, and “it”. “I” refers to the subjective perspective, “we” refers to the inter-subjective perspective, and “it” refers to the objective perspective. The fact is that certain cultures at certain times lean heavily on usually one of these basic three perspectives. When you look at a path, you can easily see which perspective shaped it.

An example of a tradition that is centered on the “I” perspective is Buddhism. The approach with Buddhism is to look within, to study the mind. Buddhism and the other “I” traditions are focused on the subjective experience and therefore give us incredible insights into this dimension of our own being.

Christianity, on the other hand, is primarily focused on the “we” perspective. This is why God in Christianity takes the form of a great thou, a separate and all knowing entity. We all have the ability to relate to the universe in this way at any given time. The common misconception is that the religions that arise from this perspective give us morality. In fact, it is the perspective itself that allows morality to develop, for this second person perspective allows us to see the world through the eyes of another, something the “I” and “it” perspectives don’t provide.

The “it” perspective is an objective lens. The scientific or rational view comes from this perspective. It provides us with the eyes to view the universe as a complex web of life. The technological advancements and scientific discoveries we enjoy on a daily basis would not be possible if it weren’t for this amazing perspective.

We have to remember that in describing reality from a specific perspective we are only seeing part of the whole picture. Therefore, any tradition, religion, or philosophy that describes reality is a partial view and should not be taken as the whole truth. There is always more to reality than any one perspective can describe.

Does God exist? It all depends on the perspective you take in order to answer the question, and remember that every perspective is limited. Therefore, no one perspective can give a full view of reality. The true nature of reality is a bit of every perspective, and yet beyond any perspective. If the universe is an elephant, let’s not confuse the trunk with the whole animal.

You are never more essentially, more deeply, yourself than when you are still.

- Eckhart Tolle, from A New Earth

Meditation is easy to learn. In this article, I will introduce you to a method that has been around for thousands of years and has been used by millions of people all over the world.

There may be a lot of different types of meditation, but they all have essentially the same purpose: to facilitate the realization of oneness with the universe. This oneness is enlightenment. Enlightenment isn’t only for Zen masters, though. It’s for everyone.

If your reason for learning meditation is not to experience enlightenment, that’s okay, too. Meditation has a lot of other positive benefits and they are all valid reasons to practice.

It is important to be open-minded when starting a meditation practice. As spiritual teacher Adyashanti put it in his book True Meditation, “The most important thing is that we come to meditation with an open attitude that’s not colored by the past, by what we’ve heard about meditation through culture, through the media, or through our various spiritual and religious traditions. We need to approach the notion of meditation in a way that is fresh and innocent”.

So, if you are ready, let’s get started.

Step 1

Sit in a comfortable position. You can either sit on the floor or in a chair. The important thing is that your posture is straight. You don’t want to fall asleep, so a pose that keeps you alert is best.

Step 2

Put your hands on your knees or lap. You can have them facing down or up; whatever you like.

Step 3

Close your eyes, and relax into the pose. Aim for a balance between resting your body and keeping your spine straight; not tense, but not loose, either.

Step 4

Breathe in and out through your nose. Begin to slow the pace until you achieve a very relaxed and comfortable pattern to your breathing.

Step 5

Pay attention to your body. Notice any areas of tension and let the tension go, let it relax. Listen to the sound of your breath coming in and out. Start to listen to the sounds around you. As you listen, just let everything be as it is. Listen to your internal dialogue in the same way. Take the role of a passive listener, not involved in your thoughts, not identified with them, but just observing them as if from a distance.

Step 6

Continue this practice of listening deeply for as long as you like. The audio file at the bottom of this article has one bell ring at the beginning and one at the 10 minute mark. You can use it if you want to do a 10 minute meditation. Start with the first ring, and when the bell rings the second time, slowly open your eyes. It is sometimes a good idea to sit for a bit and notice any new sensations, emotions, or thoughts that have come up as a result of your practice.

If your mind is busy with thoughts the whole time, this is entirely normal. In fact, one of the things you can learn from meditation is the degree to which you have almost no control over your thoughts. They come and go whether we try to stop them or not.

You also might wonder if you are “doing it right”. Don’t worry about this too much. Just keep meditating and you will start to know for yourself. One thing that might put your mind at ease is reading books or listening to audio from spiritual teachers. I have found that just listening to them helps my meditation a lot.

The most important thing in meditation is to let things be as they are. As Indian sage Ramana Maharshi said, “Let what comes come; let what goes go. Find out what remains”.

10 Minute Meditation

A few years ago, I borrowed an audio program from a friend. It was Ken Wilber’s Kosmic Consciousness. The first time I listened to it, I was un-impressed. It seemed like a huge amount of talking without much substance. To be entirely honest, I didn’t get it. Now, it’s not that often that I don’t get something. This is because I have a habit of needing to understand what someone is saying before I can dismiss what they are saying. When I didn’t get Wilber’s program, I had this nagging frustration in the back of my mind that didn’t go away. Over the next month, the concepts kept popping back into my thoughts. I kept trying to figure out what the heck he was going on about. Finally, I decided to give it another listen. About one third of the way in it hit me. It all made sense, and I knew right there that it was going to radically change how I would see the world from then on.

Ken Wilber’s integral model was a new way of seeing for me. It’s not that I had to throw away my old way of seeing things, though. Everything I had learned up till then still applied, but from then on all the content from my old model fit into a larger context, a more embracing worldview. With that more embracing worldview came more room for truth.

I was so excited about the integral perspective that I wanted to share it with everyone I could. Unfortunately, the same barriers that kept me from understanding it stop a lot of other people as well. This article is meant to describe Wilber’s model as accessibly as possible in the hope that more people can use it in their lives.

So, what is integral? A person operating from the integral impulse desires to consciously collect and integrate all the perspectives of the world into a cohesive and all together more embracing perspective. They know that a point of view is partial. It will always leave something out. Therefore, an integrally informed person doesn’t take any one perspective in their model as absolute truth. Each perspective serves to fill in and reveal larger meta-truths beyond the details of any one view. The integral mind seeks, above all else, higher truth.

In the pursuit of higher truth, we need a model to support that truth. We can’t just run around with a billion facts and figures in our mind with no system for storing all that information. The model serves as a structural framework with sections and subsections to store all that information. It is essentially a framework of meaning. Most of us let this process of model creation go on autopilot, and we end up with a pretty crappy model. The integral impulse is to bring that process of model creation into conscious awareness. Only then do we have the perspective necessary to create a better map.

In Integral Operating System, Ken Wilber says, “If you look at a simple summary of the integral map that we use, and there are dozens of variables, but we time and time again have found that there are five that we have found are really important. We call them quadrants, levels, lines, states, and types”. Basically, Wilber is saying that based on the multitude of research throughout human history, there are five subjects that come up time and again as important dimensions of human consciousness. There are obviously way more than five, but we want a useful model that doesn’t get bogged down and become just as overwhelming as the territory of reality itself. The model must be a careful and balanced representation, not too simple but not too complex.

Quadrants

The first of these five variables is called Quadrants. Quadrants refers to our use of pro-nouns to describe the perspectives we can take at any one time. The four pro-nouns that the model uses are I, We, It and Its. Again, it comes down to settling on a useful number, and four is right on the edge of that usefulness boundary.

So, what’s the use of having four pronouns in our model? If we look at these four pronouns, we see that they describe more than just perspectives that we can take on a personal level. One place they are echoed in is truth, good and beauty. If you think about it, truth is a description of information gleaned from the “it” dimension of reality. We call something true if it resonates with objective, “it” language. Science is an example of an “it” discipline. Another way to put it is that “it” describes objective reality. We say, “It is raining”. We don’t say, “I feel raining”. Rain coming down or not is an objective statement. Good is derivative of the “we” domain. Morality and social agreements are formed from taking the “we” perspective. We call this domain Intersubjective. It is based on collective agreement between at least two individuals. Beauty comes from the “I” domain. Some people think the Mona Lisa is ugly. I happen to think it is beautiful. Neither are objectively true nor a statement of what to do. They are statements of beauty, statements of the subjective. Finally, “its” describes Interobjective systems. These can be networks, governments and environments. Think of this quadrant as objective social systems.

These four dimensions of reality should never be mistaken for, or reduced to, one another. They are separate co-arising domains, and by including them in our map we have a greater chance of honouring what each brings to the table.

A while back I was faced with the decision of whether to quit my job or not. The company I was at was exploiting its employees and it was a toxic environment to be in for any length of time. I also wasn’t happy with the work itself. For those two reasons I sent in my letter of resignation. Later I was thinking about my decision and realized what I had done. I had made an “I” (personal, emotional) and a “we” (moral) check but hadn’t considered the “it” domain enough. I tend to be idealistic and this is definitely one of the shortcomings of that trait. I realized that if I had put more emphasis on the “it” domain as a factor I may have found a better job first before walking out. It was objectively a bad decision to leave when I did. This kind of quadrant check can be a fantastic way to make sure all dimensions of a situation are being given consideration in a decision.

Lines

The next variable in Ken Wilber’s integral model is Lines. Lines refers to what Howard Gardner calls multiple intelligences. We all know that people can be smart in one area and not so smart elsewhere. Look at me, for example. My artistic line is quite high because I have spent over 10 years developing it. Now if you throw me in a swimming pool with Michael Phelps, I might not do so well. My kinesthetic line is pretty sad, to say the least. This is quite common, though. Most people spend their time focusing on one or two areas and neglect the other areas. It’s not bad at all. But what we need to do is be aware of where we are developed and where we aren’t.

There are dozens of potential lines that we could include in our integral model. Wilber’s model emphasizes seven lines that really should be taken into account to encourage healthy growth. They are: cognitive, interpersonal, moral, musical, worldview, kinesthetic and values. Again, these are just some of the more important ones, and you can include more or less if you want.

A good example of where this kind of awareness can be beneficial is in leadership. The company that I recently left had a CEO who was cognitively quite highly developed, and he knew it. Unfortunately, he is a moral slug. He has made the mistake of generalizing his intelligence over all his lines, and it negatively affects everyone around him. With lines in one’s model, these kinds of blind-spots can be largely avoided. When a leader is lacking in an area, he can work on developing that area or hire someone who is developed there to fill in the gap.

Levels

Another variable in Wilber’s model is Levels. There is a huge amount of evidence from multiple researchers gathered during the last century about levels of consciousness. The evidence points to the fact that we all start out at square one and over the course of our lives develop through identifiable stages, or structures of awareness. The basic labels for these levels vary depending on the researcher but they all point to the same thing. These levels describe the stages that our lines develop through.

Spiral dynamics is a model of values development by Don Beck and Chris Cowan. In this model, the levels are labeled from lowest to highest as follows: Instinctive /Survivalistic, Magical/Animistic, Impulsive/Egocentric, Purposeful/Authoritarian, Achievist/Strategic, Communitarian/Egalitarian, Integrative, and Holistic.

The higher the level, the wider and more embracing the perspective. For instance, the Purposeful/Authoritarian level tends to identify with family and at most country whereas the next level, Achievist/Strategic has the capacity to identify with all human beings. It continues this way all the way up.

Levels are an important variable in the integral map. Awareness of this dimension of ourselves gives us the ability to know where a decision is coming from. We can always act from the highest, most embracing and holistic perspective we know. This helps promote a stronger sense of integrity. The gap between what we believe and what we do closes.

States

The forth variable is States of Consciousness. There are three main states that all of us experience on a regular basis; the gross waking state, the dream state and the formless deep sleep state. In addition, we are capable of experiencing many other altered or peak states at any given time. This is really important to keep in mind because we have to be aware that the state we are in influences how we see the world and what we do.

Another important thing to mention is that states should never be confused with levels and lines. If one has a mystical state experience, it doesn’t mean they are all of a sudden at a higher level of consciousness. In fact, most of the masters in the world’s spiritual disciplines are of any and all levels of consciousness.

Types

The final variable in Ken Wilber’s integral model is Types. The Myers-Briggs Typology model and the enneagram are two maps of this dimension of our being. They essentially refer to the qualities and structure of a person’s personality. By being aware of this dimension of ourselves, it promotes sensitivity to the various ways humans have for getting their needs met. When we know why we do what we do, we can have self acceptance for our uniqueness and also less attachment to excuses for why we can’t do something. When we know the self, we can embrace and move beyond the self.

There are many resources online where you can take tests to identify your type. I recommend the Myers-Briggs typology test. It can be a great way to get to know why you do what you do.

Quadrants, levels, lines, states, and types are the variables that Wilber’s integral model emphasizes. It’s a good place to start. Invest the time to get familiar with Wilber’s model and a variety of other models and find what fits your experience best. Our understanding is always developing and so is our model. The more conscious we are in our development, the healthier the whole process will be.

When we are faced with any decision in our lives, it really boils down to a question about what to do. Before answering that question, we try to take as many perspectives into account as possible to make sure our decision is a good one. But not all perspectives are equal. In effect, we need a system for adding appropriate weight to the various perspectives so they correctly influence our decision. A comprehensive worldview is absolutely essential in this, and Ken Wilber’s integral model is, quite frankly, as good as it gets.