How Big Is Our Umbrella?

The debate over Integral and conservative has self-combusted, but some of us learned new things from the experience. Isn't that the point? I want to post one last piece on the subject of Integral, then I will leave it to greater minds to hash out the details of our new Integral vision (at least until I have time to post an Integral "Defense of the Spiral").

Some object to Wilber being the "orthodoxy" of Integral, but we all owe to him our presence in this space discussing this topic. That is no small thing. So I just want to post a few of Wilber's own words on the definition of Integral.

What is important is not my particular version of an integral view, but rather that we all begin to enter into this extraordinary dialogue about the possibility of an integral approach in general, an approach that--we can say this in several different ways--integrates the hard-headed with the soft-hearted, the natural sciences with the noetic sciences, objective realities with subjective realities, the empirical with the transcendental.

And so let us hope that a decade from now somebody might spot a great mega-trend in consciousness studies--namely, the truly integral--and let it start right now with all of us who share this concern for holism, for embrace, for synthesizing, for integrating: let this outreach start with us, right here, right now.

Is a genuinely integral theory of consciousness even possible? Well, that would be my question to you all, and that would be my challenge. How big is our umbrella? How wide and and how deep can we throw our net of good will? How many voices will we allow in this chorus of consciousness? How many faces of the Divine will smile on our endeavor? How many colors will we genuinely acknowledge in our rainbow coalition?

Ken Wilber, One Taste, 376

'Nuf said.