Maps for Integration

Integration is the ongoing process of bringing all parts of yourself - your thoughts, feelings, memories, experiences, behaviors, and values - into a more coherent, conscious, and harmonious whole.

It means becoming more internally aligned and less fragmented so that your inner world supports the kind of action you want to be taking in the world, and vice versa.

I think the cultural need for maps for integration is one of the most urgent and unspoken needs of our time. Integration is a cultural imperative, and people are hungry for maps that can help them hold the complexity without splitting apart or numbing out.

This is why the evolutionary development framework Spiral Dynamics is such a big part of my work at Open Aware and The Holon Institute

Most people think of Spiral Dynamics as a framework for understanding social evolution or the diversity of different value systems.

Which it absolutely is.

But I also see it as deeply personal map of integration.

Spiral Dynamics maps the stages of development that humanity has evolved through (and people and groups continue to evolve through) but these stages are not just something “out there” in culture- they live in us and through us.

Rather than merely stages I see them as spaces that are alive within us and asking for acknowledgment, expression and harmonization. Our embodiment, our intuition, our power, our structure, our logic and our heart are all critical dimensions of our being. And when we create synergy between all these parts? New, profound capacities and possibilities open up for us.

It’s part of the genius of the model- mapping the developmental trajectory of the human story gives us the language and awareness of the different archetypal and foundational pieces that comprise our psyches. It's through a deeper engagement with the history that lives in our DNA that we cultivate a wholeness that is grounded and sufficiently integrative to thrive in an era of radical disruption and evolution.

Never has the need for this kind of integration been more important than now.
Integrating our full human complexity makes us better leaders, better creators, and better change-makers in whatever field we're in.
Is Spiral Dynamics a perfect map?
No, there’s no such thing.
A map by definition can never be the actual terrain.
But good maps help us navigate the terrain with skill, discernment and grace.

Learn more about the model: https://lnkd.in/eE9QrxAe

Spiral Dynamics for Organizations: https://lnkd.in/ebmDSyBA