A Short Summary of the Evolution of Integral Psychology in these Publications
Facing the World with Soul -- This writing expands the capacity of encountering soul to the whole of the world. Here, "world" is intentionally confined to the world constructed by human beings because it is here that the pathologies of soul life exhibit themselves. The assumption of the book is that EVERYTHING is a mode of consciousness -- that is, nothing exists on its own. To experience the pervasiveness of consciousness requires putting aside the assumption of subject-object dualism and to awaken the experience of the 'field'. This book demonstrates the pathological consciousness of present day building, food, economics and money, disease, technology, and other examples.
Freeing the Soul From Fear -- concerns facing the primary factor that brings about constriction of body and soul -- FEAR. Every spiritual path -- and soul path -- must begin with an individual confrontation with fear and finding the way through fear. This work is individual, and inner. The attempts to remove fear in the world are confined to substituting comfort for fear. Fear provides the necessary opposition to freedom. Through becoming free of unconscious fears leads to inner freedom an the awakening of the individual spirit into consciousness. The themes of fear and their healing through encounter with soul include: terrorism, anger, money, relationships, suffering, death -- and the way love casts out fear and initiates artistic living.
The Power Of Soul: Living The Twelve Virtues -- This writing begins the entry into practicing living integrally. The virtues are inherently practical because they are concerned with the good and it is never sufficient to simply think about the good or to feel it; it must be practiced. The True, the Beautiful, and the Good, exist as three transcendent archetypal realms and are grand imaginations toward which we aspire as human beings. We orient our thinking to the True, our feeling toward the Beautiful, and our actions, our willing, toward the Good. In such striving, we seek to unite our merely human ways with the ways of the spiritual worlds. The Good is the object of willing, that which our actions attempt to achieve when we act out of a harmony of body, soul, and spirit. The book concerns virtue as the way of world service, the art of life, The communal intention of virtue concerns shifting from wholly horizontal relationships to vertical relationships carried out in this, the horizontal world of everyday life. The twelve ways of virtue connect daily living with the imaginal presence of the cosmos intertwined with earth.
Love and the Soul: Creating a Future for Earth and Love and the World -- These books deepen the sense of the intertwining of individual, soul, and the world. A central aspect of this interrelating concerns the imaginal awakening to the presence of Sophia, The Soul of the World. These writings introduce the change from the age-old aggressive spirit of violent, sometimes violent creation and the power of receptivity, the power of Wisdom. The dimensions of Sophia are introduced, and the primary ways of Her expression -- as love, grieving, dreaming, sensing, relating, community and orienting us toward heart-centeredness. Causal connections, within the Sophianic imagination are replace by a-causal, or magical manifestation. A second key for living the creative life is to become aware of the time current from the future -- only soul/spirit creativity opens this path.
Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness -- Opens the means and practice of entering the 'place that is no place that is every place", that is the deep inner vastness from which the soul an spirit being constantly emerges. Like the so-called 'negative space' of art, that makes a work of art true and revelatory, entering the Silence allows access to the soul-depths of other, the world, earth, and the Divine. Silence renews us, awakens wholeness, access to healing, depth of connection, compassion, and service. The aim is to go beyond dipping into the Great Silence now and then, and then returning to the chaotic word, but to strengthen the ever-present Silence as a constant companion, taking us into a new reality. Without the presence of the Silence, true creativity, full openness to others, and the depth of wisdom are mere ideas.
Heartfulness -- is a wholly spiritually practical manual for re-centering life, relativizing thinking, where we now live all the time, to the heart, the center of feeling-thinking. The heart does not concern emotion, but rather feeling -- a mode of immediate presence, inner presence with the Earth, first, and then also the capacity of being present to the Wholeness and Beauty of others, the world, and the Divine. This manual shows step by step ways to come to be able to notice the multi-dimensionality of heart-presence. Through heartfulness the age-old assumption that there is a separation between the spiritual worlds and the earthly world dissolves into awarness of the constant intertwining of spirit with matter -- and matter with spirit. Heartfulness is the true path of the completeness and beauty of being human and revealing the sacredness of the world, leading to living in beauty and delight -- it is the collective way into a creative future.
Steps on the Stone Path -- takes a region of so-called 'New Age' interest and reveals, step by step, methods through which the spiritual radiance of gems and minerals can alter our way of being in the world. The book is an example of righting the falseness of having someone tell us what something spiritually means and proports to do and how to find out ourselves, while being transformed in the process. The writing is a wonderful illustration of some of the contemplative methods of integral spiritual psychology.
The Monographs -- each take a particular theme -- therapy, activism, spiritual imagination, fantasy, money, destiny, sensing, forgiveness, biblical text, listening, and action and practically open each theme to being bathed with the holy creative presence of soul and spirit. The writing itself intends to be transformative rather than thinking or speculating. The monographs are each examples of integral inner connectivity with the power of soul, freeing the reader from being tossed about and manipulated by a materialistic civilization.