An Integral Worldview

I like the word Integral; it’s a good 21st century word. Integral, integrated, whole, not separate; integral feels personal and it feels global. So what might an integral worldview look like?

I would like to suggest that an integral world is a worldview free from the idea of separation. If we consider something like the honey bee, we know it needs flowers to exist and the flowers need water and soil and the soil needs worms and nutrients and they all need sunlight and oxygen and a planet and a solar system and a galaxy and ultimately a universe in order for any of them to function at all. A honey bee is not a separate thing, and neither are you and I.

We divide the world up into separate parts, me and you, us and other, my family, my religion, my nation, my boundaries. Where are the boundaries? Have you ever heard the term that the map is not the territory? Maps have lines that define the separation of regions and territories. And, what we all know is that in reality when we visit the actual place, there are no lines. California and Nevada are divided only by arbitrary ideas of lines that we humans have made up. In reality the United States of America is one piece of land not 50 states with lines dividing them. And, of course the USA is a piece of land connected to other pieces of land by seas and oceans. And the earth is a whole that is connected to a solar system to a Milky Way Galaxy to a/the Universe. So, when we live in a larger more true reality there are no lines, we are not divided we are integrated.

So, what’s the problem? Could the problem simply be THINKING? Maybe thinking we are separate is the problem and always has been. We think ourselves separate and then live as though we are. We even think ourselves separate from God. Is that even possible? Of course it’s possible to think of myself as separate from God, but am I actually separate from God?

All the ancient wisdom traditions, Judiasm, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc., speak about human begins as fallen from grace and living in a sinful state of being. Did this fallen, sinful state of being exist in nature before man came on the scene? Mankind is the thinking animal, homo-sapiens/sapiens, the one who knows that it knows. The plant and animal worlds don’t know themselves as separate but live with the blueprint of a unified existence. Only we humans live out of sinc with ourselves, each other and nature. And, I would suggest that it's our separation thinking that is causing our suffering. We are responsible for our daily suffering and it is all based upon how we choose to think about ourselves, each other and the world we live in.

From a Christian point of view I begin to realize what Jesus might have meant when he said…”if you have seen me you have seen the Father”. Jesus knew he was not separate from God. St. Paul describes the extent that the human mind goes to in an attempt to justify itself when he said…”thinking themselves wise they became fools”. Are we so conditioned in our ‘thinking’ that we believe ourselves to be so right that we make no space for anything new to emerge?

So, I am going to be bold and suggest that our fallen condition is true based upon separation thinking. We think ourselves separate from our true selves, from others, from God and from all that we think we need. Furthermore, I would suggest the good possibility that this state of illusion is a conditioned mindset that we have been passing down generation through generation beginning with the first conscious humans. We in the west have become so conditioned by the illusion of separateness that it's become concrete, black and white thinking. In the eastern spiritual traditions there has always been a knowing about the oneness of all things. In the 20th century quantum physicists discovered that there is no separation between the visible and invisible worlds. Jesus told us that we need to be born again into the world of spirit so that we could know this too, so we could know ourselves to be containers for the kingdom of God; the invisible God living in an invisible kingdom in this visible material container named Karen, Bob, Jane and Joe. Spiritual beings having a human experience. God and mankind as ONE.

So in this blog I am suggesting that we are not separate from God, we are not separate from each other, and we are not separate from nature, we are not separate from other nations, other people, or other people’s religions. It’s our choice to have eyes to see and ears to hear what the spirit is saying. And, it’s very possible that the spirit has been saying all along that there is no separation between Jew and Greek, male and female, Isralite and Palistinian, Buddhist and Christian, etc. ect. Can we finally wake up and eventually know ourselves to be a united whole, an integraed whole?
I gladly invite your comments, rebuttals and ideas.