Our purpose

We see integral consciousness and meta-modern culture to be central to this.

If you are not familiar with this body of research within psychology, or track the annals of art, philosophy, sociology or spirituality linked to integral theory and meta-modernity - these words probably say very little to you.

We will now unpack them and apply them to the journey of development that an adult can take, to culture and to how we might relate to subtle energy and spirit.

In essence we can say that the integral development of a human is towards wholeness between what modernity constructed as false dichotomies, or divisions.

Between mind and body, between pragmatics and spirituality, between light and dark, between individuality and the collective, between the subjective and the objective, or between doing and being - to name some aspects of this fractal division.

The development of an integral stage of adulthood simply holds that both thought and emotions are important and can support one another. It holds that we all have the potential in us for a sensible part that can relate to the current world and its norms, and we have a part that can soar with the spirit of kosmos and which is beckoning us onwards and higher.

In essence we can say; I need to take action and I need to be connected to myself in doing so, to do so with the integrity and wisdom that will let those actions serve both myself and the larger context to which I belong.

In a way this is truly radical. This wholeness is not how we shape our institutions. In so many ways yang has dominated yin. The mind has dominated the body. The practical is taken as real and the spiritual experience is taken to be refuted by science. To do is prudent and to be is relegated to a shrinking preserve outside the domains of work and the digital hyperconnected lives that have become the current agora. In all this, we have built contexts that are not conducive to connection.

Equally sad and destructive is when counter culture posits a wholeness without yang. When the magical is celebrated above the rational, missing the chance for both to exist and make love to one another. Only deprivation and chaos would ensue if we, like animals, fully embraced only our embodied instinct and shat on the bounty of our glorious neo-cortex and its executive function - that is so critical for higher orders of perspective taking and empathy.

True connected lives require both yin and yang. This place is one that will seek to honor both, in ways so that each supports the other - knowing that one can’t bloom without the rest.

We want to be an integral node in an emerging network of such global nodes. The emerging mycelia that goes beyond both counterculture and current norms and seeks to co-create functional systems that take the gold of each part of what has been sundered, and seek to make it whole.

A wonderful aspect of integral theory is that it's not so much a perspective, ideology or paradigm. Meta-modernity is defined by the prefix “meta-” as it is about taking a perspective on itself - that is, an integral development is about perspectives on perspectives, stories about stories and a dream for humanity about the dreams of humanity. It is an assumption that says that it's valuable to take a step back and lay a great puzzle of all relevant perspectives.

Though very different from our current established norms, and despite it instilling a certain intellectual and orgasmic fervour where it does truly take root - it is, in its essential nature, the opposite of dogma or a sect.

Should we have communism or capitalism? Should we have hierarchy or anarchy? Should we have traditions or counterculture? Why the fuck would we choose?

Marx has some epic points. So does Silicon Valley. Obviously we need a meritocracy of ideas and people, and equally obviously - we should not let some dominate others because they are better at doing some things. Equally, naturally there is immense value at the core of all traditions, elsewise we would have organised around these kernels of gold and truth - yet to not question them and not relate to them reflexively is to stop honouring the evolution of a great universe.

The arch of this wonderous universe is long, but it bends towards pleasure, justice and function.

Just like an adult that is embracing e.g. both its rational self and its emotional self, we can do this as a culture. One marvellous way to lay this puzzle is to look at how different cultures have touched the same topics and see what each culture has found that is valuable.

One fantastic term for this can be found in Judaism.

Tikkun olam (תיקון עולם) is a Hebrew phrase usually translated as “repairing the world” or “healing the world.” In Jewish tradition, it has several meanings. In our time, it often refers to a responsibility to help create a more just and compassionate world through concrete actions. In Jewish mysticism, it also has a spiritual dimension: restoring wholeness to a fragmented creation.

It's incredibly delicious that the core of what we might consider a potential leading edge of cultural development, like how post-modernity replaced modernity, has been with us in written form for at least 1,800 years.

A perennial truth, that comes and comes again.

Trying to take root.

Perhaps it is heaven to no longer have to pick between this glory or this glory?

To fight for this over that, when both could water our garden?

Let us finally be birds in that tree, pruning ourselves and each other, and by drinking its glory, spreading its seed.

Perhaps the sweetest nectar of this great coming together, and the greatest tragedy of the sundering of creation, is how we - especially in the modern project of The West - split mind and spirit.

It is so fucking obvious that we are missing something.

It's obvious in our great malady of disconnection. In our ridiculous, fractured and suboptimising politics. It is obvious in the subtle and not so subtle pain in our nervous systems. It is obvious in our uncountable addictions - to stimulation, to work, to thoughts - all to run away from what is waiting to embrace us, if we only face the pain of not being held by it.

It is also obvious in how much humanity, present and past, are in contact with it and have a language to explore it.

For example…

• The terms 氣 (Chi, Chinese), 気 (Ki, Japanese), 기 (Gi, Korean) are all closely related.
• प्राण (Prana, Sanskrit - India) and རླུང་ (Lung, Tibetan) touch the same strands of being.
• So do terms from several African languages: Umoya (Zulu - South Africa), Roho (Swahili - Tanzania and Kenya), and Honhom (Akan - Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire) - to name a few; they are rich down there.
• In Hebrew and Arabic we have רוּחַ (Ruach, Hebrew) and روح (Ruh, Arabic).
• In the Pacific we have Mauri (Māori - New Zealand), Mana (Hawaiian) and Hā (Hawaiian).
• In The Ancient West we have had πνεῦμα (Pneuma, Ancient Greek), ψυχή (Psyche, Ancient Greek), Anima (Latin) and Spiritus (Latin) as an important part of our foundational culture.

…and in the modern West we might say Élan vital (French), Lebenskraft (German), Livskraft (Swedish) and life force.

The word subtle energy is also a fantastic term.

These meanings are not identical, and they have different importance to each of their originating societies - yet they all clearly point to the same phenomenon; there is an experience that we can have when we slow down. When we let it catch up with us. When we feel safe. When we go into nature. When we truly make love as embodied beings.

When we know it, we don’t really need anything else. When we don’t know it, even if we get everything exactly as we want it - it still does not quite taste right.

It is a birthright that we took from ourselves, and we can’t get it back unless we also give it back to each other.

It hears us when we talk about it, and it brings us into the present moment when we feel it.

It's the great relaxation of wholeness that is slowly breathing itself into the world, and (maybe) it will catch us just before we fall off the edge.

We want to serve that chance, in delicious ways.

To build it a temple…

Just to say thank you for all the nectar, painful openings and chances to grow.

Come play with us, we might whisper.

A node in a network, a mycelial strand.

A luscious coincidence, on a sacred land.

Komsi.