Ken Wilber - Integral Life Practice: A 21st-Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening

From the moment I began an Integral Life Practice, it was as if my life was assigned a new trajectory and course setting from deep within the cockpit of my soul. Glory upon Glory is the way my days are unfolding since I began to practice. An ILP is an incredible catalyst to growth in ways that I could never have imagined. See for yourself!

EDDIE KOWALCZYK, lead singer-songwriter of Live

Integral Life Practice is an extraordinary achievement. Comprehensive, detailed, and powerfully rational, it inspires any and all of us to consider more deeply how profound is our embrace of the life we are living. The searing clarity of the integral perspective leaps off every page of this manual for personal evolution, clearly illuminating what it means to be fully alive!

ANDREW COHEN, spiritual teacher and founder of EnlightenNext

Ken Wilbers Integral Theory has created a road map. Now Terry Patten, Adam Leonard, and Marco Morelli have added a GPS (Global Practicing System) with Integral Life Practice. Travelers on the spiritual path will find this book indispensable.

BROTHER DAVID STEINDL- RAST, Benedictine monk, author of Listening Heart: The Spirituality of Sacred Sensuousness and Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer: An Approach to Life in Fullness and cofounder of Gratefulness.org

Once again, Ken Wilber and his colleagues have taken a big subject, swallowed the whole thing and the kitchen sink too, and then spent years working to understand it, digest it, metabolize it, and then translate it into clear prose and helpful practices. And the outcome? This wonderfully helpful manual for living: Integral Life Practice. A fantastic resource for a more peaceful, meaningful, intelligent, and exuberant life.

ELIZABETH LESSER, author of Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow, The Seekers Guide, and cofounder of Omega Institute

Integral Life Practice will help you build the healthy foundation from which you can wake up to your transcendent nature or Big Mind. Western aspirants have long needed a universal practice manual that wisely draws upon ancient traditions and modern science and psychology. Now we have itan inspiring, straightforward guide for living a truly harmonious, awakened life.

ZEN MASTER DENNIS GENPO MERZEL, author of Big Mind, Big Heart: Finding Your Way

Ken Wilber and the authors of this clearly written, sensible, well-informed book are fellow explorers with George Leonard and me in the development of integral transformative practices. Such practices grow out of a philosophic vision dawning across the world that joins our aspiration for personal and social transformation with both science and the contemplative traditions. This book will advance this developing worldview and the disciplines needed to actualize it.

MICHAEL MURPHY, author of The Future of the Body and The Life We Are Given and cofounder of Esalen Institute

Integral Life Practice offers a finely honed distillation of some of the most effective and universal practices from the great wisdom traditions, at the same time presenting a context for practice that is both soaring and sensible. True to its title, it takes seriously the human need for fully balanced development, for depth as well as breadth, for psychological as well as spiritual development, for softness and toughness, for ethics and bold experimentation. Beautifully written, laid out in accessible modules, the book is truly an on-and-off-the-mat guide to 21 st -century practice.

SWAMI SALLY KEMPTON, author of The Heart of Meditation: Pathways to a Deeper Experience

What if we could draw from the best of the worlds ancient contemplative traditions as well as contemporary psychological and somatic therapies, and weld them into a power program for transforming our lives? Now we can, and Integral Life Practice is a happy result of this possibility.

ROGER WALSH MD , PHD, University of California, author of Essential Buddhism: The Seven Central Practices

This book spells out how to apply Integral philosophy to everyday life by working with body, mind, spirit, and the deeper psychological aspects of ourselves. Integral Life Practice presents a useful map of ones existential condition leading toward the attainment of the highest states of consciousness.

TRALEG KYABGON RINPOCHE

Integral Life Practice is a masterpiece guide of grounded, intelligent, self-transforming wisdom integrating the insights of all the great traditions of truth.

CAROLINE MYSS, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Entering the Castle

Integral Life Practice brings the integral system from the mind to doable action in life. Here is a treasure of integral Upaya.

RABI ZALMAN SCHACHTER-SHALOMI, past holder of the World Wisdom Chair of Naropa University

Integral Life Practice represents a particular milestone. It gives a lucid and easy to understand summary of the Integral thought-system, without dumbing it downno mean feat. Whats more, it describes in an engaging and practical way what to do in order to live from this elegant and inclusive worldview. If you want a clear and easy-to-follow map for waking up, read this book.

BILL HARRIS, Director, Centerpointe Research Institute and creator of Holosync Meditation Technology

Here we learn, through integral wisdom and disciplines, how to be freer and more fully authentic by ironing out the peaks of higher consciousness development into every nook and cranny of daily life. This is the secret of the integral life: transcending while including, and being there while getting there every single step of the way. Get ready to train your mind, open your heart, and awaken to your true universal Self.

LAMA SURYA DAS, author of Awakening the Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World and founder of the Dzogchen Meditation Centers

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INTEGRAL LIFE PRACTICE

A 21 st -Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening

KEN WILBER, TERRY PATTEN, ADAM LEONARD, and MARCO MORELLI

INTEGRAL BOOKS

Boston & London

2012

INTEGRAL BOOKS

An imprint of Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

2008 by Ken Wilber, Terry Patten, Adam Leonard, and Marco Morelli

Cover design Nita Ybarra

Cover images courtesy of user jenn_jenn, creative commons copyright).

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wilber, Ken

Integral life practice: a 21st-century blueprint for physical health, emotional balance, mental clarity, and spiritual awakening / Ken Wilber... [et al.].

p. cm

Includes index.

eISBN 978-0-8348-2243-6

ISBN 978-1-59030-467-9 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Self-actualization (Psychology) I. Title.

BF637.S4W487 2008

158.1dc22

2008015205

CONTENTS AT A GLANCE

CONTENTS

PUBLISHERS NOTE

Some e-readers may have difficulty displaying larger images within this book. For easier viewing, these select images are also provided at www.shambhala.com/integrallifepractice.

Welcome to the world of Integral ! The fact that you have picked up this book means that you are ready to begin not just thinking about Integral but practicing and applying it as well. This is a truly momentous occasion, to judge from the developmental research itself.