AWARENESS and CARE
Happy New Year!! Let’s get the year off to a good start by making a commitment to dampen these troubling, chaotic, evolving, and divided times. Growing our awareness and care can certainly help. Simply Big Mind, Big Heart, an expression of integral ethics.
Listening to mind chatter, reflection, sitting, and reading about integral ethics have surfaced that expanding personal awareness and the circle of care and help invites one to take a helicopter perspective of what it means to practice goodness in our everyday lives. Integral ethics “…provides a framework for thinking about how we live and for making the best moral decisions we can. It also makes sense of people’s different ethical structures by using…AQAL distinctions-quadrants, levels, lines, states, and types.” (Integral Life Practice, 255) A quick peek at some of the terms…
- AQAL: all quadrants, all lines. An integral life practice perspective has four quadrants, individual inner, individual outer, collective inner, and collective outer.
- Individual inner: conscience, depth of self-reflection, emotions, repressed unconscious, mind chatter, thoughts, etc. (266)
- Individual outer: exercise, diet, appearance, use of drugs, plastic surgery, behaviors, etc. (266)
- Collective inner: friendships, partners, family, relationships, mutual understanding, etc. (267)
- Collective outer: government, institutions, health system, economic system, technology, environments, etc. (268).
- Each quadrant has levels, lines, states, and types.
- Levels: higher or lower altitudes, stages or waves of consciousness. (74)
- Lines: streams of development, cognition, needs, self-identity, values, worldview, emotions, aesthetics, morals, interpersonal relating, kinesthetic, spirituality, etc. (81-82)
- States of consciousness: elation, boredom, fear, irritation, curiosity, etc. (100)
- Types: types of music, gender, language, hair color, etc. (106)
Some associated integral ethics terms…
- Leadership: an attribute of an individual’s brand; and is an earned, trust based, influence relationship between the respective leader, other leaders, and followers who intend ethical and moral change that mirror common purpose. Good leaders have been good followers and/or can be good followers.
- Virtues: behaviors that demonstrate Examples: gratitude, trust, hope, honesty, courage, integrity, compassion, and prudence.
- Values: goals and ideals that guide one’s actions. Examples: adaptability, dependability, family, empathy, and generosity.
- Guiding principles: a set of core values and beliefs that influence a person’s or organization’s behavior and decision-making. Example: Quality, common good, authenticity, and virtue in all we are and all we do.
- Awareness: depth or degree of perception, knowledge, consciousness, and realization…Big Mind.
- Care: to have concern or interest…Big Heart.
The more I have reflected on integral ethics, the more the concept appears to touch on every aspect of our lives. We can nourish the depth of personal awareness and care via the flexibility of processes found in Integral Life Practice: A 21st Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening (Wilber et al, 2008, Boulder, CO: Integral, 255-285).
