ARINA: Filling A Void in Individual & Social Efforts
Sara Ross
In writing this introduction, I picture us walking along a cyber path toward ARINA’s entrance. I use our brief walk to share why you will find an unusually diverse yet quite coherent set of opportunities when you enter.
I remember, as I grew up, having the belief there was some point on life’s horizon when each person’s growing up and learning would be done. I figured it was probably about age 25 when people reached that “adult plateau.” Once we got up there, we’d know everything we needed to have families, do jobs, lead companies, and run governments. Looking back, I wonder how I ever entertained that idea!
One factor may have been that we used such simple words—family, job, company, government—to describe things. Simple, unchanging words to describe simple unchanging things, yes?
Things have changed since then. Words like change and development are commonplace, and the idea of an “adult plateau” is nowhere to be found. But something important has not changed. We still use simple words, such as change and development, to describe complicated things. I’ve often wondered if such simple labels can seduce us into believing simple things about change and development.
Yet many people want to get beyond simple labels, and they are learning, researching, teaching, and writing about individual, organizational, and broader social development. Just as action researchers do, teachers, trainers, coaches, consultants, and other professionals simultaneously learn, research and inquire, teach, and integrate their active experiences to benefit their present and future work. Operating underneath all this variety, patterns show up, not only in the stages of development, for example, but also in the processes of development; the patterns point to the processes.
In a nutshell, this is ARINA’s niche: filling the void about how to use the processes of development to foster development in individual, organizational, and other social endeavors. Its mission is to do the range of things necessary for others to bring this capacity into their existing efforts. This means people can use natural human processes to address complex issues when and where they are found. This can make complexity more straightforward—simpler—to grapple with. They can do this without prerequisites (for example, learning particular theories). ARINA’s aim is to equip social change agents around the world to head right into using natural, human transformative processes to foster healthy development in themselves and those they serve while they address today’s complicated questions.
In the remaining distance of this cyber path we’re walking here, there is just enough time to share a little about how we expect associating with ARINA will connect with interests of fellow travelers in endeavors like those above.
Across all those interests and professions, some people have arrived on a plateau that is unique for them or their organization right now and they know a lot about what works to accomplish certain things related to individual and other kinds of development. This expertise can be extended to reach more people when partnered with ARINA’s teaching, mentoring, and publishing mission, benefiting everyone involved.
Some people know they have effective approaches in a specific area, and may suspect the good effects of their work would be more integral and enduring if related areas could be addressed at the same time to support systemic change better. They may want to find out how to identify those leverage points, and/or may want to find out who is already working on them, and partner. ARINA’s learning, researching, and networking missions can benefit everyone involved.
When many fields of endeavor are characterized by competition, it’s hard for some people to find colleagues with whom to kick around ideas, questions, successes, and challenges. With ARINA’s international networking mission, territorial competition diminishes. With its focus on natural human processes, network collegiality spans the typical boundaries of specific fields and benefits all of them.
Some people like to stay at the growing edges of their learning and practice, and feel thwarted by competition and spending so much of their time being experts. ARINA’s mission of acting, learning, and integrating can feel refreshing while supporting and pushing the growing edges associates wish to sharpen.
Burning questions are carried around inside by many, with few if any safe, productive outlets to express and pursue questions crucial to mission or personal development. Many of us never find out who else is asking the same questions, and it can take months or years to find answers to such questions as, for example, “What does this issue really need to…?” “How can I…?” “Why do they…?” “Why don’t they…?” “How can we get them to…?”
By its nature, ARINA’s niche responds to a number of burning individual and social questions, and its mission to research and inquire is hungry to know more about the specific questions and challenges people face. This way, its action research can co-create new methods to address them.
ARINA is about meeting these and other interests, yet it is not all things to all people. ARINA’s interests, especially during this inaugural year, are to find out how this comprehensive mission meets people where they are and addresses specific interests, along with discovering the most effective ways to communicate about it. A major interest is finding out how much energy is pent up among individual and social change agents to hit the ground running in the 21st Century with a new paradigm of naturally integral, human transformative processes for today’s complex issues.
And now we’ve arrived at the cyber entrance to Acting / Researching / Integrating Network Associates at www.global-arina.org. We invite you in to Associate with us, and join us in testing out the launching plateau we’re developing for this new paradigm as we get it ready to fly!
Sara Ross is the founder and president of ARINA, Inc. Russ Volckmann is on ARINA’s Board of Directors.
Integral Review
On June 1, ARINA published the inaugural issue of its peer-reviewed, open-access e-journal, Integral Review: A Transdisciplinary and Transcultural Journal for New Thought, Research, and Praxis. Visit its website to read this issue and to find out the kind of contribution Integral Review aims to make. http://integral-review.global-arina.org
Integral Review’ s Issue #1 Table of Contents
Editorial: Integral Foundations, by Reinhard Fuhr and Jonathan Reams
Integral Review and its Editors, by Sara Ross, Reinhard Fuhr, Michel Bauwens, Thomas Jordan, Jonathan Reams, and Russ Volckmann
Jean Gebser: Das Integrale Bewusstsein, by Kai Hellbusch
English Summary: Jean Gebser: The Integral Consciousness
Complexity Intelligence and Cultural Coaching: Navigating the Gap Between Our Societal Challenges and Our Capacities, by Jan Inglis and Margaret Steele
The Development of Dialectical Thinking As An Approach to Integration, by Michael Basseches
Toward An Integral Process Theory Of Human Dynamics: Dancing The Universal Tango, by Sara Ross
Timely and Transforming Leadership Inquiry and Action: Toward Triple-loop Awareness, by Anne Starr and Bill Torbert
Good, Clever and Wise: A study of political meaning-making among integral change agents, by Thomas Jordan in an Interview with Russ Volckmann
What’s Integral about Leadership? A Reflection on Leadership and Integral Theory, by Jonathan Reams
Ein Integraler Gestalt-Ansatz Fuer Therapie und Beratung, by Reinhard Fuhr & Martina Gremmler-Fuhr
English Summary: An Integral Gestalt Approach for Psychotherapy and Counseling
Book Reviews
Laszlo, E. (2004). Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions International.
Ferrer, J. N. (2002). Revisioning Transpersonal Theory. A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Frick, D. (2004). Robert K. Greenleaf. A Life of Servant Leadership. San Francisco: Berrett Koehler.
Afterword:
Clicking on Afterword leads to an interactive public forum on this issue, including author roundtables for discussions of specific articles.
IWET
Ken Wilber’s Integral Institute has created a weekend introductory seminar “Integral Weekend Experiential Training” (I-WET).
Ride the rising wave of integral living! Integral WET is a weekend immersion into Integral Institute’s highly acclaimed Integral Life Practice (ILP), the ultimate in body/mind/spirit cross training. This radically unified approach to personal growth multiplies the effect of any practices you choose to employ. Join the folks at Integral Institute for two stimulating days of profound personal engagement. Have a direct experience of the power of ILP and connect with others in your area who are interested in this emergent approach to human transformation. Sign up now and get wet! Featuring live music by “punk monk” Stuart Davis!
The practices that transform us, all in one place:
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Enter Big Mind™, genuine satori in three hours of facilitated interplay
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Three Body Surfing
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Dive Into Your Shadow
Learn the 3-2-1 Shadow-Work Process™, an elegant way of revealing hidden
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Your foundation for further adventures! Ken Wilber’s AQAL Maps™, the most
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exploration into the territory of you.
- San Francisco SOLD OUT
- July 30 and 31: 9am – 5pm
- Dogpatch Studios, 991 Tennessee St
- 415-641-3017
- New York City
- August 6th and 7th: 9am – 5pm
- Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th St
- 212-463-020
Writes Cindy Lou Golin: “It will be an amazing weekend! Stuart Davis will be there (in San Francisco) and other groovy integral folks. I am very excited about it. Hope to see you there!”
Spiral Dynamics Workshop
Chris Cowan will be presenting the following workshops in the coming months:
Graves/SD Overview in Brazil, August 26-28,São Paulo,
Brazil Graves/SD Certifications NL, Nov 23-30,Den Haag, Netherlands
For more information go to http://www.spiraldynamics.org
Spiral Dynamics
What Is Enlightenment? Is offering new feature site presenting the latest thinking and practice of Spiral Dynamics—designed and created in collaboration with Dr. Don Beck.
There will be feature articles, audio and video interviews and dialogues on Spiral Dynamics, and how it is being applied in politics, education, human rights work, and more across the globe right now: http://www.wie.org/spiral/?ecp=349-beck.
They offer a FREE 7-day Pass to access all content.
Also from a message sent by Don Beck:
A five day intensive seminar/workshop at the Unity Church in Tustin, California, close to LA. The title is “Spirituality, Religion and Salvation” and it promises to be an insightful and practical session. I (Don) just rediscovered a “Values in Religion” test that I developed with a master’s degree student at UNT years ago. We will range far and wide within the fields and resources in functional spirituality etc. with a focus on how all of this can come alive at a local congregation level. I hope to demonstrate a unique role of a Unity Church group in offering information to newcomers in the community as to how to find a religious or spirituality “home” that fits them, or their family, rather than recruit them to attend Unity. We are inviting my friends from the LA International Church…(http://www.dreamcenter.org/) which, as many of you know, is one of my favorite places.
Finally, I just accepted invitations to offer SDi Level One in Moscow, St. Petersburg and in Jerusalem (with participants from Israeli and Palestinian populations).