Navigating Integral Leadership: A Compass of Intention
"We are living through one of the most fundamental shifts in history — a change in the actual belief structure of Western society. No economic, political, or military power can compare with the power of a change of mind. By deliberately changing their images of reality, people are changing the world."
— Willis Harman, Global Mind Change
The Mission of Institute of Noetic Sciences: Advancing the science of consciousness and human experience to serve individual and collective transformation. (www.noetic.org)
IONS Northwest serves Community Groups in 4 states and Canada and functions as a regional hub to integrate the work of The Insitute of Noetic Sciences through a community of dynamic shared leadership.
Defining Integral
As an example of what the term"integral" means: Ken Wilber’s defines integral health as follows in his “Introduction to Integral Medicine.” We would like to propose that we are all practitioners.
“. . . the integrally informed health-care practitioner, the doctors and nurses and therapists, who have opened themselves to the entire spectrum of consciousness-matter to body to mind to soul to spirit-and who thereby acknowledged what seems to be happening in any event: body and mind and spirit are operating in self and culture and nature, and thus health and healing, sickness and wholeness, are all bound up in a multidimensional tapestry that cannot be cut into without fatal hemorrhaging.”
Thus the tapestry we weave with consciousness is one of perceiver, object, and perception as one. To be an integral leader requires cultivating noetic faculties of attention, intention, as well as examining the inter-relationship of subject and object, knower and known, self and other. Words like inter-subjective, synergy, presence and unified field describe the how the knower and known are mutual in a dynamic, creative field of inter-connectivity which carries with it self-organizing principles. Intention can be a very important determinant in the quality of experience and inter-connectivty.
Our Focus Questions for: Navigating Integral Leadership: A Compass of Intention
1) What is your most significant personal experience of the power of intention?
2) What practices (specific behaviors) do you see as most effective for cultivating integral leadership?
3) If you could focus our collective intentions on one thing, what would it be?
Conversation Notes with Apologies as we were not able to get everyone’s name down.
Edith K –
I had an experience in intending what I want to happen and manifested. It was so effortless that it is clear that is all I ever have to do.
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Janice W –
Prayer is an intent to give ourselves to a higher power. Open “the book” to get guidance –opened the little book –safety on the journey. Their intent is clear and always has a good answer.
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Critical thinking. Looked into self. There is a God. I had an intention that I will go South. I visited a friend in Northern California and was walking along a beach when I realized that I really want to worship God. I was so thirsty for it, so deeply desired this connection that it was transformational. I was soon introduced to Islam.
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Collaboration. I signed up for a class in mysticism. Every story is very, very real. It was clear I needed to suspend whatever disbelief I had. I accepted them and found great fulfillment.
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Mark
To develop collective wisdom learn to trust individuals.
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Janice
Understanding for year after reading The Field by Lynn McTaggart brought my spiritual life together. I listen to her tapes in the car. Someone recently cut in front of me and I hit the horn. I suddenly was jolted into a realization of how angry I was and experienced what negative was in it an how much of it I was putting out. I had a deep experience to rise above that.
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Shapes the Way We Go. Wanting to start a family, I decided to be really intentional about praying for exactly what I wanted and asked friends to join and now in 5 months I am pregnant.
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Susan B.
Mary Ann Williamson says that we are the intention in the mind of God. We are each individual conduits and expressions of that universal consciousness. As activists, intention can be a way that we bring the right change for opportunity to us rather than all the doing that comes from effort and trying to reform through forcing change. If our intention is in evolutionary flow, in harmony with divine will, our intent can draw synchronicities of a higher order to us to accomplish what we desire as in the work of Ghandi.
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Heather
My first 49 years were not so good. My next 50 will be better. Gary Zukav’s The Power of Intention was so powerfully impacting to her. I got what I wanted and it was a fear based intention. I understand the power of intention. I had 6 months of walking in the woods. I made a deal with God – to be a manifestation of God’s love in the world. And I continually ask myself what does that mean right now in this moment.
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I did not know what to do to help a particular client. I tried everything I knew – just gave up – just quietly intending for something good to work for the person was what was needed. Being present with the situation supported the transformation of it.
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I was a real estate salesman. I set intention for the best homes for the client to draw to them. I became a medical professional in a hospital working with people with aids. I set a wide intention that by winter I must have an answer. One day while taking a bubble bath, I downloaded a plan relative to writing a book.
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My intention is to be non violent – really. I aim to hold an optimism in life. I have done a lot of work in politics. Now I make a difference by leading with my intention. Right after 9/11, I thought how can we embrace the community with power and love – note hate. I have watched hundreds and thousands of people help out. We had a team just after 9/11 who voluntarily supervised the security of the local mosque. It was life changing for many who then were able to witness the activities of a different faith. Being optimistic and embracing through right action based on what we could do was a powerful experience.
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I picked up David Korten’s book “When Corporations Rule the World. I was moved by it and had wanted to find out how to work with him. And I set an intention. Without realizing it I moved to Bainbridge Island, home of YES magazine. I happened to pick up the magazine one day. I never realized David Korten was the editor. I discovered I had a friend who was an intern there and thus realized I could ask for an internship. I was brought on board and have been there for 4 years. I have watched the way Fran Korten mentors the new interns and it is totally intentional with a high degree of integrity.
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Tom
I place high emphasis on working with a higher order of these principals. I am interested in the collaborative life of the spirit. I don’t use the work intention. I frame it differently. It is a full time education. I am certain my purpose will come.
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Mary Ann
I call intention a deliberate form or prayer. It’s like popcorn, requires trust, suspending disbelief, and collective will. We are honing ourselves as a big collective compass.
We are at www.ionsnw.org. The Institute of Noetic Sciences has a downloadable audio series on Intentionality featuring scientific leaders and visionaries of our time at www.shiftinaction.com.
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