The Integral Edge Archives – Integral Life

The Highest Stages of Human Flourishing

Alexander Love — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 17:23:32 +0000

Keith Martin-Smith and Alexander Love explore Terry O'Fallon's STAGES model of human development, focusing on the rarely-discussed MetAware tier where transpersonal awareness becomes a structural feature of consciousness, leading to the dissolution of boundaries and recognition that all meaning is constructed.

This post was originally published on Integral Life.

The New War on the First Amendment: Words as Violence, Jokes as Crimes

Keith Martin-Smith — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 18:54:20 +0000

Keith Martin-Smith tackles America's free speech crisis in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination—examining how both left and right have abandoned principled commitments to the First Amendment in favor of tribal speech enforcement.

This post was originally published on Integral Life.

STAGES: Cracking the Code of Human Development

Keith Martin-Smith — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 18:56:37 +0000

Keith Martin Smith and Alexander Love explore Terry O’Fallon’s Stages model as a powerful lens for understanding how humans grow, make meaning, and relate across vastly different realities. Together, they reveal how developmental precision — not content or ideology — holds the key to deeper empathy, cultural healing, and truly integrative practice.

This post was originally published on Integral Life.

Redefining the Masculine (Without Losing the Man)

Keith Martin-Smith — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 18:31:32 +0000

In this episode of Integral Edge, Keith Martin-Smith explores the modern crisis of masculinity and offers a powerful framework for reclaiming the healthy strengths of traditional, modern, and postmodern masculine expressions. Rather than choosing between power and empathy, discipline and vulnerability, Keith shows how wholeness means learning to embody all of them—at the right time, in the right way.

This post was originally published on Integral Life.

The End of America? How the Founders’ Genius Is Breaking Down (And What We Can Do About It)

Keith Martin-Smith — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 18:34:55 +0000

Can America still save itself — or is collapse inevitable? Drawing lessons from history, developmental psychology, and the meta-crisis, Keith explores why systems built on “enlightened self-interest” are faltering… and what kind of leadership could restore the balance.

This post was originally published on Integral Life.

How We Lost the Art of Connection

Keith Martin-Smith — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 18:25:37 +0000

This conversation between Keith Martin-Smith and Michael Porcelli explores the hidden dynamics that shape how we communicate, from cultural conditioning to emotional awareness to the unseen “third entity” of relationship. Together they unpack why so many conversations go off the rails—and how we can learn to repair, realign, and relate with greater depth, clarity, and skill.

This post was originally published on Integral Life.

Becoming Whole in a Divided World

Keith Martin-Smith — Fri, 30 May 2025 06:37:05 +0000

In this thought-provoking episode of Integral Edge, Keith Martin-Smith sits down with executive coach and consciousness explorer David Arrell to explore what it truly means to become whole, both personally and collectively, amid ongoing division and conflict.

This post was originally published on Integral Life.

The Cycles of Time: Mapping Evolution at the Edge of History

Keith Martin-Smith — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 17:43:16 +0000

In this wide-ranging conversation, Terri O’Fallon and Keith Martin-Smith explore how human development unfolds through increasingly complex relationships with time, from infancy’s timelessness to the transpersonal awareness of timelessness beyond time. They examine how cultural evolution is accelerating, why recurring societal crises reflect developmental recursions, and how future leadership must integrate ethical maturity, shadow work, and a multi-generational vision.

This post was originally published on Integral Life.

How Can DEI Survive? (And Should It?)

Keith Martin-Smith — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 18:54:21 +0000

Keith Martin-Smith offers a bold, developmental critique of modern DEI, tracing its evolution from fairness-based policy to postmodern orthodoxy. He explores how inclusion can become exclusion when empathy gives way to ideology—and outlines how DEI might survive by embracing complexity, dissent, and shared humanity.

This post was originally published on Integral Life.

The Shadow of Trump

Kim Barta — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 17:54:50 +0000

Psychotherapist and developmental theorist Kim Barta joins Keith Martin-Smith for a deep dive into the psychological and developmental dynamics surrounding one of the most polarizing figures of our time: Donald Trump.

This post was originally published on Integral Life.