Free 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.

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.

Mapping an Ecology of Integrative Approaches to Addressing the Metacrisis

Brandon Nørgaard — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 09:08:16 +0000

IAM scholars Brandon Norgaard, Nicholas Hedlund, PhD, and Claudia Meglin provide a sweeping (albeit provisional) cartography of emergent frameworks rooted in an “Integrative Worldview“—ranging from metamodernism and integral theory to systems science, process philosophy, and critical realism—that are converging around a shared impulse to address the root causes of our civilizational predicament.

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.

IAM Spotlight: Faith Development Pathway

Brendan Graham Dempsey — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 11:11:39 +0000

Brendan Dempsey offers a powerful re-engagement with James Fowler’s Faith Development Theory, applying cutting-edge tools from developmental psychology to illuminate how our structures of meaning evolve. This presentation reveals not just how faith matures, but why this maturation is critical for meeting the challenges of a world in search of deeper coherence.

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.

Why Philanthropy Is the Most Powerful Lever for Systemic Change

Josh Leonard — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 18:39:49 +0000

This episode introduces a groundbreaking developmental map of philanthropy, revealing how the field is evolving from strategic rigor to empowerment-driven justice — and now toward a new paradigm of integrative systems change. Josh Leonard and Robb Smith explore how philanthropic institutions hold the unique freedom and leverage to become civilization’s steering mechanism, capable of addressing root causes rather than symptoms in the age of the metacrisis.

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.