1. How did you become connected to the ITP community? How were you introduced to the Practice?
The first time I was introduced to the practice was with Bob Doenges at his home in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and then I visited the Tulsa Integral Transformative Practice (ITP) community for a group ITP Kata and Staying Current share. After my initial exposure, I started to practice the ITP Kata five times per week. On a subsequent visit to Tulsa, Bob gifted me two books, The Life We Are Given and The Future of the Body. I was hungry for a more full-spectrum approach to wellness and well-being, and this fit my aspirations perfectly. My two favorite aspects of "Bob's" ITP Kata were the full 15 minutes of Witness meditation and his recitation of David Whyte poems for an inspirational hit.
2. What drew you to the Ki of Cooperation training?
In September of 2009, I was the President of the Kansas Chaplains Association (KCA) and was tasked with organizing the annual educational retreat. So, KCA invited Barry Robbins and Pam Kramer to give a three-day ITP workshop in Kansas City, Kansas. After that engagement I was interested in the Mastery course, so I started ITP Kansas in order to have fellow practitioners meet on a weekly basis.
After a few years of leading the group in Manhattan and Wamego, Kansas, I was working as an executive vice president of integral design and mission integration at Meadowlark Hills retirement community. I hired Pam to come and engage our nonprofit organization in the middle management leadership development program partially based on her work and ITP. The program manual that we were able to complete, with Annie Peace co-authoring alongside Pam, piqued my interest to bring Leonard Energy Training (LET) and ITP into the workplace. Up until then, my interest was mostly focused on spirituality in the workplace and meaning-making through rituals. This was to address the crisis of meaning in our overall American culture, as it was specifically affecting our elders living within long term care scenarios.
So, my interest in the KoC training was already primed by exchanges with Pam and Barry's amazing work over the years and now with the emergence of this newest iteration of ITPI and LET in the Ki of Cooperation (KoC), I'm in sync. Doubtless, the crisis of meaning continues to be the essential cause of our current culture war in America. What I'm eager to bear witness for is the offering of a path of empathy toward wholeness, which can include KoC as an agent of change.
3. How does your Ki of Cooperation practice affect your daily life?
My daily practice of KoC is at the Center, where the lines of inquiry from the Practice Wheel intersect and converge as both conduit and confluence for the changing of body, soul and spirit. Here is how that transpires at least five days per week: After spinning the Practice Wheel, I choose the practice that appears at the top of the wheel as my primary focus for the day. I also follow the line across the wheel to the opposite side where I form a dialectical interdependent pair in order to counterbalance my chosen practice for the day.
Case in point: When I choose the focused practice on evolutionary love, there is a dialectic set up with blending. Balancing and centering has a dialectic with core values; strengthening a bond with the world has a dialectic with staying current; integral awareness has a dialectic with integral mindset. As the dialectical interdependent pairs intersect at the center of the Practice Wheel, my particular interest on this day is to take up a focused practice of evolutionary love, whilst also simultaneously blending without focused practice. I have found that this affects all eight practices on the KoC Practice Wheel, taking one step further toward a habit pattern.
Now, this habit pattern is becoming my Sadhana or discipline, which takes many hours of repetition and rhythm before the Practice Wheel spins you into what Don Beck (Spiral Dynamics) considered your integral self and maybe further still your whole self. Our KoC Practice Wheel has the potential to be our Sadhana when we give ourselves away in selfless service, what I refer to as devotional service, to the world all my relations inhabit. Suffusing that Sadhana with devotional service is completing the full spectrum turn of the wheel, isn't it? Without love and light, compassion and wisdom, joy and insight at the Center of this dynamic wheel of The Life We Are Given, there can be no Future of the Body, as such. Without long term commitment (i.e., willingness to give) to long term practice (i.e., recipient of the flow), there is no Sadhana.
4. For you, Matthew, what is needed to be in the flow of the Ki?
When answering this question as a public theologian (i.e., One who stands with arms outstretched in humble adoration to send forth human energy to Creator), I must first cry out to my Maker, the Maker of Heaven and earth, knowing in my entire being that when free Will (human agency) and Grace (Agape, love divine) combine, there is an incomparable opportunity to dive in the eternal current of integral awareness to notice and bear witness to what is arising and passing over this fourth energy center (i.e., heart chakra).
5. What are your thoughts and ideas about building the capacities for cooperation?
When I ponder the KoC Practice Wheel and the eight capacities therein, the perimeter of the wheel is held by five boundary lines or KoC Guidelines. We presuppose certain truths within this holding environment: 1. honor each other; 2. take responsibility; 3. commit to confidentiality; 4. listen to understand; 5. speak to be understood; 6. express gratitude.
As we hold these truths to be our shared reality, then we may begin to exercise our own authority and cultivate, by study and practice, the eight capacities that we all have within our immeasurable depth of existence.
6. What is one affirmation you currently have or had that has been particularly helpful in realizing your own extraordinary capacities?
This vital affirmation's vibratory frequency is now coded in the main frame after 17 years: "I enjoy a continuous flow state of awareness throughout the day practicing awareness examen at noonday and on vesper light." As most affirmations are like software and require upgrades, there have been a couple that have made it into the hardware and do not require upgrading anymore. This affirmation is an integral part of how my daily path unfolds step by step, moment to moment. By stopping and pausing the flow of each day at the median and setting positions of the solar angel (i.e., noon and somewhere in the range of 6-9 pm according to seasonal differences), my diurnal and nocturnal attention spans are on watch or vigilant. As I benchmark these moments, there are trackers that I can trace back to comb or rummage through both my waking and lucid Dreamtime hours for cultivating data points and interactions of remembrances that I place on a string to both repent and appreciate what transpired.
7. What ways have ITP and this practice supported your work/engagement and other communities and in the world?
In April 2012, Adam Crabtree came to give a Seekers and Sages conference on evolutionary pantheism. I was fortunate enough to attend this occasion and was at dinner with several of the out of-town guests. I was seated next to Christina and Jim Grote, while Emanuel Kuntzelman was across the table from me. The conversation turned to my frequent travels to India. All three of them were very interested in my experiences and asked if I lead pilgrimages to India. My gut instinct was to say no, but my heart left from within my chest and started to dance around the table saying, “yes yes yes, I will lead a pilgrimage to India.”
As the interest grew among the four of us, Pam Kramer and her son, Joshua, also responded to the call of India. So in March 2013, we set out on a pilgrimage to mother India. As karma would prevail over each of us, at the last minute Emanuel was not able to make the long haul to Mumbai, and we missed him the entire time -- except at the very end when the fishing boat we chartered on the Arabian Sea was Christened as Emanuel - "God with us."
As far as I know, this was the first and only unofficial/official ITPI Pilgrimage to India. The journey that unfolded for us as an ITPI cohort and each of us as “soulfarers” continues to influence and impact us today in many ways and on many levels. Sharing the ITP Kata along the way definitely spread some seeds from the West coming back home to the East, since Michael Murphy spent several months at Pondicherry studying and practicing Integral Yoga and Integral Psychology at the Aurobindo Ashram.
8. Any additional comments you would like to add about the Ki of Cooperation or ITP?
One aspect of my spiritual life that I have not shared with many people is my participation in American Indian lifeways and ceremonies.
In Native American lore, there is a common inquiry when you meet up with a relative who is a stranger. You first ask, “where are you from?” Then, it is easy to understand the path that brought you to this encounter. But, the follow-up question is often more mysterious: “So where do you think you are going?”
Where are you from and where are you going have one place in common, the present moment. As each of us yearns to answer both of these questions for ourselves every day of our lives, it is significant when we show up in the present moment answers. To know in your being that your Origin Seeks You and that you are both a seeker and an original is sufficient cause for finding meaning in this life.