Thomas Steininger on Emergent Dialogue and Transcending Individualism

In this episode of the Life Itself Podcast, Rufus Pollock sits down with philosopher, practitioner, and spiritual mentor, Dr. Thomas Steininger. Dr Steininger offers insights and reflections from over 30 years of spiritual practice and cultivation of emergent, co-conscious "We" spaces and practices. Rufus and Thomas explore emergent dialogue, the victories and shadow sides of individuation, and the integral and metamodern movements.

About Dr Thomas Steininger

Dr. Thomas Steininger has been cultivating transformative “We Space” practices for nearly 30 years. He is a philosopher, practitioner, and spiritual mentor and has dived deeply into the practice of meditation and into an exploration of the evolution of human consciousness, particularly the current transition from a hyperindividual “I” culture to a co-conscious “We.”

As an authority on cultural evolution and the different spiritual and religious currents that have formed our postmodern world, he brings this perspective into his work as publisher of Evolve Magazin, the leading German magazine on consciousness and culture and as faculty at Meridian U. in California. He also co-founded and developed a process of emergent dialogue, an advanced practice in conscious communication.

About Rufus Pollock

Rufus Pollock is an entrepreneur, activist and author as well as a long-term zen practitioner. He is passionate about finding wiser, weller ways to live together. He has founded several for-profit and nonprofit initiatives including Life Itself, Open Knowledge Foundation, and Datopian. His book Open Revolution is about making a radically freer and fairer information age. Previously he has been the Mead Fellow in Economics at the University of Cambridge as well as a Shuttleworth and Ashoka Fellow. A recognized global expert on the information society, he has worked with G7 governments, IGOs like the UN, Fortune 500s as well as many civil society organizations. He holds a PhD in Economics and a double first in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge. Find out more about his work on his website: rufuspollock.com.

Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, form, individuation, integral, Ken Wilber, synergetic, dialogical, dialogue, group, question, field, listening, sense, find, world, reality, perspective, wholeness, structures

SPEAKERS

Thomas Steininger, Rufus Pollock

Rufus Pollock 00:04

Welcome, I'm Rufus Pollock from Life Itself and this is the Life Itself Podcast where we explore the trends and the topics in this emerging area of pragmatic utopianism and a radically wiser and weller world. I'm really happy today to be joined by Dr. Thomas Steininger. He has been cultivating transformative "We Space" practices for nearly 30 years. He is a philosopher, a practitioner, and a spiritual mentor and has dived deeply into the practice of meditation and into the exploration of the evolution of human consciousness, particularly the current transition from a hyperindividual "I" culture, to a co-conscious "we" culture. As an authority on cultural evolution and the different spiritual and religious currents that have formed our postmodern world, he brings this perspective into his work as publisher of Evolve magazine, the leading German magazine on consciousness and culture and as a faculty at Meridian University in California. He also co-founded and developed a process of emergent dialogue, and advanced practice in conscious communication. So really, really welcome, Thomas, to the show. I would like to start by just asking you a little bit about how you started this incredible journey over the last 30 plus years in this area? What was your original encounter? Was it during your studies, was it later? I'd love to hear a bit about your background and how this started.

Thomas Steininger 01:46

Thank you Rufus, glad to be here. I'm very excited about this conversation. Yeah, it always depends where one wants to set the starting point. But if you really go way back to when I was studying philosophy at the University of Vienna, I was, at that time, very much a social activist. I was in the student parliament, the anti-nuclear movement was strong - I was in part of all of that - and I was very much interested in social change at that time, from a left-wing perspective. And I felt in all this kind of social activism that we did at the time that something was really going wrong. And, from what I would say afterwards, there was a lot of ego involvement in the way we went about with our ideas of how to change the world. So I kind of changed course in that and did a lot of psychotherapy, group therapy, did a lot of what was in the 80s kind of things to do in body-oriented therapy, encounter, Gestalt therapy, breathwork, and all this kind of stuff. And I realized that there was a perspective opening up in myself that was different than my social activist identity. And I, being a philosopher, I tried to read about it, and there was a lot of spiritual literature. And to be honest, I hated the spiritual literature because it was often beautiful but I felt that people don't really think. I had the arrogance, at least, of a philosopher that the people didn't really think. And then in the 80s, I found something, or someone, that really was for me an important life change experience. That was the early Ken Wilber. And the early Ken Wilber - in the 1980s, at least in Vienna, nobody knew Ken Wilber - was able to think about social historic realities from a deep consciousness perspective. And I, at the end of my studies, wanted to write my thesis about social change, the evolution of culture, from a deep consciousness perspective, and I wrote about this with a lot of what at that time the early Ken Wilber brought to the table, which was already evolution of consciousness and deep philosophical understanding of a deep dimension of reality that I drew from Martin Heidegger, his whole relationship between being and beings. And this kind of interest and in-depth understanding of who we are, the subject-object divide, led me into being involved in more spiritual work. And, in a spiritual community that I was involved in, mainly in the 90s, there was a work where we very much were looking into what does it mean to come together in a different way in a dialogical form. And this work was the starting work of our dialogue forms that we did. This community broke apart, there's a lot of things I could tell about that, but if you want to have a starting point, this kind of long story is kind of a starting point of how all this work started in my life.

Rufus Pollock 05:41

Wow. So a couple of things. So I'm always very interested, what was the context that had people in that very beginning inquiry? So just one short question first, about that fascinating odyssey, what was it that had you see in the activism work that there was something missing personally, for you? You know, was there any specific incident? Where did this feeling come from? Because I would guess that many other people you were involved with didn't go on that journey, through therapy or through this kind of spiritual inquiry. So I'm just intrigued, because that's even still very relevant to today, in many ways, that thing, although maybe the political situation and so on has evolved a lot. So for you personally, what was it?

Thomas Steininger 06:35

It's an interesting question. I could point to many things, but maybe, to pick one that was central for me, because our engagement at that time, our typical interest in the 1970s, 1980s, was very much anti-establishment power, against power structures, capitalism, old-fashioned power, but the way we acted between ourselves in all these student groups and university was very power-driven. There, the power dynamics were so much part of ourselves, that there was a huge contradiction between our understanding of having the longing for liberation and equality and people coming together, and the deep investment in just usual power struggles, equal investments and the power game, as you see it everywhere. And this conflict between our big ideals and the reality of how we lived between each other, and myself included by the way, was something that was bothering me. And there was a deep sense that something was missing. And on the other hand, that was part of what my dissertation was about, it was our understanding in this liberation movement about human alienation at that time, it was very much that alienation had to do with the production process with our capitalist societies, and all of that. And it felt for me that our being alienated from reality, from nature, from each other must go deeper than that; that's not the core of it. And in particular, more or less materialistic approach to this seems to be lacking a lot. And that's where the psychotherapy processes opened up for me and brought very deep experiences that also didn't fit to my kind of more down-to-earth naturalistic understanding of reality, so I had to deal with experiences with myself, and integrate them in my own understanding.

Rufus Pollock 08:50

So I just want to highlight that… maybe just as I think, for myself… to summarise it, one point was that in the very movements that were often yearning for liberation, for kind of solidarity, for a kind of form of participation without oppression, without domination… You know, I think what we mean by power structures, often, in that terminology, is kind of domination structures, you know, that's the power stance of that maybe. And this contradiction that you were seeing between the aspirations of the movement then the way that people were behaving, including yourself if you like, inside it. And the point that I think is most interesting is at the end, though, just there, you had this very insightful point, which is that while some people would have been, at that time, like, 'well, we're like this because, you know, we've been brought up inside a capitalist system and we've been sort of formed and we're just kind of reproducing these structures of oppression that have been imprinted on us. While there may be truth in that you also saw that some of this alienation from ourselves, from nature, from each other, went deeper, I would say ontologically, it was like an ontological aspect, more than just a structuralist aspect of it, that it went into our being or nature of our being, which, of course, is formed in society. I just want to flag that maybe we can come back to it or we can explore now, this question is really profoundly ongoingly relevant to all transformative projects, especially obviously, transformative political projects. And, you know, if we just talk that through for our audience, is that crudely I would say one story about the world is like, 'hey, we're going to transform things technologically, even our own being, we're going to invent pills, we're going to take a pill for that, you know, we're going to be a brave new world where you take this or you take out or you go to a movie that stimulates this or that, but we're going to, we're going to transform even our own being and our own well being almost technologically'. And another one, which is the traditional you might say Marxist or just generally, is like, 'okay, there's structures, we don't own the means of production, or, you know, we live in oppressive family structures that reincorporate the domination with the father over everyone else, or whatever. And if we break those structures, or transform those structures, if we create shared ownership of the means of production, or we reorder the nuclear family into a much better one, this alienation and this suffering in ourselves will kind of be transformed. And then finally, there's what I would call and we could discuss together, I don't know how you would call it, I'd be very interested, but an ontological emphasis, which is say, 'yes, those other aspects are, of course, relevant - technological and structural - but really, the fault, or the pathway, lies in ourselves. There's something deep in our human psychology that is transformable. There are practices, there are methods, but really there are deep things in humans that lead us to be alienated or to have suffering. And that remains, obviously, a really relevant question and distinction for ongoing projects of political or social transformation or personal transformation. I've kind of set that out, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Is that what you were alluding to? Or in your way, how would you put it? And how does that relate to what you see still today, or even then, in your evolution?

Thomas Steininger 12:47

I mean, it has a lot to do with identity, with who do we identify being, in that sense. And even in this time that we are talking about now, in the 1980s, I had a very powerful experience that made a big difference that maybe speaks to that. In effect it was a spiritual seminar, it was called Enlightenment Intensive. And it's a very simple setting. It was a week and we were sitting in a couple of circles, and you were only doing one thing: you were with a partner, always changing, and one partner asks you one question ongoingly, "who are you?" And then you have five minutes to answer. And then it changes. So basically, the whole week, you just go with this one question, who are you? Who are you? And it really becomes interesting when you slowly run out of answers. When you have said everything who you are - a man, Austrian, da da da, activist, da da da - and you have said this already 10 times, something is loosening in your system and things become a little wobbly in that. And there is a point at least that happens for many and happened for me, where you lose deeply a sense of who you think you are. And something is opening up that is you, but you can't name it and it's meaningful. And of course, this is very much related to the meditation experience - big meditation seminars or the meditation tradition I think is very much also around this liberation from identity - and that was something that broke something open in me - not only that but that was part of the process - that still stays with me, where I think, if we use this big word liberation, there is something in our human soul where the capacity to develop an inner freedom from our identification allows us to be here with each other in a very different way. And if you call this 'spiritual justice' there, then this little opening in yourself, or maybe big opening in yourself, seems to be a very profound foundation for a different understanding of who we are as humans, and how we can be together as humans. And, of course, a lot of things changed since this Enlightenment Intensive workshop in Vienna, at the time, but it still speaks to what is important to me.

Rufus Pollock 16:01

To put it in simple words, that kind of liberation, from identity, has a sense of being available at any time or any place. Obviously, you may be different, different environments make it more available, even the very fact there is the Enlightenment Intensive, or do you have the leisure time to go and do it, or we could say various things, but the point is, from what we know of wisdom traditions that kind of liberation has been available in various forms in a whole variety of different cultures, political systems, for thousands of years, so it's kind of really distinct from liberation, maybe in the other more political, sometimes, senses one has. So to move on, so you read Ken Wilber, it had this really big impact, and then, I'd like to talk a little bit more, you said you joined this kind of community in the 90s and that there were certain things that broke down. I'd love to know a bit more about that, both its impact on you, but what were some of the things you learned, or what were the lessons, or what did you see out of that? And maybe you could say a bit more about that.

Thomas Steininger 17:20

The community that I joined, the name changed sometimes, but the name people still know is EnlightenNext. It was around the spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen. And one thing that I still appreciate, and what our work in the core was very much about, was that liberation, also spiritual liberation, it's more important what happens between us than just what happens in me. The work we were doing, and that's still very much related to the work that I'm doing now, was very much finding a way to talk with each other, where, using your word that you just brought it, where we are just available. Something, let's call it, the potential of the moment, is opening up because nobody puts him or herself in the way with identification - we don't have to call it ego identification, it's basically the same thing in my understanding - where one can be so there for this moment, that we can be so there for this moment, that this moment has a chance to show up between us with the potential that it does not have if everyone is clinging on to 'I have to be here', 'you have to be here' and 'my agenda has to come through', 'your agenda has to come through'. But all this doesn't have to completely disappear, one can be there, in fact we have to talk about how it's important also for the individual to be here, but for the individual to be here in a way that one is free from one's identification with one's separate individuality [and that] allows a different dimension to open up. And we did a lot of our work about it. One thing that was one of our major moments, it had a year-long grow log, but then some of us, something like 30 of us, at this time we were living at the East Coast, Massachusetts in  the countryside, we were for a period of more than three months, only meditating, nothing but meditating, and coming in this kind of dialogues. So we did nothing, but, I don't know how many hours, eight hours, ten hours meditation per day, for months, and every day we would come together in this kind of what we at that time called enlightened communication, and the goal was to be there without being locked into your ego, let's put it that way. And however you want to see that or analyse that, there are many things one can say about that, there was in particular one moment which was just very powerful, something was really breaking open that still is important to me, although a lot of things broke apart since then and we were not ego-free, liberated people all after that, but there was something liberating that was very meaningful and showed the different possibility of humans being together that was part of this work in this EnlightenNext community. That was also one of the pillars of my life that really still is there and important for me.

Rufus Pollock 21:23

Wow. And, I mean, it's so difficult to talk about these kinds of things powerfully and without… not being it. But just to ask you, so when you say something was breaking open, or there was this experience, so first of all, maybe even to backtrack, how do we normally dialogue or speak? You know, maybe if we're contrasting, maybe we all have experience, but maybe you could just give a concrete vivid illustration of what does it normally look like, and maybe it can be from one's own life, but what's this in contrast with? What's the kind of dialogue or the way that we encounter each other normally? 

Thomas Steininger 22:28

What I would highlight here is that usually when we normally dialogue, that's already a high achievement to dialogue and not to debate, to just make the distinction.

Rufus Pollock 22:42

Okay, so tell me what's debating?

Thomas Steininger 22:47

The distinction between debating and dialoguing, one could say, debating is very much where I want to convince you of my way of seeing reality, and you want to do the same from the other way and then either one wins, or we find a compromise, or we find some synergy, but it's basically a battle of perspectives. Debating is a form of battle of perspectives and either with power or with convincing arguments, I can convince you or I can silence you, and then someone wins the debate. Debate is something that someone is winning; a dialogue is not something someone is winning.

Rufus Pollock 23:25

Let's pick a toy example that we could think of that would be relevant today that people might debate about, talking about it right now gives a kind of chewiness to it for people listening. It could be about, I don't know, the war in the Ukraine, or it could be about something vivid, like, I don't know, Donald Trump or, you know, President Biden, or something. Can you just give me one example where you and I were debating right now about something?

Thomas Steininger 23:57

It could be the war in Ukraine, it could be, as we were talking about, the sense and nonsense of Web3. It could be also who is washing the dishes today?

Rufus Pollock 24:18

Yeah. So let's pick Ukraine, maybe, just for example, what would the debate look like? Like what would one of us say like, or maybe I don't know, on the Web3 one, it might be even like, 'okay, Web3 is amazing', or 'Web3 is useless', but what would it look like?

Thomas Steininger 24:38

The main ingredients that makes a debate a debate is that I know what is true and I want to find ways to put this truth on you, either that you agree, or at least that you are not able to counter my argument, that I'm able to silence you. So the way when I talk about the war in Ukraine, I know what it is and I hear you disagree, and I hear your arguments, and then I'm looking for the weak spots of your argument so that I can make clear why you're wrong, and why I'm right. But the foundation is that I'm very based in my conviction of knowing and that the whole orientation of the debate is to expand my knowing to other people, so that they become part of my knowing in that. And of course, it can get more complicated, you also can convince me, but basically, underneath is this foundation of identity and knowing that is fixed and that tries to win. And that, I would say, is the basic characteristics of what the debate is about. Which also can be powerful. It's like a powerful chess game.

Rufus Pollock 26:17

So let's take an example that maybe, even at least for our average listeners, so imagine I'm quite convinced that Russia is wrong, Vladimir Putin is wrong, they shouldn't be invading Ukraine. If I were coming from, like, 'I know that', this is not meaning I can't have a conviction in a view, but it's like, 'I know I'm right'. Or it could be vice versa, I'm like, 'I think Putin is great and I think Russia have got right on their side', that would become a debate with this clash of opinion about it. And what would then a dialogue start to look like? And then we're going come to a kind of emerging dialogue, or, I don't know, enlightened dialogue. What even would dialogue look like between you and me? Let's say, I'm pro Russia at the moment, you're pro Ukraine. What would it look like?

Thomas Steininger 27:21

It's cool to ask this question. The main difference is, I would say, is that in debate I'm listening for something different than I would listen for in a dialogue. In a debate, because I'm convinced of whatever, I listen for where you object and where the weak points of your objections are. It's a whole usual thought process of warfare, I look for your weak spots so that I can come through with my arguments. When I listen to what you're saying, basically, I'm looking so 'ah, he's saying that and that, and that's a weak argument. I go in there.'

Rufus Pollock 28:10

Yeah. Yeah. So let's say in here, it's like, you say something about Ukraine, and I'd be looking just like, 'well, that's wrong, because of this, you know, look the US are supplying, and you'd be like, 'no, look, at the Russians', right. And in a dialogue, what are we looking for? What are we listening for then?

Thomas Steininger 28:32

The main thing, I would say, or the starting point is that I really try to understand you, even if you're thinking the opposite, that you're thinking that really Putin is right and it's all about NATO east expansion, and Russia is cornered and they have to defend their security interests and basically it was the NATO who started this war already in the 1990s when they promised to… you can make all the arguments. In dialogue you listen differently when you try to understand the other, even if you disagree, to understand where does he or she come from? What's this world about? And in the difference that is occurring, there is still place for argument where I think 'da da da doesn't make sense', I bring it, but the foundation is listening for mutual understanding. Now, here you are as the other with this other perspective which I really don't understand and maybe really annoys me, or triggers me in whatever way, but I'm curious enough to try to create something where there's mutual understanding, some bridge-building possible between one and the other, not kind of in the flatlining, I don't care, still holding my ground. Not kind of just being 'I don't care'; I care not only about you, I also care about myself and holding this tension, this friction, that can be very uncomfortable, because it's a place where I really don't agree with you, but to still want to listen with you.

Rufus Pollock 30:57

Yes.

Thomas Steininger 31:00

And then there is something, I make a little leap here, but I think it's interesting because we've worked with this very example quite often and it illustrates something: when I listen to you, how vulnerable can I be in this listening? A good thought experiment is, if you say something that really would pull the carpet from underneath my feet, would be very disturbing, not that I have to agree with you, but if that is the case, do I really want to hear you? Or do I make a choice that there's some things I don't want to hear, because I don't want to be shaken up where I stand. And I'm not even saying that it is important to let the rug be pulled, I'm not saying that, but just as a thought experiment to see there's a point where I'm not sure, at least that's the way I always go to this, I'm not sure I really want to hear you because holding my ground is essentially more important than hearing you and to be aware that this is the point where I stopped talking with you. Just to be aware that it takes a lot of courage to make this spot more open that even if what you have to say to me is really maybe destroying my whole world just because something is coming in that I have not thought about or whatever, do I have the courage to hear your or do I basically shut down because I want to be not irritated in my security of my self identity. And you see this is quite often the end of a conversation, although we can continue talking, but basically, there is a wall and I close my ear when you bring this up and find a way around it and 'this is waterproof' kind of thing, because I don't want to be touched. And just to be aware of this shows how dialogue can really be something open, how dialogue can be really dangerous, how it also needs an atmosphere of trust, because to do this with someone who is not trustworthy is maybe a stupid thing to do.

Rufus Pollock 33:37

Yeah.

Thomas Steininger 33:38

But if there's a trustworthy relationship, a lot that is transformative, profoundly transformative, can happen in any conversation. And [especially] when there's so much trust that basically I don't stop listening.

Rufus Pollock 33:58

Can I ask then, to make it concrete, if you could share even, let's say, in the EnlightenNext community, and in these moments where you were really doing this profoundly, what kind of things would you dialogue about? Can you give a concrete example from your own past experience that really opened something up for you that you were dialoguing about? And it might have been a very simple topic, but that kind of makes it concrete for me or the listeners, something that could really be that powerful. I mean, I can imagine but I would just like to hear.

Thomas Steininger 34:33

I mean, what comes to my mind, and that was part of the spiritual work, we talked a lot about our ego-structures, my male arrogance, or, for example, about my German identification, German identity, in relationship to a lot of denial of what happened in the Second World War and a lot of justification, and a lot of 'da da da' where I just feel very comfortable because being Austrian slash German - to make this not differentiated for the sake of the conversation - a lot of things that in my environment are just a shared given, how Austrians see themselves as they were victims of history and not perpetrators in that sense, and how we translate it in the generation after the war, and how we find justification stories, and to see, in that sense, our cultural identity being built around certain myths and certain blind spots, that if somebody else shares that you very easily touch a pain point where you're not sure you want to go there. And that same thing's true for any history, any identity, talking about American identity and American race history, Native Americans' extinction, whatever. And it doesn't have to be histories, it's also my personal relationship with maybe you or maybe my partner there, my male superiority is just playing out in a way and because I may be able to play some intellectual game, I can hold power in this way and I don't want to let go, and I don't want to see it, and people just saying, 'hey, look', and maybe you don't want to look, because you don't want to see yourself because it shatters a little bit your ideal self-perception; things show up that you don't want, shadow work.

Rufus Pollock 35:44

So in the eight or ten hours you would do this meditation, what then? Would there be a group dialogue? Or would it be you dialogue with someone else, and they would bring up these things potentially?

Thomas Steininger 37:42

This kind of dialogues that I was just describing we did over many years ongoingly together. And there are also danger points with that because you can create group dynamics and group perspectives, cultish forms of dialogue structures of that, which was also part of what happened with us. So there are also shadow points and blind spots in this. But in, in this particular face that you're pointing to, around this, it was more about the capacity to allow something between us to emerge that is shared and something that we are together in, but standing also on our autonomy, it's not kind of a group thing, but it has its own wholeness where a dialogical field can be also rooted in something very deep, which is kind of connected to what I just shared before about this Enlightment Intensive experience, where it's not about me, Thomas, but something, the life itself, shows up between us like that, and to have conversations where we find a way to this relational fields to be self-aware, let's put it that way.

Rufus Pollock 39:40

And what kind of topics were you talking about in the group? Can it be anything? Were there particular things?

Thomas Steininger 39:55

I have a hard time to remember exactly what we were talking about at that time. On one hand it was very personal, on the other hand, it was very atmospheric. But that was also very specific about this particular work that we did at that point so I wouldn't make this too general a point because that was related to that particular work we tried to do at this time in this context. And in the end, it is not important. Yes. In the end, what I think is important is what you have pointed out to be available for whatever, and what I mean by being available for whatever is what is relevant in this situation that I'm here right now. 

Rufus Pollock 40:49

I suppose why I'm also speaking to it is it can sound to some people a little bit, I would say, almost magical, like there's this wholeness or this field. So before I got this very concreteness of it, which I can see, which is there are things that you could say to me that like, 'can I be with them?' You know, that I can really see that, and that there's something in my ego, there is something that is opening up a spaciousness in myself, where maybe a disidentification with those things. I mean, I want to say for myself is the things we've done that aren't so nice, I always sometimes have said that, you know, I think the hardest thing is to have been, if I were a rapist, to really be able to be with that. Not to make it okay or anything like that, but we always have such self-image of how we were good, or, you know, the ideal of ourselves, and to be able to somehow hold that and not 'oh, it doesn't matter', but somehow stepping back from it creates this space around so many things, because we so identify with our positions, including our positions about who we are like, whatever they might be, you know, like, I'm smart, I'm good, or that I'm not good, or whatever those are and so I really see that. And then you were saying there's sort of this field that emerges, as you said, that it's something in the dialogue in the space which is more than the sum of its parts yet it isn't a dissolution that we sometimes have crudely, like, I'm going to dissolve into some kind of like, you know, group, it's somehow more than but yet respect to the individuation, but it's just, I'm only coming back to it [because], why I'm asking is for the concreteness of it is, I get that it's not important but it just makes it real, potentially, for people who may or may not have experienced such a phenomenon? 

Thomas Steininger 43:22

I'm not sure if the concrete content makes it more real. And let me talk about the magic that you brought up. I would say it is magic. But what I mean with that is, or to explain myself, I think that individuation is also magic. One very down-t- earth understanding of magic is what we create with language. I find it magic when I use a word, like the word tree, and I'm pretty sure that in your consciousness somehow something like treeness shows up. That's the foundational form of magic, to be able to manifest something to language. And since we started to use language in human history, we also started magic. Magic and the start of language happened pretty much at the same time in that sense. And the fact that we were able as a species - to step back a little bit and take a meta perspective here which I think explains something - that we were able to basically leave our embeddedness in the natural process that we were in and shared with all other natural species, that we were able first to form identities as a tribe, this particular cultural forms, and it was all done with language into, starting with different forms of storytelling, coming in the hero story, all of a sudden there was the creation of the individual that stands out of the indigenous tribe, it has its own onus and the basic story form of the hero is the one who stands against the embeddedness, embeddedness with nature, embeddedness with the gods and goddesses and finds his onus. With Odysseus, or Ulysses, Homer did an amazing piece basically showing our Western, Greek, European individuation process. How Ulysses basically is able to fool the gods with the forces around him to basically enforce his own individuation, his own heroic existence, in that. That is a form of magic that he created and that created our whole culture, at least our European, Modernist culture, it's based on a certain perspective that we hold with this language, it's based on the separation that we kind of manifest, that I am myself and I'm related to objects and even other people I can objectify and can have instrumental relation [with], it's a whole world that we are creating through a cultural magical game, that even science in this form creates this magic, as a scientific language. That creates a certain awareness of reality that's based on subject-object relationship, subjectivity, instrumentality to create this world that we created as a species, as a culture. And maybe we are at a turning point right now where this game comes to its own end. There in the hyper individuation process, and the whole epidemics of narcissism, the shadow sides of this game are showing so strongly that there is an evolutionary drive to find new forms of free integration in wholeness. This experience that I was describing of a relational field, is maybe an attempt to not lose individuality, but to create an awareness that even individuality is embedded always in relationship, and to have a psychological, emotional, spiritual relationship to this embeddedness and then you give it the word field to express this. But of course, it's not a physical field or whatever, you use a word to express something that somehow has a relationship to a certain experience, that has some resonance with the experience. And that, I think, is something that is happening right now, in many places, not only in the spiritual community that we were in, but in many places, that it seems that our hyper individual, postmodern world is looking for forms of free integration. Thich Nhat Hanh's interbeing, reinterpreting Buddhism with this interbeing language, goes, from my interpretation, in the same direction in some way other people do similar work in that. So there seems to be something in the air, where the evolution of culture and consciousness is seeking, magically, to find new language games, to talk with Wittgenstein, that allows us to experience and communicate our embeddedness. And that's how I would interpret this experience. Sorry, it was a long answer, and a little philosophical one.

Rufus Pollock 45:53

Yes, let's talk about the magic.  It's great. So I want to come back to that, let's work that through for myself and maybe for listeners, and I think maybe also to expand on it in examples of what we mean by these terms like individuation and then integration. So I maybe want to bring another example that we're all familiar with, well which we all went through whether we remember it, but we might know if we've seen babies. So as a tiny child, when a child is born, from what we know and obviously, we can't really interview very young children, but we can do kind of experiments to understand how they see the world. They may not really see themselves as separate from the world, like they kind of are the world that they're in and a really tiny one-week- or a few-month-old baby is their sensations and doesn't have a sense of their body separate from the environment and things like that. And there's a sense, I'm picking an analogy, but you were also using it in the grand historical perspective, which I want to come back to, but there's a sense of individuation in a child as they start to see themselves as separate, like, there's some kind of distinction of them. And that's a very natural, and even healthy, phenomenon. And what you're also talking about, I'm just kind of trying to get that for people to understand individuation, there's a sense of, at one point the child is totally embedded in their environment, in a sense. Similarly, while again we can't go back in a time machine and go back 50,000 years or 100,000 years or even 10,000 years and really understand, or interview Homo Sapiens and understand how they see the world. There is a sense in a historical perspective, from the literature we have, from what we do know, and even from societies we know today, like indigenous, that there wasn't the sense of the individual distinct from who they were interwoven with the group. And what we're talking to here is that there's been, there's a suggestion, that there's been a big historical process, which is both a victory and, as we just discussed, has many shadows, of individuation, what that means, just like the child stops being just 'I am one with the environment', in an actually healthy way, they see 'ah I've got a boundary of my body', that there are objects in another sense. For example, very, very young children, if you do experiments, don't really, if an object disappears, for them, it's just gone out of existence, they don't search for it, it's gone, if I hide something behind the chair. And at some point the child realises there are objects out there, as it were, "in the world" that can disappear and that they can search for, they can recover, that are separate from them. I'm giving the very concrete examples from developmental literature. But this sense of individuation goes on. And, first of all, just if there's anything you want to say, to do better than me in kind of setting that up, and then there's a sense of which that has extended, that's become, we'll come to I think in a moment, this era we're in that has become so exaggerated or taken to such extremes, that the shadows of it have become very apparent, though we should acknowledge the great victory. But first, was there anything you want to say just to kind of spell out individuation. And I think this is really profound, again, it comes back to the ontological theme, but also really talks actually deeply, if people are listening, to think to how this relates to some of the predicaments, like concrete things like we talked about, like narcissism, but also what's going on with our political systems or our challenges of dealing with global crises like the ecological crisis, the climate crisis. I also want to end, I'm just flagging this for people, I want to come back to, one modern reaction, say, 'Oh, we want to go back'. We want to go back to the wisdom of indigenous cultures, which have huge amounts of wisdom, but in some of the story here is it's not one wants to go back, it's like the pendulum will swing, but it doesn't swing back, the pendulum is moving upwards, we're tracing, if you like, a helix upwards, so I want to come to all of those things. But I just want to start with the individuation point just to explain that for people, because it's a kind of a technical term and I know it relates to Jung and other things. What do we mean by individuation?

Thomas Steininger 54:02

Thank you for that. And this is a moment where I really regret that Elizabeth, my partner is not here because she is a developmental psychologist and really has a lot to say to that. But what you're describing, I think is also common knowledge. We know that and of course, people like Piaget really… that's what their work is about, to describe these changes that you are describing. And one thing that all of us know besides the examples that you just brought is when a child I think at the age of around three starts to change language and not talks anymore about oneself in the third person but the first person and just to see what it takes in consciousness to… or what it means to talk about yourself in the third person is kind of a loose way that the identification process reaches a different firmness when you don't talk about him, but I talk about me. And then this meanness really starts. And this is also, as far as I know, where the first really rebellious phase in life happens, where you really start to try the boundaries of your parents. Because you encounter the choice of saying no, basically, 'Oh, no, no, no' and screaming because you want something… all the willfulness… you you're starting to experiment and play with your own willfulness in a way where we discover something that is our essence. And I really think what you are pointing out that often because we are aware that narcissism is such a theme of our time, and our disconnectedness is such a theme that we all suffer from, and the whole wave of indigenous renaissance that we are living through right now, expresses also that we realise that those cultures who have not gone through the same process of modality that we have gone through hold some forms of wisdom that we have lost. But there is a very simple example again, that I think highlights what you were pointing to. Because when we were not separate, yet, in our indigenous tribe, there was a real power and united togetherness. Also, by the way, togetherness with nature [is included] in this, we have not objectified each other and all of that and and that's partly [what] our romantic sense is responding to: 'wow, this is beautiful, this is powerful'. And this is true. But there's another element that's worth looking at: that this was not a choice. This was a given. Nobody could step out of the tribe, there was no freedom to step out of the tribe. Literally… there are enough examples to demonstrate that people, indigenous, being taken out of the tribe die. And not because they starve or something like that, maybe that too. But psychologically, you just cannot take that you don't exist outside. So to see that this is powerful, but there's also a necessity built in and a lack of freedom to do anything else but that. That is a very different situation than we are in, that we can say no, I'm not part of the society. I'm not part of this culture. I'm not part of this family. And I really can do my thing. And it can be very narcissistic. But we also can make a choice to come together. But this togetherness is different, fundamentally different because it's based on our choosing capacity to do so. To to be aware that this kind of togetherness is based on the freedom to choose, that's very different than the factuality of just being together. It shows that this is not a going back to some romantic idea, but what I would call here trans-individuation, the rediscovery of our embeddedness in our togetherness, [which] is always based on our capacity of free choice, and also the responsibility to choose the right form of togetherness, because you can also choose the Nazi form of togetherness, and that's maybe something one can discuss if it's the right thing of coming together. So our form of responsibility of individuation and only with individuation as you will responsibility, for someone who is re-sponsible, forms a different way of this related, this field of relationship that's different than the indigenous one can learn a lot. But we also have to learn a lot from our process of individuation. 

Rufus Pollock 59:34

Yes, I think that's really important exactly to acknowledge and I think this is, again, to actually come back always to the political point, if I can bring it up here, is the traumas of individuation, which may go back much further than certainly even in modern times, you know, that people think of, whether it's the Nazi rallies or it's the Inquisition… this incredible victory meme that dominates, for example, if you go just read political theory most of it's about how do people have freedom to kind of do what they want, you know, in the sense of play whatever music or read whatever books… this is just incredible victory. That shows up– I'm giving formal examples in our kind of governmental… but the kind of underlying ontological achievement that represents is, what you're saying is kind of massive, and almost not acknowledged and particularly in these moments because it is now gone, its shadows have arrived. And so just to acknowledge that, the great victory of that freedom, and it shows up even in victory today, which is, you know, many, many societies are and were patriarchal, you know, the victories of individuation are still being reaped, whether I think they relate, you know, many of these areas, to see people, as sovereign individuals with their own rights, and all these kinds of things. And the trauma, though, that we are still dealing with of that victory, and, well not that vic-, but also, you know, of dealing with the group and oppressions by the group, and so on. And what you're now coming to is to say, but we also see the great limitations of what we could call hyper individuation, you mentioned narcissism, but an atomized society, you know, the things we can say are kind of classic: loneliness, but also, our great, our lack of embeddedness, or connection, with nature in a visceral sense. The other thing that I want to reiterate in all of this is that we have to necessarily on a call like this, we can't really do practice, although I and Thomas can be kind of, I hope, practising a bit the concreteness of this. The visceralness of these things, in both directions. And so when we say, 'Oh, we're not embedded in nature,' I mean, in a way, I could have no idea of what it really means, although I grew up in the country, [I could have no idea of] what it really means to be connected, fully connected with nature, in a certain way, but that this is something that really is showing up today in the way that we act, the way that we behave, the way that we are, the way we operate. And I wonder, therefore, coming to one of the things that you're really looking at is ways that we're not necessarily going back because we can't, we don't, we cannot go back. In a sense, it's not the same thing. What is the going forward? So then that does come back – this is what you've been describing even earlier in these experiences in these practices. And again, this magic, you said, is we're looking for ways really to integrate the victories of individuation, of our autonomy, of our individuality… back, though, into something that is a collective but that isn't a reversal […], it's something really where that autonomy and responsibility and sovereignty or something is preserved, yet there is something new that emerges and there is a sense of being the collective and connectedness and so on. Is that what the, that's what the work that you…?

Thomas Steininger 1:04:03

Absolutely. To emphasise what you're pointing to, that is also what Ken Wilber calls the dignity of modernity, that we right now tend to forget, because we are so much in the drama of modernity right now. So, rightfully, we also have to emphasise how we move beyond that and also beyond the postmodern revolt against that, to integrate it on a higher level, but it has to be honoured, the dignity. It has to be seen, has to be in there. Otherwise, we end up with all kinds of regressions. So, this is a critical point to make. And what this really means ongoingly has to be found out on a theoretical level but also on the practical level. And to talk more from a practical level, I think that's at least what our Emergent Dialogue practice is focusing on that is developed out of that what we did in the 90s. And what we did afterwards in our work here a little bit peopled by Partner and others. Here, we are working this now, since, I think, it goes to 30 years now. And one simple way to understand what an anchor point can be to enter this different form of being together here is what I would call synergetic intuition. It sounds a little bit like a mouthful and a fancy word and I'll try to explain what I mean. But when we are, in whatever situation with whatever factors, let's have people and beyond people, there is a multitude that comes together and builds a situation. Let's say we are in a dialogue, and there are 10 people. And let's leave all the other factors out right now. Let's just focus on these 10 people, different perspectives, different life stories, different agendas, different drama points, different hopes. And there's a conversation that has a certain reason why we are here. And there is a multitude, and how does this multitude find a wholeness? How do we not stay fragmented or fragment so that I have no clue… The worst thing is that we fight each other, but also just to be next to each other and have no real relationship is a form of fragmentation. That we as the circle of 10 people say […] we just don't find the wholeness, a meaningful wholeness, that everyone knows when the conversation comes to its own and somehow it feels very meaningful, what we're talking about, and we're all in it, and something's happening. And it's beyond my agenda or your agenda. It's happening. There's some meaningful wholeness building, because we did something right, let's put it that way, or something right happened, however. And I think one word to understand this rightness is the beautiful word synergy. That 'synergy' means that different points, factors, identities, all look for how they can form a meaningful whole. And it makes a huge difference in any situation, when I'm interested, have a sense organ for this synergetic capacity of a situation, and I'm in support of it to show up or not. And when enough people in a room have a focus and the capacity to really […] support this, synergy happens in a much more profound way, in a much more powerful way. And the potential between us gets multiplied just because we don't focus fragmentation. We focus on synergy and synergy does not mean that we fall into one. And there is no difference anymore. It is a creative relationship of difference, even greater friction, where I don't agree with you but there's something very powerful in this disagreement that's really interesting. We don't even have to agree in the end. But still, it was very enriching to have this conversation with you. If you agree or disagree, maybe both [are] a good outcome, but something synergized in this and the capacity to be there for this synergetic field is, I think, a way to understand what this form of being together holds in a way that I'm not primarily interested in me and my agenda and you and your agenda and debate or whatever. But we are together. We are here together for something that is a creative wholeness, that we still have to find out what it is.

Rufus Pollock 1:09:30

And again, so if you, if I were thinking for myself, or listeners to think for themselves, it would be interesting to say let's just pick something simple. Your partner and you [for example], I don't know, there's some debate over what one's going to do this week, you know, whether we're going to go to the cinema or whether we're going to go to the theatre, or let's say something more profound, I'm just kind of wondering… so like for you, or even could you give an example of like when you've seen this happen, where you've seen a group having to decide on a topic, and it could be a present topic, or it could be something, a really big discussion about the Ukraine war, and what you've seen happen when it does go into this versus not – just describe that? Yeah, I'm just trying to…

Thomas Steininger 1:10:27

Let me give a very concrete example out of my life that just happened a couple of weeks ago. And yeah, that I found significant. We do in our work, every summer, a retreat. And we did it in the last years in Italy, in Assisi. This year, we wanted to go out of some reasons to a powerful place in Turkey. And then the war happened. And it just did not feel right. To go to a retreat in Turkey, it kind of felt like some escapist thing… So a couple of us came together and just were expressing this, feeling uncomfortable with this. And out of this conversation came the idea, why don't we go to Berlin? Berlin is a city that holds so much. It's a symbol, the reality of division in our time, and also the creative response to division. So there's something very powerful in the place of that, and that just happened out of this conversation, then we had no idea how we were to do this. And we had some friends in Berlin, we started to talk. And to cut a long story short, we came up with some friends in a very powerful co-working, co-living space, and another friend who runs a community, in Berlin with young people, they call themself the Church of Interbeing… and they, we, we said, let's do this together. And then we had a process where we just are in many Zoom calls. And then in a couple of days in Berlin, we just went from our places and talked: how do we do this retreat together? And everybody has their places. And somehow it felt [as though] nobody really designed this retreat. It was a conversation, where things fell into place. It was even not only a conversation between people, we also we went to different places and felt that the place told us something, how to do this. And this listening to this ongoing synergetic presence between us, the places and the idea, allowed in a very short time that a retreat unfolded and in the end was, at least from my sense, very powerful and very successful. But it really happened in its own emergence and listening to the unknown between us: how does this potential want to arrive here? And it was not someone having an agenda, let's do this. And it was really ongoingly being very open and in the unknown, and seeing, 'Oh, wow, this fits together, well, this fits– no, this doesn't fit together'. Now, all of a sudden, it's a synergetic whole building, that in the end, I am just very happy how it happened. So that's was for me really an expression of a synergetic coming together, where none of us there over-invested and also there was no ego involved. But we were not overly invested in our ego, so that something powerful [could] emerge between us that was beyond ourselves and [that] in the end, I think, was really in service of the situation, the people involved and everything else.

Rufus Pollock 1:14:09

And also, do you have a converse example of something you've ever experienced? Where you didn't feel that dialogue? Or for some reason there was a block – and what happened then? Like, have you ever done an event where that wasn't somehow in place and therefore things… you felt that discussion happen… I'm just trying to work out how people can feel that when they have it…

Thomas Steininger 1:14:31

Yeah, I do… what comes to my mind right now is a group of people that I'm involved in since some years where we are also again from different backgrounds, or worked together, how to create a more conscious culture in Germany. And to cut it short, COVID ripped us apart. The investments in different forms [of] how to respond to COVID, to be with the establishment response or with the more alternative, even conspiracy, response are… although we are very conscious people, we were not able to hold it. We fragmented, and not to give any one of us now… we fragmented… we were not able to hold this difference in a creative, co-creative, synergetic way. I'm […] still looking for what can happen in the future, but for the moment we failed.

Rufus Pollock 1:15:56

So, yeah, I mean, this is what I want to bring up, it's something that I think is really subtle, which, just for example, a friend was talking about recently. Which was put in a simple way, there was an event he was participating in. And he's also from a research background. You know, he was in academia, and the thing he really respected in academia was […] particularly in research collaborations– So his interest was when when you saw groups operating, like good research groups, because in academia, you can be in departments. And there's different reading groups, or different research groups, and some are really kind of not very functional, you know, and some are really productive. […] And so that's just the context. And he was in a group and there was a lot of stuff about, like, everyone had to speak equally, and they were like asking a relatively expert question about like, how do you do research to assess, you know, something? And what he was noticing, which is something sometimes that happens today, and I'm asking this in this kind of question of dialogue, which is, you know, there was a kind of a bit of formality, like people felt like, everyone, you know, there's a question of who should speak, you know, who had power… there are these things that come up. But even that there are differences of opinion? I guess, yeah, this question, which is, when you operate with a lot – I'm not articulating this question super well, so I'm gonna kind of work it through, and we're going to make it a bit what we can… What he was saying, what he saw in research groups was there was a tolerance for inequality of speaking or participation at given moments because someone had expertise. But the group had this core purpose, and that would dance, it wouldn't be someone who always– In a given moment, it would be like, 'Okay, we got a statistics question. This person knows a lot about statistics.' But you could also have very strong differences of opinion, that would, at least in productive groups, there could be clashes, but it would somehow synergize and you would move on. I guess why I'm trying to bring this up is that what I'm hearing is that also, this isn't about being nice. This kind of practice of something emerging isn't about us all being like, oh, everyone's view is of equal validity. But there's somehow an ability to add, to kind of be with productive tension or creative tension. And in this group that kind of pulled apart– like, I guess what it is is: what is it that allows the group to not have too much tension or be pulled apart versus…? You know, it sounds like when you did, [when] you're available, and everyone's kind of committed to the mission, [when] there's a general alignment, and even maybe cultural alignment, there are going to be differences, but there's enough kind of shared… It's like, in this other group that wasn't so productive, […] even though there was maybe the formality, there wasn't a space actually of creative difference. Versus when there is in a research group, which might even be quite… maybe sometimes even egoic, but I'm not sure. In the good research groups that's actually one of the funny things is, even if people have got big egos, the egos in terms of what you're doing is sort of put to the side, you know, you're committed to the scientific mission. And I just kind of– I know my question is not so clear. But how does one, even in the lowest sense of this, allow not to be pulled apart like you've described, but also not to become like flatland where like, you know, oh, everyone has equal listening to, everyone's view is equally valid, because yes, everyone's view is equal, like we want to listen to everyone in a true sense of listen, but at some point, how do we deal with tensions or conflicts? Like that's, I guess my other question would be: when have you had a group [which] has had a lot of tension like the COVID group, and has successfully synergized?

Thomas Steininger 1:19:43

I have had this experience also. And I think the point is a completely different one. It's not about everyone being equal. It's not even about everyone being heard, although this is a virtue, which I find important. It's even not a shared mission, although I find this is important also, it can help. But they also can be in the way, by the way. What I would emphasise is, again, this mysterious thing called the field, or the wholeness between us. To be aware that there's something alive between us, that's more than the sum of the parts. That has its wholeness. And I find something that really makes a difference here – at least the way we do this, there may be other ways of how to go about this – [is] to create awareness of this dialogical field. Of this energetic field. And not an intellectual awareness, [but] an experiential awareness: that one really can sense into the aliveness of this, to speak in semi-mythological language, that you can look through the eyes of this energetic space itself, you're not just looking through the Thomas eyes, or Rufus eyes, but I'm able to look through the eyes of the space itself. And what I find very powerful, at least for myself, is to really have a real love relationship with this. So there is something that is very powerful in groups, which I would call interpersonal relationship. So that I'm not just me, and you are an instrumental part of my reality. But I honour you and I honour her and I honour him. And this is a very important foundation of a real relationship in a dialogical field. But this is, I would say, an interpersonal experience, where I'm aware of you and her and him and the network of us in that. But it's not the wholeness itself. The way I would talk about this field consciousness, I would call it this emergent interbeing. It has its own life form to say. I mean, I'm speaking semi-mythologically to make a point here. And to be aware of its needs in that situation, what does this relation field really need from me and from you, and my capacity to hold the relationship with this emergent interbeing field, and our shared capacity to do that allows us to hold the tension between us in a way that we don't fracture and where it's not even, again, the point is not that we, in the end, love everything everyone is saying. It can stay in friction, it can be productive, it can be creative, or we can agree and find something that's… but everything that kind of synergizes in this not kind of 'everything is nice and everything is equal' way, but it can be very complex, difficult, all kinds of stuff. But there's a love for this experienced wholeness of this emergent interbeing field that allows us to anchor us in that and to hold us so that this becomes creative and does not fall apart.

Rufus Pollock 1:23:32

And can you give a concrete example where this hadn't happened in this time of COVID with this group? Where is the example when you've seen that happen, when there was quite a tense topic. And where there were differences, but it was able to be held in this way. And what the result was. Do you have an example, even from EnlightenNext, you know, […] just to kind of get really concrete. Were there tensions in EnlightenNext that got resolved through this kind of dialogue? Or things you've seen in recent times where you've seen this really play out?

Thomas Steininger 1:24:12

EnlightenNext is a different story because–

Rufus Pollock 1:24:14

Then let's leave that one for the moment, but just any example you could give me concretely if you have a topic that you think you can describe, [where for example] these people have these quite different views, or I had this different view, […] but this was actually the result, like by [being] able to hold the field like that.

Thomas Steininger 1:24:29

I mean, in some way, this is my ongoing experience in doing our magazine, where we have sometimes very different perspectives on–

Rufus Pollock 1:24:48

Can you make it, just on this one, just give me a concrete difference and it could be just the simplest thing like we wanted to have this as the lead story or that, but a concrete example where this came up where two people in the magazine had really different perspectives. And then what happened? Like, if you did this interaction and the field was held? This was the resolution?

Thomas Steininger 1:25:10

Let me go back to this retreat decision, because we really had in that very different views if, at this point, going to Turkey was something that we should do. Or if it's even a problem to do something, or if there's a need of [something] different and we had no answer for this for a couple of weeks. 

Rufus Pollock 1:25:45

And so what happened? What would one person say? You don't have to name them, but [for example] Person X thought that we should go to Turkey strongly and Person Y… you know, like, what actually happened? Like people would get on a call, and they would just…

Thomas Steininger 1:26:03

I'm just a little cautious to not talk about too intimate things here. In that sense, even without naming names. But there were different focus points. People who were more focused on creating for people a nice experience somewhere, and people who were more kind of thinking about a more strategic context where this retreat has to, or can, serve a certain function in developing what we're doing, and where the personal experience on the rigidity is important, but it's not the whole context. 

Rufus Pollock 1:26:03

Right. 

Thomas Steininger 1:26:06

And at the same time, both sides are right somehow. There's a big, you can call it strategic context, how a retreat serves a bigger cause, and it has a certain function and a certain thing that you want to try and bring to the world. And there are certain life experiences that you bring to people who join this that you want to support. And they can be very in contrast to each other, opposing each other.

Rufus Pollock 1:27:38

So it could have been a breakdown, it could have been [that] these two camps formed and kind of slugged it out, and maybe even whatever resolution would have – there might have been no resolution – but even if there had been a resolution, people would have been conquered or dissatisfied, one group would have– Whereas instead, you're saying there was a group decision that was made relatively efficiently. And […] it was an integrative decision that built on this field to find something that people were really whole with.

Thomas Steininger 1:28:10

I mean, what we tend to do – and this is a language that we don't use, but other groups use that and I find it applicable – is that the decision process is consensus-oriented. And consensus-oriented does not mean that in the end, everyone kind of has the same perspective. But that we are behind what we do in the end together.

Rufus Pollock 1:28:42

I mean, Amazon's founder famously has this phrase, 'Disagree and commit'.

Thomas Steininger 1:28:49

Yes, exactly. But for that, you have to be very aware of a lot of factors to be able to do that. 

Rufus Pollock 1:28:55

Yes. 

Thomas Steininger 1:28:56

And […] there has to be a lot of freedom from one's own agenda. Particularly to do what you're describing: to disagree but be behind it. Because, whatever, it seems to be the right thing, although I still disagree. Maybe the reason [is] because it cannot be decided, and it's more important that we move together here than to fracture. And because of that, although I still see differently, I'm really behind doing this, because – and then maybe it connects directly again to our work – I'm aware of this relational field and I don't want to hurt it. So just to make the point clear, it's not that I don't want to hurt each other; that can be part of it. But I don't want to hurt the potential of this field. But this field… what is relevant here right now and the way we can see this together, that only can find itself in not fragmenting. And to hold this together and to value that needs first essential awareness of its reality, that it's not just an abstract idea that I can contemplate, but it's, this is much more existential. Because if I just contemplate it as an idea, that then basically all becomes a head thing. But if I have an existential experience of this wholeness, we are talking on a very different level.

Rufus Pollock 1:30:44

I want to encourage anyone listening – it's, really, this is a practice […] – really, to practise. And I think it talks to things we all know, which is that we spend much of our time not in such productive– well, in debate or not productive dialogue. I wanted to switch tracks right towards the end here and ask a couple of other questions. So one is: what was EnlightenNext, because I think there is a lot of inspiration for people wanting to cr– you know, in many ways it sounds like an incredible community. I've heard testimony from other people who've been participating. But it also broke down. What were lessons of that? Or like, what happened? Because I think this is a moment when people have a lot of ideas about, again, we want more transformative communities. What did you take from that experience as something that we could… what was the source of breakdown? What can we learn about, I don't know, whatever you want to speak to there? But yeah, anything there that you'd like to talk to? Because I think it has a lot of lessons for people today.

Thomas Steininger 1:31:55

You have another hour? A couple? I mean, there's a lot we can say. Just maybe one thing why I think that in the end, it fell apart?

Rufus Pollock 1:32:11

Yeah. 

Thomas Steininger 1:32:13

I think it fell apart… Again, [there are] many, many things that one can bring into it; I'll just pick one that I think is very central. There was a built-in contradiction between what was our project, what we tried to do, and the way we did it, because this capacity of interrelated emergence basically needs that this dialogical field really comes into the lead. But we did it in a top-down context of basically a guru context where the power structure was outside of the project. And that would have needed a complete redo of our relations in order for this dialogical field to come to its own. And–

Rufus Pollock 1:33:29

So, just concretely, so for people who are listening, like Andrew Cohen was the guru…

Thomas Steininger 1:33:35

Why did that not happen? Andrew Cohen was the guru and basically, it was a top-down power structure where this dialogical field that we are talking about was… somehow this was what we were interested in, and also what Andrew was interested in in some way. But to do that, to basically let go of this guru position would have been a necessity for this dialogical field to come to dawn. And that did not happen. Again, I could say more about it, but… simply because Andrew didn't want to. And how you interpret this–

Rufus Pollock 1:34:03

I guess one question I have is, do you think he was essential? Like, the question is: why is it so difficult for groups to self-generate? Why is it so often it is a guru to ge–? Like, what role… Why was… Was he quite central to it then coming into being in the first place? And why did he not see… Well, who knows for him why he didn't see the wisdom of stepping aside, but I guess this kind of difficulty, I guess, is: do you need something like that to create the space in the first place, but then somehow step out of the way?

Thomas Steininger 1:34:53

Yeah, I guess that's one of the lessons one can draw. That is part of the difficulty of it, because of course, it helps also to have a powerful holder of this. But the nature of this different step of human interrelatedness needs something different than pyramid power structures. And I'm not saying that authority is bad, because–

Rufus Pollock 1:35:25

Yes. 

Thomas Steininger 1:35:26

–to flatland everything is also not the answer. So yes, how to do this in a dialogical way, and to honour authority and expertise at the same time, in a flexible way of honouring who we are also in our differences… That's demanding. It's not easy. And that's why this also produces a lot of experiments that fail. But that's also part of the process. And we are in the process of finding out how we can do that, to honour a lot of contradicting things at the same time. Because I don't think that pyramid structures really can serve for the future. And postmodern, flatland non-hierarchies are incapable also. So what is the integration? And I also have no real problem with failing because I think failing is part of the success in the end.

Rufus Pollock 1:36:33

[…] So to come to a sort of related question that we come back to… you know, Integral, Ken Wilber, and the Integral room is much bigger than Ken Wilber and involves many, many people who've contributed. What are the lessons again of that? I mean, I am someone who's kind of come to it a bit later, you know, in the last few [years]. But what… I mean, I think that if you Google, the top hit for Ken Wilber or something is this essay by Manson. The guy, I think, who wrote this sort of self-help book, but who's obviously really inspired by Ken Wilber. But [the article is] called The Rise and Fall of Ken Wilber, or something, and he starts the article: 'he's like the greatest genius you've never heard of'. But again, I don't want to– I don't necessarily think that– I think that we have a tendency in our world to focus on things that are successful, because there's an entity that's really visible, that's really successful, you know; things that are successful because they influence the entire culture are not so. But what do you see has happened with the Integral community? What are your hopes? And where do you think it's evolving to? Where is it showing up in other places? And what lessons are there that other communities, which are coming into being, that are emerging, could learn from that?

Thomas Steininger 1:37:53

Again, one simple answer to a very complex question. I'm very happy about the emergence of Metamodern. And one reason why I am: because I think that any new stage of human culture and consciousness has to be multilingual. And that the emergent existence of Metamodern – also partly in competition with Integral, partly in identity – in my understanding is a support of Integral because it allows whatever this new stage in culture and consciousness is about, to find different voices in also hopefully friendly competition, to analyse what it is and not just coming from one source. So, in that sense, I really think that Integral becoming polyphone is a support of Integral. And that Ken has here a monumentous role in what happened and what he brought about and that he has his own genius and that for me is unquestioned and of course he has also his limitations and his downsides. But, I mean, he played an enormous role in my life, that's maybe beside the point, but that really shaped a lot of my life and my understanding of reality. I think that to honour this and to find a polyphonic relationship to that, as every stage of consciousness, tradition, modern, postmodern, came in different voices and competing voices is a support that there's something really new happening right now. And some people call it Integral. Some people call it Metamodern. And some people will find it a third name for that. And I think that's good. 

Rufus Pollock 1:40:10

And what do you think a key…? What is the kind of essence…? I give the analogy sometimes for people in discussing this of the Reformation leading into the Enlightenment – the great last transition, you might say, if you reflect – and let's say, the Reformation, which I think is actually a key point and you can go early Renaissance, but in essence was actually sort of an individuality, like, you know, each person found their way to God. So, you know, by Scripture alone, etc. There were, and it's a good example, there were many, many different Protestant sects. There were many different people with different views. But there were certain key commonalities, maybe, fundamentally, to, for example, Protestantism, and then ultimately, there are many different takes on some degree aspects of modernity. But they had this kind of… they were common. So as I said, one individual route to God or, you know, the importance of reading for oneself, the Bible: these were common aspects. So you got the Quakers all at one end, and you got, I don't know, the Anglicans… there's a huge spectrum. I know–

Thomas Steininger 1:41:22

Luther and Calvin, being two voices that had a lot not in common, but at the same time–

Rufus Pollock 1:41:29

Yeah, and a lot not in common. So I guess when I hear Wilber or Integral speak, it would be stuff like there was a unifying principle – that's my point, there's a lot of divergence, but the key principle, let's say, in Integral would be just the assumption of the possibility of human growth, consciousness growth and evolution, the reality of that. And that there's no end, like it's not like we've got the right answer to this kind of aspect. I don't know, maybe I'm not putting that rightly, but what would you say? Are there any underlying core principles, though, which many polyphonic voices are maybe versions of? But what are kind of core assumptions, like the Protestants have certain core assumptions that you can identify?

Thomas Steininger 1:42:09

What comes to my mind? First is one thing. And that is the integration of the Modern impulse and the Postmodern impulse into something new. Because, at least in my understanding, Post-Modernity is not really a new stage in consciousness. Post-Modernity is Modernity in the face of self-critique. It's the deconstruction of Modernity. It's not the new yet. At least, one could argue this point.

Rufus Pollock 1:42:53

It's like Scholasticism. Medieval Scholasticism was a kind of integration at the beginning, but into the old system of the discovery of Plato, Aristotle. But it wasn't… yes, it was a kind of critique or building on, but not yet the next stage.

Thomas Steininger 1:43:11

So in this impulse to really take serious what Post-Modernity is teaching us in terms of the flaws of the Western scientistic, hyper-individualistic, separate, subject-object divide perspective of reality that distinguishes – I'm oversimplifying dramatically, forgive me – [that] distinguishes this western, Greek, European impulse from traditional impulses and other impulses of other cultures around the world, and that created the triumph and the disaster of modernity. And postmodernity is very much basically the relentless self-critique of that. And Integral/Metamodern is a way to acknowledge this critique, for example, the subject-object divide of the Modern perspective. Also, the reduction to materialism, to basically that only things that we can measure with scientific methodologies are accepted as being reality and everything that shows up just in its phenomenological form is not real. All these kinds of things that Modernity and the Modern did for us is very flawed, but, at the same time, to acknowledge again the dignity of this Modern impulse and find this in new forms of holding bigger complexities, where this can be brought together, seems to be one [thing] that these different forms of Integral and Metamodern try to achieve in similar or different ways.

Rufus Pollock 1:45:14

So that integrating of the Modern, like respecting reason – so, neither throwing out the baby with the bathwater, sort of keeping the baby of Modernity, the value of reason, the value of meritocracy, the value of expertise, even, you know, material developments. While also integrating the great critique of that. […] It's odd because Post-Modernism doesn't really have quite the interiority, the respect for… But maybe  I'm being unfair to Post-Modernism. The point is that we're integrating certainly the spiritual line back into things, integrating a phenomenological and the inner world into things. That it. So it's kind of funny, because you might say that it's the time for the birth of a new whole religion, or a spiritual thing that integrates that. And I know many people talk to that. I talked about it before. And, I know, many others in this space. And Ken – one of his most recent books is The Religion, I think, Of Tomorrow or The Religion of the Future. So I guess that impulse, that integration is a key aspect. Is there anything else you see as a key aspect of these different polyphonic voices? If we were to write out our theses?

Thomas Steininger 1:46:41

It's interesting because I think it's central. But I may be biased because it's so much where my focus on it is. And in Integral, it's only partially developed. But I think, to develop a perspective of reality that is beyond the separate, individual self-sense seems to be part of the equation here. But I'm a little hesitant to say that because on one hand this is so dear to my heart. And on the other hand, I see it in certain forms of Integral only half-heartedly pursued in that, but, still, my conviction is that this is a central part of the puzzle.

Rufus Pollock 1:47:41

And finally, I guess, what are the things we could learn, like with everything, what have the limitations been of the Integral… maybe movement or community or practices? […] They may even be recognised in the community. […] But what if we were like, 'What can we learn from the last thirty, forty years of Integral's efforts?' The successes and the things that haven't worked so well. Like other groups, you know, and other movements. I mean, I know Craig Walsh wrote this 2007, I think, address to the European Integral Congress or something like that. But it was like, Ken is very clear in the work, but, you know, it can be quite heady. He himself had a very strong practice. But Craig mentioned, I think, in his address, like, we really need to make sure we're doing the work, the inner work, the actual practice, rather than this just being ideas. That's one thing that I can see in any, you know, I see for myself, I can see in any group that it's often quite easy to be like, 'oh, yeah, we've got all these great ideas' – you know, it's true of any political movements – but then it's not the practice. Going back to your first point of this whole call, we're not practising what we're preaching and that's crucial. Is that one thing? Or what other things would you say that there are that we can really learn to do even better? That were being done well and can be done even better? Or that we're maybe missing, have not done…?

Thomas Steininger 1:49:10

No, I think you've pointed it out. And I really think one of the flaws and blind spots, and maybe even the shadow sides, of Integral is the temptation of the theory that explains everything. Because there is a temptation, and I saw this in many cases, particularly in young, intelligent men, to kind of be so drawn into this capacity to put everything into maps. So that basically, you only live in maps anymore. And I see this, sometimes, to my experience, [as] very tragic. Because I see people who have deep spiritual longing, but from my perspective, [they're] completely lost in maps. When I see them, my experience is, they don't see anything but maps, even when they see you, all they can do is mapping you. I'm exaggerating a little bit, but because of the powerful capacity of these maps, they've lost touch with everything else. And this is something that happened because of the capacities of Integral theory. And because there can be a trap, you can be trapped in. And I seek… Again, it's just my perspective. But I really experience quite some tragic lives in this, where I see very sad people with high intelligent and high spirit longing, but somehow lost in this. And that is something, I think, which is connected to a blind spot, or to a shadow side of how Integral showed up until now. And again, I don't think there's anything on earth that does not show up with bias or positionality.

Rufus Pollock 1:51:22

Wow. Well, I mean, I think also that humility is a really central point as well. But not coupled with then doing nothing. Like, there's this dance, and you say we hold our view, but we hold it with a listening for others. I wanted to say at this point, anything last you'd like to say during this interview, Thomas, that you'd like to share at the very end, or anything that we haven't covered that you'd like to mention.

Thomas Steininger 1:51:52

No, just I appreciate very much the conversation that we had, and to all this very theoretical, but also very personal dimension of this. And this shared search, how can we find the step forward in our individual practice and but also in our, if I may call it activism, to find more integrative forms of culture, and living together on this planet, with this planet? And kind of having this conversation is for me part of the practice.

Rufus Pollock 1:52:28

Well, thank you so much. Thank you, everyone, for listening. And please, if you want to find out more about Thomas's work, you can check out Evolve and Evolve World. And, yeah, just a great thank you to you. And also I just want to acknowledge your partner, Elizabeth, who I knew unfortunately couldn't make it today, but was here in presence with us on this. Just acknowledging all of her contribution. And the many others. You've already acknowledged some of your kind of intellectual and spiritual ancestors on this call. So thank you to them as well. Until next time!

Thomas Steininger 1:53:03

Thank you so much, Rufus.