The Story of Integration (Part 1)

12 min readMar 16, 2020

“What holds the world together at its core?” Goethe’s Faust, Protagonist

Do you know what matters to you and what matters to others?

Have you ever experienced the conundrum of knowing what matters to you and then letting go of that to be able to hold what matters to others?

This is what some call a paradoxical relationship between the knowledge of parts and the wisdom of wholes. The essence of paradox is tensions — two diverse stories that are claiming to be true and, at the same time, contradicting each other [1].

Whether we are talking about personal change or needed changes in organisations or our society, we know that every story matters (and some more than others). By telling our stories, we come to understand what is true for ourselves and others. Our individual and collective stories change as we do; they reflect who we were, who we are, and who we would like to become [2].

But what is bringing all these diverse stories together?

Part of a previous series: What’s the story with complexity and uncertainty, this article invites us to consider a new emerging story around integration both from a theoretical AND experiential lens. At the nexus of stories we create to make sense, question, and understand our unfolding human experience, we explore three attributes of integration in complex environments:

Why integration matters

“At this time of extreme uncertainty and transition, how can we hone our capacity to work well together, to seek and hold diverse perspectives, and to ignite breakthrough thinking and action to make the leap from where we currently are to where we want to be?” Candice Smith, founder of The Thinking Field

Right now, many complex challenges are unfolding at both local and global scales — evidenced by disturbing patterns in how we are treating each other, other species and the planet. These challenges can be mind-boggling and, at times, emotionally overwhelming. Never have there been so many disciplines and perspectives to consider in addressing the change happening in our worlds.

What makes these challenges complex is that they are operating in a complex ecosystem. Three properties determine the complexity of an environment:

Multiplicity, refers to the number of potentially interacting elements.
Interdependence, relates to how connected those elements are.
Diversity, has to do with the degree/quality of many different elements, forms, kinds, or individuals.

The greater the multiplicity, interdependence, and diversity, the greater the complexity [3].

From an inner world perspective, you may be feeling disconnection between what matters to you right now and what matters to your family, friends, organisations and communities or perhaps you’re feeling overwhelmed with the complexity of prioritising work and home life.

While the outer world may be overwhelming you with disparate perspectives on our systems: imminent social-economic collapse; extreme climate conditions; depletion of scarce resources at alarming rates; massive migration of refugees; rising mental health concerns; future of work; impact of technology; concentration of wealth — and now the recent outbreak of Coronavirus (including the #ToiletPaperApocalypse).

Even as you read this, you may have other perspectives too! Everybody comes in with a different version of the truth…different perspectives on where we are today.

But what has emerged is a clear disintegration.

We need a way to help us link, leverage, correlate, and align all these diverse ways we make sense of responding to change — otherwise we can be left feeling disorientated, disconnected, overwhelmed and anxious [4].

Indeed, studies have shown that we can become even more fixated and extreme on a single point of view to the utter exclusion of competing points of view — in the face of helplessness, anxiety, and fear [5].

What do we mean when we say integration?

A simple definition of ‘integration’ is a way to bring things together (different worldviews, value systems, and disciplinary perspectives) to discover a ground that transcends and includes all truths — so that in time, lead us to wise action and hopefully less anxiety.

But integration is anything but simple.

To be able to let go of our truth (our parts) in order to include more truths (other parts) to keep things moving towards a whole truth (a.k.a. elephant) is a capacity requiring cultivation [6].

Is building the capacity for integration something that matters to you right now?

By cultivating the capacity to inhabit other perspectives and hold multiplicity, we will be able to respond more adequately than current, less comprehensive approaches to the complex challenges we currently face [4]. But being able to take in and hold the complex, multilayered perspectives, to see the truth in each comment, however partial or incomplete they may be, and viewing these perspectives as enriching one another — is no walk in the park!

As Gerard Bruitzman, my ‘Integral’ mentor consoles me:

“It’s hard to talk about integration, when one is not yet integrated, and one’s society is not yet integrated, and one’s world is not yet integrated. But the more we try to understand integration the more we open opportunities to become more integrated.”

When faced with exponential change on all different fronts, we can appreciate how an integration-informed approach to sense making can influence how we make choices about what is relevant and how we engage with these choices to implement efforts toward learning, development and change.

Otherwise, we may remain stuck in a dated, defensive mindset focused on ‘us versus them’, rather than an expansive approach to the vast opportunities that the necessary social transformation could generate.

Integrative maps for complexity

“A way of thinking and being that tries to integrate indigenous, traditional, modern and postmodern ways of knowing” Jonathon Rowson (former Director of the RSA Social Brain Centre) [7]

What about a map that helps us figure out how to bring all the perspectives and worldviews together? A map that charts our stories: helping us interpret our complex world, providing meaning and context; and revealing patterns and relationships.

An ‘Integral’ map has helped me over the last ten years to become more aware of my projecting and unfolding worldviews (read about that story here). Maps like these are always keeping me on my toes, for just as I think I figured something out, it eludes me again — much like change!

The word ‘Integral’ used in Integral Theory, is an attempt to understand a diversity of theories within one single framework. It seeks to integrate much of human wisdom into a new, emergent worldview that can accommodate the gifts of various ways of seeing the world that have come before [8].

To be able to see, understand, and integrate multiple perspectives and worldviews, like, indigenous, traditional, modern, and post-modern ways of knowing and experiencing our realities: we are effectively honouring all the different ways of truthfully seeing and knowing the personal self (me), interpersonal relationships (us), and the eco-social worlds (all of us) [7].

Surely, that is something worthy of serious aspiration!

What makes me interested in Integral Theory is that it is a meta-theory. One definition of Meta theories is that they ideally try to provide an ‘integrated view:’ a trans-disciplinary integration of theories from a number of disciplines such as science, psychology, philosophy, and sociology. Due to its integrative nature, it aims to provide an comprehensive, inclusive, non-marginalising and embracing map to navigate our changing realities [9].

We could say it provides a way of organising information in a way that assists us in our meaning making.

Following is an example of an Integral Developmental Quadrant Map from IntegralMENTORS [10]. You can find many different representations of this map here. These zones are interdependent of each other and can also be referred to as ‘fields of development / perspectives’ that shape our worldviews:

All these perspectives offer complementary, rather than contradictory perspectives. It is possible for all to be correct and all are necessary for a complete account of human existence — therefore each by itself offers only a partial view of reality.

This validation of multiple truths enables us to hold our relationship to others with more openness because we can see there are so many other ways a story can unfold.

If you can imagine this map expanding out as we include more multiplicity, interdependence and diversity — what spacious we have to traverse and hold more of our own stories and that of the living worlds.

How might this integrative map speak to you and your experiences? Can you identify with any of the quadrants as your go-to perspectives?

From personal experience, I find at work, I relate a lot more about technical content, particularly around systems and what we are doing with them — I appreciate these right-sided-quadrant perspectives because I can get into the nitty-gritty about a system process!

However, when I am with my best friend, we love to relate about relating. We prefer lingering on the left-sided-quadrant — meaning we focus on how we are connecting and in relationship with all things and what we think and feel about how these relationships are being expressed.

So just imagine the challenges of bringing together all the other-sided-quadrant perspectives into a conversation because of our preferred patterns of relating.

Complexity shaped by patterns

Our stories are recognisable patterns, and in those patterns we can also find meaning. We then use stories to make sense of our worlds and to share that understanding with others [2].

Basically a good integrative map mirrors what is already a natural process. Just as the brain detects patterns in the visual forms of nature — a face, a flower and in sound, so too it detects patterns in information. In a world of information complexity, patterns help us find relationships and connections to make sense of complexity in order to act [2].

What are some patterns that you reference to help you understand and make sense of things?

Just like the Integral Map — which maps patterns to develop and integrate perspectives and worldviews, other mapped patterns that I find meaningful are the Relational Organisational Gestalt SOS and The Thinking Environment’s Ten Components. In the agile ways of working community, Shu Ha Ri is also often referenced to help understand ways of learning.

The following is a rich pattern that shows the parallels between the representations seen in many Indigenous Aboriginal artworks and the microscopic structures hidden in the natural world. These mapped patterns reveal unexpected and intriguing similarities that can deepen our respect for our country and its stories [11].

Tyson Yunkaporta, Senior Lecturer, Indigenous Knowledges and author of Sand Talk, writes of the same: how might we begin to live within the pattern of creation again? How can these lines and symbols and shapes help us make sense of the world? How can we we learn and how can we remember [11]?

Essentially, these patterns ‘awaken’ us to the multi-generational knowledge sharing that is shaped by our understanding of the relationships that exists between ourselves and the living world.

Elegantly ordered complexity

“Bringing things together doesn’t give us emergent properties. Bringing them together in particularly elegant ordered ways does” Dan Schmachtenberger at Emergence [12].

Very few stories break us out of our routines and ‘awaken’ us to the living relationships within and between living organisms, including humans and the natural environment.

We need healthy story patterns that support us to connect and integrate with what’s around us. Not every pattern of relationship can do this, some patterns are entropic — they create the opposite direction destroying things that were already there.

But perhaps this story of integration is an enchanting one because it’s about integrating different complex patterns together in an elegant way — by symbiotically doing what’s best for the parts and what’s best for the whole [12].

The following is an example map of the collective organisational patterns from Adaptive Cultures framework [13]. This integrative view helps us see that each patterned worldview forms part of the whole (remember the elephant).

Each complex part has its own nuanced way in which it seeks to be in service of that worldview — to honour all the different ways of truthfully seeing and knowing the personal self (me), interpersonal relationships (us), and the eco-social perspectives (all of us).

This is not just complexity, it’s ordered complexity and…it’s elegantly ordered complexity [12].

With every evolving worldview, the previous worldviews are held and integrated with each expansion. It doesn’t really matter so much which part of the map you are at, for each worldview is equally important because it forms part of the whole. What matters is navigating the transitions within and between the parts in context of your aspirations. These shifts may sometimes feel like you are expanding and other times you are contracting — but nevertheless always growing and maturing.

In this way, we could say this map helps to liberate our limits! We can see so many possibilities for our future. We are also free from our past and present ‘stuckness,’ as they represent a story that we now can see is no longer serving us in this emerging future.

‘This is a sense making map, in which it makes sense of the reality we have already experienced’ Adaptive Cultures [13].

An elegantly designed map makes it easier for people to receive, accept and hold change. Because it elegantly integrates and aligns our inner world with our outer world: by speaking to our ‘intuitive’ knowing. That is, it helps us to resolve tensions and free energy to flow not only within us but through the systems we are part of — because we are cohering to the universal truth of our experiences.

I’m curious if this map integrates with your personal and or collective experiences?

Ultimately, the story of integration is about understanding how elegant sense-making maps can make our story patterns more visible, allowing us to bring our knowledge parts together. From this center of creative integration, we have more adaptive freedom to access meaning and wisdom to participate fully in all the different worldviews and be in service of so many more things that matter to us.

That, to me, is a gift from the heart of human wisdom — holding all our worlds together at its core for many many future generations to come.

Despite all this talk about maps, one certainly doesn’t want to confuse the map with the territory. One can be an expert map-reader but in real life one needs appropriate challenges and supports from self, others and society to navigate the journey. Part two will explore more of this !