The purpose of life is…to know oneself. We cannot do so unless we learn to identify ourselves with all that lives."

Mohandas K. Gandhi

At the heart of a new global civilization is the movement toward wholeness and forms that support global emergence. ‘Integral leadership’ is an important component powering this move. Integral leadership reflects a sphere of leadership where interior development and exterior structures are aligned to support and sustain organisms—people, businesses, the environment, and one another. Yet growing evidence suggests that despite gains being made at the margins, the level of development and realization of consciousness among leaders at large is not adequate to support the radical shifts required to achieve the kind of ‘living leadership’ where potential radiates from the core to the edges and back, where global wholeness takes form, and where stillness holds its echo. With increasing demands for exterior shifts in frameworks, structures, and large-scale systems, it is becoming increasingly clear that interiority of leadership lies at the center of coming world change. Expansion of consciousness—not activity—is at the center. Activity flows from mindsets and worldviews outward to fuel change.

This article points to practical realities of the situation we face, discusses the interplay of exterior forms and interior capacities, and begins to put a framework around a path to inner realization, showing this realization as a primary characteristic of meaningful, sustained leadership.

Highlighted in the following sections are a review of the practical case for interior development; a look at interiority expressed as three journeys of leadership; a description of development as personal unity—body, heart, and mind; an exploration of living leadership; and finally, thoughts on the new world coming—for which there are no precedents.

The Practical Case for Interior Development

As a microcosm of the global reality we face, my colleagues and I recently completed research into corporate sustainability among leading global companies. We mapped companies using a developmental framework for sustainability that includes five stages, advancing from rudimentary to complex activity. Results show that all companies are operating in low-to-mid-level stages of activity, in the process of up-shifting to higher stages of sustainability, with none having reached the 4th ‘integrate’ stage (embedding sustainability in the business). In addition, most do not have their sights set at all on the highest 5th ‘redesign’ stage, which focuses on large-scale systems shifts and the re-casting of market frameworks critical for addressing the global sustainability shortfall. Progress is being made—yet there remains a significant gap. Further, while each company directly points to the centrality of leadership, few appear to display worldviews that recognize the forms needed to support the radical shifts that are called for.

In concert with this research, we examined recent studies on leadership (including W. Torbert, S. Cook-Greuter, B. Joiner & S. Josephs, R. Anderson) and profiles of leader stages across a leadership population that reflect development of consciousness. Research samples show that few leaders (5%) have realized levels of development associated with success in organizational level transformations, and fewer (less than 1%) have realized levels associated with societal level transformations.

Growing evidence suggests that broad cross-walks are being established between stages of leadership development and stages of corporate sustainability. It is no wonder that we are not yet reaching the highest ambitions of corporate sustainability; we do not have enough leaders with later-stage capacities (more expanded consciousness) to see, formulate, and harmonize the integrated sets of actions needed for large-scale shifts forward. Levels of interior development have not advanced enough to match the needs of society at large. The good news is that we are beginning to understand the interplay of exteriors and interiors, and to recognize that development of interiors is a critical factor regarding large-scale and whole-systems change.

Let’s add a bit more of a macro perspective: that of futurists and economists looking toward the horizon of change and shocks potentially coming our way. J. Petersen of the Arlington Institute points toward a perfect storm rising—a collision of climate change impact, energy (peak oil) volatility, and financial instability (US bank and mortgage/reserves perturbations) that will lead to large-scale system shocks and potential breakdowns. Economists J. Quilligan and B. Lietaer also point to similar magnitudes of shock resulting from a variety of large global financial/monetary disturbances. These disruptions, shocks, and ensuing calls for change will require interior resilience and capacities at the most advanced levels in order to respond appropriately. Without later stage development of interiors, we will likely live and contend with the same conventional workarounds that stem from conventional leadership worldviews.

Interiors and Vertical Development

Practically speaking, horizontal development alone—additional knowledge, skills, and abilities added to current mindsets and models—is not enough to support the future and global emergence. The magnitude of change at all levels calls for radical shifts in vertical development—shifts involving how we learn to see through a new lens, how we change our interpretation of what is experienced, how we transform the fundamental nature of our view of reality. Development in this regard focuses on transformations of consciousness. And when considering these transformations, we are referring to our expanded realization of wholeness—the recognition of the underlying unity of reality.

Wholeness, then, is a reference point for integral leadership and for the interior work of leadership. The primary barrier to wholeness is identification with the ego. Our separate-ness, bounded-ness, and reified, rigidified patterns comprise the ego. Until leaders become free from these limitations, obscurations, and projections of the ego—which are superimposed directly on the work of leadership in understanding and action—they are constrained in capacity and potential to effectively envision and orchestrate movements and action on the global stage. They are rendered unable to respond artfully to the emerging context of greater challenge.

As you will see in the sections that follow, it is only amid wholeness —in contact with essence, pure consciousness experienced as presence—that we find the fundamental common ground of integral leadership and interior development.

So how do we approach interior development? How do we practically go about dealing with the ego and integrating it into wholeness? My personal experience over the years shows that there are definite contours to this type of development and that rigorous attention is needed. Development includes direct experiential focus on being where you are—and investigating what is really going on within you when you don’t know or are unclear. It sounds simple, but actually is not so easy. The temptations to resist, manipulate, and avoid being directly with your experience are great. And, in the words of Viktor Frankl, “what is to give light must endure burning.” But I have seen an overall pattern to the interior development process; one that has illuminated itself through practice and been informed through the guidance of the Diamond Approach body of wisdom (A. H. Almaas—interspersed below).

Three Journeys of Leadership

I have come to see the path of integral leadership as a journey of presence—a journey of self-realization—experienced as three sub-journeys: the journey to presence; the journey with presence; and the journey in presence. The three journeys can also be described as becoming aware… becoming real…and becoming the hand of life. The three journeys involve awareness of oneself as presence, which can be recognized as the central characteristic of interior development and self-realization.

The first journey is about becoming aware and finding presence—journeying to presence. This journey is supported through reflective practices (including meditation), learning to be present (in the now), and inquiring into and investigating the nature of one’s personal experience. On this journey we spend considerable time recognizing the state of the personality and the ordinary self, including the thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations involved. During the first journey, the ego personality is firmly in place, its structures and patterns strong, and recognition as well as integration of the underlying psychodynamics are a major focus of attention. Along the way we begin to see that the soul (as an organ of consciousness) intelligently brings forward exactly what is needed in every moment with the exact proportion of support required to continually allow us to turn toward the truth of reality. For me, this journey has been personally astonishing. I did not expect such clarity about the extent to which the ego so strongly shapes the view of me and my world, and how responses to life can be such patterned, repetitive reactions. The fundamental insight of leadership in this journey is recognition of presence.

The second journey is about becoming real and living with presence. This journey brings us into steady contact and moment-to-moment recognition of essential presence. We feel the field and its qualities and dimensions, yet with the ego personality and structures still in play. In living with presence, we come to know, directly and immediately, what our true nature is, beyond reifications of the mind, personal history, and conditioned patterns. The second journey is also about maturation and includes two complementary elements. The first is individuation—centered around development of personal essence—which is our sense of individuality and personhood that does not depend on fixed impressions of the ego, but rather on spontaneously arising forms of essential presence. The second element regards identity—centered on transcending the narcissism of ego and coming to recognize essence not only as one’s true nature, but as one’s very identity. My direct experience with the second journey has centered around settling with presence— beyond striving or trying to be anything—coming face-to-face with ignorance, desire, and aggression, and exploring how they are projected onto society. The fundamental insight of this journey is recognition of oneself as the exquisiteness of timeless presence.

The third journey is about becoming the hand of life and living in presence. This journey is about living and abiding in presence as presence. Here one experiences transcendence of ego and realization of non-duality, as described by Almaas: “One is all and everything; one is reality.” The third journey includes essential development and realization of a progression of boundless dimensions—including what Almaas refers to as the freedom vehicle where “each of us is an objective, precise instrument for the absolute; its eyes, its ears, its legs, its intellect, its heart and so forth; an instrument allowing the absolute to behold its own creation.” Here we find the most pure form of human being as integral leader, the true condition in which essential presence is so realized and stabilized that we become the full functioning hand of consciousness itself.

It is here that leadership becomes the ultimate form of realized expression—the unobscured, clear, luminous manifestation of life functioning fully and immediately with perfect attunement and expression of being. It is here that we reach the highest potential of leadership in service to global evolution. The fundamental insight of this journey is recognition of oneself as the functioning presence of absolute reality itself.

Personal Unity

I want to highlight just a bit more about the interior development process—about the personal-ness and integration of realizations. From a systemic perspective, we find increasing degrees of wholeness and unity through the opening, development, and harmonizing of three centers: the belly, the heart, and the head. Each is critical to integral leadership; each offers a dimension important to the full realization of potential.

The belly center has to do with embodiment of life, with movement and activity, with animated functionality. The heart center has to do with feeling and communication, with sensitivity, with attuned and empathic resonance to each situation. The head center has to do with knowledge, with clarity and discernment, with direct perception and knowing.

Each of the three journeys described here includes the opening of these centers—engaging the full flow of energy and dynamism of life through them, and developing them to rich and vibrant capacity. I have found work with these centers to be delicate, powerful, and profound. And while I have only on occasion gained a taste of it, the harmonizing effect that can be felt among all three together is an aspect of integral leadership that serves as a vision for what is truly possible. For as G. Gurdjieff expressed it, there is a fourth way—a full harmonizing of the three that allows emergence of a fourth. Almaas describes this fourth way as a center of life that arises above and in concert with the others—which in full harmony brings the integral leader to the ultimate expression of light and luminosity—pure potential engaged in service to the evolutionary thrust of life: “a balanced totality, one unified organism expressed in functionality and consciousness.”

Living Leadership

While I have used the language ‘integral leadership’ throughout in relation to wholeness, self-realization, and integrative functioning in the world, a more fitting term may be living leadership. Living leadership more fully describes the central dimensions involved—that the essence of leadership is an alive, dynamic, ultimately responsive presence—living as the continuously evolving and morphing realization of life living itself. That leadership is living in the world—being and doing on the field of life, on the stage of local and global commons.

Living leadership acknowledges that realization of our true nature (our authenticity) alone is not enough. Living leadership calls forth resonance with others through living in the world—amid the joys and exaltations, the traumas and travails of life—to incorporate action and experience into the very ground of realization itself.

Call from Stillness

As we turn into the 21st century, life on earth continues its movement toward greater global integration, more complexity of form, and new evolutionary patterns of wholeness. In service to this movement, leadership is called upon to design and activate responses to a world and life conditions that have no precedent. Amid this need and call, we find a remarkable paradox, for the very outer envelope of exterior shifts needed in the scale and scope required can be envisioned and actualized best only by leaders with later-stage interior development and transformations of consciousness. And only through expansion of individual interiority can environments be well crafted to allow for the organic evolution of differing cultures.

The world is calling forth living leadership—calling forth the true nature of personal expressions of unity and harmony—calling forth our unique and distinctive dances on the stage of life. The world is calling for the simple and the grand, and a realm that few have yet to find but many are asked to manifest.

Each of us has opportunity to bring forward living leadership in our unique and differing contexts. Each of us has opportunity to answer the call—to allow our hearts to open wide, our bellies to flow like a fountain, our minds to ignite into brilliance. Each of us has an opportunity to find the place where stillness holds its echo, to give a reply quietly and inwardly that can incite magnitudes of external change—to simply say, ‘Yes.’

John D. Schmidt is the founder and CEO of Avastone Consulting, an international consultancy committed to the vitality and sustainability of client organizations and the larger global community. He serves as advisor to global corporations and non-governmental enterprises, and is a thinker, designer, and practitioner in integral approaches to complex challenges and human development. John is the innovative force behind Avastone’s powerful set of learning experiences that bring to life dimensions and dynamics of leadership. He is dedicated to personal contemplative practice, and spends 25 days per year in retreat. jds@avastoneconsulting.com and www.avastoneconsulting.com