Awakening Integral Consciousness ─ A Developmental Perspective

This is the second of four volumes in the CARE-ing for Integral Development series, focused on CARE: Community activation, Awakening consciousness, innovation driven institutionalized Research and transformative Education. In this book, the author focuses on ways and means of developing, in an explicitly integral way, a particular organization or society, one in relation to another, locally-globally, building on prior, local community activation. He draws on two decades of experience and illustrates how such an awakening of integral consciousness can run alongside innovation driven institutionalized research and transformative education, as well as community activation, at undergraduate and post-graduate levels. In the process he addresses such topics as how to embed development in a particular society locally, how in relation to the rest of the world globally, as well as how to consciously evolve as an individual, organization or society, as such, from one particular developmental perspective – southern (relational), eastern (renewal) or north/western (reasoned/realization) – or another.

The overall integral approach, or rhythm that the author draws upon, and has used in the field for the past decade, is that of recognizing and releasing what he terms GENE-ius, through local Grounding, local-global Emergence, newly global Navigation and ultimately global-local Effect, encompassing nature, culture, technology and enterprise. Moreover, he offers a body of integral theory that has been developed in twelve separate volumes, related to different aspects of integral development.

This book on awakening integral and developmental consciousness – from an African, Asian or Euro/American perspective – is unique. Moreover, and specifically as such, the author offers an alternately relational ("southern"), renewal ("eastern") and reasoned ("north-western") perspective on such development.

Ronnie Lessem is co-founder of Trans4m (Geneva) together with Alexander Schieffer, and has been an international management consultant in Europe, America, India and Africa for the last three decades.

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