Over the course of a 30-year writing career, which has produced 23 books to date, American philosopher Ken Wilber has created a content free meta-framework for integrating the myriad insights from the arts, humanities, social, and natural sciences.

This approach is often referred to as Integral Theory or the AQAL ("All Quadrant, All Level") model (as represented on the right). The four quadrants provide a way of integrating experience, behavior, systems, and culture, while the levels highlight that there are degrees of depth and complexity in those four irreducible dimensions of reality.

As a result of its applicability within, across, and between disciplinary boundaries, Integral Theory has been widely embraced by individuals in many different fields including: art, business,  consciousness studies, criminology, ecology and sustainability, finance, healthcare and medicine, politics, psychology and psychotherapy, feminism and gender studies.

 

My Integral Approach

I have been a long time student and scholar-practitioner of the Integral approach. I first encountered Wilber's writings while traveling in Kenya - a friend was reading Grace and Grit. A few years later while living and working in Chad Africa with the Peace Corps I received Wilber's most famous book A Brief History of Everything. I read it in a few days and recognized upon completion that I would spend the rest of my life applying this model to whatever I did. Sure enough a decade later the Integral approach informs everything I do from raising my daughter, to designing on-line graduate level courses, from working with clients to designing landscape projects on our property.

I have found the Integral approach to be the most robust and effective framework for creating Good, True, and Beautiful designs be they personal or professional, academic or applied, or for individuals, communities, or companies. Thus, I created Rhizome Designs, which makes integral connections through functional, transformative, and aesthetic plans.