Aqal

Introduction to Integral Theory and Practice
IOS Basic and the AQAL Map

© 2003 – 2004 Integral Naked. All rights reserved.
http://www.integralnaked.org

Overview
During the last 30 years, we have witnessed a historical first: all of the world’s
cultures are now available to us. In the past, if you were born, say, a Chinese,
you likely spent your entire life in one culture, often in oneprovince, sometimes in
one house, living and loving and dying on one small plot of land. But today, not
only are people geographically mobile, we can study, and have studied, virtually
every known culture on the planet. In the global village, all cultures are exposed
to each other.
Knowledge itself is now global. This means that, also for the first time, the
sum total of human knowledge isavailable to us—the knowledge, experience,
wisdom and reflection of all major human civilizations—premodern, modern, and
postmodern—are open to study by anyone.
What if we took literally everything that all the various cultures have to tell us
about human potential—about spiritual growth, psychological growth, social
growth—and put it all on the table? What if we attempted to find thecritically
essential keys to human growth, based on the sum total of human knowledge now
open to us? What if we attempted, based on extensive cross-cultural study, to
use all of the world’s great traditions to create a composite map, a comprehensive
map, an all-inclusive or integral map that included the best elements from all of
them?
Sound complicated, complex, daunting? In a sense, it is. But inanother
sense, the results turn out to be surprisingly simple and elegant. Over the last
several decades, there has indeed been an extensive search for a comprehensive
map of human potentials. This map uses all the known systems and models of
human growth—from the ancient shamans and sages to today’s breakthroughs in
cognitive science—and distills their major components into 5 simplefactors,

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factors that are the essential elements or keys to unlocking and facilitating human
evolution.
Welcome to the Integral Model.

An Integral or Comprehensive Map
What are these 5 elements? We call them quadrants, levels, lines, states,
and types. As you will see, all of these elements are, right now, available in your
ownawareness. These 5 elements are not merely theoretical concepts; they are
aspects of your own experience, contours of your own consciousness, as you can
easily verify for yourself as we proceed.
What is the point of using this Integral Map or Model? First, whether you are
working in business, medicine, psychotherapy, law, ecology, or simply everyday
living and learning, the Integral Map helps makesure that you are “touching all the
bases.” If you are trying to fly over the Rocky Mountains, the more accurate a
map you have, the less likely you will crash. An Integral Approach insures that
you are utilizing the full range of resources for any situation, with the greater
likelihood of success.
Second, if you learn to spot these 5 elements in your own awareness—and
because they are there inany event—then you can more easily appreciate them,
exercise them, use them... and thereby vastly accelerate your own growth and
development to higher, wider, deeper ways of being. A simple familiarity with the
5 elements in the Integral Model will help you orient yourself more easily and fully
in this exciting journey of discovery and awakening.
In short, the Integral Approach helps you seeboth yourself and the world
around you in more comprehensive and effective ways. But one thing is important
to realize from the start. The Integral Map is just a map. It is not the territory. We
certainly don’t want to confuse the map with the territory, but neither do we want to

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be working with an inaccurate or faulty map. The...