Deep Democracy is a powerful tool for addressing shadow dimensions in groups and the larger society. In this interactive workshop, I will first give a short introduction to the principles of a new, integral paradigm of doing politics. The first principle is about including more perspectives, especially the inner quadrants.

Based on the work of pioneers of Deep Democracy such as Arnold Mindell and Myrna Lewis, we explore how Deep Democracy tools can help to address and integrate shadow and other difficult dimensions into political conversations. We will experience methods for surfacing tensions and thus, for surfing polarities in a playful way. At a time where our democracies are in need of deep transformation and further development, Deep Democracy is a powerful component for bringing more depth and integrity into the ways in which we run our communities and design our societies.

This section is a joint reflection and deepening space for the presentations by Dr. Elke Fein and Prof. Dr. Karen O’Brien, as well as the workshop by Mercedes Andany & team from Integral Politics Switzerland.

Our aim is to offer a space for building connection among those of you who feel inspired to roll up their sleeves and put integral consciousness into action in your own local or national context or in any other way you feel called to.

We hope to inspire a growing integral political movement across Europe that brings to life the promise of the integral paradigm and make a new, holistic political culture available for ordinary citizens to experience in different places.

The world is craving for re-connection and healing in all areas. As we approach the climax of late modern consciousness, the collateral damages that this structure of consciousness has – and is bringing about every day – become ever more clearly visible. We see division all around us, in all areas, across the globe. It can be mapped by Otto Scharmer’s metaphor of “three divides”: disconnection from our environment, from our fellow human beings and, ultimately, from ourselves.

We won’t be able to bridge, let alone heal those divides unless we change the paradigm of our inner operating systems towards integral. Sounds straightforward? Well, then let’s get goin! It is high time that we take the promise and potential of INTEGRAL seriously, as well as the implications of a quantum political ontology, suggesting that “we matter more than we think” (Karen O’Brien).

We can no longer afford the divisive ways of first tier politics as usual, which appears to be trapped in its limited perspectives and habits of thinking and behaving. It is us, integralists, who have to step in, leave our comfort zones of great meta-theory, deep spirituality and self-development. It is time to test our inner capacity to stand in the fire and to be and lead the change that we, at least theoretically, know is possible. Now.

This presentation makes the point for a paradigm shift in politics based on an integral consciousness. Why? Politics as we know it is outdated. It lacks the tools, the operating system and the vision to address the challenges humanity is facing at the necessary speed and with the right priorities today. Its very “operating system”, consisting of core assumptions about the world, motivational drivers, typical behaviors and instruments for decision-making and problem-solving has emerged in the early days of European parliamentarism. It is no longer fit for purpose today.

Global mega-challenges call for cross-cutting cooperation and collective intelligence. In view of reinventing politics towards an integral operating system, we can draw on numerous inspirations, from Sri Aurobindo to Ken Wilber until Quantum Social Science. Their insights are a powerful invitation to rediscover our own agency and to actively engage in putting integral politics into practice.

This presentation argues that in order to uplevel the collective capacity of social change agents for transforming a metacrisis into a metamorphosis, we need to practice field intelligence that enhances and generates more coherence within and across networks and systems. It presents questions and insights from an ongoing European action research project which explores the nature of integral coherence as a means to facilitate transformative change, assisted by the SenseMaker technology. Besides working towards a deeper understanding of the structure and impacts of coherent fields, it also explores how we can maintain and reproduce them in different contexts.

Participants are invited to take an integrally informed look at the IEC as an example of a dynamic field aiming to build a minimum degree of coherence through specific practices. A SenseMaker capture helps to map existing field qualities (including unaddressed shadows) based on micro-narratives from involved actors.