No half-hearted holding back here

Reflections on Integral Research from the JFKU Integral Field Course to Peru 

Not Here 

There's courage involved if you want
to become truth.  There is a broken- 
open place in a lover.  Where are
those qualities of bravery and sharp 
compassion in this group?  What's the
use of old and frozen thought?  I want 
a howling hurt.  This is not a treasury
where gold is stored; this is for copper. 
We alchemists look for talent that
can heat up and change.  Lukewarm 
won't do. Halfhearted holding back,
well-enough getting by?  Not here. 
(From Soul of Rumi, by Coleman Barks) 

Returning from Peru after 12 days with 15 students on the integral field course to Peru, I realize what an intense course it actually was.  We covered an immense geographic distance: traveling from Lima on the coast, to Cusco in the high Andes mountains, through the Sacred Valley of the Inkas, visiting two Andean communities (Llicllec and Challabamba), climbing Machu Picchu, descending to the Amazon rainforest, spending time in the cloud forest ecosystem, and then back again... But that geographic distance may not have been the most difficult part of the trip. Perhaps instead it was the theoretical and moral terrain that was also crossed during our time in the South. Via the students’ integral research projects, we traversed extensive theoretical ground, expanding into new domains of engagement and integrating multiple perspectives on the course subject matter. Often to do this degree of integration required the students to stretch into new moral ground, the trip itself cultivating the conditions for a more compassionate way to relate with the world. Indeed, “no half-hearted holding back” here. 

The Integral Research assignment on the course rested on the students’ ability to employ their own native perspectives, bringing them to bear in first-person, second-person, and third-person research methods. Students were asked to discern a topic of their choice to which they directed their integral inquiry for the duration of the field course and for which they designed an “integral action plan.” Within the first two days, students identified a topic or issue of interest, to which they focused their exploration, energy, and attention throughout the remaining days of the course.  The process of the individual project used the AQAL framework to:

• Assess the current situation (using at least quadrants and levels, and in some cases lines, states, and types);

• Identify what knowledge is currently missing and needed;

• Work towards gathering as much of that knowledge as possible through self-inquiry, key-informant interviews, and participant-observation (1^st-, 2^nd-, and 3^rd-person methods);

• Considering the above to propose an integral approach to this issue; and

• Present this as an “integral action plan” to the group on the final day of the course.

Albeit more on the informal side of the research spectrum, these integral research projects were conducted as fieldwork and were nevertheless able to elucidate and enact their topic of study more fully. Like the story of the blind men and the elephant, each unique perspective and its associated methodology brings to light and enacts a different aspect of the research subject. The guiding principle behind integral research, or any type of mixed methods research, is that by including more perspectives and data-gathering mechanisms, more fully can the researcher know about the topic. Samples of the topics studied by students on the course are listed in the box to the right. 

Here, I describe briefly how the students engaged 1^st-, 2^nd-, and 3^rd-person methods through using self-inquiry, key-informant interviews, and participant-observation.

The first-person method of self-inquiry sought to bring a focus to one’s own self-as-researcher into the research.  Students primarily carried out a phenomenological inquiry, mining into their own experience for data relevant to their topic of study. Students also used self-inquiry to reflect critically on their own self-as-researcher; as a way to assess one’s own self, one’s own viewfinder, and manner of interpretation. For example, assessing your Enneagram typology can reveal why you tend to see your topic a certain way and why you chose to interpret it as you do, highlighting certain characteristics and lessening a focus on others. Similarly, assessing your stage of development can shed light on why you see certain features and completely miss others (and in fact, won’t even fully know what you have missed!). Perhaps most essentially on a field course to another country, is the assessment of one’s own cultural worldview as you peer through that lens seeking to relate with and study another culture with vastly different ways to being, knowing and doing. Including this in one’s research process can be extremely useful and important.  

The second-person method consisted of dialogical inquiry, usually in the form of key informant interviews in one-on-one or group discussion settings. These became conduits for sharing between the JFKU students and the Peruvians we interacted with on this trip. Beliefs, ideas, and cultures were shared amongst us, as students engaged this second-person perspective with depth and intimacy with all those whom they met. Notably, having worked with practitioners at the NGO Amazon Conservation Association (ACCA) for 3 years, I was dearly touched seeing this connection arise between my Peruvian colleagues and the JFKU students. Upon return, some of the students have been so inspired by ACCA that they are looking to engage in other humanitarian work elsewhere; and, in a situation of overwork and under-appreciation, certain practitioners in ACCA have confided to me that they unprecedentedly felt seen and appreciated by the JFKU students. The exchange seemed profound on both sides of the relationship, not to mention fulfilling as a research methodology. 

In fact, some of the JFKU students got so into this particular methodology that they began to sample individuals in the population for data. One student in particular sought to better understand the state of education in Peru, particularly in this mountainous enclave of Cusco and its rural surroundings. She found children to interview as they walked to or from school; parents to interview who she met in the main plaza in Cusco; even teachers and the directors of a high school! The results of her inquiry were profound and revealing. She intends to return to teach at a community school in the Amazon rainforest next summer. 

The third-person research method used was participant-observation. Most of the course provided a context for this, as all the activities we did had experiential learning objectives associated with them. Simultaneously part of these experiences, the students were also active observers, bringing their research-minds to their topic of inquiry throughout. All senses attuned—smell, felt-sense, sound, taste, sight—and awareness brought to the subtleties and energetics of each moment, giving rise to important knowledge of their topics. The photos here will share some sense of this participant-observation in action. 

A key question in integral research is: How can these perspective-methodologies intertwine into a coherent whole? If the methods themselves are the science, this integrative coherence is the art of integral research. How each student did this integration depended on their own AQAL constellations. That is, the degree and quality of integration available to the student, co-arose with how much of reality he or she had unfolded in his or her own consciousness. In the final presentations, some students primarily assessed their topic using quadrants, bringing together reflections on their topic from the UL domain of experience, the UR domain of behaviours, the LR domain of systems, and the LL domain of culture. Other students integrated these quadrants with an analysis of levels of consciousness evidenced in the society’s social discourse. Still others brought the presentation more personally to consider their own level or stage of development—assessing their stage of development and their own interior dynamics as best they could and reflecting on what this meant to their research and action in the world. Each final integral action plan seemed to bring students to an exciting threshold—a threshold perhaps for the beginning of more engaged graduate level study and/or for engaged social action.  

Leaving Peru, I recalled the words of the Rumi poem, “There's courage involved if you want to become truth. There is a broken-open place in a lover...” That is the intention held by the course: that each student to step forward with a courage unlike that of their everyday self. Courage to show up, look directly at suffering, to love, and to allow one’s self to break open. Which is not easy to do. It can be tough to leave one’s home and comforts to spend time in impoverished communities and really get a sense of how life is lived elsewhere. Theoretical discourse is tidy whereas real life is a complete mess. And more, that mess will tear your heart out again and again. On these field courses, we are essentially asking students to show up and directly experience that mess, allowing their heart to break open. Clearly a tall order! I commend every participant who came to Peru, for having stepped forward with this courage spoken of by Rumi. It is thrilling to behold when the insight of integral theory meets action. Philosophy on alleviating suffering was never meant to stay on paper; it was always intended to move into compassionate engagement. Witnessing that occur in Peru was surely the greatest gift of the course.