Welcome to the New iEvolve Website with Dr. Marc Gafni
Welcome to the new iEvolve website. Take your coat off, wipe your feet at the door, and get ready to explore. On Tuesday, September 21st we launched the new iEvolve website with Dr. Marc Gafni, Sally Kempton, Diane Musho Hamiton, and Sofia Diaz. We are very excited to share with you the new look and feel of iEvolve – clean, fresh, and super easy to navigate.
Let us show you around the new site, share with you our new and improved community website features, and look forward to some new iEvolve website features planned to launch in January 2011. Exciting times!
What’s New at iEvolve
1. Free iEvolve Membership
Want to receive a full-access pass to all of our iEvolve content? Now it’s even easier to start your iEvolve membership. Just create your free member account here and enjoy all of our iEvolve audios, videos, blogs, community, and more! Want to go even deeper? Don’t forget to sign-up for our Practitioner Newsletter to receive our latest news, updates, and practice events, all conveniently delivered to your inbox.
2. iEvolve Weekly Podcast
We are officially announcing our new weekly iEvolve podcast. If you aren’t subscribed yet, you’ll see several subscription options on the right-hand side of the home page, at the bottom. Subscribing to the podcast ensures that you’ll receive the most recent iEvolve podcast automatically through your preferred service. We suggest the iTunes program as the best way to receive our weekly iEvolve podcast. You can also find our iEvolve podcast in the iTunes Store.
3. iEvolve Guest Bloggers
Another great community feature is that we now have the capacity to accept and publish guest blogs from our iEvolve Community Members. As a guest blogger, your post will be featured in our iEvolve blog. We plan on publishing several new articles each week. Want to contribute to iEvolve? Do you have a unique perspective on a relevant issue? Submit your posts here to contribute to the Integral Evolutionary community.
4. Powerful Comment System
Another feature that we’ve included on the site is a new powerful commenting system. This system is powered by a service called Disqus Comments. Disqus (dis·cuss – dÄ-skÅs’) is all about changing the way people think about discussion on the web and we are very excited to bring this new feature to the iEvolve community. These new features include comment logins through your Twitter, Facebook, OpenID, and Yahoo accounts, threaded commenting, the ability for users to track comment threads via e-mail, and a powerful moderation system so that we can keep the conversation on track and evolving.
Our hope is that this feature creates the ability to have deep, intelligent, insightful and multi-perspectival dialogues around the content presented on iEvolve. We will be doing our best to moderate this new space, so that an environment of mutual respect can be upheld. iEvolve is a troll-free environment. Help us keep our streets safe. Volunteer as an iEvolve Community Moderator today!
5. Related Posts
Another feature that we’re psyched to share with our community, appears on the bottom of each post–for our blogs, podcast, audios, and videos–and that is the “Related Posts” feature. Just as the name suggests, this feature analyzes various aspects of a content piece and generates a list of posts that have similar content for you to explore. If you find that you really enjoy a particular piece of content, then check out the Related Posts list and explore our content suggestions on iEvolve.
Future Features
Looking forward, we’ll be implementing new ways to make the iEvolve website meet the ever growing demand of our online iEvolve Community. In January 2011 we will launch our online iEvolve store, full of in-depth media programs to help support people’s individual spiritual practices. Stay tuned for that!
We also want to find out from those of you who are using the site, what features you’d most be interested in seeing. What would help make iEvolve a leading resource of 21st century spiritual practice in the digital world? If you have feedback, or want to give iEvolve a Tip of the Hat, visit our Contact Page.
I hope you enjoy our new iEvolve website. And I want to thank all of you for your dedication, heart, and practice with iEvolve since we first launched in the Fall of 2008. This is truly a privilege.
Warmly,
iEvolve: Global Practice Community
For more on iEvolve: Global Practice Community, our Mission, and our Leadership team continue reading below…
Evolving a World Spirituality is an urgent need for the 21st century.
iEvolve is a global network committed to fostering the practice of a World Spirituality rooted in integral and evolutionary principles. At iEvolve we are working toward an articulation of an emerging world spirituality which includes and honors the insights of the great traditions, but which transcends their limiting characteristics.
Enacting an integrally informed practice and service community dedicated to the evolutionary growth of the individual, the community, and spirit itself, iEvolve is linked virtually and through events taking place around the world. iEvolve members participate in seminars, telecourses, study groups, and social activism projects.
All of our programs foster radical personal evolution and the opening of the heart. The iEvolve work is built on ten commitments to practice. The ten commitments are Personal Story, Awakened Heart, Big Mind, Unique Self, Shadow Work, Awakened Eros, Devotion, State and Stage Evolution, Skillful Means and Social Activism.
Each Form of Practice is the recognition of the radical obligation, which in turn creates the radical commitment to living a full and liberated life.
The Ten Commitments to Practice 
The Commitment to Personal Story:
The iEvolve journey begins with a recognition of the unique path of each person, to the specific experience, and innate dignity of every human life.
The Commitment to Awakened Heart:
Awakened heart is set of meditative practices which open the practitioner to the subtle dimensions of the heart, fostering the fullness of love and compassion.
The Commitment to Big Mind:
Big Mind, developed by Genpo Roshi, is a simple skillful means which points the person beyond ego consciousness and towards the realization of their true, expansive nature.
The Commitment to Unique Self:
Unique Self is a typology identification practice containing maps and technologies which allow a person to identify the nature of their Unique Self and in doing so identify and embrace the Unique Life Mission for which they were born on this planet in this time and this place.
The Commitment to Shadow Work:
Shadow Work is an intensive surfacing and cleansing practice, which shatters the lies of shadow and allows the person to once again tell the truth about who they really are. iEvolve shadow work directly causes a person to reconnect, evolve, purify or simply reclaim the dis-owned shadow dimension of their authentic and unique self.
The Commitment to Awakened Eros:
Awakened Eros is an embodiment practice in which the full power, aliveness and wisdom of the human body is accessed and integrated into the fullness of the person’s life.
The Commitment to State and Stage Evolution:
States and Stages are both an experiential and mapping practice. In state practice a person gains access to state experiences, which tells the person something important about their true nature and mission in the world. In stage practice a person studies the trajectory of human evolution in the life of the individual and in the lifespan of human history and culture along the major lines of development. In so doing, one is able to identify both their own location and to set concrete goals for the next stage of their evolution.
The Commitment to Social Service:
Social Service practice is the commitment of iEvolve as a Global Community and as individuals to commit significant time to the betterment of the lives of others.
The Commitment to Skillful Means:
Skillful means practice are a set of understandings, insights and technologies that foster effective communication, teamwork, and relationship building skills.
The Commitment to Devotion:
Devotional Work Practice serves the Divine within us and beyond us by recognizing, praising, honoring, connecting and disclosing that very divinity.
iEvolve Leadership
Dr. Marc Gafni holds his doctorate from Oxford University. He is a rabbi and an iconoclastic teacher ofKabbalah and World Spirituality. He is the director with Ken Wilber, Sally Kempton and Diane Hamilton of the Integral Life Spiritual Center and core founder and faculty member of iEvolve: Global Practice Community. He has written seven books, including the national bestseller Soul Prints, and The Mystery of Love, an exploration of the relationship between the sexual, the erotic, and the sacred. Gafni’s teaching is marked by a deep transmission of open heart, love and leading edge provocative wisdom. Gafni’s path of personal evolution, in both the agony and the ecstasy of what he calls “sacred autobiography,” woven together with profound reverence and reading of sacred texts have formed the context for his teaching. It is from this place of broken-hearted humility, radical joy and sacred audacity that he teaches. Gafni is considered by many to be a visionary voice in the founding of a new World Spirituality.
Sally Kempton, formerly known as Swami Durgananda, is recognized as a powerful meditation guide and as a spiritual teacher who integrates yogic philosophy with daily life. She is the author of The Heart ofMeditation, and writes the popular Wisdom column for Yoga Journal. A teacher in the tantric tradition of Kashmir Shaivism Sally conducts conducts workshops and retreats on applied philosophy and meditation. She is also a core founder and faculty of iEvolve: Global Practice Community.
Diane Musho Hamilton is a founder and core faculty of iEvolve: Global Practice Community. She is a gifted facilitator, mediator and spiritual teacher. Diane is also a co-director of Integral Life Spiritual Center and Integral Spiritual Experience. She is well known as an innovator in facilitating group dialogues, especially controversial conversations about culture, religion, race and gender relations. Diane is a fully ordained Zen priest and teacher. She has studied Buddhism since 1984, and was given dharma transmission by her Zen master, Genpo Roshi, in 2006. She works with the Big Mind process; a facilitation technique synthesized by Roshi to convey Eastern teachings to Western audiences.
Sofia Diaz is a hatha yoga master, a lineage holder in the Balasaraswati lineage of the South Indian temple arts and a recipient of numerous meditation empowerments in both Tibetan and Shakta Tantric traditions . She turns the body wisdom practices she is empowered in into accessible teachings and practices for the modern western mind. Being an inspired woman practitioner, the rigors of her practice have resulted in great clarity and expertise in the domain of Feminine Spiritual practice, which she has been generously teaching for 27 years. She is a core founder and faculty of iEvolve: Global Practice Community. She has published writings on yoga and sacred movement in both academic and popular journals and travels frequently, teaching women’s intensives throughout the world.
Sean Esbjörn-Hargens is an associate professor and founding Chair of the Integral Theory Program at John F. Kennedy University in Pleasant Hill, California. He is founding Director of the Integral Research Center, which supports graduate and post-graduate mixed methods research. In addition, he is the founding Executive Editor of the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice. Recently, he co-founded and co-organized the biennial Integral Theory Conference. Sean is a leading scholar-practitioner in Integral Theory. His articles have appeared in academic journals such as the Journal of Consciousness Studies, World Futures, ReVision, and Journal of Humanistic Psychology. Sean co-edited Ken Wilber’s book The Simple Feeling of Being and has just completed writing a 800-page book with environmental philosopher Michael Zimmerman: Integral Ecology: Uniting Multiple Perspectives on the Natural World. Currently, he is working on a number of books including co-editing an anthology on Integral Education and editing an anthology on Integral Theory.
Chief Executive Officer, Executive Producer
Kelly Sosan Bearerserves as the CEO and Executive Producer for iEvolve. She is the Executive Producer, Host, and Founder of Integral Chicks Podcast and Executive Producer and CEO of Black Plum Productions — an online media and event production company specializing in Spiritual Media and Practice Communities. Since 2003, Kelly has produced over 50 live and virtual practice events. Kelly is the Curator of Integral Life Spiritual Center and Integral Spiritual Experience. She is the Executive Producer for the Center for World Spirituality. Previously, Kelly worked for Integral Institute from 2003-2008 and has been a student of Integral theory and practice for over twelve years. Kelly is an ordained Zen Monk in both the Soto and Rinzai schools and studies with Zen Master Genpo Roshi. She is a published author in the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice. She completed her graduate studies at Naropa University with Master’s in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology.Follow Kelly on Twitter | Join Kelly on Facebook
