Not sure if I fully understand what "Showing Up" means

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My current understanding is that Showing Up essentially means taking a four quadrants perspective in your understanding of reality. So, does your understanding of topics such as gender, race, development, etc., include what each of the four quadrants has to say about that topic?

Gender

  • The interior feeling of having a certain gender identity
  • The morphological features and genetic influence related to gender identity
  • The we-space of being a certain gender given the other genders
  • The systems in place that privilege or deprivilege your specific gender identity

Then we could consider each of those at various holonic levels within and across each quadrant.

Is this a correct summary of what it means to “Show Up?”

Thanks for the help!

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Hey @WillE, thanks for the question!

I think that what you described may actually be a quality of “growing up” — bringing more complexity to your mental terrain, in this case using the four quadrants to help orient/situate/assemble your own thinking.

To me, “Showing Up” has a fairly simple frame. We do all the work to Wake Up, Grow Up, and Clean Up — but the vast majority of that work is taking place in the UL quadrant (maybe a little in the LL). But once we are able to take the fruits of that work and allow them to spill over into the other quadrants within our own lives, that becomes something like “Showing Up”. So things like Integral Parenting, Integral Leadership, “finding your ikigai”, etc. all fall in the bucket of “showing up”. Basically, what do you do after you get off the meditation cushion, when you close the books and set the heavy weights down, when you walk out of your therapist’s office? How do you bring all of that that inner work into the rest of your life, your work, and your relationships? How does it help you more fully “show up” in these dimensions of your own life?

So it’s not just accounting for the four quadrants in our own mental models — it’s about bringing ourselves online more fully in each of OUR OWN four quadrants. Your health and vitality and behaviors in the UR, your livelihood and systemic relations in the LR, your connections and relationships and capacity to exert influence in the LL, your presence and capacity to “transmit” in the UL, etc.

In my own mind, “showing up” is the missing link between integral thinking/integral practice, and actual “integral living”.

I hope that helps at least a little bit!

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That helped a lot. Makes much more sense haha

Thanks again!

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Thought this article hits on the idea of ‘knowing about’ vs ‘showing up’ (being Integral). Very easy to project what others should think and do.