00:00 Introductions and mechanics

02:53 First question for Tom.  Why is reaching  “we space” more difficult for intimate couples than for others? Tom explains that couples carry so much “baggage” that it’s actually harder to get past it into a “higher” state than for others with whom there is no history. This is true even for “integral” couples with their complicated relationships.

06:50 “Thinking” integral isn’t enough, and often not necessary

08:49 Great Rumi quote

09:30 Lower right is slow to develop, we often have an upper left bias

10:10 The Couples Line of Development chart: Tom introduces the levels

1 – Safety and attraction

2 – Roles

3 – Relational

4 – First Love  

5 – Spiritual

13:00 How to get from Relational to First Love.  Heidi wants clarification. Tom explains the persistence of earlier stages even at the relational level (where therapy typically stops!)

15:54 The goal is to develop the intimate we space .  See chart: resonance and shared feeling. Tom gives directions and examples…and Heidi throws a curve.

19:00 Eye gazing! Leads to a resonating feeling (May takes months of practice!)

22:00 Resonance can extend beyond the couple to others not present then or there (non local awareness)

23:00 It gets easier to enter the we space and is sought out, is easy to initiate

25:00 Some impediments for some couples, stability is required

26:50 Not limited neither temporally nor geographically, no need to be together, power places

31:00 (box) Staying in First Love seems not to be permanent, most time is spent in Relational. Persistence of even lower stages.

33:50 States and Stages chart: collective states parallel individual ones but tend to eventually predominate.  Tom gives an example (Helen Palmer) and leads us up the serpentine chart.

39:30 Heidi gives personal testimony of this serpentine nature. Maybe a SPIRAL?

41:45 Preparing for the exercise. (See chart for the couples themselves) a quick aside to current politics which may apply to couples – and vice versa.  Heidi explains.

47:07 Be careful with item 4! Possible jealousy if one’s partner enters a we space with someone other than the partner. 2 examples from Tom’s experience.

50:50 Tom’s paper in 2016 Journal of Integral Theory and Practice. At a high level, fidelity can become a problem because it’s easy to really love others.  Keith Witt’s “confession to Jeff Salzman that he “falls in love with all (his) patients.”  It will get complicated!

53:14 New chart: Skills and Couples Stage: at Roles stage, unfinished individual issues arise rather than relationship issues. Emotional discipline required! Also merger can be confused with communion. You need an ego before you can dissolve it!  Where does that couples line break down?

58:05 Mark asks about the “amalgamation” of the lower left and lower right

1:01:00 Material for another podcast! Continuing with the chart: the wound as an entry point. The lower expression can be exploited by politicians , etc.

1:06:00 Moving up the chart to First Love, in contrast to the reactive stages, a rational way to deal with problems leading possibly to a unity experience

1:09:38 Jumping to the ownership of projection, how to question if it’s present or not. Tom claims that in the BEST relationships, the rate of projection is 50% and everyone else approaches 100% projection! Our own history with this.

1:13:30 the subtle stages these projections re-appear as later on so we can read deeper and deeper now that the lower right structures are in place.

1:15:30 Plans for the next Integral European Experience, wish lists. Lower right work

1.16:50 How to reach Tom: drtomhabib@gmail.com. Last words, thank you’s, goodbye’s