Consciousness is the most important subject that is the least understood. Take a moment and think about this statement. We know more about the universe than a single consciousness. I do not equate the brain and its neural circuitry as a surrogate of consciousness. They are distinct entities, having distinct capacities and purposes. The brain, inside a protective skull, analyzing and computing information of a single lifetime; and consciousness, which begins at the outer perimeter of self-knowledge like an expanding frontier, is an infinite, unbounded Sovereign, enmeshed in lifetimes and dimensions too numerous to enumerate. 

Consciousness is elusive to the measurements and detections of science, because it is perfectly subjective. There is not one consciousness that shares a single identical experience with another. Consciousness is unique to every life form. Every single one, giving consciousness the dubious distinction of being the most difficult thing to map or make explicit, due to the two halves of its reality: infinite complexity and perfect subjectivity. 

Throughout history, cartographers tried to envision a map of the world. They used verbal reports from travelers and explorers or they, themselves, were the traveler and explorer. They transcribed these reports into maps that presented a vision of a territory. One could even call it a theory of the planet’s geographical face. Tens of thousands of iterations were made mapping the earth, adding details like islands, mountain ranges, rivers, three-dimensional topography; making adjustments when new lands were discovered or conquered. Today we have satellites, fractal geometry and powerful computers to make this fine-grain resolution available to anyone on the Internet.

We need more cartographers to join the effort of mapping the face of consciousness, particularly artists. Since the advent of modern-day science, religious scholars, psychologists, neurologists, biologists, physicists have debated the nature of consciousness. Some artists have tried to capture its invisible “face”ーthe entity behind our human faceーusing paint or dance or photography or music or film or writing. Sometimes, perhaps by accident, they capture its imprint in our very human world. When they do, there can be a recognition that the artist and their work had sprung from a new sourceーa kind of inner reality that outlasts misunderstanding, and with a quiet, but resolute passion, it seeks to be understood. 

Understanding consciousness is decidedly undervalued in our culture. While our higher education systems provide diverse, philosophic opinion, and our religious teachings purport to know the nature of the human soul, consciousness remains defined by either an intellectual abstraction or the rounded words of poetry. Interestingly, consciousness is not a real subject. There is no branch of human endeavor that is charged with the study and analysis of consciousness (again, I am not talking about the brain).

While I have repeatedly, even at this early onset, stated that consciousness and the brain are distinct; let me go one step further and make the distinction between consciousness and soul. The sum total of agreed-upon definitions of soul would fill one sentence. Soul is generally thought to be our spiritual, eternal self. God, Allah, Yahweh, Brahman, etc., is its creator. It may, through an unknown process, be created in the likeness of God. The soul, after death of the mortal coil, attains a heavenly state, if it abides by certain rules. The afterlifeーgood or badーis conditioned by the behaviors as a human being on earth. This is the general framework for the concept of soul.

Consciousness, on the other hand, is not the exclusive domain of any particular
religious or spiritual organization. It is the one thing that is completely present and
infinite, and therefore consciousness is inclusive of all things. The shorthand version of consciousness, at least in my explorations, is that it is a synthesis of a Sovereign identity (self) and an Integral identity (whole). Thus, my term for consciousness is the Sovereign Integral. [1]

The term, Sovereign Integral, was first brought out in 1998 when I launched the WingMakers website. It was an embedded definition in the philosophy papers of the initial release of materials, a relatively minor mention in an array of content that included music, artwork, philosophy, a novel and poetry, wrapped inside a mythological story. In this paper, the Sovereign Integral is centerstage. It is the focus. It is presented not as a part of a mythology, but as the most real thing that exists. I want to stress that The Sovereign Integral is a nonfiction paper with radical subjectivity, as only consciousness can evoke.

You can substitute the word “consciousness” with the term “Sovereign Integral.” I use them interchangeably. It is simply a new face or facet of consciousness that this particular paper is proposing as an answer to the question, “Why is consciousness so elusive, and what is it, anyway?”

Some might be tempted to say, “It isn’t elusive, people just don’t listen hard enough to the whispers of their soul.” There is some truth to that perspective, but is there a specific kind of listening that makes the Sovereign Integral more tangible and real? That is another purpose of this paper, to draw the Sovereign Integral out onto a lighted stage, so it can be revealed, at least at the “skeletal” level and from one vantage-point: mine.

This paper is a theorem on the structure and nature of consciousness. The Sovereign Integralーin terms of its description in the two-dimensional confines of paper or canvasーcannot be more than a theory. There is no proof or scientific explanation of the Sovereign Integral. It does not distill down to mathematics. That is part of its compelling nature. It cannot be defined. And here’s why: The Sovereign Integral is infinite in scope, and because it is sovereign, it is infinitely unique. It is expanding in a completely unique trajectory of experience, and therefore, its understanding, expression, perspective, orientation, knowledge, wisdom, memory, all are unique. As it evolves its uniqueness, it redefines its very existence. In other words, the Sovereign Integral is not static or absolute or set upon a destination that acts as its end-goal.

Furthermore, the Sovereign Integral is not beholden to any organization or creed or ethnicity or socioeconomic status. It is independent and therefore, Sovereign.

This is a very important distinction. The Sovereign Integral is a consciousness of infinite and unique expansion. It occupies both the dual and the nondual realms, simultaneously. The Sovereign is the individual Self, the core identity that is always present even when the body-ego is not. It is the bridge between lifetimes and it is the lifetimes, as well. However, as it occupies a human body, its identity is assumed by the body-ego, assisted by the ubiquitous signposts of the Social Program.

The Sovereign, and its unique connection to the Integral, are dismissed by the body, ego and Social Program, as if it were a child that is being dismissed from the dinner table: “Carry-on, by all means, but please do it somewhere else”. The ego emerges as an outgrowth of the survival instinct, and later in life, as the protective shield for the harsher realities of the Social Program. The ancestral DNA confers tendencies and talents to the body, which can also have an effect on the ego. Now we have the body and ego, sitting at the “dinner table” enjoying their dinners in peace and quiet, tuned-in to the Social Program. The Sovereign has been dismissed. The Integral repelled.

A little bit about the Integral. The Integral is most similar to the term “Spirit” in religious and esoteric texts. It has a magnetic quality and acts as the core attractor of the Sovereign, because without this, the Sovereign could easily become distracted and its expansion of understanding falls subject to entropy. While these phases occur (free will intermixed with the Social Program), it remains that the fundamental nature of the Sovereign is expansion to the Integral.

The hands of evolution are attached to the body of the Integral. The Integral is the intelligence of all realms as a result of being the collecting point of experiential information. It is the companion to everything, and it is therefore, the one thing and essence that enfolds all life. The two entities at the table (body and ego), immersed in the Social Program, are, by comparison, exclusionary. They are the tribal cliques that dominate the landscape of human, social culture. It is precisely through this tribalism that the Integral is thwarted by the body-ego-social programーthe triad that obstructs the Sovereign Integral consciousness, and therefore, muddles comprehension of its presence and purpose.

I maintain that this is purposeful. It is the means through which the Sovereign can remain in separation from the Integral, and, in a sense, lose itself in the body-ego. This allows humanity to be human. There is joy in the enchanted flesh, and human experiences cannot be contrived as though they were products of factories. They require oblique light, and separation from both the Sovereign and the Integral.

This paper is not designed to improve anything or replace anything. It is not even designed at all. You see, I wrote it, diagrammed it, and painted it, for myself. Once it was collected and I could see the value in it, I decided that I would share it. That is the sum total. There is no publisher, no editor, no organization, no artists and no designers. No other voices (other than the translators) entered this work.

With that qualification in mind, I submit that The Sovereign Integral paper accurately represents my explorations as a cartographer of the face of consciousness. It may be radically different from your own, and for that, I acknowledge no claim to it being more valuable or better than anything else. It is possible that these maps of consciousness and existence only apply to me. That is, afterall, the nature of the Sovereign Integral. Subjectivity is the default state in a free will, infinite multiverse where individual consciousness is interwoven with all others.

I want to acknowledge that this project rests on the shoulders of a great many Sovereigns who informed these maps. Their work and contribution became my bridges. I do not make any claim that these maps represent a path to realization or enlightenment. They are, at most, an on-ramp or starting point for holding and examining the Sovereign Integral consciousness in your imagination.

This paper exists partly as my hope that others will want to examine the Sovereign Integral and allow it enough space and time in their lives so they can welcome it. The other part is because the mythology of consciousness is the most interesting of all mythologies. The reality-makers that we all are, observe and learn. We watch our lower expressions in duality wrestle, tame, or transform their consciousness to include the nondual worlds and form an integration based on a larger, more dimensional love.

There is a fundamental truth, and often people get anxious or frustrated with this truth, but it must be accepted: The consciousness of the Sovereign Integral is not accessible to the five senses. It can only be accessed through the imaginative faculty, and this faculty is not in the brain or pineal gland or the body or the ego or even the heart. It is a sensory receiver of the higher mind, that part of the mind that cares about redefinitions and expansion into the Integral. It is not interested in human achievement, psychic or spiritual phenomenon. The higher mind, the Noble Mind, imagines the Sovereign Integral and invites its consciousness into the human domain with a specific intention: expansion to the Integral state.

As mentioned earlier in this introduction, consciousness is the most important subject that is the least understood, and therefore, that continuum is the widest dichotomy of human knowledge in both the individual and collective sense. This is precisely why this subject is critical to understand, because it, perhaps more than any other factor, can create behavior that is Integral-minded, yet grounded in the appreciation for the uniqueness of the Sovereign.

Your identity can shift, and given this natural ability we have as humans to explore identities, we need to be nimble, always with the outlook of deepening our understanding of our Sovereign, while expanding our reach to the Integral. We need to be aware of our resonance points with art, culture, consciousness, social norms, education and the shared reality of being human in this time and place.

There is a phrase, “Just tell the truth.” However, in the case of metaphysics and consciousness, there is only theoryーrelative truths. These relative truths are really just opinionsーvarying opinions, sometimes, quite opposite opinions. The point is, one cannot tell the Truth of how we exist, why we exist and what we truly are or how we came to be. There is no set of words (in any language) that can adequately describe or explain the intricate and fractal nature of consciousness as it slips between dimensions, lifetimes and infinitely varied experiences.

If this could be explained, this paper would be about that. The very best that any of us can do is to explore maps of consciousness and be sensitive to our resonance points. Is there a feeling of expansion or constriction? This resonance is a feeling more than an intellectually reasoned-out experience.

This material may feel slightly “cool” to the touch. This is due to its focus on the mind of consciousness, rather than the heart of consciousness. It is more directed to the higher mind of consciousness, which is particularly open to concepts that are unbounded, unmoored, dynamic, evolving, enigmatic, self-directed, and yet, reasonable. Perhaps even logical.

It is the third definition of consciousness that is most relevant to us. However, I do, as you will see, redefine what “totality” means. Consciousness is an infinite canvas, so vast that a single paper like The Sovereign Integral can only paint a single pixel. I had to carefully choose which pixel to paint.

The Sovereign Integral consciousness is all-inclusive. You could be an atheist or a devout religious scholar and still see how these maps of consciousness could “bolt-on” to your present belief in consciousness or the human soul. As I mentioned before, this paper is not meant to replace anything. You may still be an atheist or a devout religious scholar after reading this paper, there is no need to change your social network, life’s work, or a single relationship. This paper is not about any of that.

The Sovereign Integral is like an Imaginary Being. It is not a human being. It is not even an enlightened being. It is infinite and interdimensional in both dual and nondual realms, which, as impossible as that may sound, we, nonetheless, can imagine it as us.

The philosophy that originates from the Sovereign Integral is best described as expansion. Anything that is stale, crystallized, pinned down like a specimen and can be described one day the same as the next, is not from the Sovereign Integral. Consciousness is like weather: it is always changing. Anything that describes a destination or endpoint or culmination of effort or achievement of purpose, is not from the Sovereign Integral. It expands in infinitude.

Thus, with such an Imaginary Being as the Sovereign Integral, how does it live and breathe in our worldーthe shared reality of humans that we all live in? If science can never pin it down, if religious and spiritual texts are too vague, how do we stand a chance to ever bring this entity into our human sphere, in a meaningful way?

That is precisely what this paper is about. It is my belief that it is the function of artists to bring the Sovereign Integral consciousness into human culture so that its imprint, its energetics and its perspective can be more deeply felt as an inspirational factor in all of our lives.

In this Section we will start with the Sovereign, then, in the following Section we will take a closer look at the Integral. 

1   Consciousness is a synthesis of two completely antithetical identities (Sovereign and Integral); and while it is intrinsically and infinitely unique, it does possess common characteristics that apply to all entities incarnated in the realms of duality. This is one: We are a unique mix of Sovereign and Integral, but in the realms of duality, these qualities undergo distortions brought on by the body-ego-social program, what I call the “veils of duality.”

2   The Sovereign, as it has been used in literature, is a term used to describe a King or Monarch. Here’s what the dictionary says:

3   As you see from this definition, sovereign and power are closely allied concepts. The words I highlighted in blue are related to my definition, but as you will see, my definition of the Sovereign may feel a little surreal to your body-ego-social programーthat part of you that you identify with, as You. My only suggestion is to have one self-discipline while you read this Section (if not the entire paper): guide your mind to remain open and explorative. 

4   To understand the Sovereign, we need to first understand what is meant by the higher self. 

5   In nearly every definition of the higher self that I have studied, it is a singular entity, paired with a specific body and represents the spiritualized center of the personality of the individual it serves. It is a relatively new form of thinking about the soul or inner spirit of an individual. It suggests that the higher self shares its wisdom for the purpose of guiding the individual to a spiritual realization of one kind or another. The higher self is, in every way, a counselor in the matters of the spiritual life of an individual. It posits that one’s salvation is a personal process, not necessarily dependent on an outside influence. In general, the higher self is a more aware version of the body-ego, and more of a spiritual guide for an individual.

6   The higher self is not the same as the human soul. Similarly, the Sovereign is not the same as the higher self. 

7   In the case of the Sovereign, in the nondual realm, it is the collected identity of each dimension of consciousness (level), and each state of existence (lifetime). The Sovereign is aware of the nondual Integral and is consciously seeking to unite with its state of consciousness in order to experience the Sovereign Integral consciousness. 

8   In the realm of duality, where the body-ego of all humanity defines our shared reality, what I refer to in this paper as the collective Social Program, the Sovereign inhabits the mind, emotions and body-ego, not unlike an astronaut inhabits a space suit. 

9   You could say that the unfractured Sovereign lives in the nondual realm, while the fractured Sovereign lives in duality. The fractured and unfractured are one, individualized, infinite identity, however, the veils of duality and the body-ego obscure the Sovereign and the Integral, to the point where it becomes doubtful that they even exist or if they are believed to exist, their definitions are narrowed in scope and function.

10   The important thing to understand is that the Sovereign inhabits lifetimes across species, gender, time and space; and it operates across dimensions in each of those lifetimes. This is the process through which each Sovereign is infinitely unique and individualized. The consciousness that defines the total individual is the Sovereign. The goal of an individual can be to align the dimensional Selves of a particular lifetime and express the core Sovereign through all dimensions of that life, allowing the Sovereignー the core Sovereignーto fuse with the body-ego, and to an extent, reduce the drag, inertia and gravity of the Social Program.

11   Fractals, oddly enough, are important to understand in order to envision the Sovereign. A fractal is a recurring pattern, mathematically generated, that repeats at infinitely higher and lower scales. In other words, fractals appear the same at different levels of scale, but scale itself confers a special meaning to a particular level. The concept of Sovereign, for example, is not merely cloned at different levels, it changes in complexity, meaning, vibration, expression, and life force on each level, and this is because each level evokes a different Sovereign through the Social Program, which itself, varies from level to level of consciousness.

12   Fractal geometry, however, is contained between one and three dimensional space. But what if a fractalーin conceptーcould traverse all known dimensions of consciousness? Dual and nondual realms? In other words, there is no dimension that can contain it. This is what is being proposed in this paper. The Sovereign and the Integral are fractal in nature. They are the fluency between lifetimes (Sovereign) and dimensions (Integral). At whatever scale, frequency, density or vibration that existence can be, there is both the Sovereign and the Integral. They are the only intersection of opposites that is fractal. 

13   (I did warn you that it would get abstract. I apologize, and in that same breath, I will cite the cliche: Not everything will sink in the first time you read it.)

14   The diagram above is a visual representation of the Sovereign. (I acknowledge that my depiction of fractal concepts that flow between dual and nondual realms, like the Sovereign and Integral, is wrong at the first mark of the pen or tap of the keyboard.)

15   The Sovereign, in this diagram, is the collector of experience across Levels and Lifetimes. It is not the Sovereign’s only role or function, but it is a central one. Meaningful experience that is useful in deepening the Sovereign’s understanding of love, intelligence, interconnection and expansion, becomes the valuable and vital substance of its existence. 

16   The Sovereign is a singular, yet composite entity that inhabits unnumbered bodies, egos, times, places, social programs and dimensions. It is not isolated in one lifetime, gender, planet, or even species. The Sovereign is the core identity of an individual regardless of the life form it inhabits and the experiences therein. A particular lifetimeーwhether as an ant or human, plant or dolphin, chimpanzee or catーis the experience of a Sovereign in a three-dimensional species-based reality. The Sovereign experiences these various lifetimes within a specific species (body-ego), a specific social program of that species and during a specific time and place.

17   The Sovereign is the prism, the Integral is the light, the lifetimes are the colors, and the levels or dimensions in which the lifetimes play out, are the stage. The Sovereign is agnostic as to the body-ego-social program. They are all of value. Each contributes to the broadening and deepening of its understanding of the Integral, guiding its synthesis to the Sovereign Integral consciousness. 

18   So it is, with the feather of hope that we first learn to fly. In all great, personal transformations, there is an inception pointーa time and place where the headwaters bubble to the surface. It starts with a trickle of water that turns into a stream that turns into a creek that turns into a river that turns into a larger river that empties into an ocean. This is the way of life under the lens of time, and while the Sovereign Integral is not of time, the Sovereign and the Integral dwell in duality, and are therefore subject to time. 

19   The body-ego is the temporal Sovereign of human reality, just as the mind is the temporal Sovereign in the mental realm. Each level, a new Sovereign identity exists. The Sovereign is an interdimensional fractal of individualized consciousness. That is, it moves across dimensions or levels, and while these different expressions of a Sovereign may appear similar in nature, at each new level of consciousness, a difference emerges from the unique experiences of the Sovereign’s existence within that particular level and lifetime. 

20   One of the more notable aspects of this definition is that the Sovereign inhabits other species; it is not confined to the human species. This denotes that all life is sovereign. A Sovereign could be in the body-ego-social program of an ant, tuna, hawk, giraffe, gorilla, dragonfly, starfish, apple tree, octopus, in addition to inhabiting a human body-ego and adjusting to its social program. And that is only earth.

21   The Sovereign represents the interdependence and interconnection with other life forms and Nature in general. It is, as an interdimensional consciousness, pursuing evolution and expansion in every reality-dimension of its existence, whether the Sovereign is experiencing the reality of a moth or a human being. Each species has its own species-specific reality, which includes the social program for that species and spacetime. The body-ego, in a species-specific reality, is the species’ interface with the Social Program. Yes, even a yellow-fin tuna or a silver oak tree has a Social Program that they are immersed within. The Sovereign fills, powers, learns from, inspires, and expands into the body-ego, interacting with the shared reality of its species, and following cues from its Social Program. 

22   Perhaps, at least to me, this is the most interesting quality of the Sovereign: it is not fixed in time and space; it is interdimensional. The soul, the higher self, the inner spirit, the atman, the eternal self, the sons and daughters of Godーthey were all fixed in time and space, that is, they were attached to a specific human until death. It was our spiritual alter-ego that went on after death as a spirit-being, usually, to a better place.

23   However, the Sovereign is not fixed to a particular human being in a particular time and place. The true Sovereign, not the body-ego, inhabits spacetime, not merely a specific body-ego. It does not exist in either a single lifetime or a succession of lifetimes, culminating in bliss, nirvana, heaven, or becoming an angelic teacher. The Sovereign, wearing multiple body-egos in multiple realities, learns the wisdom of a place and time in order to express and appreciate the Sovereign Integral consciousness. 

24   The Sovereign stays with a particular body-ego for the scope of a lifetime, and then, somewhat like a revolving door, transitions into a new body-ego-social program. For most, this transition after death feels like an inertia of their human life just completed. They remain largely the same in terms of their belief system learned in their just completed human life. This belief system powers their experience, because the belief system creates intention, and this intention does not end when the “cord is cut.”

25   For example, if I am a devout believer in Christianity, my intention is to get into heaven; be on the right side of Jesus; and reflect the values of Christianity to the best of my human ability. I am admittedly simplifying this set of intentions, but for the sake of brevity, the belief system casts the intentions for the individual as a significant part of their Social Program. And after death, the Sovereign (body-ego version) consolidates their learning and then selects a new body-ego-social program from an impossibly diverse matrix of realities.

26   This gives intrinsic value to all life, because all life hosts a Sovereign. This is, in part, why the Sovereign Integral is inclusive of all things. It enfolds all things. It inhabits all things. It is all things. It answers the call as to why human culture needs to embody this fundamental premise of equality, and why our collective Social Program, over time, will include this perspective. Equality, in this definition, is wholeness. It is not the equality of “we are the same”. The true Sovereign is the core identity of all life in whatever form it takes, and in whatever spacetime it expresses itself.

27  On planet Earth, approximately 110 billion human beings have been born since human beings came into existence. Now, consider Nature. How many plants have lived on earth? How many insects? How many fish? How many mammals? You get my point, life on earth, as part of what we call Nature, is near-infinite in number. The Sovereign consciousness has been shaped through human life forms and Nature, if it were not, how could the Integral exist?

28   The Sovereign is the student of duality. It is as much the confused human as the enlightened soul. For what purpose does the Sovereign journey into a life form? To learn? To experience? To understand? To embody the Integral perspective? The Sovereign is always in the state of expansion to the Integral, even when the body-ego seems bent on tribalism and competition. 

29   A critical element in the definition of the Sovereign is the level of intelligence that we place on the unfractured Sovereignーthe collected identity. The soul was created in the image of humans. That is to say, that the soul is essentially a good version of us that just happens to live eternally, and just happens to share occupancy with our body-ego on planet earth. If the soul is the creation of humankind, it is reasonable to hypothesize that its intelligence is bounded by human intelligence. While there is no IQ test for the soul, generally, those who believe in the soul, would say it is very smart. Certainly smarter than a human being, but how much smarter? How much more aware?

30   The Sovereign, as the student of duality, is marginalized by the body-ego-social program. This expresses itself in the tribalistic ownership of concepts like spiritual enlightenment or truth or social value or the best path to heaven. The Sovereign is diluted to such an extent that it has become a human soul tethered to one body, one species, at one time, with one goal: live in eternal bliss. The Sovereign’s intelligence is of a different order. Its intelligence is the expression of the nondual within the worlds of duality. It is the intelligence of merging the Sovereign with the Integral for the purpose of generating beauty, wisdom and love. 

31   There may be some of you, who, in looking around at human culture, wonder how it would be possible for an interdimensional entity with the intelligence of a Sovereign, as defined in this Section, to be so corrupted, so utterly distorted and seemingly disempowered. Why would such an intelligent being allow its own diminishment? The simple answer is that the “veils of duality” enable separation from the core, nondual Sovereign. This is precisely what the Sovereign desiresーfreedom from the nondual in order to explore duality without memory of its Integral nature. It can then, as a consequence, experience the full spectrum of love-hate, good-evil, win-lose, superior-inferior and a thousand variations of duality.

32   The fractal matrix of the Sovereign (i.e., Levels and Lifetimes across species and spacetime) is the defining imprint of the Sovereign. We can only imagine the intelligence of such an entity, particularly as it centers its intention on the Integral consciousness. The Sovereign is not the phenomenon. It is the consciousnessーthe experiencer. The phenomenon is the Integral. The phenomenon of cosmic visions or even the random Déjà vu or drug-induced hallucination are not necessarily desirable and certainly not required experiences. They attract recurrence, because they resonate with the body-ego and carry less abstraction than consciousness itself. The body-ego can become somewhat addicted to phenomenalistic experienceーseeking it as a means to satisfy the glamor-seeking of the ego or to establish a sense of proof for the mind.

33   The Sovereign perceives life as an expansion of identity that deepens understanding initially through the curiosity of phenomenon, however, this curiosity gives way to the mental models of pure consciousness. The expansion of identity can be nuanced so finely as to be perceived as no change, and again, it is because this is an internal shift of consciousness, not phenomenon, not the stories of phenomenon, but the subtle changes in one’s consciousness and perspective that nourish the Integral. Each of us, as Sovereigns, are feeding the Integral consciousness within us, and also outside of us through our personal Social Program. 

34   Consciousness is the one thing that we always are. Our body-ego will dissolve back into nothingness, but the Sovereign that is us, is always existent, always experiencing. It is our presence in this world that carries on. It is that eternal flame of curiosity that we are each a part of. It is as much our origin, as it is our destiny. 35   Yet, the attention it attracts from the body-ego, in most of us, is trifling at best when compared to the time and attention we pay to our body-ego. The attraction of the Sovereign to the body-ego can only be felt and imagined by the body-ego. This is why the practice of the heart virtues is important, because through them, we can access the Noble Mind and utilize the imaginative faculty therein, allowing us to imagine the subtle finery of the Sovereign consciousness, and inviting it into our body-ego as an equal.

35   Yet, the attention it attracts from the body-ego, in most of us, is trifling at best when compared to the time and attention we pay to our body-ego. The attraction of the Sovereign to the body-ego can only be felt and imagined by the body-ego. This is why the practice of the heart virtues is important, because through them, we can access the Noble Mind and utilize the imaginative faculty therein, allowing us to imagine the subtle finery of the Sovereign consciousness, and inviting it into our body-ego as an equal. 

36   The diagram above represents the process of unfoldment as it pertains to the dual realms and the Sovereign’s experienceーthrough the body-egoーof innumerable lifetimes, levels and species. The Sovereign is the activation point of the body-ego in each specific lifetime, however, the body-ego has free will to reject its invitations of expansion and reality-testing. The Sovereign is the activational current that sparks the interest of the body-ego in the Sovereign perspective and from the insights therein, the body-ego can then reinterpret its personal and collective Social Program. Similarly, the Integral is what activates the Sovereign to expand into an alignment with its energy and culture. It is the Sovereign Integral that activates the Integral to amplify its attraction to the Sovereign, in effect, to encourage it to build a culture of the Sovereign Integral within the species, one Sovereign at a time, knowing that these maps and modelsーat whatever resolution they appearーattract the activated Sovereign. 

37   There needs to be a relative balance between the Sovereign and the Integral, otherwise there could be Sovereigns who are ready, but the Integral is too undeveloped in the culture that the Sovereigns must wait, attaching themselves to familial beliefs or delaying the expansion of their belief system. Similarly, the Integral could be strongly magnetic yet, there are very few Sovereigns who are activated and willing to experience and express the Integral. They lack readiness because they are indifferent to the attraction of the Integral, in that they desire to live exclusively in the body-ego.

38   This balance is fundamental to the activation of the unfoldment process, which then stirs the inception point for the Sovereign Integral consciousness to manifest in the realms of duality. We begin to imagine the Imaginary Being, whose presence in our life emerges through our Sovereign, and can be experienced and expressed through the body-ego and our Social Program. 

39   The body-ego, once activated by the Sovereignーparticularly as technology accelerates and compresses timeーneeds patience; tolerance to challenge; replenishment of commitment; and time to contemplate; these qualities support our persistence to deepen and expand our understanding of the Sovereign Integral consciousness. These are, admittedly, highly abstract ideas, and it is easy to feel that they are irrelevant to our world. However, the threads of understanding that I am attempting to weave in this paper are fundamental. They seem abstract, but they are pointing to the essence of existence. 

We will now explore the Integral and its purpose.