About Us
What is iEvolve: Global Practice Community
iEvolve is an integrally informed practice and service community dedicated to the evolutionary growth of the individual, the community, and spirit itself. Linked virtually and through events taking place around the world, iEvolve members participate in seminars, 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.
iEvolve Core Founders and Faculty
Diane Musho Hamilton is a gifted mediator, facilitator and teacher of Zen and Integral Spirituality. She is a core founder and faculty of iEvolve: Global Practice Community and is a co-director of the Integral Life Spiritual Center. She is the lead trainer on Integral Life Practice and has worked with Ken Wilber and Integral Institute since 2004.
Dr. Marc Gafni is a rabbi and iconlastic teacher of Kabbalah and Evolutionary Spirituality. He is a core founder and faculty member of iEvolve: Global Practice Community as well as director of the Integral Life Spiritual Center of Integral Life. He has written seven books, including the national bestseller Soul Prints, and The Mystery of Love, a Kabbalistic 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 personal realization. It is from this place of broken-hearted humility, radical joy and and sacred audacity that he teaches.
Sofia Diaz is a gifted teacher of Hatha yoga, sacred movement, and feminine spiritual practice, deriving her form of teaching and body philosophy from the South Indian Temple Arts and their accompanying scriptures. She has apprenticed with dance and music masters of the Balasaraswati lineage of Devadasi Sadir. She is also a core founder and faculty of iEvolve: Global Practice Community.
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 of Meditation, 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.
Chief Executive Officer
Kelly Sosan Beareris the Chief Executive Officer of iEvolve: Global Practice Community. She is the C co-curator of Integral Life Spiritual Center and Integral Spiritual Experience. Previously, Kelly worked for Integral Institute from 2003-2008 and has been a student of Integral theory and practice for over a decade. Kelly is an ordained Zen Monk 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.
The Ten Commitments to Practice
The Commitment to Big Mind
Big Mind is to the commitment to the recognition of our true nature. By cultivating identification with expanded awareness – Big Mind, True Self, or All That Is - this practice shifts us beyond ego consciousness to the realization of our unconditioned, free, and boundless nature which is inseparable from our everyday lives.
The Commitment to Awakened Heart
Awakened heart is a specific set of meditative practices that open us to the subtle dimensions of the heart, fostering the fullness of love and compassion, and supporting our commitment to the kind and fair treatment of others.
The Commitment to Unique Self
Unique Self consists of typology and awareness practices that allow each of us to identify our unique perspective and qualities, to see our place as evolutionary agents in the larger contexts of becoming, and to embrace our very life, its circumstances, and the purpose for which each of us was born in this time and place.
The Commitment to Shadow Work
Shadow Work is an intensive practice that brings disowned elements of self back to awareness. It cuts through our projections, reduces our tendency toward spiritual piety, and releases energy formally bound up in maintaining our protective self-image. At the same time we work to transform the negative, we engage in a practice which allows us reclaim our own authentic identity which has fallen into shadow, that of our unique self.
The Commitment to Awakened Eros
Awakened Eros is an intention in which the full power, aliveness and wisdom of the impulse to grow and develop is accessed and integrated into the fullness of our lives. There is no growth without pain and imbalance, and this practice helps us to interpret life challenges and difficulty through the experience of Eros, supporting the evolution of Spirit through us.
The Commitment to Embodiment
This is a commitment to engage the full spectrum of embodied awareness and movement, and involves the conscious practice of cultivating our power and strength, as well as our flexibility and fluidity as a human body. Through this commitment, our body becomes the very vehicle of evolution and of compassionate action in the world.
The Commitment to an Evolving Integral Map
Comprehensive, evolving maps are one of the great tools that we have for navigating human experience, and this is a commitment to using the best map that we have of our awareness at this time, i.e. quadrants, levels, line, states, and types. While the map should not be mistaken for the territory, through this practice, we are able to see more clearly how skillful application of the map can help to reveal, support, and illuminate our experience of reality.
The Commitment to Skillful Means
Skillful means practices are a set of relational understandings, insights and technologies that foster effective communication, teamwork, and relationship building skills. The true test of meditative insight and awareness is the capacity to realize them in practice with others, and in engagement with the world.
The Commitment to Social Activism
Social Activism practice is the commitment of iEvolve as a global practice community to investing significant time, effort, resources and life energy to challenging injustice and healing suffering in every possible way.
The Commitment to Radical Devotion
The commitment to the way of praise and adoration opens us to the continual devotional practice of recognizing, loving, praising and serving the beloved. Devotional practice of adoration serves the Divine within us, others, and beyond us, by recognizing, praising, honoring, connecting, and disclosing that very divinity.