Click here to learn more: https://integrallife.com/attunement
Keith Martin-Smith and David Arrell diagnose the core pathology of contemporary life: we're living in an attainment culture that measures worth through accumulation—more status, more recognition, more stuff—while starving the qualities that actually make life worth living. The result? Epidemic levels of anxiety, polarization, narcissism, and a quiet desperation that no amount of productivity hacks or self-optimization can touch.
The alternative isn't another framework to add to your collection. It's a fundamental reorientation toward attunement culture—a shift from quantity to quality, from getting to becoming, from conquest to meaning.
David lays out the architecture of this shift across three temporal dimensions:
HEALTH (The Past): Most of us are operating from developmental anchors—unconscious wounds and reactive patterns that keep us stuck at earlier stages of maturity. When you criticize, control, or comply automatically, you're not responding to what's in front of you; you're responding from an old script. The work is to turn toward these patterns with curiosity, reclaim the energy locked there, and stop letting the past hijack your present.
DEPTH (The Present): Your attention is under siege. Billions of dollars have been spent engineering super-normal stimuli to keep you distracted, metabolically aroused, and scrolling. But presence—the capacity to remain grounded when life gets turbulent—is the foundation of wisdom. Character and virtue aren't abstractions; they're your ability to tolerate weather without capsizing. The fruits of the spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control) emerge spontaneously when you create the conditions, like apples from a healthy tree.
GROWTH (The Future): Beyond your current capacities are your leading edges—the places where you're stretching into new territory. Growth means tolerating the unknown, throwing aspirational grappling hooks into territory you can't yet see clearly, and expanding your container of authenticity. It's not about becoming someone else; it's about becoming more fully who you already are.
Throughout the conversation, Keith and David return to a revolutionary foundation: dignity culture. Unlike respect (which must be earned), dignity simply is—every human being has equal claim to worth by virtue of being human. This creates common ground from which we can build toward higher ground. It dissolves the false choice between dominator hierarchies and victim narratives, between attainment Olympics and oppression Olympics.
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Ideas don't transform lives — lived practice does. You can understand everything David and Keith discussed intellectually and still show up tomorrow exactly as you did today: distracted, reactive, caught in the same patterns, serving the same attainment culture that's been grinding you down.
Click here to learn more: https://integrallife.com/attunement
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Click here to learn more: https://integrallife.com/attunement
Keith Martin-Smith and David Arrell diagnose the core pathology of contemporary life: we're living in an attainment culture that measures worth through accumulation—more status, more recognition, more stuff—while starving the qualities that actually make life worth living. The result? Epidemic levels of anxiety, polarization, narcissism, and a quiet desperation that no amount of productivity hacks or self-optimization can touch.
The alternative isn't another framework to add to your collection. It's a fundamental reorientation toward attunement culture—a shift from quantity to quality, from getting to becoming, from conquest to meaning.
David lays out the architecture of this shift across three temporal dimensions:
HEALTH (The Past): Most of us are operating from developmental anchors—unconscious wounds and reactive patterns that keep us stuck at earlier stages of maturity. When you criticize, control, or comply automatically, you're not responding to what's in front of you; you're responding from an old script. The work is to turn toward these patterns with curiosity, reclaim the energy locked there, and stop letting the past hijack your present.
DEPTH (The Present): Your attention is under siege. Billions of dollars have been spent engineering super-normal stimuli to keep you distracted, metabolically aroused, and scrolling. But presence—the capacity to remain grounded when life gets turbulent—is the foundation of wisdom. Character and virtue aren't abstractions; they're your ability to tolerate weather without capsizing. The fruits of the spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control) emerge spontaneously when you create the conditions, like apples from a healthy tree.
GROWTH (The Future): Beyond your current capacities are your leading edges—the places where you're stretching into new territory. Growth means tolerating the unknown, throwing aspirational grappling hooks into territory you can't yet see clearly, and expanding your container of authenticity. It's not about becoming someone else; it's about becoming more fully who you already are.
Throughout the conversation, Keith and David return to a revolutionary foundation: dignity culture. Unlike respect (which must be earned), dignity simply is—every human being has equal claim to worth by virtue of being human. This creates common ground from which we can build toward higher ground. It dissolves the false choice between dominator hierarchies and victim narratives, between attainment Olympics and oppression Olympics.
---
Ideas don't transform lives — lived practice does. You can understand everything David and Keith discussed intellectually and still show up tomorrow exactly as you did today: distracted, reactive, caught in the same patterns, serving the same attainment culture that's been grinding you down.
Click here to learn more: https://integrallife.com/attunement
In this powerful and often provocative dialogue, psychotherapist and developmental theorist Kim Barta joins Keith Martin-Smith for a deep dive into the psychological and developmental dynamics surrounding one of the most polarizing figures of our time: Donald Trump.
Drawing from decades of clinical experience and the STAGES developmental model, Kim outlines a rigorous three-part typology of shadow—projection, introjects, and split ego states—and shows how each of these can be activated in our political and cultural reactions. Whether you're vehemently opposed to Trump or a staunch supporter, this conversation invites you to pause, look inward, and ask: What part of this is my perception—and what part is my projection?
Because whether you love him or hate him, Trump functions as a kind of shadow magnet—someone onto whom we unconsciously project either our darkest disowned traits or our most idealized hopes. His presence on the political stage acts like a psychological Rorschach test, provoking intense reactions that can often reveal more about our internal landscape than they do about the man himself.
For those critical of Trump, Kim offers a challenging but compassionate perspective: if Trump “makes you crazy,” then you've already given away your power. Shadow work, he suggests, doesn't mean condoning harmful behavior—it means reclaiming the capacity to act from clarity rather than compulsion, from discernment rather than disturbance. And this matters—because if Trump truly is the existential threat many perceive him to be, then our resistance must come from grounded, skillful action rather than reactive turmoil. Otherwise, we risk undermining our own integrity, credibility, and capacity to influence meaningful change.
For those who support Trump, Kim extends the same invitation to self-inquiry. Many on the right experience a profound sense of betrayal, cultural marginalization, or disempowerment — and that pain often fuels projection just as powerfully as it does on the left. The goal here isn’t to invalidate anyone’s concerns, but to help distinguish between authentic values and reactive identity defense. Because if you truly believe in the principles Trump represents to you — whether it’s populism, sovereignty, or freedom — then embodying those principles with clarity and compassion will always be more persuasive than lashing out from a place of grievance or fear.
Which is why this is not a conversation about being "right" — it's a conversation about being whole.
Everyone Is Right
Click here to learn more: https://integrallife.com/attunement
Keith Martin-Smith and David Arrell diagnose the core pathology of contemporary life: we're living in an attainment culture that measures worth through accumulation—more status, more recognition, more stuff—while starving the qualities that actually make life worth living. The result? Epidemic levels of anxiety, polarization, narcissism, and a quiet desperation that no amount of productivity hacks or self-optimization can touch.
The alternative isn't another framework to add to your collection. It's a fundamental reorientation toward attunement culture—a shift from quantity to quality, from getting to becoming, from conquest to meaning.
David lays out the architecture of this shift across three temporal dimensions:
HEALTH (The Past): Most of us are operating from developmental anchors—unconscious wounds and reactive patterns that keep us stuck at earlier stages of maturity. When you criticize, control, or comply automatically, you're not responding to what's in front of you; you're responding from an old script. The work is to turn toward these patterns with curiosity, reclaim the energy locked there, and stop letting the past hijack your present.
DEPTH (The Present): Your attention is under siege. Billions of dollars have been spent engineering super-normal stimuli to keep you distracted, metabolically aroused, and scrolling. But presence—the capacity to remain grounded when life gets turbulent—is the foundation of wisdom. Character and virtue aren't abstractions; they're your ability to tolerate weather without capsizing. The fruits of the spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control) emerge spontaneously when you create the conditions, like apples from a healthy tree.
GROWTH (The Future): Beyond your current capacities are your leading edges—the places where you're stretching into new territory. Growth means tolerating the unknown, throwing aspirational grappling hooks into territory you can't yet see clearly, and expanding your container of authenticity. It's not about becoming someone else; it's about becoming more fully who you already are.
Throughout the conversation, Keith and David return to a revolutionary foundation: dignity culture. Unlike respect (which must be earned), dignity simply is—every human being has equal claim to worth by virtue of being human. This creates common ground from which we can build toward higher ground. It dissolves the false choice between dominator hierarchies and victim narratives, between attainment Olympics and oppression Olympics.
---
Ideas don't transform lives — lived practice does. You can understand everything David and Keith discussed intellectually and still show up tomorrow exactly as you did today: distracted, reactive, caught in the same patterns, serving the same attainment culture that's been grinding you down.
Click here to learn more: https://integrallife.com/attunement
