True Professionalism: A Spirituality of Integral Service, Creativity, Care

by Marilyn Hamilton, PhD

When I think of myself as a Professional I can look back over my life and point to being at least three kinds of Professional.

My first official designation as a Professional was as a Professional Numerati – I became qualified as a professional Accountant. That is considered a profession that is vital for the operation of most organizations – whether they be profit, not for profit or government. The Accounting Profession is known for its generally accepted accounting principles, formats, guidelines and standardization of recording, reporting, analysing and assessing.

I chose to become an Accountant so that I could learn how organizations operated. What is the spirituality of True Professionalism for an Accountant? How do I serve, create and care?

Another version of being a Professional is my life as a Professional Literati – acting as an author, editor and curator of the written and spoken word. I have authored non-fiction books, articles, peer-reviewed papers. I have edited integrally informed Reviews on Leadership and curated graphic books on urban wellbeing. I have crafted novels, novellas and poetry.

I choose to write because it is a deep primal – probably spiritual –  impulse that runs through my energy field. What is the spirituality of true professionalism for an author/editor? How do I serve, create and care?

Yet another experience of being a Professional is my life as a Professional Integralati  – designing, teaching, training, educating, facilitating, coaching, learning integrally informed bio/psycho/cultural/social ways of being in the world: related to techno-computer-intelligence skills, life skills, collective consciousness, community capacity building, the praxis of praxis.

I choose to engage with Integrally informed realities because I am called as a Gaian Being to share my gifts, talents, perspectives for the well-being of persons, people, place and planet. What is the spirituality of true professionalism for an Integralati? How do I serve, create, care?

Is it possible that multiple manifestations of Spirituality as True Professionalism co-exist and are expressed differently for different purposes?

What different nuances of Spirituality arise for Service, Creativity and Care when one considers the intentions and perspectives of these 3 professions?

I consider that each of the professions draws on a different spiritual quality or expertise – Accountants require numeracy; Authors require literacy; and Integralists require wholism.

Table 1: Different Professions; Different Meanings

So I might ask: “Are any one of these expressions more or less Spiritually True”? Or could the only way to differentiate the relative truth of each profession be to recognize they have different standards – even spiritual standards – by which they are judged?

Perhaps it is also possible that the qualities of Service, Creativity and Care within each Profession also have a spectrum of expression that would differentiate each Professional practise by the degree or depth to which spiritual qualities are expressed?

In Integral City , we have identified 12 Intelligences for Cities as complex adaptive human systems. (See Figure 1) And we have clustered them together into 5 sets of intelligences on a GPS. The very core of those Intelligences is Evolutionary Intelligence which I always sensed was the Spiritual Impulse that energizes all the other 11 Intelligences. (See Figure 1)

When we are taking a Discovery Tour of a city or human habitat (see Figure 2) we have a scoring system that measures the evidence and expression of each intelligence on a 4 point scale from:  latent to aware to active to advanced.

This is an integral practice that enables us to use Service (applying the framework), Creativity (inquiring with curiosity) and Care (collaborating with the people who live in the City of Interest) to notice how the Spiritual qualities of  Service, Creativity and Care exist in any particular place.

I would say this process is also integrating (at least) the three expertises I have pointed to in my life work history: numeracy, literacy and wholism. Thus I am using a multi-perspectival and trans-disciplinary approach to this professional and spiritual Discovery practice.

Does this mean that the Spirituality of True Professionalism can’t be found as an Accountant or an Author?

If I may quote Ken Wilber, one of the world’s great experts on Integralism: “each of these professions and practices are true – but partial.”

Which is why my life journey through professions, reveals that the spirituality of true professionalism is most wholly captured by an Integral Approach – I am always attempting to combine partial truths into a greater whole.

And for me the Spirituality of True Professionalism calls for the integral approaches of subjective ways of knowing – often expressed as Literati; objective ways of knowing – often expressed through Numerati; and Intersubjective and interobjective ways of knowing through Wholistic culture and social discovery tours.

Finally, I would add, beyond all those ways of knowing, the Spirituality of True Professionalism calls for the courage to “not know” – to enter the Spiritual Cloud of Not Knowing – and be curious how to meet people where they are at – no matter how they experience Spirituality, so our relationships invite the creative weaving of spiritual expertises, qualities and practices into something greater – and more beautiful, good and true than we can ever profess as mere individuals.

That is why in Living Cities.Earth we say … we are humaning well TOGETHER for aliveness … with Love . And I propose that is how we translate the spirituality of our professional practice into Service, Creativity and Care.

A spiritual practice that we ultimately express as Gaia’s Code of Care for Self, Others, Place and Planet (see Figure 3).

Web link: www.livingcities.earth

Figure 1: GPS 12 Intelligences

Figure 2: Due Diligence Page 1 and 2

Figure 3: Gaia Code of Care