At IEC 2025, the theme of Finding Wholeness for an Integral Age rang through many contributions. Among them, Dr. Elke Fein’s keynote on Wholeness in Politics and my own workshop on AQtivating Soul Power for Cities in Metacrisis revealed strikingly parallel paths. One spoke the language of politics, the other the language of cities. Both pointed to fragmentation, crisis, and the urgent call to reconnect with wholeness.

Elke Fein (author of  book exploring Integral Politics)  reminded us that politics-as-usual—partisan, competitive, modern—is not only incapable of solving planetary crises but has itself become part of the problem. What is missing, she argued, is the meta-perspective that integral practice brings: the capacity to see ourselves, to include neglected voices, to listen deeply to resistance, and to surf the polarities of democracy with courage.

My own contribution asked a similar question through the lens of the city: What if the metacrisis in our urban systems is rooted in disconnection from Soul? From war-torn rubble to climate chaos, cities mirror the fractures of our collective psyche. The path forward is Soul Power: practising Gaia’s Code of Care, reconnecting to Beauty, Truth, and Goodness, and remembering our role as Gaia’s Reflective Organs.

Wholeness as remedy

Then we both went into the need for integral politics to be deeper, higher, wider, broader – by exploring and practising deep democracy (one of Fein’s great strengths), finding new ways to access plural perspectives while listening both the 4 Voices of the city (as I frequently remind us, brings the whole city system into the room).

Fein goes another step further and challenges integralists to step into the political ring.

My exploration of Soul Power in cities resonates with my long call that to live in service to Gaia’s wellbeing – as we live well in our cities – we must practise Gaia’s Code of Care. This awareness and embrace of wellbeing for Self, Others, Place and Planet attracts the Big Three dimensions of Beauty, Truth and Goodness. And these frameworks provide the scaffolding that supports and guides practice across holarchic scales.

Polarity work

Fein is fearless in stepping into the arena of polarity work – she admits that politics is much about actually surfing polarities. We must learn by “falling and failing” and picking ourselves back up again to find the ways of aliveness (like we are learning to do at Ecovillage Findhorn – being an example of “trial by life practice” and rejecting any attempts to put us on a pedestal).

Fein notes that Integralists who practice deep democracy, gain the muscle to hold tensions – a willingness to listen and accept resistance as a natural experience on the path to coherence. This dance with polarities is how we co-create coherence.

In cities, I am saying that we must move out beyond fragmentation into a field of integration – where we can meet and honour the 4 Voices and 4 Ways of Knowing. This is the path where our species moves beyond the manipulative roles of competition (as Elisabet Sahtouris used to remind us) into the land of cooperation and collaboration.

Like me, Fein has the courage to hold paradox as a necessary stage of healing politics (especially for Integral Cities particular interests in city politics).

Call to agency

Echoing in many ways, the voice of Karen O’Brien, Elke Fein accepts the need for healthy power that does not abuse people – but rather reclaims the power of responsibility to transform democracy. Fein is effectively pointing out that agency itself generates power and that generates feedback amongst practitioners who are in service to healthy political life in nations and cities.

I point out that every citizen must (re)activate Soul Power to regenerate wellbeing in communities, cities and the planet. (O’Brien points out that our fractal connections give us a natural capacity to ignite this regenerative fire.)

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You Are Political, You Are Soulful

Placed side by side, Fein’s call for integral politics and my call for Soul-powered cities echo the same heartbeat. Both recognize that wholeness cannot be legislated from the top or engineered from the outside must be cultivated through coherence, deep listening, and shared values that ripple outward across scales.

For politics, that means integralists stepping into the arena, daring to facilitate new spaces of dialogue and coherence, and refusing to remain silent. For cities, it means re-patterning life around care, compassion, and co-creation, so that urban systems once again serve people, places, and planet.

The invitation is clear: we are all political, and we are all soulful. Wholeness asks us to hold both truths, to surf polarities while activating care, and to claim our responsibility in shaping the Integral Age.

The question is no longer whether we have what it takes—Elke Fein reminds us, we already do. The question is: will we choose to use it?