Likely you have heard about the memo that leaked from Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer banning all telecommuting for her employees. When she later spoke publicly about this policy at a conference she said “people are more productive when they’re alone, but they’re more collaborative and innovative when they’re together. Some of the best ideas come from pulling two different ideas together.”

Do you remember being conceived? How about being born? Or the time in your mothers womb? Even if you can’t call forth specific memories might your cells or your morphogenic field hold the imprints of this time? If so, how could this be impacting your life, your decisions and your experience of the world today?

Do you consider yourself to be creative? Do you have a strong critical mind? What connection do you think there is between these two? Which has your education helped develop? Which does the world need you to have more of right now?

My friend Logan has a great podcast called Practically Ideal, “the podcast for idealists who like to keep it practical.” Aside from having a great name they offer a somewhat Libertarian take on technology, media and politics.

We know that Breathing Exercises have an amazing number of positive effects on your physiology. The breath is the link between our conscious and unconscious processes, the way to establish a conscious link between our awareness and our autonomic nervous system. Well, when you combine meditation and breathing exercises with visualizations the results are astounding.

Are you above or below the center of gravity in your social circles? Are you aware of times when others hold you up? How about times when they pull you down? How often do you get to have the experience of truly resonating in every way imaginable with a room full of people?

Do you always want more? Do you always feel like you are one accomplishment away from happiness? What if I told you that this striving, this desire for change, for growth and transformation can become an expression of your satisfaction with the way things are right now?

Our body follows our mind, but our mind also follows our body. It is a chicken or egg cycle that we can impact from either side of the equation. Change your mind and your body will react. Change your body and your consciousness shifts. You likely know that I am a huge fan of using Breathing Exercises to shift your mind and your subconsciously controlled body systems (such as heart rate and digestion).

Do you tend to engage in “Additive Thinking” or “Subtractive Thinking”? This has to do with how you handle failure. This determines whether your failures become learning experiences that make you better or suffering experiences that make you meek.

Two weeks ago I introduced you to the habit cycle as described in “The Power of Habits” by Charles Duhigg. Last week I introduced the technique known as Habit Reversal Training that can be used to help change any habit. I also mentioned that there is one crucial element that can make any habit change either bulletproof or susceptible to failure at a crucial moment. This element is belief. More specifically, it appears to be belief in something bigger than oneself.

Once you have identified and tracked the cues that send you into autopilot you can now choose to follow that cue with a healthier, more supportive behavior.

Do you have a bad habit…or 12? Maybe you have or have had an addiction? Have you ever tried to pick up a new, more healthy habit? Do you know how to change bad habits? Or how to install good habits? That’s right, I said install, like installing a program in a computer. Conventional wisdom tells us that habits are mysterious and control over habits is an elusive and mysterious process. A new book by Charles Duhigg tells us otherwise.

I have explained what FLOW is and how much it is like transcendent spiritual experiences. I talked about two ways to cultivate FLOW. One by changing yourself, the other by changing your environment. Today we will look at a 3rd factor in cultivating flow.

Increasingly, scientists are conducting studies looking at how practices such as yoga and meditation effect the brain. For centuries in the east there has been a tradition of rigorous practice and acceptance of yogic techniques as being beneficial for people in innumerable ways. For better and worse the west is not often convinced by anecdote or public consensus alone. We love to attempt to create a controlled environment and then adjust one variable and see what results. This is the basis for our scientific method.

Last week I introduced Mihaly’s research showing that happiness correlates with states of FLOW and then answered the question “What is FLOW?” I also mentioned that cultivating or creating FLOW can be approached in two ways. Today I will talk about those two ways to create FLOW by further exploring the connection between spiritual practice and becoming an expert. Both are about cultivating optimal experience.

This month we will look at how holding an integral perspective impacts our relationship to sex. Few things are guaranteed to exist through every stage of development. So far, sex is one of them. Clearly we have sex for a wide number of reasons. Even if technology someday changes the way we reproduce, it’s looking like a safe bet that we will continue to have sex. But many questions of how, why and with whom remain.

Imagine yourself having the experience described above. Are you happy? Has this happened in your life? It has probably not happened enough. What if you could learn to cultivate this experience so it begins to happen more and more often? What if happiness is a skill you have not been taught? Would you want to learn now?

Integral New York (disclosure: I am an organizer) hosted Alexander Belser for a presentation and discussion titled “Taking Mushrooms Before Dying: Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy”. Belser and his research team at New York University are part of a small group of scientists who, in recent years, have gotten government approval to conduct studies on the potential health effects of psilocybin, the active compound in “magic mushrooms”. Currently, psychedelic mushrooms are a schedule 1 drug. This makes them the most illegal of all drugs.

I have done the Master Cleanse once a year for the past 8 or 9 years. It gets easier every year. Honestly, the first times you do it the first three days can be a little difficult.

Charles Eisenstein has written an important book for our time: Sacred Economics: Money, Gift and Community in an age of Transition. In the hopes of inspiring potential readers and informing the rest, I would like to offer a brief summary and commentary on four key ideas contained in his work. I highly recommend you investigate further. Whether or not one agrees with Eisenstein’s ideas is second to the fact that these are the conversations we need to be having.