ABOUT JOHN KESLER

Integral Polarity Practice an Awareness and Meditation Practice

John teaches an awareness and meditation practice which he developed called Integral polarity practice (IPP). He has been sharing IPP for the past several years in North America and Europe through the Integral Polarity Institute.

IPP reflects an integral approach to awareness and meditation and related life practice which emphasizes a deep connection between internal awareness and personal integration and growth on the one hand, and service and social activism on the other. IPP includes but is not limited to interrelating and interpenetrating practices and thematic patterns in the following areas: polarities, states, stages, types, lines, quadrants, ascending and descending, evolution and involution, shadow, tantra, virtues, “unique self” and life practices. IPP provides a complement to any spiritual or life practice. The integral framing of IPP has been deeply influenced by the work of integral philosopher Ken Wilber.

IPP is significantly influenced by the “Big Mind Process”, of which, John was the fourth person to be certified by Genpo Roshi, the founder of this process, as a big mind large group facilitator after two abbots of Zen monasteries and Diane Musho Hamilton a transmitted Zen teacher. The Big Mind Process is considered by many to be the most significant development in Buddhism in over 100 years. John serves on the advisory board of Big Mind, Inc.

John and Diane were co-directors of a non-denominational community outreach meditation center in Salt Lake City affiliated with the Kanzeon Zen Center.

John served as director of the official meditation center for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

IPP integrates energetic and shamanic influences. John co-founded Indigenous Lenses, a non-profit organization dedicated to documenting indigenous shamanic traditions around the world before they disappear. In that context he was trained in shamanic practices. He currently chairs the board of Sierra Earthworks Foundation which supports the global work of Native American shaman and healer Ramona Sierra.

IPP is significantly influenced by Jewish Kabbalistic practices. In this regard he collaborates with and serves on the board of the non-profit foundation of Kabbalistic master Rabbi/ Doctor (doctorate from Oxford University) Marc Gafni. John is also a visiting teacher for I Evolve Global Practice Community co-founded by Rabbi/Doctor Gafni. As an integrally informed practice IPP takes into account developmental stages of the human being. John matched his ascending archetypal polarities in his meditation system with the latest research on the ego development of Suzanne Cook-Greuter grounded in the original research of Jane Lovenger. Dr. Cook-Greuter is perhaps the leading researcher in the world with regard to ego development from the pre-egoic to the post egoic ranges. John is vice chair and Dr. Cook-Greuter is chair of the board of trustees of the recently established Developmental Research Institute which is pursuing ongoing research on this model, particularly the transpersonal levels of human development. John is engaged in practice based research in this regard particularly in collaboration with Dr. Terri O’Fallon executive director of the Institute. He is also a visiting teacher for Pacific Integral, a leadership and human development consultancy in Seattle in which Dr. O’Fallon is a principal. IPP reflects the deep patterns of John’s Mormon tradition in which he is a high priest and a bishop and leads regular classes and workshops on awareness, meditation and life practices for Mormons. The closest Eastern corollary to the patterns underlying Mormonism is the Vedantic tradition, and particularly Kashmir Shaivism. IPP has been influenced by resonant teachings in the Vedantic tradition particularly including teachings of Kasmir Shaivism lineage holder Sally Kempton (Swami Durgananda).

John was a founding teacher of the Integral Spiritual Center and is a founding teacher of the successor organization, the Integral Life Spiritual Center.

Social Activism and Services

John facilitates, consults, writes, lectures and is an activist in the following areas where he has had the following experience:

• Community Flourishing in a Global Environment
  John served as Communities Editor of National Civic Review, the oldest and most respected journal in the United States addressing local civic and democratic practices. He led several studies relating to communities and community movements, funded by national foundations, and is credited with identifying, writing about and improving on many cutting edge aspects of community flourishing. John founded and chairs the Salt Lake Center for Engaging Communities, a non-profit corporation which models and mentors integral approaches to community flourishing in a global environment. He was a co-founder of GAN-Net, a network of global action networks, a new type of local-global multi-sectoral learning and leadership network. He served for several years as chair of the board of trustees of the Berkana Institute, which trains and has created a network of young leaders in third world settings to honor their native cultures and at the same time assist their people to take advantage of 21st century global communication and economic resources.
• Healthy Communities
  John founded and chaired the first state level healthy communities coalition in Utah. He was a co-founder and first co-chair of the US Healthy Communities States Network which included 30 state level healthy community coalitions. He was on the governance board of Coalition of Healthier Cities and Communities (CHCC), the US healthy communities coalition, and served part time as CHCC’s executive director for three years. While he was executive director of CHCC, CHCC sponsored tens of thousands of research based community dialogues and produced the globally influential study and report on “Seven Patterns of a Healthy Community.” With Professor emeritus Dr. Len Duhl of the University of California at Berkely, founder of the healthy community movement, John co-chaired the initiative to create a global action network of several thousand healthy community initiatives around the world.
• Health Care John served for 15 years on the board of the University of Utah Hospitals and Clinics including over 10 years as board chair. He also served as board chair for over a decade for the University of Utah Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, which has pioneered an integral model of treatment with an assumption of resilience and capacity even among the severely mentally ill and the importance of the balanced wellness of the providers of health care. John served on the board of the Utah Hospital Association for over a decade, and founded and was the first chair of the Utah Trustees Council, a state network of hospital trustees. For over five years John has chaired the Utah Health Care Vision 2010 Coalition comprised of all major health care stakeholders including major business and consumer groups in Utah, and has co-chaired the Wellness and Healthy Communities working group of the Coalition.
• Health Care Reform John co-founded and was first chair of the Integrative Health Network, founded to better establish evidence based integrative health in American health care. John co-founded and is the first chair of the Healthy Communities Wellness Self Management Network. The HC-WSM Network is a network of the leading scholars and clinicians in Utah of wellness (wellness self management) and healthy communities who have established ground breaking consensus principles of HC-WSM. The HC-WSM Network is dedicated to promoting through an integral approach a deep shift toward the model of wellness and resilience and long term maintenance of chronic conditions and treating sickness when it arises (rather than just treating sickness) in the US health care system, and as a major part of health care reform.
• Educational, Social and Political Reform John was a founding member of the Politics Center of a think tank, the Integral Institute. He has spent a good part of his adult life attempting to create greater educational, cultural, social and political flourishing through an integral approach. He spent many years promoting integral and democratic influences in education including chairing the board of a charter school founded by university professors dedicated to integrally informed education, being a civility consultant for the Utah Office of Education, and acting as executive director and being on the board of the Utah 3Rs program, dedicated to promoting religious liberty principles and civility in Utah Schools. In 2008 John convened the citizens of the State of Utah in developing a “Call to Civility and Community; Ground Rules for Discourse and Behavior”, which was endorsed by all top state leaders in Utah in all branches of government and both major political parties. John has recently announced the launching of an integral political movement, and his commitment to joining others to promote it as a non-ideological alternative to politics as usual. He teaches a monthly workshop at Westminster College in Salt Lake City addressing various integral approaches to social and political transformation, which has been endorsed by all state and private institutions of higher education in Salt Lake Valley with attendance by students and faculty from all of these institutions as well as the general public.

Law Practice

After initial years of law practice, Mr. Kesler served as regional general counsel for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days Saints for Eastern and Western Europe, Great Britain and Africa. After returning from residing in Europe in that capacity, Mr. Kesler co-founded and was managing partner of Woodbury &Kesler law firm headquartered in Salt Lake City for over 10 years, and is now “of counsel” to that firm. While he was managing partner, this law firm established 5 US offices and offices in Frankfurt Germany and Hong Kong. John’s law practice has emphasized international and commercial law.

John recently served as chair of the Constitutional law section of the Utah State Bar reflecting his longstanding interest in and study of the constitutional foundations of American society.

Since 1994 John has held and maintained both the highest professional rating (A) and highest ethical rating (V) given by the peer review US national lawyer rating service, Martindale Hubbell.

John’s most memorable representation to date was being named the international legal representative of the Provence of Sichuan China, the first time a Provence in China began to pursue international commercial relations without involvement of the central Government. The effort and the representation were short lived as the central government clamped down in a reaction to Tianamen Square.

John’s most repellant representation experience was when representing a Japanese billionaire who had purchased a casino in Las Vegas, John ended up staying in the casino three days a week for almost a year mediating endless conflicts between Japanese and American staff. He oversaw the replacement of three general managers and witnessed in depth the seedier side of casinos and Las Vegas casino culture . Ever since, John avoids staying in or even sleeping overnight anywhere near the Las Vegas strip if at all possible.

John’s current goal in law practice is to master the art of practicing law as a spiritual practice. Now that is a paradox to hold!

Community Based Church Service

John and his wife, Colleen, are currently serving together an “inner city service mission” in Salt Lake City for the Mormon Church, where they work with those in extreme need, specifically including those with challenges of addiction and homelessness.

Sports, Education and Early Career

John was the US Junior National Champion in the 100 meter backstroke while in high school. He attended and swam on the freshman swimming team at Stanford University which had the best freshman team in the US at a time when freshmen were not allowed to swim on varsity teams. He was undefeated his freshman year including against a swimmer that went on to win the world university games a few years later and could beat the best varsity swimmer at Stanford who was an all American that year.

John had a passion for science and had the highest chemistry lab scores of any Freshman at Stanford. He assumed that he would pursue a research oriented path in science. Nevertheless, the first intimations of the student social revolution were stirring on the Stanford Campus in 1964, and being exposed to its implications, John suddenly decided to commit himself to understanding the deep cultural and political changes that were taking place and to become a social activist. Never having even joined a club in school growing up and having limited communication and social skills and no leadership experience, John transferred to the local state university where he grew up in Salt Lake City, the University of Utah, where he could learn such skills and explore the social sciences and political philosophy in which he had no background in a less rigorous academic environment.

Three years later John graduated from the University of Utah magna cum lauda and was student body president. After sitting out a year as required by the NCAA, John swam on a limited basis but stayed on the University swimming team in order to have a full ride scholarship and was able to achieve all conference swimmer status, although he never returned to level he was on when he was a freshman.

John was selected by Time Magazine as one of ten student leaders in the US to oversee “Choice 68” , a program to engage under age students in the 1968 presidential election. John was chosen by the US State Department to be one of 10 student leaders in the US to go on a fact finding mission to Vietnam and countries in East Asia meeting with government and student leaders to assess their attitudes and concerns relating to the Vietnam War.

John was awarded a Rotary International fellowship to do graduate work in political philosophy at the University of Hamburg in Germany. After returning from Europe John was on active duty in the national guard, and then until his reserve obligation was completed, he served in various intelligence units in the guard and reserves primarily studying various languages and evaluating radical political movements around the world.

John worked as a congressional staffer in Washington D.C. and then became a consultant regarding the implications of the dramatic cultural and political changes that had been taking place since the 60’s. He served in this regard for the White House and for the United Nations.

John could not find a graduate academic program that even remotely addressed the nature and scope of his interests in social and political change, and his increasing interest in interrelated issues of spirituality, philosophy and social activism. So he decided to attend law school with an emphasis on international and comparative law to give himself a broader grounding in the legal and value foundations of society and to forego PhD training or an academic career, which he deeply regrets from time to time, and the rest of the time celebrates. John received a Juris Doctor degree from Columbia University Law School. While at the law school he continued his consulting in Washington D.,C. and New York, and was absent from classes quite a bit. John was chosen to be an International Fellow of the graduate school of Columbia University, and then served as assistant to the director of the International Fellows Program also while still a student at the law school. The International Fellows programs selected a few graduate students from each of the graduate schools of Columbia University to receive enriched interdisciplinary training in international affairs, exposure to global leaders and assignments in internationally oriented scholarship through the Columbia Graduate School of International and Public Affairs.