At the 2025 Integral European Conference, Tomas Björkman reminded us that humanity is standing at a bifurcation point — facing breakdown, oppression, or breakthrough. Through the Inner Development Goals (IDGs), he calls for a global narrative shift: to recognize that solving the great crises of our time requires cultivating inner capacities as much as external solutions. Listening to his vision, I recognized a deep resonance with my own work on AQtivating Soul Power: both approaches insist that inner awakening is not a luxury, but the foundation of collective survival and flourishing.

Tomas Björkman asks, what if the Sustainable Development Goals cannot be reached without an equally ambitious set of Inner Development Goals? Björkman has built a framework that translates the language of integral development into accessible, measurable skills — empathy, sense-making, long-term vision. His project is pragmatic, corporate-friendly, and globally scaling. My work on AQtivating Soul Power approaches the same challenge from another angle — by awakening the evolutionary impulse within us and our cities, activating the 12 intelligences of the Human Hive. Together, these perspectives suggest that humanity’s future depends on weaving skill with soul, practice with purpose, inner growth with outer wholeness.

Metacrises and Paradigm Shift

Björkman sees the interconnected crises that require systemic solutions. Synchronistically like Integral City (influenced by both complexity theory and Meg Wheatley’s Berkana paradigm shift model) we recognize that current life conditions present us with breakdowns that are portals to breakthroughs. With Soul Power, Integral City, calls on humans and our cities to “AQtivate” the deep intelligence that accesses our evolutionary impulse that is the regenerative centre of our “wholeness” (and GPS).

At this turning point of human evolution, Björkman  points to complexity and IDG’s as vital tools for a paradigm shift, while Integral City invokes Soul Power to enlighten its maps, voices and intelligences.

Inner Dimensions as Key to Collective Change

It seems clear that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) can only be manifested by developing the Inner Development Goals (IDG’s). Björkman  suggests that our narratives must shift beyond the outer goals to the practices of community development and policy integration.

Integral City’s GPS of 12 Intelligences resonate with this alignment of inner and outer voices – even cultivating coherence (through practices like the “Islands of Coherence” meditation).

Both thought leaders recognize the foundational qualities that inner development brings to systemic, sustainable change. The combination of intelligence and soul awakening may well enhance the metrics of skills and capacities.

Language and Accessibility

While Björkman  wisely distances himself from both integral jargon including the “green allergy,” he speaks language that is corporate friendly and evidence-based so that he can be heard by audiences who typically ignore or deny SDGs and IDGs.

Perhaps Integral City transgresses too easily into the metaphors from Nature (like bees, hives, cocoons, Soul Power) – while it firmly points to the lessons that biomimicry reflects?

Nevertheless, both IDG and IC approaches build bridges for (diverse) audiences to enter new territory – at least curious about options that open up generative possibilities.

Community as Developmental Crucible

Björkman advocates “deliberately developmental communities” (e.g., Lakefront Stockholm) where change-makers live and grow together.

Integral City, on the other hand, describes Human Hives where carers, curators, and choreographers co-create regenerative systems. IC focus on community coherence and emergent wholeness parallels the deliberatively developmental settlements.

Attractors of the Future

Björkman  asks what happens if we descend into chaos or oppressive techno-feudalism? And responds by calling a “third attractor” society — one more beautiful and complex, even if we can’t yet see its form.

IC points toward Soul Power as the (third) attractor that aligns people, places, and planet in aliveness and evolutionary unfolding.

It seems that both speakers share a vision of an emergent attractor, though framed differently — Björkman  through societal complexity and skill-building, Hamilton through evolutionary spirituality and integral wholeness.

We might say that Björkman is building pragmatic, skill-based entry points for inner development to scale globally. Hamilton is invoking the deeper soul impulse that integrates inner/outer intelligences into evolutionary wholeness. Both approaches are complementary — one offers measurable scaffolding, the other provides evolutionary depth and meaning.