Integration Living
“Wholeness is not achieved by cutting off a portion of one’s being, but by integration of the contraries”
- Carl Jung
Whether you are aware of it or not, as a living organism, you are always moving towards integration. This beautiful process of bringing together individual parts into a single, functioning system, is the basic law of life.
When you injure your skin, your body knows how to connect it back together. When you experience an emotional stressor, your nervous system responds to protect you. These are all efforts at restoring the equilibrium. Your innate healing intelligence always wants to bring you back to wholeness.
But sometimes the injury is so overwhelming, that it becomes hard to restore that harmony. You may be left with a scar, or a fragmented sense of self. You may develop defenses to help you survive, at the expense of your ability to thrive.
Your work then becomes a process of connecting the pieces that got misaligned along the way. Taking them apart and putting them back together, like a broken bone that needs surgery. It takes courage and commitment to let yourself fall apart. Letting go of the familiar requires trust that healing is possible.
“We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy”
Throughout this process, what you are really doing, is moving towards integration. Integration of your mind and body. Integration of your light and your shadow. Embracing the joy and the pain, finding balance between safety and growth.
The journey is not a straight line, it is more like a dance. We go in circles, which eventually become a spiral. When we outgrow one level, we get pulled towards another. The joy is in the dance of polarities that support this movement. Suffering comes from resisting it. In the end, what you are really looking for, is not perfection, only course correction. Small choices you make each day, help you find the way.
And when you master this dance, you stop worrying about missing a step. You realize that a power greater than you has been supporting you all along, and surrender was all that was necessary. Then you finally see your life, not as a journey, with some destination to reach, but a dance to be enjoyed. Keep on dancing.
