I’m always talking about doing the work. What the work’s really about is the process of bringing our unconscious patterns out into the light so we can see them and understand more about who we are, what is going on with us, the choices we are making and why. The work we do for ourselves and our lives brings greater happiness, understanding, and a sense of peace and acceptance. But the work is only half of the equation. The work matters little if we can’t integrate what we’ve figured out and begin living it as second nature.

Integration can be an even fuzzier concept than the work. Where do we even start? What are we actually integrating? What do we even do to integrate the lessons we’ve learned or the insights we’ve gleaned? Surprisingly it’s got a pretty straightforward answer, practice. Practice what you might be asking? Practice paying attention. When we pay closer attention to what is going on, how we feel, situations that repeat themselves, or holes we can’t seem to dig ourselves out of, we begin to see our lives in a larger context and start to notice the way things come together and why at times they fall apart.

Within the nature of practicing is remembering. We begin to remember what matters to us, how we felt when we had a significant experience or aha moment. Remembering becomes an essential piece of the puzzle of integration if we are to live and grow into more and more of who we truly are. Remembering means we become familiar with the feelings of lightness, alignment, flow, or prickliness, hesitation, discomfort and slowly begin to recognize which actions lead to which results. When we become clearer about why things come together or why they don’t we are in the process of integrating. And this is when we start seeing ourselves and our choices with greater clarity. From there we can be more discerning about what we let into our lives or choose to leave out.

After an unspecified amount of time, and cloaked in a bit of mystery, we fully integrate what’s happened or what we’ve understood in a new way. The day comes when we just get it, what was under the covers is now front and center and we begin to live from that insight into the next. Really we are always on the spectrum of recognizing something new and integrating it into our daily living, it just never appears as a clean line or simple trajectory. It’s a tangled mess. There are a bunch of staggered ideas in the process of becoming the life we are learning to live into.

So there you have it, paying attention and practice creates integration and makes space for our new insights to become familiar territory. Always there is something new and always there is something that’s wanting to be seen or understood. The great integration becomes more recognizable the more we pay attention to what is going on in our lives, how we feel about what we’re currently doing, and what we want more or less of. It takes practice to change old habits and old mindsets and begin living in a new way.

So be kind and gentle with yourself. Life can be rocky at times. Take a break when you need it. Rest when you’re tired, but always begin again.

The great cycle of growth requires our patience and sincere practice.

kb