Live The Integral Life

Live The Integral Life

To live an integral life is to live a spiritual life.

It’s a search for our essential completeness or wholeness. In fact we are already whole. We just need to rediscover this completeness.

In essence then our journey becomes one of self discovery—of finding out who we really are. It’s the quest to “Know Thyself”.

As we discover who we are we integrate into ourselves that which fulfills us and discard that which does not. It’s like separating the wheat from the chaff during the harvest.

In fact the more we separate the wheat from the chaff, the closer we come to that critical mass of energy that ignites our heart of love and gives us the passion for taking action to unleash our potential.

To live the integral life is to build a foundation of action based on 7 key principles.

Principle No. 1: Acceptance Is The Key

“Sometimes what seems like surrender isn’t surrender at all. It’s about what’s going on in your own heart. About seeing clearly the way life is and accepting it and being true to it, whatever the pain, because the pain of not being true to it is far, far greater.”
Albert Einstein

Before you can accept your life, you need to become aware of what it is you need to accept. How many times do we worry about what is going to happen and it never happens.

Worry, fear and a lack of faith in ourselves are each a form of resistance. And what we resist persists. We whine and complain, while making excuses for why we are stuck.

What we really need is to accept each moment and trust that all will be well. And then make that moment of trust like a train which just keeps moving and moving and moving….

There will be bumps and roadblocks in life. That’s part of the great game. So we need to find a way to overcome the difficulties and always find the humor in many of life’s situations as much as we can.

Once we accept and face a challenge magic happens. Not only do we realize that we have the greatest force within us to face the challenge, but we are the greatest force on earth.

The more we accept life as it is right now, the more we can change and transform any situation in which we find ourselves.

Once we accept life on its terms, we are ready, willing and eager to enthusiastically embrace what lies ahead of us. Only then do we truly become the masters of our destiny.

Principle No. 2: Remember Your Wholeness

“Be a life long or short, its completeness depends on what it was lived for.”
Albert Einstein

“Each circle is the wholeness of the moment, inclusive of the means and the end.”
Kazuaki Tanahashi

To live a life of wholeness is to live a vibrant life in all its myriad aspects.

We live in a world of duality, of opposites or pairs like two sides of a coin. To experience our wholeness is to realize that the Cosmic Game is to embrace this duality and go beyond the opposites.

It’s like turning on the light switch in a dark room. Until we accept the light and realize our purpose is to transcend and to progress, we will look at life as a crisis instead of an opportunity.

We are not just a body; we are not just a mind; we are not just our vital, (our emotions and life force); we are not just our heart; we are not just our soul. We are all of these.

When each part of our being works together we become greater than any one part. When we use our hands, we cannot say that they are separate from our feet. They are attached and part of us. But how often do we separate ourselves from a part of our body because we feel it is less than the ideal we would like.

We may not be using all parts at any one time, but the more we can feel the oneness with each part of our being while honoring its unique function, the sooner we will become who we were meant to be.

To be whole we need the awareness that our success and progress in life doesn’t just involve our “little ego I”. If we are to have true joy and fulfillment in life we must go beyond the “little ego I” and revolve around the universal self or bigger “I”.

We are the satellite orbiting the Sun, inextricably connected through forces visible and invisible.

Principle No. 3: Live In The Present Moment

“Life is the sum of what you focus on.”
Winifred Gallagher

“We are always getting ready to live but never living.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Judge each day not by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you plant.”
Robert Louis Stevenson

“You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend or not.”
Isabel Allende

To live in the present point of time we need to look at where we’ve been; where we are now and where we want to go.

Our present state of being encompasses all our inherited characteristics and tendencies.

What’s more it’s the sum total of all our experiences including the results of past actions, both good and bad. Then there’s our outer environment where forces exist that want to hold us back.

To live in the present moment we must forget that part of the past that no longer serves us, while building on the good that we have already achieved. In that way we will grow into our future with confidence.

The process of forgetting the past involves looking at our life story from our current vantage point and then moving back in time. Looking at the pain and trauma along with our joy give us the context for that point in time called “the present”.

To move forward and create our dreams and vision for the future we have to redefine our present moment. We need to create a map as to where we want to go. Then we can step onto a new path.

There are four points to the creative process that will propel us onto a new path in freedom and certainty.
Imagine you are at the center of an axis.

Ahead of you is your realization, the many aha’s you’ve had and the many more you desire. But you’ll only get there with determination.

Behind you is frustration and imperfection. These are all those negative qualities and habits that have not served you, nor brought you the satisfaction that you were looking for.

Above you Divine protection and salvation awaits you. A loving Creator who only desires your satisfaction and fulfillment

The other point is deep within in the inmost recesses of your being where lays perfection and illumination. It’s the point beyond the duality of existence where all is still and at peace.

As you travel forward, upward and inward, you leave behind all that has not served you. It’s like tossing out old tattered clothes that you no longer need and your points are only upward, inward and forward.

Principle No. 4: Life Is A Journey Of Self Discovery

“As an irrigator guides water to his fields, as an archer aims an arrow, as a carpenter carves wood, the wise shape their lives.”
Buddha

“Life is a celebration of awakenings, of new beginnings, and wonderful surprises that enlighten the soul.”
Cielo

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Socrates

“Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.”
Samuel Johnson

What is the purpose of examining our lives? So we can make progress and reach our full potential. It’s to create the life you desire and dream of.

The question is what do you want to create—a piece of rusty junk, a piece of art or a masterpiece?

The journey of self discovery is one of focus. Each of us must decide who is running our life. Are we in control, is our life in control or are other people running our lives.

To examine our life is to challenge our own limitations, no matter where these limitations have come from. We have capabilities at every level of our being.
Another part of examining our life is to discern what we need to hold on to and what we need to let go.

Life is like going to school. We have lessons to learn and there are some lessons that are easier than others.

Our lessons are our teachers. Our family, our mentors, our role models, our coaches are also our teachers. Even our so called enemies can be our teachers.

There may be a plateau while completing a lesson or there may be a delay.

Many of the lessons will require experimentation and evaluation. But when each lesson is completed, no matter how small, it becomes a stepping stone on the pathway to greater success.

Each completion is a graduation and should be rewarded with a celebration.
It takes time. We can’t graduate from university without starting in kindergarten.

It takes many stones to create a roadway. In the same way each stepping stone experience is learning, newness, and growth if we can believe and have faith in ourselves.

This is the key that opens the golden door of fulfillment.

Then the trick is not to forget what we have learned. Each time we learn from our mistakes, we weaken the negative pattern of behaviour and each time we repeat the mistake we move backwards and strengthen the pattern.

Life is on the move so we need to decide if we are moving with it or just treading water or worse yet going backwards. When we go backwards, we make the same mistake again and again and so the negative pattern or habit repeats itself.

We don’t suddenly become our ideal self. It is a gradual process of transformation and enlightenment.

While we’re discovering ourselves if we take a glimpse back from where we came, we realize our nature is being transformed and at the same time we’re also moving forward.

Principle No. 5: Self Transcendence

Self transcendence is the transformation of our nature. By rejecting our limiting self and indentifying ourselves with what we want to become we move forward and grow into the higher reality which the Source of our existence.

It can apply to any aspect of our being. Physical self transcendence can be running faster; mental self transcendence can be going beyond our purely self centered divisionary thinking.

Self transcendence goes beyond the thinking of the mental person. The thinking person, the doubting person, finds it extremely difficult or impossible to identify with that reality.

It’s not a process of intellectual thought. It’s an action of self giving to become the reality that is our goal.

The source of this self-giving is the psychic human. The psychic human—the heart and soul—become part and parcel of the reality by identifying with reality itself.

This requires the spiritual practice of prayer and meditation.

It involves giving up of one’s ego self in order to attain true joy and delight. As the Christ said: “He who loses himself will find himself”.

And finally self transcendence is a process of evolution.

“Evolution is the hyphen between what was and what shall be. We all know Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution of species. It is the change in the physical organism from lower to higher, or from simpler to more complex. Spiritual evolution runs parallel to physical evolution. The soul exists in all beings. True, it is divine and immortal. But it has its own urge to be more complete, more fulfilling and more divine. Hence, in the process of its evolution, it has to pass from the least perfect body to the most perfect body. At each stage, it takes into itself the real value of all its earthly experiences. Thus the soul grows, enriching itself, making its divinity more integral, more harmonious and more perfect.
Sri Chinmoy in “Yoga and the Spiritual Life” p. 44-45

Principle No. 6: You Have A Mission

“Happiness, health, and prosperity are the result of a harmonious adjustment of the inner with the outer of the man with his surroundings.”
James Allen

“Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.”
Simone Weil

Know that you came into the world with a special mission. It can be found deep within the recesses of your heart—in the very depths of our soul.

In fact you have two a twofold mission. One is the discovery of your Highest Self—the Source of your being while the other is your unique contribution in creating a better world.

As this two part process it includes our outer evolution or our service to the world and involution or a turning inward where we discover who we really are.

Principle No. 7: The World Beyond

“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
Albert Einstein

We are on our own, but we are never alone. We live in an interdependent world.

Ideally this goes beyond the world of competition into the world of oneness, where oneness becomes an extended part of our own reality.

As we transcend and transform our nature we gain a wider perspective of our true self.

The question then becomes “Who am I if I am not you?”

All the great spiritual traditions have the concept of the golden rule “treat others as you yourself would like to be treated”. When we view others as our own, then we can no longer act in a way that injures them.

Our lens then becomes only one of love. In this way we create a world of peace and harmony.

Written by Joyce Friesen