For every authentic experience we have the ego mind is right behind trying to capture it and define it so that we can then identify ourselves with/through it. The real work is to witness this and let go. The real question is are you here to become somebody or for liberation. Identification places you in the process of becoming. Letting go and witnessing is the path to liberation. Meditation is the key.

 Samir and I were discussing our intentions for our January meditation retreat and Integration came up as an important part of our offering. With many friends seeking support for their own integration work and our own understanding that integration is the key to the embodiment of our experiences, we are offering this retreat as a tool for our friends to experience integration on all levels. After our conversation, Samir wrote a few paragraphs of his understanding of integration and how the teachings of Masters such as Atisha can support.

I thought to share what he wrote here:

Every experience we have, either from the outside world or from the vast inner world, will land in the systems of personality, beliefs and identities that define who we think we are.  These constructs are mostly utilitarian and help us adapt to the worlds we are born into.  They help us not only to survive but to conform to the families, cultures and societies we live in.

The difficulty arises when we don’t have access or exposure to understandings that transcend the bounds of normalcy and point toward a pathway that embraces individuality and freedom.

Without these understandings, we can misinterpret our experiences.

So how will we integrate our experiences?  Or in other words, WHAT will we bring our experiences INTO, WHO will experience them? 

Therapies and Self-Inquiry techniques work in the periphery of our inner world and seek to bring healing and new understandings to us.  We are offered the opportunity to let go of patterns that initially helped us adapt to the world but that now seem to have become burdens and prisons.  We can develop new tools to expand our lives and find more space to be ourselves.  We can experience healing in our bodies, where we carry the past.  Our minds can relax more as we gradually let go of the battles that different aspects of ourselves have been fighting inside.

Meditation is a process of disconnecting through awareness.  Disconnecting from WHO we think we are, to something else.  It is not something we have to learn.  It is something we have to remember. 

Medicine, used in the service of remembering, is a tool.  It is direct in its effects and works in all the dimensions of being. 

We are fortunate that we have access to understandings that have been experienced and shared by the Buddhas and Enlightened Ones of the past, such as Atisha. Their willingness to share can be helpful for our journeys and allow us to reshape ourselves and to interpret our experiences in deeper ways.  But in the end, we each must find our own way through our own efforts.

Therapy, meditation and medicine all can become pathways towards the ultimate experience of knowing who we are through our own experience.  How we Integrate this experience is in our hands.  Maybe we don’t get lost as easily along the way and if we do, we can find our way back to center faster.