More on ultimate integration

I've been working on this idea of "ultimate integration." I find I can call up the experience of pure awareness for a time. But soon my mind is back to playing out the various dramas in my life, and the ultimate dimension is history. Or is it? Of course since the ultimate and the manifest are but two sides of the same reality, it hasn't gone anywhere. My mind is all that leaves - to replay the past or anticipate the future, neither of which is happening now!

Integrating both sides of reality in my consciousness, then, requires being present, first of all. Such are the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, Eckhart Tolle and many others. Basically, it seems, spiritual practice boils down to practicing being present. Reality is only in the present. One's life is only happening in the present. All else is memory or speculation, all coming from our fallible and impermanent minds. (Of course, memory and speculation are very useful things, so long as we remember that's all they are!)

Comments

[janice stringer]

Lynne,
Just over a year ago my family and I travelled the world for just over 8 months. What I experienced during that time I believe to be internal integration. All parts of me seemed to come together at the same time, I experienced in different places my emotions, feelings,acknowledgements of held childhood beliefs(before travel consciously unknown)and developed adult beliefs. I brought together the learner, the educator,the child, the woman, the lover, mother and wife. I experienced difference and diversity within and without. I came back to england with space that I never knew existed within my mind and a real experience of me, also a calmness and a sense of fully living my life-of being present.
Alas as the saying goes'this to shall pass'
Can I ever experience the like again i dont know, what I do know is that what happened is what is classed as experiential learning and an integrtion of who I am and in return I felt fullfilled.
I just wanted to share my experience whilst thinking about your idea of ultimate integration.

[Lynne Tolk]

Thanks for sharing your experience, Janice. The great thing about learning (I am learning) is that it never ends. Insights, large and small, do pass, but we are not the same, for all that. There is an excellent book by Jack Kornfield, After the Ecstasy the Laundry, which explores this phenomenon.