Tears are my friend of late. 

 

I can't help but allow them to flow gently down my cheeks. I've gotten to the point where I don't even bother wiping them away. I love the feeling of their soft paths drying on their own time. 

 

There's something beautiful about walking along a side walk with tears rolling down my face, about the softest of tears cooling my cheeks as I check my mail box. There's something precious about tears rolling out from my eyes as I press hundreds of pounds from my heart or as I cycle on a stationary bicycle. Sometimes the tears land just perfectly on my knee. 

 

Life is so utterly heart breaking right now. To breathe in my life right now is shatteringly painful. This very breath wells tears into my eyes. Why? 

 

This is all just too precious, this beautiful radiant moment is so precious. I seemingly can't stand how much I love life. On one hand there's no "thing" about life that stands out right now, it's just this beautiful field of life that breaks my heart. On the other hand, it's seemingly just about anything that can pierce through my heart. Sometimes its someone's eyes, an heart felt invitation, someone protecting themselves, a song dancing within my heart...  

 

Part of me wants to possess, to hold on to this dancing immediacy. Part of me knows I can't hold any of this. To do so would close me down to the very love and vitality that hurts with such beauty. I think this dives into the heart of what is so shatteringly penetrating. My heart loves this moment with a gasping unconditioned embrace, and there's the part of me that wants to hold on, to possess something when ultimately there's nothing to have here. 

 

The impermanence of this life is just so penetrating, so uncompromising. I can feel just how fast and fleeting this life is. I'm 30 now. I'm utterly shocked by this fact. I never thought  my life would last this long. And yet I can still feel the time of the transcendent in my bones, this is all going to be over in just a few moments, just a few blinks of the Kosmic eye. Rob will soon be gone. I take form, I change, I dissolve and pass away. 

 

In the meantime, the only thing that matters is to Love. To articulate my Love's Kindness in every gesture that animates this body-mind.

 

Kindness, Kindness, Kindness. 

 

Kindness not born of convention, but a Kindness that knows only the beauty of this moment and the precious opportunity to dance from Love's timeless unconditioned source. 

 

Does anything else really matter? Does anything else truly hold this depth? 

The center of your heart does not make distinctions. 

The heart at it's core simply is open, radically vulnerable, intimately receptive. 

 

There's no, "I'll take this, but not that."

There's no conflicted stance, no I'll be "sort of" open...but only to the things I want. 

 

Openness as it quietly rests at the center of your heart is in many ways an either or phenomena. Either your heart is Open and Alive in the moment or it's not. Your heart either feels intimately this very moment or it severs itself from the very life that animates it's vitality. 

 

When Open, the heart knows no obstacle. The heart feels obstacles, but unconditionally remains open, receptive, spacious and intimate with every subtle nuance of this moment's presence, this moment's configuration, this moment's articulation of itself. 

 

The problem is the part of you that does make distinctions, does take sides, does stake claims in preferences. When you do this, the basic nature of the heart is severed from how you function in the world. The alive unmediated lovingness of your heart is severed and your life becomes a rote expression of your slavery to the preferences, opinions, likes and dislikes of your conditioned history. 

 

When the cool open spaciousness of the heart is lost within your direct moment to moment experience, you stop feeling with the fullness of your being. As a result, you live your life in accordance to your conditioning. Contracted into your preferences, distinctions and sides you guide your life from a lesser place. You feel less because you're less alive. You are less skillful because you lead your life from a more self-centered perspective. You're less kind in the world because you don't feel deeply into this radiant moment. 

 

As days slip by you continue onward semi-consciously amidst your life. Days turn into weeks and weeks to months. Suddenly years start slipping by as you slumber through each moment contracted around "you." As each moment beautifully flowers into an exquisite dance and dissolves away but your heart's truest most authentic articulation of life remains largely dormant as long as you live a life enslaved to your small self and it's conditioned preferences.

 

The heart remains ever present, waiting, the authentic articulation of yourself is brought into its fullest life as you release your attachments. As you stop contracting around you, your heart's immense sensitivity and delicate responsive aliveness comes to life. You die,  your little box of a self dissolves and something much more precious than you can possibly image takes life right here, right now. 

 

Here's a bow to the Heart. 

I am amidst what I call a push workout. I'm training my shoulders and core on this particular occasion, performing a cycle of lateral dumbbell raises, abdominal crunches on a bench and a practice of release in which I'm working on core and spinal flexibility. 

 

Everything is *normal* perhaps too normal which proved to be the breakthrough. In my training I effortlessly fell into a Complete Surrender.

 

I'm not talking about the kind of surrender where you stop doing everything, allow your breath to naturally rise and fall as you drop all inner motion as you would on your meditation cushion or as I will at times practice between my sets. 

 

In this emergence of Complete Surrender I was in the midst of an intense set of dumbbell lateral raises. I was exerting, pushing, flowing into each movement when shockingly everything changed, Surrender enveloped my conventional way of being-in-the-world. 

 

From this Great Shift my eyes caught themselves in the mirror. As I stared deeply into my soft brown eyes everything was completely the same yet utterly different. The "I" that I conventionally understood was still there, same thoughts, same motions, same engagement with the intensity, yet for some reason my gaze fixed deep into my still eyes.

 

Amidst a contracting face and an intense extension of energy out into the world the subject from which I experienced life was all of the objects arising around me. 

 

My Witness was no longer confined to feeling life from within my particular body-mind. Instead I was feeling life through the dumbbells in my hands, I could feel the mirrors from their own interior.  

 

As my set continued onward, I felt the stair case behind me, the railing, the rack of weights, the wall wrapping around into the locker room.  Perhaps most odd and profound was the space from which all of these things arouse. I could feel this cool expansive space from it's own interior just as I could feel the growing burning radiance in my shoulders as I raised the dumbbells again and again. 

 

Awareness, liberated in it's essential nature, was awake and my witness (the witnessing faculty typically identified with my individual body-mind) had realized itself (the transcendent ever-present all-witnessing-witness). The subject and object had become one. As Wilber so eloquently says, "What you are looking out of is what you are looking at." 

 

As we approach the new year I offer you this one instruction. Give yourself to your discipline. It doesn't matter what discipline you've chosen, what does matter is how completely you've given yourself to it. This year, practice surrendering to what animates you. Practice it until Surrender practices you, until the Great Shift holds you anew with grace and beauty.

 

Peace in Stillness, 

~Rob 

Right now you've got one chance, one life, one opportunity. Manifestation has but one occasion to know who you are, experience your fullness and feel your love. You've got one body-mind and one life from which to share and serve.

One shot, that's it.

Now I'm not talking about one life as in a certain number of years before you meet your body-mind's relative eventuality (that's a sophisticated way of saying "you say hello to death"). I'm talking about life as this moment.

This is all you really have, or rather all that has you. If you think you've got years, got more than what's right here right now you're fooling yourself. You're painting a fantasy. The fact is you don't, nor will you ever, fully know where this moment is going to take you. Cancer, a car accident, an allergic reaction, a stroke, a heart attack, terrorism in any of its faces, an asthma attack...

Your body-mind may indeed shine into it's full brilliance beyond your next exhale, but there's no guarantee of this. As your chest rises with this inhale and falls away there's no guarantee aside from what's here right now.

This is perhaps Mortality's core message to you. You get one shot, one chance and this is it. "This" is the present moment, not your fantasy of what you'd like to have in terms of days, weeks, months and or years.

This message from Mortality isn't coming to you from the outside, letting you know that death is going to come for you. While you may be reading this blog, reading these words, check in and see if they resonate with truth from within. They will. Ultimately you'll find the message from within your own body-mind is no different from what is being shared here in these words.

While it often appears at first that death is something that comes to you and happens to you, something more profound is happening. Death is a part of yourself that, chances are, you have yet to own, embrace and guide your life from. Death doesn't happen to you, it is who you are. Thus Mortality's core message actually comes from within. Mortality's message resonates from a deeper sense of self that holds more authenticity, more beauty, more brilliance and ironically more life and vitality.

Regardless of whether or not you want to accept it or not you will come face to face with the crossroads of life and death. You will cross the bridge.

You can pretend as though this bridge resides off in the distant future, something for you to worry about "later." If you do choose this you're stunting your life, building your life around fantasy and avoiding your deepest calling and strength.

If you look closely, you can see that the bridge for you to cross is ever-present. The crossroads to the Unknowns are right here. Mortality stands within you as an invitation to enact and embrace more life, more of what's good, true and beautiful.

Are you going to paint a fantasy attempting to build a wall around your heart? Are you going to internally dismiss death's call for your ultimate freedom and fullness? Are you going to settle down, sit with your anxiety and face death eye to eye? Are you going to open your heart to death's grace? Are you really going to let death settle in and radiate throughout your body-mind as more vibrant life?

Death awaits. You know its message, its power, and its purpose. Deep down you know it. Now is the time to stop running, avoiding and escaping from your own greater freedom and fullness. You are simply too precious, to profoundly beautiful to cut yourself from your truest core. Embrace death now, allow yourself to breath out your last. Expect only your freedom and your fullness in this moment. Leave the rest to grace. This is Morality's chief concern.

~R

Invariably life brings it's beautiful partner death to the dance.

 

You're invited.

 

Sorry but there's no turning down this dance, nor is it a dance you want to turn down. Anyone in their "right" mind would be a fool to resist. Yet how often do we spend our precious time playing out the fools dreams, pretending that the fool in us knows best?

 

Without death's grace life's glory slips away into a fleeting void. Does it not? So why resist, avoid, deny, run and pretend that you know not what resides beyond your conventional grasp of life?

 

For those who've made it here to this web page for one reason or another here's a glimpse of the dance between life, death and this guy who happens to respond to the name Rob.

 

~~~~~~~

 

My asthma strolled into my life like an old friend that you just know shouldn't be there. Familiar yes, somewhat known yet I know in my gut something's "off." This friend shouldn't be here right now. He wasn't invited. The look on his face confirms, something isn't quite right but I pretend not to know what.

 

I knew from the moment the subtle tightness set into my chest that something different was happening. Everything was the same, same old tightness, same old medicines, same old precautions, same old everything except for a nearly intangible felt sense that everything was different this time.

 

I immediately threw everything I had in my arsenal to continue the illusion that I was "OK." I chalked it up as I told myself and other's that I "just didn't want to spend my vacation struggling with my asthma." Looking back, I think I just wanted to avoid this subtle sensation, this fine shift in my being knew something else was going on here.

 

This fine subtle shift knew death had just cut in on the dance. I avoided it with more medicine, more treatments, more pills, more puffs, more struggle, more "fresh air" and more avoidance.

 

What was locked in my more conventional mind was that nothing was going on. "It's no big deal, don't worry, I'm fine. I've been here before. There's nothing to be worried about... just enjoy the vacation" I rehearsed to myself.

 

Over the next few days I got worse every day. Every few hours seemed to bring a step backward. Less of the normal life I wanted to have and more the constricted suffering I wanted to avoid. The more I treated my asthma the further I slipped towards death's powerful pull to dance.

 

My conventional mind constricted tightly around a belief that I was fine. I kept my back to death as I starred into life's eyes. Let's dance some more I demanded, gripped onto life's hands as the now odd dance continued.

 

New years eve arrived, the snow softly fell from the emptiness of the dark sky and we headed up into the mountains. My incessant drive to dance with life suddenly shifted into an exquisite play of vibrant moments. It was a clearing in the most unlikely of places. A taste of the "normal life" was mine to enjoy. I breathed in ease for the first time in days as I coasted long gentle ski slopes.

 

The soft silent snow, the breeze across my face and the immense stillness and contentment in my heart was exquisite. While the mountains were breathtaking, the surrounding lakes in the distance beautiful and the company warm and loving the most appreciated element was a cool effortless washing breath flowing in and out, in and out. No hit of tightness, no hit of the storm that had been brewing.

 

I knew from when I was a little child that my asthma would "take me." Something in me knew I would die from this. It wasn't a guess or a hunch, it was a knowing stemming from some unknown and unseen part of myself. This intuition was an unshakable certainty, I just didn't know when. But here it was knocking on the door and all I could do was deny. This isn't it. let's all pretend that this really isn't going to happen.

 

My day in the mountains came to a close and as it did my break from the downward spiral ended. My condition worsened and new years day brought with it life's all too common frantic avoidance of death. Panic flashed through my bodymind as I started to awaken to my condition.

 

It was a brief cutting full bodied flash. In this flash I heard myself saying "take me to the hospital."

 

I dulled it with relaxation, release and an intense focus on my breathing as my machine steamed medicine into my lungs. My subconscious mind rehearsed it's persistent argument: "Maybe, just maybe I'll turn this around after this treatment. Maybe something will change soon."

 

I completed my treatment and watched myself worsen by the minute. Left with no other course of action aside from acceptance I tried one more treatment. As I huddled over my machine wrenching air in and out of my lungs with heroic effort life's colorful vibrations faded away as I fell into death's arms. I reached out for help in desperation in my last moments, tears flowing freely until the I that I assumed to be me passed out.

 

Amidst the intense turmoil as I suffocated and fought for life's hand I found myself enveloped my the heaviest, deepest sense of emptiness and peace. A plunge into a relaxation that makes the best relaxation you've probably ever known seem stressful.

 

There was no energy expended, I mean that quite literally. When your body stops, your mind stops, your heart stops and an indescribable peace slowly settles in with a fullness, a richness and a completeness that's breath taking - literally. It's embrace is stunning as it fights nothing, accepts all and holds all of you all the same. The desperation of life's impulse to continue, the inevitability of cessation, the love of those around you and your resistance to leave. It's all OK.

 

As my lifeless body laid on the carpet, my pale oxygen deprived skin turned blue, then to a dull lifeless grey. The heavy dense, infinitely thick emptiness enveloping me was sliced through for a brief sliver of a moment. The sound of sirens sliced through this deepening peace to reach my awareness.

 

"ah, good they're here" was the very last thought belonging to my more conventional sense of self. After this my body, my awareness, my mind, my heart, nothing touched this known world of form - at least not from the vehicle of my more conventional sense of self.

 

The transcendent self can be defined as that which perceives yet its perception is no longer identified with nor grounded exclusively in the conventional body-mind.

 

As the paramedics furiously fought to save a young lifeless body with no vitals I'm in the process of remember my Self. I Recognize my Self, the one who came prior to the "Rob" who was born on October 30th 1977. I remember who I AM prior to this "life" that has just passed. I feel as though I've returned home, I realize I'm returning to something that's never been left.

 

Decades appear as short brief minutes amidst the Kosmic clock as life and death's dance continues; however, with a radical clarity I realize my "life" in the more conventional sense has been more of a "death" and this, yes this embrace of death shines forth as life, genuine vitality.

 

I remember Death is the plunge into a depth of life unfathomable to the conventional self.

 

My arms begin to extend, stretching outwards. My awareness follows as my arms continue to extend and dissolve into a radical embrace of manifestation. I sweep across mountains, forests and their brilliantly confident trees. In an instant become one with a loved one. I'm not their body, nor their mind in this moment. I hear their thoughts, I know their intentions, but I am their emotions coursing through their bodymind. I am their emotion - their basic energy-in-motion.

 

Here's to the emergent tree of life from which we all are fumbling towards the divine and to those who embrace the dance of life and death.

I've received more than a few questions on the intention front and there's a few critical elements I'd like to at least briefly touch on for those interested in the "power of intention." First of all I'd like to say this: Intention is NOT - I repeat not - the same thing as a wish. Wishful thinking isn't a whole lot different from the fantasy filled thinking you did when you were a child. Now there's nothing wrong with this approach to relating to the world, yourself and your dreams. It's just not very effective if your age isn't still in the single digits. Wishes generally stem from your "surface level thinking," meaning wishes are often created by impulsive desires and or fantasies that are created by your conditioned history. Most often wishful thinking parading around as "intention" is focused on outcomes, getting this, or getting rid of that. Again there's nothing wrong with this; however, the assumption that if you wish for something it will come true largely doesn't work. Try an experiment, see if it does. I think you'll find that it doesn't work so well. Now for most adults - developmentally disabled may be an exception here - wishing your life to change parading around as the "power of intention" is a regressive movement. Again, this is OK; however, it isn't all that effective in terms of making grounded change in your life. So for those who're interested in the true power of intention, and perhaps a more effective way to spark and catalyze change, let's move onto the good stuff and foster healthy wishful thinking in our young children and not ourselves, peers and other individuals who's age does indeed involve two digits. At a deep level, intention is an important structure or process that lies at the very core of who we consider ourselves to be. Now I'm talking about at a deep level, so your more surface-level social construction of a sense of self isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a level of authenticity that delves beyond your more "social" identity we first start to create in adolescence and consolidate in early adulthood. Let's go beyond this "you." Now this structure involves a choice, a decision if you will. For those of you thinking well, we all make decisions and thus we all are connected to our "intentionality" you're partly right. Even the wishful thinking is stemming from your intention to bring about some change - or so it seems. Yes it appears to be this way, it certainly looks and feels as though our more "surface" selves have an intentionality of their own. But here's the key question in my mind. Are you really making a choice, a decision for yourself - your authentic sense of self? OR is your decision, wish and "intention" stemming from your conditioned history? It boils down to this, do you create your intention or does the intention that's handed to you by your conditioned history create you? I'll put it another way because this is one hell of an important question, Does your conditioned history own you or do you own it? The vast majority of people are largely owned by their conditioned history, and thus when they work with the "power of intention" they find themselves desiring, fantasizing and wishing just what their history ordered. Unlocking the power of intention requires that you take ownership of your capacity to choose, to make a decision for yourself - one that belongs solely to your most authentic self - not the selves that rest in dependence to your conditioning. In order to do that you simply MUST have cultivated a stability of mind, a clarity to see beyond the surface waves of your conventional selves and a strength to courageously act from the spring within you that is the fountain of your most authentic purpose in life. So grab your cushions, and work on your stability of mind. Pick up your weights and burn the torching light of radical clarity that sees more of this and every moment. Roll out the yoga mat and cultivate the strength of your effortless single pointed focus as your body-mind manifests as the perfect expression of the asana. Without these the basic prerequisites, you will simply not unlock the true power of intention. And if you're not unlocking this core seed of intention, chances are you're probably reinforcing and strengthening your attachment to playing out the puppet show of your conventional selves, their conditioned fantasies and surface level desires. And while the popular understanding of intention points to the world being at your feet and your conventional sense of self getting whatever it wants I urge everyone to consider this: If indeed you do power your way to have the world at your feet, is it you who own and have mastered the world or is it the conventional world that owns and has mastered you? Consider this carefully because if you do employ more sophisticated ways to engage the world - disciplined action, visualization, mantras, affirmations, goal setting, etc. - and these tools are in service to the more conventional you - you're playing with a fire that fuels more and more suffering for both yourself and others.

A few weeks ago I finally made it in for an annual physical - although in my case it would be more accurate to call it the decade physical. I'm pleased to report that in i'm in good health; I've got no ringing in my ears, my eyes appear to be doing well and I didn't have any pain as the Doc pushed into my stomach feeling out my organs. My blood pressure is "very good" and my resting heart rate was so low the nurse asked me if I "exercised a lot." I said "yes." I thought I was doing pretty good until my doctor brought my weight to my attention. As he put it "Now I want you to be aware you're 3 points away from what we consider obesity." According to the wonderfully efficient and innovative Body Mass Index or BMI as its often called I'm "overweight" and not just a little overweight. I'm only a few pounds shy from being clinically obese according to the BMI. My doctor continued, "now I know you've got some muscle; however, I want you to be aware of this." My 6 and a half minutes were up with the doc after a brief discussion of my asthma and I was finally given permission to put my clothes back on. As I was getting dressed I was laughing to myself, I just got my first obesity talk! Here's a guy who was poking and prodding around on my body, I've attached a photo of me in my pre-obese state to give you a sense of what he saw, and then he talked to me about obesity. Come on Doc? Are you serious? You're really going to mention obesity to me? Personally I think the BMI is so profoundly out of whack it's amazing it actually gets used. Next time I go in I plan on being clinically obese according to the BMI. But next time he's going to have to demonstrate that he knows the importance of body composition as opposed to generalized measurments. Here I come obesity!

Abundance, What is it? At its root abundance is space. The experience of abundance is an expansive opening that's quite unlike anything else. Abundance is "otherworldly" in its texture; however, utterly plain through and through. Abundance is what holds, possesses, retains, nurtures, cares and yet does not lose the root of spaciousness. If you're interested at all about knowing abundance intimately you'll pay careful attention to the end of the last sentence... "yet does not loose its spaciousness." Abundance isn't having something without this spaciousness. Holding without spaciousness isn't abundance. That's scarcity. That's what is called "I'm going to grasp onto this stuff like a hoarding kid ready to fight for the cookie jar. This is mine! mine! mine!" It doesn't matter if you only own a bag, one book and no change of clothes or 3 houses, 8 "luxury cars" and 55 of the most expensive shoes on planet earth, if you hold and grasp you're living in scarcity. From an interior standpoint, there's very little different. Now let's look at the other side of the coin. Let's take a quick glance at spaciousness without holding, possessing and retaining. That's not abundance either. That's the "I'm checked out like a kid at a middle school dance with my hands on someone else not quite sure what to do as I shuffle my feet around" ... abundance isn't in the slightest bit afraid to hold what is here. So Abundance is spaciousness that embraces, possesses and holds. The desire to possess is so strong that very very few people ever really come to know what true abundance is. Why? You guessed it, no space. What you probably didn't guess is that there also isn't any ability to possess anything. Go back and read the first part of the last little mini paragraph - ok, so you don't really have to, I'll rewrite it again - I said, "the desire to possess is so strong..." Did you catch it that time - it's a desire to possess. This "desire to" in no way in hell or in heaven (or on earth for that matter) is the actual ability to possess something. So most people end up desiring to possess - and I mean really intensely desiring to possess that new car, house, pair of really cool shoes, relationship, spiritual attitude, computer, book, insight, discipline, happiness... you get the point. So in the extreme desire to possess, people tend to follow one of two trends. Behind door number one we find Bob Barker revealing the person who "has it all" or the person who's on the path to "having it all." There's very little difference between these two at their root. (My deepest apologies to those who've "made it" in order to set themselves apart from those who haven't). Behind door number two we find Bob Barker revealing the person who has "next to nothing." This is either by necessity or by choice. In necessity we find people for many reasons who aren't able to deeply engage into their lives. When I say they "aren't able" I mean they lack the ability in any particular moment. Those who've chosen not to "have" anything fall into the camp that is largely driven by fear. This is your pathological ascender - the ones who've mastered dissociation and just kept on going. Somehow they feel as though they are better than just about everyone else, yet ultimately afraid to step into their manifest strength and responsibility. Now I'm obviously painting with some broad strokes here, life isn't black and white. There's gradations of an immense complexity relating these trends; however, for the sake of conversation hold these lightly as orienting generalizations. So then, let's come back to this notion of abundance. Without spaciousness, openness, and the expansive freedom from which and within all of manifestation arises, true appreciation cannot flourish. Appreciation thrives upon space. Appreciation dives deeply into the present moment, your heart expands and opens more fully to what is in front of you, what you behold. You appreciate what is, you cherish and celebrate what is. This is abundance. Abundance is in no way, shape, or form (at least not one that holds much authentic wisdom) the contracted desire for more. Abundance isn't the fantasy of having this or that later on down the road. Abundance only exists right now in this moment. The beautiful thing about abundance is it requires nothing special, just space, an open hand and an open heart. The challenge then is taking the steps we need to cultivate our awareness of space and our ability to open our hands and hearts so that we're actually able to just hold - nothing more nothing less. Peace, Rob

What is an injury within the context of an integral practice? And how should you work with injuries within your integral practice? These questions have come up on several fronts, both in my Pod Integral Strength, questions to me on my Z-mail as well as in my consulting practice. Let's take a quick look at injuries, what is the basic nature of an injury? An injury in the broadest sense of the term is some type of "pathological disorganization" with your body-mind. Now injuries are most often referring to physical problems; however, injuries as I'm framing them here can also refer to an interior "pathological disorganization" as well. So, injuries within this context includes both the exterior as well as the interior. Now as far as I can tell, all injuries have a cause, it may be getting hit playing a sport, too much weight for a joint in the weight room, a fall on the mountain slopes, etc. These all tend to result in a physiological injury (which obviously has interior dimensions to it but is largely external - meaning your "body" is what's "injured."). Now we also have emotional assaults, the violation of trust, verbal attacks aimed at you that create pathological disorganization within your interior. What we have now is what's typically referred to as psychopathology (which has external body based correlates but is largely an interior injury that has corresponding symptoms in your body). Much like the muscles, tendons, bones, etc. get "injured" in falling on the slopes, trust, confidence, and or your sense of self become "injured." So we have both external (the body part of the bodymind) pathological disorganization and interior (the mind part of the bodymind) pathological disorganization. At the root we have some cause that has on some level disrupted our bodymind's natural (or optimal) organization. As far as I can tell injuries are simply part of life. So if you're alive, you're going to invariably run into injuries. Something is going to knock your bodymind's organization out of whack. To answer the question of what is an injury in the context of integral practice let's take a quick glance of what integral practice is and what it's central aim is. Integral practice has two basic functions or two central aims: 1. To awaken. That is to cultivate awareness, consciousness, or what what essentially boils down to awakening to our essential Freedom. Integral practice fundamentally cannot avoid this awakening process. If it does, in my opinion this practice can't in any genuine way be considered "integral." 2. Shifting to the second basic function of Integral practice we find this: To embrace. Embrace as I'm using it means to enact, engage, activate, and cultivate manifestation as it arises in our self, culture and in nature. Put simply Integral Practice is committed to the Fullness of manifestation. That's why we try to "exercise," "train" or "engage" all of the major parts of ourselves. Injuries naturally draw our awareness to our bodymind - both our interior and exterior dimensions in each and every injury we sustain along our journeys. Injuries within integral practice is a calling to awaken to what is. Each and every injury along our path is a call to witness what is. When we get injured, whether its to our interior or to our exterior, we get a clear picture of who we are and how we're organized. This natural movement of our awareness of being injured is a calling to your witness. Your witness is at its root freedom, it is the seat of your everpresent unflinching impartial awareness that without question, without hesitation holds all that arises moment to moment. It doesn't matter if you're heart has been shattered or your spine broken. The witness in its truest seat holds these experiences no differently than the radiant love of your heart nor the fluid open spinal column of a yogi. So this is the first role of injuries within the context of Integral Practice. Here's a summary: WAKE UP! The second role of an injury within the context of integral Practice is, you guessed it, to helps you embrace more of who you are. That's to say it is calling you to engage, activate, fill out and enact the larger sphere of who you are in and as manifestation. This is difficult because the natural response of the ego is to struggle with an injury. Integral Practice includes the ego's struggle with injuries; however, a strong practice does not mindlessly (that is to say unconsciously) follow this process. The ego's natural tendency is to withdraw from an injury, to contract around an injury and to fight to get rid of the disturbance. This is good news/bad news. The good news is that this process in many cases starts the healing process. The bad news is that left to its own devices you'll end up reinforcing the injury - you'll often consolidate and solidify the disorganization within your bodymind. Often times this process does not facilitate you embracing more of who you are, instead you end up avoiding more of who you are. Thus injuries often take on some type of chronic disorganization that becomes normalized and accepted as the "normal" organization of your bodymind. One process I've practiced for years is what I call Working With The Envelope. The first step in this process is to find your "envelope," which is the boundary in which you start to bump up against your injury. Finding your envelope is an ongoing process; however, you want to push out into your bodymind's sphere and see just where you're disorganization begins and where it ends. The closer you look the more fluid this boundary will become. Once you've found this fluid space, the delicate boundary between what is normal and uninjured and what is injured you'll want to start to work with this boundary. A professional who specializes in your injury is a useful resource to draw from. They can provide conventional norms of what to do and what not to do with regards to exploring around this envelope - the space around your injury. Your central intention is to work with the injury within the moment. Live with the injury without trying to get rid of anything. With that said, you're not solidifying your injury into some solid entity separate from yourself. There's a delicate balance of accepting what is and working with what is, awareness of and embrace of, watching and dancing with your injury. Ideally what happens is you're bodymind's organization starts to integrate the injury into your larger self system. You become more fluid with your injury and over time the envelope that you're exploring becomes smaller and smaller, meaning your injury is healing more and more. Now some injuries - interior and exterior - become resolved, healed and normal fully integrated functioning returns. Other injuries are more or less there for the rest of your life. The trauma, disorganization and disruption to your bodymind were lasting and become a part of your thumbprint so to speak. This isn't to say these injuries aren't workable or aren't fluid from moment to moment. This is simply an acknowledgment of your conditioned history, your past. Some "injuries" become part of the more or less permanent landscape of our bodymind. With these types of injuries, it's important to acknowledge our egoic desire to struggle with these parts. Acknowledge this rejection of your injury but don't allow it to be the single guiding intelligence. Ultimately our injuries are something to be celebrated as beacons to our own awakening as well as sparks to drive us to deeply engage in our lives. Injuries are simply our call to freedom and fullness. With that said, I hope this fuels a strong, consistent integral practice and the skillful use of your injuries, whatever type they may be. Peace, Rob