Integration

I was lucky to have a few days exploring the forest on the slopes of Mt Taranaki. Sitting amongst mossy trunks and lichen covered branches of kamahi and fuchsia trees and further up the slope the remarkable totara and griselinia that grew along the tree line before it entered tracts of Olearia, (tree daisy) and small shrubs. Walking around Mt Taranaki is like climbing into and out of pleats of a skirt. I would hear falcon, stop and wait to catch a glimpse in vain and then finally seeing one, unexpected, as it silently glided through the grassy glade I was sitting in and on into the forest. I watched a small riorio feed a large long tailed cuckoo chick with a constant peeving call. I have a number of photos of mossy branches where the bird somehow is invisible and I had some conversations with a tomtit, quite a few in fact, although I think they might be one-sided. Sometimes it takes a while to land in a place, to integrate different sensory experiences and each place has its making and its stories and its ancestry.

Integration is a process that acknowledges a truth or insight or perhaps a separated aspect of ourselves and then co-ordinates that into a unified whole. I sometimes see the idea of wholeness as perhaps like a pūriri tree that may have been buffeted by winds or the many holes it has through pūriri grubs or kākā ripping at the bark. Puriri teaches me to accept the wounds, the hollow spaces, sometimes being present to these spaces, and continuing to grow. Integration is remembering to value the ordinary and mundane, understanding the sacred is embedded in physical form. I see the harm that can occur in the want for heightened spiritual experiences without any desire to do the practice to bring those experiences into meaning and form. I see people struggling to remember the importance of craft, of the slow practice involved to integrate our visions or our ecstatic mystical experiences. 

When I began contemplating integration, I started to explore why so many people resist this process. If the first part of integration is acknowledgement, then this involves a certain attendance. In a moment of conscious attendance, the separation is defined. We might feel the rough lines of delineation, here is perhaps pain, here is a separation, here is a wound, here is a heightened experience and following that there might be a fear of loss and a sense of no going back. We change when we integrate. And perhaps in that process a certain invisibility is inevitable, intensity might become mundane, the burning fire might transmute, that mantle of power may be laid down. We are humbled. We are part of earth. This is the foundation of my work.  

Driving back from Taranaki we picked up three 5-month-old Pekinese bantams. They are very beautiful with iridescent black feathers that reflect an emerald green sheen. I have enjoyed supporting them to integrate into a different environment. They are young and in this realization of responsibility I have found so many slow sweet moments. They didn’t know where to roost at night, in fact I was unsure if they had started roosting, they seemed a little unsettled. There is a little hutch in our run and our geriatric bantams tend to roost in the pear tree so I stood up on the bench we had and the young bantams followed leaping to nestle on my feet and then I stepped in the branch of the pear tree and they following nestling in. There was a lot of resettling and slowly I left them, it reminded me of those times of gently unraveling from a toddler as they just fall asleep. Right now, they are browsing on the plantain seeds outside my studio, little brrrrs of contentment, I think they help me put things in perspective, taking space, looking at my environment with different eyes.  

I had an exploration through the southern hemisphere medicine wheel feeling into the directions around practices of integration. I like to start in the east, and the practices of integration here is the realization of inhabiting life in our physical form, sensory awareness, nature connection, taste, smell, hearing, seeing and feeling. The joy of being alive, gratitude, speaking aloud a thanks-giving prayer. What stood out in the north was play, that beautiful balance between order and chaos, the delight in the unfolding nature of play. There was also the act of crafting, literally weaving your experience into form. As children we naturally integrated through play. spending time role playing by ourselves and with other children. Also the physicality of hide and seek and running in the fields and through the houses.  Before I moved in the west, I was aware of that afternoon energy of the north west, the place in our day of integration on a daily basis, remembering to pause, the do-nothing moment, the ritual of a cup of tea. I think too here could be the place of meandering, no destination, moving with a whim. In the west the integration was through community and belonging, friendships, the sharing of food, storytelling, laughter, music, dancing together. The south, integration came in the form of reflection, of writing, lying back looking up at the sky, the quiet go slow, a deep rest, the time of retreat.

In our great evolution that we seem to undergo in living our lives there is so much to integrate. We may need integration after healing if we experience an unraveling of the past, soul retrieval - integrating soul parts that have disassociated through trauma, and recovery from illness and shock. Integration of epiphanies, of experiences of merging, of falling in love, of powerful emotions and experiences of power. There is integration required when we experience intense memories from visiting a place, or traveling to new places and cultures. Some people merge in a way where they are unable to ground and connect to the ordinary world, sometimes they embody other beings, other dimensions and ghosts that they can’t find any understanding or be able to place in their world view. Often in this situation integration occurs through being listened to and finding places of belonging. What I haven’t even begun to look at here are those who witness or are victims of environmental devastation, calamity and war. How can such fierce wounds be attended to? Perhaps as a global community to be open to listen, to hear their stories. To no longer deny and turn our backs on what is painful.