Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about integration. Now, this is a word you may have heard a lot of in the personal development space, in the psychology space, and even here on Mindfulness.com. I tend to use it a lot, especially when discussing moving toward the experience of, of wholeness and contentment and well-being. But what does integration actually mean? Well, for me, the way I define integration, it's learning to see that all parts of you play an important role in fulfilling the complex and multifaceted needs of being human.

That can feel like a mouthful. So I'll say it again a little more slowly. Integration is learning to see that all parts of you, all parts of you, play an important role in fulfilling the complex and multifaceted needs of being human. So if we look at that through the lens of, of disintegration, recognizing that we do have a lot of different parts of us, parts of us that want to protect a certain experience or version of ourselves, parts of us that might be fearful, parts of us that might be sad, parts that might have joy, parts that might want to aspire for growth. Parts that want to, to feel safe.

And we look at that all as, as part of the whole of who we are. Well, disintegration is when those parts stop communicating with each other. They stop appreciating each other's participation in the journey of wholeness. A certain part might go, I don't like you. You're uncomfortable.

Why are you here? When you come out, people don't seem to like you. And so we cast that part of us into the shadows of our awareness. And this is how humans fracture, parts of them splinter. And we actually get disconnected from ourselves, disintegrated in a way that we can still get through life, but there's not this deep sense of embodiment and grounded-ness within us. And maybe you've experienced this for yourself.

And so integration is the recognition that yeah, there might be some parts that are uncomfortable. There might be some parts of us that we don't fully understand, but we recognize that each part has some positive intention, even if we don't yet know what it is. The part that we might be frustrated by, that experiences fear a lot that says, don't do this, don't do this. That we just tend to go, why are you, why are you so fearful? What's wrong with you? Like go sit down. Right? That is taking a relationship to that part that doesn't really recognize, or perhaps isn't creating a space to understand why that part might be there, what it might be saying.

When we can open ourselves up to that part with some curiosity, and instead of pushing it away, say something like, Oh, okay. So there's some fear right now. What are you trying to tell me? Well, then that part has the opportunity to share. It's like, well, last time we were in this situation, we said this and that person didn't like us. Okay, cool.

So now we can at least have a conversation with it. And when that arises, then another part can come in and say, yeah, I see you fear. I, I recognize where you're coming from. And you're right. 10 years ago that did happen, but who we are now is different and this is a different context and we can hold the experience if it doesn't go well,.We, we we're all in this together.

And so that conversation with the different parts, all the different facets of who you are, is how we move toward the experience of wholeness. It's my definition of, of integration and many people's definition of integration. So as you consider your journey of growth, of mindfulness, look at your own internal experience. And sense for yourself is there a disintegration or is there integration? And it might be true that parts of you feel more integrated and other parts feel disintegrated. And a mindfulness practice is creating space for some of those parts that we might tend to want to push away, to actually be invited into our awareness, for us to become curious about them and to see that they to have a positive intention.

And even though they might not be necessary for this moment, they may be necessary for a future moment. And if we're constantly at battle with them, we don't give ourselves the chance to see the positive role that that part might play. So hope this gives you something to think about in your mindfulness journey. Thank you for your practice and let's settle in for today's meditation.