healing, integration, integrity
28 Nov 2018just a mashup of some recent thoughts:
over the past months, i’ve been thinking a lot about integration. like what is it? i think the work of healing is the work of integration. if pain, harm, trauma, etc. are all versions or side effects of disconnection, the opposite of that work is integration. that is, healing.
in my own life, my trauma shows up as disconnection within myself. parts of my past that i am disconnected from because of pain, often a need to self-preserve in a context where harm is happening or has happened.
in community, when people hurt each other, the pieces of the whole community are split. barriers come up, often out of anger or desire to protect (oneself or others).
so then the work of healing is bringing the pieces of the whole (individual or community) back together. for me, that means facing the hard parts/moments of my life. and learning how to reintegrate them into myself because i have (falsely) created some separation between those things and “me.” in community, well, idk exactly what that looks like but lots of people have ideas.
“I can’t believe in any of this stuff about creating community. I think the whole project of trying to build community is misplaced. I think community is. It is ontologically there. So the project is more about awakening.”
For him, community is remembered, or revealed, because we are already “dangerously involved with each other in an incredibly intimate but unseen way.” That’s what it means to be human. Community just is…
words in quotes from john o’donohue. other words from casper via his latest newsletter
second thought: so if another way to think of healing is putting the parts back together, integrity is integration. to move with integrity is to move forward with all the pieces. this has completely reframed what i hear and think when i hear other people use the word. when i hear someone ask for integrity in a group process, i hear “has this process moved forward with all the pieces, opinions, people, intact?”
anyway.
words / writing / post-processing
335w / 9min / 5min