Adaptation vs Integration
Adaptation vs integration
My 4 am jet lag has me stepping outside myself to observe and witness all the aspects of change I’m currently experiencing, both within my body and in the peripheral energy field, in transition from Thailand back to the US. From heat and humidity to dusty and dry, from palm trees to pine trees. There is a heaviness in the air here. Everyone fears each other, keeping to themselves, no one makes eye contact, and I certainly feel a wall of ‘I can’t go in and immediately hug this person.’
(Also, shoes. I wore shoes once for an hour in July. I'm not into the shoe thing.)
And for someone who's an environmentalist, I feel like I've used more plastic in a day here than I did in a month in Thailand.
But we are adaptable, so I’ll eventually get used to it right?
Not so fast.
Adaptability is an incredibly beneficial trait, but it also must be practiced with awareness of not slipping back into the comfort of old patterns, or allowing the change to melt into what's considered 'the new normal.'
Where does adaptation separate from integration?
Integration is a key part of any experience from which major change, growth, or shift is experienced. (It's also a major aspect of Kambo and plant ceremonies that's often overlooked or even ignored.) It's not just for after ceremonies of Higher States of Consciousness that we need to integrate. It's li-ter-al-ly everything.
But the principles are the same. We bring the lessons of the transformative experience with us every day into creating our new reality.
How do I integrate being back in the US? Sure, I'll adapt to the change in weather and I'll adapt to wearing shoes. Simultaneously I bring with me all the ways I've morphed into Anura that I met and embodied over the past two years while shedding those aspects of myself I've grown out of which no longer resonate here.
Pre-C19, I had traveled to 74 countries, and every time returning to the US is a culture shock. Now, even more so, and it's like a slap to the face of my nervous system and my subtle energy bodies. Through integration, I need to bring all that I experienced and learned with me to navigate and implement in this new location. TBH, my whole time there feels like it was one long TRIP, a cosmic festival of all my wildest fantasies and dreams. Now it's up to me to bring Heaven down to Earth.
Just as we shed old layers of ourselves, we also outgrow the food, people, substances, and medicines that no longer resonate with us, all in the name of personal evolution.
