Integrative and dis-integrative forces affect the ability to release the real self.
An example of integrative energy is LOVE. Lets say that love is patient, love is kind and that love keeps not score of wrongs. That means love creates a safe space. It is integrative.
What happens in society and in ourselves is that we can come to believe that love is something we can earn. If you are a good little child and do as mommy says, “I will love you”. At that point it is dis integrative.
So it’s easy to see that if a person is in an atmosphere where there is patience and kindness that person will thrive and become confident and able to express him or herself with clarity and with creativity.
On the other hand if a person is in a situation where anger and judgment prevail it disintegrates the person’s ability to express him or herself.
I remember seeing this in a dramatic way through the lives of mentally challenged people who transitioned from an institution into a loving community setting.
I saw this happen in the l’Arche communities where the mandate is to provide a safe and loving community environment for mentally challenged people.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been in an institution and have witnessed what can happen there. I have. The institutions I worked in treated the mentally challenged with a fair degree of aggression. They could be mocked or laughed at. They could be made to feel stupid and of no consequence. They were left alone and sometimes ridiculed. They were not ‘honored’ for the human beings they are.
The result was often violence and aggression on the part of the mentally challenged person. More often it was the deep self hatred and self rejection and isolation of the person that developed.
The forces of disintegration were doing their work.
Once a person made the transition into a l”Arche home after some time of experiencing the integrative forces of love that are patience and kindness and saw only the good in the person, these mentally challenged people could flower and become alive and joyful and expressive in such a way as to become models of human beauty and integration.
After some time of being surrounded with love and affection and acceptance Bobby who was self inflicting wounds on himself began to smile and to show real concern for others and to show a wisdom that was healing to everyone who came in contact with him.
Dis-integrative energies include hate, fear, anger, envy, guilt, jealousy and the like.
Just think what we do when we spend a lot of time listening to the NEWS for example. It’s amazing that we live in a world where we have a ‘information system’ that we can tune into that feeds us or gives us details from anywhere in the world in a moment of the most terrible human acts and of the most terrible and tragic human events going on.
Think about that for a minute. Imagine what exposing yourself to these dis-integrative forces, as a constant diet, does to you as a person?
I you spend a lot of your time in a day reflecting on dis-integrative forces happening in the world, will it not have a dis-integrative impact on you and create dis-ease in your life?
I find it amazing that we tolerate and expose ourselves so easily to all of these dis-integrative negative forces and think nothing of it. Then we wonder why the world is as it is and why we feel tired and miserable.
To become aware is the first step in choosing.
Do you choose Life? Do you surround yourself with integrative forces? (love, patience, kindness…)
Or do you choose Death? Do you surround yourself with dis-integrative forces? (hate, fear, harshness…)
The 1st choice ‘frees’ the person. The 2nd choice ‘stifles’ the creative person that you are.
What do you think?
Peace and Blessing,
Norm.