With Integral Transformative Practice, we look at life experience through four lenses of body, mind, heart, and soul. We often say these are co-equal components of an integrated whole; that we are actually looking at one thing through four different windows. Each of these windows provides a slightly different view on one’s life experience. Each of these views is valid, important, and offers unique insight and guidance for our lives. However, for me, the voice, window, or perspective I place above all others is my soul. Why would I do that? My soul offers me the highest, widest, most holistic and informed picture of me and my life. It is the part of me that is most rooted in and connected to the all-and-everything. It lives in and comes from a field of eternal evolutionary love. Messages from my soul are life-level, even multi-life-level, messages. These are messages regarding my deepest, truest, most important purpose for being here, for living the life I’ve been given. My soul keeps me on track in life. When I listen to my soul and follow its guidance, I am most satisfied and fulfilled with the unfolding experiences in my life. I pay deep attention to messages coming from my soul.
ITP practices are indispensable for living from soul. Through ITP, I cultivate this highly important relationship with my soul, helping me hear it and live from it. For example, meditation is one of the practices that powerfully connects me to my soul. In the silence, I can hear its “still small voice,” and I can experience its “peace that passes all understanding.” This is not an intellectual experience “thinking” about something; this is a voice that knows something. It goes beyond thinking, thoughts, and even feelings. Messages from my soul come through as the truth of things and because of that, carry great weight in how I live my life. It is the grand compass, the North Star, guiding me through, even creating, the landscape and experiences of my life.
Of course, the body, mind, and heart have a role. Soul speaks and lives through each of these aspects. This is the brilliance of the integral model we engage with ITP; we pay attention to and cultivate all these aspects of ourselves. ITP brings all of me along, leaving nothing behind. Without a strong and healthy body, mind, and heart, the soul has a very difficult time being heard and inspiring its divine right action into my life.
Through ITP, I am able to develop harmony between and with my body, mind, heart, and soul. To use a sailing metaphor: my soul is the North Star, my heart is the captain at the helm, my body is the ship, and my mind is the first mate. Each of these is essential for successful sailing in this earth plane of existence. Better than anything I’ve ever seen or experienced, Integral Transformative Practice optimizes the roles and responsibilities of each of these parts and keeps me successfully sailing on the high seas of life, grateful for the miracle of the life I’ve been given.