Gaia: Integral Strength - Tips & Techniques - The Dark Night of an Integral Strength Practice

Re: The Dark Night of an Integral Strength Practice

http://sardonyx.gaia.com — Sat, 16 May 2009 17:34:17 GMT

I am so thankful D and Rob for having the pioneering spirit to actually bring these subject up- at least on the web... :-)
I am unsure about which "stage" I am at. I have had a few times where I would begin at a gym and typically discontinue. This has happened with martial arts too, but in a different fashion. I have such a love-hate relationship with body practice, that, I have decided to probe into it as deeply as I can...!

I am employing therefore, "The Work" inquiry to help me, and the pathological structure becomes clear quite quickly....
One of the issues that came up for me as well was "superficial motivation".

So, as I phrased it in The Work was:
"My motivation for engagining in weight-training are just not good or legitimate enough".
This phrasing already exposes the super-ego self-righteous tendency that comes with this type of thinking: (from journal)
"When I think this thought, I am actually in the business of 'self-righteously favoring [pseudo-evolutionary] spiritual bypass instead of alignment with authentic aspiration'".
And, at almost a transrational level,
I thought that hey, I don't -need- "superficial or illegitimate reasons" to feel "not good enough"- freeing "not being good enough" from the tyranny of having-to-have reasons to feel that way is paradoxically liberating!

I myself am not sure what this MEANS- just that in the integral circles, there is the need to justify everything integrally, and sometimes it borders on being self-righteous instead of loving ourselves for the aspirations we have. We get so incredible afraid of what might look as shallow, which is actually a quiter voice, a willingness that demands much less than our "non-superficial reasons".

My plan is continue to examine my relationship with training, and eventually return to training slightly more integrated I hope!

Re: The Dark Night of an Integral Strength Practice

http://Rob.gaia.com — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 08:01:58 GMT

Here's a little for you to bounce off of...

The very heart of the dark night is organized around this singularity - that which you want to get rid of isn't going anywhere. The lucidity from which you grasp this and the fullness within which you embody this determines much of what follows in my opinion and practice.

The dark night is at it's heart despair, which is born from the desire to get rid of something (or if you want to flip that coin - attain something). When everything fails, when in your most honest and awake moments you spontaneously know you are left with failure your body-mind contracts up into your essential wound. The contraction that defines you, makes you and owns you is now consciously in your face and there is absolutely nothing you can do.

While there are many considerations to look at when stepping further into this phase of practice and life, the general prescription is to push into this, because as Terry (and others) presuppose, it is this fertile space that gives birth to that which you seek most desperately to know within.

Personally, in my own experience the dark night never ends and it completely disappears depending on how I want to organize myself and my perspective. I choose to embody the fullness of this contraction and despair and hold the essential liberation that is this. Freedom and Fullness, to embody and enact integral practice you must have both, awareness and embrace they actually require each other.

You are not one, not the other. You fundamentally are not two.

For me, moving into this despair and letting go, this is the work that we're here to do. This is what it really means to do a set with all of your heart, tears rolling down your cheeks, with a shattering smile of Suchness that allows everything, absolutely everything to be ok just as it is.

This is the path of becoming uniquely you, not ejecting in escape of something or reaching to attain something but not the unconscious attachment to the enveloping immanence of your relative vehicle. You'll know something is radically different when the contraction that scares you, the knot that is you that you try to manage, control and negotiate with has been transformed into itself. From this perspective, from this embodiment the contraction and limitation of you is the unfolding liberation of your divinity.

Discover this in your breath right now, re-cognize this as you move resistance, realize this and you'll know your Unique Self - the you that's always known you ;-)

Big Love,
~Rob

The Dark Night of an Integral Strength Practice

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 06:52:52 GMT

I've had a chance to travel recently which, in the process of transit and spending time in hotels, had given me time to read and reflect. An interesting topic that came up for me whilst reading the new Integral Life Practice book was the concept of the "Phases in the Practice Life". What resonated was how it related to the phases in my previous yoga practice and how it now relates to my current strength training practice that I pursue as a yoga. As a roadmap of what potentially to expect at each stage of a strength training practice I thought this would be worth sharing with the group.
Quick overview of the theory (Integral Life Practice: p. 368-372)….

Practice takes time. An over time, as you engage practice, certain phases often unfold organically. A series of different "seasons" will appear…[being The Honeymoon, The Plateau and Falling from Grace, The Fruits, The Dark Night, Responsibility].

The Honeymoon is usually for a period of at least several years, practice involves the process of establishing a new orientation in life, breaking old habits, and establishing new conscious routines;
The Plateau and Falling from Grace, the regularity of practice will have become second nature and awareness expanded and stabilised with practitioners, unaware that they had become addicted to the experience of expansion, begin to feel like their practices aren't working anymore;
The Fruits, new, free capacities bloom and awareness effortlessly expands. We worked hard and now we re seeing results. Were gratified. Proud. Identified . Attached. And, inevitably, full of it!;
The Dark Night, At a certain point your practice life may seem to fall apart. You may lose all motivation, no longer able to believe that practice is going to get you anywhere. Awareness of the underlying selfish motives for practice may become so acute that you despair of the whole enterprise. You may discover that something essential is dying. The awful aloneness and sense of limitation that you may have hoped to escape through practice has now engulfed you. Despair is inescapable; your aspiration to infinity will never succeed. You are going through a kind of death, one you cannot escape. Congratulations - this defeat is the doorway to profound freedom;
Responsibility, This phase of responsibility contains all the previous phases flowing together in a stability whereby the fruits of practice may even gracefully deepen - perhaps becoming the liberating illuminations described in our ancient spiritual traditions.

My reflection, and hopefully a point of discussion, is focused on The Dark Night phase. I experienced similar feelings and reactions on my yoga practice to the point where I have abandoned this practice almost entirely and replaced this with a Integral strength training practice. And while I am very much in "The Honeymoon phase" of this practice - motivated by the energy and intensity of the new practice - a cannot ignore the residue of the feelings I had in experiencing what I believe was A Dark Night phase. I've discussed this a little in this forum as my reflection is that I'm concerned by my own capacity for a superficial shadow motivation for pursuing strength training practice even as a form of developmental practice may lead to a deeper, more intense Dark Night than potentially other modes of practice. This is a generalisation and dependant on an individuals relationship to practice and their own understanding of shadow motivation.
So what I want to explore here is The Dark Night, Shadow motivation, and the superficial motive. If you have experienced a Dark night phase - how did you recognise it, what were your physiological reaction, did you continue/persist with the practice and for how long or did you radically change the mode of practice to overcome the experience as I have, have you emerged from A Dark Night and again how did you recognise that and what part of that phase still is residue in your current practice post experience of this phase.

Gaia: Integral Strength - **Tips & Techniques** - The Dark Night of an Integral Strength Practice

Re: The Dark Night of an Integral Strength Practice

Re: The Dark Night of an Integral Strength Practice

The Dark Night of an Integral Strength Practice

Gaia: Integral Strength - Tips & Techniques - The Dark Night of an Integral Strength Practice