Path of wholeness

We always are aspiring to go beyond the "personal". But we also believe that if we are able to have some more harmony in our life as a "person" without attaching to it then it will support a deeper spiritual practice. In the same way the spiritual practice will continuously bring more and more clarity, transparency, and light into our daily life.

 

A great master PADMASAMBHAVA said:  “Descend with the view, ascend with the conduct. It is most essential to practice these two as a unity.”

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This is an essential part of the vision of our family, of our little community here.

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We integrate in our daily life the science of healthy nutrition and Ayurveda, psychotherapeutic practices, body work, arts, and at the same time we are aware of the background of Stillness, of our True Nature which is beyond all this. We try to cultivate harmonious attitudes and pay attention to all the dimensions of our being: the physical and energetic body, the conscious and subconscious mind... and Spirit.

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Our path consisted of many different courses, academic studies, university degrees, research, as well as retreats, healing workshops, sacred ceremonies... in different countries, cultures and spiritual traditions.

Today most of the courses / workshops promise happiness and harmony. But with time we came to a conclusion that most of them were only working with one or two levels of our being: either with physical body (physical health, physical exercise) or energetical body (energetic balance), with subconscious mind (repressed emotions, automatic programs) or with conscious mind (beliefs, mindset etc). Many modern spiritual practices also are focused just on reaching higher states of consciousness, "transcendental" meditations and so on, but often they do not give the tools to integrate these experiences into the daily life, so the many aspects of life still remain "forgotten" or in unbalance.

Each of such practices is certainly useful on its level but based on our own experience we realized that it is essential to enquire and to "grow" on all the levels. Each aspect of our being needs attention and deeper understanding, so that they can support each other.

To go beyond our ego we first need to study it (we cannot surrender our wealth if we are poor). When the conscious mind is clear, when the subconscious mind is healed from the hardest traumas, when the deepest emotions are not repressed anymore but accepted and their energy is channeled, then it is much easier to live with an Open Heart and, ultimately, to transcend all of that and go beyond.

In the same way: when our energetical and physical bodies are in balance (we eat healthily, we do energetical or physical practices, eg. asanas, pranayamas and others), it creates better conditions for meditation and for revealing our True Nature.

On the contrary, if we dedicate lots of effort and time only to one or some aspects of our being while neglecting others, we risk to create an unbalance and strain. Like a carriage needs to have all wheels equal, so do we. We need to have all aspects of our being equally developed in order to move on with more ease.  

All the levels of our being are interconnected. So, when we eat healthily and consciously, then our cognitive and emotional mind benefit from it. It is not that we just have more energy, but also our mind acquires greater capacity to concentrate. 

Once we have accepted some "negative" emotions we not only feel in peace, but our physical body feels lighter and some psychosomatic symptoms may disappear. Then the mind is calmer, and we can go deeper in meditation. Then we can open to feel that we are not just that emotion, not that disease, and even not the person who dealt with that. As a psychotherapist I have met many people in my practice who were not able to come out of their stories, to transcend their pain... they were suffering so much that they couldn't dis-identify from this suffering even after hours of meditation. Then some healing work, psychotherapeutic methods may be useful to deal with it, to accept it, to heal it...

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The world is immensely rich and it is worth embracing its different aspects without rejection or denial.

Here we try to celebrate life in its wholeness.

So, in our lives we try to bring awareness and harmony to all the dimensions off our beings: physical, energetical, mental, subconscious, and then... to go even beyond.

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Purna-marga (path of wholeness)

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The German indologist Georg Feuerstein used the term of integral vision to refer to a particular outlook on spirituality which he saw present in the Indian tantric traditions. Feuerstein outlined three major approaches to life in Indian spirituality: nivritti-marga (path of cessation), pravritti-marga (path of activity) and purna-marga (path of wholeness). The path of cessation is the traditional path of renunciation and asceticism practiced by sanyasins with the goal of liberation from this world, while the path of activity is the pursuit of worldly goods and happiness.

Non dual philosophy and the tantric tradition

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Feuerstein ties this integral approach to non-dual Indian philosophy and the tantric tradition. According to Feuerstein the integral or wholeness approach: "implies a total cognitive shift by which the phenomenal world is rendered transparent through superior wisdom. No longer are things seen as being strictly separated from one another, as if they were insular realities in themselves, but everything is seen together, understood together, and lived together. Whatever distinctions there may be, these are variations or manifestations of and within the selfsame Being." 

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In the teachings of Sri Aurobindo, integral yoga refers to the process of the union of all the parts of one's being with the Divine, and the transmutation of all of their jarring elements into a harmonious state of higher divine consciousness and existence.

According to Sri Aurobindo, The Divine is in his essence infinite and his manifestation too is multitudinously infinite. If that is so, it is not likely that our true integral perfection in being and in nature can come by one kind of realization alone; it must combine many different strands of divine experience. It cannot be reached by the exclusive pursuit of a single line of identity till that is raised to its absolute; it must harmonize many aspects of the Infinite. An integral consciousness with a multiform dynamic experience is essential for the complete transformation of our nature. — Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 114

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