One way to look at how practice is currently being integrated into your own life is to explore the extent to which practice has permeated the different domains of your everyday experience (you may discover that a domain has even become a practice, without you realizing it!).
Make a chart with three columns. On the left, list the domains of your life; in the center, list the ways that you’re presently integrating practice into these individual domains; on the right, list the ways you’d like to either integrate practice more fully into a specific domain, or recognize a domain more explicitly as a practice. Examples of domains might be work, family, social, health, finances, etc. A sample chart follows.
Life as Practice, Practice as Life
159 Domain Integration of Practice How I Want to Grow My work as
a teacher.
I’ve begun to ring a small bell at the beginning and end of each class period, not only to signify the beginning and end, but also to remind myself of my mindfulness practice as a teacher.
I’d like to bring more of my physical practice into my work. I will incorporate five minutes of gentle stretch-ing with my students.
Working with a child who is having difficulty with a task is really a kindness practice for me—I’d like to recognize it more consciously as such.
My eating habits.
I’ve begun to offer thanks for the food I eat.
I want to eat more mind-fully and cook more for others.
From “I” to “We”
Whatever put us here—me, the ocean, the sand—we are all one. We say “I”
or “you” so we can communicate, but … there is no I, there is no difference between I and you. I am you, you are me; there is only that.
—SHAYKH YASSIR CHADLY (2006)
As a young man, Yassir Chadly—now a charismatic Sufi teacher—was a member of the Moroccan national swimming team. One day, he went to the ocean to bodysurf. It was a particularly calm day, so rather than surfing the waves of the Atlantic, he decided to float on its flat surface. It was then that a mystical sense of unity came to him:
My eyes were closed. I was on my back and feeling little waves, so small, under my body … involuntarily, all of a sudden, I could feel my body growing out of its limits. I couldn’t stop it. It was like yeast rising—it was
From “I” to “We”
161 could feel the ocean moving on the Earth, and me within it. I was one with
the whole ocean. I could hear inside my head the verse from the Qu’ran that says, “Say that God is one.” And I understood what it means, because I experienced that oneness. I said, “Yes, all is one.” (2006)
Over our decade-long research program, we’ve found that one of the most common elements of consciousness transformation is an experience of the transpersonal: an experience, like Chadly’s, in which consciousness or self-awareness extends beyond the boundaries of the individual person-ality. As we discussed in chapter 2, this kind of experience can result in a consciousness shift—and stimulate a lifelong journey to understand the experience. But “transpersonal” doesn’t only refer to isolated experiences.
It also refers to a worldview in which you see yourself as not just a separate, individual ego, but as part of a greater whole.
Throughout the course of our lives, we pass through many different developmental stages. Transpersonal development refers to those that go beyond the typical stages of the adult. Ken Wilber, one of the leading theo-rists of transpersonal development, posits ten common stages of develop-ment, six of which are stages most of us are familiar with—the development from the immaturity of infancy to mature adulthood (2000). However, Wilber and others—such as Abraham Maslow, Carl Jung, Stan Grof, Michael Washburn, and Sri Aurobindo—have proposed that beyond these six stages are higher stages of development that are transpersonal, in which people experience themselves as not only connected to others both in and out of their tribe, but connected to all that is.
In Wilber’s view, during any of the ten stages one can have an expe-rience of a higher stage. However, “the ways in which these altered states will (and can) be experienced depends predominantly on the structures (stages) of consciousness that have developed in the individual” (2003, 1).
Says Wilber, “Overall or integral development is thus a continuous process of converting temporary states into permanent traits or structures, and in that integral development, no structures or levels can be bypassed, or the development is not, by definition, integral” (3).
Across traditions, many of our research participants reported experi-encing an ever-present sense of unity and connection, with both others and
the broader world—a sense of connection, moreover, that grows stronger and stronger the more they engage in transformative practice. As this sense of connection grows stronger and more reliable, it becomes more a perma-nent part of each person’s sense of self, rather than an isolated event or peak experience.
Participants in our studies articulated this experience of a deep, trans-personal connection in many ways. We heard such phrases as “a realiza-tion of the interconnectedness of all beings,” “a dissolving of the boundary between self and other,” “an abiding personal relationship with God—the same God in all the world,” “a sense of community at a global level,” and
“a gradual realization that there isn’t any separation.” Though people didn’t always use the same words to describe this experience, descriptions common across people and traditions included a growing sense of unity, shared identity, and belonging; and an awareness of a divinity universal to all people and all life (Vieten, Cohen, and Schlitz 2008; Vieten, Amorok, and Schlitz 2006).
We asked our study participants to help us understand what changes result from such experiences. How do these experiences of deep connection impact who we are and how we view the world, at a core level?