The Heroine's Journey Part 11: The Integration

In this recording from a live event on Insight Timer, Marcella guides you through Stage 11 of the Heroine's Journey: the integration.

As the Heroine nears completion of her journey, she is tasked with weaving her new relationship with herself into her daily life: reconciling the woman she's been with the woman she's becoming, reconciling unmet needs with newfound self-respect, reconciling her inner critic with her deeper compassion.

In this highly interactive talk, we’ll use EFT Tapping to help you blend the seeming contradictions into an integrated whole..

Transcript

Well,

Welcome again everyone.

Our heroine's journey continues.

So let's talk about the integration.

So essentially the journey of the heroine is the journey of the breakdown when things in her world and her life are just simply no longer working and something has to give and she hears a call to adventure and that could either be a call that comes from within her or some circumstance that pushes her where she has to make some really big changes,

Kind of a kill or cure proposition could be.

Then there is the resistance to the call like,

Oh no,

I can't do that.

I don't want to do that.

Why?

Why do I have to do that?

Then as she's grappling with resistance,

She meets the mentor who guides her along the way.

She crosses the threshold into,

It could be a new mindset,

New circumstances,

You know,

A new,

A renewed commitment to her path.

And then invariably she will meet tests and temptations.

She will find allies.

She will confront enemies.

She will pull the mask off of her own monsters,

Her own deepest fears,

Her deepest shame.

And when she walks through that dark night of the soul with the support of her mentor and her allies,

She receives what Joseph Campbell,

The great master mythologist who codified the hero's journey,

She will receive the boon is what he calls it.

I like to call it the gift of the goddess.

And this is the gift of a level of self-confidence,

Self-knowledge,

Self-love,

Self-strength,

If you will.

The deeper parts of herself that she has always known were there,

But perhaps didn't have the resources or it wasn't the right time or the right circumstance to bring all of that forward.

Now that comes into flowering,

Now that comes into fruition.

Now,

The thing to know about the gift of the goddess stage is that it can be a very,

Very powerful revelation.

And we had a lot of very powerful openings working with that last week.

But then the question becomes,

How do we sustain what we have realized?

And in the 12-step world that I come from,

This is the question,

Or this is the path of practicing these principles in all our affairs.

So this is the integration.

It's the question of how we join heaven and earth,

How we take our vision,

Our aspirations,

Our new understanding,

Our wisdom,

Our realization,

All of that we could say is the domain of heaven.

And how do we bring all of that down into earth?

And earth here is day-to-day activity.

Earth is the nuts and bolts of your life.

So how do we hold ourselves as heroes and heroines when we're paying the electricity bill,

Or we're changing the baby's diapers,

Or we're arguing with our spouse about where we're going to go for the holidays?

How do we hold ourselves in this understanding in our day-to-day lives?

And this is what I want to talk about today.

So what I want to suggest to you about the integration is that every thought you think,

Every word you say,

And every action you perform is a form of prayer.

Every action,

Every thought,

Every word is a form of prayer.

And the universe always responds with an affirmative,

With a yes.

So if you're saying,

It's impossible for me to lose this weight,

The universe is saying,

Okay,

It's impossible to lose the weight.

If you are saying to yourself,

I am committed to caring for myself and loving my body enough to treat it well enough so that it can be the healthiest body it can be,

The universe is saying,

Great,

Okay.

And either way,

You will be given the evidence of those prayers.

So the task here for the newly awakened heroine is to access and harness her power to make conscious choices.

Based on what some of you have said,

Being coming more patient and kind to myself,

Like what Lynn said,

Or Marjorie,

Noticing the shift of perception in my body and my self-love.

So we sustain those shifts through our day-to-day actions,

Through our thoughts,

Through our beliefs.

And all of this is brought under the umbrella of one of my favorite words in the English language,

And that is the word discipline.

I love discipline.

I love the word discipline.

I have spent a lot of time reclaiming my discipline,

And I want to share this with you.

There goes a couple of hearts.

Okay,

Great.

Some of you are resonating with this.

So for me,

Growing up as a little girl in Catholic school,

Discipline was always the nun with the ruler who was going to come smack us on the hands.

Discipline was some kind of brutalization for some perceived shortcoming,

Something that either we weren't doing or we were doing incorrectly.

And there was a sense of this imposition of this authoritarian lid coming over us that was saying,

Do this and don't do that and do the right thing and don't do the wrong thing.

So,

You know,

If you grew up with an authoritarian figure like that,

It could have been a teacher at school,

It could have been one of your parents,

Like just do as I say,

Don't give me any feedback,

Then you might have this sense of discipline as an external imposition of punishment,

Of being disciplined in the negative sense.

Let me know if any of you have had that kind of experience or if I'm speaking to you here.

What I have come to recognize on my own journey,

My own heroine's journey,

And I was so delighted to discover this,

Is that the word discipline is intimately connected to the word devotion.

If you think about it,

A disciple is someone who joins discipline and devotion.

Okay.

So yeah.

Okay.

Absolutely.

Yes.

Thumbs up.

Yes.

Okay.

So you're getting this.

So yes,

It's from that place,

That kind of heavy,

What we could call the lid aspect of discipline,

Where,

You know,

Maybe you're lying in bed in the morning,

You think,

Oh,

I really should get up and exercise,

But I don't want to do it.

I'd rather just lie here and scroll on my phone.

Yeah.

So that's the discipline that is the lid aspect of discipline.

But you could also regard discipline,

As I said,

As an act of devotion to yourself.

As an attitude of,

I love myself and I am devoted to myself enough to be very mindful of what I say and when I say it and how I say it.

The discipline,

Rather than being a punishment,

Is actually,

Let's call it the yoga of preserving and nurturing one's dignity.

What speaks to you in that?

Preserving our dignity.

So I am devoted to my own personal dignity,

Such that I take care of my body.

Exactly.

The taking care of myself.

Exactly.

That's right,

Noah.

Such that I am mindful of both what is coming out of my mouth and what is going into my mouth.

There's a hexagram in the I Ching,

It's called the corners of the mouth,

Receiving nourishment.

And that hexagram is all about that relationship of what comes out of your mouth and what goes into your mouth.

Think about that for just a moment.

So I want to encourage you to consider that there is a different relationship that you can take to this word.

And I hope that you come to love the word discipline as much as I have come to love it.

Now,

Mind you,

This does not mean that my discipline is perfect.

And this is another thing that I think gets in the way of us having a good relationship with self-discipline is that we expect perfectionism from ourselves.

What does,

You know,

At the heart of discipline,

At the heart of my own discipline,

I would say,

Is that I know that I can trust myself to bring myself back when I start to stray,

When I start to wander.

And I'll talk about that more in just one second.

Okay.

Ginger is saying,

Hey,

Ginger,

Welcome back.

What we allow into our field energetically.

Yeah.

Okay.

So what we allow into our field energetically,

That comes under the umbrella of discernment.

We discern.

Yep.

So wonderful skill to have when you're looking at your screens.

What am I going to take in?

What am I going to let go of?

Having that sense of filtration.

Martha regarding yourself.

Beautiful.

Yes.

Okay.

Ginger again,

Dignus in Latin means worthy.

Love it.

See,

Here we are.

We are worthy of nurturing our dignity.

What a great affirmation.

Yes.

Okay.

So let's talk a little bit more about the nuts and bolts of our discipline.

So we're talking about the view right now of preserving our dignity,

Preserving our,

You know,

Worthiness.

We are worthy of nurturing our dignity.

So this is kind of the view of how we can think about discipline in a different way,

How we can rethink our relationship to discipline.

Then there are the actions that make up personal discipline,

Kind of universal actions.

And in the Buddhist teachings,

These are called the 10 virtuous actions of body,

Speech,

And mind.

And I think these are really important to keep in mind,

Especially nowadays in the times that we're living in,

When everything is fraught with turbulence and rapid transition and a lot of assaults on our senses,

How we hold ourselves to our own center.

Okay.

So let's go through these,

The 10 virtuous actions of body,

Speech,

And mind.

So beginning with body,

The three virtuous actions of body first is not taking life or let's put it in the positive.

They're the virtuous actions.

So preserving life force,

Taking only what is offered and coming into right conduct sexually.

Okay.

Preserving life force.

This is the first action,

Virtuous action.

And this is what you all have come here to do,

Whether you realize it or not.

So if you have been seeking to improve your health in some way,

You're looking to lose the weight,

You want to eat better and you want to get better sleep and you want to,

You know,

Have a healthier relationship to your body,

Your life force.

All of that is under the umbrella of preserving prana,

Preserving life force.

So how do we feed our bodies?

How do we move our bodies?

How do we rest our bodies?

You know,

All of those yogas,

All of those offerings are under the discipline,

That first point of the discipline of body.

Second is taking only what is offered,

Taking only what is yours.

So this is a kind of a subtle point.

Sometimes when we are mistreating other people,

We are taking what is not ours.

And I'll talk about that in just a moment in speech,

Because it comes up a lot in the category of speech.

Okay.

So let me just leave that there,

Taking only what is offered,

Taking only what is yours.

And then the third point,

The third point is sexuality and sexual conduct.

And this comes down to honoring our sexuality,

Treating ourselves and others with respect sexually,

Under the spirit of preserving dignity,

That you are treating your sexuality and you are interacting with others sexually from a place of self-dignity.

Okay.

So that's body in a nutshell.

Those are just some basic reference points.

Then we get into speech.

What we say is the link between our body and our mind.

Speech is the nexus point.

Speech is the joining point.

Speech is an activity of the body,

But it's also an expression of the mind.

And speech can also include our emotional nature.

Okay.

So with speech,

There is telling the truth.

Now in the 12-step rule,

We talk about rigorous honesty.

And what I have found in my own journey is that the path of rigorous honesty it's a path.

It's not an event.

It's not a one and done,

But as heroines on this journey and as heroes on this journey,

We will be continually challenged.

We will be continually confronted with a choice of,

Okay,

Do I tell the truth here?

Do I just tell a lie or do I somehow put like a little spin on what I want to say?

Because I think the other person might not be capable of handling the truth.

Now that diminishment of somebody else,

That underestimation of somebody else could be regarded as a form of compromising their life force,

Compromising their dignity.

And I'm sure many of you have heard this.

The questions that we ask ourselves,

Is it necessary?

Is it helpful?

Is it respectful?

What I'm about to say.

The truth can set you free.

First,

It can make you mad.

It can upset you.

That's okay.

Truth can hurt,

But truth does not harm.

Telling the truth does not compromise the life force of yourself or another person.

So very important.

Now here's where abstaining from gossip comes in.

Going back to the mindful actions of body.

In the 12 step world,

Gossip is referred to as a polite form of murder by character assassination.

A polite form of murder by character assassination.

So abstaining from gossip means speaking about others with respect as well.

Preserving the dignity of other human beings,

Contributing to the dignity of other human beings.

The thing about gossip is interesting because in the absence of what we might call gossip,

We have a police state.

There's a certain way in a society where it's not so much about gossip per se,

But just like the way we talk about each other,

There is an element where it does help to maintain a certain social order.

And there can be a place for that.

And there can be a place to express genuine concern,

Genuine curiosity,

Inquisitiveness,

Bafflement,

Whatever it is.

What we're abstaining from here is the teardown of another human being vis-a-vis how we talk about them.

And in preserving that person's dignity,

We preserve our own dignity as well.

So abstaining from gossip.

Then the fourth part of discipline of speech is speaking only what is necessary and abstaining from speech that might be frivolous,

Babbling,

Just speaking to fill up space.

And that leads right into the fourth part of discipline of speech was that sometimes you just need to be quiet.

You know,

Sometimes silence is the perfect thing to say.

Okay.

So I'm going to just go through mind very quickly.

And then I want to hear what is resonating for you and everything that I'm saying.

Discipline of mind in a nutshell,

I would say is holding and coming back to a regenerative perspective,

Holding a vision of possibility.

And this isn't just simply optimism.

This isn't optimism.

I mean,

Optimism is good.

Optimism is great.

But this isn't just the sense of like,

Oh,

It's all going to work out.

Everything's going to be fine,

You know,

Because that can be kind of like a glossing over.

But for myself right now,

When I look at world events right now,

Like what's happening in our collective,

And I have really spent a lot of time kind of praying,

Meditating,

And really asking the divine to please show me,

Show me what it is that I am meant to see.

And that's a beautiful prayer,

By the way.

So,

You know,

If you're getting upset,

Looking at the news,

Or just walking out the door of your neighborhood,

You know,

You can hand that over to the God or goddess of your understanding and ask for a perspective that will be helpful.

And what I see right now is just simply that we're in a time of collapse,

That things have been running on a certain track for however many years,

It depends on how far back you want to go.

But that seemingly,

You know,

Things are hitting this kind of crescendo,

This acceleration point,

There will be a collapse,

And then something new will arise.

Now,

That might be scary,

That might be terrifying,

That might not be pleasant or fun,

It could create a lot of hardship.

But it creates a,

You know,

To look at things that way creates a generative context of understanding where it's not quite so hopeless.

But that things again,

If we trace it,

If we look at the world through the lens of the heroine's journey,

The hero's journey,

You know,

We have the breakdown,

The breakout,

The breakthrough,

We're breaking down now.

And at some point,

There will be a breakout,

And then something else will break through.

I hope this is helpful.

And I hope this making sense.

Discipline of mind,

Bringing ourselves back from precipice of despair.

Again,

Being mindful of what we tell ourselves,

It's hopeless,

It's impossible.

Well,

Okay.

Remembering the universe says yes to every thought,

Is that really true?

Now,

The other thing I want to say about discipline is finding the consistency within the inconsistency.

So I say this a lot.

I don't meditate every single day.

I'm not one of these people that gets up at like six or five in the morning,

And I'm sitting on my meditation cushion.

However,

I have been meditating for 39 years.

Do you see?

Do you get that?

So again,

Discipline can be regarded as the energy that comes forward,

Bringing yourself back to yourself.

Here's Eileen,

I'm making lists of my wins.

Good.

And then one thing I did during the day that was out of integrity.

Yep,

Holding it in my heart with compassion.

So in the 12 step world,

That is you're doing a 10th step.

Taking personal inventory on a daily basis,

Like what did I do well?

Where was I out of integrity?

See,

And that's the discipline right there,

Marjorie,

Bringing yourself back.

Now see,

There are millions upon millions of human beings walking this planet who might be out of integrity and don't think twice about it.

It's a way of life.

But see,

You have the discipline and the discernment to recognize it and bring it back.

Noah,

For me,

Every day meditating helps me to keep the bigger perspective.

I love that,

Noah.

And you know what that is?

The meditation,

It's discipline and what we're talking about today.

But it also goes back to your inner mentor.

Okay,

So there can be the claustrophobia of circumstances.

Again,

That sense of things pressing in and pressing down.

Then when you sit down on a meditation cushion,

You turn off all the noise.

You feel enough devotion to engage in that discipline with the divine.

Your inner mentor,

Your intuition has room to come through and guide you.

It's been said,

Prayer is talking to God.

Meditation is listening,

Right?

So creating that container,

Having the devotion of the discipline to create that container to listen and then to hear.

Shall we do some tapping?

Yeah,

This has been a wonderful conversation.

I've enjoyed it.

I hope you've enjoyed it.

Let's tap on being open to developing a new relationship with discipline.

How's that?

Okay,

So let's just start by bumping the sides of the hands together.

Even though I have really struggled with discipline and go ahead and just repeat after me.

And I have been telling myself a story that I am undisciplined.

I am totally open to rewriting that story.

I am open to a new relationship with my personal discipline.

And I deeply love and completely accept myself.

Excellent.

Let's go up to the top of the head.

Oh,

Yeah.

Yep,

I've been telling myself that I am undisciplined.

Mm-hmm.

Good.

Inside the eyebrow.

Beating myself up for all my so-called lack of discipline.

Okay,

Side of the eye.

Beating myself up because I'm not doing this or I'm not doing that.

Mm-hmm.

Under the eye.

Beating myself up because I'm not doing it perfectly enough.

Under the nose.

Just giving myself a hard time.

Mm-hmm.

Under the mouth.

I am so accustomed to thinking ill of myself in this way.

Good.

Okay,

Collarbone.

And maybe this is something that I learned early on.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Under the arm.

Adults in my life telling me I wasn't good enough.

Right?

Back up to the top of the head.

What's wrong with you?

Inside the eyebrow.

You'll never get it right.

Side of the eye.

You're too stupid,

Or you're too lazy,

Or you're too dumb,

Or you're too this or that.

Whatever.

Yeah.

Okay.

Under the eye.

Okay,

What if I just turn all that noise off?

Mm-hmm.

Under the nose.

Because that's really all it is,

Is just a bunch of noise.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Under the mouth.

Let's take a breath here.

Okay.

And here,

Just bring your energy as you're tapping underneath your mouth.

Just bring your energy into your heart center.

Because the truth of it is,

I am committed to my healing.

Mm-hmm.

Good.

Collarbone.

The truth is,

I am devoted to my own healing.

Great.

Collarbone.

And I know this because I am here tapping right now.

Great.

Top of the head.

And I am dignified and worthy.

Love that.

Yeah.

Good.

Inside the eyebrow.

I am worthy of nurturing my dignity.

Side of the eye.

Treating myself with dignity in every area of my life.

Under the eye.

Being respectful toward my body.

Under the nose.

Being respectful toward my speech.

And my emotions.

Under the mouth.

Being respectful toward my mind.

Great.

Collarbone.

Being the peace and the dignity that I want to see in myself and the world.

Good.

Collarbone.

And I really love and appreciate myself for that.

Yes.

Yay,

Yay,

Yay,

Yay,

Yay.

Okay.

How are you doing?

How is that tapping for you?

How do you feel now?

How has your relationship with personal discipline changed as a result of this tapping and this conversation?

What are you taking away with you?

I see a lot of hearts ballooning up in the corner.

Adrienne is feeling empowered.

Yes.

And you know,

Adrienne,

This is where it's really important to stay in community.

Because when we are by ourselves,

Those monsters of mind can really take root.

So you know,

Some of you have been coming here every Saturday.

This is literally where we have reminded ourselves and each other what we are capable of,

Who we are in our essence,

What is the nature of the journey,

And so on.

Okay.

E is saying,

I like challenging the story.

Yes.

Like as we were doing that tapping,

I literally had this sense of like turning a dial down,

Just turning all that noise down,

Just turning the volume down.

Whoo,

There's lots of hearts bubbling up here.

Beautiful.

Any other thoughts before we adjourn?

Susie Q,

My first time to tap.

Need to understand how this works.

Okay.

Let me speak to that in one second.

Mary Pat,

It solidified my worthiness a bit more,

Combating all the disciplinarians from my childhood.

Good.

Good.

Okay.

Susie Q,

Let me give you a little,

Very quick overview of tapping for all of you who are new.

Some people call tapping emotional acupuncture.

So what we do is we fingertip tap on points that are at or near the ends of certain acupuncture meridians while we are recollecting a stressful situation.

And what the tapping does is it acts like a little circuit breaker on the electromagnetic signal of the distress,

And it kind of diffuses the signal.

Like,

Let's say you get bit by a dog,

And you know,

When you look at the trauma of being bitten by a dog,

Maybe this dog is menacing towards you,

And it's got like,

You know,

It's showing its teeth,

And you feel the impact of the dog biting your backside or whatever it is.

You know,

All of those sense perceptions,

All of the emotions,

All of those chemicals kind of lock into your system.

When something like that happens with the tapping,

We recollect,

Oh,

The look on the dog's face,

Or the sound of it growling,

Or the feeling of how it was biting me.

And we tap while we are recollecting that stress.

And what that does is it down regulates the limbic system of the brain.

It's kind of like,

The limbic system is kind of like the smoke alarm of the brain.

It just calms that smoke alarm down.

And then that memory,

It's not that you don't remember it anymore,

But it's no more significant than like this crystal that I'm holding.

It's just another thing,

You know.

There's a saying in the tapping world,

Try it on everything.

The thing that's been so amazing for me working with women like you is,

Oh,

Okay,

Let's talk about your relationship to frozen pizza.

Well,

What does that frozen pizza represent?

Well,

Gee,

My mother and I used to bond over frozen pizza when I was five years old,

Or whatever.

Okay,

So then we can tap.

You know,

In that case,

That's what's called a guiding star.

That's kind of like a more pleasant association.

But still,

We can tap to reorganize your relationship to that pizza and that whole experience of your mother so that the pizza just becomes the pizza.

You know,

The food just becomes the food.

And it doesn't have all this stuff,

Baggage connected to it.

So I hope that's a helpful explanation.

Please let me know.

Noah,

For me,

It connects directly to last week.

Yes.

Yes.

Good point,

Noah.

It connects directly to last week.

I love you no matter what.

And not only am I going to say I love you no matter what,

But I am going to demonstrate that to myself and to the world through my discipline.

Okay.

Ginger saying,

Reminding us of how tapping,

Neutralizing the charge is so helpful.

Good.

Okay.

Marjorie,

I find the tapping allows me to release deep sadness and grief over the struggles I've always had.

There you are.

Beautiful.

And Susie saying,

Yes,

Very helpful.

All right,

Ladies.

Wow.

Thank you so much for yet another wonderful,

Wonderful Saturday morning.

Please follow me here on Insight Timer.

This is so good.

Thank you so much for taking so much time with us every week.

Your offering is incredibly valuable on changing lives.

Marjorie saying,

Very well said.

Thank you,

Marcella.

Well,

Thank you all of you.

You know,

You,

If,

If there was no you,

There's no,

There's no me.

The Insight Timer community don't show up.

There's nobody here for the teachers to teach,

Right?

So you make this happen.

And that just gives me a lot of joy.

All right,

Go forth,

Enjoy your life,

Go forth and prosper.

Lots of love,

Everyone.

Bye for now.