Now that you, fair reader, have navigated Integration’s four realms, your understanding of the term will have blossomed along the journey. Like the four blind men who feel an elephant, one reports its solid, another that it’s serpentine, etc…. The aggregate of their testimonies, however, allow us through a sort of conceptual triangulation to apprehend the true nature of the noble pachyderm itself. Likewise with the concept of integration, our understanding deepens as we consider diverse perspective. There remains a danger, however, in misteaking the menu for the meat, as it were:

True integration is not a concept, it’s an experience.

I follow a special diet so I don’t eat menus. Nevertheless I find it all too easy to conflate the two. Intellectual apprehension is a tool towards a deeper knowing; it is not the knowing itself. Use this preceding series as a tool, an instrument—a compass to guide you to the unassuming patch of earth, and as a spade to excavate the real treasure withal.

Einstein called the rational mind “a faithful servant” and then observed that “We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” We will probably always make this mistake, but maybe in 2015 we can do it a little less…