The Embodiment of Freedom: An integral approach to optimal health and personal transformation (Part 1: Introduction to the inquiry)

We’ve all had moments when we feel particularly full of life, especially present to whatever we’re engaged in — times when we’re simply more on, more there, more tuned in to life than usual. I was in my mid-twenties when I started to realize that these experiences of wakeful presence and intense vitality were becoming few and far between in my life, scattered here and there amidst the languid grind of everyday existence. The more I inquired, the more it became increasingly clear that I was also progressively losing touch with the sense of wonder and possibility that I had come to know as the deepest, most precious part of myself. As the prize of maturity stood waiting for me to grasp hold, I was paralyzed by the fear that somehow this growing sense of disconnection and diminished vitality was simply the terrible and inevitable cost to be paid, the price of admission into the world of adulthood. Before too long, however, I’d be graced with another wide-awake moment and, for a time anyway, I would feel certain that there was a better way forward, a way of becoming more connected and more fully alive instead of less so as we get older.

Abraham Maslow used the term “peak experiences” to describe these windows of full-living, and my initial question regarding them was three-fold: What is the nature of such experiences; why are they becoming so few and far between in my life; and can I learn to live in such a way as to have more of them?

Over the years this initial inquiry has become a sustained, passionate pursuit of personal truth that has always been, at heart, toward a deceptively simple end: to be as fully myself as often as I can be. Along the way I have discovered a few things that I hope others will find to be interesting and useful. I also hope that writing my way through the process — of where I’ve been, where I am, and what may lie ahead — might open new avenues of inquiry and new territory to explore as I continue on this journey.

My intention is to update this series of posts regularly — at least once a week. In the next installment I’ll define in detail what I mean by the terms “integral” and “personal transformation”, and I’ll also lay out a broad outline of some of the territory I hope to explore.