Share the bounty! ITPI Fall Newsletter 2019

Dear Friends,

Perhaps now is as good a time as any to take a breath, balance and center and become aware of our blessings. As the world turns unpredictably and presents an array of challenges, we can be fortified by our practice and global community. In ITP, we stay rooted in our personal transformation in ourselves and that of the world.

In this issue, we focus on the soul dimension of the integral. As days gets shorter here in this hemisphere, our attention turns inward towards our deepest selves. What is your soul asking of you? What messages are you responding to?

Enjoy reading articles submitted by members of our community on the topic of soul. Be sure to check out ITPI upcoming events - opportunities to touch into your soul's guidance and be awakened to greater hope and goodness on the precious planet we are graced to inhabit together.

Thank you sharing the path of practice with us. Together, we can create a more beautiful, hopeful and generous world. Wishing you a healthy and peaceful holiday season!

With love and gratitude,

Pam Kramer

ITPI President

Science of the Soul

by Roger Marsh

Integral Leadership facilitator & GLEE co-coordinator

What is the soul? When we ask this at ITP workshops we get, as you would expect, a variety of answers. If there is commonality in those answers it is that the soul is a deeper aspect of ones' self and is somewhat more mysterious than our other more familiar aspects of body, mind, and heart. Because it is deeper and more mysterious, it is more challenging to study and understand. However, the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS, www.noetic.org) has been using science to explore areas of human experience, you could say, illuminates at least some aspects of what we might consider soul.

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Soul Pickings

Insights from Prairie Grass

by Sally Mahe

ITP Mastery teacher & ITP San Rafael member

I want to share a fragment of "soul pickings" from my journal. These are thoughts that come to me when I reflect and intentionally enter into conversation with my soul. I usually do this by sitting quietly in the mornings with my journal in hand. I often address the day's entry by greeting my soul like this, "Dear Sally soul,"..... then, I begin to write whatever comes up.

How we understand and relate to our soul is exquisitely personal. I sense that what we receive from soul conversations accumulates over time and these insights add up. They are our own treasure, ready to be retrieved and renewed with meaning. I hope that this sample "soul picking" from my journal may be helpful to you. More importantly, I invite you to reflect on conversations you may have had with your soul and see what "soul pickings" are there for you. You might consider returning to your "soul pickings" to help you realign with your life journey and your soul's destiny.

"I loaf and invite my soul...at my ease observing a spear of summer grass..." - Walt Whitman

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Soul Work

by Jerry Patch

ITPI member

Being from Texas, my heroes have always been Cowboys, until I met Michael Murphy. Although 15 years ago, the encounter is in indelibly etched in my memory. My hero, Michael, came to Houston to visit and inspire the ITP group that Linda and I had joined. Visiting in Lydia Dugan's home, I sat next to Michael on a sofa. We exchanged pleasantries and Michael casually remarked to me, "I recommend you read Soul Code by James Hillman." I followed Michael's advice. Although I meandered many times from the wisdom embedded in Soul Code, it has been a bright light on my path and a rudder to steer life's sometime rocky shoals.

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Karma

by Kevin Maher

ITPI member

What if in death we evaporate

as Rilke said like steam from a dish,

or dissolve into a final dilution

beyond Avogadro's number

so that no atom of us remains

in the life's solution,

and yet an imprint of our essence lingers

homeopathically in the world's evolving ocean

as a subliminal 'memory of water',

embedded in the world's subconscious

until appearing again as the same essence

clothed in other atoms

we move through the world in another body,

and circumstances arise to meet us in that life

when we reappear in the world's consciousness,

so that the events of our lives occur

in life's automatic associations

as the world remembers us again

sometimes in happy circumstances;

or we could at times

be like an olfactory trigger

to life's limbic system

so that we evoke in certain moments

a nightmarish fate,

a dharma that seems to surround us

like the world's flashback

in its posttraumatic stress disorder,

life's recollection of

homoios pathos,

similar suffering,

through which like cures like

and life cures life:

a form of karmic homeopathy,

an intensification of the symptoms

before the remedy has its

healing effect.

Spotlight on Armando Cardenas

ITP Journey of Practice member

How did you become involved in ITP?

About three years ago I was invited to a new position in my job. My old boss was pushing hard on me to apply, but I was not sure because of the big challenge and radical change the new position involved. After a long internal struggle, I finally decided to take the step.

During the promotion process I was interviewed by the new manager and what was supposed to be a traditional interview turned into a friendship convo. I even recall me talking about meditation at some point. I was accepted for the new position, and this new manager turned out to be Doran Blinderman,

ITP SF co-leader. What could have been a really tough

change process was considerably lightened by his leadership and advice.

After some time, I received a priceless gift from Doran of the books Mastery and The Life we are Given. He also invited me to join my first Journey of Practice series where I met Pam and the ITP community. Everything after that is just magic!

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