Hello everyone,
Thanks for all of your posts. I appreciate hearing about what you think of the ILP Kit. I'd like to respond to a couple of points that were made here.
First, someone asked about the MyILP.com site and access that we promised on the inside cover of the box. Yes, it's true that we have not yet completed this site. We are however, still planning on creating this site as part of our new IntegralLife portal. It's still in the design phase, but we plan to release the first part of it in the first half of 2008. So please be patient and we'll let you know when it's out.
In the meantime, one thing that we are doing is hosting ILP concalls with our teachers every few weeks. If you have an ILP Kit, you can participate on these calls. We had our first one last night with Ken, which was great and went for 2 hours. Well be doing a Body module call at the end of the month and a Mind module call in Dec. You can check the currently www.myilp.com site for info and access.
The other thing that I'd like to respond to is the perspective that the Kit is basic or just for beginners. At one level that's certainly true. In fact, we intentionally created the Kit so that anyone can make use of it, even if they don't have any previous experience with integral. (We even call it the Starter Kit for that reason.)
At the same time, I feel that there is plenty of depth and richness in the ILP Kit for people of any level - as long as they actually do the practices. One of our design principles while creating the Kit was to distill the core principles from many different practices into the simplest methods that we could. We didn't feel that practices needed to be complicated to be effective.
Think about the basic practice of meditation. Sit quietly in an upright posture, notice your breathing and when you get caught up in thoughts, just come back to noticing your breathing. Simple enough in theory... The challenge (and benefit) is in the doing of it... on a consistent basis. And to start to develop a habit, so that we practice even when we don't 'feel' like it. I know that this is something I'm still working on, after almost 15 years of practice.
So the ILP Kit has many of these types of practices that are pretty straight forward to explain, but the doing with a beginner's mind of curiosity and willingness to explore our edges, is where the value lies.
The other point I'd like to highlight is that the practices are great to engage in, but the true testing ground of our growth is in our daily lives. So it may be easy to sit calmly in our meditation space, but can we bring this equanimity when we are dealing with work, family & traffic? I'll use the 3-body workout to flush out what I mean in more detail as to how this relates to the ILP Kit. (Since this is the practice I'm most familiar with :-)
The 3-body workout was designed to exercise our gross, subtle and casual bodies. So we can notice the spaciousness of our awareness in the causal, feel and cultivate our energy in the subtle and become strong and grounded in the gross. These 3 bodies/aspects of our being are always available & working; it's just a matter of how much awareness and skill we have to access them in an intentional way.
So as we go through our life, are there certain experiences that cause us to contract our awareness, drain our energy or tense our bodies? Or are we always able to remain spacious, energized and relaxed - even in the midst of challenging moments? Probably some of both. If that's the case, we have an opportunity to practice and grow so that we can bring more consciousness and depth to each moment.
How does this relate to the 3-body workout?
One of the practices in the workout is F.I.T. (focused intensity training), where we practice using all three bodies as we engage in strength training. Let's use the squat as an example here. So as we consciously do squats and hold one in the squat position, we very quickly can feel the burn of the muscle. At that moment, how do we respond? Do we want to reactively pull away from the pain? Or can we breathe into the intensity and stay present with our sensations?
This ability to conduct intensity through our bodies with our breath and awareness is not dissimilar to being able to conduct intense experiences in our lives. Instead of trying to avoid or strategize to get around intensity/challenging moments, we learn to conduct and hold the intensity so that our deepest self can shine through in the midst of it. And if life is anything, it certainly seems to be getting more intense these days. So who couldn't use more practice with this?
I'd like to close with one last thought. The ILP Kit is really intended to help us build a bridge from mentally understanding the Integral concepts to fully embodying them in our lives. If you happen to think that it's too basic for you, I have a couple of suggestions on how you can check it out:
1. Reflect if you actually took the time (at least 2-3 months) to engage in all the practices in a consistent manner before coming to this conclusion. Or did you just read about it/watch some of the DVDs?
2. Show your partner (or a family member/close friend) the ILP Kit and ask him/her if he/she thinks that you already fully embody everything in it. Always holding multiple perspectives, body at full radiant health, constantly aware of shadow and resting in Big Mind/Heart. If not, perhaps there is something to practice still...
I hope that helps!
Huy
Huy Lam
Chief Development Officer
Integral Institute