Chapter 4

My First Integration

Sit in a calm place where you will not be disturbed. Do not lie down, and do not collapse into a sofa. Sit with your spine relaxed but erect. You do not need to be stiff, but you should sit straight enough to feel awake, attentive, and available to the practice.

Posture matters more than people think. When we lie down, the body often enters the reflex of rest, and the mind may stop treating the exercise as something important. When we are slouched, it becomes harder to gather the attitude of active study and concentration. When we are standing, moving, or doing something else, the attention is divided. For this first integration, give the exercise all of your mind, as much as possible. Sit simply, sit straight, and prepare yourself to feel what is there.

We will begin with pride. For now, understand pride as a defensive measure. It is often the first denial that rises when our identity feels questioned. This may happen when our social position, our opinion, our intelligence, our competence, or our value seems attacked. Pride rises to defend the image we have of ourselves.

For this exercise, choose a moment where your pride rose. It may be a recent moment, or something from the past. Choose a situation where you felt offended, misunderstood, undervalued, or treated as if what you said or what you were did not matter. It does not need to be dramatic. It only needs to be real enough that you can still feel something when you remember it.

Take a moment now to remember the situation. Let the story play again in your mind. Remember what happened. Remember what they said. Remember what you said, or what you wanted to say. Remember how you felt in the chest, the belly, the throat, the head, or the whole body.

Now breathe consciously for at least one minute. The breath should remain natural, but intentional. You are not trying to force the breath. You are simply breathing with attention.

As you breathe, give your main focus to the feeling of pride. Let the memory help the reaction rise again. Your mental plane follows the instructions, remembers the story, and keeps the practice organized. Your emotional plane gives itself permission to feel what was awakened.

This may be disturbing. That is part of the work. Emotional Integration is not about judging that the reaction was wrong, stupid, or unacceptable. What you lived is what you lived. The point is to accept feeling the uncomfortable state that arose, so that you can observe it, taste it, and understand how pride appears inside of yourself. Disappointment, sadness, anger, let it all rise. Stay still, without making judgment. Breathe into the experience and accept to feel it.

Give yourself at least one minute. Two minutes is better. Five minutes is better still.

Stop reading now and practice.

When you are ready, continue.

Pride is a reaction. It is one of the three denials. It usually hides a deeper emotion. The emotion behind it may be abandonment, rejection, or guilt. We will not define these too deeply yet, but we need a simple understanding for the exercise.

Abandonment is the feeling that someone or something was there, and now it is gone. Usually this concerns a person, someone we loved, liked, needed, or counted on. It can also concern a job, a place, an object, a role, or something we felt connected to. In abandonment, the pain has the flavor of absence.

Rejection is different. In rejection, the person or group may still be there, but we already believed we belonged, or that they were responsible for including us, and that belief is challenged. They may refuse us, exclude us, dismiss us, or not give us the esteem we wanted. Rejection often hurts our sense of value and our sense of belonging. It feels like, “I was not accepted,” or “I was not seen as enough.” This is often the emotion found behind pride, but allow to rise whichever emotion rose, without judgment or expectation. We felt undervalued, and pride rose to defend us from feeling that rejection too directly.

Guilt is not the feeling of actual right or wrong, of being good or bad. It is the impression of right or wrong. You can cause suffering and never feel guilty if you never learn about it. You can do your best and still feel guilty if someone suggests you have done badly. When someone suggests that we caused harm, whether their accusation is true or not, guilt may rise. Pride may then appear to defend us from that guilt.

Now return to the same situation. Ask yourself, beneath the pride, what emotion is the richest?

Was there abandonment?Was there rejection?Was there guilt?

If you feel two of them, or even all three, do not complicate the exercise. Choose the one that feels most present, the one that has the strongest emotional charge.

Now focus mainly on that emotion. If it is abandonment, feel abandonment. If it is rejection, feel rejection. If it is guilt, feel guilt. Let the emotion be the center of the practice.

Keep a secondary attention on pride. Remember that this emotion expressed itself inside of you and outside of you as pride. Pride was the defensive measure built over the emotion.

Keep a third, lighter attention on your breathing. Let the breathing remain normal, conscious, and intentional.

Sit there for one or two minutes, ideally five. Embrace the emotion that rose. Feel the pride that covered it. Do not try to solve it. Do not argue with it. Do not justify yourself. Do not accuse the other person. Stay with what happened inside of you. Just feel it.

Remain there as long as it takes for something to become clearer. Sometimes the wisdom comes quickly. Sometimes it does not. The practice is already useful when you accept to feel honestly.

Stop reading now and give yourself the time to practice:

emotionpridebreathe.

After a few minutes of this Emotional Integration, relax. Let the breath become simple again. Let go of the story, let go of the drama, and let the situation return to the past where it belongs.

Do not force anything more for now. Just find again the peace inside of yourself, as much as possible. When you feel calm enough to continue, we can focus on what can be deduced from this first integration.