The Lost Years

Video Blog Transcription:

(00:00):

So I talk a lot about integration and the work that I do. In fact, I even call one type of coaching that I do spiritual integration coaching. And typically when I describe it, I talk about experiencing your spiritual connection and awakening that open spiritual awareness and then bringing that into your daily life.

Often, we allow ourselves to experience that in a yoga class or when we're meditating, but then we're not able to bring that into our daily life. So this is the context I usually talk about spiritual integration with, but today I want to talk about a different aspect of integration.

I even took a peek at the dictionary, Webster’s, and integration was combining the parts of yourself to make them whole. I guess it didn't say yourself, but to combine parts to make a whole. So there's another element of integration, which is taking the different aspects of ourselves and embracing them and seeing them as a whole.

(01:15):

And the other thing is that we can do is we can look at the different aspects of our lives, the different periods or phases of our lives. Often these phases become kind of fragmented. It feels like we’ve lived a bunch of different lives within this life.

They were different phases where I was in a marriage, at college, and they almost feel like they were different lifetimes. There were these phases of life that were different. And then because of that, I think they continue to be a little fragmented and disjointed. They're not unified, they're not integrated.

(01:59):

And a really good example of this I just experienced lately. So there was this time in my life that I probably haven't talked about much. It was when I was in my second year of college, and I was at Penn State. It had been an interesting time previously to this.

My father died when I was 16 years old. And shortly after that, I ended up getting a pretty serious girlfriend. And we went out for like two and a half years, and it was first love. And, I was just really happy. But as I did work on this later, it seemed that I didn't totally feel the loss of my dad; instead, I kind of fell in love.

And then, so what happened, I'm going into my second year of college, my girlfriend and I broke up. Actually, it was more like she broke up with me. And what happened is that all this loss of that and loss of my dad at all of it hit me.

(03:00):

And then that was the time of my life when I was most depressed, and what I was doing at the time in order to manage this, I ended up partying a lot, smoking a lot of pot, playing the drums, and going to see these amazing concerts, you know?

I would go see a lot of jam bands. I was back east, and we'd go and see the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers, and Santana. And a couple of years later, with some therapy and work, and I met a spiritual teacher, I kind of pulled myself out of this depression.

And over time, I kind of saw this time of my life as "the lost years”. I think that's after a John Prine song called “Jesus, the lost years”. It's not that I'm Jesus, but I just kind of labelled this time as those were the lost years.

(04:03):

I was kind of floating around; not much happened. I didn't really accomplish very much. I didn't do well in college. I did see some amazing music, however, and I played the drums. It was kind of the hippie phase of my life, really.

And it worked because I pulled myself out, but there was a time in my life when I kind of split off from myself. I didn't really own it as part of me. Or maybe not as good of a part of me, that was kind of the lost part of me. And I didn't really embrace that, which is what I've learned.

So recently, I was out here in Bend, Oregon, and my friend and I met to get out, and there was this band that was playing Grateful Dead covers there. And they ended up being really good, so I started watching, and they played this really good version of a song called Cassidy. I thought, Wow, these guys are good.”

(05:11):

And what happened is that pretty soon, I was dancing a little bit, and they'd play a couple of songs. I knew all the words, and pretty soon, I was crying and remembering these songs and having the joy of remembering the songs and the times that I had.

I realized, “Wow, there was a real joyous part of this.” Watching this band brought me joy. And it helped me remember the joy of this time of my life, which I had forgotten and kind of threw the baby out with the bathwater that this was a nonproductive and depressed time.