If we were to follow our instincts, we would live a life of integration. Integration with the world around us and all living things within it. This mindset of segregation, is a modern mindset. It serves those in power well to alienate us from others and from ourselves.

When you look at nature, everything is connected. It is the relationships between them all that helps everything to thrive. Creating a healthy and thriving ecosystem. The plants, the insects the animals, they all co operate together.

Yet in human society we are more likely to compete against one another than work together. From a young age, we are told to focus on personal success, to do all that we can so that we succeed and be the best. Introducing this competitive nature.

But if we are to really thrive in life, we need to work together, and not just with our own kind, but with all life forms. Bill Mollison the father of Permaculture expresses it perfectly:

Although initially we can see how helping our family and friends assists us in our own survival, we may evolve the mature ethic that sees all humankind as family, and all life as allied associations. Thus, we expand people care to species care, for all life has common origins. All are ‘our family’.

So much about permaculture spoke to me, but hearing these words, words that I had long believed, really sang out to me and made me feel so confident and at home, amongst the permaculture way of life.

It is all about finding solutions, solutions that are right there in front of us. Integrating with our communities, creating space for those that need it and forming caring and respectful relationships.

Building bridges between us all and seeing how each and everyone of us, has so much to offer, so much to give. Helping others to see this, is such an empowering gift to bestow upon them.

Rejecting the fear that the media and government tries so hard to put upon us. It is so important to promote messages of unity and oneness. To see one another for who we really are! Instead of feeding into the fear that creates such huge divides.

On a personal level, we have been taught to reject certain parts of ourselves, those parts that are not seen as civil. Behaviours that are not encouraged. Open displays of anger and pain. We live in a world, where those that suffer are hidden away from society.

We are told to always act appropriately and if not, then you can be sure that you will be ostracized for your behaviour. Described as a train wreck, or being overly sensitive or weak.

So many of us, push our pain and anger and sense of injustice away. It festers inside until it manifests itself into different physical aliments. Because our bodies will find a way to release them, but by then it can be too late, we find ourselves seriously ill.

It is so important to fully accept and embrace ourselves, all parts of yourself. To integrate all the pain and anger, so that we can then resolve them. So that we can process them and let them go. Those emotions are as important to our personal growth as any other.

We are meant to feel, to express and to grow. Not to be left go stagnant, creating blockages within ourselves.

Imagine a world were we all co-operated with one another. Where we built upon our relationships and connections, where us humans mirrored that which already exists in nature. Imagine what we could do?

Imagine what we could create. It is already happening, there are already such communities happening all over the world.

Right now as I write this, there is the awesome ecovillage that is being created in Portugal, led by @eco-alex. This is what integration looks like, using this platform to bring people together to birth new creations, creations that will work with nature and not segregate itself away from it.

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