Laughing Crow’s Articles

Integration gets talked about like it’s a destination.

As if one day you wake up, stretch, yawn, and announce, “Ah yes. Fully integrated. Tea?”

It’s not that.

Integration is staying.

Not heroically. Not spiritually. Just… staying.

Staying when anger shows up and your first instinct is to either swallow it whole or weaponise it like a rusty machete. Staying when grief rolls through your chest and everything in you wants to shut the doors, pull the blinds, and call it “being grounded.” Staying when desire wakes up—clean, alive, unapologetic—and all the old rules start rattling their chains.

And this part matters: Integration is not looping the old inner rules.

A lot of people think they’re integrating when they’re actually just rehearsing.

Same trigger. Same story. Same internal monologue. New language, same script.

That’s not integration. That’s a spiritual remix.

Most people don’t want integration.

They want relief.

Relief is the fire exit. Integration is realising the alarm is loud but the building isn’t actually burning. Relief says, “Get me out of this feeling.” Integration says, “Stay until it finishes what it came to do.”

Anger isn’t the problem - Anger is power knocking.

Grief isn’t the problem - Grief is love that hasn’t finished moving.

Desire isn’t the problem - Desire is life stretching its legs after being cramped for too long.

The problem is what the old inner rules do when those energies arrive.

They rush in with instructions.

Contain it. Explain it. Fix it. Transcend it. Be good. Be safe. Be acceptable.

So instead of staying with the experience, we stay with the rule.

Round and round we go, calling it processing.

Integration isn’t repeating the rule with better insight.

It’s letting the body complete something without obeying the old instruction manual.

Eagle Eye, my old mentor taught me this without ever sitting me down to explain it. He wasn’t big on explanations anyway. He was big on watching.

I remember sitting with him one afternoon while someone kept asking the same question. Over and over. Slightly rephrased, same nervous energy underneath it. I could feel irritation rising in my own body—tight jaw, restless legs, that internal for the love of all things holy voice warming up.

Eagle Eye didn’t correct them.

Didn’t shut them down.

Didn’t offer a teaching moment.

He just stayed.

You could see it in him—subtle shifts, a longer breath, weight moving through his feet. The irritation was there, but it wasn’t driving. It wasn’t being suppressed either. And here’s the key: he wasn’t following the old rule that says “I must fix this or leave.”

Later, when it was just the two of us, I asked how he managed that.

He laughed. Not kindly. Not cruelly. Just honestly.

“I didn’t do anything,” he said. “I just didn’t abandon myself to feel better.”

That line hit harder than any teaching he ever gave me.

Because that’s the habit.

We abandon ourselves to escape discomfort—or we cling to the rule that promises safety. Either way, we leave the actual moment.

Integration is the opposite of that.

Integration is letting anger move without turning it into harm and without turning it into a lesson.

Letting grief breathe without collapsing into it or analysing it to death.

Letting desire exist without apology and without negotiating with your old worth rules.

And then there’s the hardest part—the moment the old exits light up. The familiar ones. The ones you’ve used your whole life. Withdraw. Distract. Transcend. Make a joke. Become busy. Become wise.

Those exits are powered by inner rules.

Integration doesn’t fight them.

It just doesn’t follow them.

Integration is noticing the instruction—“Get out now”—and staying anyway.

Not because you’re strong.

Not because you’re healed.

But because you’re finally letting the body finish something it never got to finish while the rules were running the show.

That’s when the loop breaks.

Not through effort.

Through presence without obedience.

No fireworks. No applause. No certificate.

Just a quiet realisation one day that the same trigger no longer hijacks you. The feeling still comes—but the old rule doesn’t get the keys.

You’re still here. Still present. Still you. That’s the work.

Uncomfortable. Inconvenient. Deeply unglamorous.

And absolutely real.