Integration is a bit like making a homemade pizza:
At first, basic ingredients are mixed, kneaded for a good amount of time, and left to rest for even longer. That becomes the foundational layer. Each simple ingredient brings its unique offering to the wholeness – the bread – and at this point you cannot really tell the different ingredients apart.
Then a tasty sauce is added – another layer of mixed ingredients that together form wholeness. Now, as you enjoy a taste of what has become your tomato sauce, you will notice the rich flavor of the herbs in the sauce, you will appreciate the contribution of the garlic, and you will notice the rich flavor of the tomatoes. It is as if you can taste each ingredient even more when they are together, than when they are on their own.
Then some toppings are added, and the pizza is baked.
The result is tasty. The result is a dish, where all ingredients are contributing with their unique flavors and colors to the greater whole, and where all ingredients have been cooked for long enough to work well together.
Integration is NOT assimilation. That would be a rather tasteless and boring result.
I frequently revisit the socio-cultural elements, thoughts, and events that I am made of.
Each time a new layer or a new ingredient is added, I can look back on my constitution with a new perspective. And then I need some time to cook a bit more.
If I discover elements that I have cast away or forgotten about, then I also need some time to cook.
“Cooking” is integration. Integration is the proces of making sense of it all without neglecting any part of myself.
It would be much easier, and much less energy consuming, to just stick to the original perspective, or to just accept the new and through away the old, but when I have integrated, I can move forward with more integrity. When I have integrated, I am much more rooted in myself, I am at peace with the topic I integrated, and I feel more at home in the world.
When I have integrated, I no longer need to use so much energy to think, feel, say, or do. But after a while, or maybe even simultaneously but in another dimension, another integration process is going on.
That is development.
That is expansion of the perspective.