Integrity is alignment between our different facets, values, planes of existence. When our thoughts, actions and feelings align, we have integrity.
Integrity is a minute by minute decision to listen to the dictates of our soul, our heart, our body, to act in good faith, to live by something that is bigger than us and which we choose to belong to. It embraces universal wisdom and a moral code, something we deeply believe in on a personal level, that we adhere to, and commit to.
With that kind of integrity, we transcend the human condition and everything makes sense, every connection, every failure, every challenge. We are ready for anything.
Compassion is available, magnanimity, as well as this other option that neither submits nor dominates, but rather belongs in the heart of the Creation: Oneness in action.
As we renounce being one thing always, and rather choose to be true to our present state at all times, we see we are much more than this mortal, time & space-bound creature.
It takes practice to be this authentic, arguably we can never achieve it fully and consistently, but our trying sets the tone, it inspires.
As we become truer and truer, we know our core enough to recognise when we're out of balance, so we can course-correct.
Accessing inner truth requires knowing what we want, value, think and feel when free of another's influence.
It doesn't mean we won't take others into account, it means honesty with ourself, sufficient awareness to articulate and start a conversation, the willingness to place our needs neither above nor below someone else's and to let our truth transpire into our actions.
Our inner, higher or divine self is also the piece of us that speaks the universal language of love, creativity, and impermanence.
Connecting to our inner truth is not a selfish endeavour, it is falsely introspective. Intuition is our direct access to 'the tap', the source of collective and ageless wisdom, which can see, past the physical illusions, into cosmic truth.
As such, this connection inward is not self-absorbed, it is expansive.
We can’t quite understand who we are, what makes us us, until we catch a difference between us and another.
Then we may be deluded into thinking that difference makes one of us wrong, but that would be missing the entire point of the diversity of creation.
Integrity asks us to be, discover, and expand ourselves through the company of others. The company we seek is the one that allows us to be a fully fledged human, with joy and pain and all the rest.
Integrity is not submissive. It may be cooperative, constructive, harmonising, hard-working, supportive, accepting, or any other shape of generous, but it does not fold under peer pressure, does not comply to be loved.
Instead, it demonstrates how it's done, what it looks like to stand by our truth, to dare; being seen, setting an example, taking the lead. It risks meeting remonstrances, but it is more wrong to bow than to step up.
Genuine integrity does not need to convince people, be understood, proven, noticeable.
Acting and living in such alignment with ourselves involves purity of action, that our words, choices, attitudes and behaviours are an accurate representation of our state of being, not a projection, and not a demonstration.
In removing from our actions any aspect that is aimed at someone else, we streamline our authenticity.
Integrity cannot be pinned down. Like all things divine, it works in mysterious ways.
It is not about specific actions, a prescribed mechanic, or 'proper' anything. It is a connection to the present, to the truth of the situation and the demands of the soul.
When we try to fit it in a box, in a rule book, in a persona or in a time frame, when we project the dictates of one circumstance onto another, we damage our integrity.
Inner Truth
Inner truth
The Truth Within