The Purest Form of Integrity
Integrity seems to be an ongoing theme these past few weeks. The first post described the value of integrity, while the second described how to move towards greater integrity. I found an opportunity to increase my own, and changed my vocation from counselor to adviser, and changed my web site to refer to awakening instead of counseling.
Integrity, at its simplest level, is the art of keeping ones word.
At its purest level, integrity is the art of keeping ones word to the entire Universe. Including yourself. All the time. Every second, every moment.
The only way to achieve this is to be utterly, radically honest. The moment we create a lie, we have to maintain that lie. We have to keep the story straight, or we are caught in the lie. Lies beget lies, until, like with Seinfeld characters, it collapses under its own weight.
When you are radically honest – honest about everything you do, everything you think, every opinion, every circumstance – you never have to keep your story straight. The Universe keeps the story straight for you.
One of the biggest challenges with radical honesty is being honest with yourself. Usually the ego is afraid of doing this, because it doesn’t like recognizing the consequences of its mistakes. But when we are open to being completely honest with ourselves, it becomes clear that the heart’s greatest desire is to connect.
Compassion and empathy – the ability to understand and feel another person’s circumstances – travel through the heart. And frequently we shut that down. We tell the heart, “I don’t want to hear from you. It hurts too much.” But, even though it hurts, it doesn’t hide the truth: the heart wants to connect. If we are radically honest with ourselves, we have to acknowledge the desire to connect.
When we finally listen to the heart, and its connection to others, we discover that we cannot, in integrity, willfully hurt another person. When we do, the heart feels the pain we cause. It empathizes with, and has compassion for, the person we hurt. When we hurt someone, our heart feels the pain. It feels bad to hurt another person. So we’d rather not do it.
Because our hearts are intertwined, because we feel the pain that others feel, we find ourselves becoming very aware of the consequences of our actions. Our minds work more deliberately, making sure that, whatever we do, we are not breaking others’ boundaries. As we listen more and more to our hearts, the deliberations of the mind give way to the emotional truths of the heart.
Radical integrity, radical honesty, means not attempting to run from our mistakes. It means owning them, being honest about the consequences, and being honest with the desire to make amends.
We aren’t doing this from a space of feeling guilty, or from feeling ashamed of our actions. We do it from a space of feeling empathy and commiseration. We want to make amends because we want the other person to be well again. Their joy and our joy are intertwined, because our hearts feel when they are joyful or sorrowful.
This doesn’t mean that we sacrifice ourselves for their joy. Our hearts feel pain when we put ourselves into pain as well. The key is creating situations that increase joy for everyone involved, that reduces pain for everyone involved.
At the same time, though, we also differentiate between something that feels good and something that feels right. At first we may find that being radically honest, keeping our word, not allowing ourselves to be compromised, is extremely painful. If we had set up a life based upon lies, then having to undo those lies to reach a space of truth can be traumatic.
What we find is that our hearts, when we listen to them, won’t let us lie. We find ourselves needing to unwind those lies. Because as long as there are lies between the two of us, we are not connecting to each other’s hearts. We are connecting to each other’s lies.
Once we have unwound the lies, we find ourselves showing more restraint, doing things that are more difficult rather than hurt the ones we love. We see when others are not ready to stretch their boundaries, and feel compassion for them, and choose to find another avenue that doesn’t require that from them.
At times, the best action is no action. There are people who will have challenges with any actions we would take. In that case, we respect their boundaries and wish them well from afar.
Radical honesty is not brutal honesty. It is thoughtful, heartful honesty. If someone asks to give an opinion, and you can tell that their self-esteem hangs in the balance (the classic “Does this dress make me look fat?” scenario), rather than saying, “honey, no dress will make you look skinny,” I simply wouldn’t answer the question. It’s fairly straightforward – “Do you like it? That’s all that matters,” or “You could wear anything or nothing and I’d still love you” – because, when it comes down to it, love is more important than shape.
For a more challenging one – someone asking, “do you love me?” when you aren’t wholly attracted to them, for example – it means being honestly vulnerable. “I love you, but I cannot be with you wholly. I find myself filled with reservations. There are things that make me feel uncomfortable about being closer with you. And whoever I am with, I wouldn’t want them to only have part of me.” It means wanting more for them than what I can offer. And it means not promising more than I can willingly offer.
And it means sharing this with them from the space sitting next to them, staring at the same point, connecting in the shared perspective. Being open to their pain, open to the shared sense of love that connects us all.
When we are in that place – acting for the highest good, not compromising on our heart connection, being radically honest, acknowledging the consequences of our actions – we embody Integrity. We cannot be caught in a lie, because we only speak truth. We cannot break our word, because we cannot hurt another person without hurting ourselves.
Love is the purest form of integrity. And it doesn’t always feel good. But it always feels right.