It is easy to write about Integrity as the word we use in everyday language: the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles, the state of being whole and undivided. As a quality we value it highly, yet it seems in short supply, and one would think therefore it should be in high demand, as without it a structure crumbles, a person withers, and society divided fails. Could it be that we are lost to the deeper meaning of Integrity itself and therefore how to live it?
As I have myself deepened in recent years, so has my understanding of many words commonly spoken in the world. And in my own unfolding, I’ve realised the richness of much of our language that has been lost, as together we have reduced – and in many cases completely hidden from ourselves – the deeper meaning of our words.
No better example than the word Integrity which itself rests, in its richest, deepest meaning, at the heart of what is hidden and why we hide… as if from ourselves.
Integrity says that there is only oneness and from that foundation only one way. There can’t be two standards that I apply in life – such as one at home and another at work or out in the world. There can’t be two qualities lived and expressed.
If deep within me there is an unmistakable quality of Divine being, and I don’t bring it to the fore in my movements and expression, then why and to what result? And if I do bring it to the fore, even then there is always an even richer quality from a greater depth of being to be accessed within, and Integrity says that too then must be moved and expressed.
Only that can be the quality that everyone gets from me, be it in direct relationship, or indirectly, if only by sitting next to me as strangers on a bus, or even passing me by as I walk down the street. Living in integrity, everyone, including me, knows the same from me, receiving the same standard, the same quality from and through me, ever deepening, ever richer.
Integrity says that I can hold myself neither more nor less than another, neither higher nor lower. It says that I cannot benefit to the detriment of another, because from my innermost is the knowing that there is no other – only the oneness from which all emanates, the source of all, from which whatever is not Integrity also is known. Any fragmentation, division or disunity, within or around, is registered and understood to be something other than from Integrity itself.
Integrity says of itself, “you all know me – as the setting of a foundation, the ever stronger foundation, the upholding of a standard, the ever greater standard, the maintaining of a quality and the ever deepening quality, and thus I am an alignment made, from which I am then moved, expressed and lived”.
And so, Integrity alone guarantees an ever deepening, ever evolving being and unifies triumphant, when anything other than Integrity reduces, divides and conquers.
Could it be refracted out, as light through a prism, Integrity unfolds from itself to reveal the unmistakeable qualities of Divine being deep within us that are Stillness, Love, Joy, Truth and Harmony – the foundational palate of the richness and glory there to be moved and expressed in human life and society.
And in concluding these words drawn from that very depth of being, I ponder, and well may you too: upon what foundation, to what standard and in what quality will be my next movement and my next word spoken?
