'Integrity and responsibility form an alchemical brew. They turn the lead of holding back in life into the gold of dancing with it.' – Christine Caldwell
Inner integrity is our basic human nature — the effortless emotional wholeness that is our birthright. When we tune into our direct experience as it actually is in the moment — not what our heads think about it, but what we actually experience — we find ourselves able to act in alignment with life, rather than undergoing an inward battle.
Despite sounding basic, it's not. Somehow we become convinced we're too much, too little, or just not up to standard. Where does this personal judgment come from? When is the point where it becomes so great to actually evoke us into acting in a manner that conflicts our emotional wholeness? Is current culture to blame? Have we become more inclined to succumb to one of Mahatma Ghandi's 'seven deadly sins': pleasure without conscience?
I recently came across a school of thought called integrity therapy. This practice focuses on finding inner peace through becoming one with our experience and facing the facts about past experiences. It has received rave reviews by couples, leaders, and individuals alike.
Opening more and more fully to our own experience, we gain a sense of peaceful grounding within ourselves, and the confidence to allow whatever arises to manifest. The end result is inner integrity — our complete and undivided self - the whole self.
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3 comments:
Do you think inner integrity and inner peace are the same? And is self-doubt incompatible with either?
In my opinion, compliance with one's conscience is one of the steps to inner peace. I also think that a little bit of self doubt is a good thing, in order to continually strive to improve. But we cannot let it govern us.
Fred, you've got a good mix of the esoteric and the everyday on your blog.
I will definitely have to check this book our Fred. I think it is very difficult for anyone to find their true self because I believe we all have so many roles that are acted out everyday like student, son, employee, leader, follower, friend, and foe, etc. When I read your post I must admit I had to turn back the clock and will again address the question of knowledge. Maybe in that discussion we mist a chance to attend to the topic of this post.
“The secret is knowledge. Not knowledge in the sense of acquiring information but an inner knowledge of your own potential to achieve wisdom, strength, compassion, and peace.” Unfortunately this type of knowledge is very difficult to acquire because of a number of agents that act against.
As we discussed in brief on Saturday night (sorry JS) the “Culture Industry” speaks to this issue. Written by Theodore Adorno of the Frankfurt School it is easy to get lost in the muddy wording and its clear elitist, or European, reference i.e. the ballet and opera as the pure forms of art. Aside from that, however is a most important message – that being – “the culture industry perpetually cheats us of what it perpetually promises”. Adorno takes from Freud, and his work with the sub conscious and the pleasure principle, saying that humans have a tendency to seek pleasure and avoid pain which in turn causes individuals to believe the ideology of the privileged in society. Importantly these individuals do not understand their true social position or where their true interests lie.
From this art is called upon to provide metaphor and anecdotes that challenge the oppression and alienation of society on mass culture. However, and this argument is extremely debatable and contentious, but modern art does not achieve what it should promise, that being lending new shape to conventional social forms over pledging obedience to the social hierarchy helping individuals become more docile and content over what Shawn suggested continually striving to improve.
Consider what Frank Lentricchio and Thomas McClaughlin say in their academic journal titled Critical Terms for Literary Study - “we (Liberals) are not interested in truth we are interested in power. - that power should encourage people to live in ignorance, ignorance of their own lives”. Jacques Lacan understands this as it is not with the object that would seem to satisfy a desire, but with the object, that causes it.
Link to the Culture Industry: http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/adorno.htm
Troy, I think that is a very good point, that people often value contentedness over improvement, simply because they don't know any different, or they think it would reduce their pleasure to challenge the status quo. Are happiness and pleasure one and the same? According to John Stuart Mill, happiness is pleasure and the absence of pain. Utilitarianism is the name of the book. I would highly recommend it, if you haven't read it.
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