The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self

My inner teacher felt completely aligned with the thought that as a child, I’d been a victim. No question. But now I was an adult who had consciously decided to step outside the rules of my culture. I’d known that people would push back. I realized that the person sending that fax probably saw me as “attacking our way of life.” After all, I’d told

Physical pain comes from events. Psychological suffering comes from the way we deal with those events.

emotional pain of a hard truth is eased by our soul’s response to aligning with reality. Around and beyond mere emotion, we feel a sense of freedom, a vast openness that includes all aspects of our experience. We connect with an unalterable stillness around and within us. There’s space for pain. There’s space for joy.

I know a psychologist who sums up the way of integrity with this succinct prescription: “Know what you really know, feel what you really feel, say what you really mean, and do what you really want.”

People stuck in the victim role always have targets of blame, people they see as persecutors. They often turn to others for help and support. These are their rescuers, who play the final role in the drama triangle.

You won’t catch wild animals pouring their energy into such random activities. Some creatures compete for food, territory, and mates. Many love to play, and seem to enjoy their mock victories. But they don’t pull out their own hair and feathers if they fail to accrue a billion times as much birdseed or dead rabbits as the next sparrow or coyote. Mo

Everyone who decides to embrace integrity must mourn the known misery, the familiar patterns and dysfunctional relationships they’ve left behind.

“In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of the Way, every day something is dropped.”)

they all yearn for just a few things, and those things are remarkably consistent, even among people from very different cultures. They include peace, freedom, love, comfort, and belonging.