What is Integrity?
and why we should find out
Sweetness
As far back as I can remember, I recognized in myself what I would now call wholesomeness or sweetness. But I had no names for it then.
On a literal surface level, this inner condition announced itself in the scent of my skin. Throughout my life, my skin has given off a particular perfume. I related this as a young child to that sweetness, my real self.
I can’t come close to describing it, but there is sweetness and also something ineffable and complex like masala.
I used to play in my mother’s kitchen mixing spices. It was my earliest alchemy.
I once managed to make a mixture that smelled like my skin. Inhaling the scent, the pressure of memory surged, but without me being able to remember. Like a potent dream one cannot recall.
I stood in the kitchen. I was perhaps four or five years old. I inhaled and inhaled hoping that the dam holding back the reality of my life would break, and all the hidden things would come rushing out.
Ordinary integrity
Integrity is a word that has become more prominent in my life as I’ve grown older. I first considered it when I worked as a tenant organizer in New York City.
I collaborated then with people who generally had much less privilege than I did. At times people expressed righteous bitterness and anger. Some suffered from mental health or substance abuse problems. Meetings could get intense and chaotic. There was a lot of distrust.
I decided then that integrity was my way through. I vowed never to promise more than I could deliver and to deliver what I promised. I vowed to be honest in all circumstances and do my job no matter the conditions.
These are wonderful precepts that express ordinary integrity. They gave me a ground to stand on amid storms. They kept me functional rather than reactive and protected my ability to serve.
I’ve often encouraged my students to discover their own precepts for expressing integrity, and I also encourage you to do that.
But beyond this is a more all-encompassing kind of integrity.
Self integrity
Self integrity is a term I just invented. (Unless someone else invented it first!).
It means supporting, nurturing, and acting in accordance with your inner sense of enduring value. It means not betraying yourself or committing crimes against yourself.
Self Integrity doesn’t lend itself to codification in a list of precepts.
In order to practice self integrity, you have to be able to feel yourself. You have to be able to feel your own sweetness and goodness. You have to feel your primordial value.
This value is not conditioned. It does not depend on you doing or not doing anything. It exists in you and all life. It is unearned.
But we get distracted. Our emotional and other habit patterns block our connection to ourselves like dense vines.
Integrity means protecting one’s access to that primordial sweetness or wholesomeness and living in total friendship with that before any other relations.
What is aligned with the primordial wellspring of your life? What brings you closer to this? What diverts you from this? And what allows you to remain in this, to feel and express this?
Every decision in life can be made by consulting one’s inner sense of sweetness (or whatever you want to call it) and choosing and acting in alignment with that.
No one is lost forever
Our primordial self is forever. Our ways of losing contact with that are all impermanent. That’s the good news.
But we certainly can get waylaid or detoured. When that inevitably happens, following functional precepts is a good strategy.
My main job, or perhaps my only job, as a teacher is to point the way and give people the tools to travel back to their sweet selves.
We forget or get detoured by a process of conditioning. We can call this karma.
For instance, if I live in a hostile environment, one possible response is to become aggressive in order to fit in and defend myself.
Many people experience this in the workplace. You have to “toughen up.” But then if you hold that stance for too long, you can forget who you are.
In this circumstance, even ordinary integrity becomes difficult to put into practice.
Wholly holiness
A holiness, a wholesomeness exists, full of compassion and clarity, at the heart of life. Most of us can feel this, even if only fleetingly. Spiritual practice helps us to recognize this more deeply and move from this center more of the time.
Self integrity means being true to oneself, to God, to wisdom. It means doing so without self-deception or fantasy.
Self integrity involves a certain quantity of courage and confidence. We are not used to charting our life according to inner promptings that often bypass ordinary mind.
Self integrity is not something we define intellectually and then enact. It moves within us, and we follow behind.
Living this way, the most skillful choices appear to us spontaneously with a feeling-sense of alignment and goodness.
When we go against self integrity, we feel disconnected and off-balance. We anxiously search for justifications, reasons, and explanations. The search for ground never ends. We may compusively position ourselves against others. We may be so used to this condition, we hardly notice it.
But following self integrity, we experience deep relaxation and a sense of being right with ourselves, as if our lives have come into proper focus.
We may actually feel happy.
We may actually love ourselves again.
with infinite love,
Shambhavi
Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter on Substack to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.
Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?
Jai Mā! "Isnt it funny that we're al here?!" <3
I will return to this writing again and again