Book 325 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title: Finding Integrity!

Book – The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self by Martha Beck (Part 1 of 3)

Book Description:

Inspired by The Divine Comedy, Beck uses Dante’s classic hero’s journey as a framework to break down the process of attaining personal integrity into small, manageable steps. She shows how to read our internal signals that lead us towards our true path, and to recognize what we actually yearn for versus what our culture sells us. With techniques tested on hundreds of her clients, Beck brings her expertise as a social scientist, life coach and human being to help readers to uncover what integrity looks like in their own lives. She takes us on a spiritual adventure that not only will change the direction of our lives, but also bring us to a place of genuine happiness.

Reflection:

For most of my life prior to Emilia, I lied about really stupid and dumb little things regularly. I’m talking about things that are completely meaningless and ridiculous. I did it all the time and I don’t know why, but I did.

Here are a few examples:

While telling a story, I would exaggerate just a little beyond the truth. I would never outright lie about what happened, but I wouldn’t give the full exact version of the story either. For example, let’s say reality was that I won a tennis match by the score of 6-3 and 6-2. For some reason, I might casually say I beat the person 6-2 and 6-2 when recalling the story to someone else in the future. I didn’t lie about outcome, just fudged the score a little bit to make it sound a little better. No idea why I would do that, but I did. I’m sure there was some deep-down reason of wanting others to be more impressed or feeling like I had to prove something to someone. However, in my mind, I just loved the thrill of telling a small fib and being able to get away with it.

I would do similar stuff to that all the time to the point where it never even registered in my mind that I was lying.

Here’s another of my best examples that I could give to illustrate my point. For some reason, I’ve stolen items from the self-checkout line at grocery stores more times than I can even recall. In the process of checking out, I’d accidentally “forget” one of the items in my cart and walk out. I knew exactly what I was doing, and I didn’t care. I found it fun and exhilarating to steal that stupid $9 gluten free bread, random can of $5 kombucha, etc. I didn’t need to steal out of necessity, I had plenty of money to pay for the items. I literally did it just to get away with it. I was never caught, and I never stopped. No harm, no foul…right?

For seemingly no reason at all, I lived my entire life in this state of misalignment. Deep down, I didn’t want to be the person that exaggerated all the time or would steal an item or 2 every now and then from the grocery store. Don’t get me wrong, I loved getting away with it, but I also always knew that it was “wrong”. It is almost like I was trying to throw myself off the path to integrity just because I could.

All that changed after I met Emilia, and I began to follow the tracks she left for me during her time in this world. Emilia is what the author refers to as a Soul Teacher. A soul teacher is someone who helps your soul grow and evolve during your time on this Earth as you find yourself on your way to integrity. Emilia is the ultimate soul teacher and that person for me. No other person has even had a fraction of the impact on how I live my life than my daughter. Without ever speaking a single world in this world, my daughter showed me what it looked like to life of meaning and purpose. Her strength, her desire to want to live, and her ability to endure taught me more about life than any words I’ve ever heard from the wisest sage that has ever lived.

By doing my best to emulate my soul teacher, Emilia and I found a way out of the dark wood of error that I found myself in after she passed away. I was more lost than I’ve ever been in my life and had no idea how to get back to living life again that had any meaning or purpose. Emilia was with me every step of this journey as we slowly took 1 tiny step each day. We learned together, reflected together, and keep moving forward together until I slowly began to find myself again along the way.

I kept following her tracks as she led me to each new core value that we discovered on our journey out of the dark wood of error. Slowly, over time, we’ve discovered our love of learning, balance, having fun, not doing life alone, enduring, challenging yourself, and giving more than we take. Each one of these values was found through living for 2 with Emilia each day. Each one has a particular story of when we first realized that this is who we were and how we wanted to live our life and express ourselves to the world.

The most recent track my soul teacher led me toward that we’ve added to our sacred core values list is integrity.

Integrity was found one day about a year after Emilia had passed away. I found myself feeling somewhat back to “normal” and at least able to function in society again. On this particular day, I found myself at the self-checkout at the grocery store once again. I realized that I had accidentally left an item in my cart after I had already checked out, and to be clear, it was a true accident. As I was walking toward the exit, a voice inside of me said “Don’t worry about it, you didn’t mean to do it. Just keep walking.” I paused and thought to myself, is this who I want to be? Is this someone that would make my daughter proud…a thief?

While in the store, I racked my brain to determine if I kept walking, would it violate any of my values I hold so dear? I couldn’t find an answer. None of my current values as is would seemingly be in mis-alignment if I kept walking out the door, but I knew something still wasn’t right inside. I stopped and went back to pay for the item, and immediately felt relieved. No one knew what I just did, but I did, and my soul teacher did.

Over the next few weeks, I found myself trying to figure out what that was all about? After a lot of reflection with my soul teacher, god, and myself…I discovered Integrity as my answer. It was added to my core values list right then and there.

Today, I use integrity as my backstop to whenever an action I take doesn’t violate a core value, but still doesn’t feel right for whatever reason. That is when I know I’m still in mis-alignment and that I need to lean on my value of integrity to keep me on the path toward a life of purpose with Emilia.

Question: How do you find your way back toward the path to purpose when you feel misaligned?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - The Way of Integrity by Martha Beck