Integrity.....

                                                                    

"Being good for the sake of being good since it makes you feel good about yourself and let others call you a good person is not really being good. Being really good is not to make you feel good about yourself or others to call you good but just being good no matter what you may think of yourself or others may think of you". If you are always thinking that you are not good enough, then, it means that you are being good. 

They say we need to live our life with integrity. In order to understand how to live our life with integrity, we need to first understand what 'integrity' means. Isn't it? Let us do that.

According to Merriam-Webster, integrity is a noun and it means: "the quality of being honest and fair and/or the state of being complete and whole". As it is, I am wondering why they disagree with being honest. For ex: when I say we need to be honest in what we say and what we do, they say "no, if being honest is going to hurt the feelings of the other person, then, we should not be honest". By saying so, they probably mean that being sensitive to other's feelings and therefore faking or lying or being insincere or being dishonest is absolutely fine as long as we can back it up with the good intention of maintaining the peace and hormony.  Aren't they essentially saying that as long as the intention is good, being dishonest is still integrity? Seriously???!!!! Will not the conscience prick while being dishonest, fake, insincere and hurt the feelings of the one being so? Are not feelings of both the parties involved important? Isn't it when we can say we are being fair?

If and when asked, they may say we must not put ourselves into a situation where we need to be dishonest, insincere or fake so that we can be naturally honest and fair. They may continue to say that if we are putting ourselves into such a situation then it means that we are inherently bad, self-centric people. Can an inherently bad, self-centric person be brutally honest, fair and sincere. The answer is a big NO. Hence, they may say that his/her honesty, sincerity and fairness is all fake. But, it is not necessarily true. We will see how. 

No one prefers chaos over hormony. Everyone wants peace and hormony. But, it does not mean that to ensure peace and hormony we shall be dishonest, lying, insincere and faking since being all that, however good is our intention, can bring only short-term benefits. In the long run, the same approach will infact destory the so called peace and hormony they are talking about permanently. No one can refute it. 

This short-term, fake benefits approach may be suitable to those who are tactical / diplomatic in their approach. But, who are interested in real, permanent and stable benefits do not get bothered about the short-term, temporary benefits and therefore are firmly sincere and firmly honest in their approach however insensitive and hurting it may appear or sound. 

YES, it is important that we all live our life with integrity - with real integrity and not compromised integrity. Then only we and our life shall attain the quality of being honest, fair, complete and/or whole. The real, permanent peace and hormony is in this real integrity. By compromised integrity, I mean, the integrity of those who are mindful and not soulful. A soulful person listens and follows his/her conscience and not his/her mind as he/she knows well that mind is manipulative and deceiving. 

The feeling that "Ah...I am living a life of integrity that focuses on peace and hormony" may be comforting and helping to feel high of ourselves but we need to understand that it is the trick of the mind that will eventually bring in sense of pride, arrogance & adament and destroy us completely. 

Being honest and fair & complete and whole ...or...to simply put, being a person of integrity means being truthful and therefore 'also' being insensitive and hurting if there is need to hurt and need to being insensitive. We cannot be good. loving and caring towards everyone. That is impossible and unacceptable. Hence, being a person of integrity means being honest, fair, complete and whole according to the person and situation we are dealing with. Being fair even towards an unfair person; being honest even towards a dishonest person; being sincere even towards an insincere person and being truthful towards a fake person is NOT being a person of integrity. If anyone says he/she is good, loving and caring even towards everyone irrespective of how good or bad they are, then, I can be only sympathetic towards him/her since he/she is living in delusion. Delusion is sickness and sick people deserve our sympathy and empathy.

At the higest level of spirituality, there is no good and bad. But, at the material level, there is good and bad and therefore being a person of integrity means being good to good and being bad to bad since that is what is being honest and fair; complete and whole. 

Let us live honestly, fairly, completely and wholly to attain real peace and hormony in our lives. 

                                                                                                                         ---   More in the near future.