session 9 - integrity

The transcription emphasizes the importance of integrity and finding balance between inner and outer worlds. It highlights the significance of daily meditation to connect with one's inner being, leading to making choices in alignment with integrity. By nurturing inner peace and truth, one can navigate relationships and external world authentically. The speaker stresses the value of consistent effort in maintaining integrity, acknowledging the challenges of life but emphasizing the rewards of living with integrity. Integrity, oh man, even just that word, integrity, it brings to mind wholeness and in wholeness there is power and there is stability. When we start toying with our own integrity, we lose balance because we don't have two feet firmly planted on the ground to stand on. Really one of the most important things in this life is integrity. Even if it doesn't seem that way and feel that way, if I today am in a place where I don't want to talk about God, I don't want to talk about spirituality, I want to fuck off and go do something, I want to go drink and I want to go be a little wild. If I don't do that, that's not being a person of integrity. What am I trying to say? All things in moderation, even moderation. Integrity isn't doing one thing or it doesn't have to look one way. Integrity again, it's following the still small voice within that you achieve, that you gain access to by closing your eyes or not closing your eyes, finding the difference between your life and your life situation, finding a way of accessing the inner world as opposed to the outer world. The inner world is you and your own being and your own experience. The outer world being the world of maya, the world of relationships and objects, both of which are very real and present in this human life of ours. I feel like going back and forth from one to the other has got to be the way, it's like riding a wave. I mean, this is why all the great spiritual traditions have some form of a meditation, of a daily meditation practice so that we can dip in and out of this transcending maya, transcending the world of relationships and objects and dipping our toes into, quote, the eternal. I mean, even if you just close your eyes for a moment, just close your eyes for a moment and breathe and settle and relax your body, calm, try to calm your body, relax your muscles and so forth, eventually you're going to feel a moment of void. By void, I mean the absence of the world of objects and relationships and you can start to access your own being and from that place we can understand and decide what is the path of integrity, what choice do I make to remain in integrity. Without dipping your toes into that still, quiet place, I think it's very difficult to maintain integrity in the world of objects and relationships. When we do act with integrity, when we do live our lives from a place of relative integrity because it's not always easy and nothing is perfect and this life is tricky, but when we can look back at a chunk of time in our life and say and know and feel that we've been, for the most part, doing our best to actively live with integrity by dipping our toes every day into our own inner world, watering those seeds of truth and peace and joy, the joy of being, when we water those by dipping our toes into that place every day and then come into the world of objects and relationships and act the best that we can and do the best that we can, that to me is living in integrity. We don't always see the fruits of our actions. From my world view, in this life or another, everything pays dividends, our karmic bank account. In the end, there is no other way. This world, this life does maintain a shroud of mystery, but one thing that's not mysterious, you can demystify a lot of things and I can tell myself, I can say with certainty that the act of seeking peace and stillness and clarity through the visitation, the daily visitation of my own being through some form of practice and then letting that bear fruit in the world of objects and relationships, that's a pretty winning combination.