“I cannot, and will not, cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashion.” – Lillian Hellman
Let’s start with the definition of integrity:
“The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; the state of being whole and undivided.”
Integrity is in the eye of the beholder, including our own of ourselves. The framework is set, in our reality construct, by society, community, religion, etc. We use our framework as a perspective on our own integrity. From Carl Rogers work we can see that from moment to moment our integrity is reflected in our self image, and the person we strive to become is the ideal self. How one judges oneself for the distance between the ideal integrity and one’s actual integrity then becomes a choice that can bring about heavy doses of shame and guilt, which in turn brings one’s vibrational frequency down causing mental unhealth. We make these choices from experience to experience and might sometimes toe the line with our expectations, and sometimes stray far from our ideals. The process of making the decision to stray from our ideals, unfortunately, usually happens in our head with all the cognitive biases we suffer under.
Our pure authentic selves, or as Carl Rogers calls it; organismic selves, can be described as our true perspective of integrity. Anything beyond that is going to be choices coloured by our own experiences, thus based on programming and traumas. We always have choices when we are faced with upholding our boundaries of integrity, wherever we are in our journey. Those choice will have consequences and it is imperative that we hold ourselves accountable for them, not apportioning blame, but hold accountable.
Choices relating to our integrity is not an intellectual process, if we want to remain as close as possible to our authentic selves. We have to learn to listen to our intuition and inner guidance to stay on the straight and narrow.
The idea of integrity as it is measured in society comes out of the collective consciousness. The shift in our perception of integrity as a society happens as individuals come closer and closer to their authentic integrity, i.e. this, like so many other things, is an individual process of change and growth that will benefit humanity as a whole.
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