Have you had times in your life when things seem serendipitous? When things come together in some unseen orchestrated manner that leaves you wondering: wow!
Increasingly, life (not “my” life) seems to be just that. Spontaneous happenings that make me wonder and laugh! Sometimes cry too, but I think the crying season has largely passed (thankfully, boy was it a long season!) and spring is here, with more light and laughter.
Cherry blossoms
I have not known before –
They are blooming now.
Okay, I got the syllable count wrong on that Haiku attempt, but I will leave it be, because my writing discipline requires me not to edit or delete too much. I only correct typos or sentence constructions, not ideas, however clumsy they might be. This mode of self-expression is almost stream-of-consciousness, with just a hint of structure. A little thematic perhaps.
The Way of Integrity was given to me serendipitously by a friend at the same time that I was doing a Landmark Seminar on Integrity.
The author Martha Beck uses Dante’s The Divine Comedy as a framework to present a four-stage process to find integrity in our lives:
- The Dark Wood of Error
- Inferno
- Purgatory
- Paradise
To begin with, we stumble without purpose, feel lost, are emotionally miserable or physically unwell, stuck with bad habits that we seem unable to shake off.
Then we meet a soul teacher (serendipitously of course!) who shows us that the only way out is through. That means confronting the demons that seemingly haunt us – usually, these are thoughts that have become so automatic we take them to be real and inevitable, and habits that are self-sabotaging. Lying, for instance. Not just the big black lies, but also the small white lies (we unthinkingly say “fine” when someone asks “how are you doing?”) or the grey ones that we justify or reason away.
When one finally comes to terms with the truth of our own lies, then there is the possibility to end the self-betrayal. With that begins the process of cleansing, and commitment to truth, which sets us free.
That in brief is a quick whirlwind tour of what I got out of the book. Of course you must read it yourself and make your own meanings.
At the same time, the Landmark Seminar has brought into focus a powerful approach to life that I had encountered earlier in The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz.
The first agreement is: Be impeccable with your word! And that in essence is the way of integrity.
The word is not just a sound or a written symbol. The word is a force; it is the power you have to express and communicate, to think, and thereby to create the events in your life. The word is the most powerful tool you have as a human; it is the tool of magic.
I had read this book earlier and was struck by the above sentence from The Four Agreements, but then it remained an idea. And my inability to live it impeccably was a thorn in the side. Now with the ongoing seminar, I have the opportunity to actualize it.
It is interesting to observe oneself and see how we make weak promises and then break them. Repeatedly. In small and big ways. Each time we do that, we are eroding our own strength. For example, we say “Yes” when we really want to say “No” and then we find excuses to get out of the situation we did not want to be in, in the first place. And this kind of double-speak has become our cultural norm. When we have broken enough such promises, either we accept that as a regrettable but expedient way of life (“everyone does it”) or decide not to make any more promises and live a life of low expectations and mediocrity. To break out of this bind requires courage.
Take a look at the following extract from the book:
A sin is anything that you do which goes against yourself. Everything you feel or believe or say that goes against yourself is a sin. You go against yourself when you judge or blame yourself for anything. Being without sin is exactly the opposite. Being impeccable is not going against yourself. When you are impeccable, you take responsibility for your actions, but you do not judge or blame yourself.
What a powerful redefinition of sin! Not moralistic at all. It stems from the recognition that life is sacred, and as an expression of life, we too are nothing short of sacred. So the only sin there is, is to act against life itself and its expression: ourselves.
This then is what I am doing daily: watching my promises as I make them, fixing the messes I create when I break them and then holding myself accountable to do what I promised to do, without creating a story out of it. I am going one step further – I am making new promises daily as a way to step out of my cave, to engage with the world again, and to discover in action what might manifest in this world through me.
In addition, I find myself holding other people accountable too, to follow up on what they promised to do, or to point out that they had committed to something and were now pulling out.
All of this is quite simple, but not easy.
Old thought patterns intervene: don’t be so harsh, give it another chance, what difference does it make in the larger scheme of things, let it go this once, see how good you have been so far, etc.
But it is possible to not take these thoughts as real; instead we can treat them as what they truly are – visitors to our minds who will leave in time if they are not made to stay.
Here is an example.
At the beginning of the year, I had set out a template to live my life intentionally along various dimensions. I made some progress during January and then I hit some roadblocks and struggled.
One of the specific goals I had set for myself was to write at least one blog post a month – I was more ambitious intially (one post a week) and then I pruned it down to what I could realistically do. I got my January post in, but was not sure what to write about in February. There was the piece on The Buddha in Daily Life that was waiting to be written but I was putting it off for some reason.
This morning, I broke the impasse and wrote this piece instead and the impulse to do so came from another direction.
Besides the blog post, I had wanted to also start making Insta reels. I had been putting off making the reels (excuses were plenty and creative) but two days ago I enrolled in an Udemy course on Neuro Linguisitc Programming as part of my pathway to becoming a Life Coach. (Hang on, it all connects up.)
In that course, one of the steps was to Take Action. To write down the first thing that comes to one’s mind to move towards one’s goal and I wrote down: Make a website. Then the course said: Do it today!
Ouch!
I sat back in my chair and thought “damn, let me do that again and see if something else comes up as my task!” because the thought of creating a website was just simply overwhelming. Oh man, do I have to do this? That too, today?
I have the skills to create websites – was a web developer for eight years – but the idea of projecting myself in some way publicly just had me shaking my head. I just did not want to do it. Too much work. Too much coming out of the cave. And that was when I thought of the Insta reels that I had been putting off and I changed my task a little bit – instead of a website, I would make a reel.
That evening I took out my phone, recorded my first video and uploaded it on Insta, and put a link to it on my WhatsApp status. It got some 30-odd views and three likes! I also have six followers, including myself and my son! 🙂
A friend who watched the video offered to give me tips to make it look better and be more effective. I will now learn this tool and make it work for me.
So this then is what is happening in my life now. Something I read somewhere triggers something else, which leads to some other thing, and before I know it, I have to face some fear, go past it and boom, I have made progress.
I should now end this meandering piece – a hot-potch of ideas. I feel a sense of accomplishment now that my February post is done, even if it is just in the nick of time.
These days I say to myself an expanded version of my initial affirmation:
Yes to Life.
I can handle whatever happens.
I stand at the cause of Life.
And with these small steps, I build my muscles daily to live a life of integrity.
Featured Image: Photo by Sarah Cervantes on Unsplash
Leave a Reply