Shadow Law # 16

...All the shame, guilt and repressed parts we hide, even from ourselves. These unconscious aspects will sabotage our best efforts in life unless we learn to accept them.

Cynthia F. Davidson, from the Wisdom Wheel Shadow card 

(see www.thewisdomwheel.com to order cards, posters or stones)

'Only the Shadow knows...' intoned the popular American radio program during the 1930s and '40's. What our Shadow sides 'know' is often more obvious to others, than ourselves, unless we do our psychological Shadow work. 

During your next ten days with this 16th Law, make notes or journal about the things that are difficult for you to own, or admit aloud to others. These include secrets, shameful or ugly thoughts, 'unhealthy' motives; everything you are able to see, and judge harshly about others, will be reflected in such a list. 

The Shadow also contains a lot of our Power (Law # 32). It often reveals itself in dreams and nightmares. Everything left out, which we refuse to integrate into our waking minds, tends to show up whenever we are alone, or gone to sleep. 

Reexamine your fears and phobias now. Look for evidence of how you respond to what is Unknown about yourself, and about life in general. Reconsider what is behind your decision-making and your Choices (Law #20).

The Law of the Shadow sits next to Trust (Law #10) on the Wisdom Wheel. Take a moment to reflect upon this. These two have a deep and abiding relationship throughout our lives. Whenever we give our Trust, we risk having it broken. It hurts so much when someone betrays the Trust we have put in them, or when we betray someone else's. More often than not, the Shadow side (of one or both of you) is responsible when Trust is not honored.    

Unless we examine our Shadow sides, we will hurt others, and be hurt by them, and fail to comprehend why. Before we can wisely place our Trust in others, we have to fully Trust ourselves. And we won’t know ourselves, well enough, unless we've probed our own Shadows. And we won't be prepared to handle the truth about the Shadow's workings in other people either.

This is not an easy Law to take on, so be kind to yourself during the next 10 days. As you explore the Shadow, and discuss it with others, be prepared for push back and denials. People are quite sensitive about this subject and there is a great tendency to project ones' Shadows upon Other(s). 

As the great psychologist, who popularized the Shadow, Carl Jung said, 'Would you rather be whole or be good?'   

Here's some wisdom from others about the Law of the Shadow.

The shadow is simply the whole unconscious… The individual who wishes to have an answer to the problem of evil has need, first and foremost, of self-knowledge, that is, the utmost knowledge of his own wholeness. He must know relentlessly how much good he can do, and what crimes he is capable of, and must beware of regarding the one as real and the other as illusion.  Both are elements within his nature, and both are bound to come to light in him, should he wish – as he ought to – to live without self-deception or self-delusion.

Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, discovered most people deal with the challenges of the Shadow in four ways: denial, projection, integration and/or transmutation.    

The person we choose to be automatically creates a dark double--the person we choose not to be.

Thomas Moore in Owning Your Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche by Robert A. Johnson

A good way of learning to detect one’s shadow is to notice what qualities in others make us angry or irritated.

Irene Clarmont de Castillejo author of Knowing Woman

…each person must take responsibility for the dark side of humankind…

Lauren Artress in Walking a Sacred Path

The shadow consists of the unexplored, feared and unwanted aspects of our personalities – whatever doesn’t fit into the ego ideal of the good self.

Christina Baldwin American author, books include Calling the Circle

Whereas the ego weaves together the worlds, the shadow unravels the world. Whereas the ego acts as a catalyst of creation in the world, the shadow acts as a catalyst of destruction. Whereas the ego supports the status quo, the shadow is an agent of transformation.

Connie Zweig & Steve Wolf, psychologists and authors of Romancing the Shadow

                                             Between the idea

And the reality

Between the emotion

And the act

Falls the Shadow.

T. S. Eliot, English poet, works include The Hollow Men

What has no shadow has no strength in life.

Czeslaw Milosz, Nobel prize-winning poet

If any help was going to arrive, to lift me out of my misery, it would come from the dark side of my personality.  

Robert Bly, who calls the Shadow, 'that long bag we drag behind us,' heavy with the parts of ourselves our parents or community didn’t approve of.

The Shadow, of course never dies; we always cast a shadow. But how we relate to it, and it to us, depends on whether it is known. Once known, we have inevitably lost an innocence that can never be recovered. What replaces it is knowledge about the complexity of our nature. Sometimes we are fortunate, and this knowledge elicits a kindness and tolerance in us for others — even, perhaps for ourselves.

Deena Metzger, American author, books include Looking for the Faces of God and Writing For Your Life

To honor and accept one's own shadow is a profound spiritual discipline.

Robert A. Johnson in Owning Your Own Shadow

Furthermore, it is important to point out that every Divine Quality has its shadow side. It is precisely because of our fear of falling into the shadow that we have difficulty developing a particular quality. The shadow side of mastery, for instance, would be ruthlessness or selfish manipulation.

Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan in Awakening: A Sufi Experience

…No matter how fast you run, your shadow

keeps up. Sometimes it's in front!

Only full overhead sun diminishes your shadow.

But that shadow has been serving you.

What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is

your candle. Your boundaries are your quest.

I could explain this, but it will break the

glass cover on your heart, and there's no

fixing that.

You must have shadow and light source both.

Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.

When from that tree feathers and wings sprout on you,

be quieter than a dove. Don't even open your mouth to coo.

Mevlana Rumi (1207 – 1273)

To battle a demon is to embrace it, to face it with clarity of vision and humility of the heart. To run from a demon is as effective as running from a rabid dog, for surely this only beckons the chase. Whatever we resist — persists. These demons, these parts of us that haunt us, torture us and reduce us, are the agents of change.... Without our demons we would grow spiritually flabby.

Stephanie Ericsson in Companion Through the Darkness

 Ten days from now, we'll take up the 17th Law of the Journey. Until then, have some fun getting to know your demons.

Initiation Law # 15

How did we become who we are? To initiate and to be initiated are ancient and sacred tasks.  We can all learn to honor this Law…by including knowledge gleaned from other cultures…

Cynthia F. Davidson, from the Wisdom Wheel Initiation card (see www.thewisdomwheel.com to order cards, posters or stones)

As you spend the next ten days with this 15th Law, reflect upon Initiation rites and rituals you have participated in. Baptisms, weddings, coming of age ceremonies, first day of school, first day on a new job, boot camp... Many of us have been initiated in cross-cultural activities, like sweat lodges and vision quests, which come from aboriginal traditions but are meaningful to us all because of their universal significance, as they return us to Nature which we all share. 

Today vision quests are included in Outward Bound programs for executives and wilderness camping sojourns are used to initiate troubled teens into more adult attitudes and capabilities. 

Take time to initiate something this week. It could be physical - like starting an exercise regime - or emotional - like seizing the initiative to improve a relationship - intellectual like beginning to explore  a new language or culture - or undergoing a spiritual Initiation of some kind, perhaps even visiting a house of worship from a Faith tradition you are totally unfamiliar with. 
What prevents us from enjoying more Initiations all our lives? And from offering them to others? Over a lifetime, we have many passages worth marking with special forms of appreciation.  

For the next 10 days seize the initiative to explore all kinds of Initiations. See a movie or television show or documentary about other cultures Initiations like the Australian 'walk about.' 

Bring up the subject of Initiation as often as you can. Seek out someone of the opposite sex who has an Initiation story to share. Tell them about one of yours too.

Here's some more wisdom about the Law of Initiation.

Initiation is a process of excessive hard work, a graded series of liberation allowing the initiate greater freedom to proceed further on the Way, learning to work behind the scenes, unrecognized, unknown, unclaimed and receiving no rewards and sacrificing the individual identity ...

Margo Kirtikir, Ph.D. author of Cosmic & Universal Laws

The mark of an initiate is his lack of interest in himself and his personal fate… The path of Initiation includes long periods of search, detachment, pain and of revelations producing tension, fusion and energy projection. The initiated enters into the light, which penetrates his nature according to his development at any one point.

Margo Kirtikir, Ph.D. author of Cosmic & Universal Laws

...we are truly initiated by what we cannot control.... 

Albert Einstein

Initiation is learning mastery… In the first initiation you prove you're a master over physical things. The second initiation shows can master your emotions and glamour. In the third you master the world of the mind and illusion. There are seven altogether...The true glory of accomplishment is in initiation, not imitation. 

JJ Dewey

The Law of Initiative; All action occurs as a direct result and in direct proportion to the initiative of each soul. Initiation cannot be given nor forced on anyone. The energy initiative brings about evolution, it is through the initiative of the particular soul that the soul evolves.

Margo Kirtikir, Ph.D. author of Cosmic & Universal Laws

Bereavement is the deepest initiation into the mysteries of human life, an initiation more searching and profound than even happy love.

 Dean Inge (1860-1954) Dean of St Paul's, London 

I began to sense how the subtle inner processes of these esoteric ‘Initiations’ were affecting a person's psyche…much of what we experience as an emotional crisis, is in actuality an evolutionary challenge to awaken. And this challenge of awakening requires us to make new choices for our psychological and spiritual evolution… most people feel very relieved when they realize that their personal emotional challenges are, in reality, linked to a larger, more impersonal challenge of awakening.

Neil Cohen, www.integrativeawakening.com

Because we had no tools for reprogramming our egos, and healing our emotional wounds (culturally approved grieving, training and initiation rites, healthy role models, etc.), we keep reacting to the damaging programming of our childhoods, and cannot get our adult needs met... the emotional, mental, spiritual, or physical needs. Codependence allows us to survive physically, but causes us to feel empty and dead inside...codependence...causes us to wound ourselves. 

Robert Burney, author of Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

When Initiation is in place, the old men help the boys move from the mother's world to the father's world...Initiation asks the son to move his love energy away from the attractive mother to the relatively unattractive serpent father... he learns to look at the death side of things. 

Robert Bly, American author, and men's movement leader, books include Iron John

...her dying society had no tradition by which to teach her the one lesson she did not know by instinct.

R.P. Blackmur, writing about Emily Dickinson, over 100 years after her birth

Initiates have no desire to be rich because their aim is not to settle down in the world nor to rule over it. An Initiate wants, above all, to become a luminous beacon, a shining light and, consequently, he has no wish to encumber himself with things that would prevent him from devoting himself to this divine task. An Initiate wants to be free and detached in order to work on himself and others; it is because he refuses to burden himself that he is able to make continual progress and go from strength to strength until he becomes truly formidable. He doesn't need to worry about protecting his money from thieves, or from falling prices on the stock exchange. 

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t45065.html 

Entering the spiritual path is just like shooting an arrow at a point one cannot see, so that one does not know what the arrow is going to hit; one only knows one's own action, and one does not see the point aimed at. This is why the path of initiation is difficult for a worldly man….

Ghazali, a great Sufi writer of ancient Persia

All initiations actually fall back upon the greatest symbol of all; spiritually dying and coming back to life.

Robert Ellwood, The Cross & the Grail

Certain forms, such as the labyrinth, represent explicitly the experience of initiation; entry into the abyss of the mysteries, and the pilgrimage of the spirit.

Joan Halifax

The path of initiation is not a path of study. I have seen people who have not only read fifty volumes, but have written fifty volumes and published them, and are not yet fit for initiation. It is not an act of the brain, it is a process of spiritual melting, going from that hard, metal aspect to the form of liquid; the ice turning into water.

...(the initiate) begins to think differently, feel differently, see and act differently; his whole condition begins to change. One might say of him that from that moment he begins to live. It may come as a vision, as a dream, as a phenomenon -- in any of these forms; one cannot determine the manner in which it will manifest. 

www.sufiorder.toronto.on.ca

What is it that the initiator teaches the initiated one? He tells the initiated one the truth of his own being. He does not tell him something new or something different. He tells him something which his soul already knows but which his mind has forgotten.

There are different kinds of initiation… One is natural initiation..an unfoldment…without cause or reason…Sometimes initiation comes after great illness, pain, or suffering. It comes as an opening up of the horizon, as a flash of light, and in a moment the world seems transformed. It is not that the world has changed; it is that that person has become tuned to a different pitch. He begins to think differently, feel differently, see and act differently; his whole condition begins to change. One might say that from that moment he begins to live.

www.sufiorder.toronto.on.ca

A true initiation never ends…. Beyond a certain point, the whole universe becomes a continuous process of initiation. 

Robert Anton Wilson 

In another 10 days, I'll initiate you in the knowledge of the 16th Law of the Shadow until then enjoy all the things Initiation has to teach you.

Eternal Present Law #14

Being...in...this day is a privilege that will only come once... Be fully Present. Be, with. First practice being, and then you can do anything with greater Purpose...  

Cynthia F. Davidson, from the Wisdom Wheel Eternal Present card

Why is it hard to just be Present? To pay attention, to focus, to concentrate...even people paid to pay attention fail to prevent accidents from happening. How much does not being present cost us; financially, physically, emotionally? 
What is distracting us, putting us off, putting us outside the zone of being? (Have you read this page without a single interruption, so far? While writing it, I've answered the phone, fed the dog, checked my email, consulted my calendar....) 
When we're not able to be here now, as Ram Das wrote, where are we exactly? If I am not in the moment, am I outside of what's Eternal as well? 

For the next 10 days choose to be Present, in a radical way. 
When you are not paying attention, admit it, redirect yourself, and gain some practice at correcting this habit of wandering mentally and otherwise. 
Don't allow interruptions and stop interrupting others too. 
Talk about presence and see who's retained this quality. How have they done it? 
Try some mindfulness meditation; whether sitting, walking or washing the dishes. See what you're missing. 
Refuse to be rushed!    

     

Here follow some quotations about the Law of the Eternal Present.

There is ... a connection between the words ‘present’ and ‘presence’ as the two are very much connected in sense and meaning. In our practice of inquiry, when we talk about being where we are, we mean being in the moment. Our experience is always in the present, even though our mind might be flitting about in the past and future. The actual manifestation—what is arising in our experience—is always arising right now. This is also true of light. For light there is only now; there is nothing else. This fact is a reality described by Einstein’s relativity equations.

Hameed Ali, writing under the pen name of A.H. Almaas

Time does not exist. What we refer to as past and future, have no reality except in our own mental constructs. The idea of time is a convention of thought and language, a social agreement. In truth, we only have this moment. When we hold regret for an occurrence in the past, we keep the regret alive, with pictures and feelings we conjure up. When we feel anxiety about the future, we keep the anxiety alive with the pictures we imagine. Time is the abstract concept. When we practice remembering that the here and now is all we have, our present moments improve. 

 Margo Kirtikar Ph.D. in Flowing with Universal Laws

Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. And today? Today is a gift. That's why we call it The Present. 

Babatunde Olatunji

So break the old pattern of present-moment denial and present-moment resistance… Start by observing the habitual tendency of your mind wanting to escape…don’t seek to grasp this with your mind… You can only know it when the mind is still, when you are present, fully and intensely in the Now…  To regain awareness of Being, and to abide in that state of ‘feeling-realization,’ is enlightenment.

Eckhart Tolle, German author of The Power of Now

The only time you ever have in which to learn anything or see anything or feel anything, or express any feeling or emotion, or respond to an event, or grow, or heal, is in this moment, because this is the only moment any of us ever gets.  You're only here now; you're only alive in this moment.  

Jon Kabat-Zinn in Wherever You Go There You Are

Eternity has nothing to do with the hereafter... This is it... If you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere. The experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. Heaven is not the place to have the experience; here's the place to have the experience.

Joseph Campbell (1904 - 1987) American mythology expert books include The Hero with A Thousand Faces

People with presence have an ineffable quality about them; they are ‘present,’ surprisingly attentive, and undistracted. A fullness, a centeredness, a wholeness radiates from them. We enjoy being ‘in their presence.’ You can build presence. It is the natural radiance of heart security.

Doc Childre and Bruce Cryer, From Chaos to Coherence

  

As you embrace the present

and become one with it, and merge with it,

you will experience a fire, a glow,

a sparkle of ecstasy throbbing in every sentient being.

As you begin to experience this exultation of spirit

in everything that is alive, as you become intimate with it,

joy will be born within you,

and you will drop the terrible burdens of defensiveness,

resentment, and hurtfulness...

then you will become lighthearted, carefree, joyous, and free.

Deepak Chopra, M.D. whose many books include The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success

It is when you are really living in the present – working, thinking, lost, absorbed in something you care about very much, then you are living spiritually. 

Brenda Ueland

In the spiritual life, I am always at the beginning. Remembering this helps us overcome our addiction to 'getting ahead.' When we experience a true present- the 'now'- that's when everything happens.

Ralph Blum

We are so rarely in the present. Within a period of five minutes we are remembering one thing, anticipating something else, unable to focus on the only time that is ours to affect. In moments of intense exertion, physical or emotional, we are forced into the present. …why…can't our mind simply rest in the present? The present is not boring or routine. It is basically unknown and recovered only with a haze of nostalgia. When we stop skimming the surface, and allow ourselves to be fully submerged in the present, we discover depths of beauty and meaning. The present is the only place where we can find God. 

Carol Ochs in The Presence in the Desert

When you surrender to what is and become so fully present, the past ceases to have any power. The realm of Being, which had been obscured by the mind, then opens up. Suddenly, a great stillness arises within you, an unfathomable sense of peace. And within that peace there is great joy. And within that joy there is love. And at the innermost core there is the sacred, the immeasurable, That which cannot be named.

Eckhart Tolle

Stay present & in another 10 days, look for the next post, Law of Initiation.

Beauty Law #13

...Silence the judge and the critic within and you will see Beauty abundantly... Mother Nature never forgets this Law. Seek and find Beauty in all you think, say and do....

Cynthia F. Davidson, excerpted from the Wisdom Wheel Beauty Law card

What if Beauty was a Law? Could it reduce the amount of ugliness, sickness and violence in our world? It is not the glossy made-up magazine type Beauty I mean, but the kind that needs no airbrushing or faking. The Beauty which radiates from within, no matter what the age of the person, place or thing. Not just visual Beauty, but a quality you can sense and feel, emanating as you approach, a sacredness and holiness. 

Since ancient times the Navajo people, aka Diné or Naabeehó from the Southwestern USA, have based their way of life upon this Law. They call it the Beauty Way and seek to maintain harmony, goodness, normality, success, well-being, blessedness, and happiness via this philosophy, which includes the ideals of prettiness, pleasantness and worthiness. The Navajo are the largest federally recognized tribe with over 300,000 enrolled members. Even today, when one is ill, they seek the help of a medicine person, to conduct a healing ceremony, to re-establish Balance and Beauty in their life so they can return to wellness. Here is an English adaptation of one of the prayers. 

Today may I walk in beauty.

With beauty may I walk.

With beauty before me, may I walk.

With beauty behind me, may I walk.

With beauty above me, may I walk.

With beauty below me, may I walk.

With beauty around me, may I walk.

It is finished in beauty.

It is finished in beauty.

Repeat this at least once a day, for the next ten days, and see what happens. Listen to the Navajo musician R. Carlos Nakai's transporting flute music. Bring up the subject of Beauty often. Ask others what they believe about it. Many are cynical about Beauty because it has been commercialized, and exploited, to sell everything from lingerie to cars. Let go of any sarcasm you might have, about your own capacity for Beauty, and try to appreciate it instead for the coming days.  
      

Here are a few nuggets of wisdom about Beauty.

Beauty is the ideal of perfect harmony which is in the universal being; truth the perfect comprehension of the universal mind. We individuals approach it through our own mistakes and blunders, through our accumulated experience, through our illumined consciousness - how, otherwise, can we know truth? Beauty is truth's smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror… By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower. 

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) sobriquet Gurudev, a Bengali polymath; poet, novelist, musician, and playwright, won 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first Asian Nobel laureate

We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes… Things may be pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful…. Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

Beauty is indeed the sphere of unfettered contemplation and reflection; beauty conducts us into the world of ideas, without taking us from the world of sense…By beauty the sensuous man is brought back to matter and restored to the world of sense.

Friedrich von Schiller

 Science will never be able to reduce the value of a sunset to arithmetic. Nor can it reduce friendship to formula. Laughter and love, pain and loneliness, the challenge of beauty and truth: these will always surpass the scientific mastery of nature.

Louis Orr in 1960 speech to the American Medical Association

Beauty is an experience, nothing else. It is not a fixed pattern or an arrangement of features. It is something felt, a glow or a communicated sense of fineness. What ails us is that our sense of beauty is so bruised and blunted, we miss all the best.

D. H. Lawrence, English novelist

The soul's beauty is harder to see than the beauty of the body. The beauty that addresses itself to the eyes is only the spell of the moment; the eye of the body is not always that of the soul.

George Sand aka Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin, (1804 – 1876), became Baroness Dudevant, first female French novelist to gain a major reputation

All that one loves becomes beautiful. Beauty is nothing but the expression of the fact that something is being loved.

Robert Musil (1880 - 1942) Austrian novelist, books include The Man Without Qualities.

…beauty is simply reality seen with the eyes of love. 

Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941) English theologian and mystic

When we meet a person who’s beautiful, we say they ‘lit up the room’… transcendent beauty is an inner beacon, brilliantly lit and brimming with bliss. Learn how to attract light while calming the ego— when the mind abides by the soul, the body, in turn, is connected to this knowingness, and transcendent beauty follows. Such people live in harmony—their health is abundant, their bodies are agile and fit, and their minds are vibrant and inspired. People talk about attractiveness but that is merely physical, while true beauty comes from the soul.

Crystal Andrus author of Transcendent Beauty

For beauty is the cause of harmony, of sympathy, of community. Beauty unites all things and is the source of all things. It is the great creating cause which bestirs the world and holds al things in existence by the longing inside them to have beauty. And there it is ahead of all as…the Beloved…toward which all things move, since it is the longing for beauty which actually brings them into being.

Pseudo-Dionysius in The Divine Names

They who manifest the Beauty of My thinking in the orderliness of Universal Law(s)…are already in My house. The doors of My kingdom are opened to them…

Walter Russell (1871–1963), controversial American artist and author, books include The Universal One and The Book of Beauty

Beauty is how the gods attract us into life. 

James Hillman

Our hearts yearn for beauty. In the Kabbalah, beauty, called tiferet, is where spirit and form meet and the human and divine are in balance. Linked to compassion and harmony, beauty is at the very center of the Tree of Life. 

J. Ruth Gendler in her book Notes on the Need for Beauty 

Because we have so disastrously neglected the Beautiful, we find ourselves in such terrible crisis…In the experience of beauty we awaken and surrender in the same act. Beauty brings a sense of completion and sureness. Without any of the usual calculation, we can slip into the Beautiful with the same ease as we slip into the seamless embrace of water; something ancient within us already trusts that this embrace will hold us.

John O’Donohue in The Invisible Embrace of Beauty

In ten days, I'll post the 14th Law of the Eternal Present. Until then, enjoy your inherent Beauty, and the universal Beauty all around you in Nature.

Integrity Law #12

To act powerfully in the world, all parts must synchronize. No one can take on the whole world, or live a whole life, until they become a whole person. Discuss the relationship between ‘integrate’ and Integrity…  (excerpt from the Integrity card, available at www.thewisdomwheel.com)

Time to consider the Law of Integrity and why the laws of our land have failed to instill Integrity in our culture. Based on the daily news, about everything from crime statistics to cheating scandals at schools, banks and in politics, I think we need a lot of ethical rehab, not just drug and alcohol rehab. 

Is Integrity a head, heart or a gut issue in your life? Do you believe you can be a person of Integrity without first being whole? Notice that the Law of Trust balances this Law on the Wheel. Without one, you won't have the other.

For the next ten days, make Integrity your watch word. Bring it up in conversation often enough to be considered a bit of a pest. Find out what people believe about Integrity. How important is it to you? Have you left any job(s) for the sake of Integrity? People who 'sell their souls' have usually sold their Integrity. This causes the psychic pain of conscience which can drive many to abuse drugs & alcohol...there's always a link.

Identify one thing you can do this week about your Integrity. Help someone else maintain theirs. Be honest, keep your word, be a person of Integrity. All the money in the world can't buy it back. 

      

Here are some nuggets of wisdom about Integrity.

Integrity requires that I discern what is integral to my selfhood, what fits and what does not - and that I choose live-giving ways of relating to the forces that converge within me... By choosing integrity, I become more whole, but wholeness does not mean perfection. It means becoming more real by acknowledging the whole of who I am. 

Parker J. Palmer, American teacher and author, books include Hidden Wholeness

Knowing what we value deeply-what we hold most dear, when in alignment with being of service to the greater will of all, allows us to take right action in our personal and professional lives. When the will and action are conscious, and in alignment, integrity follows…There is a voice within us that tells us when we are acting right.

Maureen Simon

If we want more brotherhood and goodwill, more intelligence, more clear thinking, more honesty and sincerity, more tolerance and human understanding we must concentrate upon cultivating these qualities within ourselves... There is no substitute for personal integrity. 

Howard W. Hintz, DD

…instead of dividing into mirror-image opposites…people need to achieve a healthier balance of integration. But such integration is difficult. It represents that high human achievement: wisdom. In the absence of wisdom, people are compelled to struggle in their folly. Each side, wedded to its half-truth, sees the other as the problem. But the problem is a property of the system: the polarization and conflict are symptoms of the failure to find a way to bring together those values that are in tension. 

Andrew Bard Schmookler books include Beyond Dispute: Working Through America's Moral Polarization and Fool's Gold: The Fate of Values in a World of Goods

 The saying, “to thine own self be true,” means to act in accord with one’s deepest feelings and values, no matter what the social consequences.  Such emotional integrity could well lead to deliberately provoking a confrontation, for instance, in order to cut through duplicity or denial – this clearing of the air is something a social chameleon would never attempt.

Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ

Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people.

 Spencer Johnson

It is no longer enough to be smart -- all the technological tools in the world add meaning and value only if they enhance our core values, the deepest part of our heart. Acquiring knowledge is no guarantee of practical, useful application. Wisdom implies a mature integration of appropriate knowledge, a seasoned ability to filter the inessential from the essential.

Doc Childre and Deborah Rozman

..it is not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity.

 Francis Bacon, Sr. (1561-1626) English lawyer and philosopher

What is not integrated repeats itself until it is integrated. I look at the personal story and the societal story as being one and the same, only in larger or smaller scale. In our families and in our nations, what we see is our disintegration being played out. The journey needed now is the integration of ancestor wisdom into the living community—personally in each of our families, and globally in the human family.

Angeles Arrien in The Four Fold Way

Principles are like a compass. A compass has a true north that is objective and external, that reflects natural laws or principles, as opposed to values which are subjective and internal. Because the compass represents the eternal verities of life, we must develop our value system with deep respect for "true north" principles… Consider the absurdity of trying to live a life or run a business based on the opposites…unfairness, deceit, baseness, uselessness, mediocrity, or degradation

Michael Lewis Norton

When you are fully integrated you can be either/or/both/all that you are. You are androgynous in spirit. Your physical nature is just something you take on, play with. No matter how you look, you are not as you seem, you are a soul. 

Christina Baldwin, in Life’s Companion 

The great spiritual leaders of humankind, Buddha, Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, St. Francis or the Dali Lama, possessed integrated values that seem to put tension into a form that was not just a compromise on the lowest common denominators. At their level of integration, one might be at once freer than the libertines, and more disciplined than the straight-laced. One could be both a better warrior than the hawks and a better peacemaker than the doves. 

Andrew Bard Schmookler in The Dance of Polarization

It is in the integration of the inner and outer worlds that true spirituality can be distinguished from false. But this integration is greatly influenced by an internal struggle in the psyche for balance. From this struggle self-knowledge is attained.

Katherine Tyler Scott in ‘Leadership & Spirituality’ chapter of Spirit at Work

Integrity means living and acting in alignment with spiritual law and with our highest vision, despite impulses to the contrary. From the heart of integrity we recognize, accept and express our authentic interior reality, inspiring others now with words, but by our example.

Dan Millman in The Laws of Spirit

The personality is the integration of the physical, emotional and mental worlds in one…Integration of the soul with the personality connects to the plane of intuition and the spiritual world… The goal of all development is integration – of the individual as a personality; integration of the personality with the individual soul: integration of the human with the whole, until complete unity has been achieved.

Margo Kirtikar, Ph.D. in Cosmic and Universal Laws 

In ten days, we'll look at the 13th Law of Beauty. Until then, enjoy integrating your thoughts, feelings, intuitions and sense of spirit.