Integrity

One of the dictionary meanings of the word Integrity is, ‘The quality or condition of being whole or undivided’. The basic necessity for a fulfilled life! If we ever have done any root cause analysis for any of our problems, for sure, we shall reach a point that the lack of integrity in our life and living is the root cause. The lack of integrity is due to our desires, attachments, possessiveness…

Psychologically, we are not whole. We have divided ourselves into numerous fragments – each fragment representing a small part of ourselves. We are the collection of such fragments. When we ourselves are fragments, integrity is not possible for us. On the other hand, there cannot be integrity in our life until the time we exist as fragments.

For anything and everything we have certain ideas and opinions. Once we have the ideas and opinions, we are already identified ourselves with those ideas. With that identification, each ideas and opinions are just a fragment of us. We see anything with respect to these fragments and act on anything with the fragmented knowledge gained by seeing based on ideas/opinions. Hence the action cannot be the action of intelligence, but the action of fragmented knowledge. When we act with a fragmented knowledge, we cannot gauge the necessity of that action. In fact, we cannot act, we can only react! When we act on anything without the understanding of its necessity, the outcome will be an accident. If the outcome of this accident is positive with respect to us, we celebrate and if it is negative we suffer.

When we act with integrity, all our actions will be pure and effortless. It is out of understanding of the necessity of our action. Such action does not require any effort from us.

When there is no space or interval between our thoughts, words, and actions, integrity will be established in our life. In general, almost every one of us, probably with very few exceptions, thinks something, talk something else, and act in totally different manner. The reason for this is that we do not understand the space between thoughts, words, and our actions and hence do not realize the changes happening with in that space. Due to our lack of understanding of that space, something else may enter between the spaces and hence our thoughts, words, and action are disintegrated. Such a life with disintegrated thoughts and actions is a totally disintegrated life. Suffering is inevitable in such a way of living. If we are of the type that we never complain about our sufferings, the current way of living is fine. But if we are complaining about our sufferings, the first thing we should do is correct ourselves from this disintegrated life.

For understanding the space between the thoughts, words and action, we need to have perception – Perception of our thoughts, perception of what we speak, and perception of what we do. Perception is possible only when we keep ourselves alive or when we are really living. Perceiving is living! In our current way of living, complete perception may not be possible at once. But it is possible to have perception when we keep ourselves attentive. The trap here is that if we are not able to be attentive, we may start cursing ourselves which does more harm than help. In such situations, just be aware of that inattentiveness – Which can take our perception to new levels. The basic requirement here is the understanding of need for such attentiveness and our willingness to be attentive. Once we have the understanding and willingness, integrity is our being and the space, if any, between our thoughts and action are no more occupied by anything else and hence in reality there is no space between our thoughts and action. It is a single integrated activity!

It is not a tough task to understand that whatever problems we have in our personal level or religious level or national level or global level – the basic reason is lack of integrity within the responsible personnel. For our problems, we are the responsible one. For religious problems, the so called religious leaders are responsible personnel. For national problems, the political leaders are responsible personnel and so on.

We expect those who lead us should have the quality of integrity. But are we having integrity within us. If we are totally disintegrated, what value do we have on our expectation that others should have integrity? – Whoever it may be. We are the society, we are the nation. If we are disintegrated, the society/nation is disintegrated for sure. But we may ask, if I establish integrity within myself, will be the integrity of society established? Such question is an immature question – can be asked by a mind which cannot grasp the quality of integrity within it.

Integrity is not about having a set of moral qualities. A mind entangled with morality cannot possibly understand the quality of integrity. The conflicts arises within the mind due to the urge to comply with the moral values takes away the integrity. A mind with chattering desires may not be able to have the quality of integrity. It is not that one should not have desire, but should not be within the prison of desires. A mind with fears and beliefs cannot have the quality of integrity. Fear and belief divide us into tiny fragments.

If we want the quality of integrity within our society, within our political establishments, within our religious establishments, the basic need is that we should be a person with the quality of integrity. If we don’t have integrity within us and expect others should have that quality is equivalent to that of an act of violence. When we have the quality of integrity within us, the very presence of integrity within us spread around us. The integrity within the society is thus started forming. If certain small percentage of population lives with integrity, the whole of society will prosper due to the ripple effect. Why don’t you and I start that change?