integrity - Waking Spirals

Integrity

“Do actions agree with words? There’s your measure of reliability. Never confine yourself to the words.”
― Frank Herbert

“If you say you’re going to do something you have to do it.” Each day this point gets driven through to me. From work commitments to following though on stated consequences for teenagers. Our word starts to mean less each time we fail to follow through. In work or relationships especially family ones this can lead to disaster. What’s worse is that not keeping our word can all too easily become a habit. We break it in small things and then gradually the big things stop mattering as much. There is a reason why it is called integrity and that is because without it, it becomes a lot harder to keep things together. This is one of those lessons that far too often is learned the hard way.
Blessings, G

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Mandala of Partial Connections by G A Rosenberg

Sigil of Emergence by G A Rosenberg

Messages Sent and Received

“Our own life has to be our message.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

If I stay still and listen
aware of your presence
your words and your being
than I can receive the message of your life.
With each breath and each choice we reveal ourselves
each moment becomes the midnight
where our masks come undone
yet even our masks show the face underneath
after all are they not how we want the world to perceive us?
That says a great deal
Yet how do I choose
the message of my life?
How can I become a clear channel?
Does my life say what I wish it to
or am I just messaging myself?

Blessings, G

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Strange Seas At Night by G A Rosenberg

Fluid by G A Rosenberg

Integral Quality

A few quotes about quality from Robert Pirsig:

“The result is rather typical of modern technology, an overall dullness of appearance so depressing that it must be overlaid with a veneer of “style” to make it acceptable. And that, to anyone who is sensitive to romantic Quality, just makes it all the worse. Now it’s not just depressingly dull, it’s also phony. Put the two together and you get a pretty accurate basic description of modern American technology: stylized cars and stylized outboard motors and stylized typewriters and stylized clothes. Stylized refrigerators filled with stylized food in stylized kitchens in stylized homes. Plastic stylized toys for stylized children, who at Christmas and birthdays are in style with their stylish parents. You have to be awfully stylish yourself not to get sick of it once in a while. It’s the style that gets you; technological ugliness syruped over with romantic phoniness in an effort to produce beauty and profit by people who, though stylish, don’t know where to start because no one has ever told them there’s such a thing as Quality in this world and it’s real, not style. Quality isn’t something you lay on top of subjects and objects like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Real Quality must be the source of the subjects and objects, the cone from which the tree must start.”
― Robert M. Pirsig

“Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one’s heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there. ”
― Robert M. Pirsig

“I like the word ‘gumption’ because it’s so homely and so forlorn and so out of style it looks as if it needs a friend and isn’t likely to reject anyone who comes along. I like it also because it describes exactly what happens to someone who connects with Quality. He gets filled with gumption.

“A person filled with gumption doesn’t sit around dissipating and stewing about things. He’s at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see what’s up the track and meeting it when it comes. That’s gumption.

If you’re going to repair a motorcycle, an adequate supply of gumption is the first and most important tool. If you haven’t got that you might as well gather up all the other tools and put them away, because they won’t do you any good.”
― Robert M. Pirsig

A friend of mine on Facebook today asked ‘what is quality in thought and statement?’ The word quality itself brought to mind Robert Pirsig’s book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which is a very long response to that very question. After reading the above quotes and considering the question for a bit, it strikes me that there is a definite link between the idea of quality and the idea of integrity. After all what is integrity but a combination of internal consistence, honesty and an examination of whether the integrity holds or whether things have to be re-evaluated. It is easy to rest on one’s past integrity and claim to always hold it yet each day we encounter new things and add on to our knowledge and awareness of the world. Each time we add something to our consciousness base, we need to examine the whole to make sure the integrity holds. The times I have ‘leaked’ the most have been times when I have prided myself on past consistency without examining the present state of things.
Blessings, G

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Body and Mind in Space by G A Rosenberg

Design Elements by G A Rosenberg

Make Something Beautiful

” If no matter what is given to you, you can make something beautiful out of it, that is intelligence.”
— Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

Funny, I read this quote and I knew it was what I wanted to write about or at least what I wanted to share for tonight. Yet it starts a whole string of quotes off in my head and its tempting to just list the words of others to show why I am moved by this one but I feel I want to tackle this one. I have seen people who have been given so much yet their lives were ugly things, lacking in either appreciation or integrity. I have seen people with almost nothing, beautiful in their pain and this beauty so truthful it made me weep.
So in this I definitely see beauty as being a function of integrity.

What about intelligence as Sadhguru says? Fostered by archaic systems of education many of us tend to have very fixed, very limited ideas of what intelligence is. To me, it goes beyond tests of IQ or the ability to do complex maths or be able to analyze a block of text tho all of those things may be a part of it. To me, its a matter of aesthetics.

It’s one thing to know that a squared plus b squared = c squared, its quite another to have an appreciation for how this relationship works in our physical universe and another to be able to create using this principle. This expression of mathematical understanding to create is beautiful as is any form of pure self-expression. Perhaps integral sext-expression is the link between beauty and intelligence. I find that concept pleasing.
Blessings, G

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Shooting Flame by G A Rosenberg

Spiralling Fountain by G A Rosenberg

Crazy is My Strength

“George smiles to himself, with entire self-satisfaction. Yes, I am crazy, he thinks. That is my secret; my strength.”
― Christopher Isherwood

It is doubtful that I will ever see life in the same way that the majority of people in my environment do. On the day that this ceased to be a concern for me I felt liberated. No longer would I try to wear a reality view that fit me worse than the borrowed suit I wore to my brother’s wedding. No longer would I try to follow the crowd while my inner voice shrieked and howled that this is not how its supposed to be. Instead of worrying how others see me I have given myself a much more difficult criteria. I now have to act in accordance with how I see myself. The biggest difference is that when I put the view of others ahead of my own inner self, part of me died. Every time I act with the integrity of my being, my life shines brighter.

Blessings, G

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Aeon by G A Rosenberg

At the Jewel’s Centre by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – March 12 2013

“And here, according to Trout, was the reason human beings could not reject ideas because they were bad: “Ideas on Earth were badges of friendship or enmity. Their content did not matter. Friends agreed with friends, in order to express friendliness. Enemies disagreed with enemies, in order to express enmity.

“The ideas Earthlings held didn’t matter for hundreds of thousands of years, since they couldn’t do much about them anyway. Ideas might as well be badges as anything.

“They even had a saying about the futility of ideas: ‘If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.’

“And then Earthlings discovered tools. Suddenly agreeing with friends could be a form of suicide or worse. But agreements went on, not for the sake of common sense or decency or self-preservation, but for friendliness.

“Earthlings went on being friendly, when they should have been thinking instead. And even when they built computers to do some thinking for them, they designed them not so much for wisdom as for friendliness. So they were doomed. Homicidal beggars could ride.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

This week I seem to be having a lot of my old issues returning to haunt me and perhaps finally coming to the point where I can put them to bed.
Tonight I lost a friendship (careless of me I know). It seems that my friend Mark considers himself a teacher and somewhat of a guru and was disappointed that I was not ‘sharing his wisdom’ and insights with everyone I knew on the internet. It was a fair point. I haven’t been.

While I have been willing to connect him with people I know, I have not shared that many of his ideas. I enjoy talking with the man and enjoy his conversation. Doesn’t that mean I find his ideas worthwhile? It took me a bit of meditation and sitting with this question to receive an answer. While I do find some of Mark’s insights valuable, I find that many of them have been said before and said better. I also believe that there are some places where Mark widely either contradicts himself or kind of misses the forest for the trees. By saying this, I do not believe that these qualities are not true of my own writing. Like most of us, I learn as I go and I take for granted that all or most of what I say may be superseded by a greater truth.

Herein lies the problem. Mark seems to believe in the absolute accuracy of his vision to such a degree that he has been known to dismiss anyone who disagrees with him without even considering what they have to say or that it may lead to a greater truth. In order to keep the friendship, I have avoided questioning him on his ideas. I could not be dishonest to the extent of endorsing them but I also could not recommend them whole heartedly.
Thus in trying to maintain a friendship I ended up losing it and in the process gained a lesson in integrity. From this point on I will hold the truth to be more important than friendship. Indeed how can you have a true friendship without it?

I am thankful to Mark for driving this lesson home and I wish him well. It’s also refreshing to some extent that not only can I still make errors in judgement at this point in my life but that I can realize them.
Blessings, G

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Caught Up in the Dance by G A Rosenberg

Landing Field by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – February 13 2013

“We’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.”
— Joseph Campbell

What is that rapture? What does it mean to have inner life? It means questions for sure and answers that lead off into more questions? It means witnessing the behaviour of the self and that of others, not withholding judgement for we all judge but watching that judgement as well, knowing that it can be faulty. It means honesty and a struggle to be honest even if that honesty may cause pain. That one I get stuck on often. But how can we have integrity without honesty and what does our response to the outside world matter if our inner life contains too many lies?
Blessings, G

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Storm FLight by G A Rosenberg

Ripple Orb by G A Rosenbeg

Quote of the Day – January 21

“Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people.”
― Spencer Johnson

Is it possible to be honest without integrity? I try to speak the truth as far as I know it to the best of my ability but am I willing to go further on my own journey? Can I look at my blind spots so that I can be more honest and have more to share?
Is it possible to have integrity without honesty? Ah, the recipe for a good villain, one who knows what he is and gleefully follows through. Yet at the same time, he or she misses the point that we are all interconnected and to do something to another is usually a way of trashing part of ourselves so their integrity only reaches so far and they stop themselves from fully integrating with others. Now I don’t consider myself a villain (not sure many outside of fiction do) yet there are times when people I meet are so mired in illusion that to be honest with them means to confront and either anger or sadden them. It seems easier to keep what I see to myself and be supportive rather than be honest and well, kick a person when they’re down. Even tho at times that may be the fastest way to help them to their feet. Occasionally they really do want to lie there and then I ask what would a friend do, a true friend? Ultimately I have realized that there while there is a clear answer, how honest I am depends on the situation. Am I hurting myself by this dishonesty, quite possibly? Am I hurting them? I am not sure.
Blessings, G

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Soft Journey by G A Rosenberg

Shoots and Ladders by G A Rosenberg