First published in
the August
2005 issue of VIDA!
Palabras Da Vida
with ANTARES
INTEGRITY IN THREE EASY STEPS
The First Step. You have to
expand your self-awareness to include the possibility that you are not
merely a one-dimensional social ego forever seeking approval,
recognition, and status. You are, in fact, a multidimensional entity
with personality aspects known and unknown – and you exist on many
levels of consciousness simultaneously, from the ridiculous to the
sublime. In short, you have to acknowledge that there’s a whole lot
more to being YOU than meets the public eye.
There’s that poor little neglected kid, for instance, that nobody paid
any attention to in your early years – and who silently swore to
someday make a big splash in the tadpole puddle of existence (and who
ended up being a major control freak with tyrannical tendencies). There
may also have been the severely traumatized little you, innocently
playing with your genitals in the bathtub one morning, when your mum or
your maid caught you at it and screamed, “Hai-ya! No shame!” and then
whacked you a hard one. These are just some of the more common
forgotten aspects of ourselves that are permanently embedded in the
subconscious regions of the mind; but no matter what we later become,
they still occasionally impinge on us as restimulated memories, causing
us to react to specific circumstances or personalities in irrational
and erratic ways (often inappropriately and counterproductively).
And of course there are the heroic, sagely, saintly, angelic, or deific
aspects of ourselves that must be incorporated and reintegrated with
our conscious beings – without which our existence would be
pathetically inglorious and prosaic indeed.
Step Two. Forget about doing it
“right” or doing it “wrong.” Grownups spend so much energy trying to
teach their kids the difference between “right” and “wrong” – and then,
many years later, spend thousands of dollars on all kinds of therapies
unlearning deeply ingrained notions of “right” and “wrong” – just so
they can feel INNOCENT again. No matter what you think you’ve done at
any point in your existence – even if it’s an act so shameful and, to
your mind, so heinously disgusting you would never want to share it
with another soul – you are, in truth, INNOCENT!
Innocent in the cosmic context. Innocent when you arraign yourself
against the vast backdrop of The Big Picture. Innocent in the eyes of
whatever or whoever you have chosen to identify as God. Yes... even if
you were Idi Amin’s personal chef, or Idi Amin himself... you are
ultimately (and were originally) innocent and no proof of guilt is
worth the paper it’s printed on. How so? Simply because the Divided
Self is purely an ephemeral condition – and a totally illusory one at
that. The Divided Self, better known as the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Syndrome, is what happens when society tries to impose an artificial
“moral code” on real people, especially when they are young and
defenceless against erroneous notions of “acceptable” behaviour.
Our vital essence is on the side of our animal nature, which has been
so severely suppressed over countless generations that it has literally
“gone underground.” Our so-called ids, our shadow selves, our Mr Hyde
sides, if you like, cannot be destroyed – only denied and swept under
the carpet or locked away in some dark cupboard or packed away in a box
and left in some ancient attic to collect dust. Where we do not label
any action as a crime, no punishment need be meted out; and where no
punishment is feared, no action is concealed; and therefore no
hypocrisy exists. In that state of undistorted clarity, all situations
can easily find their own resolution – without the use of coercion,
without the rule of fear.
For in the end it is always fear that drives out all possibility of
compassion and true understanding. And without true understanding, we
can only exacerbate whatever problems arise in our lives with our
mindless reactions to other people’s actions. Remember: the person
whose behaviour most upsets you is really holding up a mirror so you
can examine hitherto unexamined aspects of your greater self. Instead
of chasing him or her out of town, out of your reality, you would do
much better to simply say, “Thank you for the feedback.”
The third and final step is as easy as
1-2-3. Knowing now that you are a whole lot bigger and more
complex and more mysterious than you ever imagined you were, you can
set about INTEGRATING all those aspects of yourself and aligning them
with your own Core Self – that’s the Innermost Self you’ll find seated
majestically on the throne of your own kingdom or queendom. Every one
of us is a king or queen in exile, subject to external authority and
life’s vicissitudes – until we reintegrate ourselves and locate the
very core of our beings.
Integrity, you see, is a purely technical condition and has absolutely
nothing to do with man-made concepts of morality. When all aspects of
yourself are integrated, you attain the status of an Integer, and
thereby leave behind the emptiness and meaninglessness of Cipherdom.
Only as a whole being – an Integer, in effect – can you possibly
manifest Integrity as a tangible quality. Integrity goes beyond mere
honesty in that it considers all perspectives as potentially its own.
Without integrity, you cannot experience honour and your own nobility –
and will be condemned to seek it in others, a search doomed to
perpetual disappointment.
And what’s so cool about being in conscious integrity? Things fall
apart, they disintegrate, according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics
– a condition otherwise known as Entropy. In other words, the 3D
reality of Decay, Disease, and Death... in other
words, Holographic Hell! Being in conscious integrity nullifies and
neutralizes entropy, and leads to syntropy (a term coined by
Buckminster Fuller, who also gave us the word “synergy”) – a condition
wherein everything just keeps improving and renewing itself. Now,
that’s what I would call Heaven on Earth. Get my drift?