I just had a very unconscious meeting with my ex-girlfriend, which inspired me to write this blog. It’s always lovely to see her, but earlier today, I had decided that this was going to be an important evening of work at home. I was looking forward to it. In fact, I was excited that my work seemed to be calling out to me so temptingly. Happy that I felt inspired about the stuff I’m doing. When she invited me out, I defaulted to “that sounds nice”, ignoring my subtle feeling of being out of alignment with myself.
After having spent some time with her, totally unable to serve her with my presence, I was called to reflect on integrity. The most basic level of integrity is being true to your word. It’s the integrity of Deida’s 1st stage of masculinity. This integrity is central to the masculine. Interestingly, since stage 2 men are less masculine than stage 1 men, they tend to be less true to their word. It’s an odd paradox of evolution that becoming more conscious means you are becoming less true to your word. But as you know if you have seen the madman in”No Country for Old Men” by the Coen Brothers, you know that if saying “I’m going to kill you” binds you to become a murderer, integrity to your word is not necessarily a good thing.
So we understand there is a deeper level of integrity. This deeper level of integrity is acting in alignment with your core values, and with your own inner knowing. The call to act in accordance with this deeper level of integrity exists inside any man, although the fewest know it. Only the more evolved men are conscious of this. What happened to me today was that I overruled my own inner knowing of what I was meant to do with my time and I became conscious in the process. I was out of integrity with myself. Whenever any man with a masculine essence is out of integrity with himself, he goes unconscious. And he hates being unconscious.
The majority of men are out of integrity with themselves at least 90% of the time. This is why they are unconscious and depressed. This level of integrity that we are talking about here is an absolute prerequisite to consciousness and happiness for any man. We must understand that most of the maneuvering we do in our life, whether it is buying fancy stuff, meditate, have sex, whatever, we do because we are on a downward spiral due to constantly being out of integrity with ourselves. The mystery of inner evolution is that as we become more conscious, we understand that the deep values and convictions that our new level of consciousness uncovers have really always been there. We understand that our lack of satisfaction in life came precisely because we always did other than what we really desired in our deepest self. We understand then how we have spent most of our life sabotaging ourselves, simply because we never bothered to look for what was important to us.
Any man should meditate or do other types of practices to train his consciousness. It will help him spot integrity glitches more easily. But understand that no amount of formal practice in and of itself will cure you of your unconsciousness if you, in the informal paths of life, keep going against your deepest integrity. If that’s all you do, you will do all these practice for naught because you will always fuck it up the minute you enter the marketplace. Your lack of integrity will keep pulling you back to where you started, effectively ending any hope of progress in life.
The conclusion is that following your deepest integrity is the Holy Grail of manhood. It is what it is all about. Every time you are unhappy or unconscious in that nasty, inauthentic way, it is precisely because you are out of integrity with yourself. Not just in word, but in the core of your being. So get to know what you are all about, and then the issue of staying in integrity becomes a little easier. Even if it means saying no to having coffee with a woman you love.
PS! Check out the guys at the Authentic Man Program for some great stuff on integrity. They teach that Presence and Appreciation are the building blocks that precede Integrity.