"My notion about service is that service is actually that kind of
relationship in which you have a
commitment
to the person. Now I don't mean to the person's body or to the
person's personality or to the person's stomach or to the person's
almost anything. What I mean in fact is that for me what service is
about is being
committed
to the other being, to the other person spiritually, to who the person
is. Now the problem with that is that to the degree that you are in
fact
committed
to the other person, you are only as valuable as how you can deal with
the other person's stuff, their evidence, their manifestation, and
that's what service is all about. Service is about knowing who the
other person is, and being able to tolerate giving space to their
garbage. What most people do is to give space to people's quality and
deal with their garbage. Actually, you should do it the other way
around. Deal with who they are and give space to their garbage. Keep
interacting with them as if they were
God.
And every time you get garbage from them, give space to the garbage
and go back and interact with them as if they were
God."
...
"If what you've given your word to has you suffering, there's
inauthenticity."
This essay,
Approaching Integrity,
is the fifteenth in the open second group of
Experiences Of A Friend
(click
here
for the complete first group of thirty five
Experiences Of A Friend):
I don't mean "How do you take on integrity?", neither do I
mean "What do you consider integrity to be?" (ie what your ideas about
integrity are), nor do I mean "How do you study / research integrity?"
(as if you're preparing to present
a paper on it),
and nor am I referring to what you'd have to do to
clean up
the integrity in your life - none of the above.
What I mean is something very literal, something quite
pedestrian actually. What I mean by "How do you approach
integrity?" is "Who / how are you being when you
walk
up to people you know have high integrity?" (and
"walk
up to" is about as literal / as pedestrian as you can get). When I ask
"How do you approach integrity?", I'm actually asking "What happens for
you, what do you take with you, what do you take into account, as you
get near / as you approach people of high integrity?".
What I've taken stock of ie what I've noticed, is I had a tendency to
pre-judge that people I'd run into randomly, would have
low integrity or no integrity. In other words, I'd pre-judge people's
integrity even before I'd met them. Oh,
God!
That was awful ... so righteous! I can barely confront I actually did
that - not to mention how
small it made me
(which is ironic since until then, I had it that having the smarts to
be able to recognize low integrity / no integrity, made me a
bigger person).
On the other hand, when I approach people I know have high integrity, I
be a certain way. I come prepared. I generate a future in their
presence, and it's joyful. Yet I've caught myself about to approach
people I don't know have integrity (which is different
than people I know don't have integrity) and just assumed
they have low integrity or no integrity. That was my default sensor
reading. I'd cast myself as an island of high integrity in a sea of low
integrity or no integrity. That's a
small
game.
What I realize with hindsight (and hindsight is always
20/20 vision) is when I approach people whom I've cast as low integrity
or no integrity, it is I (not they) who has them be that way. It's
embarrassingly obvious to me now. The inevitable self-correction came
from scrutinizing who I be, and what I do when I approach people whom I
know have high integrity, then pledging / promising /
committing
to take all of that with me when I approach all people, without
pre-judging their integrity.
What are the yardsticks, indeed what are
the sources
of what I take with me when I approach people of high integrity?
They're legion. For starters,
my Experiences Of A Friend, and my
Encounters With A Friend
are my
chief sources.
From them, I've distinguished and assessed and harvested the ways I be
when I approach people of high integrity, and I've woven those ways
into components of my interactions with all people, even those I meet
randomly. This way, I grant integrity like a possibility
to all people I approach.
For me, granting integrity like a possibility to all
people, is to see them as
whole and complete.
It's to approach them as if simply
being around
them will impact my life profoundly. It's to come prepared to engage in
worthwhile conversation. It's to bring forth
a platform
for love and trust, even if none has been established in the past. It's
being willing to share coming from who I really am, with who they
really are, without compromise. That's how I approach integrity, and I
see it in everyone.
