To live from integrity, to
honor who you really are as
your word
in
front and center
of a world which is out of integrity can be like taking a walk in a
minefield. Integrity isn't earmarked only for easy times in the company
of like-minded people. Neither is it to be shelved when times are
fraught with
resistance.
History speaks of great men and women who were cut down in their prime
simply for taking a stand for integrity. It's a fine line between
taking responsibility for our lives and taking responsibility for our
assassinations. Did President Abraham Lincoln cause his own
assassination? Did Mrs Indira Gandhi cause her own assassination? Did
John Winston Ono Lennon
cause his own assassination? These are difficult issues to confront, at
least certain to spur spirited debate.
But the idea isn't to live from integrity to the point of being
crucified. That's been done before. Rather, I assert the idea is to
live from integrity while developing certain
Zensmarts ie to be street wise in avoiding the
mines. And that can't be done coming from survival. If it were it would
be self-defeating. It has to be done coming from compassion.
That's because in this sense, if you're in survival about being in
integrity, it kills off the possibility of being in integrity. So the
Zen
smarts I'm alluding to here are not the result of some new learned
method of self defense. If they were, they would only get in the way.
Rather, they're the result of a way of being in integrity which doesn't
give up any of it's completeness to self preservation. In this sense,
the best way to defend is simply to be.
When taking a walk in a minefield, you'll be skipping where even the
nimblest trudge.
The mines are really personal
interpretations
which appear as reality. That's the first sentence in the
guide book with the map for walking safely through a minefield. Very
little of what blows up out there is reality, although
making it reality is our first mistake. The second mistake is to assume
(which we mistake for learn) that if it's happened once in the
past, it will surely happen again in the future. In this way, we
predetermine our own future by deciding it will be a repeat of the
past. The minefield we walk in is thus pre-seeded with mines of our own
creation, a fact which we've long forgotten.
A good question, then, to ask is this:
What is it that makes for life being a walk in a minefield for some and
a walk in the park for others?