"Perhaps the most important aspect of being out of
integrity
is the loss of yourself. In a very real sense you are your
word.
When you
honor your word
to yourself and others: you are at
peace
with yourself, and therefore
act
from a place where you are at
peace
with others and
the world,
even those who disagree with or might threaten you; you live without
fear
for your
Selfhood,
that is
who you are
as a person; there is no
fear
of losing the
admiration
of others; you do not have to be right; you
act
with humility."
...
This essay,
Without
Fear
For Your
Selfhood,
is the fifteenth in a group of twenty three on
Integrity:
It's one of life's great conundrums. Yet as enigmatic as it is, it goes
with the territory of
being human.
Almost all of us at one
time
or another have been caught up in it. It's the inquiry into ie it's
the finding out of
who we really are.
This inquiry can be particularly vexing (at least at
first) when we discover very few concrete
answers
forthcoming, and the
questions
themselves aren't
easy.
It's a perplexity which feeds off itself: inquiry, few concrete
answers,
more inquiry, more few concrete
answers.
Then at some point it becomes quite obvious (double negatives aside):
you can never not be anything other thanwho you really are,
ever. There's the
breakthrough.
That's the irony of it. You're
who you really are.
Always were. Always are. Always will be. That's
what's so
before the inquiry starts. That's
what's so
after it reaches its conclusion.
Listen:
can a
dog
ever not be a
dog?
Like that, can you ever not be
who you really are?
It may just be it's not the search for
answers
in the inquiry which vexes us. Rather what gets in our way of finding
out
who we really are
is our distinctly
human
unwillingness to accept the obviousness of what is already here (we are
convinced there simply must be something else, some ulterior purpose,
some hidden
meaning).
No,
nothing's
required to find out
who you really are.
You're already it.
By the same token, it's not possible to losewho we really are.
And yes, there are those
moments
when it seems as if we
could
lose
who we really are
(which is to say when we
fear
we're in imminent danger of losing connection with
who we really are),
indeed that we've already lost connection with
who we really are.
But does that
dog
have to try really hard to continue being a
dog
ongoingly? Does the
dog
have to try hard to stop himself from becoming not a
dog
ie from losing his
dog-ness?
It makes for a massive shift in
the way
life is lived when you find out you can never not be
who you really are.
And it makes for a quantum leap in
the way
your life is lived when you find out you can never lose
who you really are.
So relax! You're alwayswho you are.
You're always it. It's more than that: it's you can never lose it.
We talk about the path to
Selfhood
ie the path to
who we really are.
To use the
word
"path" in this inquiry into
who we really are,
is so fraught with associations and
meanings
and overdubbed conceptualization as to render it almost
completely
ineffective. Yet it's at least the start of a point of reference. So
with that cautionary note in place, when I
speak
about "the path to
who we really are",
it's
good enough for
jazz.
And I propose that we set aside (for the duration of this
conversation
at least) all other known,
respected,
and cherished so-called paths to
who we really are,
and consider instead the reliable, accurate path to
Selfhood
is simply being in
integrity.