Martha Beck The Way Of Integrity Quotes

What upsets people is not what happens to them, but their thoughts about what happens.

Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.

And, above all, please learn to trust your inner teacher, the burst of relaxation and freedom that rings through your whole body.

The extent to which people will defy nature to serve culture can be truly horrifying.

Believing things that aren’t true for us at the deepest level is the commonest way in which we lose our integrity. Then suffering arises—not as punishment, but as a signal that we’re being torn apart. The purpose of suffering is to help us locate our internal divisions, reclaim our reality, and heal these inner rifts.

At the deepest level, you know what makes you happy and how to create your best possible life. That knowledge is coded into your very nature. But your nature is forever colliding with a force that can tear it apart: culture.

The Indian sage Nisargadatta Maharaj once commented, “The only true statement the mind can make is ‘I do not know.

To be in integrity is to be one thing, whole and undivided.

Because our true nature is serious about restoring us to wholeness, it hauls out the one tool that reliably gets our attention: suffering.

If you don't walk your true path, you don't find your true people. You end up in places you don't like, learning skills that don't fulfill you, adopting values and customs that feel wrong.

This was how I discovered the most powerful way I know to kill our own cowardice as we approach a gate to hell. We must pull our minds away from situations that exist only in our hopes and fears, and rivet our attention—all of it—on the present moment.

whatever your lies are, digging through them will eventually take you to the center of your inferno. There you’ll encounter three major aspects of your own psyche: the monster, the betrayer, and the betrayed.

When you feel like a victim, always suspect that you may be caught in your own errors of righteousness.

Contemplating integrity as a way of life is like deciding to leave your homeland and become a citizen of a new country: it involves a major identity

our ultimate freedom lies in our capacity to interpret the world in new ways.

In this rush to conform, we often end up ignoring or overruling our genuine feelings - even intense ones, like longing or anguish - to please our cultures. At that point, we're divided against ourselves. We aren't in integrity (one thing) but in duplicity (two things). Or we may try to fit in with a number of different groups, living in multiplicity (multiple things).

Getting out of a triangle drama is also simple, though not easy. It hinges on one act of integrity: acknowledging that we’re capable of choosing our responses to other people and situations, no matter what. We can end the futile drama of human conflict only when we accept that at a deep, existential level, we are free.

we tend to measure our own well-being not by how we feel, but by how our lives compare to other people’s.

Is it true? (Yes or no. If no, move to question 3.) Can I absolutely know that it’s true? (Yes or no.) How do I react, what happens, when I believe that thought? Who or what would I be without the thought?

And if the whine and sting of purposelessness isn’t enough to shake us out of our sleepwalking, our subconscious minds will up the ante. They’ll summon the megafauna, the mental wild beasts we call mood states.

Psychologist Steven Hayes calls this connecting with our “core values.” His research shows that focusing on values has an almost magical ability to accomplish the very things we think we’ll get by attacking our enemies. Simply shifting our attention from attacking our enemies to defining our values can “reduce physiological stress responses, buffer the impact from negative judgments of others, reduce our defensiveness, and help us be more receptive to information that may be hard to accept.

An author named David Emerald did just that after he studied Karpman’s work. He developed a kind of anti-triangle, which he called the “empowerment dynamic.” In this pattern, people who were once seen as persecutors become “challengers.” They force others to rise to new levels of strength and competency. Rescuers become “coaches.” Instead of jumping in to soothe and fix (“Poor you! Let me do that for you!”), they say, “Wow, that’s an awful situation. What are you going to do about it?” And in the most empowering shift of all, Emerald suggests that victims become “creators.” Where victims believe “This situation is unbearable and I’m helpless,” creators ask themselves, “This situation is messed up. What can I make from it?” Remember, creativity is the opposite of violence, which is pure destruction. If we can find any way to see ourselves as creators, no matter what our situation, we can turn drama triangles into empowerment dynamics. Instead of getting trapped in violence and hatred, we can use relationship dynamics to reach higher and higher levels of integrity.

They include peace, freedom, love, comfort, and belonging.

they all shifted from obsessing over the same torturous thoughts to noticing that the world around them was full of ideas and experiences that brought them joy. Without much fanfare, they moved on to happier lives.

Whatever your terrors are right now, whatever your inner demons are screaming at you, notice that they don’t feel like your inner teacher, that clear chime of truth. They aren’t just unnecessary, they’re toxic.

Your true self is showing you that. It’s trying to get your attention, to help you question, doubt, and drop the beliefs that are trapping you in hell. If you can feel that, congratulations. Your trip through the inferno isn’t over yet, but you’ve rejoined the way of integrity.

Getting out of hell doesn’t mean picking up a new set of chains, a new set of absolute beliefs. It means replacing rigid convictions with curious openness, to your own sense of truth in every moment.

Won’t people think you’re wrong? Won’t they judge you? Yes, dear reader, they will. As you spot the innocent errors that have been damaging your life, as you dissolve them with observation and inquiry, you’ll soon end up breaking the rules. Which rules? I don’t know. But the people around you who believe in those rules may find your behavior dubious or even wicked. You’ll feel a thousand times freer—and they won’t like it. Don’t worry. This can actually be evidence you’re on the right track. You’re entering the part of the inferno where you’ll learn to cope with judgment—yours, and other people’s. Things are about to get radical.

If you’ve ever found yourself snapping at someone you dearly love, or sitting down to complete a work project only to spend five hours shopping for home tattoo kits online, it’s probably because you’re internally divided. You’re trying to act in ways that don’t feel right to you at the deepest level. Whenever we do this, our lives begin to go pear-shaped. Emotionally, we feel grumpy, sad, or numb. Physically, our immune systems and muscles weaken; we might get sick, and even if we don’t, our energy flattens. Mentally, we lose focus and clarity. That’s how it feels to be out of integrity.

Physical pain comes from events. Psychological suffering comes from the way we deal with those events. It can grow exponentially in situations where pain is entirely absent. Even when you’re curled up in a comfortable chair, suffering can make you wish you’d never been born.

When we’re feeling fundamentally lost, afflicted by purposelessness, foul moods, and bad jobs, anything that stimulates the brain’s pleasure centers can become an addiction. Some of the most common, aside from the dynamic duo of drugs and alcohol, are gambling, sex, intense relationship drama, shopping, binge eating, and staring at the internet day and night without pausing to sleep, eat, or pee.

the single step that will put you squarely on the way of integrity. It has never failed me or any of my clients. And it’s so simple: just tell the truth about how lost you are.

when we’re still wandering around the dark wood of error, knowing we’re lost but clueless about how to find ourselves, a teacher is essential. So stay alert for anyone that may offer help or guidance. The teacher may not look like what you expect.

Many of us might use the word love to describe the kind of devotion spiders feel for flies. Spiders genuinely love flies (the way they taste, the way they crunch). They express that love by wrapping up any fly they can catch and keeping it close, slurping out its life force bit by bit. I’ve had many clients whose parents, friends, or lovers treated them this way. I call it “spider love,” though of course it’s really not love at all; it’s a predator-prey relationship. And soul teachers never do it. Real love doesn’t want anyone to be immobilized or attached, certainly not in the dark wood of error. It wants—always, always, always—to set us free.

Now that I’ve given you a few pointers for recognizing an outward soul teacher, I want to talk more about the inner teacher, the one who is your goal. This ultimate guide has been with you since before you were born, and will be available to you until the moment you draw your last breath (and who knows, maybe even after).

You can trust everything in the entire universe to be as it is. You are already coping with it right now, and right now is the only thing you’ll ever have to cope with.

In 2018 a group of psychologists led by J. D. W. Clifton published the results of a five-year study, for which they analyzed enormous amounts of internet data looking for major trends in human attitudes. They found that our culture is divided between people who see the universe as dangerous, frightening, and meaningless, and those who see it as “safe, enticing, and alive.” The researchers called these two perspectives “primal world beliefs.” They described how, because perception is selectively screened and interpreted according to belief systems, people in either camp can find abundant evidence to support their worldviews.

I couldn’t know what would happen to him, me, or anyone else, except that we will all eventually die.

The word integrity has taken on a slightly prim, judgmental nuance in modern English, but the word comes from the Latin integer, which simply means “intact.” To be in integrity is to be one thing, whole and undivided.

The word integrity has taken on a slightly prim, judgmental nuance in modern English, but the word comes from the Latin integer, which simply means “intact.” To be in integrity is to be one thing, whole and undivided. When a plane is in integrity, all its millions of parts work together smoothly and cooperatively. If it loses integrity, it may stall, falter, or crash. There’s no judgment here. Just physics.

Integrity is the cure for unhappiness. Period.

Just notice that right now, you’re basically okay. You can trust that gravity will keep holding you in place. You can trust the air you’re breathing. You can trust everything in the entire universe to be as it is. You are already coping with it right now, and right now is the only thing you’ll ever have to cope with.

Our worst psychological suffering comes from thoughts that we genuinely believe, while simultaneously knowing they aren’t true.

When you experience unity of intention, fascination, and purpose, you live like a bloodhound on a scent, joyfully doing what feels truest in each moment. Your daily work, whether it’s writing computer code, gardening, or building houses, is so absorbing that at the end of the day you don’t really want to stop. But when you do, you enjoy hanging out with loved ones so much, and sleep is so delicious you can’t imagine anything sweeter. And when you wake up the next morning, the day ahead seems so enticing you practically bound out of bed.

In this rush to conform, we often end up ignoring or overruling our genuine feelings—even intense ones, like longing or anguish—to please our cultures. At that point, we’re divided against ourselves. We aren’t in integrity (one thing) but in duplicity (two things). Or we may try to fit in with a number of different groups, living in multiplicity (many things). We abandon our true nature and become pawns of our culture: smiling politely, sitting attentively, wearing the “perfect” uncomfortable clothes. This is why a soldier will march into gunfire without complaint. It’s why whole communities once thought it made sense to burn a few witches here and there. The extent to which people will defy nature to serve culture can be truly horrifying. But the whole thing works very well from the perspective of creating and sustaining human groups. There’s

There are infinite ways to make a living. At some level—a deep, instinctive level—you know which of them will truly work for you. You can feel it immediately when a job requires you to push aside your true desires. Your awareness of your true career path may be buried deep under layers of acculturated false beliefs. But it’s still there, like a flower trying to grow through toxic sludge. If you continue to resist your genuine impulses, you’ll become slowly aware that what you’re doing to make a living is turning you into the walking dead.

But speaking of science, solid research shows all sorts of links between living in harmony with our truth and maintaining good health. There’s a whole field of medicine, psychoneuroimmunology, that focuses on the way psychological stress, including the stress of lying or keeping secrets, contributes to illness. Studies have linked deception and secret-keeping to elevated heart rate and blood pressure, increased stress hormones, higher bad-cholesterol and glucose levels, and reduced immune responses. The more significant our deceptive behavior, the worse the effect on health. For example, in one study of gay men with HIV, researchers discovered that the more closeted the men were about their sexuality, the faster their disease progressed. There was a dose-response relationship between the level of concealment and immune status—in other words, the greater the concealment, the higher the rates of disease and death. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” sounds benign, but living in even tacit separation from our real identity can literally hasten our death.

We don’t have to trust that we’ll be okay in ten minutes or ten seconds, only in this razor-thin instant called NOW.

We don’t have to trust that we’ll be okay in ten minutes or ten seconds, only in this razor-thin instant called NOW. If we do this repeatedly, we discover something remarkable: by dropping resistance to whatever is happening right now, we are always able to cope. Even when we’re not coping, allowing ourselves to not-cope gets us through this moment, over and over and over. Presence is the sanctuary integrity offers us as denial comes to its dreaded end.

In this rush to conform, we often end up ignoring or overruling our genuine feelings—even intense ones, like longing or anguish—to please our cultures. At that point, we’re divided against ourselves. We aren’t in integrity (one thing) but in duplicity (two things). Or we may try to fit in with a number of different groups, living in multiplicity (many things). We abandon our true nature and become pawns of our culture: smiling politely, sitting attentively, wearing the “perfect” uncomfortable clothes. This is why a soldier will march into gunfire without complaint. It’s why whole communities once thought it made sense to burn a few witches here and there. The extent to which people will defy nature to serve culture can be truly horrifying. But the whole thing works very well from the perspective of creating and sustaining human groups.

The moment you begin any creative activity, you leave the realm of violence, which knows only destruction.

A closed mind is like a weapon whose only function is to harm. It grips the thought “I exist in continuous violent reaction to whatever is threatening.” By addressing problems with core values and creativity, we choose a different mode de vie: “I exist in continuous creative response to whatever is present.” Sacrificing our reflexive tendency toward destruction gives us access to a much greater power: creation.

Almost always, our deepest self-betrayals have their roots in our childhood. Jesus, so the Bible says, hated it when people hurt children. Most folks agree with him. But we’ve all betrayed and hurt at least one child: our young selves. Each time you obediently kissed scary Aunt Ethel, each time you forced a laugh while being taunted by other ten-year-olds, each time you pretended to feel fine when your parents fought, you abandoned and betrayed yourself. You had no other option.

But bad things happening to powerless people are uncomfortable for everyone. It’s always easier to go along with the system—white privilege, domestic violence, animal abuse, as well as child molestation—than to stand up for those it has harmed.

Your loved ones may shame and blame you for disobeying the cultural rules of your relationship. They may try to manipulate you with displays of neediness, anger, or straight-up aggression. If you’re in an oppressive system, you could get arrested or physically threatened. When someone embarks on integrity and refuses to look back, culture pulls out its whole arsenal of control strategies to make them drop their stupid obsession with integrity and go back to acting normal!

That said, unless you’ve experienced profound trauma, your deepest lies probably aren’t devastating enough to need this kind of support. Maybe you’re just reluctant to face the fact that you’re getting farsighted, or that you actually do have a favorite child, or that some of your friendships just don’t work. But whatever your lies are, digging through them will eventually take you to the center of your inferno. There you’ll encounter three major aspects of your own psyche: the monster, the betrayer, and the betrayed.

Accepting responsibility is honest, but blaming ourselves when we did nothing wrong is cruel, deceptive, and devastating. Even as children, we sense that there’s something off about it, something horrendous. We know deep down that we’ve betrayed ourselves, and (here’s where the lies really are a tangled web) we hate ourselves for our own self-betrayal.

Our own purgatory requires leaving duplicity behind, adjusting our outward behavior to match new inner truths.

Still moving forward, he feels the gravitational pull of the life he led before starting his surreal journey. He’s getting very close to a fundamental shift in identity. Sensing this impending transformation brings on a spasm of nostalgia for the life he’s known so far.

Even though I was grateful and relieved to be out of the church, I felt paradoxical waves of intense sorrow for my old familiar ways of behaving.

Everyone who decides to embrace integrity must mourn the known misery, the familiar patterns and dysfunctional relationships they’ve left behind. I promise: if you give your grief space and time, it will eventually bring you to a level of joy you may never have imagined.

In order to cleanse away mistaken beliefs, we must get them into the foreground of our minds where you can observe and question them. So how do you get a clear view of something you can’t see? You don’t. You have people who do that for you.

Reacting to injustice and hatred with justice and compassion is hard. It goes against the “righteous mind” that makes every attacked person want to fight back. But it’s possible. Even when we’re feeling hurt and angry, we can follow the basic integrity process: (1) observe what’s happening inside us, then (2) question our thoughts. This will show us if we’re stuck in the same violent, righteous mindset others are using to attack us. Our own blind rage will rise into clear view. Then choose to either stay on the path of violence or (3) move away from the ranting righteous mind and follow the way of integrity.

All lies, whatever their origin, wreak similar kinds of inner havoc.

It isn’t just our brains that struggle when we lie; our bodies weaken and falter as well. One study showed that people who present “an idealized image of themselves” had higher blood pressure and heart rates; greater hormonal reactions to stress; elevated cortisol, glucose, and cholesterol levels; and reduced immune-system functioning. Lying and keeping secrets have been linked to heart disease, certain cancers, and a host of emotional symptoms like depression, anxiety, and free-floating hostility.

You are infinitely worthy. You are infinitely precious. You have always been enough. You will always be enough. There is no place you don’t belong. You are lovable. You are loved. You are love.

Sounds so simple, doesn’t it? And it is, from a logistical standpoint. We’ve already seen that lying is hard and toxic, while truth-telling is relaxing and healthy. Here’s the rub: if you stop lying, you’ll eventually, inevitably violate the rules of a culture that matters to you.

Studies in psychoneuroimmunology show that if we plunge too quickly into any major change, even a good one, our bodies and minds can’t absorb the shock. We must give our psychological and physiological systems time to adjust. We do this by allowing something that neuroscientist and cultural anthropologist Mario Martinez calls “mourning the known misery.

Whenever we follow our true nature away from a cultural norm, we’re demonstrating that social consensus is arbitrary and fragile. The lurking fear of people who follow the culture is that if one childless woman, kindergarten teacher, or seven-year-old can abandon their society’s rules for living, anyone could!

A lot of my clients try to follow the Golden Rule to a fault: they are continually accepting, even apologetic, toward people who treat them badly. “Well,” they reason, “I’m treating others the way I want them to treat me.” These people are telling as many lies as Cindy, though a very different kind. They’re violating the opposite of the Golden Rule (I call this the Elur Nedlog, which is Golden Rule spelled backward). This version says, “Never allow others to treat you in ways you would never treat someone else.

If someone in your life consistently hurts you, ask yourself if you would treat anyone else the way you’re letting yourself be treated. If the answer is no, then to stay in integrity you must start thinking of ways to change the situation. This may take courage, ingenuity, civil disobedience, and time. But to accept your own mistreatment is to participate in a lie.

Counseling sessions of all kinds are confidential precisely so that clients can access their truth without alerting the people in their “real lives.” They can blow off enough steam to feel a little better without encountering cultural pressure. Some people become therapy or seminar addicts, constantly seeking environments where they can be themselves without upsetting any apple carts. They may wander around ante-purgatory for years, not really in hell anymore, but definitely not in heaven.

Their longing to be whole became steadily more intense until it overwhelmed every inner obstacle, all their worst fears.

Until you feel an actual desire to move forward in real life, don’t make any behavioral changes. Just focus completely on the yearning to belong, to feel completely safe, and to know you are unconditionally accepted. This is your true self longing for total integrity. The more you focus on it, the stronger your wings.

Radical truth-telling rocks a lot of boats, so other people may be reacting badly to your no-lie challenge. This isn’t fun, but it’s actually a good sign. If you’ve really stopped lying, with both words and actions, resistance from others is often evidence you’re on the right track.

When we begin dropping all “disordered” love, following nothing but integrity, our lives may change dramatically, and fast. Inwardly, this feels incredibly good. But the pushback from outside can be intense. If just speaking the truth bothers your culture, you can imagine what happens when you start acting with integrity. You might stop laughing at your coworker’s crude jokes. You may come out as gay or trans. You may start posting things on social media that shock your loved ones. You may turn into some version of Rosa Parks, refusing to give up her bus seat to a white person.

Everything in and around us is negatively affected when we lose integrity. And because our true nature is serious about restoring us to wholeness, it hauls out the one tool that reliably gets our attention: suffering. Personally, I do not enjoy suffering. It hurts me. If you’re into it, I don’t judge you—but I do want to make a crucial point: suffering is different from pain, at least in my lexicon. I once saw a sign in a medical clinic that read “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” Physical pain comes from events. Psychological suffering comes from the way we deal with those events.

Not because this path is virtuous, but because it aligns you with reality, with truth. Your life will work for the same reason a well-built plane will fly. Not a reward for good behavior. Just physics.

They echo the Biblical lament in Ecclesiastes, “I have seen all the things that are done under the sun, and behold; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” In other words, “Life is hard. We’re all going to die. WTF?” Without an authentic sense of purpose, it’s hard to feel that the daily grind of a human existence is worth the trouble.

So I won an Olympic gold,” one client told me. “And as I climbed down from the podium, the only thought I could think was, ‘What the hell do I do now?’ It was awful, absolutely terrifying. It was like death—the worst feeling I’d ever had.” A hard-working author said, “After a lifetime of trying, I finally had a book hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list. It made me really happy . . . for about ten minutes.

I’ll never forget one wealthy, beautiful celebrity who confided to me, after attending yet another glamorous party, “I’m exhausted by my own hypocrisy.

This is the second step on your way of integrity, a prelude to aligning your thoughts and actions with your truth. It requires nothing of you except to recognize when you’re doing something because it’s prescribed by culture, and when an action arises from your true nature.

Not only do soul teachers fail to fall in with our hustles, they may actually talk about the fact that we’re hustling. Instead of praising our designer clothes or clever wordplay, they may mention that we seem to be trying to impress them. When we cover our existential despair with flippancy, they may skip the polite laughter and ask why we’re acting happy when we seem so sad. Yes, I know! Shocking! This violates what psychiatrist Alice Miller calls the cardinal rule of all cultures: DON’T EVER MENTION THE RULES. In other words, never articulate that there’s an unspoken code everyone in the room has been trained to follow.

The idea of “killing the Buddha” means learning all you can from any given teacher, until you begin to transcend them. Then you can use both the truths you’ve learned and the falsehoods you’ve spotted to move on. Every true guide will tell you this, repeatedly and insistently turning you back to your own discernment as the final arbiter of your beliefs.

If you’re a stay-at-home mother who’s never really enjoyed being around children, a firefighter who longs for quiet, intellectual work, or a soldier who doesn’t thrive on routine, you may be proud that you’ve forced yourself to go against your nature and do what appears righteous to your culture. Now I’m telling you that this admirable effort is out of integrity. What the hell?

Because of that, we’re biologically programmed to identify with the people who look, act, dress, talk, and think the way we do. The downside of this is a universal human tendency to mistrust anyone who seems different from our in-groups. Many tribal groups, from the South African Khoikhoi to the Siberian Yupiit, call themselves by names that in their languages mean “the real people.” This implies, of course, that folks from outside the group are not real people. This is called “othering,” and everyone does it. From early childhood, we see anything unfamiliar as weird and unnerving. The eighteenth-century social reformer Robert Owen pointed this out in his famously ironic statement, “All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer.

Life becomes a play with only three possible roles: victim, persecutor, and rescuer.

Most people try to do this by dominating Mr. Hyde with Dr. Jekyll’s willpower, which is a great idea—except that it doesn’t work. It can’t stop the pain that drives most self-sabotage, because the duplicity comes from an unrecognized split in our belief system.

Iknow a psychologist who sums up the way of integrity with this succinct prescription: “Know what you really know, feel what you really feel, say what you really mean, and do what you really want.

One day, I came across the book, opened it at random, and read: In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of the Tao [Way], every day something is dropped. Less and less do you need to force things, until finally you arrive at non-action. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.

After all, a Mormon authority had recently proclaimed that the “three great enemies of the church in the latter days” were feminists, intellectuals, and gay people.

And all these experiences, from my most intimate private encounters to my most diligent formal research, gradually coalesced to reveal one simple truth: Integrity is the cure for unhappiness. Period.

They strive to cooperate with every rule for living they’ve learned from their respective cultures. Which is a terrific way to run your life if you like to look good and feel bad.

I was twenty-five: old enough to imagine the losses ahead of me, but not old enough to realize that hope is a harsh, unstable master and that there are many benefits to abandoning it. This is the next step on your journey toward integrity

Soul teachers don’t share our culture’s values What? Not share our values? Aren’t we supposed to spend our lives looking for teachers who do share our values? Not when we’re in the dark wood of error. Remember, cultural value systems play a central role in leading us off our true paths and sending us up all those versions of Mount Delectable. Following cultural values, we exhaust ourselves chasing things that will never make us genuinely happy. To lead us away from such errors, soul teachers must be free from our particular brand of cultural delusion.

One of my favorite Indian sages, Nisargadatta Maharaj, put it this way, “The outer teacher is merely a milestone. It is only your inner teacher that will walk with you to the goal, for he [she] is the goal.

That’s why our truest guides don’t help us get comfortable in our illusions. Instead they rattle our cages, make us uneasy, confiscate our sedatives. When someone you feel drawn to upsets your patterns of thought, you may feel petulant and unloved, like a child whose parents refuse to serve candy for dinner. But pay close attention. As long as it liberates you, what looks like harshness or even cruelty may in fact be the purest love you could possibly receive.

Then we do something so simple it sounds almost nonsensical: we trust that in this moment, everything is all right, just as it is. We don’t have to trust that we’ll be okay in ten minutes or ten seconds, only in this razor-thin instant called NOW.

peace is your home. Integrity is the way to it. And everything you long for will meet you there.

And as Margaret Mead famously said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.