The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self

by Martha Beck

Even after doing everything we can to be good, we don’t feel good.

It’s simple logic: if you don’t walk your true path, you don’t find your true people.

We simply can’t chart a course to happiness by linking up with others who are as lost as we are. The path to true love—true anything—is the way of integrity.

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.

“If whatever you’re doing isn’t working, don’t do it harder.”

the problem isn’t how hard you’re working, it’s that you’re working on things that aren’t right for you.

In our society, people will virtually kill themselves trying to be better by decorating the fanciest cake, or breeding the most standard of all standard poodles, or clubbing a tiny little ball into a tiny little hole.

Your true nature loves things for their capacity to bring genuine delight, right here, right now. It loves romps, friends, skin contact, sunlight, water, laughter, the smell of trees, the delicious stillness of deep sleep.

But they all yearn for just a few things, and those things are remarkably consistent, even among people from very different cultures. They include peace, freedom, love, comfort, and belonging.

Anything you do solely to influence others, rather than to express your true nature, is a hustle.

there’s only one reason you did the unpleasant thing: at some level you thought you had to.

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. At this point there’s no other action step.

no one can ever know what’s absolutely true.

Whenever you go against your true nature to serve your culture, you freaking hate it.

The only change to make at this point on your way of integrity is to admit—just to yourself—that some of your actions are designed to impress or fit in with other people.

Just when a teacher became necessary for forward progress, someone or something showed up to help.

no external teacher can ever be the answer to all your problems.

They offer just enough feedback to help us find the wisdom at the core of our own consciousness.

So stay alert for anyone that may offer help or guidance. The teacher may not look like what you expect.

your teacher may arrive via a book, a song, an animal. It may even show up as a time of intense experience, a phase when circumstances force you to gain a great deal of understanding, fast.

Anyone who tries to force-feed you advice isn’t likely to be a competent soul guide.

A real soul teacher will draw your attention in a way that makes you feel inwardly driven, not dazed by powerful marketing

Genuine soul teachers may perplex or disturb us, but they tend to be fascinating, not repulsive or unbearable.

the teacher appears when the student is ready. We make ourselves ready just by realizing we’re lost and committing to the way of integrity.

real soul guide’s job is to wake us up when we’re somnambulating through the dark wood of error.

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.

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.

Soul teachers often say and do things that just aren’t said and done in our social circles—or any social circles. Their manners, their reactions, their advice may be different from anything we’re used to.

The problem is that reality is too vast and intricate to be fully represented by one person, one set of ideas, or indeed all people and ideas combined.

“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.”

No external guide you’ll meet will ever be as accurate as the teacher in your soul, and none can ever be as constant.

The real essence of your inner teacher lies beyond labels. You can’t experience it by thinking about it, only by being it.

The way of integrity is simply to listen to this voice, to sustain this feeling not just occasionally, but often—even continuously.

This isn’t a complicated process: waking life is observably more resonant with truth than a dream once we’ve evaluated the two experiences. We do this with all our meaning-making systems: body, mind, heart, and soul.

So another characteristic of the inner teacher—the most important one—is that you can feel it in all aspects of your being (body/mind/heart/soul) at once.

The body’s reaction to recognizing truth is relaxation, a literal, involuntary release of muscle tension.

When our minds recognize truth, we experience that invisible cartoon light bulb going on in our heads, the feeling of a riddle being solved. “Aha!” we think, or “I get it!” or “Of course!” All the puzzle pieces fit. The math works. Everything makes logical sense.

To our heart, the ring of truth feels like a flower opening up. In total integrity, we’re completely available to all emotion: overwhelming love, deep grief, terrible anger, sharp fear.

The emotional pain of a hard truth is eased by our soul’s response to aligning with reality. Around and beyond mere emotion, we feel a sense of freedom, a vast openness that includes all aspects of our experience.

Our sense of truth, our ultimate inner teacher, is as familiar to us as the sun and the moon. We use it constantly in ordinary perception.

Every real soul guide outside you will bow to the teacher inside you.

“Everything is okay,” it would say without words. “You’re going to be fine.”

The voice of your inner teacher is not the one that tells you that the meaning of your life is to do something you think you’re supposed to do. It’s the sensation you get when you state that you are meant to live in peace.

On the other hand, you may never remember feeling complete peace. You may have been taught that such a thing is impossible. But your inner teacher will validate that this state—and whatever it takes for you to experience it—is the meaning of your life.

Ultimately, leaving denial is the most productive, grounding, calming thing we could possibly do.

At the core of all this hoping was the mega-hope that I wouldn’t have to lose anything. Not my lifestyle, my goals, my self-image, my work, my place in society.

To find that gate, we simply have to acknowledge the things we don’t want to acknowledge.

Approaching that gate is the next step toward integrity. I wish I could say otherwise, but I can’t.

Here, you have to find a way to kill your own cowardice. Be brave, my friend. You don’t have to figure out your whole life right now. Just take one step toward the gate by identifying some things you do not want to think about.

But beneath this effort to control the universe, we feel a dreadful deeper truth: the universe is not ours to control.