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by
Martha Beck
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January 15 - January 22, 2022
Whenever we inquire deeply enough into the truth about our suffering, we arrive at the place where, without changing direction, we stop descending and start ascending.
For all of us, passing the center of Earth means connecting very directly with that core lie: I’m alone.
Am I sure this thought is true? Can I absolutely know it’s true?
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.
We entered the inferno at a comparatively mellow spot, where the sinners were sad but not savage.
learning to walk the walk of integrity is arduous at first, effortless by the end.
The instruction for your next step is the ultimate self-help strategy, the one practice that could end all your suffering and get you all the way to happiness: Stop lying.
Any day at work
On meetings
With my family
I want to throw up due to constant anxiety
I am numb most of the time
Calm and at peace
I’m comfortable with my own skin
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 truth sets us free. All of us.
1 week
Do and say whatever feels like harmony in your body/mind/heart/soul.
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.”
If you start honoring your true nature and find yourself missing your old culture, don’t panic. Be kind to yourself. Allow yourself time and space to grieve. Confide in loved ones. If they don’t understand, find a coach or therapist. But don’t think that missing your old life means you should go back to it.
“Abandon all hope,” this one basically says, “Abandon all intention to backslide.” It’s when we make this major commitment that we begin shifting not just our thoughts, but every word and action, to align with integrity.
Truth-telling brought joy, relief, and healing.
you reach the point at which you’re terrified to be really honest but determined not to return to your known misery, proceed with caution. Find safe people to confide in about next steps. Keep toggling back and forth between the feeling of self-protective lying and the feelings you might have if you could live as your truest self.
“When you’re going to leave, they know.”
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!
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.
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.
Life becomes a play with only three possible roles: victim, persecutor, and rescuer.
This soul—like the great moral leaders of history—tells us that our ultimate freedom lies in our capacity to interpret the world in new ways.
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
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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 t...
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person whose attack upsets you most is always showing you your next step on the way of integrity.
“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”
“Know what you really know, feel what you really feel, say what you really mean, and do what you really want.”
Now, I have something scary to tell you: you don’t have much time left to live. Whether it’s five years or fifty-five, it’s not all that long. You have no time to waste on suffering, no time to keep torturing your nature to serve your culture. The time for integrity is now.
Every single choice is a chance to turn toward the life you really want. Repeatedly putting a little less time into what you don’t love, and a little more into what you do love, is your next step on the way of integrity.
“Practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect,” he’d say. “Practice makes permanent.”
By repeatedly choosing the way of integrity, we unwire ourselves for cultural compliance and rewire ourselves for honesty and happiness.
And when one person gets more of those truly innately delicious things, their joy isn’t divisive. It’s multiplicative. The more of these beautiful feelings we receive, the more we create. Giving doesn’t impoverish us; it makes us richer.
Everything that truly makes us happy is limitless and multiplicative, not scarce and divisive.
All these “sins” are actually based in love. Sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust are simply unbalanced relationships with rest, abundance, nourishment, and sex. We can err by either compulsively indulging or rigidly repressing our natural relationship with these things. This lack of balance doesn’t come when we allow union with our true nature, but when we split ourselves away from it. It’s misguided thinking, not natural behavior, that causes us to stray from our innocence.
Slow it down, but keep it up.
“I spent a lot of my life lying to get what I thought I wanted. Here’s what I found out: if I live in the truth, I’ll always come out okay. Because only the truth has legs. At the end of the day, it’s the only thing left standing.”
When I thought of myself as already dead, I didn’t care what anyone thought about me. It sort of gave me permission to stop worrying so much about everything.”
At that point, you may not have the definition of a perfect life as seen by your culture. But you’ll connect with ideas and states of mind that go beyond culture, to a way of being that’s more vivid, fearless, and in love with life.
When we see something in our life that doesn’t match our true nature, we leave or end it, replacing it with things based on our truth.
The good news is that the system will cause you so much suffering it will be easy for you to see places where your culture doesn’t match your truth
The bad news is that you’ll be “creating Eden” in adversarial conditions.
The most dangerous places for creating change are also the ones where it’s most desperately needed.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.”
Being seen in ways we can’t control terrifies us all.
I’m going to happen to something terrible.
