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

by Martha Beck

Integrity is the cure for unhappiness. Period.

The role of soul teachers is crucial but limited. They offer just enough feedback to help us find the wisdom at the core of our own consciousness. Ultimately (spoiler alert), Virgil won’t be able to guide Dante all the way to paradise.

When we grasp truth—any truth, from the correct solution to a math problem to the capacity for love—all of our ways of knowing align. We recognize this alignment as our ideal state of being. It feels calm, clear, still, open. That feeling is the inner teacher saying yes.

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

I’m dwelling on this because listening to our inner teacher is the most important skill we need to follow the way of integrity.

The first neuroscientists who studied decision-making were surprised to find that people who’d damaged the logical, calculating areas of their brains had no trouble making good choices. On the other hand, when people had damaged parts of their brains that handled emotion, they became unable to make any kind of decision. They would weigh options endlessly, dithering and comparing, but never moving forward. They could reason all day, but they couldn’t recognize a good decision if it bit them on both legs.

Here it is: your thoughts, even thoughts you absolutely believe, may not always be true.

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

Virgil keeps urging Dante to do three things: observe the demons, ask questions about them, and move on.

“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.

Neuroscientists have shown that meditators who’ve spent many hours observing their thoughts and focusing on compassion have less neural activity in parts of the brain associated with negative emotions, and unusually dense neural tissue in areas linked to empathy, love, and joy. The longer these people practice, the greater the change. They are literally rewiring themselves for happiness.

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities,” said Suzuki Roshi. “In the expert’s there are few.” From a place of enlightenment, the mind’s job isn’t to shore up beliefs, but to let them go.

The “shape” of your life—your words and actions—will shift in ways that affect the people around you. As those people change, the shift in their lives will affect the people around them. The pattern of integrity recurs in the same shape but at a larger scale. As a twig is to a branch is to a tree trunk, so one human’s integrity is to a couple’s, a family’s, a nation’s. This is how individuals and small groups may end up influencing huge numbers of people.

Go back to the resonance of the statement “I am meant to live in peace.” Can you feel yourself relaxing as your whole self aligns with that idea? This is why, when we struggle for things in a state of desperation, they don’t come to us—nothing works when it’s misaligned. But when we return to a state of peace, the things we’ve “ordered” can finally reach us.

It boils down to this: peace is your home. Integrity is the way to it. And everything you long for will meet you there.