Inner Work

For the week of March 31, 2008

Integrity Under Duress

When personal difficulties descend, our emotions sometimes pressure us toward actions we know are not right. Anger, fear, envy, and jealousy might drag us into improper and disrespectful acts such as physical aggression, dishonesty, insults, emotional abuse, negative gossip or backbiting. We need to apply the light of day (or front-page) principle: Is what I’m about to do something I will regret or feel embarrassed about later? Will my action dig me deeper into the morass?

While we may rightly take appropriate action if we have been wronged, there is a line that marks the realm of inappropriate, unethical, or rude behavior. If attacked, do I respond in kind? Between an eye for an eye and turn the other cheek, a vast gray area of situational ethics awaits our judgment. And judgment that emanates from our integrity defines who we are. Indeed, integrity and a clear conscience are our most valuable possessions: in a real sense our only permanent possessions. So even in those difficult gray areas, we exercise judgment, an exercise that bolsters our integrity.

This week we address integrity under duress: do I act on passion or do I exercise judgment in the heat of the moment? What do I do under ongoing but not acute duress, such as chronic pain, financial straits, relationship problems, failures, and traffic jams? To a great extent, our acts arise from habit. Do I typically explode, spewing verbal abuse under the influence of anger? Or withdraw into a cold shell? Maybe such responses are necessary and appropriate sometimes. Or not. If financially strapped, do I give back that extra change mistakenly tendered by the store cashier? Do I succumb to the temptation of adultery? Can I train myself to see such moments coming and conduct my life with integrity? Can I train myself to hold my integrity sacred and to act by it in all circumstances? Such training bears the fruit that fewer and fewer situations can set us wobbling on that razor’s edge between right and wrong.

How we act matters, not only for the health of our relationships, but also for the health of our spiritual quest. A basic prerequisite for peace of mind is a clear conscience earned by a life of total integrity. That same clear conscience fulfills a basic prerequisite for advancing along any spiritual path. Bad behavior, even in small things, emanates from and reinforces the self-centered or group-centered egoism that prevents our rising into the spiritual realms. Judgment and integrity strengthen our will and allow us to approach the higher without the baggage of conscience-damaging acts. Furthermore, judgment and integrity entail a clarity of vision that makes us fit servants of the sacred.

For this week, notice how you act under duress. Do you follow the guide of your own integrity?

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