Integrity is Integral to Your Happiness!

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Hello, everybody, Anna Gatmon here, another week of Expanding on Expansive weekly tips and teachings. And this week, my word has been integrity. And so all the posts this week focus on integrity. And so I want to speak about integrity and why it is so important to live with integrity, how it can contribute to your ongoing happiness and fulfillment, and to the healing of your world in our world and our community.

And so, you know, we see such lack of integrity in our leadership in so much of our leadership, whether it’s in the United States or in Israel, where I come from, you know, we see a lack of integrity in finances. We see lack of integrity in healthcare. We see lack of integrity in racial injustice and social discrimination.

I mean, there’s so much lack of integrity in politics that we see and just personal gain and often is connected to either a personal financial gain or power gain of personal power. So I looked up the origin of the word, integrity. Integrity comes from the Latin word, integer. If I’m pronouncing it correctly, meaning whole or complete. So integrity is about something that serves the wholeness and makes a given situation or the act that you do. It makes it more complete and whole versus just something personal that you do.

So synonyms of integrity are unity, wholeness, unification, coherence, and then it goes to honesty, ethics, morals, and honor. Because when we do things that feel like they’re coming from a place where a person has a lot of integrity, they’re an honorable person, they live by their ethics and their morals. But really it’s about finding yourself within an integral whole. And so I posted on Monday, I said, “Integrity, perceive the wholeness of a given situation and find your grounded center within that wholeness.”

And so you see it’s about finding yourself, your optimal situation, your optimal values, your optimal essence being aligned, but within the larger given situation that you are dealing with. You see integrity shows up always when someone has done an act, that feels like highly integrity. That has a lot of integrity more than you even thought of at that moment, or has much less integrity than you hold in yourself. And so in that difference, which is essential to have that contrast, your integrity is awakened, and you need to decide, how do I respond to this?

Do I admire them? And does their integrity bring more integrity out of me? More courage out of me? More confidence to speak my truth or truth to power as well? Or, does it question my integrity here? And do I need to speak up? Because someone here I feel is out of integrity. So it’s a gift in a sense to feel the contrast of others, either having more integrity or less integrity, to either bring more integrity out of you or awaken your integrity by contrast of, wow, this is a moment where I need to decide how I’m going to act, And you can feel it because you feel, if you’re inspired, then suddenly you feel high. When somebody has acted with a lot of integrity, really inspires you to do the same.

But when you feel that the situation is a bit dangerous, you suddenly go, Oh my God, here is a point where I need to decide to be in or out of integrity, a bit or a lot. And it can be scary to make the choice. And ultimately you decide if this is worth the fight or worth standing for who you are and what’s important for you.

So integrity has a lot to do, being in of integrity, or out of integrity, with the two consciousnesses that I speak of a lot which are the ultimate consciousnesses, right? The consciousness of interconnection and the consciousness of separation. And we are coming out of this consciousness of separation, which we can see in politics, in power, and greed. And the consciousness of separation means, you know, I end here where my arms and that’s where I am. There’s only me. And that is a very scary consciousness because if I am alone in the world, I need to fend for myself. I need to survive. I need to it’s me against them. It’s them against me. And so I need to grab whatever I can in order to survive.

And planet is a big place. The universe is a huge place. So that consciousness is a consciousness of fear. Now the conscience of interconnection is a consciousness of love because when we see everything is connected, then I am part of the whole, you are part of the whole, and I care for you. I care for the rest of the world.

I care for the situation. I care for the outcome of this for everyone, not just for myself because I am part of that. We’re interconnected. If I act out of integrity, it affects everything in the situation that I am affecting. And if someone else acts out of integrity, it affects me in everything, everyone that is around them that is primarily affected by them being out of integrity.

And so in the consciousness of interconnection, there is care. There is love. There is what happens to me, affects you. What happens to you affects me. Now, I want to be clear. It’s not about erasing the self because sometimes we think in dualistic terms on planet earth, we always do. But our job is to elevate our consciousness and transcend the either-or, but we need the either-or in order to know what’s right for us to do as we transcend. And so sometimes it can look like a consciousness of interconnection is one where I need to erase myself and compromise myself for the better good of the whole.

That is an old way of looking at togetherness or interconnection. Another way to look, it’s not an either-or the more you are in your optimal state, your optimal spiritual, mental, professional, personal, social health state, that you can be the more you’re going to influence in a more efficient and effective and potent way, your immediate world. And then it ripples out to other people who touch other people who touch other worlds. And this is how we are unified. So don’t give up on yourself for the good of the whole stay within your center, stay aligned, but pay attention to the whole. Don’t see yourself as separate and you need to, to survive just for your own benefit. Think of what is going to be optimal for you. What is going to bring you a sense of integrity, but what’s going to also bring integrity for the whole situation.

So in a sense, you’re like a conduit, like the flow of the universe that I spoke of last week, you’re a conduit of what is the right thing to do the right place to be at right now, the right thing to do the right thing to say at this moment, that’s going to serve the best of me. I’m going to bring the best of me out. You’re going to bring the best of you out, but it’s also going to serve the situation for its best. So you’re taking everything into account as much as you’re able to because you care for the whole situation and for yourself as part it and for other people or other events or things that are related to this situation.

I hope that’s really clear cause that’s really important. So other posts this week, so spiritual integrity is, “Integrity arises when our intuition is aligned with inspired action.”

So when you listen to your higher self, to the essence of you are, to inner wisdom to your gut feelings and that what you hear intuitively is aligned with inspired action, which is the third key in the four keys for spiritual of spiritual-material balance in my book. So when your intuition is aligned with inspired action, you are in integrity because you are listening to the higher wholeness, the intuitive wholeness and you’re connecting it to the immediate action that you’re about to do. Now the inspired action that’s based on that.

So that’s how you find spiritual integrity, or spiritual-material integrity, or spiritual-material balance. Professional integrity is when you feel in integrity when the essence and expression of our calling are aligned. So when you are connected to the essence of who you are, the essence of the gifts and talents and capabilities that you have, and you express them to the fullest that you’re able at any given moment, we do our best at any given moment, professionally, personally, in an interaction, in your self-care, in your financial situation, whatever you’re doing professionally, self-expression, but you’re using your essence right now and expressing it.

You are in integrity because you are integrity between your spiritual aspect, your spiritual essence, and your material expression of that essence in the world at this very moment. And that is living in integrity. And so from this frame of integrity, where there is the self, and the self is part of a whole. I ask you, is there any part of your life, any area of your life where you want to live in greater integrity? Is there any area of your life where you would want to live in greater integrity? Now there’s a quote that says “One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.”

What it means is that when you’re in integrity, you are not willing to compromise on that which you feel is the right thing to do right now. That is a characteristic of integrity. And so, so often we give up on what is for our best and the world around us, for the best, for the good of the whole and for the good of ourselves for our own happiness, we say, well, this is not a big enough thing to make an issue of.

I’m not gonna raise a conflict here. I don’t want to say anything about that. And then we end up in, you know, even in social situations and in systemic, you know, places in countries where this wasn’t big enough, and this wasn’t big enough of an issue. And then we have horrific consequences. But also in our life, we say, Oh, well, nevermind for this sugar. And nevermind for that fatty salty food, nevermind for not taking care of my needs at my work here, I won’t, you know, I’m not going to tell my boss this it’s not big enough. And so we’re out of integrity, which means we’re out of connection to the essence of who we are and to the good of the situation.

And we give up on our full potential on the potency that we have on our vitality. And so the quality of integrity is that it doesn’t give up, that it says right now, I need to be aligned to the essence of what’s right now for me and for the situation and I’m going to be the speaker or the doer of what needs to be done right now.

But you do it out of love because you don’t want to give up of yourself every day just a bit more till there’s nothing left. And you’re just a robot doing, you know, what is left for you to do, but there’s no vitality, no joy, no happiness left, no delight in living. And you don’t want to give up for others as well, because you care for the world as much as you care for yourself, because you are part of this world because you are in this consciousness of love interconnection.

So you don’t know how what you’re going to say is going to affect somebody else. And you might feel this is dangerous. The system is going to be, I mean, even a relationship, even an intimate one, you know when you’re going to say something where they’re going to go, that’s not going to sit well for them. You got to do it. Do it scared. Be in integrity, because eventually, this is going to help you and them become more whole, heal, grow. You’re not going to rob them or rob yourself of any vitality.

Instead, you’re going to infuse the situation and yourself and the interaction, the relationship, your community, the world with more and more vital energy with light and love. So I leave you with all of this, a different perspective on integrity. I send you lots of blessings of integrity. Thank you for joining me from Germany. I appreciate you showing up many times when I’m live.