May 21

INTEGRITY MONTH: DAY 21: “Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn’t blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there and see a man who won’t cheat, then you know he never will. Integrity is not a search for the rewards of integrity. Maybe all you ever get for it is the largest kick in the ass the world can provide. It is not supposed to be a productive asset.” ― John D. MacDonald

This is great stuff! When we are sitting quietly with ourselves, we can always tell what is going on beneath the surface of our thinking mind. I believe this is why so many people refuse to practice meditation. We are afraid of what truths we will uncover if we sit for very long without some kind of distraction. It can be terrifying when we let go of our need for emotional and intellectual stimulation around the clock every day. Then we find that we cannot tolerate emotional and intellectual stimulation that does not have some kind of purpose for us. There is NO reward for doing the right thing. Early on, I was told to do 5 things a day for someone else, random acts of kindness or generosity, and NOT tell anyone I did them. I have always wanted to be that person, so I have to act like that person and do it just that way. Every once in a while, I talk about it, and lose all sense of being kind or thoughtful. It just does not count if I am taking a bow. So I need to just be that person. When I am honorable, I get to feel the way I feel when I am honorable. When I am not, which happens less and less often these days, I get to not only feel the feelings, but I often get to see what that produces. I did this about a month ago, I got all caught up in something and did several things that were not mindful. There were almost immediate results to my lack of thinking things through. So I have a mess that will take me some time to clean up. I love that I get “busted” almost immediately and see that I am still capable of being completely clueless about bad behavior. It usually happens when I get too emotionally or intellectually stimulated. I live a pretty quiet and peaceful life, with lots of time to be meditative and very little noise or worldly interaction. When I get too much of that, I get off track. So it is important for me to maintain this balance. I know that, yet am sometimes unmindful of doing it. And there are consequences, because I do not want to act in these ways. I have always seen myself as the little silver ball in a pinball machine. (I am old, and I happen to LOVE pinball machines and playing pinball!) When I am reacting to stimuli on an emotional or intellectual level, I am the ball…I am driven by flippers and buzzers and lights and bouncing off all the stimuli, with little or no say in how I react or what I do next. When I am mindful and peaceful, I am present to everything that is going on and I have much greater say over my behavior. This is up to me, I am NOT saying it is the fault of anyone or anything outside of me. I just get to see how reactive I can be when I am not mindful. So I need to learn to be responsive to stimuli and to be aware when I am getting caught up in things that are not what I want for myself. I can participate in anything I want, but need to do so in a way that I can sit with. I am going to say that no one really cares, but me, how this unfolds. It seldom has any impact on others, because they don’t always know what is going on. I do this because I want to live well with ME. And because doing these things has given me the kind of peaceful life I used drugs to achieve.