Integrity, Sanity, Circumstances

When you lie to your­self, you start feel­ing crazy. There is some­thing about integrity and san­ity that go together. The rub comes with the cir­cum­stances. The sit­u­a­tions around us pres­sure us into betray­ing our­selves. It is the story straight from the Gar­den of Eden. We cave into the crazi­ness of oth­ers and go crazy with them. Adam and Eve caved into the dis­torted real­ity pre­sented by the ser­pent, and the rest is his­tory (blam­ing, sham­ing, mur­der, and even­tu­ally a level of moral chaos that took a flood to stop).

Get­ting your san­ity back means get­ting your integrity back. Integrity is a mind/body/soul rela­tion­ship in which the truth flows within and between them. We lie to the body by cheat­ing it of sleep, proper food, or exer­cise. We lie to the mind by feed­ing it infe­rior ideas. We lie to the soul by accept­ing the dis­tor­tions of our times. The “truth will set you free” but it takes time. It also has to be applied gen­tly and with lov­ing care. Truth is a healer

You will feel crazy if you expect the impos­si­ble from your­self, but you will feel just as crazy if you expect too lit­tle of your­self. There is some­thing way down inside of us that just can­not be fooled. No mat­ter how we try to talk it into going along with the con­coc­tions of the crowd, it just shakes its head and says, “you’ll be sorry!” Sure enough, given time and a mil­lion irra­tional frus­tra­tions, we have to con­fess — we have to admit our own crazi­ness to ourselves.

Cir­cum­stances intro­duce end­less ratio­nal­iza­tions. Ratio­nal­iza­tions are a way of lying to our­selves small bite at a time. Sooner or later, we have swal­lowed the whole truck load of decep­tions. Eve saw that the for­bid­den fruit was pleas­ant to the eye, tasted good, and made her smart — and that is all it took. Adam caved right in with­out much of a fight. The temp­ta­tion was tied to cir­cum­stances that included his bride (and no doubt his sex drive).

You don’t have to go along with any­thing. You don’t have to feel crazy either. The price may seem high at first (peo­ple have lost fam­i­lies, jobs, and their coun­tries of res­i­dence over this one) but it is always worth it. Integrity has to do with your essence. Cir­cum­stances are merely a few shift­ing “facts” and illu­sions blow­ing by.