Did you read with me? Integrity by Martha Beck
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This is my monthly Read With Me project and I hope you’ll join me! No commitment. No wine and cheese parties. If you want, simply read the book for the indicated month (see image to left) and then look for a post about the book here on the blog around the 15th of the following month.
I won’t write a formal review. I’ll just share what I found compelling (or not) and I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments (but again, no commitment).
Ok, so here we go: The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to your True Self by Martha Beck.
This month for my Read with Me project, I made the mistake of listening to the audio book instead of actual reading it. What was I thinking? I have no text to reference, which makes it kind of difficult to write about the book here.
Oh well. It was a great listen. Beck herself reads and it was kind of like a long version of her podcasts (both of which I also love). Martha is funny and interesting and wise. And bonus: I could do art while listening at the same time. But it’s going to be difficult to be specific. Sorry about that. I won’t listen to books on tape for this project going forward.
Bottom line I think The Way of Integrity distills in clear language what is essentially ancient wisdom:
Resist the dominant Culture (i.e., community, family, work, the greater society…Beck uses the word “Culture” as a wonderful catch phrase for these entities) that asks you to be dishonest about who you are.
Live in integrity with your own Soul no matter what—make it your highest priority. It’s the only way to find joy, fulfillment and peace.
Without integrity, we are living a lie and we will be unhappy. And as she says, “Integrity is the cure for unhappiness.”
Of course, as she explains, living in integrity is difficult to put into practice because two of the deepest human needs are to be loved and to belong, and while our Soul demands we live in our truth, Culture often asks us to conform to what it wants from us—and we risk love and belonging by not conforming. A great human fear is to be cast out, alone.
However, Beck uses the hero’s journey and “mystical adventure” of Dante’s Divine Comedy to demonstrate that in fact, the opposite is true. After making the trek through the Dark Wood of Error believing we have to conform to Culture to be loved and find belonging, we can make our way through the Inferno and Purgatory to align back to our True Nature and reach paradise, which is simply living in our soul’s integrity, where we’ll find real love and belonging from ourselves and those who value us.
So this book is essentially about how to reclaim and live in Integrity. I would recommend it to anyone who feels misaligned in their lives, and you may not even know what is wrong—but as she says we all have an “internal guidance system” that tells us something isn’t right even we can’t name it. This book will help you name it and it will help you get closer to aligning your life with your true Self. It’s very readable, I think. I enjoyed her many personal stories and examples of each phase and the book is full of ideas for how to apply to our lives.
Overall: Really good book and nice nonfiction change of pace for this Read with Me project! Meanwhile, on to the next book which I’ll make a post about next month: Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell, one of my favorite authors. I can’t wait to share my thoughts next month. Hope you’re reading too!
As with all our books, please share your experience of The Way of Integrity in the comments below. I’d love to know what you think!