SELLING OUT VS. STANDING IN TRUTH – HOW IMPORTANT IS INTEGRITY TO YOU?

“Every time you use waffle words, back off from a clear statement of values and priorities and most of all, think about what’s likely instead of what’s possible, you are selling yourself out. Not just selling yourself out, but doing it too cheaply. Own your dreams. There is no better way to make them happen.” 

~ Seth Godin, On Owning It

Seth Godin’s (LINK) quote says a lot. It says so much that it is easy to skip over it and blithely go about one’s life as if what he wrote had not really been seen. The first time I read this quote, even though I copied into my quote file, I didn’t really SEE it. I saw it for the first time today when I came across it in that file while looking for something else.

One of the great challenges of spiritual leadership is the tension between trying to keep people happy and being a true teacher of spiritual principles. There are many occasions where being congruent with principles requires discomfort. If there is a lack of congruence between the actions of the spiritual leaders (or members) of a spiritual community and the principles they espouse, then the spiritual community will spend most of its energy in conflict or in simply trying to maintain the organization. This is a waste of energy, when that energy could be put toward the development of a community of love and compassion.

Another way that this congruence can be distorted or lost is when the spiritual leader(s) opts to be “nice” instead of holding people accountable. Kindness is a wonderful spiritual quality, but failing to hold people accountable within a spiritual community can be, well, disastrous. And one can be kind when holding people accountable. The problem tends to arise when whoever is being called to accountability, be it a volunteer who has not honored their commitments or a student who is not doing their work, reacts to being held accountable in a negative way.

I cannot tell you how often spiritual leaders, in response to being challenged, cave in, choosing “niceness” or backing away entirely from holding the person accountable. This practice of avoiding difficult conversations is all too often present in spiritual communities.

“You can’t make everyone happy. And someone shouting at you doesn’t mean you’re wrong. What matters is maintaining your integrity.”

~ Henry Cavill

I am not speaking about political correctness here; we should always honor the essential nature of people and never speak in a way to diminish them. What I am taking about is honoring the person while criticizing behaviors that are out of congruence with principles and practices taught within the spiritual community. As a  spiritual leader you do your students no favors by failing to speak up when they are out of congruence or integrity.

Integrity is more than good ethics; it is an essential inner sense of strength that holds a person on course. Integrity is essential to trust, and trust is essential to community. The erosion of integrity in when a spiritual leader fails to hold people accountable can be very rapid and vast. When spiritual leaders waffle and fail to be clear in their expectations and accountabilities, then the spiritual community tends to lose its rudder, so to speak. Integrity, the capacity to hold together toward a vision, is an essential element in spiritual community – loss of integrity can be fatal – the community may continue to exist, but like a ship at sea without sails, it will go nowhere.

Integrity leads to congruence and congruence leads to harmony.

“The opposite of reflexive niceness is integrity.”

~ James Hollis, Jungian analyst

A spiritual leader with a strong sense of integrity will  work to develop a strong sense of kindness – a kindness that is bound in firmness. One does not lose one’s temper every time someone fails to do something; instead one kindly but firmly helps that person back on track – or, if the person chooses to leave, one lets them leave. One is kind but enforces well-communicated boundaries and practices that have been developed for the good of the whole community.

Members of a spiritual community will tend to mirror the behaviors of the spiritual leader. If the leader is seen as being out of integrity in any way, she is giving tacit permission for others in the community to do the same thing. A spiritual community without healthy boundaries is a community open to conflict and disharmony. Honest conversations need to be the norm, rather than the exception. So often we move to stop anything that sounds negative or loud, without realizing that we are silencing the woundedness that needs to surface before it can be healed. When the spiritual leader is afraid to speak her truth for fear of upsetting someone, she is, in effect, selling out to her fear and teaching others to do the same. It takes courage to stay congruent with spiritual principles, and members have a right to expect their spiritual leadership to be courageous – to stand in truth.

“We live in a bourgeois cocoon of niceness and anything that breaks out of that is very threatening and disruptive to people. We have to work towards having honest speech with each other. When we have honest speech we have to speak out about the things that are unjust and unfair. We need a more honest and abrasive speech to bring our talk into connection with our social reality. Any intent to curb that kind of speech is a desire to not have reality pointed out to us. But if we don’t have reality pointed out to us nothing will ever change.”

~ Walter Brueggemann

A spiritual community of adults should speak and behave as adults. There should be an ongoing conversation about boundaries, accountability, clarity, and conduct.There should be ongoing Shadow work and spiritual practices aimed at deep healing and the awakening of the inner power to which we all have access.

People should expect to be held accountable and expect leadership to speak clearly and openly about such issues. This takes spiritual leaders who are, themselves, in integrity. May we all support one another in this endeavor.

“We will not refuse to help the helpless or lift up the fallen, but we will refuse to wallow in the mud because of our sympathies.”

~ Ernest Holmes 

As always, your comments are appreciated.

Copyright 2016 – Jim Lockard