For the most part your integrity is 'out' whenever you are giving your attention to something you believe doesn't work according to what you believe does. For example if you believe eating meat on Friday is a sin and you do, you'll feel some degree of emotional guilt. If no one ever suggested to you that it was a mortal sin you will not feel guilty for there is no conflicting emotion. Now that is a fairly simple example but I'm sure it conveys the message.
There is a significantly more primary understanding that must be considered here. How does the context that would allow the idea that eating meat on Friday get considered? How does a human being believe something is 'bad' or 'sinful'? They feel it. If I told you that wearing blue shirts before noon was a mortal sin and you came in wearing a long sleeve bright blue André Benjamin, I don't believe you'd feel bad. Why? Now why is that? You might feel silly but you surely would not have any negative emotion.
If you were told early on as a child that if you were to disobey the Commandments and Jesus died for you, that would be enough to make you feel guilt and shame and you would be unworthy, undeserving. If you were a rational 25 year old adult you could not feel these kinds of emotions as the brain by now has built a rational defense. Well there is no context for it, no good and bad emotions.
How you know you are out of alignment (that your integrity is out) is by your ability to interpret your emotions rightfully. You have the emotion you desire to feel and the emotion you are feeling that you ate that meat. If the feelings are conflicting there will be the experience of two conflicting emotions that will cause a vibrate 'negatively'.
The scale of emotions could range from possible 'happy, joy, bliss' to the other side 'hopelessness, despair, powerlessness'. These will surely inhibit a positive self esteem.
There are a few notions to dispel in order to understand the road to joy. First, integrity has nothing to do with right or wrong, good or bad and second, or that a human being could be unworthy. These are things a human being can think but nothing a person could ever be.
The context for life is the phenomenon that the word 'works' points to.
The actions of the particles in the cells are moving in a direction that works or does not work to produce life. To what end? To live, to exist, to self actualize.
The question to ask is does it work? Not is it right or wrong good or bad. Is it moral or immoral? The notion that something could be immoral is a man made invention to manage societies. Particles attract like particles not because they are good particles, they do so because it works to produce life.
Your strongest wish is to exist and continue to exist. But before that which is most desired is turned into words, such as I want to exist, I want to live there is the desire to feel more joy as I continue to reach for more of life. The intention to live is primary, to feeling better. The reach towards more joy and happiness is always a reach for live, for freedom. Though there is much more to be said on this subject, these are the fundamental notions. The release of negative emotions allows for greater and greater experiences of happiness to fill ones life.
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