INTEGRITY

The compass that will show you the right way, when you feel lost, when you are on the verge of losing your path, when you don't know anymore the right direction, when you are confused and frustrated, the compass that will help you reach your destination, that compass that always shows you the north of the integrity, don't you ever lose that compass and don't you ever ignore it!

Being integrity means being whole. Being complete.

Be yourself! Respect the truth of your own identity! Be integrity towards yourself, always know and tell yourself the truth about yourself, don't deceive yourself!

Those sum up the meaning I choose for '' to thine own self be true'', though the context in Shakespeare's play, Hamlet, is quite different: Polonius advises his son, Laertes,  in a hypocrite way, to be ''true'' to himself, in such a manner, that what follows, as night follows the day, be that he will not be able to be ''false'' to any other person. 

The sense that Polonius intends is that his son must follow his interest - obtaining for himself the most advantageous results and avoiding the actions that are disadvantageous for his image, that ruin his public status and perception, as lending or borrowing money, engaging in relationships with women of doubtful condition and/or morality.

The one giving the advice, Polonius, is exactly the opposite of his incentive: he manipulates and controls his son, as he does with other people, lies, cheats, spies, conceives intrigues, machinations, schemes,  makes use of the malefic art of dissimulation and concealment, by falsely promoting and aggrandizing virtues, and thus implying his own virtues ( nonexistent substantially), with the purpose of disguising his true intentions and with the purpose of protecting and attaining this interests, born out of envy, greed, malice and thirst for power.

He does everything except being true to himself and to the others, his actions leading to the tragic end of himself, of his son, Laertes, and of his daughter, Ophelia.

"Integrity is doing the right thing. Even when no one is watching." - C.S. Lewis

If you succeed to be integrity towards yourself, you will be integrity towards the others. 

Wisdom is knowing the right path to take. Integrity is taking it. 

Most of the time the right path isn't the easiest. 

Most of the time, though it has already been hard enough for you to decide which is the right path, it is even more difficult to really and truly decide to follow that path, and yet more difficult than actually walking the path is not to give in to the temptation of renunciation, not choosing the facile and comfort instead of integrity and persevering in your integrity. 

Integrity is a combination of these verbs: Think/Say - Believe/Feel - Do/Act

When what you say and what you think, what you believe and what you feel, what you do, and how you act coalesce and become one, then you will have succeeded to define yourself as integrity.

Think about the times you thought and said something, yet you believed and felt different.

Think about the times when what you did was in complete opposition with what you said and thought. 

Think about the times when you acted against what you truly believe, against what you feel, though you could have been, thought, said, and acted according to what you have already decided. 

What impact had all these ways of being and all these actions and types of behavior upon the others? 

Were you content with yourself or were you disappointed with yourself?  

Did you make others sad? Did you falsify their expectations? What do you think caused all of that? 

Is it possible that the main cause was the lack of integrity, and first of all, the lack of integrity towards yourself?

You can now choose a different way of being, a different path: 

"Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity". - W. Clement Stone

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THE ROAD: THE INITIATION JOURNEY

There are moments in life when you feel that the ROAD attracts you, you feel somehow that it talks to you, it calls you. 

THE ROAD, that road who has been waiting for you for a long time, as you well know it, that road which you can hear whispering to you: '' I'm here, I am patient, you will arrive to me, sooner or later '', that specific road you can see flashes of, from time to time.

When you dream, you are free, you are unencumbered. 

Your imagination grants you this freedom, and that is the actual moment when the JOURNEY begins:

It will come a day when the perspective of your life well will change.

The day will come when your thirst for knowledge, for understanding, for freeing and fulfilling yourself will be strong enough for defeating the fear of the unknown, the fear of danger, the fear of not being powerful enough and astute enough in order to face all the challenges you will meet on the road, to face and overcome all the obstacles. 

The ROAD is a mystery, the road is hermetic for the uninitiated: 

This is exactly the reason for which you will never find out if you would have succeeded or not, as you cannot understand the ROAD before stepping on it. 

This is the true purpose of the INITIATION JOURNEY: to live your PERSONAL LEGEND, to turn yourself from the uninitiated into the initiated.  

You have no guarantee that you will succeed. 

You have no guarantee even that this is your true road.  

You have no guarantee that walking on your road you will not lose your way, that you will not be deceived or mislead from the right path and from the destination that destiny has chosen for you and that at the same time you have chosen.

You have no guarantee that your true path will not be lost forever in the labyrinth of the roads of the world.

If you don't take the first step though, you will never find out what could have happened if you had begun your initiation journey. 

You will have in front of you both before choosing to begin your journey and during the journey the possibility of choice:

YOUR CHOICES WILL BE THE ONES THAT WILL DEFINE YOU!

During your journey you will make mistakes, you will suffer, you will lose things that you are so attached to, in the present, you will be engaged in confrontations, confrontations for which you cannot be prepared enough, as you cannot know yet what, when and how will happen.

The INITIATION JOURNEY of every one of us is different from each other's. 

Your unwavering faith, the help that the Divinity grants you before you even ask for it, in His endless Generosity, Wisdom and Love, your faith and your love will be the water which will soothe your thirst, pain and dispair, your faith and your love will be the fire which will warm and protect you in the moments of loneliness and fear, your faith and your love will be your strongest weapons.

You will learn that you are much stronger than you believe, you will learn that the time to do what you are meant to do, the time to be what you always wanted to be, that time is right now!

Now is the time to begin THE JOURNEY and THE ADVENTURE OF YOUR LIFE!

No one will be able to explain to you what you must do and how you can succeed before you have already taken the decision for yourself.

At the end of your journey, you will discover your PERSONAL LEGEND: " When you're on a journey to fulfill your Personal Legend, the whole universe conspires to help you achieve it" - The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

I cannot tell you, no one can tell you what the extraordinary transformations you will go through will be like, how much you will evolve, but the result will be in such manner that your former self will remain a distant memory, a memory you will be able to look at with clemency, tolerance and a slight nostalgic smile. All these things will happen. 

You will then understand that: " At a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie" - The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho.

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INNER CONVERSATIONS

If you listen closely, you can hear in your mind several voices. It doesn’t mean you are crazy if you can hear them, loud and clear. 

For instance, when you are in public, obviously you cannot speak by yourself in a loud voice. Crazy people do that. So, you speak with your inner voice. 

When you are alone and need to think about different topics, you may talk to yourself out loud. Some people do that – they find it easier to clarify their thoughts – some people don’t: even when they are alone, they are afraid they might be surprised by a neighbor and make an awkward impression, or they fear that this may turn into a habit and they could find themselves making an observation or some remark while driving, or walking, or in any other circumstances. 

The second category of people, as I said, thinks with their inner voice even when they are alone. 

By now you will have recognized the voice I am talking about. 

This voice has different degrees of development and use, depending on the person. 

There are people who have a clear, articulate inner voice, formulating intelligible phrases, complicated enunciations, complex analysis, detailed observations, or plans of action. 

There are people who mostly feel, or see images, rather than hearing words or concepts. 

There are people whose inner voice combines words, feelings, colors, vivid images as movie trailers or videos, sounds, and words.

Regardless of your inner voice type, at some point, regardless of the frequency of it, you can hear it. 

And sometimes you can hear it crystal clear.

It can sometimes frighten you, as inexplicable thoughts surface out of your subconscious. 

The fact that you can hear it saying constantly the same expression, over and over again, talking to you about the same topic, forces you to pay attention to that specific matter that needs immediate attention, the same matter that your conscious mind keeps ignoring it, over and over again. It can sometimes surprise you what results can be generated by listening to your inner voice. 

These are the fortunate cases when you feel that what your inner voice is telling you is the right thing to do. 

We assumed so far, that your inner voice manifests itself as being yourself, and that its manifestation embraces the form of a monologue, as in: “I think that… I like that… Perhaps it would be better to..” etc. 

But it doesn’t happen always this way.

And this is the best part: CONVERSATIONS.

"Be careful how you are talking to yourself because you are listening" - Lisa M. Hayes

You find yourself in a conversation with yourself. 

You hear your inner voice saying something, until that moment nothing strange happened, because it was you who was talking, and then you give an answer, or state a different opinion.

Who is who now? 

Which of you is you and which is the other? 

The other is the other one? If not, who is it? 

Is it intuition? Is it your subconscious? Is it your higher self? 

Another situation: you surprise yourself having the same behavior in a certain context. Behavior that isn’t advantageous for you. 

And then you think about what were you thinking at that time: for sure, at least once in your life, when talking to someone else, you must have said, while telling your story: I don’t know what was I thinking!

Thinking about your thoughts in that specific situation, you discover that ALL OUR ACTIONS ARE DETERMINED BY INNER CONVERSATIONS. 

"Most of us are totally unaware that our inner conversations are the causes of the circumstances of our life" - Neville

It is less important the identity of our inner talkers, it may seem monologue or dialogue, but either if we are conscious or not about it, A CONVERSATION ALWAYS OCCURS. 

And that conversation becomes a way of being. 

If you want to change or improve certain ways of being in your life, you need to take the time and really identify and understand your inner conversations. 

For example: 

“I would like so much to do this or that, to become this or that, but he/she won’t let me!”

Or:

“I would so much enjoy starting that, but I’m too old for that ”

Or.

“ I would like to do this, or that, but I don’t have time, I’m too busy/ it’s not appropriate/suitable for a men/a woman of my status/ I lack the courage/ it is too late/ I’m afraid not to look ridiculous/ I don’t feel prepared ” – the list is endless.

If you want to change your life, as I know you want, you can begin by listening to your inner voices. 

Select the one that suits you best. Choose the brave, friendly, and wise one.

Detect the fraud, the deceiver that hides behind your bad and unproductive habits.

Create better, more efficient conversations!

Repeat and rehearse them aloud or silently, when you are alone, until they are understood, believed, and assimilated by your subconscious mind. 

Next time when you will be facing a recurrent situation, that you failed to overpass in the past, repeat silently, with your clear, precise, and firm inner voice the conversation that you have already rehearsed and act upon it!

You will succeed!

Mind your inner conversations, change them for the better, follow and act accordingly!

You will become a whole different person; you will become a new identity!

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