Your Simple Path to Liberation

 "Peace is your home, integrity is the way to it, and everything you long for will meet you there.” ~ Martha Beck

Recently I had the honour of interviewing the author Martha Beck, and I was struck by how full of life and joy she is. This woman has a past and a story (that continues to unfold) that would inspire anyone to change and transform their life. I encourage you to check out the episode and subscribe to the podcast as we have some FIRE teachers coming on that you won’t want to miss.

The reason you need to listen to this podcast episode is that Martha’s book, The Way of Integrity, changed my life. It reminded me why I am here, what truly matters to me, and the immense pain and weight that comes when we’re not in alignment with what is true for us. My friend Kristin Hallett recommended the book to me as we both navigated the very treacherous climate of a culture that continues to find it seemingly impossible to discuss any subject for fear of it causing anyone any emotional pain and/or dysregulation.

Integrity has been a guiding North Star for me. To me, integrity means to live a life and make choices that are in alignment with my core values. To trust my truth. To explore my reactivity with curiosity. To be love, to embody love, and know that love is not the absence of ferocity, but rather the clean embodiment of it.

My commitment to integrity fuelled me to change my life, who I was being, and is ultimately what Create The Love was born through. I was committed to telling what I saw was the truth in relationships, which meant I had to live that truth. I couldn’t say one thing and be another. I had to get my poop in a group. I knew, from my own experience with teachers, that words just hit differently when they are spoken or written by someone living what they’re saying.

Before I started on the path to restoring my integrity I didn’t know I was even out of integrity. It’s normal to look around us and see people making choices that hurt others and themselves. It’s normal that people abandon their values for relationships and memberships to families, friendships, groups and cultures. Sometimes we have to do that to survive. And, sometimes our fears keep us in patterns that are harming us. I don’t think we realize that if we committed to breaking those patterns, to stopping the things that don’t align and started living and loving from a place that does align, the path to liberation will unfold and all the things you’ve always dreamt of being and feeling will, as Martha so eloquently said, “meet you there.”

Because we don’t know this simple truth, it usually takes falling into a million pieces to realize that we don’t have to build ourselves back to being who we were, we can just be.

My uncle Dan once told me something I will never forget, “There are two paths in life Mark. The easy road and the hard road. And the only thing good about the easy road is that it’s easy.” My uncle took his life years ago, and I wish I would’ve had the courage to speak those words back to him as he navigated addiction and shame. And so I speak those words to you today.

To live a life of integrity is not easy. It requires courage. It requires bravery. It requires the willingness to die a small “d” death of every and any cell that needs to be liked by others, so we can fully love ourselves.

Let it be a good death. One of honour and reverence for the younger part of ourselves that learned to put other people’s feelings ahead of our own above anything and everything. The part of us that wanted to just. Be. Enough. The part that wanted to be loved and have a membership to a group or family even at the cost of our own values.

But the truth is that it takes time, space and often deep pain to wake up to the fact that we have adopted values that aren’t our own. We are born into families and religions that say “this is love. This is what it means to be a good _______.” Well what we observe is often anything but unconditional love and values aligned with Christ or whatever other deity they claim to praise and model. We observe hypocrisy and then we become it.

Until we don’t. Until the call of our true values and soul says, “NO MORE OF THIS BS. WE ARE HURTING. STAWWWWWP."

Change or repeat. You choose.

And then marketing and materialism promises you that you will no longer feel that if you buy this thing, take this drug, inject this chemical, all to try to numb the pain of trying to fit into a box you’ve spent your life shapeshifting to fit into.

You are far too magnificent to fit in a box. You are far too complex and expansive to be trapped in a rigid and narrow definition of who you should be.

As Marianne Williamson famously said: 

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

It’s interesting to consider that your fear is not your inadequacy, but rather how brilliant and powerful you really are. AND, would your life that you're currently living be able to hold your enormity?

I ask you: Who loses from you living a life true to you, from your heart, and in your greatest joy? What kind of love would not want that from you?

Integrity is liberation. And getting into alignment with integrity is not that complex, it’s just scary and often stirs some pots.

1. Write a list of your top 4-5 core values.

2. Audit your life and be real with yourself: what habits, rituals, relationships, choices don’t align with these values?

3. How could you get each one of the things you listed into integrity? If it’s a relationship, what could you invite them towards? Who would you need to be in order to align the relationship instead of misaligning yourself? If it’s a habit or a choice, would the version of you that’s living a life of integrity be able to keep that habit?

4. What habits, rituals, choices and relationships do you need to invite into your life?

5. Repeat often. As you live and grow, your integrity will shift and grow as you do. Be gentle with yourself as you realize that what used to align, may no longer. There is no value in shaming a behaviour and/or choice that taught you the lack of alignment of that behaviour/choice.

Now go listen to the podcast with Marta Beck, cause it’s pure magic and she is a badass inspiration. 

Much love,

Mark