I heard a promotion for a workshop on the topic of ‘nonduality’. The gist was that word nonduality was catching fire and people were flocking to the resources and readings regarding that term. Imagine going to the average coffee shop that serves only two forms of brew; caffeinated and non caffeinated and then ask the patrons for their thoughts on nonduality. The response would likely be something like: “say what?” or “is that a tire strategy for less than heavy loads”?. Ask the same group about the word “integrity” and the conversation would catch fire.

I will continue to pursue a deeper understanding of nonduality, but that said . . . the word doesn’t really communicate in an age where if we don’t communicate, all is lost. When I hear the word integrity I immediately get the sense of ‘one working piece’. Where ever you poke me, there I am. In our age we are in the process of breaking our society into unrelated pieces and no longer seem to demand integrity among the pieces. We are the science self; the part of us that relies on cars, airplanes, clean water, and flushing toilets. We are the religious self; the part of us that relies on cooperation, care love, and kindness, We are the political self: the part of us that relies on people following traffic rules so the mother and child aren’t run over crossing the the green lighted intersection. But integrity demands these reliances be knit together and synchronized in each of us so that we are one working person; spiritual, scientific, socially cooperative and reasonably compliant to the democratic civil policies that our collective authority has crafted. . . in short ‘integrity’. Any chaos and violence we face is the product of abandoning the work of integrity and allowing ourselves the indulgence of selective ignorance and contradiction. Call it integrity or even perhaps nonduality . . .but that is the work of this website and I submit, the work of the age.