By Noura. Follow: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.
Recently, a friend requested my feedback on a children’s book. She had read it to a friend along with one of my quotes below:
The Abundance of Emptiness – Emptying our minds frees us to hear better what’s going on around us, including what’s going on in our bodies. This emptiness enriches our lives, not in knowledge, but by providing the space to process and understand what is now.
I read a copy of the book as soon as I could. I was so impressed by its simple and yet powerful message on honesty that I decided to use it as example to write this article about the foundation of integrity.
Book Description – The Empty Pot by Demi
The Empty Pot is Demi’s beloved picture book about an honest schoolboy
A long time ago in China there was a boy named Ping who loved flowers. Anything he planted burst into bloom.
The Emperor loved flowers too. When it was time to choose an heir, he gave a flower seed to each child in the kingdom. “Whoever can show me their best in a year’s time,” he proclaimed, “shall succeed me to the throne!”
Ping plants his seed and tends it every day. But month after month passes, and nothing grows. When spring comes, Ping must go to the Emperor with nothing but an empty pot.
Demi’s exquisite art and beautifully simple text show how Ping’s embarrassing failure is turned triumphant in this satisfying tale of honesty rewarded.
Discussion:
An important thing to note from the book’s description is that the Emperor didn’t say that the one who would grow the best flowers would be emperor. He asked for the ones who would present their best. How would the Emperor know for sure that the children have presented their best? If you haven’t already read the story, you might want to read it to find out!
This is a children’s book for ages 4-7. It’s a very short and easy read but the message is so powerful and well-presented that it goes to show that a book doesn’t need to be long to be meaningful.
What kind of mindset is needed for integrity?
The hero of the story, Ping, came to the Emperor with an empty pot thinking that he was presenting nothing of value to the Emperor, and yet he brought something far more important, the gift of his honesty. Honesty is a sign of maturity born out of the total understanding and acceptance of ourselves as we are, not as we wish to be. In order to be honest with others, we must first be honest with ourselves. We need to be able and willing to meet ourselves where we are.
We need to forgive our judgements of our limitations so we can look at them. If we judge them as unacceptable, we will not be able to look at them because of the pain of our judgements. If we don’t look, we can’t learn and understand why they are there because we can’t get past what we don’t see. Acceptance doesn’t mean resignation. It means no energy wasted arguing against facts so our energy is not wasted in conflict. If we choose to forgive instead of judging, we can redirect our energy towards learning and correcting. In this light, something that may have been perceived as a failure becomes the foundation for the next step in our journey.
When we accept ourselves completely as we are, flaws and all, we can be authentic because it will never occur to us to be anything other than what we are regardless of expectations or what is going on in the world. If we meet life according to a system, a method, or expectation, it is not us, but the system that responds to life through us. We are now divided within ourselves.
We have this enemy within which tells us that our flaws define us. We give power to our flaws to upset us and then we give power to something external to save us from our sense of lack. This weakens us because it makes us dependent on externals for our sense of self. When we make peace with our limitations, no one can use them to manipulate us. As this African proverb says “When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.” When we have no enemy within, we are united within ourselves. This unity is the foundation of mental strength.
Accepting ourselves completely, flaws and all, frees us to live our lives as we choose rather than being slaves to others’ opinions. Life is no longer personal because we no longer take anything personally. This is how unconditional love of ourselves frees us and makes us strong. Unconditional acceptance of ourselves is the root of integrity.
When we accept ourselves as we are, we can extend the gift of honesty to ourselves and others. When we believe that our worth is dependent on others’ opinions, this belief corrupts the mind and also makes us susceptible to corruption. This belief also weakens us because it gives power away to others to define us. Without the strength of integrity which arises from unconditional love or acceptance of ourselves, it’s very easy to lose ourselves in the darkness of corruption.
Some of the Reasons why We Compromise Our Integrity
We want other people to like us: Is it better to be disliked for who we are than being liked for who we are not? The problem with a lie is that once it is told, we have to keep lying to keep up with it. But if we tell the truth, we don’t have to worry about keeping up appearances.
We are afraid to stand alone and we want the sense of security from being accepted by a group: the problem with this is that the truth is not dependent on how many people believe in it or not. There was a time when people believed that the Earth was flat and that the sun revolved around the Earth. We now know that this is not the case. Sometimes we compromise our integrity by supporting a corrupted system in order to have security, but a system without integrity can’t endure.
We are not able to meet our limitations because we believe that they define us. If we can see our limitations as “where we are”’ rather than “who we are”, we can step back and look at them, we can forgive them for being there. Rather than seeing them as enemies that should not be there, they simply become signposts that are indicating to us where we need to keep growing. If the dashboard of my car tells me I am running out of gas, I don’t get mad at the dashboard, I get more gas. The peace with which I meet the situation helps me to move forward. But if I argue against the fact that I need more gas, this becomes a hindrance because it wastes mental energy.
When does Integrity Require Courage?
When we find ourselves in corrupted environments, then integrity will require courage. People we consider as heroes today are those who stood up against corruption so we could all have a better world. In this day and age, it’s hard to conceive that there was ever such a thing a slavery or the holocaust.
The value of history is that it can serve as a warning system. It’s important that we don’t take our progress for granted. We should continue to be as mindful as possible of the darkness within so that it doesn’t show up in ways that we may not recognize and cause self-sabotage. Any tool that can help us to be more self-aware is helpful. Meditation is one of the tools we can use. You can read about it in this article I wrote: The Purpose and Meaning of Meditation.
Other Questions to Consider
The “Empty Pot” by Demi raises some important questions to consider. How do we meet failure are a society? How do we meet our children’s failures? How do we define failure? If we tell our children that they are not allowed to fail, what message are we sending to them? Does the end justify the means? Is it more important to get results to keep up appearances or is the way we get there just as important?
What are we passing down to our children? Are we teaching them how to compete to accumulate the most material possessions and better social status or are we teaching them how to live in a way that is not destructive to our planet? All these questions lead us back to the following important question: who are we?
Are we part of the Earth’s Ecosystem, or do we own the Earth? The true wealth of the Earth is not in the stuff it produces, it’s in the ecosystem’s ability to renew itself. That’s what we want to protect. When don’t see ourselves a part of this system, we end up destroying it because we don’t see that it’s part of us. If we pollute the water, that’s a big problem because most of our bodies are water.
We should all be activists and use whatever talent we have to bring awareness to the need to protect our home from pollution because the Earth is not just our home, it is part of us. I absolutely love this music video by Lil Dicky – Earth which was made for the purpose of raising funds for environmental charities. The beauty of this video is in its purpose of reminding us of our unity with all life. This is a great example of how we could use whatever talent we have, singing, dancing, writing, and so on, to remind each other of what really matters in life, our unity.
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