The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self

Throughout her book, Beck presents integrity as the key to emotional healing. She uses the word “integrity” in at least two senses (see: Index of Terms), which relate both to the methodology by which one finds healing as well as to the end goal of that healing. For Beck, living in harmony with one’s inner values will lead to a life of integrity and wholeness.  

First, integrity is presented as the means to emotional healing. The use of integrity as a method, a means of progress along one’s journey, is encapsulated in Beck’s advice to stop lying. The practice of integrity requires a person to live in complete honesty, not only in the words we choose to say but also in how we live our lives. To follow her advice of not lying, then, one has to give up all those parts of life in which we choose to go against what our own inner guides might be calling us to do: “Do and say whatever feels like harmony in your body/mind/heart/soul” (193). By learning to live honestly according to our own deepest values, we make progress along the way to wholeness.

This leads to the second sense in which Beck uses the idea of integrity—not just as a means to an end but as the end goal itself.