Integrity is an element within the iconography of the Caduceus: the central staff; the Implicate Reality

Integrity is a word that we would like to define in many ways–words that infer structure and order, words that describe human qualities that denote truth and uprightness, and words that describe an inner reality that conveys the notion of contact with Self and a larger Reality.

Integrity  is also an inner force, noble and intact, indestructible, always Present, of Truth and the Straight Path that causes the emanation through epigenesis of our intent to grow (back) towards the Source (whatever we conceive it to be.)

If we were to take the analogy of a seed that germinates, then the shoot that emerges from the cotyledon ascends towards light. It illustrates the nature of integrity, in that it seeks to connect what is, between the earth and ‘its’ heaven – the sun. Likewise, the roots descend to connect with the material, that which is already created, the source of life. Integrity is a quality that emerges from the heart of the earth. A psychospiritual idea that our ordinary physical heart (of matter, earth)–a mere pump to most of us–is in fact a psycho-spiritual organ that literally propels us into an inward journey of growth and development when we practice Remembrance. Thus the ordinary heart, full of promise, pathology, history, and old patterns of love, evolves into a feeling, wide, open, clean pure heart whose nature from one of mere earth transcends to a less substantial element which we may call the heart of water, as it cleans what has gone before, and takes, absorbs and slowly breaks down what enters it.

This seedling therefore illustrates a ‘soft’ life-affirming aspect of ‘integrity’ (that which is alive); the upward, transcendent, light seeking, epigenesis of what was. The term integrity is our language to illustrate the core of the caduceus; the staff.

Like the seedling and its roots,  the central pillar, the staff, needs to be placed in the ground, as it’s like a flag pole pointing upwards yet connected to the ground. It is firm, strong, resilient, fundamental, and true. In our bodies, it is the vertical structure, our fascia and skeletal structure, the integrity of the piping–blood vessels, lymph, nerve pathways–and particularly our vertebral column. It recalls honesty, uprightness, straightforwardness, truth, trust, true. It is an integer, a complete whole, and connects things. It infers a contact–with our ancestry, our inner self, and with something Higher.

Integrity as a word has many sub-texts associated with it. Using common vernacular we talk of people losing their integrity, bending their integrity as they lean towards a greater force, mass or authority, word or idea. We give people an external staff to denote authority, such as a Bishop and his crozier, a judge and gavel, a policeman and truncheon, a conductor and baton, and an officer and his staff of authority. Our own integrity could be said to be our core, a central tenet, an internal strength, a core feeling, an axis around which we operate. Integrity is not necessarily a given. It may not be transferred in our genes, nor transmitted through our parents, peers, environment, and schooling. It may not be passed on as a meme or collective behaviour. It may be missing in the general population as part of the culture; there may be no interior understanding of truth, or honesty.

The following articles relate to the journey:

• Flexibility

• Reflectiveness

• Surrender

• The Noble Human

• Value

• Undifferentiated human