The nexus between spirituality, integrity and development

This articles focus on what spirituality, integrity and development have in common. All three have the ability to reduce corruption because they stem from the same origin, and/or have the same purpose in common.

The word spiritus is the Latin for breathing and it is a neutral state of being.

To be spiritual means to be in a neutral state of mind. Spirituality is one of the highest overarching meta-values, a way of looking at life that connects a person with his inner self, it connects a person with the universe, meaning people, plants, animals and insects, all creatures. Spirituality connects a person with his soul, his soul path and soul development.

From studying spirituality, one needs to ask the following questions: What is my soul path? What is my purpose in life? After asking these questions, then the journey can begin to align your work and your personal life with your soul path and in the process try to create a work – life balance.

Spirituality has to do with connectedness, and creating wholeness of a person. The Latin word integer, from which integrity developed, means wholeness. Thus, integrity and spirituality got the development of the wholeness of a person in common.

If all development obstructions of a person are removed/eliminated/overcome – there are five areas of development obstructions - then the process of developing the wholeness of a person can be possible. Thus, spirituality, integrity and development have development of the wholeness of a person in common.

Spiritualty requires the development of all five areas of a person, namely: economically (income and wealth), politically (influence and participation), ethics (from the Greek word ëthos meaning character), morality (peace and harmony), knowledge (to enable insight and understanding), and identity.

The word corruption developed from the Latin Com meaning together with and rumpere meaning to break. Corruption breaks the togetherness or wholeness of a person or system and hampers and/or prevents or obstructs development, integrity and spirit of a person.

Some of the co-producers of corruption are greed and jealousy.

There is a never-ending search for material wealth. Such search is never ending because it cannot make a person whole or complete. Obtaining material wealth and profit are part of obstructions to a person’s development and part of dualism, i.e.: an abundance of wealth vs. poverty, inclusiveness vs. exclusiveness, and peace vs. war.

Spirituality is a neutral and meta-value of perceiving life. To be spiritual is in contrast to dualism because spirituality enables unity and/or completeness, it can remove obstructions to a person’s development. Spirituality can repair the impact of corruption – that breaks down the togetherness or wholeness – it can enable a person to develop himself or herself in all five areas of life, meaning to become a complete person.

There are ways to exercise to create a neutral state of mind as required to become a whole person, e.g. meditation that can empty a person’s mind and enable connectedness to one’s conscious. Corruption obstructs connectedness with one’s consciousness, because inner peace to arrive at a neutral state of connectedness with other people are not possible with exercising corrupt activities. To put it in other words, corruption entails selfishness that breaks the connectedness with other people.

Any manifestation corruption (e.g. nepotism) is destructive to society. The impact of corruption damages the environment, animals and trees, because it creates unsustainable development.

Spirituality requires to be accountable for one’s own life. To accept answerability for one’s own life, irrespective of what happened in the past. No one is to blame, yourself is in control of your own life. Spirituality implies no blame, no judgement. There are not always clearly distinguishable rights and/or wrongs.

To be spiritual means to accept full accountability for what happened to yourself as a person. Without accepting accountability, a person cannot change himself or herself, cannot transform himself or herself. Transform is coming from a word that means across, to change yourself across all five areas of development.

To synthesise, corruption breaks down the wholeness – integrity – of a person. Spirituality is a meta-value and a way of looking at life to repair the damage of obstructions to development, corruption and dualism. To be spiritual means to accept accountability for one’s life.

Wholeness of a person can possible through developing all five areas of a person life. All three concepts, spirituality, integrity and development have wholeness in common. Because spirituality is about wholeness as well as accepting answerability of one’s life, for that reason, spirituality is overarching integrity as well as development.

It is possible to deduce that spirituality is the ultimate antidote to reduce and fight corruption.