Integrity

" One should examine oneself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others." ~Moliere

" Many of us believe that wrongs aren't wrong if it's done by nice people like ourselves." ~Author Unknown

" The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself." ~Jane Addams

" How seldom we weigh our neighbors in the same balance as ourselves." ~Thomas à Kempis

Psalm 51:10:
10 Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Psalm 26:2:
2 Test me, O LORD, and try me,
examine my heart and my mind;

Psalm 139:23-24:
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

Ouch! It hurts sometimes to have to examine your life and your motives and actions and find them lacking in purity.

So often it is infinitely more appealing to see the faults of others rather than to look internally and see that when it boils down to it, you are just as faulty as the person you were criticising. It takes a magnanimous person to admit that they need to change their ways.

Life has a great circularity to it. What goes around will eventually come around. It is so much better to send favorable things out so that they come back to you in like manner. Often though we send out rotten energy and expect sweet energy to make its way back to us. It doesn't work that way.

As I have grown older and gotten more life experience under my belt I have been much more careful to surround myself with positivity whenever I can. I can see more clearly that I attract what I send out.

You are naturally drawn to that which you see in others that is like yourself. You may not even be conscious of it, but it happens just the same. You may find yourself in the same unfortunate circumstances time and time again or in the same kinds of deleterious relationships over and over. There is a common denominator there that must be examined. That common denominator is you. It is sometimes hard to admit that you bring the dreadfulness on yourself, but there really is no other way to look at it.

Like I mentioned, over the years this has become increasingly evident to me. Every once in a while I have to reexamine things and trim my life of toxic people and get out of negative situations that I find myself in. It's not always easy to distance myself from malignant relationships, but as I get more and more adept at not letting them in to my life to begin with; the incidents are fewer and farther between. When they do come up though, I turn to my God to give me fortitude to change my life for the better and ask that he create a fit spirit within me.