Martha Beck On The Way To Integrity

This heart expansive and moving soul share with Dr. Martha Beck will inspire you to follow your deepest truth and embody true integrity. According to Martha, we’re born in integrity; it's our true nature. But nature often clashes with culture and we can begin to abandon parts of our true nature to please our culture, leaving integrity. In this conversation, Martha shares concrete tools that help people find their essential selves and plot a course to their unique best lives.

Transcript

If you think about someone you love and you think,

Here's the thing I never want you to know about me,

And then you switch it around and say,

Here's the thing I most want you to know about me,

You'll find it's the same thing.

You want people to know what you're ashamed of and still accept you.

Hello,

Beautiful souls,

And welcome to the Soul Collective podcast.

The Soul Collective is a place where we navigate this human experience and raise our planetary frequency collectively.

Together we heal,

Grow,

Expand,

And activate our own inner light by alchemizing programming to look outside of ourselves,

Remembering the deep reservoir of wisdom that resides within.

I'm Emily Gosheras,

Intuitive Guide and your host for this soul expansive journey.

Each week we'll explore topics centered around spirituality,

Mysticism and healing,

Connecting with renowned thought leaders and providing actionable insights and tools to help transcend self-limiting beliefs,

Raise your personal vibration and to shine bright.

Thanks for spending time with me today.

Now let the collective share begin.

Welcome back to the Soul Collective podcast.

I am so grateful you're here.

I'm feeling a little nervous slash excited to connect with my guest today,

Martha Beck.

I am a huge fan of hers,

Not only because she is an absolutely brilliant human being,

But also because of the extraordinary stories she tells.

So I hope that we will get into some of those in our conversation,

But Dr.

Martha Beck is a Harvard trained sociologist,

World renowned coach,

And New York Times bestselling author.

She has published nine nonfiction books,

One novel,

And Oprah has called her one of the smartest women I know.

Martha,

It's an absolute pleasure to welcome you to the Soul Collective.

Thank you so much for joining us.

The pleasure is all mine.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah,

And your book,

The Way of Integrity,

Which we're gonna talk about today is truly life changing.

I wanna start with just what you mean by integrity.

Yeah,

It's not like you have to be like the church lady,

Like prim and virtuous.

Integrity comes from the Latin word integer,

Which just means complete and whole.

An integer is a number that's not a divided number.

And we tend to be born as one whole thing in perfect integrity.

But then as babies,

Before we can even talk,

We get this pressure to act the way people want us to act that may not be the way we're feeling.

And the moment we decide,

We usually sell out our nature and go with our culture or the people around us.

And that means we've divided ourselves.

So we're not one thing,

Integrity,

We're two things,

Duplicity.

And if that happens to an airplane,

If it's in structural integrity,

It flies.

If it's not,

It crashes.

And our lives are the same way.

And virtually all of us lose our integrity,

Not because we're bad,

But because we're trying to be good.

Absolutely,

Yeah.

And when I started thinking about this definition,

I realized that the majority of my life I have spent out of integrity in some way,

Shape or form.

And that might be very small nuanced areas of people pleasing,

Or you talk about mote delectable and really kind of climbing this- Ladder of achievement,

Yeah.

Yeah,

So what are some ways that we can sort of start to begin to realize if we are out of integrity?

Well,

The phrase mote delectable comes from Dante's Divine Comedy,

Which I follow through the whole book.

And one of the points I think he makes as a metaphor is that when we're away from our integrity,

He calls it the true road,

We're not happy.

And he sees it as this dark forbidding wilderness and mote delectable is the golden achievement that will take us out of the dark wilderness.

It doesn't matter whether we try to achieve or not,

If we're not in integrity,

We develop symptoms of suffering,

Psychological suffering.

And I think those ways of suffering are meant to wake us up so that we'll find our way back to the true path,

To our own truth.

And I think in the book,

I go through six things that are most characteristic of people who've lost their integrity.

And the first one is a sense of meaninglessness or purposelessness.

And this is the single reason people come to me and they say the same thing in rural Africa that they do in New York City.

And it's,

I don't know why I'm bothering with this.

What is the purpose of my life?

When you're divided from your truth,

You can't feel it.

So then if you keep going away from your integrity,

You start to get emotional suffering in the form of anger,

Grief,

Like anxiety,

Depression,

Irritability,

And all the way to really serious psychological illness.

Then your body starts to give way.

In fact,

The moment you say something that isn't true for you or do something that's not right for you,

Your body immediately starts to get weaker and more prone to illness and more achy.

And I mean,

There's lots of science on this.

Then your relationships don't go very well.

Your career stops.

You can't get anything done going in your career.

And finally,

You may actually end up self-medicating with something.

It could be just cruising the internet mindlessly,

Or it could be a serious drug addiction,

Anything in between.

So those six things happen predictably to people who lose their integrity and can't find it again.

Yeah,

I mean,

If you think about it,

Even just a polygraph test,

You can realize how much our bodies need to be in alignment.

And when we're out of alignment,

There's a physiological response.

Yeah,

And the interesting thing is,

Even if we're saying something the mind thinks is true,

Because the mind is the part of us that abandons the rest of ourselves,

Right,

To fit in with society.

And speaking of stories,

I used to go to a methadone clinic in Phoenix and work with the addicts there.

And they were active heroin addicts.

And they would come to the methadone clinic because they couldn't get heroin.

They had to go through my coaching in order to get their methadone.

Not the most enthusiastic clients I've ever had.

But I used to ask them,

What do you love?

What do you enjoy?

What makes you happy?

Heroin,

Heroin,

Heroin.

That's all that they ever talked about.

But when I'd ask them to hold out an arm and like I'd push their hand down,

And these were not weak people.

These were often guys right out of prison that were really beefed up.

And they were much stronger than I was.

And the moment you tell a lie,

Your muscles weaken.

So one of the things that kinesiologists do is they have you make a statement and press on your hand.

And if you're telling the truth,

You'll be really strong.

And if you're not telling the truth,

You'll be really weak.

So I'd have these big guys hold out their arms and have them say,

I like heroin.

And I'd press on their hand at the same moment.

And they were weak,

As weak as kittens.

Their bodies hated heroin.

And it freaked them out that they could not be strong while they were saying this out loud.

But that's how dramatically lying weakens the body.

Even when we don't know that what we're saying is not true for us at the deepest level.

It's really intense.

That's so powerful.

And I think it is that awareness that gives you the ability to make changes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's lacking in so many of us.

I often,

When I'm speaking in public,

Ask the audience if they're comfortable.

And everybody says yes.

And I ask again and again until they're really annoyed.

And then I ask them if they were sitting at home alone,

Would they be in the position they're in at the moment?

And they never raise a hand.

And I ask them why not.

And finally,

Somebody figures out they're not comfortable.

They're not horribly in pain,

But they're not comfortable.

And the crazy thing is that they just finished telling me three or four times absolutely that they were comfortable at the same time that the body knew that they weren't comfortable.

That's the loss of integrity for most of us.

We don't just make up lies and tell them or cheat on our taxes or whatever.

We just say we're comfortable when we're not.

And noticing our own discomfort is the first step back to integrity.

Wow.

Yeah.

I think we have such a high pain tolerance,

If you would,

Culturally,

In terms of just focus on the end goal or just work hard.

We kind of have these mantras that are ingrained into us.

No pain,

No gain.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So for you and your journey,

What were some ways that you began to realize that your life was out of integrity?

Well,

I was clinically depressed from the age of five.

I was always like,

I remember being six years old and wondering how to kill myself.

I was not a happy child.

So there were a lot of emotional symptoms.

And then when I was 18,

I started to get really bad physical symptoms.

I developed a whole cluster of autoimmune diseases that were all poorly understood,

Progressive,

And incurable.

So I was pretty much sidelined with intense chronic pain,

All over my body,

My muscles,

Various organs.

And that went on for about 12 years.

So I was pretty much bedridden for 12 years.

And things just kept getting worse.

And it's not easy to cheer up when you're in that much pain either.

So it just got worse and worse and worse.

But I have a very high pain tolerance,

Physically and emotionally.

And I was able to keep driving through that and get my doctorate and have three kids.

And all of this,

I could barely,

I spent almost all my time lying down.

And so that was the depth of suffering I reached before I decided that I was going to find my truth,

Whatever it took.

So I decided not to tell a single lie for one calendar year.

And I kept that resolution.

And oh my,

Did the crap ever hit the fan in my life when I decided to stop lying.

Oh my gosh,

What a remarkable journey.

I want to ask you about that.

But first I have a quick question about autoimmune conditions.

Cause you know,

It's something that I previously struggled with as well.

Oh really?

Yeah,

And just curious about that,

If you've ever sort of studied the correlation between autoimmune conditions and integrity.

Oh,

Absolutely.

I'm obsessed with it,

Obsessed.

It's the core of the life coaching system I developed.

It's,

I used to read the journal of psychoneuroimmunology obsessively to look at the research on the connection between psychological states and the way it affects the body and because your brain is not isolated.

We think about the brain as being what we use to go through the world,

But it's our whole nervous system,

Right?

If it affects the brain,

It's going to affect every nerve in the body potentially.

So yeah,

A lot of autoimmune diseases happen to people who are,

Especially people who have had difficulty in childhood or go through a massive trauma as adults.

And so they get set in a kind of fight or flight and the basic untruth that they instantly hold is the world is really dangerous.

So if you're always on alert,

Always like I had horrible insomnia,

Intense anxiety,

And the body just starts to give up under that deluge of fight or flight hormones and no rest and constant activity.

And it just,

The body starts to burn out really quickly.

Yeah.

Yeah,

You have to get yourself back by unlearning what you learned through trauma or socialization.

Yeah,

Yeah,

That's so interesting.

And I think it's a powerful correlation to make is just how much the mind and our mental state has on the physical body and the steps that we can take to return to wholeness as you talk about and really be in a more peaceful state of mind.

So talk to us a little bit about your journey that happened New Year's Eve and deciding to never tell a lie for an entire year.

Oh my goodness,

I was raised really,

Really Mormon in the Mormonist place in the world,

I'll let you guess where.

And then at 17,

I went off and my whole adult life had been at Harvard.

So it was about as different as it could be,

But neither of those cultures really fit my true self.

Anyway,

I had had a child with Down syndrome and I had to choose whether or not to terminate that pregnancy very,

Very late.

So even though I'm pro-choice,

I kept the baby and the people at Harvard were not pleased with me.

It was kind of the first time I chose my truth over the advice of powerful people around me.

And I went back to Utah for a while to finish my dissertation because I knew people would accept my decision about my baby.

And then I found out that Mormonism really didn't fit me very well at all.

So I was at this New Year's Eve party with a bunch of Mormons and I said,

Here's my resolution,

I'm not gonna lie this next year.

And they all just went,

What,

You can't do that,

No.

And I was like,

Wait a second,

I thought you guys believed in truth and justice and the American,

Whatever.

And they were like,

No,

You can't go telling the truth.

And I thought something's very wrong here.

But yeah,

I stopped lying.

It turned out I wasn't telling any big lies to get away with stuff.

I was just saying I was comfortable with things when I wasn't comfortable with them and doing things that I didn't wanna do.

And when I stopped,

Oh,

Good heavens,

In that one year,

I lost my religion,

Which meant losing my family of origin,

Which was,

I had seven siblings with kids and that all went into the fire.

Every friend I'd made before the age of 17,

Everything in my home,

Because I was sort of,

People would literally turn their backs when I walked down the street.

My neighbors would physically turn their backs because I'd left Mormonism.

So I left my home,

I quit my job,

Didn't like that.

Quit academia,

Which is the only way I had of making money.

The only thing I'd been trained to do,

Realized I was gay.

So there weren't my marriage.

It was just like,

Just pour gasoline on the whole thing and send it ablaze.

It'll be great,

Keep you warm at night.

And in the middle of that incredible storm of loss,

My depression went away and my body started to heal for the first time.

So even though I was in intense grief and going through the whole grieving process,

I started getting well because I was going back to my truth.

And that's when I thought,

Oh,

There's something very important going on here.

No wonder every wisdom tradition says the truth will set you free.

So,

So powerful.

It was intense.

I do not advise that that is not in this book.

Do not go a year without lying as your very first thing then move toward integrity.

Take a tiny step.

Just do one thing to be more comfortable today and another step tomorrow.

Yeah,

You don't wanna go through that all at once.

Yeah,

Such a powerful practice.

And I'm sure people listening are like,

Wow,

That is a dramatic series of life changes.

And maybe somebody is listening and they feel like,

Wow,

I don't need to make so many changes in my life.

I feel like some things are going right for me,

But some areas I'm still struggling in.

Like,

Is there a way to feel closer to alignment and make progress in that way?

What would you recommend?

Well,

The first thing is just going to a quiet place and thinking about the thing that makes you unhappy or that isn't working very well.

And just quietly observing,

It's almost like peeling an onion.

If you sit still long enough,

And this is not something Americans are very good at.

Pascal said,

The source of all our misery is that we're unable to sit quietly alone in a room.

And then COVID came and a bunch of people,

A bunch of us had to sit quietly alone in a room.

And that's really what it takes for the truth to start surfacing.

So you can sit there and think,

Okay,

My job,

I don't really like my job,

I'm not doing well.

Wow,

I really dislike my supervisor.

She gives me the creeps,

Whatever it is,

Or there are real problems in my marriage and I haven't been looking at them.

And all you have to do is become aware.

The first half of my book is just about becoming aware of one's own deceptions and the places where you're going away from your true path.

And you don't have to do a single action step outside your head and heart.

You just have to start recognizing the truth about what's going on in your life.

And it just rises to the surface if you sit quietly.

I love that so much.

Can I read to you my favorite quote from your book?

Well,

Yeah.

A friend said to you,

Oh my God,

How did you get that job?

Here's how.

I started in the dark wood of error,

Went through hell several times and clamored up purgatory until I reached a basic level of functioning integrity.

Then I took about a million one degree turns in the direction of my true nature.

That pretty much sums up my life right there.

I absolutely love that so much.

I love it because of the honesty.

And I love it also because there's not just a light switch that we can turn on and say,

Hey,

We are here in integrity for the rest of our lives.

It's just this constant recalibration and it gets better and better.

And you use the metaphor of an airplane and really being able to steer that in one degree turns.

Right.

Huge,

Meaningful progress.

Yeah,

Somebody recently told me,

Cause that's my whole thing is if you make a one degree turn every half hour in an airplane,

You won't even know it's turning,

But you'll end up somewhere really different.

And someone told me,

If you set off from New York City and you're going to LA and you make a one degree correction north,

You end up in Seattle.

So I don't know if that's true,

But it just shows how a tiny decision made early on and then sustained can change everything.

And then if you make a series of tiny decisions in the direction of what feels right,

Comfortable,

True to you,

It may be not always comfortable in the sense that you may do things that make you vulnerable.

You may do things that cause conflict,

But it will feel safe within yourself.

And if you keep making those tiny,

Tiny turns,

You could end up in such a different place in not very much time.

Yeah.

Martha,

Can you share with us with your experience that you kind of mentioned with being pregnant with your son,

Adam,

And what that decision was like and how it changed your life?

Yeah,

I wrote a whole book about this because it was so transformative.

And I had just been climbing that mountain delectable.

I was a good girl,

So I worked as hard as I could in school.

I did well,

And I was climbing the Ivy League ladder.

And it was all about intellect and achievement and that whole culture.

And then I became pregnant.

And during this pregnancy,

I started having psychic experiences,

Which was very alarming to me,

But they kept happening.

I could see what was happening to people I loved when they were far away and so on.

Did this carry on after you were pregnant as well?

It's funny,

It's like a door opened really wide during the pregnancy.

And as he was born,

It closed,

But not completely.

So I still get little hints of it,

But he himself,

And he's 30-something now,

He's very psychic,

But he doesn't make any big deal about it.

He just is.

It's just part of reality for all of us now.

It's just Adam.

So all these weird things were happening.

And then I found out when I was 24 weeks,

I was like two weeks shy of my third trimester.

And I found out he had Down syndrome.

I didn't put this in this book,

But when they called me,

The nurse practitioner called me to tell me about the results and they thought,

They assumed I would run right in to terminate pregnancy.

And I picked up the phone and she said,

Martha,

She said,

This is the nurse and I have some not so good news for you.

And I heard a voice sort of in my chest or something.

It was inside me,

But not,

And it said,

Don't be afraid.

And then she said,

The fetus you're carrying has Down syndrome.

And I said,

And the voice said,

Martha,

Are you happy?

And I said,

What?

And she said,

Down syndrome is trisomy 23,

Blah,

Blah.

And I was like,

No,

No,

No,

Not you.

I was listening for that voice.

And I thought,

Am I happy?

Am I happy?

And I realized I'd never been happy and that I could remember and I said to the nurse outlet,

I said,

Is it possible for people with Down syndrome to be happy?

I've heard that it's possible.

And she said,

I don't think so.

And the voice said,

That is right.

And it was so,

And it never said anything else,

Not for a long time,

But it was so clear.

And it was so clarifying.

And I went around Harvard handing in papers and stuff and nobody that I interacted with seemed happy.

And I thought,

Well,

What good is a human life if you go through it and you achieve and you achieve and you achieve and you're miserable the whole time?

And on the other hand,

Why not have a life that's full of joy even if you can't go to Harvard?

Like,

Ah,

So yeah,

That was really,

Really life transforming.

And my son continues to be the source of this amazing spiritual energy that I'm lucky enough to live with.

Yeah,

I know.

And you weave in some beautiful stories in your book about Adam and there's one story about him coming face to face with a lion.

Yeah.

Were you scared?

Oh my goodness.

And he was like,

No,

Because we were feeling each other.

Yeah.

He said,

I was feeling him and he was feeling me back.

And I said,

And what was he feeling?

He said,

What lions always feel.

I said,

What do lions always feel?

And he said,

Peaceful.

And it's just not the way we think about lions.

They're like,

Argh,

Argh,

Argh.

But animals don't exist in the state of anxiety and fury that we do.

Primates like baboons can come close.

But,

And they're also the only animals besides us.

Higher primates are the only ones who even try to lie.

Other animals don't lie at all.

But like the gorilla Coco who learned sign language,

She once had a fit of temper and rip to sink off a wall.

And when they asked what happened,

She had a kitten and she signed,

Cat did it.

It's like,

Okay,

Good try Coco.

So yeah,

Adam does not lie and animals do not lie.

And it is,

There've been large,

Long periods of my life where I've retreated to be with animals and with people like Adam,

Because lying is so toxic and we feel it.

And it's not just telling lies.

I want to reiterate that.

It's doing things we don't want to do.

What are some examples?

Going to a job you don't like,

Because somebody told you it's the only way to make a living and keep the wolf from the door.

Staying in a relationship that's not right for you.

Refusing ever to like call someone on rudeness that's hurting your heart because you don't want to cause conflict.

Doing exactly what your parents want and not even checking to see if it's what you want.

I mean,

The list goes on like every day.

Putting on clothes that aren't comfortable or you don't really like them.

Yeah.

Everything.

Yeah.

There are so many opportunities to make those little choices.

Which do I really,

What does my body really want for breakfast?

Like I took a sip of coffee one day in the last few years and my body said,

No.

I was like,

You've got to be kidding.

Coffee is my favorite thing.

My eyes said,

No.

And now I can't stand it.

I can't drink it.

It made me really anxious.

Wow.

Yeah.

And integrity is saying,

Even though I need the caffeine right now,

In my mind,

I'm still going to listen to my body.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just always go toward truth.

Or if you don't,

Sometimes I'll have to drive early in the morning.

So I say,

I know this isn't my body's favorite thing,

But in the entirety of things,

This may be wiser.

So after my year of not lying at all when I was 29,

I decided,

I'd thought about it a lot for a year.

And I thought if I were in Nazi Germany and I had a family of Jewish people hiding in the basement and the Nazis came to the door and said,

Are you hiding Jews?

I would have said,

No,

I'm not.

And felt completely moral about lying.

So when you're in a system that is insane,

Your integrity may tell you,

Or when you're in an unusual situation,

Your integrity may not always tell you to do the same things.

It moves like a river through a forest.

It's not like,

Okay,

Never lie.

That's the whole rule.

I'm never gonna vary this.

Here's what I am.

Here's what I do.

No,

Moment to moment to moment,

Your integrity tells you which choice is the wisest one.

And that's what you do.

I love that so much.

How would you think our world would change if everybody took a step closer to being in integrity?

Ooh,

I get chills when you say that.

And I love that the purpose of your podcast is to assist in a transformation of human consciousness.

Because I believe that if we don't start stepping toward integrity,

We are going to destroy the ecosystems on which we depend.

Not to mention having these horrible wars and awful racism and everything.

Like it's a mess.

It's been a mess for hundreds of years.

And it's time to clean up the mess or we're not gonna survive it.

So I think that if everyone started to recognize their discomfort and take a one degree turn every day in the direction of their integrity,

What would happen is nothing less dramatic than a mass awakening.

Yes.

I talk about this in the book that when you get to a certain level of activity,

Your brain or integrity,

Your brain starts to change quite dramatically.

And it changes in a way that in Asia is called enlightenment or awakening.

And it makes,

There's like a binary switch where at one point you're suffering and then you go beyond suffering.

And it's difficult to describe because you still have emotion.

Like happiness and sadness move through you,

But you are a field of peace.

And the happiness and sadness don't determine the peace or the joy of the experience,

Even when it's hurting weirdly.

If you're in absolute integrity,

You become love,

You become the universe,

You become completely united.

I just talked to Jill Bolte Taylor,

Who's a Harvard neuroanatomist who had a stroke and it took out the left side of her brain for eight years.

And during that time,

She perceived herself as being the size of the universe and including all things and being completely made of love.

And that's the part of the brain,

That brain shift happens if you go into deep enough integrity and you don't have to have a stroke,

But you awaken in a very sort of abrupt binary way.

And if enough people did that and started operating on it,

We would literally save the world for ourselves.

Yes,

I have goosebumps.

I believe that so deeply.

And I think it's true because if our fields change and we are in that state of peace,

Everything around us changes as well.

And I love you give some really profound examples in the book of like,

We see poverty out in the world,

For example,

But we still have sort of an impoverished mindset when it comes to overworking and being really critical or harsh on ourselves.

Just that small example of like,

As within,

So without.

Yeah,

There's something that I put in there that was so difficult for my editors to understand.

They were like,

Oh,

This is math,

We don't like it.

And it's the concept of fractaling.

A fractal is a form that repeats itself at different sizes and it's all over nature.

So for example,

A twig is the same basic shape as the branch which is the same basic shape as a bigger branch which is the same basic shape as the trunk.

A bunch of broccoli looks a lot like a cloud that's bunchy for the same reason.

The physics of reality create these fractal forms.

And I believe that we are,

Each of us,

A fractal form of the universe.

So,

And there's a lot in Asian philosophy about this,

About how we're all like teacups reflecting the entire universe in one little teacup.

Like you can see the moon in a teacup.

It doesn't mean that the moon is literally in the teacup but we all bear the reflection of reality.

And when we change,

It projects a different reality into the universe around us.

So as you said,

Like if people are worried about polluting the earth and water but we're still taking in substances we know to be poisonous for us at a low level,

Alcohol,

Whatever it is for you,

That your body doesn't love you,

You're still taking it in.

You can't clean the physical earth around you unless you begin by getting clean in yourself in your own physical body.

That's just,

Obviously you can work and make things happen.

But I really believe that when you go into a state of integrity for yourself,

You create a kind of frequency that fractals the shape of that integrity,

Of that peace,

Of that love and joy,

Of true nature,

It fractals it to the people around you and then to whole crowds and your followers online and maybe whole nations in the world.

That's my hope.

That's such a beautiful way of describing it.

It's so true.

It's like our level of consciousness that we apply to anything is how we apply to everything.

Yeah.

Ronni Ware,

I always quote her because I love kind of just thinking about this in terms of the five biggest regrets of the dying and the number one regret is I wish I had the courage to live a life that was more authentic to me.

Yeah.

And I think the key there is courage and Martha,

You have so much courage.

I dislike suffering very intensely and that makes me brave.

No,

Actually I had such horrible anxiety and panic when I was a kid and when I was 14,

I almost couldn't bear to go to school.

And I realized that I used to fantasize about being able to go inside like a phone booth thing that where I could be alone and still attend school because I loved school,

But I hated being around people.

And I realized when I was 14 that if I didn't start doing things that frightened me,

I was gonna end up like living in a tiny apartment with 25 cats.

So I decided that every day I would do one thing that frightened me.

At 14,

You decided that.

At 14,

Yeah.

I had a therapist once tell me my biggest problem is that I keep my resolutions.

So I did one thing that scared me every day and it wasn't hard to come up with it.

But what I found is that once you've done something that scares you a number of times,

It stops scaring you.

So then in order,

After a few years,

I'd run out of things that scared me and I had to start doing bigger and bigger things to be scared.

And another thing I learned is that there's no difference between pretending to be brave and actually being brave.

So true.

That's so good.

So I just pretended to be brave and did the same,

Did bigger and bigger things.

And I still try to keep that going.

Yeah.

One thing I wanted to ask you about because it must've required a tremendous amount of courage was your decision to write a memoir and share your experiences of leaving the church.

Yeah,

Leaving Mormonism and also having experienced sexual abuse and Mormonism.

And then as a sociologist,

I remember I went back to Utah after I'd done all my Harvard stuff and I was working at a women's resource center and it became really clear to me that the abuse of women and girls was absolutely epidemic,

Especially in the really,

Really fundamentalist communities.

And they're also quite violent.

So I've experienced this.

And when I decided to write about it,

I knew that I was gonna get a lot of pushback.

And I told the publishers,

Don't put any publicity out until it's ready to go.

And they were like,

You're afraid of Mormons?

How ridiculous.

Then they sent out the pre-publication galleys for critics and stuff.

So the galleys are just the book without the cover.

And I started getting calls,

They're crazy.

Why didn't you tell us they're so scary?

And like,

I was literally handing out anti-anxiety medication to people at the publishing company because we all started getting threats.

I got death threats.

My children were threatened.

I had everything,

Legal attacks,

All just the whole nine yards.

My family of origin tried to get me prosecuted and put into prison.

And they told me I'd never seen my children again.

It just,

It went on and on.

It was bad.

And I just held on.

I mean,

You decide to do it.

You jump out of the plane and the falling might not be fun,

But you can't really take it back at that point.

But I knew what would come.

I knew what would happen.

And I also knew that if I kept it quiet in myself,

I would lose my soul.

And I went back to Utah to go skiing a few years later.

And I put on my ski goggles in the plane.

So nobody would recognize it because Utah has the greatest snow on earth,

But I didn't want to be around the Mormons.

So I got into the airport and scuttled into a coffee shop because Mormons don't drink coffee,

Right?

This was when my body let me drink coffee.

So I was in there and I was like,

Okay,

I can take off my goggles.

And I went and bought a cappuccino or something.

And as I handed my money to the barista and she handed me my change and then she grabbed my hand and she said,

Thank you for writing that book.

And at that moment,

I just went,

Okay,

It was worth it.

It was worth it if it was just for this one woman,

It was worth it.

And that's a good feeling.

That is a good feeling to think.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

What were some of the other gifts or blessings from that experience?

The best antiseptic for shame is openness.

And so I was very,

Very burdened with shame.

One of the most beautiful parts of the Divine Comedy that nobody ever talks about it is when Dante,

He goes through hell and then he climbs up this mountain,

Which is like learning to walk your talk.

And at the top,

He's really clear.

He's really in his integrity,

But he's got one thing still to do.

And there's a woman that died that he was in love with who's now like exalted and her name is Beatrice.

And she says,

You're still suffering from fear and shame and I need you to wake up.

And then she has him dunked in two sides of a river.

And the first side makes him forget everything he's ever done wrong.

And the second side makes him remember everything he's ever done right.

And he comes out free from fear and shame.

And I realized before I wrote that book and then as it all went down,

That the things we most,

Like if you think about someone you love and you think here's the thing I never want you to know about me.

And then you switch it around and say,

Here's the thing I most want you to know about me.

You'll find it's the same thing.

You want people to know what you're ashamed of and still accept you.

So I put it all out there and the shame was horrific.

I mean,

I was talking about sexual abuse.

It was very embarrassing.

And then that was the thing that frightened me enough that you do that a few times.

You have to do a few dozen press conferences where you're talking about your own sexual abuse.

You stop being so afraid and you stop being so ashamed.

And that is ultimate freedom.

It really is.

Yeah,

I 1,

000% agree with that.

That's so inspiring.

I think it's so true.

Transparency,

Bringing to light anything that we put in the darkness,

Such a transformative,

Powerful experience and allowing people to see us.

Shame and guilt are what really keep us in a lower state of consciousness.

I do.

And it's so interesting the way Dante says it.

He makes a big point of saying this river is absolutely transparent.

So he's giving us a metaphor for the transparency we need to live in in order to be free from fear and shame.

I mean,

That poem,

I don't actually remember deciding to use it in the book.

I don't know why I used it.

I was not,

Like it was really interesting because halfway through I'm like,

Why am I doing this?

But I started having,

I meditate every day and I started feeling like Dante was in the room with me.

And it was such a beauty.

I started dreaming about him and I thought,

Oh my gosh,

He really,

He went through a genuine awakening.

And then he wrote this poem 700 years ago as a map for each of us to go from confusion,

From that lost,

Dark,

Awful place to a place where the world is full of magic,

Full of love,

Full of peace,

Full of light.

And my goodness,

He made a metaphor for every psychological step along the way.

That is so cool.

Yeah,

And I didn't know it when I started reading the book.

I mean,

Writing the book.

As I read and reread and reread the Divine Comedy,

I thought,

Oh my gosh,

That's really good,

Dante.

Good for you.

Oh,

Yeah.

That is so cool.

Martha,

You mentioned meditation.

What are some other maybe spiritual practices or spiritual teachers that have been profound in shaping your life?

Obviously,

Spiritual books,

The presence of animals in nature.

For me,

Painting and the visual arts are very helpful and music as well.

Being around babies or people with intellectual disabilities who are completely pure,

Completely innocent,

And stillness,

It doesn't necessarily have to be meditation.

Like every time I coach someone which is pretty rare nowadays,

And they're not in a place of really feeling comfortable,

I find myself going to deep breathing.

The breath,

I'm sure you know this,

Is the fundamental thing that can bring us to peace psychologically and physiologically.

Because we're one of the only animals that can control our breathing.

And when you breathe deeply and slowly,

Your whole nervous system goes into a state of peace.

And that's so easy.

Just breathe slowly and deeply,

You'll feel better.

Yes.

So simple.

Yeah.

And yet I forget to do it.

Exactly,

We forget.

It's crazy,

But I forget,

Yeah.

Yeah,

That's so cool.

I know you have a course that's coming up on creativity.

Just curious for you,

Have you found a direct correlation between integrity and creativity?

Oh,

I'm so glad you asked that.

It's so interesting.

Because I thought this is probably the last book I'm ever gonna write because I think I found my silver bullet.

Integrity is my silver bullet.

It may not work for everybody,

But I really believe in it.

So I didn't think I'm finished because I know I'm imperfect,

But I thought,

Yeah,

I think I found the thing.

And then as I lived,

Because I'm writing about this,

I feel like I've got to live it or it would be the height of hypocrisy.

And what I've experienced since publishing the book has been this explosion of creativity.

And I think it's because the brain actually inhibits the creative power that made us and the rest of the universe.

It's manifesting itself as everything.

And I think we're one of the few ways in which the consciousness of the universe can actively create in material form.

So I just,

The first week the book came out,

It went to the bestseller list.

And I was like,

Okay,

I'll still do interviews.

But other than that,

I'm just gonna be in creative pursuits.

And that it just has been like all I care about.

And it is like something working through me,

Not that I'm creating great masterpieces.

It's just like when we reach integrity,

We become pure creativity because the universal consciousness is pure creativity.

Oh my gosh.

I know that makes me wanna cry.

It's so true.

And it's interesting because I'm going through something right now where it's just a little bit of burnout.

I've experienced burnout before.

I'm sure many or most of us have,

But it's just,

I'm not even kind of sure why.

I know that on the other side of rest is that creativity and that rest is integrity.

One of the ways that our culture,

Many,

Many cultures violate people's integrity is by saying it's not useful to rest.

Just the opposite of the truth.

People say,

Go build your dreams,

But don't sleep too much,

Forgetting that we dream when we sleep.

Exactly.

And the earth never tries to force itself to produce in the dead of winter,

In a wintry climate.

It lets itself lie fallow.

And that's how it brings forth this cyclical pattern of creativity.

And if we don't do the same,

We're out of the integrity of our true nature.

So,

And it's also interesting though,

That as I said,

Integrity winds like a river through the world.

And one of the things that often happens is you're doing something,

You're hot on the scent of your truth.

And then the universe has a slightly different plan for you or they want you to shift,

They,

I don't know who they are.

The universe wants you to shift your attention towards something you've never done before.

And you may start to lose the joy of something that you thought was the thing.

And it all goes kind of weak and dark and you're like,

Well,

I'm in the dark wood again.

And then it's time to start getting clear and saying,

Okay,

This floats my boat a bit still,

But then there's something over here like I really need to rest.

Or maybe it's,

I really need to go out and play or go hang with a friend from a high school.

You don't know what your integrity is gonna do.

It's a big adventure going forward.

And it will tell you to do things that you don't expect.

And that is,

It's just deliriously fun.

I love that so much.

Yeah,

It's not forcing like,

This is what I think I should be doing.

It's just like allowing.

Never,

The phrase I think and the word should generally take us straight away from our integrity.

Yeah.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

Oh my gosh,

Martha,

This has been such an amazing conversation.

I just wanna honor you and I just love all the magic,

Honesty,

Transparency that you're bringing to the world.

You too,

Emily.

Thank you.

I've enjoyed it so much.

Thank you.

Where can people go to learn more about you and your course that's coming up?

Marthabeck.

Com.

It's on my website.

Awesome.

Yeah,

Thank you,

Thank you,

Thank you.

Many blessings to you.

Thank you so much,

Emily.

It's wonderful to meet you.

Yes,

Likewise.

Thank you so much for joining me on The Soul Collective.

It is my deepest pleasure and most divine honor to co-create with all of you.

I know I learned so much in this episode and I hope you did as well.

One of the things that I love most in the world is connecting with all of you and hearing your feedback.

So please leave me a comment and share what your biggest takeaway was from this collective share.

Also,

If you haven't subscribed or reviewed the podcast,

Please do so.

Your feedback helps the show so,

So much and we're able to bring on even more amazing guests.

Just a reminder that our journeys are not meant to be linear and therefore it's easy to forget how far we've come,

What we've healed from and the massive shifts and expansion which has taken place.

It is the small steps done consistently which creates big change over time.

So keep shining your light,

Trusting,

Showing up and being you.

I'm sending you so,

So much love and gratitude and I look forward to connecting with you next time.

Reviews

10 out of 10!

Always wonderful to hear an interview with Martha Beck. So good! 😊 blessings!!

This was just amazing and I love Martha!! Thank you so much!1♥️♥️

Brilliant!

Amazing podcast, very inspirational.
Thank you x

Wonderful conversation. I particularly resonates with the physical illness when we are not living authentically enough. And small steps and REST! Thank you and Blessings🌻🐢🦋