An individual who has become a person has staged a rebellion. She rebels against the individualistic ethos and all the systems of impersonalism.*
David Brooks

Martha Beck writes about the way of integrity we need to find our way back to: that is, our intactness.

Cynthia Bourgeault writes about “singleness,” becoming one with our imaginal self: the fullness of the person we can be.

Integrity and singleness are about finding our way home.

They are not alone in bearing witness to the existence of a path that leads us from our present to a different future, a path that contemporary society doesn’t feel it needs to inform us about (not least because it cannot place a value on it), a way that is not continuation or extension, but is transformative, and this over and over.

When we find our own path – we cannot walk another’s – we will also find our guides and become guides to others who will find us.

This is possible because, whilst each path is unique, they contain elements that are found in all.

We are the product of a highly individualistic society and may baulk at the idea of being guided, David Brooks warns and exhorts when he writes:

A hyper individualist sees the individual as a self-sufficient unit; the relationist says, a person is a node in a network, a personality in a movement toward others.*

The true guide understands that the person who will know your way best of all is you, and they will aim to help you to trust what emerges from your heart; they also know that you will have things to share with them that will help them on their own path: it’s two-way.

The human soul is hungry for beauty; we seek it everywhere – in landscape, music, art, clothes, furniture gardening, companionship, love, religion and in ourselves. No one would desire not to be beautiful. When we experience the Beautiful, there is a sense of homecoming.**

*From David Brooks’ The Second Mountain;
**From John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty.