Integrity

Integrity...
When I was younger I was recruited to teach kids how to wind surf. I had NO idea how to windsurf but I figured that neither did they so we'd just give it a try. After a quick lesson from someone who actually did know what they were doing, I spent days in the water helping kids pull up sails filled with water, flipping the boards, holding them steady. We had some successes and some exhilarating short runs for everyone.
Everyone except for me, since I never really had a chance to try it. Quite frankly I was over wind surfing after the first day of intense treading water in the cold lake. So yeah, I never did learn to windsurf.
I taught others how to do something I didn't know how to do and I helped them have a really great experience.
But I never ONCE pretended like I knew what the hell I was doing, like I was an expert at wind surfing.
The kids and I figured it out together. I asked the 'real' teacher lots of questions to help them get better. We did a lot of 'hey, let's try this and see if it works'.
That's where the integrity comes into play.
Because if I had pretended to know what I was doing, those kids wouldn't have had nearly as much success as they did because I'd be teaching them all wrong. I wouldn't have asked questions and we wouldn't have been experimenting with what felt right.
I wouldn't have been laughing when we got it wrong either. We had fun figuring it out together. If I was busy pretending, I wouldn't have been nearly as joyous, even in the cold water working my ass off to lift a sail.
The energetics would have been out of alignment and that would have tainted the entire experience.
Integrity means coming from where you are and speaking the truth, even when it makes you look bad. Holding up to your end of the bargain. Being in alignment...