The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self

Since Beck is taking Dante’s Divine Comedy as the paradigm for her reflections, she begins where Dante does, exploring the awareness that one has somehow gotten onto the wrong path in life. She identifies six symptoms that, together or separately, form the diagnosis for this state, called the “dark wood of error syndrome” (6).

First is a feeling of purposelessness, which often arises either from pursuing goals that other people believe are purposeful, or by achieving a longstanding goal and finding that it did not bring the lasting satisfaction that we imagined it would. The second symptom is emotional misery, symbolized by the dangerous beasts Dante encounters in his allegory: “Neediness, panic, depression. Welcome to a few of the emotional states that may jump you as you wander through the dark wood of error” (9). Third is physical deterioration, a symptom that reveals the way that our emotions and stress can affect overall health.

The fourth symptom is consistent relationship failures, as our own disordered state prevents us from being able to find the people who are well-suited to our underlying temperament and values. This aspect is mirrored in the fifth symptom, which is consistent career failures. By pursuing goals and purposes that do not align with our deepest values, we end up in unfulfilling jobs that fuel the cycle of purposelessness and resentment. The sixth and final symptom is the experience of being unable to break our bad habits, which can sometimes end up spiraling into compulsive or addictive behaviors, driven by a desire to find the fulfillment we have been unable to realize in other areas of life.

After leading the reader through these symptoms and an exercise in self-assessment, Beck offers her first counsel on how to move past the dark wood of error: Admit the reality of the situation. “Just tell the truth about how lost you are” (20). Once this admission is honestly and sincerely made, it opens up the possibility of moving toward pathways of healing.

Beck addresses one of the common temptations for people caught in the “dark wood of error syndrome”: to act as if working harder, pushing oneself just to be better, will solve the problem. This, Beck says, is a bad idea. The root issue is not how hard we are working but rather the fact that we are pushing ourselves to succeed in areas that are not important to our true values. In Dante’s allegory, this false temptation presents itself as a potential pathway toward “Mount Delectable,” but the mountain actually represents a misleading promise of fulfillment.

Beck applies this to contemporary life as the temptation to run after all those things that the wider culture uses to define success—money, career accomplishments, popularity, etc.—rather than one’s own deepest values: “The problem with all our Mount Delectables is that they’re still part of the dark wood of error that’s always making us miserable” (25).

Beck describes the behavior involved in trying to climb Mount Delectable as “running a hustle”—trying to get what we want by feigning confidence, moving quickly, pressuring others to bend to our own ends, selling ourselves, and cheating our way to the top. Unfortunately, using these methods to reach a goal that does not match our own deepest sense of purpose is tantamount to running a hustle on ourselves, and getting to the top will ultimately prove unsatisfying.

To overcome this temptation, Beck leads her readers through an exercise to discern which activities in their lives are motivated by their own values versus those motivated by cultural expectations. Drawing on reflections from the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Beck argues that since one cannot know for certain what is absolutely true, then we ought not to give precedence to cultural conceptions of absolute truth over our own intuitions.