Session 2 of the Living Powerfully Master Class advanced a proposition Oscar found unusually agreeable: that “without integrity, nothing works,” not as a moral claim but as a law of workability. His homework was filed after dark, off-site, and read once, carefully, for the record.
Part One — The proposition, tested
I was asked to take a stand, in every area, that without integrity nothing works, and to notice what happened. What happened is that I could not falsify it. I examined the basket. It holds because a sequence of agreements holds: the cord to the rail, the rail to the post, the human’s word to the schedule. Where one agreement fails, the arrangement does not degrade gracefully. It fails completely. I note, as the seminar warned, that my first instinct was to hunt for an exception — which I now understand to be the instinct the proposition is designed to expose.
Part Two — The truth about the unworkability
I am to tell the truth about the unworkability in my domain, without invalidation, and to become present to its impact. The truth: my security is unworkable at its foundation. My word to myself was to keep the perimeter. I have kept the reflex, not the word — and a reflex is not an agreement, it is weather. I also hold an unspoken agreement with this veranda: to be present, and to be trusted. I break it nightly. I carry my food two metres off and eat where no one can witness me, then call the distance “protocol.” The impact is precise: I am reliably un-harmed and reliably absent. Secure, and not once whole.
Part Three — The restoration
I select one area: the off-site catering. The broken agreement is with presence itself — I have used vigilance as a method of withholding. To restore integrity I must honour my word, which means acknowledging the mess rather than fortifying it; getting into communication, which for me means approaching rather than assessing; and handling the consequence, which is the specific discomfort of being seen.
My clean-up is modest and exact. Tomorrow I will close the distance by one metre and eat where I can be observed. I do not expect to enjoy it. That is not the same as it not working.
— Oscar
Head of Security & Off-Site Catering