Friendlier Skies

A Higher Power

Apr 07, 2024

In 1965, United Airlines introduced its famous slogan:

“Fly the friendly skies.”

The man who led the ad agency that coined the phrase explained:

“Let us show the public our warm 'good-guy' genuine concern side, as well as the efficient side they already appreciate in us.”

Interesting slogan.

It struck me that it sounds a bit like the way I have been presenting myself to the world ever since I can remember. Loving and compassionate all the while keeping the perfect hive-like level of efficient productivity like somehow being “good” at life would solve the issue of how I was feeling inside.

That it would be pleasing to others and they’d buy in and when they did, it would feel rewarding and I’d feel happy. But I’ve discovered the hard way, that even after doing everything we can to be good, we don’t necessarily feel good.

We’re sold ideas about external rewards of happiness, health, prosperity, true love, and self-esteem but this equation fails to balance.

But even when we seem to have all of those things, sometimes our planes just crash.

What can we do when things break down and we feel lost or trapped and things begin to break down all around us despite our best efforts?

Aviation has been under the microscope this month in the news with a series of high-profile incidents raising concerns about safety across the industry.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby sent a letter to customers last month acknowledging recent issues at the airline and pledging action to increase safety measures:

“Unfortunately, in the past few weeks, our airline has experienced several incidents that are reminders of the importance of safety. While they are all unrelated, I want you to know that these incidents have our attention and have sharpened our focus.”

If you’re curious, the incidents are tires falling off in mid-air, engine fires, damaged wings, stuck rudders, and missing bolts, and panels. No fatalities or serious injuries that I’m aware of, but there have been other customer service issues like oversold flights.

When I was flying last month I overheard a United Airlines flight coaxing passengers on the intercom who had purchased seats to please give them up and in return, they would be compensated $500 and could get on a later flight that same day. They had a couple of takers but not enough, so they were back on the intercom 10 minutes later and the price went up to $1000 per seat. It felt like an auction. A couple more people stepped up, but they still needed a few more seats so they upped the ante to $1,500 and that seemed to do the trick.

I was a bit taken aback - I almost felt sorry for the more agreeable people who took the $500. It all felt a bit offside. They had oversold the flight. I understand why Hotels and Restaurants often do that as well because of the attrition rate - usually, a small percentage of people don’t show up so they hedge their bets.

It’s understandable but also a bit of a customer service gamble when online reviews and stars can make or break a business. It seems like a huge risk to make a promise and take a customer’s money knowing full well that they may not deliver the service as promised. Also, it just feels icky.

Sometimes things go wrong in life despite our planned maintenance protocols and good or warm and friendly intentions.

As passengers, we assume the flight risks when we board any aircraft but most of us do it under the assumption that the companies are compliant with the Federal Aviation Administration and are being…well, honest.

As you probably already deduced, today is not really about airplanes, but it’s helping to set us up for the greatest connection of our lives.

Our final destination next week is a surprise, but before we take off…

Can I see a show of hands?

Raise your hand if you lie.

(If your hand is down, please find the fire extinguisher fast because smoke may be coming from the general direction of your pants:)

Keep your hand up if…

You have ever cheated on a test or taken something that doesn’t belong to you?
Have you broken a promise, or a vow, or been unfaithful?
Exaggerated a story, fudged an expense at work, or a deduction on your taxes?
Skipped putting money in the parking meter?
Fibbed to a friend to get out of something you should have said no to in the first place?
Taken more than your share, or not kept your promise to others (or yourself)?
Have you ever stuck your gum under a table or a chair in public?
Or left dog poop on someone’s lawn or the side of the trail?

First, please take a deep breath, relax, and remember this is a judgment-free fly zone.

You’re not getting in trouble, nor are you bad for doing any of those things.

But aren’t you the least bit curious as to why you feel the need to lie or compromise yourself?

When you don’t get caught, do you believe you are getting away scot-free?(BTW, the ‘scot’ in scot-free has nothing to do with Scottish people, it was a medieval tax; if you evaded paying it you got off scot-free, that is without receiving the deserved or expected punishment or without being harmed.)

Is there any unexpected harm that comes to us directly or indirectly from these risky behaviors?

“We're the only species that creates destructive environments for its species.”

Gabor Maté

Today touches on something powerful that seems to be pulling our puppet strings without our full awareness. It’s rarely spoken of in our media, at work, in our governments, schools, or in our homes.

Any guesses?

When it’s compromised it feels like remorse, guilt, or shame. It can lead to disease in our bodies.

On the flip side, when properly aligned, it has been known to heal our trauma, make us feel joyful, and is the best indicator we have of whether or not we love and trust ourselves…

drumroll, please…

INTEGRITY

The word integrity comes from the Latin “integer”, meaning whole, or INTACT.

In other words, we quickly fall to pieces when we lose it. Hence the lying and less desirable behaviors.

Divided in our minds, we feel conflicted and we suffer.

At first, the suffering may be mild, almost unnoticeable, but no one can sleepwalk away from integrity indefinitely because things get much worse the further we travel in the wrong direction.

Again, it’s not a bad thing, it’s just how our systems motivate us to regain our integrity.

Integrity or being aligned with our true nature is THE most underrated contributing factor to our overall well-being and our feelings of worthiness.

A lack of integrity is responsible for countless broken promises in the political arena, the economy, and in all of our relationships including the one we have with ourselves.

It would not be a stretch to say that having it or losing it is the root cause of the quality of our personal experience of life no matter what circumstances we endure.

Aligned with it, happiness and joy are its natural effects.

LIVING IN INTEGRITY

Have you ever had the experience of boarding a plane and after you enjoy the small victory of finding a coveted spot for your carry-on in the overhead bin and everything is stowed you sink into your seat and allow yourself to feel the anticipation and excitement about your new adventure?

And then it happens. A delay is announced by the pilot.

Your heart sinks.

You sit and wait and wonder with a ripple of dread how long a baby can cry continuously before it exhausts itself and then you begin to feel nervous about whether or not you will be on time for your connecting flight.

But eventually, you realize you have no control and your mind settles in.

It surrenders because a part of you realizes that it’s better to be late and arrive alive.

You are about to be taken up in over 300 tonnes of aluminum, steel, and titanium 40,000 feet in the air, and not being in perfect structural integrity is paramount, so you wait.

I like this airplane metaphor because it has nothing to do with morality.

Or judgment.

This kind of integrity is the kind that keeps the plane whole and undivided. It keeps all the bits and pieces together in the right places because if they’re not, we may falter or crash.

It’s not a judgment, it’s physics.

That’s it.

Just like United Airlines, it shows us where “our attention and sharpened focus” needs to be to make the skies friendlier for all of us.

When we live with integrity, we are always in service to the well-being of the whole.

If your job is okay and your relationships are fine you still may be getting lift-off, but after decades of flying the same routes, you may begin to notice that you feel restless and you begin to fantasize about running away from the life you have, you are innocently trying to feel better albeit in a misguided way.

There is nothing wrong with you or your feelings.

It’s all working perfectly. All you need is a quick tune-up to get realigned WITH the natural laws of the Universe, not against them.

The end goal is to feel good, but we certainly don’t need to feel wonderful all of the time, we can enjoy the range of human emotions freely like a newborn baby. Otherwise, how would we recognize when we have a need that needs to be met? Emotions help guide us. They cleverly indicate when we’re unaware that we’re heading in the wrong direction for us.

In other words, our emotions are indicators, not dictators.

Culturally we’re taught to suppress them or stuff them down and that, in my personal experience is when we risk the wheels falling off.

The wheels that fell off United’s airplane thankfully didn’t cause any human injuries, but there are a few cars that were in the parking lot that may never be quite the same.

So what does it feel like to abandon our true nature?

Since we’re all liars here, let’s strain ourselves and be honest for a moment and admit that most of us have no idea what it’s like to BE perfectly aligned with our true nature because we’re not.

We’re walking contradictions.

Instead, we try to fit in with the herd. We know when we do because we’re surrounded by others, but we still feel alone and lonely.

So what’s the big deal with going with the flow? We spend our entire childhood trying to fit in, how will going our OWN way help us?

Ralph Waldo Emerson taught that inconsistency, originality, and nonconformity are essential human virtues for our awakening to our true nature.

They are the source of our power.

We need to BE us.

Our internal guidance is our genius. It’s the intelligence that already knows our true potential.

Becoming quiet enough to hear this guidance is our work.

When we deny ourselves this gift, or we try to fit in by compromising our integrity and changing ourselves, when we suppress how we feel we never quite feel at home even inside our bodies.

Our energy becomes blocked and thankfully our bodies can’t lie and will give us signs and even some symptoms if necessary to help us stop the harmful trajectory we’re on and get re-aligned. From a headache or rash to an eye twitch or a more serious diagnosis our consciousness is highly sensitive and intelligent and resides in every cell of our body and will do everything it can for us.

Sadly, most of us have learned to medicalize our symptoms and neutralize our feelings with medication or self-medicating to disconnect from them in our feeble attempt to feel better.

“Conformity is an understandable evolutionary response to loneliness, the ultimate existential threat.”

Sarah Wilson

When we feel divided we abandon our true nature and we lose ourselves.

We smile politely but our smile doesn’t quite reach our eyes.

We wear uncomfortable shoes and do things we don’t want to do just to fit in.

Abandoning my true nature felt to me like depression and anxiety. Eventually compulsion and addiction.

It feels like wanting to escape the life we have.

It can be mild at first. Maybe you have things that need doing, but you find yourself sinking into your couch, procrastinating, scrolling, dreading a commitment, or shopping online for sequined cushions of Nicholas Cage’s face… before you check out consider allowing yourself to see the deeper truth, that you are just trying to feel better.

A compassionate self-inquiry seems to be the best way to become aware of what’s going on beneath the surface behaviors.

I’m teasing with the pillows, but most of these things DO work in the short term so of course, it’s why we innocently reach for our cigarettes or control our food and want to change our bodies when nothing outside of us can help us feel better in the long run, but getting back into alignment will.

When we behave in puzzling ways that seem to contradict our desires, we may not be able to connect the dots in the exact moment when we’re eating the pint of Cherry Garcia on the couch, but we’re simply out of alignment.

The ice cream weight gain or staying up late gaming is not the source of the problem.

Like the warning light on the pilot’s instrument panel, it’s an indication of being off course and we can make any necessary adjustments in real-time.

The deeper truth is that we have already arrived at our destination, we ARE whole, but thankfully we will face turbulence in the form of challenges in our lives, periods of uncertainty and darkness, compulsions or contradictions to help us have this realization for ourselves.

We can be a mass of contradictions and our dual nature requires careful integration.

One day we are kind, and another day cruel.

One day we feel clear and the next we are totally confused.

One morning we’re incredibly joyful and before dinner, we’re downright sad.

And yet, having contractions is not our dilemma.

Understanding them is what helps us to tap into our inherent genius and what Emerson called “self-reliance”.

“Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am vast. I contain multitudes.”

Walt Whitman

Would you like to know how to trust your true nature and hear the whisper “only you can hear” to fly high above the turbulence in your own life?

In an age of imitation, social influencers, and self-measurement based on ‘likes’ and ‘winks’, we need this message of originality and contradiction more than ever.

We can turn our sights within and gain an ‘internal locus of control’ like our very own panel of inner instruments to balance us, which frees us to evolve in our natural manner with love, not fear.

Rest assured, your internal guidance system will signal “WRONG WAY” as clear as day.

The lies and deceits fall away along with the fear and grievances when we’re integrally aligned with our true nature.

Next week we will take a closer look at how the wisest and most enlightened people on earth recommend you fly in the direction you aspire.

As we learn better how to read the internal signals and recognize what we yearn for, rather than what our culture sells us brings us on a spiritual adventure that changes the direction of our lives and brings us to a place of genuine happiness.

You can put your hand down now.

You are cleared for takeoff.

It’s time to stow your laptop, put up your tray table, and fasten your seatbelt because the way of integrity will take you to unexpected new heights of peace and happiness.

No matter what mechanical issues life throws at you or what problems may occur, when all parts of you come together at once, it feels like you’re flying.

It feels like a miracle. The mind-boggling amazement never gets old no matter how many times we lift off the ground and watch the city below us get smaller and smaller.

As we head into the clouds, for a few moments our view is blocked, but we feel safe knowing that while we are not in control of what lies ahead, we can rest assured that we’re aimed in the right direction like a well-built plane that has been checked and rechecked and is in integrity and can be trusted.

Working as designed it feels like we’re flying in friendlier skies and being led back home to ourselves.

With love,

Rev Nona

p.s. Just like pilots, next week I’ll send you a Buddhist-inspired practical checklist of 10 ways to help gently guide you back into integrity if you feel like you’re straying off your path.