honesty

To be enlightened is to be honest with oneself.

This sounds a simple thing. And yet, self deception is at the root of all our problems, all our suffering. Our mind is a fanciful thing. It imagines ways it would like the world to be. It sees things which it would prefer not to be. And this applies equally to the inner world as to the outer world. So, of course, those things that are in oneself and yet one cannot accept as part of oneself, such things are pushed into the unconscious mind. They form the shadow, the dark side of one’s psyche. And this is self deception in action. And of course those things we have rejected in ourself, we project onto the outer world, onto other people. And this causes much trouble.

But it is not only the dark side that we treat this way. There are parts of us which are too good for us, we feel; too good to be part of us. And these also are somehow rejected by the mind, pushed away. And instead of just accepting oneself as one is – simply, honestly – we believe in a fantasised version of ourself: the ego. And so to be honest with oneself, is to lose all illusions about oneself. And strangely perhaps, if one can lose all illusions about oneself then all illusions about life, about the rest of the world, also drop away.

How else are we to come to truth, other than by being honest? For whilst we play as a deceiving mind, truth will elude us; Reality will not be visible to us. So to come to rest in what is, in the truth, we should start by being honest; Being honest with ourself.