honesty

In this episode I am going to talk about honesty. Here I am not so much concerned with whether we are deceiving other people. Such dishonesty is of little relevance to the spiritual journey. Here we are concerned with being honest with oneself.

Ordinarily we are deceiving ourself. We are telling ourself little white lies, all day long, endlessly. These little white lies are like sugar sprinkled over life. Deep down we are somehow miserable, and to avoid feeling the full force of that misery we try to make life pleasant, bearable. To do so we deceive ourself. We somehow like to feel good about ourself, so we feel some pride in what we associate ourself with, what we identify with – this could be our job, could be our nation, could be our favourite football team; it could be our wife or husband, could be our children. We take pride in all this stuff. We make it better than it really is and in this way we deceive ourself. This self-deception keeps us from the truth and prohibits us from going beyond our deeper miseries.

First we must face the truth of life and much of the truth of life feels unpleasant to begin with. The routine, the boredom, the meaninglessness of our petty little existence, the family squabbles, day after day, you know it all. Deep down you know it all. If we ignore this, if we pretend it doesn’t exist, then we will never come to see the beauty of life in all its glory.

So first, my friends, we must become honest with ourself, be true to ourself, stop deceiving ourself in these ridiculous childish little ways. When we can start to be honest about life, the situation we find ourself in, its hopelessness, its meaninglessness, when we can start to accept this then our judgements about it will begin to drop away. Only through this will it be possible for us to go beyond this miserable feeling about life. Of course, we might avoid it at times with our entertainments and our distractions but you know it will be back. So, to face this dark truth is a large part of the spiritual journey, particularly in the early stages. It is rather arduous and unpleasant work but it is not to be avoided any more.

Facing the realities of life, slowly, slowly this negativity can drop away and eventually, years down the line, everything in life is felt as beautiful, as sacred. But to reach that point we need to be honest with ourself, brutally honest, not hiding anything, not making anything better than it really is, nor worse, just facing things as they are, honestly.