Honesty

Do You Tell the Truth
or
Does the Truth Tell You?

By Carl Bozeman

Honesty is Not the Best Policy.

From the moment of our birth onward over the span of our human sojourn, we are conditioned to be other than what we truly are.

Nowhere is this more prevalent than in our general understanding and subsequent expression of honesty.

We are all liars.

In fact, we are so good at lying, many of us will take offense at such an accusation, but perhaps more importantly, we have become so good at it we don't even know it.

Our conditioned nature has us convinced that our little withholdings and untruths are necessary to negotiate the collective human condition. We even come up with metaphors to express this conditioning even though we will not acknowledge the pervasive nature of our lies.

We say things like half truths or little white lies to soften the blow, so to speak, so that our fragile egos do not have to face the fact that we are indeed liars.

Collectively, we have come up with terms such as spin and techniques have been developed to divert the collective attention away from the truth.

We even accept that certain groups such as lawyers or politicians are dishonest and that is just the way it is. We will support individuals representing a political view, but overlook that they fall into a faction we know (and accept) as dishonest. We will even defend them to the point of anger or rage if they are attacked by another individual who is supported by a faction representing an opposing political view.

Individually and collectively we have become defenders of our dishonesty.

Egoically, we have even gone so far as to determine that no individual ego, whether child or adult, should ever be told where they have missed the mark or fallen away from a particular guideline, without following up with where they have done well.

Well, we don't want to hurt any feelings now, do we?

We are so concerned about preservation of feelings (ego), that we cannot speak the truth, or as we might say, the whole truth. It is interesting that we have books titled Radical Honesty, proposing that what was once simple honesty has become so elusive that telling any truth has now become radical.

In other words, we have conditioned ourselves into the proverbial corner, that honesty is no longer the best policy, rather it has become the exception to the rule, both individually and collectively.

Perhaps in no other aspect of the human experience will it be more apparent how difficult it will be to alter this current conditioning.

We have completely given way to the idea that feelings should not be hurt. We must conduct our lives in such a way that only the softest of blows are ever exacted against our own and other egos.

The loss or damage of self esteem is untenable in any circumstance.

In other words, tell the truth if you can, lie if you must, but always spare the ego - always!

Gateway to Inner Knowing

If we can learn to listen to our inner talk, we can begin to notice the deceptions playing out in our minds.

If we listen carefully, we can catch ourselves every time we tell a lie and hopefully, in time, catch it before we express it outwardly. In so doing, our deceit can become a window into the nature of our conditioning. It can become the way back to a life of integrity and truth.

It is through that same window that we can begin to see once again our divine self.

The who of our existence rather than the what the ego creates. Once found, we see life as it was before our conditioning took over our awareness.

Who you are always comprehends truthfully.

Finding who you are is the way out of the darkness of a life that is cloaked in a false illusion and untruth.

In fact, it is the only way to have a life that is fully aware of something beyond our limited and egoic view of it.

It is seeing without eyes, hearing without ears.

It is a life only a god could know.

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