The Truth Shall Set You Free: Manifestation Through Honesty Versus Deception
In this post, I would like to take you on a journey of a deeper consideration of honesty and deceit. In so doing, I hope to inspire within you a commitment to be honest with yourself and by extension, others. Not to uphold some ideal moral code, but rather because this one choice determines what you create in your life. In using deception, you build a life around you that is out of harmony with you and so becomes uninspired and flat. On the other hand, committing yourself to honesty builds a life around you that you love and enjoy.
For all of my readers who have already made a commitment to honesty, the ideas in this post might be obvious to you. (I am actually really curious about this). What might not be obvious to you is why other people use deception - and this post may give you a peak into that reality.
First off, I will not say that deception is ‘bad’. In our current world, there are times when a lie could be life saving. I learned deception at a young age, and for me, it was an undeniable form of self protection. So this is an important point: I cannot tell you when a lie might save you from danger or abuse. Only you can discern that for yourself. If you are in a dangerous situation, and you can use deception to save yourself and others, please do! I will caution you, however - my perception of ‘danger’ continued even after my situation changed, and I was no longer in any real danger. So, discernment of your conditions versus your perception is important to develop.
When I moved in with my aunt and uncle before the start of middle school, I had this understanding: lying is a useful and necessary protection. My aunt had a very different perspective of lying. To her, lying blocked intimacy and eroded our relationship. My aunt was very clear at expressing her displeasure with my lying, and she readily doled out negative consequences when she caught me in a lie. This once protective habit produced negativity and drama in my new life. I had to re-orient myself.
Some years after beginning my ‘adult’ life, I was able to see that I also lied by omission. Also a hangover from my formative years, I used silence and withholding as a protective mechanism. If I didn’t communicate with you, I put distance between us, so you could not ‘hurt’ me. Silence, when I have something that I want to say, prevents me from full participation in a relationship. I might also lie by omission if I assume you will not like what I have to say. In this case, I am erroneously taking responsibility for your reaction, which is not mine to take.
When I lived with my aunt and uncle during my teenage years, I was not yet even aware of how I withheld my perspective from others. Withholding was just an automatic, habitual response to life. I couldn’t reveal my truth, even to those who treated me with love - because intimacy felt dangerous to me. Experiencing abuse during my youngest years created a misperception that all other people were antagonistic. For me and my sisters, it wasn’t just our step mother who was abusive. It was also the babysitters she chose, the kids at school who made fun of us because we were different, and the middle school bully who beat up elementary school children walking to and from school. That was basically the whole of our world.
It took me decades of living in different conditions, with different people, for me to even see these once protective habits - and then begin the work of changing them. With perhaps another decade of life experience, I was able to see that I also lied for less significant reasons: approval & and avoiding conflict. Growth in self awareness takes time.
When we use deception in any form, we unwittingly create fake, empty relationships - and by extension, a fake and empty life. It is detrimental to our sense of self, as the continual disallowance of honest openness with ourselves and others erodes our self knowledge, our self confidence and ultimately, our self reliance. We do not know who we are, what we think or feel, and we become dependent upon other people’s opinions of us. This is one of the most disempowering circumstances we can create for ourselves.
On the other hand, when we commit ourselves to saying what we mean and meaning what we say, we free ourselves from the reactions and opinions of others. The first time I was able to voice my perspective in a heated discussion, I was amazed at how little the other person’s reaction to my honesty mattered to me. When I had finally come to that tipping point, I was overwhelmed by a deep feeling of love and respect - for myself.
I had always assumed that I loved myself. I never belittled myself, I was never hard on myself - life was hard enough! It wasn’t until my mid twenties, when I tried saying, “I love you” in the mirror, that I was able to observe my own mental and emotional arguments to this statement. I was very surprised! “Holy crap!” I thought, “Do I NOT love myself?” I reasoned that this was the left over residue from my youngest years, in which I wasn’t treated with love. I must have taken that upon myself, so a belief that I was ‘unlovable’ was etched into my subconscious, and I didn’t even know it was there!!!
Yet my commitment to honest expression within relationships revealed to me that saying “I love you” in the mirror is NOT the same as actually treating myself with love and respect. It merely begins the reprogramming of the subconscious belief. It cracks opens the door to the actualization of self love - which seems to be, first and foremost, a commitment to live and express one’s own truth in the present moment of one’s unfolding life.
As I said earlier, my transition from deceit to honesty has been a continual evolution of thirty years. We tend to imagine that change happens instantaneously. While I do think that some inner shifts can be experienced this way - the vast majority of my learning has been a gradual process. When I understand that learning and integration are gradual, I am less likely to get discouraged and give up. I personally felt so frustrated for so many years that I was not yet ‘enlightened’. My inner suffering was continual. I was not at peace. I didn’t get it, I wasn’t getting it, and I wanted it so badly - so where the heck was the sudden “Poof!-Everything-makes-sense?!’’ Where was my instant gratification?!?!
Looking back, I can see clearly how far I have come. I have had some sudden realizations that have immediately shifted my perspective. However, the integration of these still took time. Mostly, the revelations have been a gradual expansion of my perspective as I have continued to ponder a given topic.
It takes time to grow in self-awareness. To even NOTICE automatic behaviors, it often also takes new life experiences. My life has changed radically, over and over again. Yet wherever I went, there I was. At some point, I could no longer believe that the outside world was responsible for that which I was carrying with me wherever I went. Change fosters growth in self awareness, for the simple reason that it allows you to see yourself from different perspectives.
What I discovered in this necessary accumulation of life experience, is that my use of deception as an adult created a life around me that was disharmonious to me and fraught with internal and external drama. It’s like this: my mind is a lens. My truth lives inside of me, and it is projected onto the screen of the outside world through the lens of my mind. Deception creates cracks in the lens, so the projected image becomes scattered and chaotic. Honesty, on the other hand, creates a clear, clean lens in which the projected image matches my resonating heart. The latter, once experienced, feels glorious.
Deception can also play out as a misinterpretation of reality. In this case, your misinterpretation deceives you. This means that your understanding and behavior are based on fallacy. I have also experienced this a great deal. As I said earlier, when I moved in with my aunt and uncle I was still perceiving danger, although it was no longer there. This can be equated to dirt on my lens, or an overlay of an assumed reality which prevents me from seeing clearly. As such, disentangling your interpretation from the world you see before you is vital to clarifying your lens. I have written about this in The Nature of Reality.