When I think of honesty, not the word ‘honesty’, but honesty the way I live it, I kinda get the heebie jeebies. Whenever I am wavering on the edge of truth, truth that isn’t easy, truth that doesn’t serve me in some way, a laser of light cuts through any crap that I might be hiding behind and, like the curtain yanked abruptly aside revealing the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz, I stand, shaking, under the naked light bulb of truth.
Of course, I, like you, have always known the truth. But through years of untruths fed to me and years of manipulating the truth to suit my own needs, I shudder at my own inability to be truthful, even to myself.
Mostly to myself.
Honesty sometimes seems to be a slippery concept. Some people live their lives balanced on a beach ball, shifting it slightly this way or that till their truth accommodates the situation. Sometimes we omit certain segments of a story to refrain from an out and out lie or we avoid speaking at all, justifying to ourselves, at least, that no lie was committed. Is the halo still firmly in place?
But more sadly than the above examples of human dishonesty, is that we don’t even know, or if we do, we rarely live, the absolute truth about ourselves. And that is that we are divinely created, divinely protected and divinely cherished. And we don’t have to do anything to obtain this love. No lie is required. There is no need to shift on the beach ball to conform to another’s (or our own) expectations.
Lying to ourselves and others keeps us shackled. Opening our arms and hearts wide open and speaking our truth, with kindness and compassion, of course, is freedom unlimited.
To me, this is liberating!
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