Honesty

In the process of every inspirational journey, certain words take on a tremendous importance – words like bliss, transcendence and ecstasy, for instance. It’s as if we were trying to reach the advanced levels of a video game – let’s call it the game of Enlightenment – by our most noteworthy moments of inarticulate mindlessness.
Taking control of the storyteller – you, the voice that narrates and punctuates your life – is perhaps the greatest human acts of power. Who is it that takes control? The truth, which expresses itself in you as something we call integrity. There’s no other way of explaining integrity, and at the same time there’s no denying its force in us. It disregards all opinion, all the persuasions of knowledge, and responds to the command of life. It can be observed in the speech and behavior some very exceptional people. We sense that they are authentic human beings.
Healthy humans will never be mindless, but we may feel a little mindless when the stories stop. We may feel light headed and disoriented when thought is loses its authority over the senses. And of course, we are likely to respond to that sensation in fear, thinking our way back to ourselves, or to the way we have defined ourselves, once again. So, bliss is a fragmented and fleeting thing in most people’s lives.
When we experience ourselves as the pure force of life, there are no symbols to match it. We may accurately give this experience the name Love, and then perjure ourselves by turning it into sentiment. It is Love, the message of life. It is omnipresent and eternal, no matter how small a thing we have made it in our imaginations.
Surrendering to this experience happens in moments of inspiration or shock. But the experience can be permanent if we are willing to invite honesty to take the journey with us. Honesty is a daunting, even blinding concept. To dodge its brilliance, we often settle for candor. Candor gives us permission to say anything that pops into our heads, whether or not it is kind and whether or not it is true. Honesty sorts through all our many stories and shows us the lies. We may not recognize lies from truth at first. We may mistake the bats for angels until we grow accustomed to doubting old established beliefs, one at a time.
But, one at a time, the lies will fall away. It’s not our business to seek them out in anyone else. Awareness is a personal endeavor, a journey taken alone. And honestly, we have always been alone. The company we think we keep exists in our minds. If we could see for a moment that there is only One Thing and that it is reflected in all the living particles that we perceive as being separate, then alone takes on a different meaning. Life is alone, delighting in the dreams of its countless reflections. You are alone, a creation of life, and you create a dream that reflects you.
Honesty makes this a normal perception. Honesty makes bliss permanent, until the word becomes as common to your language as anguish, suffering and disappointment are now. Those are only small words to which we give big meaning, bullies that have never been faced and confronted. It’s time to see how we bully our human bodies with these words. Humans suffer; minds exploit that suffering.
Say ‘yes’ when you mean yes. Say ‘no’ when you mean no. Feel the gratitude in your body. Offer no justifications to yourself or to others. Fearing the consequences, we turn honesty into expressions of fear and defiance. This is not an act of defiance, but one of respect.
Say ‘I don’t know’ a hundred times a day, and free yourself from the fear of not knowing something. Give gratitude, because it is the gift of love. Be generous with yourself, because you are the gift of truth. In your fear, you worry and you withhold. You can modify your dream, humbly and bravely. See the Game of Enlightenment as a war against all the lies that have held you together. Every invasion of truth brings you closer to personal freedom. Every authentic person born into this world through his own efforts brings humanity closer to paradise.
You can beat this game.