Lies and Distortions

Student: We use the word “lie” and “liar” a lot. For a lot of people, them’s fighting words!

Barbara: Yes. Those are rough words.

Student: Can you expand on why we find ourselves using a very powerful word like “lie”? What comes of seeing ourselves as “liars”?

Barbara: When there is a disturbance created, we begin to shift our point of view and accept another idea, another possibility, another way of perceiving. So harsh words, to me, are very useful. “Liar” is a harsh word, just from the point of view of society. We all want to see ourselves as upstanding and honest, and we do our best to intend well to ourselves and others.

I am not talking about the social context. I am talking about a spiritual context. Where whatever force that created us, and we are calling it life, is being reflected as clearly and as purely as possible. Which means, what we perceive is just what we perceive. It has no particular interpretation or meaning as we have given it over a lifetime of using words and symbols. It is just as it is; life communicating through light and seeing itself impact matter. When we get down to definitions and interpretations of what we perceive, that is where the distortion begins.

The distortion of the real thing, meaning life or light, is what we are calling “lie.” So a lie is anything we put into sound and symbol and language and theory that explains what we perceive. It is a distortion, it is not exactly the truth. As we convolute language and symbols into opinions and beliefs the distortions get greater and greater.

Now, obviously there are symbols, words and theories that invite us toward a greater truth. That is the best we can do in communicating what life is. We change our stories and our mythologies in order to get our consciousness closer to a greater truth, and away from one way of looking at things, perceiving things. Away from rigid beliefs. Away from opinion. What I am doing for you, right now, is telling you in words and symbols and theories that we can experience truth if we can just look inward, as warriors, and see where we have distorted the truth. See where we stay so rigid in our beliefs, so bound to our opinions that we cannot see life just as it is: color, shape, texture, warmth, sensation.

Student: In fact, we as warriors use strong language such as lies, liar, story tellers, to remind ourselves over and over again that everything that comes out of our mouth is a distortion. What is a clear mirror?

Barbara: Well, let just think of ourselves as human beings with minds that dwell within matter. And all matter is one way or another reflecting light, whether its shining bright or dull and diffused. All matter is reflecting light.

At least think of ourselves as reflecting that light which created us, then, the less dull and diffused or dense we make of ourselves, with ideas and ideals and rigid belief systems, the shinier and brighter we reflect light or life.

How does that look in our daily behavior? Well, life itself is nameless, anonymous, unconditionally accepting and loving, radiant with joy and opportunity. These are the qualities I would give life itself. Life is constantly creating. Constantly duplicating itself in mood and matter.

Are we doing that? Or are we holding ourselves to certain beliefs? Are we reacting in reflexive ways to situations and interactions. Are we being held down by our rules, our memories? Are we creating a density that does not reflect life as it is?

I’m not sure that is clear, but I think that the warrior’s way is to see what the mind is doing at any one point in time. We can see whether we are messaging to our bodies, to those around us, that we are angry or we are depressed or we are in fear over our futures, we are in frustration, our productive and creative energy blocked. If all this is going on inside us, I think that this is a pretty good indication that we are not reflecting light clearly, as mirrors.

Part of a warrior’s job is to polish the mirror that he is. In other words, what am I doing to keep myself from shining as brightly, as purely, as unconditionally as loving as life itself?

This gets back to our earlier point about listening, modifying the messages the mind is giving the body, modifying our conversations, modifying the way we listen to other people and agree to beliefs that really don’t do anything to make us more radiant or appreciative of ourselves as light.

Student: That is excellent! I was seeing an image that reminds me of mathematics from school. We had these curves, that move towards a line but never quite touches it. With the language we use, with our words, we can never quite speak the truth. We can only approach it.

Barbara: Right. The minute we say something we’ve lost the truth of it. We live in a world where we can only communicate through language, through ideas. The ideas need to free themselves from our specific beliefs or dogmas in order to reflect the truth.