DISHONESTY / HONESTY

Any time I lie about anything my soul weeps tears of sadness. Any time I tell the truth my soul weeps tears of joy.

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You cannot run away from the truth. It will catch up with you sooner or later. You could save yourself a lot of trouble if you just welcomed it.

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A lot of the time, when people lie, it is habitual and instinctual. They are not even aware they are lying. “Yes, of course, I love you … [Right, what’s on the telly?] …”, “Yes, I’ll get back to you about that … [Right, what’s on the telly?]” or, “This is a bargain! You won’t get cheaper car insurance anywhere else … [Great, another sucker]”.

All of which is built on a fundamental lie. That you need to find the person of your dreams to be happy; that you need to get the right job to be happy; that you need to save as much money as you can to be happy. Or even, that you need to find God – the right God, obviously – to be happy.

No, you don’t.

You don’t need anything to be happy. To be happy you be happy.

All that needing stuff does is make you needy. Which is very much different to my idea of happiness.

But this lie persists because a lot of people – economically, politically, spiritually – have a lot invested in perpetuating it.

And because it is everywhere we are, it is difficult to detach yourself from it.

And here’s how you detach yourself from it. Any time you tell a lie, you don’t cover it up, or pretend that it didn’t happen, or build more lies on top of it. No, you be honest about the fact that you lied.

And you might be surprised to notice that people will actually appreciate you for this.

Or your money back …

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Never mind the lies we tell other people, the lies we tell ourselves do the greatest damage. The biggest lie is this: “I can’t do that”. Yes, you can.

It is very, very simple. All you have to do is take the actions necessary.

You just cannot be bothered, that is all there is to it.

Or, the very idea of it terrifies you.

The first step is to be honest: to acknowledge that you can do it, but for whatever reason you won’t. The next step is to be honest, and to ask yourself: “Just how important is this to me?” You might find that, actually, it really isn’t that important, after all.

In which case, you can just let it go and happily get on with something else in your life.

Or, if it is important to you, be brutally honest. Get as clear as possible about why things are as they are for you. And then create a step-by-step process which leads beyond “I can” to “I am”.

But, recognise, if you’ve just spent your whole life convincing yourself of all the reasons why you can’t, it might take a lot of convincing before you realise that, actually, there is no reason why you can’t.

If it is really important, stick with it for as long as it takes. And you will start to see all the porkies that you have been telling yourself, that stop you from getting what you really want.

And ask yourself: “What is more important to me? Believing the porkies? Or getting what I really want?”

© Phillip A. Klein March 2008