Honesty is not telling someone (including the person or people you claim to love most) everything and especially those things that you regret and are ashamed of.
Honesty is not transacting your secrets for someone’s love or trust or approval or forgiveness
Honesty is not trying to reduce your guilt by disclosing the most private or repugnant things you believe about yourself to someone else as proof of your vulnerability, intimacy, humility or of your willingness to ‘reform’.
Honesty is none of these.
So what is honesty?
Above all else, it is seeing things as they truly are.
Meaning:
No story. No judgment, No self-criticism. No self-loathing. No self-persecution. No blame. No shame. No living in the past. No guilt.
These are all hallucinations of the Ego which has, on the one hand orchestrated your ‘wrongdoing’ or ‘mistake’ or ‘ill-intention’ and on the other, punishes you mercilessly with its self-judgment while encouraging you to seek ‘salvation’ from something or someone else.
What the Ego will not do is encourage you to ALLOW your natural peace, your natural goodness, your natural greatness, your natural joy, your natural power. In short, your INNOCENCE – that which you are IN ESSENCE.
To be honest, you have to be here and now. You have to be present, for truth is only ever found in the present.
And in the present, stripped of all story, of all judgment, of all blame and shame, of all the hallucinations of the Ego, you can see clearly.
And in seeing clearly, you also think clearly, INTEND clearly, speak clearly and act clearly.
When you see clearly, you see through the eyes of Love whose guidance is never wrong.
You can never be honest when you are trying to get something for being honest whether that is approval, forgiveness, trust or love. Remember, Love is unconditional.
So, learn to see clearly. Or should I say, ALLOW yourself to see clearly. For only when you see clearly, will you see clearly what needs to be done and what needs to be said or not said,
That is what Honesty is.
A response of and in Love. Not fear. Or guilt. Or neediness. Or powerlessness. But Love.
Always and only Love.
REFLECTION
Have you transacted honesty for approval, acceptance, forgiveness, intimacy? Can you be honest without expecting any kind of reward?
CALL TO ACTION
Try to stay vigilant when you are about to make an ‘honest’ declaration about something you have been accused of (or that you have accused yourself of). What are the forces/motivations at work?
HEALING STATEMENT
I can be honest for no other reason than that it is my nature to be honest.
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