Honesty

Getting Started

Our efforts to make positive change for ourselves are significantly enhanced by our being or learning to become, as my father would say, “ruthlessly honest” with ourselves as possible. We all can improve our level of honesty and we benefit when we do.

Personal honesty is not something one develops casually. Doing so takes a personal and sustained commitment to be honest not just with others but also with ourselves. It also includes our understanding that we may be untruthful and unaware of it. If we are serious about personal and/or spiritual growth it is essential that we cease glossing over our reactions and actions in life. To do this requires mindfulness, so we notice our thoughts, honesty and personal responsibility. We will get to in responsibility in the next essay..

Being mindful includes pay attention to our thoughts, emotions and the choices they lead to rather than ignore or perhaps even lie to ourselves about them. There are almost invariably times when we would like to leave the past behind and not think about it or tell an untruth for any one of number of reasons. However, our dishonesty does not help us though we may convince ourselves otherwise.

There may be times when we are not ready to deal with something, but I don't believe in accidents. Every time we have the opportunity to lie we also have the opportunity to learn why and deal with the issues that had us wanting to. We cannot resolve our issues or get beyond our mental barriers by denying or ignoring their existence or hoping they go away. They will not.

It should be fairly obvious that honesty, like responsibility, are critical for personal growth. It may be less obvious why it is also critical for spiritual development. The reason is we cannot get past our rational mind's programming without it. We will remain locked into how we have programmed it unless we start to examine what we say, what we think, what we feel and how we act in more detail and moment by moment.

We all should accept that what we think and know may not be true, and work to notice when we are not being honest and examine why. It is not likely that you will figure it out right away, however, by looking you we are telling our minds we are not as afraid of the truth as we were. Besides, if we do not look at and into it we will never learn why or deal with it and our growth will be greatly hindered.

Every conscious thought we have, which includes those behind the actions we take, will create a vibration. The vibrations of our thoughts interact with our other thoughts, our own energy field and the natural energies around us. In a manner of speaking, when these vibrations are in harmony and balance they are constructive and destructive where they are not. Continuing with the analogy, we get destructive or negative energy when we are untruthful. Destructive interference leads to the development of negative energies in our aura and barriers in the rational mind that lead to mental and likely emotional challenges. If we are serious about growth, developing a high level of honesty is essential.

Issues of honesty can be subtle, and often missed. For example, when someone asks us how we are feeling the typical response is “good”, “fine”, “okay” or something similar. Any of of these may very well be passable as a description, it does not make it the truth. Regardless of whether this answer is a fair or even adequate generalized assessment of how we are doing, more or less, it is likely the one we want them to hear rather than our most honest and highest truth; though maybe not for the reason most think.

We tend to justify our answer to the question in many ways. We may think they are only asking out of courtesy rather than out of a genuine interest in us or we do not want to share the truth or we do not want to think about how we feel at the time or deem it none of their business or for any one of a number of other reasons. We should be mindful of the thoughts we have that lead us to how we choose our answer. Naturally our minds will formulate its answer to the question; however, until we are being more mindful and working on being honest with ourselves most of the thought processing involved will be at the non-conscious level.

During this process the mind filters out thoughts we have trained or programmed it to not make us conscious of. We program it this way when, for example, we decide we do not want to be conscious of something because it make us uncomfortable for one reason or another. The end result of this process will be its determination of what answer(s) we are most comfortable with under the circumstances. Once it has done this we be conscious of its answer to the question.

This pre processing happens fast, which is why we tend to not notice it, especially during casual interactions like the one I have been using as an example. The reasons our mind filters out certain potential answer and keeps them hidden are almost always growth points. Being dishonest with others is a issue we need to get beyond. It is doable if we start being mindful enough to start noticing our thoughts after we are asked and as we answer. We have to want to know why we answer as we do, which is what our mind's given us to be aware of, and not just accept our "casual or polite" but not quite honest answer as being okay.

However, the dishonesty to which I am referring is internal to mostly internal to us. When the answer given aloud is a generality, it is likely that applies to the answer given internally. Given a generality is not a truth it follows, in the strictest sense that a generality cannot be honest unless you can be specific and have simply chosen not to share it. When asked such a question one should be aware of how they feel, and not in some vague manner regardless of how they answer it. We are not required to share our feelings with others; however, we should be able to articulate all the emotions they feel to ourselves. We should know the big things that may be troubling to or a problem to us as well as if we a little tired or perhaps annoyed by a minor event, feeling a little distracted as well as if we are cheerful or excited.

An active awareness, paying attention moment by moment in order for us to notice significant emotional changes while missing subtle ones and vice versa. Have you ever felt uncomfortable but do not know why? Can you even describe what you are feeling? It is your mind and they are your emotions, you should know what your think and the emotions they stir as well as the emotions they activate or create. One reason this is helpful is if we do not know this then we have no way of knowing if the emotions we experience are our own or those of others.

You may be curious about how we lose control of our honesty. We learn to be dishonest from others. The process starts shortly after we are born and takes root gradually over time. It is common knowledge that children are very capable of telling you just how they feel or what they think right in the moment; provided they do not feel threatened by how others might react to what they say. This speaks to the important aspect regarding personal honesty.

Life changes our natural honesty. We gradually learn that the personal truth is subjective, and that we can lie to others when it serves our purpose, benefits us in some way or minimizes potential harm. We gradually program our rational mind to respond to questions based on our perception of risk, even to our own thoughts about ourselves, and lose our childhood honesty. Some would call it the end of our innocence.

We lie to ourselves to avoid examining our thoughts and feelings or do anything about them. Perhaps we felt no one cared, or no one could do anything to help us with our feelings or it did not matter to them, that they were selfish or we were hurting. Regardless of the reason, over time, we lose our openness and our honesty goes with it. Personal honesty takes time to achieve, and when fully manifest in one’s life leads to:

Knowing/admitting how I am feeling and why (not just how I think I am feeling or would like to think I feel).
Knowing/admitting that I act a certain way and why
Knowing/admitting that I react in certain ways and why
Knowing/admitting that I do certain “things” and why

We do not have to share our awareness of ourselves with others; however, if we are honest we must be truthful when we do. Personal honesty is a requirement for growth, indeed for life in general, because it is a tool to help us know ourselves better. This leads to greater awareness and personal power, the kind one needs to continue on the path they have chosen. Otherwise, we are imagining ourselves to be someone we are not. If we do not know who we are, we are likely to avoid issues, work on the wrong areas or issues at the wrong time and will encounter unnecessary setbacks. This increases our burden and the length of our journey.

When it comes to personal honesty, we must be careful to not try to fool ourselves into thinking we simply choose not to say to others what we do or feel and still believe we know ourselves. It is also dishonest to mislead others or knowingly let them infer something that is not the case. Both of these statements are true, except in the most exceptional cases.

It is true that we do not have to share information about ourselves. However, not doing so can become a crutch that allows us to convince ourselves that if no one asks directly we are not hiding. However, who can say this? We often do not share facts because either we fear the results of doing so or we do not even know ourselves. Learning to accept “facts” about ourselves enables us to grow past them, indeed we cannot do so without personal honesty. We can learn to face ourselves in the calm light of truth, without passing judgment on our mistakes regardless of whether others do and will benefit immensely by doing so.

Look at the following illustrations:

Example A: Shortest path

Example B: Lengthened Path

Example A represents the ideal; in this case, people who know themselves well. We know where we are and can see what we need to do to get to where we would like to be. Mind you, our minds and awareness with almost innumerable variables are almost impossibly complex. As a result we lack a great deal of knowledge about ourselves likely will still make determining a starting point and direction extremely difficult. By starting point, I mean a sense of where you are at a particular moment in time. As we become more self aware we will make adjustments to or refine our path, but will be able to do so consciously rather than it being out of our control.

This assessment includes how honest are we in our life, what our "strengths and weaknesses" , what kind of person we are, our degree of awareness of our sensitivity, what kinds of issues we face and so forth. It should be a continual process, at least in terms of our awareness of ourselves, as we change moment by moment. Our experiences and reactions to them are the key to unlocking our inner self. This means we need to pay attention to what is happening around us in the present as it helps us know the issues and problems we need to examine and work on. The closer we are to knowing who we are “right now” the better. The more we lie to ourselves the further we get from knowing ourselves and the further we have to go to get to where we want to be. Without self awareness we end up fighting ourselves.

Our honesty affects our choices, and if we are lying to ourselves then we are not who or where we like to think we are. Not being where we think we are means we can make choices that take us further away from our goal. Consider being lost in a strange city and trying to get to a particular place. If we do not realize we are lost or know where we are to start with we are not likely to get to where we want to by randomly driving around. Many choices will actually put us further away. If we do not know we are lost or unwilling to admit we do not know where we are we are unlikely to get to our destination. To get to our destination we need to find out where we are and perhaps even get directions to it.

Make no mistake; the starting point or our initial coordinates are where we “really are”. To be clear, where we “really are” does not include where we feel, think or believe we are, nor where we would like to be. When we start to take stock of ourselves pretty much everything about us is relevant. This includes little things like actions or things we like or dislike such as doing the dishes, or chores, mousy or loud people, aggressive sports, cats, snow or certain kinds of furniture. These seemingly innocent or minor personality traits, regardless of we accept or like them, are the result of how our minds integrated our experiences and tell the story of who we are.

How we integrate our experiences depends on choices we make, which depend on the thoughts we hold regardless of our awareness of them. Essentially this is who/what we are. We have all heard or even used the phrase "I am what I am"; however, if we are serious about growth it really helps if we actually know who we are more than casually, something we cannot do unless we look within and explore ourselves.

There is in fact nothing inherently right or wrong with any of the traits I mentioned. The acts themselves are neither “right nor wrong”; however, acting out of need rather than preference or equanimity also creates lower energy in our aura. Being fully equanimous is the only way to avoid this. We will examine this in the essay on Preference versus Need. Further, there are responsibilities and consequences attached to our actions, which we will look at in the next essay. When we accept these aspects of ourselves our fears are reduced and vision starts to get clearer. In such moments of honesty, we are more likely to perceive the reasons for why we feel certain ways about various things or act as we do. It has the added bonus of reducing the barriers we created and providing additional clues to our mental makeup, both of which help us in our efforts.

The potential challenges I have mentioned are the kind that we encounter in Example B. When it comes to personal growth our lack of honesty with ourselves about "where we are" makes for more work. The amount of extra work depends on how poorly we have determine where we are. If we think we are a certain way and are not then the changes we make can take us further off course. Extra years of effort are common and can become decades if we are far enough off in our assessment of ourselves. Also, a lack of success can lead us to believe what we are doing is pointless or impossible causing us to give up trying to grow and develop ourselves. Remember, we can lie to ourselves if we choose, but there is a price. We make our path harder and longer when we are not where we think we are.

We must accept and own any dishonesty we may possess and make a decision to improve it otherwise we are things more difficult for ourselves. Further, we must be willing to look within as it is also difficult to change what we do not see, understand or own. The first step in working on improving our honesty, besides trying to tell the truth more often is to start to understand our reasons for our lack of honesty. This is because our "internal issues" tend to manifest in many ways hence getting at root reasons for our dishonesty is likely to resolve more than one way our dishonesty manifests in our lives. We do this by identifying areas where we have difficulty in telling the truth without judging ourselves as bad people for it as we work through the process.

Degree of honesty

This section deals with the topic of personal honesty with the purpose of helping you to identify your personal honesty issues. Honesty is the cornerstone of personal growth. We will approach it in a different way, one you many have even done in part before but may not have taken full advantage of. Bear in mind that for personal growth honesty is not a measure against some absolute truth; we measure it against our awareness of our truths.

The starting point to working on our honesty is dealing with the untruths, misrepresentations we tell that we already about. We get at other less obvious or hidden un-truths within our rational mind. These are the ones we refuse to acknowledge, ignore or are blocked out from our conscious attention. Resolving the ones we are aware of first gives us confidence and we can build on the success we have with our "little battles". This is important as fear is a big part of not just our dishonesty in the first place but also our resistance to being honest.

If you think about your honesty in general terms, you may notice that your degree of honesty depends a great deal on the nature of the topic, and who you are speaking with as well as the nature of the experience or situation. Our honesty with people reflects the true nature of our relationship with them. We speak freely about certain topics with some people and not others. With some we may even exaggerate or simply lie. Therefore, it is of great value to examine our honesty based on the areas where we have issues across the spectrum of relationships types.

First, we will define a hierarchy of types or levels of relationships. The list below contains the main levels of relationships that can affect our honesty. The levels vary with the degree of closeness to us that exists in the relationship. The degrees range from people we meet once and will never see again to our closest relationships including the one we have with ourselves. To put it another way, the levels vary from the most casual or least intimate to the most intimate.

The ordering of points 2 to 4 or 5 to 7 can vary depending on each persons history. The order I have used is simply a general hierarchy of most distant to closest relationships and has no bearing on how we will use our self-assessment. You can change the order if you like but try to resist reducing the number as lumping groups together will make clarity harder. Also, if you cannot identify anyone in your life for any of the levels you can leave it blank or substitute a different type of relationship, one with a similar level of closeness.

If you spend a great deal of time on the internet you might want to include online relationships, such as those you have from use of social media tools, as a level. If you use your real name for some sites but also engage in anonymous online activity on another you may want to have a line for each. You can also add a line to the spreadsheet if you choose to work on your level of honesty with a particular person or group of people. Try to avoid adding too many lines so as not to make the exercise overly long or tedious. We can break things down to the nth degree; however, more is not always better.

The Levels or Relationships of our Honesty Table are:

People we do not know and will never see again
People we are acquainted with
People we work with
Our friends
Our intimate or close relationships
Our family
Our spouse or significant other
With ourselves

The next step is to create a list representing areas where we are going to evaluate our level of honesty. These are all personal in nature. Again, you can add extra columns or rename some if there are aspects of yourself that you want to focus on. Include areas where you believe you are honest as well as we should not assume that we necessarily are.

Our lives show us what we things we need examine and work if we are mindful and paying attention. This means you should pick areas related to the issues you we are dealing "now" when you create your list. Note that once a column has been added it should not be removed until you have you have done the exercise a number of times. The risk of doing it too soon is that you can be avoiding an area you need to examine. Leave the columns in as this allows you to see if your level of honesty in the area is improving or not. Even if you feel you have resolved an honesty issue as leave it in as it does no harm doing so and it does not hurt to check from time to time to make sure you have continued to keep your level of honesty up in that particular area.

The below list includes a number of examples of different areas that you can include in your chart. It is meant as a guide rather than an all inclusive list.

Some examples of fundamental Areas of Honesty we could use are:

Our intelligence (do we pretend we are either smarter or less smart than we feel we are)
How knowledgeable we are about something
Our job (do we make our jobs appear better than they are or say we like it when we do not?)
Our job skills (making ourselves look great at what we do, saying how good we are...better than others)
Our love life (a big issue for men is their virility, their ability to attract any women)
Our sexual orientation
Our personal habits (you can pick one or look at them in general)
Our religious beliefs or lack thereof
Who we care about
Our history or background
Our feelings
Our wealth or what we own (cars, boats etc.)
Our behavior
What we think and believe

There are times when we would prefer not to tell the truth. We may not want certain people to know about some aspects of ourselves for fear of how they would take the truth due to the potential consequences of being honesty whether real or imagined. Not telling people what is going on in your life is not necessarily an issue. It can be an issue if, for example, you are avoiding telling someone something in order to allow them to believe something that is not the case by implication, are trying to avoid it or are also lying to yourself.

We do not have to share everything and if you feel others do not need to know something then do not share it; however, we ought do so out of hand or do so for the reasons such as the ones I mentioned above. Always remember that we cannot control what others think about us, and any thoughts about or judgments they have of you are their business and potentially their issue not yours.

We may feel others may not like us if they knew the truth or that our honesty could cause problems we are not ready to deal with. While under certain circumstances it may appear to be advantageous to lie, it is not in our best interests. We are only building walls and deeper holes for ourselves. Further, when it comes to people who are closer to us we should be asking ourselves why we would want someone we believe we have to lie to as a friend.

The truth is that when we lie we are not being true to ourselves, period. This may sound harsh but it is just the truth. At some point in the growth cycle, we must examine our fears of the truth. Without doing this it is highly unlikely that we will give up the lies. Of course, part of the problem is memory is not a fixed or rigid “thing”, so we are not always consciously aware of why we feel as we do nor if what we are saying is even the truth. I can only say that by working on being honest we find out about aspects of ourselves we never noticed before and can work on. Be mindful to not push yourself too hard on this. Take it one-step and issue at a time and have faith in yourself!

One important tool in our arsenal for improving our honesty is the importance of feedback from without. We need to pay attention to notice consequences we can directly attribute to our dishonesty such as people being hurt by our lying, including ourselves. In addition, criticism from others however unjustified or invalid we may feel them to be can have kernels of truth in them we should not ignore.

Ignoring criticism out of hand and getting angry at those who criticize us does not help. Both ignoring and lower emotions reactions to criticism are clear indications of a personal issue or issues. One way to reduce our resistance is to accepting criticism is to allow the possibility that there may be some truth to what they say or part of what they say. We can then contemplate the possibility with as much honesty as we can muster. Doing so is essential if our goal is truly to improve ourselves for we are unlikely to get beyond the issue they have pointed out by denial or responding emotionally.

When we examine an experience we can learn about our part in the interaction. Doing so can lead us to see that we may be the way others perceive us to be. When we do not "get down on ourselves about it" we create an opportunity for growth. Losing and even reducing our fears around personal honesty make it far easier to explore a growth area with less resistance and fear. By doing so we see ourselves a little more clearly making our work on the issue easier.

When someone points the finger at you do not point yours back. This reduces you to their level and robs you of the opportunity to grow through the experience. What others say is a subjective view, based on how they see the world. Of course they could be wrong, have a mistaken interpretation of us or what they are saying may not be what we are working on at that time. This does not mean we should simply discount their opinion or push back with counter claims or negative comments.

People often react to aspects of us we do not notice in ourselves, ones that point out other growth opportunities. There are many reasons we may not see them, such as we do not want to think about it, do not like what we believe will be the consequences of admitting something, we do not like that aspect of ourselves, it runs contrary to our opinion of ourselves or we simply may not be paying enough attention. These reactions are the result of how we have programmed our rational minds.

Remember that we attract what we put out. This means that if we have negativity in us, we will attract it to us. Fortunately, it also means that if we put out for answers life will provide them, though not necessarily in a straightforward way, on the timeline we would like or in the manner we would prefer. If we want to learn and grow we must start to lessen our resistance to facing and dealing with issues and broaden our scope. The increases our ability to noticing the growth opportunities our life presents to us. A less reactive and open mind is a key to helping us grow personally and spiritually.

A note of caution, do not ask for too much honesty at once. Ask for a level of honesty that is manageable. If you ask you just might receive, and unless you are ready for the consequences of a high level of honesty do not ask for it.

How to determine our level of honesty

At first, you may find it challenging to determine your level of honesty. This is natural. We will start with a process to or method of assessing our level of honesty. We will also examine using other aspects of our awareness to help us in working on our honesty in later sections. In the beginning, I would advise you to keep this personal and private. It reduces fears associated with sharing deeply personal information and makes both being honest and the likelihood that one looks within for not just guidance but answers.

To look at our honesty with different people and aspects of ourselves we will use the Degrees of Honesty listed below and assign values to the degrees. This will help you get an idea of how honest you are in the various areas or levels. For example how honest are you about your personal history when you speak to someone at work, perhaps it is higher than when you do not know the person and may never see them again. By cross-referencing levels of honesty with areas by using degrees of honesty, we get a clearer idea of where we have issues with honesty so we can focus on them to find out why. When we know why we tend to be less honest we have a better chance of doing better.

In the Honesty Table relationships are listed as the rows, and areas of honesty as the columns. The values we will place in the table, at the intersection of a row and column is the Degrees of Honesty associated with them. We determine our degree of honesty for each combination of relationship and topic or issue by our answer to the question – “how often I am honest in a particular Area of Honesty based on the Relationship Level I have with the person I’m speaking to?”.

A little later, when you work on your Honesty Table, you will use the values in the below list to represent your Degrees of Honesty. You will notice the highest and lowest values possible, “always” and “never” respectively, come with the qualifier that one is always or never honest without exception. You should only use these values if the qualifier is true, anything else would be dishonest.

Values for Degrees of Honesty:

never (0) * means never ever honest without exception
rarely (1)
on occasion (2)
half the time (3)
usually (4)
nearly always (5)
always (6) * means always honesty without exception

Obviously, when you go through this exercise you need to be as honest as you possibly can. This may sound simple; however, unless you have spent time considering or contemplating your honest you will likely find being honest more challenging than expected. By working on your honesty and doing this exercise periodically, you will discover insights into yourself. You should be mindful when doing the exercise and if you are you will notice that on some points you have to think about what degree of honesty is the right one for a particular area and level or relationship. topic.

When you repeat the exercise you should not look back at previous versions to see what you entered before. You can do so AFTER you complete it. The reason is the value of this exercise is doing it with as much honesty as you can muster at the moment you do it. Before you start it can be helpful to make a note of your emotional and mental and what's going on in your life. as they can affect how you fill in the table.

You will notice that some of the values will change over time. This will help in discerning more about yourself, to know where you are being successful or may have slipped and how your mental and emotional states may have affected your answers and perhaps level of honesty. Doing this helps with discerning what we need to be more mindful of and/or work on.

During the process, make sure you give yourself little pats on the back for progress made and do not chastise yourself for perceived failures. If we are sincerely trying to work on our honesty we should feel good about just doing the exercise. We are who we are and we are where we are and should accept that everyone has challenges of personal honesty whether they are working on it or not. When we are able to make change, have the personal power to do so, we will, not before. One thing is certain if we struggle with honesty in some regard and cannot admit the problem we are significantly handcuffing our efforts to become more honest.

We have touched on how we lose our honesty, that it is during our early childhood that we start to learn the intricacies of lying. When we are being dishonest it's not always because we want or consciously choose to. We lie because experiences teach us it serves us to do so though each of us has our own reasons or justifications for them.

Children quickly learn that adults do not always tell the truth. They may not know what the truth is or even understand it; however, they are often conscious that they are not hearing it. That people lie, often without any consequences, reinforces the notion that lying is acceptable, as is obvious from today’s world. Acceptable does not mean it is good, or right. It means that most people see it as simply another part of the way things work in real life. Our acceptance that some lies are okay programs our rational mind that dishonesty has its place. Each of us will manifest this differently.

There is section of a book I remember, “The Inner Life” by C.W. Leadbeater of the Theosophical Society, where he says that we do what we do out of ignorance; and goes onto say that people who do “wrong” do so out of their own ignorance. We cannot say, “You should know better because you have been told 'its' wrong” because people only do better when they KNOW it is “wrong”. You do not put your hand on a hot stove because you KNOW the consequences, the consequences of our lack of honesty are often much harder to quantify.

We are unlikely to notice the consequences of our lies if no one can prove us “wrong” or if we are not caught by our lies or doing something “wrong”. In life, we may be told that something we do is not right, true, beneficial or correct; however, until we are able to fully understand it and are ready to hear it we are likely to remain ignorant about it. Children struggle with this as their lack the experiences and thoughts to help them process what they are being told often lead to misunderstandings of what they are being told. That it may be obvious to another does not mean it is obvious to use and vice versa.

Our rational mind’s programming goes deep, and over time becomes stronger, more rigid. To change our mental programming we need to be aware that it needs to be changed, have the desire to change it and some idea of how the rational mind works so that we are correcting problems and are not adding more. Being aware of these things help us to take the first steps towards being more honest.

This journey begins with the identification of the problems we need to correct. The Honesty Table will help you to focus your attention on your own level of honesty so you become familiar with the areas where you have challenges. You can learn a great deal about yourself by examining the areas where you struggle with being honesty without judging yourself, more so than those areas where you do not. You will grow stronger every single time you work on an honesty issue even if you are not successful in getting past it right away. Developing our honest is a process, give yourself time to grow.

As I have stated, the primary reasons for lack of honesty is from how our rational mind has learned to react to experiences in the past. We hide behind lies for a variety of reasons such as personal protection, to gain advantage or to keep ourselves from getting hurt without realizing or perhaps by trying to ignore that the hurt from the lie itself is far greater in the long term than the short-term protection we believe it provides. Unfortunately, we humans tend to be short sighted. We feel a certain way now, and try to remove or get away from discomfort, often without proper forethought of the consequences. Quite obviously, there is danger in this beyond the fact that we can forget the truth or we can end up removing one issue but create others.

Do not try to "get fully honest" in one sitting, it is not likely to happen. Simply try to be kind to and a little more honest with yourself each time you go through the exercise and as you go about your life. Sometimes this means working on an area where you feel you can succeed even if the improvement may seem small or insignificant. Be patient with yourself. After all, you do not share this with anyone else so your secrets are safe.

Build on small successes, and do not concern yourself with the honesty of others, as most people have not taken the time to do this and it is not our job to fix them. They continue to lie out of fear and weakness. They do not understand or realize that their confidence, strength and personal power grow by delving into our own personal honesty and truths.

Our "Faces"

Obviously when we lie, we are not presenting our true self to others or to ourselves. Besides the obvious negative impact of lying and the karmic consequences, there are other problems associated with it. We have quite literally different faces for every different level of honesty. We may choose to lie to protect information that we feel is personal and sensitive, information others could use against us or to avoid what we believe to be the negative consequences of telling the truth.

Everyone has been hurt or felt betrayed by others at some point in their lives. This leads to distrust. We can also get our lies mixed up, telling different versions of a "story" to different people. I am sure everyone is aware of the kinds of problems that can arise from doing such things. Studies have shown that the lies we tell ourselves eventually become our truths.

On the other end of the spectrum we can be too honest with others, though this an entirely different challenge. In this case it is a matter of developing the wisdom of knowing when to speak and what to say and as well as when not to speak or remain silent on something.

The consequences of a habitual lie is that, at the conscious level, we no longer know what the truth is. Let us put the significant spiritual issues or karma of lying aside for the moment and simply look at its impact on our lives. At the low end of the scale, dishonesty can be embarrassing or lead to uncomfortable situations, at the upper end, it can have devastating consequences.

We often have a mistaken perception of the consequences of honesty and choose to lie instead. We do this because we tend to train our minds to look more towards risk and avoiding the uncomfortable than the rewards of being honest.

By risks I am referring to outcomes that we find negative such as punishment, that people might not like what I say, it will just blow up into a big messy situation or will cost us in some fashion and so on. The result is that our lives can become a mountain of lies, and the fear of the consequences of telling the truth can appear even more devastating than the actual consequences themselves.

The best path is to tell the truth, and examine not just our intent but our issues with doing so when feel you cannot or should not tell the truth. If we do tell the truth we never have to get our story straight or worry about someone or something exposing the lie. This also applies to “little white lies”. The reason most often given for these lies is to protect someone from words that might hurt them. However, part of the reason is also to enjoy the side benefit of our not having to deal with the reality at that moment. Silence is better than speaking untruths. It helps to remember that by working on our honesty and daring to learn why we are not we are reshaping the way our rational mind works in a highly beneficial way.

The Honesty Table: Improving Your Honesty Level

Being as honesty is is simply of vital importance for anyone working on personal or spiritual growth. It is something we should always try to do and we should set our sights on this high rather than low. I say this though it can also be true that learning to be completely honest has its price, relatively speaking. The price we may have to pay can be in terms of relationships, friendships, family or even our job, though in many cases the fears we have over the consequences of being honest are misplaced.

There are a great many more people who live by their untruths than not. Do not concern yourself with what others are doing or not doing. Realize there are often unspoken rules about the truth, ones set up by people who have a stake in maintaining their walls and barriers. Adjustments to your honesty level will affect your relationships with these types of people the most.

By working on our honesty we are relearning to live in truth. It is not a simple task; in fact, it is one of the hardest. Our honesty has a history. For every area where were are not there is a birthplace and time and other experiences that reinforced or changed it. We do not become dishonest overnight. It's roots lie in the past, often completely forgotten, making it almost invariably true that we will encounter old mental and emotional walls and a maze of other contributing factors as we work on it. The maze is the result of how entangled our thoughts, beliefs and lies become.

It is exceedingly rare that a lie stands alone. Typically, they develop webs of dependencies on each other. We all know, or most of us do, how one lie can lead to another. What makes working on our honesty a real challenge is the walls can be very tall, and the maze daunting. To move forward we almost invariably have to go at them from a number of directions. Working on our honesty is a core element of our growth, but not the only one. We will look at others that assist us in finding ways to grow past our barriers.

There are other challenges in working on our honesty. For example, we can come across situations where we may feel that we are being honest; however, others are misinterpreting us. This can have us "playing with the truth" to make it more palatable. Another is we need to be mindful of not misleading someone, or allowing untruths to stand. Inferring or knowingly leaving an untruth to stand is being dishonest though these can be hard to notice. There is no excuse for partial truths save our own ignorance. Saying this does not mean we should beat up on ourselves when we struggle with our honest. See such events as learning opportunities and try to discern why instead.

Honesty is difficult to achieve. When we get angry, hurt or scared we often say things we do not mean, exaggerate or lie to protect our feelings or hold onto something. None of these justify lying. See your reasons as something to understand, something you can change rather than rely on excuses. The impetus is on each of us to work to become more honest, not as an end in itself, rather as part of the process of growing. We are better able to admit our frailties and our own problems when we have accepted them as truths about ourselves. We cannot deal with or change ourselves until we do.

Being honest - A Process to Review Thoughts and Change Them

Level of Spiritual Awareness related to honesty and personal responsibility

Last Updated October 22, 2021