Have you ever had one of those situations where you are really perplexed whether or not you should tell the truth? I think everyone has those times when you want to tell someone the truth and wonder if it is the best course of action. Especially when there is no real payoff or if the consequences of telling the truth can alter a relationship inexorably.
One of the absolute best discussions, and greatest insights into the price you pay both physically and spiritually, for not telling the truth was shown in the October 13, 2011 episode of Oprah's Lifeclass where her guest speaker was Martha Beck. The discussion was titled: The Truth Will Set You Free. I've provided the link below if you would like to watch the show; well worth your time.
http://www.oprah.com/oprahs-lifeclass/Oprahs-Lifeclass-Complete-Webcast-with-Martha-Beck-Video
In that Lifeclass, Martha Beck describes a near death experience she had while under anesthesia for an operation. The after effects of which opened her awareness to the toll it takes on your happiness and well-being to withhold the truth. The enormous love and bliss she felt during her near death experience impacted her so deeply that when she "came back", she wanted to do everything possible to live her life recreating that feeling. She quickly realized whenever she wasn't completely honest, whenever she told even the smallest white lie, it totally depleted the blissful feeling she had carried with her from the experience. She made a pledge. "For a whole year, I'm not going to tell a single lie of any kind." Martha said. As you might imagine, her whole world changed. She lost a great number of people who she thought were friends, her family disassociated themselves from her, she quit her job and totally quit her profession. A total, blissfully life-shattering transformational overhaul of her entire life ensued. Martha illustrated during the show just how your body hates telling a lie by doing kinesiology test on Oprah and asking her questions about a recent statement she had made about hating exercise. She was able to prove that Oprah did not really feel that way about all forms of exercise, just the ones she was doing. Martha also spoke about the physical effects that take place in the brain and in our body chemistry when we try to tell a lie, or withhold the truth. All of which, made me think about what kind of bad body chemistry have I been brewing and what types of ill-formed neural pathways am I creating when I try to tell any type of lie. I began making it a point to begin being more truthful. As Maya Angelou puts it: "Once we know better, we do better." A wonderfully insightful statement, but the bigger question is: When we know better, we do better...but do we tell?
Once I started to examine my own life though the lens of Martha's near-death experience, I also started to notice the discomfort and the physical sensations in my body when I wasn't being completely truthful. Now please bear in mind, I went through eight years of Catholic School, I'm not so good at telling lies, even little white ones. So, this discussion is more about self-editing, inauthenticity, withholding and the telling of little white lies. To me, these types of non-truths are what most people practice in their daily lives without a second thought. Withholding or telling a little white lie is supposed to be one of the social graces. But is it really? And then there's the whoppers. The really, really big lies that hide our true identity or preferences, or past actions. We'll leave a discussion around the really big lies for another post. As Martha says: "Your soul will tell you when it's time to tell a bigger truth and take the jump." For now, let's begin with changing the baby steps. Once done, we build up much more courage to handle the bigger stuff.
I began a similar path of more authentic truth telling because I am horrible at telling lies. I stutter and stammer and exude falseness. I am much more in touch with all kinds of physical sensations that bubble up when I am inauthentic. It is indeed becoming a much greater strain to withhold the truth, or to censor what I need to say to some one. Distressfully at times, it has led to verbal diarrhea when sharing the truth with my loved ones; it can be much more honesty than they can handle. God Bless my husband because he endures the deepest darkest truths of my soul and holds them in his tender care with chivalry and honor. I have indeed lost some friendships by telling the truth. I have discontinued relationships intentionally because I could no longer bear to feign affection. I've even had to distance myself from some family members. And I most certainly will subconsciously or consciously self-sabotage my way out of doing work that I hate - especially cleaning out my garage.
What was illustrated so brilliantly by Martha Beck's experience is that when we are inauthentic, when we withhold the truth, or when we are not fully expressing who we are, we aren't really having a relationship with anyone because no one is being shown the truest version of ourselves. We are presenting in those situations a false identity, the counterfeit character we've created of who we really are. My determination to be more authentic is what started my blog. I was feeling very hurt, confused and angry at some of the inauthenticity I was viewing from the people who claim to be the Lightworker set. I simply couldn't handle drinking the KoolAid and pretending that life was all love, light, rainbows and unicorns. Sounds more like that maxi-pad commercial than reality. I don't think there is any shame or dishonor in openly admitting that we may not have all the answers and may not always be following the guru laden path.
What struck me so strongly when watching the Lifeclass was what viewers were posting on the Facebook and Twitter feeds: that most people are pretending to be happy. Isn't that sad? Most people are just putting on a false face so that no one knows just how unhappy, hurt, struggling, frustrated, bereft, and bankrupt they truly are. When my husband was laid off due to the economy for the third time since 2008, holding it all in became unbearable. I wanted to scream and stomp my feet and fully express just how rotten the deck had been dealt. What a revelation it was to witness the reactions from friends true and not when I opened the raincoat and flashed even the smallest vulnerability. Our authentic and honest discomfort makes others withdraw because the realness and rawness of it scares them to death. Some people will jump in with both feet and shoulder some of that pain along with you and make beautiful efforts on your behalf to help you through. However, as lay-offs have the tendency to go on and on nowadays, never allow the pain to be protracted for too long because only very few can handle the burden; at that point it's better to pay someone to dry your tears. Given our financial circumstances, I've had no where to go with these continued emotions, therapy is simply unaffordable. So I've taken fingers to keyboard and let it all spill out ugly and raw and diseased as it is. The result is that I feel relieved. I have no idea if anyone reads what I write or even cares. But it's out now. I'm no longer swallowing down the vomit of inauthenticity and trying to pretend to be someone I'm not. It is absolutely liberating! It's my very own personal version of bra burning for the psyche. Not fully engaging in who I am creates a choice to be less than who I am and if that threatens anyone or makes them uncomfortable, "c'est la vie". Which reminds me of a quote by Ghandi: "Many people, especially ignorant people want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct or for being years ahead of your time. If you're right, and you know it, speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth."
So that leads to a discussion about how to tell the truth to someone else. It is quite simple, you do it with as much love and integrity as possible. There are quotes that say "It's better to be kind than to be right." Why is it assumed these ideologies are mutually exclusive? Or, that being "right" is an affront to the essence of truth? And once you share that truth with another, you cannot control anything beyond that; you have to give it away and hope that the wisdom of it will seep into some small crack and allow for that person's self-realization to develop into awareness and then eventually admitting the truth to themselves. That's the thing about truth, it will follow you everywhere and it will catch up with you no matter how fast you try to run away or how defiantly you try to turn away from truth's reflection. It will be hard to live out the ramifications of telling the truth, but ultimately, the reaction of the recipient is their responsibility. You can only do your part in trying to bring the dark to light and to be of service.
