Honesty Above All Else – Understanding Honesty
Previous Posts in this series:
Honesty Above All Else – Introduction
In the first post of this series, we developed awareness of transparency and honesty, now we will take a look at where our drive to be dishonest comes from and also try a practical exercise to experience the feeling of being honest.
How does it work?
This tool is an applied version of the Speak Sincerely principle.
The key to remember is that you cannot give what you have not got, so the practice of honesty and transparency needs to start first in our internal world before we can then cultivate this virtue in our external interactions.
Let’s start by taking a look at what honesty is not…
The Root of It
Dishonesty stems from not wanting to accept the truth of reality as it is. This lack of acceptance drives us to fabricate a reality that aligns with how we think things should be; not what is.
Instead of flowing with the river of life, we are grabbing hold of rocks and resisting the current, or even worse we are using rocks to build little dams around the edges in a bid to cultivate a small lake of stillness away from the main flow of the river. We are trying to convince ourselves the reality is a lake when it is in fact a river.
If we do not accept and work with the flow, we promote turbulence in our life.
This may be about not wanting to accept the truth of traumatic events we have experienced in our past, or about not wanting to accept the truth of who we are as a person; by this I mean the realities of our behaviours or our physical/psychological abilities.
While the mechanisms of dishonesty are similar in both cases, I am not professing that people with PTSD need to just get over it. People in this circumstance would be best seeking the advice of a trained mental health professional who specialises in providing support in this area. This tool is aimed at people who are choosing not to face in to their own personal truth of who they are.
So, bringing in to focus who this tool is aimed at, now let’s explore what honesty is…
Feeling Honesty in Action
This is a little practical exercise for you to connect with the inner sensation of practicing honesty. You just need a few minutes sat in a quiet space…
Sit either on a chair or cross legged on the floor.
Establish a relaxed, yet upright posture and take five slow deep breaths to the count of four on the inhale, hold for four, and exhale for four; then allow your breathing to return to normal.
Now focus on your left hand and wiggle a finger. Feel the finger wiggling with no other thought…
Now take that thought and slowly transfer it through your body to your right hand and wiggle a finger…
How does this feel?
Now wiggle both fingers at the same time.
How does this feel?
This is what it feels like to communicate with honesty.
When you practice authentic honesty and transparency you resonate with the Oneself. The Oneself is both the left and the right hand.
If you are honest with yourself, it is a feeling that you already know and have just unlearned how to connect with.
So now we have experienced what honesty feels like, lets look at some tips and insights to cultivate this feeling more…
What’s Next?
Now we have felt what it is like to be honest, and we have begun to understand where our drive to be dishonest comes from, it is time to take a deeper look at how we can diminish the drive to be dishonest
Enjoy, for now.