Honest about honesty

The keyword for being honest is truth, because the truth will show how honest we are really being, so an honest person has a vested interest in always seeking the truth, even if uncomfortable.

In a way, it is selfishness that is the real threat, as the others, in themselves, may be appropriate in many circumstances, but having them for selfish reasons gives rise to difficulties, such as preventing beneficial changes in attitudes, outlook or actions.

Fear can be a paralysing emotion, so is sometimes difficult to push through until really ready to. The start is being willing to move towards the truth that underlies the fear, as that enables being able to do something about the causes of the fear.

Some see showing vulnerability as being honest, but it is not if it is used just to gain sympathy or trust. It is not required to be honest, unless not acknowledging it stands in the way of our own healing.

Forgiveness of ourselves or others is needed to be able to move on. We don't have to trust someone – there may be justification for our wariness – but just move on from focussing on them as being an impediment to our own growth and sense of worth.

Honesty is about following the truth, and letting the truth set us free.

Honesty in the personality can bring a certain degree of contentment and relief, but the personality is not all of us.

Honesty in the personality can bring a sense of freedom: from the worries that may have plagued our thoughts and hobbled our ability to face our fears; from the fears that have made us feel powerless to change our lives and ourselves; from the shame of feeling unworthy of love. Yes, those can give a sense of escape from the shackles of the past and trepidations about the future, but where do we go from there?

Any step from here that just involves more indulgence of the personality will just lead us to more of what we have been glad to be rid of. The only meaningful path from here is up, in the sense of expanding our consciousness to encompass more of our higher self, from which we have been hiding in our justification for personality indulgence.

Avoiding our higher self has enabled us to be deluded that life is all our own choice and that we answer to no one. We may feel brave having come to terms with debilitating parts of our personality, but now we have to face that part of our self that has been defining our personality and what it has faced.

We may have come to terms with the actions we have taken in the past and learnt much about why we made those decisions that had brought about our arrogance and those that brought about our humbling, but we have yet to fully reckon with the full extent of our past and the full vision of who we can be in the future.

We have lived many lives, and in our present life we may have learnt how to conquer those aspects of personality life that led us to create problems for ourselves and others in past lives and this one. We may even have learnt how to give of some of the wisdom that that learning and experiencing has brought us. But that has not really prepared us for facing the immensity of our past and opportunities of the future that facing and embracing the higher self brings.

Facing the higher self – that has given us the personalities of the past and now and defined the circumstances of those lives – is to face how our personalities are but a part of a greater learning cycle of creation leading our higher self to becomes a master of creation at its own level. But is yet a part of never-ending levels of greater cycles with ever-widening scopes of creation. No wonder we, as personalities, like to close our eyes to that wider sphere and settle into a smug delusion of our own importance.

Now, all this may make it seem like we are unimportant, and just some plaything in the aggrandisement of a being that we seem to have little understanding of, especially since it seems to be ok with our suffering as we stumble around in ignorance of our real part in the story of a creation unfolding. To a certain extent this is true, but only because that judgement is from the level of the personality.

All along the way, we have been given free will, and have mostly chosen to create suffering for others and ourselves, even though the consequences of such actions have always been obvious because we have seen and felt the pain of what we have created, but told ourselves that we were justified in those actions. We have created the cycle of suffering and ignorance by our choices to not acknowledge our complicity.

In this life where we have come to terms with some of our choices, we have earned the right to learn to cooperate with that part of our self that has felt the pain of our self-inflicted suffering, steered us towards its wisdom while we have viciously fought it, and yet still shines its light in our consciousness in an effort for us to see that we can break the bonds of our ignorance. Do we make that choice to cooperate?

Unfortunately, many so-called spiritual people have given us the impression that we have to learn to torture and deny our personalities for that right to end our suffering.

That is rather sick, and is just more personalities continuing to inflict pain under the delusion that it brings enlightenment. Enlightenment is not a rendering apart of the flesh to expose the light of our higher self, but that that higher self has always been in our flesh and does not need the gory sacrifice of it to be revealed.

Enlightenment comes by living the personality life with acknowledgement of our part in learning how to create, and giving and allowing others the opportunity to do the same. It is living with respect for ourselves, others and the planet, which is a living being that has given us this great opportunity. The more we cooperate consciously with the flow of creation and foster it within ourselves, but without selfishness and suffering, the more we will grow and come to know our higher selves better.

We now have so much knowledge that our consciousnesses are drowning in it because we don't properly choose between what is good for us and what is detrimental. That is where discrimination comes in, for without it we allow ourselves to be deluded that knowledge is freedom and power, and blind ourselves to suffering. That ability to discriminate leads to wisdom because we make better choices leading to clearly seeing what the consequences of our actions are before we are stuck with the tormenting replays we have tended to put ourselves through.

Enlightenment is not magic, at least not of the glamourous sort that bedazzles the personality, but that which reveals itself as a glow that permeates all levels of our being as we let it flow out from us. It will not happen quickly, and it will not be fought over, but just happen as we go about our lives studying life and learning to create.

We don't need to prove our creative prowess by building great physical monuments, as we can learn just as much by doing the same at a much less exploitative level. Those great monuments have always been created through the exploitation of the oppressed and have left in their wake great poverty. This is not wisdom nor enlightenment, because if all are not part of it, we have gained nothing but suffering and destruction, and no one escapes that.

Worldwide communications have presented us with a mirror to ourselves, and we can either be entranced by its plethora of glamours, or see the reality of the world and together face the challenges of bringing the planet back from destroying us, and the world population back from mass suffering. The more we let our inner light out, by giving it preference over our addictions, the more the world and us will shift towards a balance that lets all prosper at a level that allows us all some luxury and peace to pursue our own creative abilities. Then we will truly live in an age of enlightenment.