Radical Self Honesty.
So often we are deceiving ourselves. We fool ourselves to the point that we believe our own lies, we believe ourselves to be somewhere where we are not. We are so, so skilled at this that we not only convince others but we convince ourselves and end up living in dilusion.
We hide things from ourselves because its not convenient to admit the truth. Maybe we have a image to uphold, whether it be in buisness or to those who love us, so we lie to ourselves and live in this image simply to avoid being exactly where we are, as we are.
It takes courage, and a certain level of maturity to start being honest with ourselves about where we are, and we may be in very different places in different circumstances. Whether it be where we are spiritually, emotionally, mentally or circumstantially.
Unless we learn to be radically honest with ourselves we will never grow or evolve. We have to learn to be our own authority and not rely on the teachings, the principles or the beliefs of others. We have to learn to and investigate our own experience and not blindly trust the experience of others no matter how highly we hold them.
It took me a long time to learn this, and its still an ongoing process to be able to fully trust my own process. It took many years of suffering, of self deception, of pain and anguish to get to a point where I started to begin to follow my own instinct, my own inner guidance.
As long as we are fooling ourselves we will continue to go in circles, spinning our wheels in a state of stagnation until it gets painful enough and we eventually have no choice but to be honest and to let go of whatever ways we are deceiving ourselves.
When we learn to be our own authority, we start to become more fully human. Instead of repeating what others have taught us, what we learnt in school, from different teachers, sponsors or from our parents we end up being our own teaching. Our lives, and our insights, become our teaching and teacher. Other wise we are just regurgitating what we have heard, which ends up having no authenticity.
This doesn't mean we don't accept support from others, it doesn't mean we don't reach out when we feel we need help with something, or that we don't voice it when we are experiencing different levels of anguish. It simply means that we don't look to others for salvation, we know nothing outside of us can offer us salvation. We become a light unto ourselves, our own process, our own fire, our own life becomes our teacher. We become an authentic expression of what it means to be a human being.
Peace,
Matt Nettleton
www.mattnettleton.com