One-year-old James is crying, turning to look at three-year-old Katie who is holding a yellow plastic spoon. Daddy asks, “Katie, did you hit James?” Katie replies, “Yes Katie hit James,” as she waves the plastic spoon enthusiastically. That kind of honesty is almost funny, but very soon Katie will learn that in order to get what she wants or avoid what she doesn’t want, she must lie.
We all do it. Like it or not, everyone lies to some extent. In the past few years, I have been practising honesty and authenticity, and it’s been hard. My stumbling block now is that I still avoid having difficult conversations and I’d rather let something go than be honest how I feel about it. The fear of rejection is imbedded in every human, right back from when being rejected would mean being kicked out of the tribe and certain death by a saber toothed cat.
They say there are only two kinds of fear, not getting what we want and losing what we have, so you can understand where the need to manipulate to get our needs met comes from. That is my defence on the part of the liar. However, my pet hates are being taken for a fool and when someone lies they take your choices away to make a decision with all of the facts.
We live in a time when we have access to more facts than ever before. Often, if I go and see the doctor, I have more information about my condition than the doctor. I have read up and learnt everything there is to know about one thing; the doctor is expected to be an expert in everything, which frankly isn’t possible. The same goes for buying a car, I might know more about one kind of car than the used car sales man standing on a lot of twenty different cars. Power to know is now with the people, thanks to the Internet. However in this time of information overload, how can you discern which details are correct?
For scary information I use my gut. If something is wrong with the information I am given, I feel it in my tummy. This might be a sick feeling, a tight feeling or even the need to take a pee.
If something is right I feel an excited feeling coming from my heart and a serge to move forward. Now, of course, falling in love can feel like this, and if you have ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn’t have fallen in love with, you might not trust this form of intuition. In addition, if you are a naturally nervous person your gut will be warning you about everything outside of your comfort zone.
We are stepping into an era when we need to become more honest than ever before. As our consciousness starts to shift you will find more news stories where transparency is being called for. Whenever there is a lie, chaos will soon follow. We used to see this as Karma, which often would take some time to come round. But now, you lie, deceive or not be your fully authentic self, and you’ll find that your life becomes chaos very quickly after. Whereas, if you know yourself, know your values and are true to your word, life will be so much easier.
