Honesty
I was struck by this quote:
“Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people.”
My journey to honesty and truth has been a long and difficult one. When I first realized that I was telling lies to myself and others was while living at a Buddhist Retreat Center in the middle 90’s. The lies were subtle, insidious. Saying little things to myself and others that I didn’t feel meant anything. Such as saying I liked something when I didn’t. Saying I cared about someone when I didn’t. Saying I wasn’t angry when I was. Not allowing myself to feel hatred for someone who had done something unkind to me. At the time I was trying to go the Buddhist path of not being unkind to others, which was fine, but I soon realized that I had to be honest with myself on what was really going on, and then there would be the possibility to be kind to others. If I had all of this what I call stuff going on inside me, and I wasn’t paying attention, all I would do was act out and never get to be honest and truthful with myself and others.
At the time I felt guilty if I had these hateful feelings towards someone and somehow I didn’t find any solace in the practices in Buddhism to allow me to deal with these feelings. Just when I thought I was being honest, I realized I had not been honest. I am not saying I was dishonest all of the time because I wasn’t. It just took a lot of deep, deep inner work to want to be truthful and honest with myself and others. At this point, I have found this opportunity in this spiritual community I have been part of for almost 3 years “Diamond Heart.” Being in this community, I have realized my commitment to the truth no matter what.
When a friend, lover, stranger, family member is talking to me and I know they are lying to themselves and to me, it is very painful. Yes, sometimes I can say something and other times I just have to allow the person to find their own way in their own time, but it still doesn’t take away the pain that I feel.
On this path of honesty and the truth, I am coming to terms with feeling the aloneness that comes along with it. Over the past year, I have had the loss of a great many friends, mainly because our time together the way it was had come to an end. So I am in this aloneness of all of the losses, but also there is a great deal of love that I will always feel for these people who have graced my life.
Tags: authentic, honesty, morning coffee, publicist nyc, publicity nyc, relationship, self-help, Sherri Rosen Publicity, sherri rosen publicity nyc, spirituality, truthfulness, women
This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 19th, 2010 at 7:53 am and is filed under Friends and Colleagues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
