Virtue 1: Honesty
Note: This is part 1 of a 4 part series, not including the introduction and conclusion. The introduction is titled Peaceful Virtues, and has links to the rest of the articles in the series.
I said in the introduction to this series that Honesty forms the foundation of peace.
The reason why is simple: Honesty is the connection to reality. It is the only means that we can use to change ourselves and change the world.
Now, some people may ask, “Aren’t we already living in reality?”
Well, of course, yes we’re living in reality. At least, our bodies are. Our consciousness, however, doesn’t touch reality directly. Our thoughts can not smell a rose, or climb a tree. Our ideas can not write a program or get a promotion. Only our bodies can do these things, under the guidance of our minds.
I can imagine writing a program, but unless I guide my body to take action, the program never gets written. I can imagine the smell of a flower, but if my nose had never smelled a flower before, how can I know what one smells like?
The very essence of our thoughts lie just outside of objective reality. Every physical experience must be translated from the objective world into the subjective world before it can enter our conscious awareness. Every thought must be translated into physical action, whether it be moving muscles or pushing air past our vocal cords and tongue. Without this translation into action, none of our thoughts will manifest in the objective world.
Because our consciousness is separate from the objective world, we have the ability to experience things that aren’t real. This is great, because it lets us plan and remember, but if our consciousness is focused on the ideas that don’t match with the objective world, our actions will have little effect.
Paradigms, Pair o’ Dimes
Our lower-level neurons are wonderful at filtering out our environment, giving us the information that is the most useful. The problem is that we’re not born knowing what is useful information in today’s world. When you’re reading this, you see words on the screen, and your thoughts turn to the audio version of those words, so you can ‘hear’ without hearing… This is an example of certain neurons being trained to tease out useful information from your environment, and it happens very automatically. Nobody was born with this ability, it had to be learned.
What about the recent stock market turbulence? For most people, the turbulence says that investing in the stock market is unsafe… there is simply too much risk. It tells me, however, that the stock market is having a sale and it is prime time to jump in. The only reason why I think that it is time to buy is because I have changed the filter that processes information about the stock market. My paradigm is different, and it has been changed by a conscious decision.
This is one key to honesty. You must look at the world as it is, then change your paradigms to match. If we turned things around, looking at the world through our paradigms first, then deciding how the world really is, then we only reinforce the paradigm, no matter how close to objective reality that paradigm is. The Law of Attraction is a wonderful example of reinforcing a paradigm this way, especially because we are told to look first through the paradigm of Intention-Manifestation to see if that paradigm is good.
The Law of Attraction is not a bad paradigm, in my opinion… I simply see it as incomplete. If you believe that the world is flat, and you never needed to navigate far enough for the curvature of the Earth to matter, then your paradigm works, and works wonderfully. If you wanted to fly across the Pacific, though, you’ll find that the curvature of the Earth matters a great deal, especially when it comes to minimizing fuel costs, if you can even find your destination.
The Law of Attraction is part of the Placebo Effect. Unfortunately, it looses its power when viewed that way, because placebos require the subject to believe that the power/drug/law/solution is real. Fortunately, if you have been working under a placebo, you can look at the reality of your situation and realize that you don’t need the placebo in order to achieve the same results… You have already been succeeding on your own, and the training wheels were only there for looks.
Being Honest
First, to be honest, you must be honest with yourself. Doing this takes time and practice, and requires stripping away both pride and humility, if only while you’re exploring reality.
What prompted me to start taking an honest look at myself was when I noticed my pride getting in my way. As I’ve noted in a previous post, my pride prevented me from sharing what I viewed as failures, which limited the help that I could both give and receive through this site. I had tried to quit smoking, posted about it, and made it two weeks before returning to the cigarettes. Because I was prideful about quitting, I wouldn’t admit that I had started smoking again. Looking back, if I had kept my pride, I wouldn’t be able to relate my story of quitting smoking and the insight that it gave me about people’s expectations.
On the same hand, humility can be just as limiting as false pride. I am good at writing software (I’m not the greatest out there, of course), but for a very long time, I hid my talents simply because I wasn’t the best. This kept me from taking chances and trying new things. Looking back, I believe that taking chances is one of the best educational tools I have.
Neither pride nor humility are honesty. They are versions of our perceptions. Neither are empowering and neither give us peace. False humility can help us in our relations with others, if we’re unwilling to show them our true self. False pride can open some opportunities to continue to challenge ourselves… yet the problem comes when we have to continue to live outside of reality, and we have to limit ourselves to fit within our stated humility or we have to continue to create deceptions to prevent the true nature of our pride from showing through.
These are easy to see, when we’re being humble or prideful to someone else, but what about ourselves? Can we tell when the only thing holding us back from success is our own humility? Or, more likely, do we continue to use external excuses to explain why we don’t challenge ourselves and grow internally? Can we tell when our pride is keeping us from seeing the reality of the situation? Or, more likely, do we continue to blame poor luck and terrible circumstances for why we can’t perform beyond our abilities?
How to be Honest with Ourselves
This creates a question: How can we be honest with ourselves?
We can’t, unfortunately, simply step outside of our paradigms and examine reality as it truly is… Our minds are built upon several layers of nerves and different filtering systems that are essential to gain the most basic understanding of the world. No matter how flawed our view of reality might be, if we did not have paradigms, we would not have any connection to reality to begin with, and would never be able to examine reality. We will simply never have access to reality in the raw, because our consciousness doesn’t exist within the objective universe.
What we can do, instead, is look at the filters that we have in place, and ask ourselves if there is any other way to look at the world. This is a very slow process that is both methodical and intuitive, just as most discoveries about the nature of reality are. Sir Isaac Newton revolutionized physics by asking why objects fall towards the ground, which was started off by a sudden burst of inspiration followed by methodical measuring and several more sudden bursts of inspiration. The bursts of intuition were built upon the methodical observations, and these observations led to more bursts of inspiration.
First, most importantly, we need to be alright with proving ourselves wrong. I have taken on a new saying: I don’t care if I’m right today, as long as I’m right tomorrow. Being honest with yourself means accepting that the beliefs you hold right now might not match up with reality, and it is the process of moving closer to the reality of the situation which is important, not starting out being close to reality.
Just as a board game where everybody begins at the last square is not one worth playing, if we were born knowing the truth about reality, there would be no way to improve ourselves. Looking at what I have learned already, as well as at the questions left unanswered, I don’t think that I will ever learn all that there is to learn… yet it is the process of moving forward which provides the most joy and which gives me the greatest sense of peace.
Question of the Day
Alright, I want honest answers from everyone. What is your primary purpose in life, and what virtue makes up its foundation?
And, since I haven’t said it for a long while, I’ll repeat my chosen purpose: “To bring peace to everybody.”
Link Love
I’ve already featured him, but Albert of Urban Monk has written a very thought-provoking article that touches on my latest rounds of philosophical musings. While his article may be more appropriate for next Wednesday’s post on Awareness, a huge part of me is impatient, and I want to share what he has written right now. In his latest article, The Beauty of Impermanency and the Illusion of the Ego, Albert cuts to the core of philosophy, asking where the ego and consciousness reside… It is the same question that I am struggling with right now, especially after writing about how an artificial consciousness could be possible with today’s technology.
Yes, indeed honesty is the best policy!
Very nice article.