honesty

Honesty

Albert Einstein said:

The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking.

Man in his human condition lives from a side of himself that we sometimes call personality, the ego, it has many names, and in that side of ourselves we do not represent ourselves. We misrepresent ourselves. But our super-consciousness, I AM, that God has placed in us from the beginning, is having a very difficult time getting us to properly represent ourselves. Remember Jesus said that we will do greater things than he did? Well, while his disciples did perform miracles, for the vast majority of us, sorry, not yet.

You see, man is a spiritual being who has fallen away from the awareness of his true identity and he believes many things about himself that are not true. For example, he sees himself as a limited human physical being and he sees his fellow man as even more limited than he himself. Both of what he believes about himself is either completely untrue or at the very best only partially true.

Now a righteous man in the scriptures is one who uses his mind correctly. And an evil man, or a sinful man, is one who falls short of the correct use of his thinking mechanism. The word sin, as a matter of fact, is an Anglo-Saxon word used in ancient archery, meaning to miss the mark, to fall short. And have we not done that? This is the reason that (so far) we have fallen short of what Jesus predicted we would do.

So can you see that man not knowing what he is or who he is has taken the creative machinery of mind and through the wrong use, the misapplication of his vast powers has misshaped himself and his world, and he has created a fantasy world both within himself and without himself. Now, if this fantasy world be unreality, if that’s the unreality that we have experienced, then somewhere we must find our way back to reality, to what is real and eternal and permanent.

We have to stop letting anything else be in us except our spiritual condition. Choose ye this day whom you will serve. If our old way of thinking has been the problem, then to continue thinking in that way is not going to provide the solution. To continue to seek answers in the manner that we have sought answers with the people with whom we have sought answers is merely the blind leading the blind and we all fall into the ditch.

If the one who has discovered that he of himself has no power, of his own personality, that his personality, that outer shell or self of him, can do nothing, then something can begin to happen. As long as there remains in us one last shred of hope that some external thing is going to fix us then we are not going to get where we want to go. As a matter of fact, we won’t get there until we can admit a clearly defined personal need based on this first movement of consciousness, of our awareness that we need help. We need to ask God for help; the I AM of us.

Help for what? Help to make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, and an honest examination of our minds. And at first glance, this may appear to be just too easy, or just plain unnecessary. But let me assure you that this is not the case. The most difficult action that the human mind can take is to examine itself. This is difficult so that only a small percentage ever fully achieve it, and therefore only a few people ever experience dramatic spiritual experiences. For example, Matthew 5:8 states:

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” This suggests that a clean, honest heart, achieved through self-examination and a focus on God, is necessary to encounter Him.

Now why is it so difficult to see ourselves and to get honest with ourselves? This should be easy or simple, one would think. Primarily it’s because man still lives from the lowest part of himself, one, his instinctive nature, and two, his intellectual mind. Now the instincts are great, and creation gave them to us for a purpose, and without them we simply would not be complete beings at all.

And yet these instincts that are so necessary for our existence have often far exceeded their proper functions.

And so here we are about to start to take a journey inside ourselves that we call a searching and fearless personal inventory. It’s an examination of one’s inside, and it takes guts to do it. As a matter of fact, any business which does not take a regular inventory of itself usually goes broke. An inventory is a fact-finding and fact-facing process. It’s an effort of an individual or an organization to discover the truth about its assets and about its liabilities. Now if the owner is to be successful, he must be honest with himself, he cannot fool himself about what’s right or wrong. He better find out what his friends and his customers already know and make the necessary adjustments.

If we’re to grow along spiritual lines, we must do what any successful business must do. If we get our in here fixed, out there will take care of itself, because out there is an expression of what exists in here, inside yourself, in your own mind, in this creative mechanism that you are constantly putting into action.

You see, our problems all originate in the changing side of ourselves that we call personality. And man is almost completely identified with this limited and limiting side of himself that must be recognized, denied, or separated from, because this side of us can never know God. We will never have a spiritual peak experience this way. Only our I AM can have a peak experience.

So, we need to find all situations that have caused anxiety, bitterness, frustration, depression, anger, all of the negatives that have brought us down into something less than our spiritual identity since childhood and coming into the present moment. We’re talking about taking an inventory of the events and of the reactions that have shaped your world and of your life, and of beginning to see the patterns that are there.

In this inventory, it’s wise to write out questions and answers that will help to give us an aid to clear thinking and honest appraisal. Keep in mind that the most common symptoms of emotional insecurity are worry, anger, self-pity, and depression. And consider carefully in your inventory all relationships which bring recurring trouble of this kind. And it should be remembered that this kind of insecurity always arises in any area where instincts are threatened.

Before I list some questions, a side note that I think anger is sometimes the result of grief. First someone harms us and at first, we are hurt, then we get angry and want revenge. C.S. Lewis, British writer, scholar, and theologian who is considered one of the most influential Christian authors of the 20th century, said:

I sat with my anger long enough until she told me her real name was grief.

Here are just some question ideas, you should add absolutely change or add your own and write down your responses.

What was my reaction to the discovery of my sex, whether male or female, was it false excitement, curiosity, unrestrained sensual imagination?
How have I reacted to the behavior pattern of others?
Why do I lack the ability to accept conditions I cannot change?
Do I adjust myself serenely to self-discipline?
If I’m unable to change the present state of affairs, am I willing to take the measures necessary to shape my life to conditions as they are?
When we come up to the present moment, ask yourself, what are my fears?
Why am I afraid?
Am I a good friend, a good employee, a good spouse, really?
How do you feel about your marriage, really?
Really down deep inside yourself where it really counts, how do you feel about your life, about your job?
Are you easy to live with or work with?
Would you hire you?
Why not?
Why wouldn’t you hire you?
What are the habit patterns that are continuing to cause you something less than success in your life?
Begin to observe yourself as you would observe another person. Are you honest?
Do you ever lie? Why?
Do you live in a fantasy world?
Do you live in a continued state of hopelessness that you have not been able to admit even to yourself, that you cover up, you lie about, deep down inside yourself in the center of your gut?
Do you believe that your life is over, finished, done?
What’s really going on in your mind?
What do you believe about God?
What do you believe about tomorrow?

For example, I know of a lady that, after completing this inventory, said “she really got honest with herself and recognized the fact that she had expected all financial matters to always be a struggle. She always believed that one must struggle to earn a living. She said that’s the way it’s been all of my life. It’s been that way until today.”

As for me, I learned that I had convinced myself that happiness was not in the cards for me, that life would always be hard like it had always been. I was jealous of others that I thought had drawn a better life card. But I came to realize that by working through my issues, and succeeding, had endowed me with a substantial set of unique skills. I came to understand that I wouldn’t trade my life for anyone’s.

Honesty