Honesty is the best policy is a foundational piece of every relationship that is largely misunderstood. Honesty as the foundation of you as an individual, creates a structure of empowerment in which you and everyone in your life benefits. Many people think honesty is telling the truth about an action taken within a circumstance. This is an aspect of honesty at best. To have a comprehensive discussion about honesty as a significant foundational part of life, discussing the difference between truth and honesty must take place first.
For the purpose of this discussion, truth is a person’s perception based on what they’ve experienced in the past. There for a person’s “truths” are clouded or veiled as it were, literally defined by how they experienced life circumstances. As human beings we experience life through sensations in our bodies. We sense by way of our eyes, ears, nose, mouth, skin/touch as well as our heart/feelings. We’re able to think about all of what we experience thanks to our brain. All that being said, as we experience life circumstances and situations through the sensations in our body, we interact with how it physically feels (as in this is hot and it burns) as well as how it feels emotionally (based on if we are being supported and cared for in relationship to what we are experiencing).
The emotional piece has to do with our heart and directly affects our innate natural ability to be honest, as well as what our truth with regard to the experience we remember. If we experience something painful to the body sensations, our natural response is to express the discomfort. We express through our voice and or with our actions for the purpose of getting help and assistance to feel better. A baby cries to let you know they are hungry or dirty and literally need help to feel better. When we express the need for assistance and no one helps, our heart that knows we are loved, important, special and worthy learns that it’s more painful to express than to endure the experience. It’s a conditioning process that literally shifts our natural place of knowing the truth we are loved, worthy, important, special and unique, as well as supported, cared for and protected. This is where a shift occurs. The truth of our heart becomes veiled in perceptions of our experience and denial of expressing HONESTLY, in other words sharing what we are experiencing in our body temple is silenced. It becomes easier to experience physical pain than to experience the pain we feel in our hearts when experiencing not being loved through supportive caring and protective measures.
To complicate things, every individual body has a unique base line from which to sense. What is hot to one person is cold to another. What is sweet to one is bitter to another. What is loud to one is soft to another. Also, the beginning of spring brings temperatures that feel warm to those who have experienced the bitter cold of winter. However, those same spring temperatures feel cold when experienced in fall after the warm temperatures of summer. Adding to this is each person’s body chemistry/sensitivity and temperature. Here’s another great example, if you’re standing at an intersection of two roads, from that point east is to one side and west is to the other. If you move in one direction or the other even an inch, what used to be west is now east or what used to be east is now west!
Also, every individual’s ability to sense can be different in every situation depending on where they are emotionally. Using myself as an example, as I walked into the bank I worked at years ago, the little mice running around on the floor were adorable to me and my desire to catch them and set them free was what motivated me to do just that. On the other hand, the Assistant Manager standing on top of her desk screaming with tears of fear rolling down her cheeks had a very different experience. Her experience was different due to a past emotional trauma. As a little girl a mouse dropped from above into her shirt while she was walking through an old barn. She began to scram for help and no one helped her. It took a good amount of time to remove the mouse from the back of her shirt. Mice are now remembered by her as terrifying even though the current experience of them at the bank on the floor could in no way duplicate one dropping from above down her back, that’s the feeling that was accessed as a result of the experience she had. This experience is both physical and emotional and brought up a very visceral reactive response from her. Although this example is extreme, it happens even for small seemingly inconsequential experiences we have through our lives.
The point being, we experience from our point of reference. When we enter our bodies, our point of reference is pure and unique to each of us. Pure in the sense we don’t judge the history of our lineage. As we begin to experience life from our pure point of reference we are vulnerable and dependent upon those who are our care givers. Our care givers pass on to us how they’ve experienced life, how they’ve been taught and cared for as well as the judgments related to the experiences. The life cycles continue on from there and often our references are skewed by what we experience. What we experience conjures a truth of experience, as well as a feeling and emotion about that truth. Here’s where honesty comes into play. Many of us learn early on, expressing (being honest) what we’re feeling with regard to our experiences, actually creates more pain. Because of this our truth becomes, “being honest is a detriment to our ability function safely and supported as a unique and beautiful individual.” Every time we express and are not interacted with in a genuine way, the feeling associated with that experience becomes an emotional charge. This emotional charge contains both a positive and negative aspect that anchors it in as good, bad, right and wrong. We begin a life at opposite ends of the teeter totter feeling as though everything is one way or the other, forgetting that both ends of the teeter tooter are on the same plane with a center point that allows a beautiful harmony to co-exist. When you exist in the center, metaphorically the heart space, all things can work in harmony for your benefit and the extremes become less extreme.
The path to harmony exists at the center and involves remembering the wisdom of our harmonious world. Knowing all things have both negative and positive charges, benefits and detriments, is an important bridge to remembering the unconscious selves are safe to express honestly. All unexpressed emotions stored within are excited to be freed through expression and communicated with through honesty. This communication takes place first by the conscious self, and then with others through a supportive and attentive conscious self. All the parts that learned early on it was unsafe to express are ready and willing to reunite with you as a whole. At the center (the heart), harmony is achieved through an open heart. An open heart takes responsibility for all you’re feeling in a nonjudgmental way with regard to what you are experiencing through others choices and your own choices. The teeter totter then becomes enjoyable.
Many go for Balance, which like all things is useful sometimes, however certainly not all of the time. Can you imagine getting on a teeter totter and having to have both sides remain still and balanced, structured and rigid? It would defeat the purpose of riding it. There are of course many areas where balance is useful, even within harmony balance can be useful. If you consider an orchestra, there is harmony achieved by every instrument playing its own unique part at its appropriate time. Balance is achieved with in the different parts by how loud and soft each instrument plays. Within what I described, both balance and harmony exist one within the other. It is much the same for us as individuals, harmonious balance of past present and future energy can and does for us to experience in a supportive and unconditionally loving way.
Honesty is the best policy with an open heart. It takes courage to express with an open heart and the more you express honestly from your heart center united with the wisdom of your mind, you empower yourself with confidence. This confidence nurtures a sense of peace allowing you to reconnect with all of your parts from the past, while in the present moment, using them as a platform of beauty. Your future is freed to be fluidly flowing with God’s love in a way you’re aware of. Make the commitment and live with honesty and communication as your way of life. Choose to get to know all of you. All of your feelings, judgements, joys, wounds, celebrations, successes and failures. Use them all as your foundation to live peacefully, united and whole.