radical honesty for wholeness.
*deep exhale* It’s rare that I find myself starting any point of reflection with deep sighs and releases, but this topic in particular was born and dwells deep in my foundation, at the root of my being and the base of my body. My time in Peru opened up a vastness within me that I knew existed but for some reason, I believed I would not witness or experience in this lifetime. I don’t know; feelings of unworthiness coupled with doubts of my own capacity to listen and pay attention with care. I’m not interested in glamorizing that ascetic moment in my life; truly it was wonderful and long overdue, but in under a month, I was ready to return to my community, social connecting, and being of service in the world. But in that incubation period, in that moment of my life where I unequivocally chose me, I blew the dust off the compass of my heart, dug my heels deep into the earth, and turned the energetic ship of my life completely around. I made a full 180 turn towards my self, and I said ‘Hey Lovey, what do we got here that isn’t yours? In this experience of alienation, what remains and what dissolves? Without the distraction of family, friends, service, love, self-“work,” what and who are you?”
I did not recognize or know how to be with my self. I seriously was so disoriented and uncomfortable being the focus of my own attention. I felt myself clinging to old habits and schedules of fast movement and productivity, having to talk myself into being okay with having ‘nothing to do’ indefinitely, waking up, napping, and going to sleep when my body signaled for it, having lush mornings making plantains while listening to podcasts about Morphic Resonance and Quantum Entanglement, sitting in a garden training my body to not react when a fly or wasp came too close (if you know me, that shit is hard), climbing steps, mountains, and hills to zoom out on my life; all these experiences that I was left to pursue seemed so nugatory and superfluous within the context of capitalism. Makes sense: if money becomes God, then I can see how anything that doesn’t generate capita can be regarded as ‘wasted worship.’ Funny, as I’m writing this, the idea of these experiences being something only ‘privileged’ people can do pinged: like having an extended, intimate moment with your self-cultivation and transformation is only reserved for those who have the access and resources. This construct has derailed the entire purpose of our creation, with the belief that only after you acquire a certain amount of wealth, you can ‘afford’ to get to know your self. That’s worship of materialism for you. And a disheartening restrictive narrative. And a whole other rumination…
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What if I told you that the entire purpose and reason for your existence is: enlightenment. What if I offered that the highest level of your biological evolution is: awakening. To amplify and develop your essence (i.e., soul, spirit) through this human existence, which affords us specific experiences that are unique to this material earth and body. And in the uniqueness of this ONE TIME earthly experience, we have the capacity to experience profound sensuality, imagine and create the unfathomable, and encounter other souls in diverse forms that teach and reflect the depths and vastness of our potentialities. In Martha Beck’s The Way of Integrity, she states that “our brains are biologically programmed to move toward awakening.” How do we do this? She offers 3 ways:
Drop your attachment to beliefs
Shut down the areas of your brain that say a) you are a separate entity and b) you have control over situations/life
Give yourself space to align with your true nature
This is so great! It’s a short, 3-item list…containing the HARDEST things to do. Just great. But why do I feel these are the “hardest things?” Because we live in a culture that deliberately moves us in the opposite direction of these actions. The culture that we are all engendered into forces us to adopt and attach ourselves to beliefs on a variety of topics, encourages us into hyper-individualism and shames us if we lose control over ourselves, situations, and life, and it strips us of our time, curiosity, and basic desire to get to know our self via overwhelming and suffocating cultural demands, resulting in overextended, exhausted, anxious, dispassionate, withered and wilted humans. I say this loud and with my chest because it’s vitally important on this journey of self-building that we recognize the influential source of our behaviors and we stop blaming ourselves. It’s about respecting the intelligence of your organism that has brought you as safely and intactly as it could up until this point. It’s about recognizing the all-out assault on your being everyday since its inception. It’s about extending your self some deep compassion for the battles its lost and is losing. The way forward does not include self-destruction, -blaming, -deprecation, or any negative self-talk.
“If someone does not want me it is not the end of the world. But if I do not want me, the world is nothing but endings.”
- Nayyirah Waheed
The first step out of chaos and into integrity is to stop engaging in self-betrayal.
Betrayal: expose to danger by treacherously giving information to an enemy. Self-betrayal would mean treacherously exposing yourself to danger by engaging in acts, conversations, agreements, and behaviors that DO NOT SERVE YOU. Whether that be your safety, belonging, dignity, well-being, deepest desires and yearnings, aspirations, motivations, authenticity, genuineness; it’s treacherous because somewhere deep, deep, DEEP (see the first sentence of this rumination) down inside of you, you know this action lacks alignment and integrity with your truest self. Our deepest self-betrayals can be traced back to events in our childhood, where we probably told the truth (you know how honest children are) and we were punished for it. That was the first betrayal. That was the beginning of the split from self, from essence.
And that was also the beginning of telling lies.
Martha Beck recounts a moment in her life where she challenged herself to ‘not tell a single lie for a whole year:’ she offers a thorough analysis of the gravity and devastation of telling lies. Due to its small, common, and nearly invisible nature, lying is ubiquitous, pervasive, and seemingly a natural part of being alive. WRONG. Truly, lying is described as the “dark counterpart of courage,” where engaging in this act “enables every other type of evil.” Simply put (without being reductive), lying creates a fog: it creates an environment of dis-ease where nothing feels reliable or trustworthy. It also has a proliferative nature, in that the more deceitful we get, the more we can’t speak freely, can’t improvise or do things to break the narrative, can’t chill or relax: you’re frozen in time and space under duress and arrest. Take a moment and rehash a past (or current) lie that you’re engaging in: let it rise and marinate on how you show up in the context of that lie. To keep that lie alive requires constant sustained effort and your thinking begins to slow down and becomes sluggish and foggier. You start to lose emotional connection to the content because you just can’t be your authentic, genuine self. And guess what? The same thing happens in your body! There is growing research demonstrating the damaging effects lying has on our physical systems, including elevated blood pressure and heart rate, hormonal reactions, and reduced immune-system functioning, and emotional expressions like depression, anxiety, and my favorite: free-floating hostility. You know, the type where if anyone so much as looks at me wrong, I’m going to pop off. Emotionally, we start to feel lonely, numb, becoming cold and withdrawn. The moment we lie, we leave our own truth, split from our integrity, and engage in unconscious self-deception. We go deaf and blind to our own pain, which disrupts our capacity to recognize when a situation or person is becoming dangerous to our being.
“Courage is the most important of all virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.”
- Maya Angelou
Let’s briefly unpack the three types of lies (I’ve renamed the types, as the continual use of color like ‘black,’ ‘white,’ and ‘gray’ furthers an insidious belief that black is bad/guilty and white is right/innocent- no thank you):
Conscious (formerly ‘black’): this is a lie performed knowing it’s wrong but we do it anyway and internally find a way to excuse ourselves, to the point where we start to believe our own lies (e.g., telling people you “love” spending the holidays with your partner’s family, when you truly would give a limb to do anything else)
Subconscious (formerly ‘gray’): this type of lie is also intentional but we use it primarily in situations where we are trying to calm the waters of life; it’s a small cheat and then we fabricate some story to preserve our concept of self as upstanding citizens (e.g., “Sure, I don’t mind eating sushi,” when you were truly craving something completely different)
Unconscious (formerly ‘white’): this often occurs in social situations as fibs or we engage in unconscious self-deception, where we are essentially deaf and blind to our truth (e.g., “Oh it was cheap” when it wasn’t really that cheap according to your/the standards of the respective person/group)
It’s cute the way we’ve dissected and categorized lying, even though ALL LIES WREAK SIMILAR KINDS OF INNER HAVOC. Definitely classic Cartesian split behavior to delude ourselves into thinking some lies are not as bad as others. Lying is lying, ok? The body does not register your lies to your friends for social equilibrium, unconscious lies to yourself, and blatant heedless lies as different types. Lying is lying, just that simple. But gotta love the intellect for its rational, eluding tactics.
So where does this leave us? If you know my style, getting out of the *shame-blame-game* response is paramount in my process. I have truly been able to reconcile so much by simply knowing why and where these behaviors came from in the first place. So let me just say this: we cannot survive without belonging. Humans are social creatures. Our survival depends on close-knit groups of cooperating individuals. Due to our physical form and identities, it is purported that we are “biologically programmed to identify with people who look, act, dress, talk, and think the way we do.” If anyone shows up otherwise, there’s an initial mistrust that arises. If we don’t instill critical thinking and develop emotional capacity to tolerate differences, we will immediately ‘other’ this different presentation. When we ‘other’ someone, we are unconsciously defining them as inhuman and inferior. I’m delineating this process so that you understand that lying to achieve belonging is the smartest thing your organism can do to ensure your survival. And it’s important to thank your organism for that wisdom. But now: since this need of belonging will be with us for the rest of our human experience and living in integrity means being your authentic self, void of performative behavior and untruths, at what cost are you willing to belong? Physical, mental, and emotional dis-ease? Fog, freeze, and exhaustion? The reality of belonging is that your true tribe exists where you won’t have to lie. You won’t have to engage in self-deception. You won’t participate in self-betrayal. “You have no time to waste on suffering, no time to keep torturing your nature to serve your culture.” - Martha Beck
Step 1, we can have lots of fun…
Step 2, there’s so much we can dooo!
Step 3, it’s just you and you (me)…
Step 4, it (the process) will give you more…
Step 5, don’t you know that the time has arrived?!
Ok y’all, here’s the situation: the first step is to stop lying to yourself. It always starts with you. Don’t concern yourself with all the lies you’ve told up until now or how much backpedaling you feel you’ll have to do. Just start with yourself. The LEAST you can do right now is to stop lying to yourself. Even making an effort to stop lying to yourself can improve physical, mental, and emotional health. Your relationship to your self is that powerful. For now, just notice where, when, why, and with whom you lie. Since lying splits us from our integrity, every lie you stop telling brings you one step closer to the core of your inner truth. It also reveals deep, confusing, and tormenting untruths that you’ve fabricated and sustained to pacify the blow to your self-love and nobility, when that first act of self-betrayal was committed in childhood. And it’s not always about the verbal. Interestingly, there are moments where being silent is also a form of lying. Returning to integrity, which is a state of wholeness, means engaging in radical honesty on all fronts. In this step, becoming radically honest with your own self sets the foundation for healthy self-talk, self-worth and -esteem, and emerging harmony between your internal and external worlds.
The first step of ‘not lying to yourself’ is what Martha Beck calls a ‘one-degree turn.’ One-degree turns are micro-adjustments that we can make in our life to begin putting more time into actions that make us feel alive and less time into the things that you genuinely don’t love. As suggested in the name, these changes are so small but over time add up to an impactful change. When aiming for a positive transformation, small steps add up more quickly than heroic leaps, which typically require more energy, planning, and mental cajoling to actually follow through. Small steps means every single choice that you make every single day, is an opportunity to turn toward the life you really, really want.
Merging the Maps of Body, Speak, Observe:
BODY: The body doesn’t lie, but it does hold habit. This is new information for my understanding and experience. So yes, it’s an informational source, and yes, there’s truth contained therein, AND, when we’ve been lying to ourselves for an extended period (for some, since childhood), it’s hard to physically discern truth in the body. This is why all these practices are experiential and explorative: I cannot say for sure what lying feels like in your body, but I strongly invite you to explore the sensations through practice and play. So I offer this: start by telling yourself a boldface lie (the Trini in me just had to come out). Something obviously not true, and maybe even superficial, like, “My hair is curly/straight” - whatever is not your hair texture. Say it out loud like you were saying it to someone else. Say it with seriousness. What comes up in your body when you say this lie? Where do you feel the sensation of deception? Describe it via temperature, pressure, and movement. As you’re ready, start to make the lie more and more realistic: “Sure, I’d love to hang out again,” “I don’t really mind waiting,” “No it’s cool, I can come in later in the day,” “I love you.” Just notice how your body is processing these respective untruths.
SPEAK: This one is tender so engage with it as you see fit: look at yourself in the mirror, see your form and the essence behind the form, spend a moment being with the innocence, purity, and sweetness of your existence. Living is a tender, tender thing. Whenever you feel ready, utter any part (or all) of these words: “I have been lying to myself.” “I am split from my deep, core truths.” “I am living out of integrity.” “I deserve to feel wholeness.” “I am tired of living like this.” Any of these phrases can birth a myriad of responses, follow-up statements, or sensations in the body. Usually one phrase will ping enough to the point where you may become emotional. Stay with that opening, that rising of feeling. It means something in you is coming unstuck, something in you is moving and shifting. It’s a part of your essence coming back to life.
OBSERVE: As you take the above practices, notice what comes up in the emotional and mental channels. There’s great depth to the simple practice of noticing. Notice if your mood changes, if there’s a voice in your head that is attempting to keep itself alive. Just notice how speaking untruths impact your energetic channels. Notice if your disposition or relationship to your self changes, notice if there’s a resistance to changing, doing things differently, or meeting your authentic self. Notice notice notice. Utilize the power of the witness to observe how this practice of radical honesty lands in your terrain. Notice if there’s a dread to returning to wholeness or an anticipatory expectation of what these changes might look like or mean. If I can offer any return point, it would be this: it’s not about being liked, it’s about being authentic.
Much compassion, power, and love on the journey out of self-deception and into radical, authentic truth-telling.
Love love. -aa
**schedule a complimentary un-earthing call with me here.
Referenced text:
Beck, M. (2021) The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self
