Honesty and Self-Deception, Part 3

or “Uncovering self-deception”

Welcome to the third and final article in this series. If you are just getting here, you might want to look over the first two parts Honesty and Self-Deception, Part 1 (or “How to clear a path towards success in my goals”) and Honesty and Self-Deception, Part 2 (or “Unseen barriers to my goals”)

And we finally we get to self-deception! Which is often detectable in others, but which can be very hard to see in ourselves. Why? Because our minds have a vested interest in maintaining a pretense. There is some aspect of self we don’t want to reveal to others or even to ourselves.

The trick here is that there are indicators - but it takes courage and intuition to identify the pretense and reveal the truth behind it.

The indicators, briefly

• Blame / criticism
• Doubt
• Struggle
• Separation
• Repeated events

When you see these in yourself, you will find self-deception if you have the courage to look.

And the rewards? Freedom and a breath of fresh air.

Let me say that again… this can be hard work. These explorations can be cringe inducing. They can expose a great deal of remorse. But the rewards are a future of liberation and freed attention. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t felt the challenging journey was worth it.

It seems easier to defend actions than to honestly examine them. We are quicker to attack than admit. Admissions require courage.

Being honest is really a question of courage – courage enough to be vulnerable, and to face what we fear. This ability gets lost in the smoke screen of deceptions that is used to justify dishonesty. Whenever we accept that there is good reason to be dishonest – hardship, desperation, depression, ignorance, victimhood, etc – we increase the evidence for fearing what we are avoiding. And what is it? Only this: fear is a belief in our inadequacy to face and deal with something. And that belief precedes ant evidence of inadequacy that we have collected.

Excepted from Living Deliberately, Chapter 11 – A Private Talk on Honesty, by Harry Palmer

I encourage you to read that bold part again - 'fear is a belief in our inadequacy to face and deal with something'. 

I am continuously blown away when I reflect on this viewpoint. How much of our pretense, fear and blame is reinforcing some feeling of inadequacy? Are we really just reinforcing an illusion of limitations? For those who are willing to look from this perspective - new possibilities and potentials await.

This is advanced work, best addressed with guidance in a ReSurfacing workshop. But for those brave enough to try it on their own – this is available in the Personal Integrity mini course (Chapter 6 in The Seven Pillars of Enlightenment).

Harry Palmer, author and creator of the Avatar materials - 

 

Thanks for taking the time to explore this topic with me. I hope you feel both a path forward as well as inspiration and determination to do the work. The rewards are profound - both for you and those around you.

If you are inspired to grab one of the books mentioned - they are go into more detail on these and many other subjects.

And if you think a course could help you create the life you prefer - please reach out and let me know of your interest.

Love,

Derek

 

Read Honesty and Self-Deception, Part 1 here

Read Honesty and Self-Deception, Part 2 here