Use Honesty to Uncover the Truth

Like many people, I have found a spiritual practice fit for the 21st century hard to come by.

The gods don’t seem to speak to me.

The spiritual technology seems contrived or not for people like me.

And yet, like many people, a spiritual gap in my life is at times tangible.

I thirst for it.

I’m desperate.

One of the practices that emerged as I worked with Robert Holden (someone whose gods seem to speak to me, whose spiritual technology somehow doesn’t seem contrived and does seem for people like me), was a journalling practice.

Sit for five minutes in the morning with the question, What is success for me today?

Before I sit with the question, sit with something - some affirmation or idea or poem that connects me to something bigger. I have used Holden and Louise Hay’s cards , and tried Rumi, but my father’s poems work best.

Then sit with the question.

When I first sat with the question it wasn’t a spiritual practice. It was a thinking practice.

And then, after several months of sitting, every day, for five minutes with that question, something shifted and it became a spiritual practice.

I stopped defining success for myself for the day (a very powerful practice in and of itself , but not what I was looking for) and started uncovering, instead.

Started listening.

Started hearing things that I wasn’t thinking.

We could say that I started praying.

This week, as I sat praying, here is what came:

Success is using honesty to uncover the truth.

I was struck by the profundity of that phrase, by how much it uncovered.

In this moment I am reminded that sometimes - sometimes! - I have those experiences that people talk about. Insight arriving through meditation , God speaking in our prayers.

Because while I might have thought about that phrase and thought it true, this was something different.

This was something uncovered, invited in, heard in silence.

And what a practice using honesty to uncover the truth can be for us.

It is the practice of journaling: let yourself write honestly and, as you do, uncover the truth.

It is the practice of coaching: speak to someone more honestly than you do anywhere else in your life and, as you do, discover the truth.

It is the practice of being a truly honest person, someone who doesn’t lie . And, as you do, discovering the truth.

As our awareness of the world’s uncertainty grows and grows, we don’t have many solid things to stand on.

As Jennifer Garvey Berger and I discussed on The Coach’s Journey Podcast , the things that used to feel solid, that we could trust (our employers, our mayors, our rabbis) no longer feel as solid as they used to.

But we always have something.

We always have honesty.

We can always use honesty to discover the truth.

Until we present who we really are , we can’t know the truth of what people think of us.

Until we are honest with our loved ones, we can’t be sure that they really love us.

Until we are truly honest with ourselves, we can’t know the truth of how we see the world, or of what we want.

Until we practice honesty as a route to uncovering the truth, we can’t know the truth of our sense of reality.

Because under the shining light of honesty, many of our beliefs, our rules about the world, the ‘truths’ of our experience… well, they are shown up for the poor approximations, the counterfiets, the sleights of hand, the paper-thin, leaf-in-the-wind nonsense that they are.

And then where are we?

Well, we’re not somewhere fun.

But we’re somewhere more true.

And whilst it can feel nice and safe and tasty and comforting to live in the cotton-wool bubble that we have created for ourselves, it only feels like that until we realise that there is no cotton wool really, there is no parachute or padding, there is just the ground of reality rushing up to meet us at 100 miles an hour.

Better to know where we are.

To know the truth of our existence.

At least, to know it as well as we can.

And so I write.

And so I coach.

And so I pray.

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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method : write for twelve minutes, proof read once with small edits and then post online.

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