In my opinion, so many of the difficulties we’ve had as a world trace back to our everyday communication and behavior patterns in the first place.
The starting place for those difficulties, again in my view, is irresponsible communications. The epitome of them is to discuss, and especially to gossip about or criticize, a person absent to the discussion we’re having. This kind of water-cooler communication leads to and perpetuates divisiveness and distrust.
One of the rather painful exercises we used to do in a three-month encounter group that I took in 1975 was to go to a person we gossiped about and report what we had said. Oooo, that hurt.
The greater lesson was not to gossip at all, but to reserve our beefs and gripes to be expressed to the person concerned or not at all. That kept our communication clean.
The second difficulty arose out of the first and that was that, when we criticized someone behind their back, we were then left with what the est Network called a “withhold.” We now had a secret to guard and part of our energy, instead of being open and flowing, was now given over to protecting our secret. Someone once said that we didn’t need a memory if we always told the truth and had no secrets. Said another way, transparency eliminates the need for secrets and for remembering.
One of my favorite shows when I was a child was I Love Lucy. And the plot of I Love Lucy was always the same: Lucy began the program by telling a little white lie. And, when questioned, she covered up by telling another little white lie. And then another. And then she needed to tell a big white lie to throw her questioner off the track. And so it went until at last she broke down and confessed the lie and the reason for it.
Lucy would feign a look (see above) of fear of exposure and reluctance to be lying on the one hand, but a fear of telling the truth and suffering the consequences on the other. She could exactly balance the two and therein lay the genius of her comic portrayals.
She typified the way so many people at that time were actually communicating that it seemed incredibly hilarious. It allowed us all to acknowledge the broken way we communicated but at a low cost to ourselves.
As a student of the path of awareness, I observe myself, including when I lie. It’s a peculiar thing. Covering up a lie or hiding a malignant secret seems to cause the energy to fold back on itself. We speak of “tying up our energy” in our lies. We tie up our energy in hiding our lying in the first place and in remembering to keep the lie a secret in the second.
As time goes by, we find we’ve obliged ourselves to shut down our awareness to maintain the lie. Then comes the time when awareness begins to force itself upon us. Of this time, enlightened psychologist John Enright said: “Unawareness leads to momentary relief and continuing pain; awareness leads to momentary pain and continuing relief.” (1) est Trainer Randy McNamara said something vaguely similar: “It takes an instant to tell the truth and it’s like cutting yourself off at the knees.” (2) He might have added that not telling the truth is like having perpetual bursitis.
I well know the experience of coughing up the truth. There is tremendous pain that arises as we are just about to do it and then the pain rapidly drains away. The alternative is not to tell the truth and then the pain lasts, at a lower and duller level, forever.
I can certainly tell you that the wider one becomes known, the more criticism one invites and the more frightening it becomes to tell the truth and to have the truth be known about oneself. I, for instance, do not take frustration well and it was recently pointed out to me that I can be disrespectful to checkout clerks, etc., if I am not served to my satisfaction or at a speed I’d like. That’s true.
And it extends much further than that. Patterns like these have a habit of growing and spreading. They seldom remain stable; gradually they spread and take over the house.
I’m aware that I imbibed my parents’ dislike generally for being kept waiting. And I feel very right and justified while I’m acting out around being kept waiting so I come across as bullet-proof in the matter. And this is only one area of my acting out.
But the bullet-proofing is a lie and the maintenance of the lie costs me a huge amount. I lose my chance to be impeccable and lead a squeaky-clean life – well, we now would call that a Fifth-Dimensional or ascended life. I build myself a rap sheet and lose my self-esteem. I lose aliveness, spontaneity, and full self-expression. We really seldom have a conception of what it costs us to perpetrate something as simple as a lie.
And finally the weight of all my lies, all my perpetrations, weighs on me like a wet blanket. I feel totally smothered by the weight of all my lies. Or so it seems.
This same frustration becomes an angry streak when indulged too often. And I notice that, when I can’t force the other person to do what I want, over which I’m frustrated, I respond by simply pouring on more force. I do more of what didn’t work in the first place. And, predictably, it doesn’t work either.
Perpetrations like these are such commonplace ways of being that they go on and on below awareness. Here I am, 65, and still responding in as automatic and wooden a way to life as I did when I was a child. No wonder some of the people we listen to here say that we often make very little progress from lifetime to lifetime. My life may as well be a serial like I Love Lucy. And it makes it clear as well why serials like I Love Lucy were so popular: because they really did seem to portray how things were for many of us.
It very well could be that we’ve entered a time when the really big changes are coming to an end – the cabal is banished, war stops, we are awakened. And now begins the really hard work, the slog, of turning the attention inward and tackling all the low-grade perpetrations, weaknesses and vices that the necessity to fight to free ourselves allowed to remain hidden.
Footnotes
(1) John Enright, Awareness, Responsibility and Communication Workshop, Cold Mountain Institute, Jan. 20, 1979.
(2) est Trainer Randy McNamara, est Training, Jan. 11, 1981.