Today in my morning teleclass on sexuality, we questioned the age-old concept that feels so very true “he/she shouldn’t have been deceptive”.
One of the first times I heard Byron Katie she was speaking to the whole audience about common stressful beliefs. She said “people shouldn’t lie….on what planet??!”
I got that Katie was saying that here on this planet, ever since humans have existed, there have been people who are deceptive. People tell outright lies, people invent elaborate cons, people also exaggerate, diminish, or modify the truth. People withhold important information from others. People don’t say what they really mean. People get scared, even little children, and they hide or keep secrets.
Getting angry that humans do these things is really painful. And it’s an ARGUMENT with REALITY, as Katie says. The reality is, is that people are deceptive. There are people that steal, cheat, hide, manipulate and withhold the truth.
But let’s get down to the bottom of why it makes us absolutely sure that it’s true that people should NOT be deceptive.
It’s because I shouldn’t be deceptive.
Have you ever told a lie, or smoothed over the real truth, or avoided saying what you really feel because you know it might hurt someone’s feelings? I notice that it doesn’t feel that great for the one being deceptive.
In Dostoyevsky’s famous novel Crime and Punishment the main character gets away with murder and believes he will do good deeds with the riches he obtains. But he is tortured, he knows something is off. Woody Allen’s movie Match Point also shows the torture of crime by the criminal. The character can’t believe he’s gotten away with it. He loses all faith in the human condition, that no one is “catching” him and punishing him.
I read a book recently called “Radical Honesty” by Brad Blanton. He suggests saying everything and telling everyone the real truth, because it makes for an intimate, passionate, REAL life worth living.
If you feel sad or angry about someone who has misrepresented themselves, or been deceitful or deceptive….turn it around for yourself, for your own sake.
I shouldn’t be deceptive. Maybe even with that person who I perceived was dishonest. How was I deceptive with that person? Well….I laughed when what was being said wasn’t that funny, I didn’t speak up when I disagreed, I pretended I had something else to do instead of saying I didn’t really want to get together.
Now, the next step is being compassionate with yourself, and finding out what you were believing that made you think you needed to be deceptive in the first place….
Every little deception is there for a reason, it is there because the person engaged in it thinks it’s better to be deceptive than truthful. If I told the truth, that person would hate me, attack me, be enraged with me, talk about me to other people, be hurt….and if all those things happened….I would be all alone.
Ahhhh, now I can question “I need other peoples’ love”—is that true??!
With love and radical honesty, Grace