Truth is a Harsh Mistress

Truth is a harsh mistress. I took that from the title of Robert A. Heinlein's book 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress'. I loved that book when I was a teenager. I figured that the phrase wasn't completely original, but a google search revealed that "Harsh Mistress" was actually made famous by that book. "Cruel Mistress," on the other hand, dates back a ways, along with other variations. I use it here as an alternative to the more colloquial "Truth's a bitch." Which is my way of saying the living in truth, with honesty, or being authentic, is a difficult path to walk, full of illusions, false trails, beautiful dead ends disguised as clever solutions.

Truth is a slippery concept. Notice I didn't say The Truth. Truth isn't about one answer, or even a group of answers, it's something that evolves, moment-by-moment, throughout every day. Some people call it "Being true to yourself," others call it "Being authentic," and still others call it "Being in the Vortex." But in all cases, it involves finding the right action, or inaction, to every circumstance in life, so that you stay aligned with your values and goals. This is difficult precisely because we find it so easy to delude ourselves about what the 'correct' response to a situation might be. Fortunately, mistakes in this area are rarely fatal, so the trick is to learn to recognize when you're doing well and when you're not and, hopefully, do more of the former and less of the latter.

I my life this played out in two recent instances. One, where I realized that someone that I have known for about a year, was someone I have known in several past lives. The other was when I was confronted by the necessity of growing my business.

In the first case, I faced the question, should I say anything? My first impulse was to keep quiet for it's simply not a good idea. But as time went on I was getting the strong impression that there was something we needed to complete. Then I started thinking about subtle ways to get to know them better to gauge what I should say, when and how. I almost started a conversation a few times, but something stopped me. I wanted to believe it was just fear and I needed to confront my fears and trust in the result.

For days I kept coming up with different scenarios about how to work into the conversation. All of them felt wrong. It took me about a week to get that the whole idea was wrong, that I was talking myself into something that was just a bad idea all around. It turns out that my ego and sense of superiority was leading me down the primrose path. Lucky for me I as able to catch on, before I actually put any of my plans into action. Looking back, I see my initial misinterpretation was that we needed to complete something. The truth that I needed to complete something was hidden under a confusing tangle of wishes, desires, and willing misrepresentations of what was right in front of me. Lesson: When something feels wrong, or just doesn't feel right, don't do it.

In the second case, I had read about other practitioners leaving their cards in bookstores. Now I'm not too sure what they meant by that, but initially I thought that they were leaving them on appropriate shelves or in books. That gave me the idea to leave my cards in libraries. Seems like a cool idea right? Just leave a few cards laying around and the right people would be 'guided' to find them and use them. So what if most of them end up in the trash, a few would find their marks and people would find the help they needed. Right?

Well, what I'm thinking now is that the other practitioners left their cards at the front desk, with permission. That's the key. Whether or not there is really anything morally wrong with sticking card in books, doing it behind the backs of the staff is wrong. So you better ask first. Afraid to ask, then don't do it. Again, I had to sit on this for a while before I finally got it right. I was so willing to justify my idea, and it seemed so perfect, that it was really hard to give it up.

These cases happened one after the other. While they were going on, my "happiness quotient" took a significant nose dive. I began questioning my decision to start this new career and thinking about alternatives. That's the true consequence of being inauthentic, straying from the path, you quickly lose your satisfaction in life, your perceived options narrow, then you start getting desperate to get back to where you were and stray even further. This time, once I noticed the red flags waving in my face, I could drop my silly ideas and then things start clicking again. I felt better and I started having new ideas that are much more alined with my goals and I'm sure that they will play out better than the two clinkers I just talked about, no matter what happens.

Maybe someday I'll just 'know' the right actions from the get-go, but until then I need to really watch for the signs that something isn't right. Keeping a weather eye out for the slightest thing that tells me that I've misstepped somewhere so I can correct it before the ship gets too far off course.