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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome, friends, to the Tara Brach Podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Each week, I share teachings and guided meditations to help us awaken our hearts and bring healing to our world. You can learn more or support this offering by visiting tarabrach.com, where you can also join our email list.
Now, let's explore together the many ways we can live from the love and presence that's our deepest essence. Namaste.
Namaste.
Welcome, friends. So I begin with a brief story about a woman who's in a job interview and the interviewer is saying, well, tell me, what do you think your biggest character defect would be? And her response was honesty. And he said to her, honesty? I wouldn't consider honesty a defect. And her reply, I don't care what the hell you think.
So I'm opening with this because I'm going to be sharing with you one of my favorite talks from the archives and it's on honesty and what it really means and what it really takes to be honest with ourselves and each other. And for many like this woman it doesn't necessarily mean saying what's on the top of our mind especially if we haven't investigated and gotten real with what's underneath.
So as most are aware, on a societal level, we are desensitizing to the scale and degree of deception. We've gotten used to it. I mean, even when the lies translate into massive destruction and suffering, We're used to it.
It's now an assumption that, and especially those in power, but more broadly, that people will say or hide whatever they feel is necessary to most promote or protect their interests. It's contagious. It fills the atmosphere of the society, as we know, in government, but not just that. We've seen it through the Epstein files and any hierarchical organization, religious, spiritual communities.
If others are being quiet about a lack of ethical behavior, then we'll be quiet too. It's very corrosive to the spirit. And I would even go so far as saying that dishonesty is right at the core of the disease of our world, not seeing and acknowledging what's true inside us and the reality around us. It's why we go around with such different and conflicting realities.
And it leads to mistrust, dividing from each other, from our inner life. So I'm saying all this because it really calls us to deepen attention in our own lives, you know, really asking, am I being honest, real, true?
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Chapter 2: How does radical self-honesty impact our relationships?
The conditioning is in each one of our brains and nervous systems to deceive, the conditioning to lie as a kind of survival practice. And it comes from, and this is the most core universal conditioning, that we identify as a separate self, that we have this core sense of, oh, something's missing or something's wrong.
And then the more craving our fear, our shame, the stronger the impetus to lie, to deceive ourselves or others. And of course, deception then creates more of a sense of separation. So there's more craving, fear, and shame. Let me ground this a little in a story. Some years back, I was when I was teaching meditation and I was a clinical psychologist.
And I was meeting with one woman who was about a year into Alcoholics Anonymous, AA. And she had almost lost her marriage to young children because of her drinking. She grew up in a very traumatizing household, sexual abuse. Her parents had a very bitter divorce. She started drinking when she was 14. And she told me about her first meeting with her very wise AA sponsor.
And one of the first things this woman had said to her was, no matter what, tell the truth. No matter what, tell the truth. Let this be your North Star. No matter how embarrassing, no matter how ugly, shameful, tell the truth to yourself and to us, all of us. And it saved her life. But not right away.
I mean, she had two bad relapses where, you know, that very familiar thing if you're in a 12-step program with the rationalizations, the self-deceptions that think we can get away with things. And during her second relapse, at one point, she was screaming at her husband and he wasn't yelling back. And all she could see was his utter hurt, that he was in some way devastated.
And then that's when she heard those words from her sponsor in her mind, tell the truth, tell the truth. And right then and there, she said to him, I'm hitting bottom again. I hate myself. I need help. And that was the beginning of her slow climb out, telling the truth. And AA was invaluable in it. It's a culture of truth telling and it reduces shame.
But her challenge, and this is with her family and others close in, was she would get reactive and triggered. She got caught in feeling victimized and blaming, and she wasn't present enough to be aware of what was true. She couldn't tell the truth because she wasn't in touch with the truth. So she'd say things like, you know, I'm just speaking my truth.
Many of us are familiar with that line, but they're actually just what she was expressing were the top layers of anger and resentment and blame. She wasn't recognizing underneath that the unprocessed fears and the hurts and the traumas. So her proclamations of I'm speaking my truth actually fueled more conflict. Her sponsor suggested that she come to my meditation class.
I was teaching live classes in DC at the time. And her sponsor actually attended those classes along with huge numbers of people from 12-step programs. The 11th step you might know is to do with prayer and meditation as a pathway to presence. So she started coming. And many of you know mindfulness meditation is rooted in the Buddhist practice of Vipassana. That's the Pali word.
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Chapter 3: What societal issues stem from dishonesty?
There's no one it's happening to. There's no one who's causing what's going on. Just life unfolding. So in moments of full presence, we're free from the story of the self. We're living in a larger truth. And she was able to actually name that. She was able to talk about the prison of self-centeredness and what was shifting. And I remember when she said, when I'm being really honest,
I become more like an undefended open space. An undefended open space. So this is a story of self-honesty, somebody's experience recovering from substance addiction. And many of you listening who know about recovery know honesty is key. And self-honesty is key for all of us. We all have the same core suffering, this conditioning to live in a shrunken reality of a separate self.
You know, we all have emotional reactivity and a tendency to cover over what's painful. We all have that conditioning to not be truthful with ourself and others. So it takes practice, it takes commitment. One man at the end of a
a month-long Vipassana retreat, we met and he was describing all of his ups and downs and practicing presence, that radical self-honesty, seeing his tendency to compare to others and his jealousy and his self-consciousness and insecurity, seeing his loneliness and also seeing the peace that could come and the compassion and the lucidity in his mind and the clarity
So as he was leaving, he said, the joy is in getting real. I'll never forget that. The joy is in getting real. It's in seeing the truth of the moment, being honest with ourselves, with others. So here's the thing in getting real. It's not particularly about what the content is. It could be pleasant or unpleasant.
It's the capacity to be the awareness that we are and see and allow and include this ever-changing life. And when that happens, the more we're resting as that awareness, the more the habitual self-centeredness gets replaced by a real sense of freedom, undefended heart. Most of us consciously value honesty. In some way, I'm preaching to the converted.
We think it's good and healthy to be honest with ourselves. We think it's important to face truths about our own experience and our behavior and our impact on others. And we think it's good and healthy to be honest with others. I think of Adrienne Rich who writes, an honorable human relationship
that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word love, is a process of deepening the truths they can tell each other. It's important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation. Telling the truth breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.
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Chapter 4: How can mindfulness enhance our capacity for honesty?
So you might reflect and even sense the relationships where you feel the most closeness. And just notice how much in those relationships the closeness comes from being real, from being honest.
They're inseparable, really.
The undefended heart. Of course, I like the way Mark Twain put it. He says, always tell the truth. That way, you don't have to remember what you said. But it is freeing to just tell the truth. And, you know, if we Google, statistics vary some, but They say we lie on an average of one to four times a day and 60% of adults can't have a conversation without one lie every 10 minutes.
And psychological research shows that we regularly deceive ourselves to maintain our narrative about ourselves and our view of the world. We lie to ourselves when we can't face reality. And often it's quite toxic and pervasive. So I am titling this talk, The Honesty Challenge, Telling the Truth to Ourselves and Our World.
And I'm calling it a challenge, but I'm hoping you'll join me just to let it be an opportunity to see what happens when we consciously dedicate to being more honest. See what happens. It's also a challenge because it's an incredibly humbling domain to explore. And as I mentioned, we value honesty. In fact, it's part of our self-narrative that we're honest.
And yet, when we start looking closely, we see how much of the day can be littered with, it's not the big lies, it's the small ones. And, you know, as I, over these last few weeks, have been reflecting on this more directly and writing notes to myself to share with you now, of course, I was monitoring myself and made it very purposeful. And it was so revealing.
I mean, it's a little bit of a confessional, but so revealing to see all the small ways that I started noticing I was not
being real, you know, in emails, catch myself all the phrases and expressions that just didn't feel genuine, sometimes flattery or saying I was looking forward to meetings that are going to be actually difficult or obligatory and I'm not looking forward to them or I noticed in several casual social interactions embellishing stories to be more interesting or
a conversation with Jonathan just to impress. I remember one morning he asked me how long I swam. I swim most mornings. And I started rounding up the minutes and then I had to say, no, actually, it was 27 because I'm trying now to be honest. But just to watch myself with that impulse to round it up or noticing, talking to people and saying I'm feeling, asking how I'm doing and
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