Radical Honesty

Creativity, using the mind rather than being used by the mind, is the cure for all stress disorders. Willingness to tell the truth in order to be free from your secretly assessing, secretkeeping mind creates the possibility of using your mind to make a future as an artist rather than as a victim. (Location 260)

All interpretations of reality are bullshit. Freedom is not being dominated by your own bullshit. (Location 278)

What kills us is intense attachment to our interpretations and failure to distinguish these interpretations from sensate reality. (Location 300)

Perpetual arguing to convince others of the rightness of your case doesn't work worth a damn in personal relationships, and we all know it but can't seem to stop. (Location 426)

When we take innocent and open children and train them to be moralists, we train them at one and the same time to be liars. Moralism and lying go hand in hand. Being “good” and “looking good,” conscientiously valued, lead directly to lying. If you can fool the nuns into believing you are good like they want you to be, you can secretly do what you want. (Location 496)

Unity is the nature of things. It doesn't take any work. It is the given. We are each creators of the universe out of our own being. What is given us to experience is a unity, within which we make distinctions. (Location 544)

Mystics are people who rediscover experience. (Location 634)

Moralism is a disease in which “good” and “bad” become more important than “alive” or “dead.” The heart of the disease is hurt and anger and fear of losing love and hysterical hope that we can somehow figure out how to be good enough to keep hurts from happening again. (Location 695)

not. The three levels are: revealing the facts; honestly expressing current feelings and thoughts; and, finally, exposing the fiction you have devised to represent yourself and your history. (Location 875)

Level Two: Honesty About Current Thoughts and Feelings   The second level of telling the truth is to begin to speak forth the emotional truth and the truth of one's judgments to reveal one's constantly active, secret mind. You begin here the practice of admitting how you feel when you feel it, speaking your secret judgments of others out loud, and constantly revealing your own petty and condescending ways. (Location 944)

Imagine living out of the transformation D.H. Lawrence describes! This is the third level of telling the truth: the place where telling the truth and living the truth become the same. This is the place of which the Hindus say, “If you speak the truth long enough, your word becomes universal law.” The third level of telling the truth occurs when you admit that who you are is not who you have been pretending to be. What you have been selling other people on, and selling yourself on, is not who you are. You don't really know who you are. You confess disillusionment with beliefs you used to stand for, and various sales pitches you did and still do for your act. This is at first embarrassing, then for a while something to brag about, and then just a description of what happened to you in the course of growing up. (Location 1108)

When we reveal more, we have less to hide. When we have less to hide, we are less worried about being found out. When we are less worried about being found out, we can pay better attention to someone else. In this way, telling the truth makes intimacy and freedom possible. (Location 1181)

freedom, is often too terrifying for a mind to tolerate, so the mind hides from freedom behind piles of bullshit, under blankets of evaluation, in a bed of memories. Describing what is true ruins the escape from freedom that being lost in the mind offers. (Location 1285)

e.e. cummings says that a poet is someone who is “abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement.”12 I say this is true of an honest person. Being descriptive of one's own feelings in so precise a way as to evoke feeling in another is the heart of the creative power of poetry and of honest speech. Telling the truth about events requires some discipline of description and can be hard work, but feelings and thoughts are even more difficult to tell the truth about than events. (Location 1328)

An honest person prefers language that reveals what is so, whether it's about someone else, the world, or himself. Being fascinated with uncovering the truth from a nest of evaluations is the best game in town. It only becomes fun after meaning becomes less serious and pretending has become boring. Going back to putting on a show is a bigger drag than having all be known. Playing in a world where all is known is more challenging and less trivial and less wearing. Letting up on oneself about having to hide and pretend is freeing and it feels good, like breathing fresh air. (Location 1359)

Learning how to be honest and being willing to do so is the cure for all non-environmental stress disorders. It is the key to managing the disease of moralism. It is the most worthwhile focus of our attention as humans of this time and the only thing with half a chance to save us from ourselves. This is vital to our life and to the survival of life for all of us. (Location 1392)

In order to decrease the pressure, we have to get mad out loud, but we are afraid of the experience of anger we would have to go through in order to have the anger disappear. We learn to “act nice” and deny that we are angry, and we make ourselves sick in the process of denial. (Location 1502)

A neurotic is a person who incessantly demands that life be other than it is. (Location 1518)

These previously learned methods of adaptation to life do work. Getting drunk works. Getting stoned works. Being overweight works. Being sad works, particularly in a world where being angry or horny or expressively joyful are taboo. These are all methods of survival, and if they get replaced there is a risk that the new replacement will be a big pain to accomplish and not work as well as the old way. (Location 1615)

Expressing resentment directly is a requirement for creating an authentic relationship between two human beings instead of an entanglement of two minds. Agreeing to tell the truth about anger in a committed relationship is a way to get over some of the damage and suffering that comes from how you were raised. (Location 1763)

The major benefit of expressing your anger completely to someone is that afterwards, you can forgive him or her. The reason for forgiving your enemies is not for their benefit but for your own benefit. (Location 1909)

Once you start getting more honest with yourself about your judgmental, angry mind, you find yourself confronting this question: “How can I express my resentment in such a way that I strengthen, rather than destroy, my relationships with others?” (Location 1944)

There are ways of expressing anger that work, and there are ways of expressing anger that make the situation worse. The ways that work make things worse for a while and better later. These are the ones you want. Most people express anger ineffectively, and then, when they see how uncomfortable the situation has become, decide that it's best to leave those feelings hidden. (Location 1946)

Paying attention to the experience of feeling in the body while angry is the key to learning how to use anger rather than have anger use you. (Location 1959)

The process of forgiveness involves the following six minimal requirements, none of which may be skipped. 1. You have to tell the truth about what specific behavior you resent, to the person, face-to-face; 2. You have to be verbally and vocally unrestrained with regard to volume and propriety; 3. You have to pay attention to the feelings and sensations in your body and to the other person as you speak; 4. You have to express any appreciations for the person that come up in the process, with the same attention to your feelings and to the other person as when you are expressing resentments; 5. You have to stay with any feelings that emerge in the process, like tears or laughter, regardless of any evaluations you may have about how it makes you look; 6. You have to stay with the discussion until you no longer feel resentful of the other person. (Location 1988)

A Checklist for Intimacy   If you are reading this chapter with an eye to having it help you have a better relationship with your mate or mates, God bless you, I hope this works. If you are willing to risk and want to grow together, start by using the following checklist for intimacy, and if you haven't done a particular item on the list with your mate or mates, do it. 1. Tell each other your entire life story, taking about 3 hours each. 2. Tell each other your complete sexual history, including how many people you have had sex with, what gender they were and the details of what you did with them. 3. Masturbate to orgasm in front of each other with no assistance from each other. 4. Tell each other of any affairs, near-affairs, necking, arousal, daydream or flirtation you have engaged in since you have known each other. 5. Take turns with a half-hour monologue in which one of you agrees to be silent for 30 minutes while the other speaks. Tell your partner everything you resent them for and everything you appreciate them for. After you have both taken a turn, talk about the two monologues for at least a half an hour. (Location 2303)

The source of personal power is the ability to interrupt your own mind. And since having things to hide keeps you in your racing mind and keeps it racing, you have to reveal what you have hidden. The whole being that each of us is, includes, but is not limited to, the mind. Nothing interrupts the mind like telling the truth. My judgment about whether therapy works is based on a few assumptions about what the job is, which I will now make explicit. (Location 2513)

The primary, fundamental, essential, baseline, critical, lowest-level minimum requirement for happiness, without which there is no other hope, is a willingness to take care of oneself. The trouble is, people are generally willing to take care of almost (Location 2554)

Psychological well-being comes out of the re-discovery that you are the Creator. Most of our education is to prevent such a thing from happening. (Location 2662)

Nietzsche said, “A man's maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child at play.”20 That serious play, that paying attention first and then thinking-directed-by-attention, that utter dedication to being with whatever you are doing, is a way of being we have known since the light first came on in the womb. (Location 2671)

By focusing our attention on our apparent struggle to change — the reasons and explanations and excuses that we generate instead of results — we engage in a conspiracy to pretend that we are each an accidental grouping of disharmonious parts working against each other. Why “parts”? When you say, “I want to look for a new job, but I can't seem to get started,” who is it that “wants to” and who is it that “can't”? It is as though there were two of you and one — the one who “can't” — had more power than the other. You pretend that the “real” you is the one that “wants to.” We pretend that we are not whole. The “I” who wants to get up early every morning and exercise, for instance, seems to be a different individual from the “I” who decides to sleep in. The “I” who longs for a successful, supportive marriage is not the “I” who backs down from making a commitment whenever a relationship gets too serious. Instead of examining more closely the actual way in which we operate, which consists of “trying” to get what we want and then sabotaging our own efforts, we assume our error is in not trying hard enough, and redouble both our efforts and our resistance. We always manage to stay one step ahead of ourselves, so that we never quite reach our goals. By focusing on the struggle instead of on the results, we avoid having to admit that the one who wants to change and the one who resists change are one and the same, that we are whole, and that we really do get what we want — which is struggle, rather than results. But until I can experience my own resistance as “me” just as I experience my desire to change as “me,” I am doomed to be locked in the hopeless struggle for control. Tom was absolutely right about the one-eyed man: “Ya jus’ askin’ for it. Ya like it. Lets ya feel sorry for yaself.” (Location 2765)

The abysmal truth is that everything comes to nothing. No change matters. Whatever you don't have is only important to you because you don't have it. Something you want is very important to you until you get it, and then it's nothing after a while. (Location 2797)

This movement from anticipation to accomplishment to disillusionment is inevitable. All change is futile. The alternative kind of life — conservative, preserving beliefs, avoiding change, a kind of stagnation within the protected bounds of first-learned concepts — is an equally futile way to live. Both ways to live are merely playing tiddlywinks between predoom and postdoom. Willingness to face the abyss of meaninglessness is the power required to accomplish change. Whatever your main struggle is, it is insignificant in the face of your death; it is petty and unimportant and has no meaning at all. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. (Location 2798)

Perfectionists are people who would rather be the worst than be the second-best. Everyone who ever successfully made a change that worked and served as a platform for the next, did this first: they finally accepted themselves the way they were. They gave up the struggle to get better. Then, finally, they were free to change. (Location 2842)

When a Zen Buddhist sits and looks at a wall for fourteen hours a day for seven days in a row, he does it to be able to sit and look at a wall. To be able to sit and look at a wall and just sit and look at a wall is enlightenment. To sit and look at your life story like you would sit and look at a wall is to recontact your source in the same way. (Location 2848)

The second sutra of the Yoga Sutras, the one that most comprehensively covers the entire subject, says, “The objective of all Yoga is to bring about an inhibition of the modifications of the mind.” (Location 2918)

The modifications of the mind are memories, principles, conclusions, morals, and beliefs. Telling the truth is the particular “yogic” practice necessary in our time to inhibit them. (Location 2920)

The problem is that we begin to treat people, who are highly unpredictable phenomena, the same way that we treat the highly predictable phenomenon of an airplane flight. The result is that sometimes people we know do something new and unpredictable after we have stopped watching and are only manipulating a category they represent. We then end up missing a lot that is new in the world. (Location 2935)

Having an image of who we are and how we should behave is a great constraint on us. Escape from the mind happens in spite of, rather than because of, our self-image, whether it's a good one or a bad one. Anyone who thinks a good self-image is important is full of shit. If you have a psychotherapist who tells you that it is, go find another one. The only way you can tell the truth when talking about your so-called “self– is to report it as an image you have. You are an imaginary person to yourself. You'd like for other people to imagine you the way you want them to. You spend a lot of time sculpting your image in the eyes and minds of others. It is an interesting game, but if it becomes the point of living it is a waste of life. It is in obedience to the rules of this game that people lose the playful freedom that had them start playing games in the first place. When you are talking about yourself, you can't be telling the truth about anything but an imagining you have. (Location 2950)

When one has learned to appreciate freedom, the world becomes a place of creation, rather than a mind-smothered place. The mind becomes the enemy that has been defeated and made an ally. (Location 2977)

should come as no surprise that I recommend helping other people as a method of staying awake. Since memorizing the idea of liberation kills liberation, you have to do something other than memorize and remember to keep being liberated. What keeps you liberated is interaction with other people interested in staying in contact with their fundamental nature as beings, and being honored by the opportunity they provide you when they allow you to contribute to them in this way. (Location 3074)

Buddha was right, the suffering is built in. If we don't rescue ourselves from our intense attachment to too many expectations, we'll continue to be controlled by the anxiety of multiple choices — going crazy from too many options. Dreamjam. We'll go numb from possibilities. (Location 3101)

Love is being wide open to the present, not blocked by nostalgia for some memory of the past or anticipation of some new love of the future. Love of another person happens only in a moment. Love is never having to say anything. (Location 3121)

Science is a formal attempt to agree on the criteria we are willing to accept as a basis of agreement, in (Location 3135)

A major focus of any worthwhile psychotherapy is an attempt to reawaken this ability to get lost in experience, by reawakening noticing. One of the first things to notice is that worry and fantasy, which are twins, have captured all of your attention. The second thing to notice is that when you aren't worrying or fantasizing there is still something left. (Location 3163)

Beliefs about how we should behave are all bullshit. There is no way for us to do the right thing. Thinking we are doing the right thing is a part of the illusion of being in control. When you place your faith in your own judgment, you place your faith in your judge. You get to believing that your judge is who you are. Catholic parochial education is a perfect model for teaching children that their superegos are who they are. Investment in that belief is the antithesis of healthy aliveness. As a psychotherapist, curing Catholicism is one of the biggest challenges I have. (Location 3202)

It is a milestone in growing up to get this: there is no way to be right. There is no right way to behave. There is no way to know you have done the right thing. (Location 3210)

Thinking becomes merely something else to notice and use when one has become reoriented to experience. Thinking loses its prior status as the primary ruler and jailkeeper of being and becomes more like the chauffeur. (Location 3244)

Having integrity is the opposite of being moral. If one has integrity, one doesn't need morals. People with integrity operate with rules of thumb, not morals. Integrity both results from and is a manifestation of telling the truth. Integrity is not a total cure for the disease of moralism, but significantly reduces its negative effects simply because if you feel whole you don't need righteousness to try to feel good. (Location 3259)

Albert Camus said that the question of the age is whether or not to commit suicide: that is, is life worth the effort? Are you willing to live or do you judge that it's not worth the effort? I say the important question is “Who's asking? Who asked you? Where is the question coming from?” The judge who has poisoned experience, through the alienation which judgment itself represents, wishes now to make a judgment of whether life is worth the price, since, in his judgment, life never lives up to its billing. Such an arrogant question: “Is life worth the trouble?” When it is answered in the negative and a person commits suicide, the judge who made the decision is preserved at the expense of the being who grew him. (Location 3269)

When you are lying, when you are keeping a secret, when you are withholding information or feelings in any moment, you are always doing that to protect something meaningless. You are usually protecting a memory to preserve a constant state of being. You can't see that what you are protecting is meaningless because the illusion of the self you are protecting blocks your view. When, through telling the truth, you destroy that illusion, you can then see that it was meaningless. Meaninglessness is of great value. When you finally get that who you actually are is empty and meaningless, it doesn't matter to you whether you are a jerk or not. There is where your power lives. (Location 3369)

You may have an image of yourself as a “good” person. You may lie to keep from “hurting someone else's feelings.” The someone else you are thinking of is even more ephemeral than the self-image you are protecting. The people you protect by lying are just as imaginary as the self-image you maintain when you lie to protect your self. This is the imaginary world of adolescence. (Location 3374)

We know at least two things by the time we've been tempered by despair and become road-worthy facers of disillusionment: 1. There are no dependable truths. There are more or less dependable truths, and they change now and then. 2. There is one dependable source for common agreement. It is sensory data. We can and must assume that a direct report of sensory data is the closest we can get to shared common experience. (Location 3407)

mind is a web of abstractions, and once a mind has been grown and nurtured, the job becomes getting extricated from the web of abstraction and returning to hometown reality. It's not really reality, I know, but it is the best close-to-hand, agreed upon basis of interpretation we have. It is the only “reality” we've got. It's a hell of an assumption that your pain and my pain are the same, that your pleasure and my pleasure are alike, and that your perceptions match my perceptions, but this is the necessary basic level at which to begin. (Location 3412)

I can only tell the truth that is my truth at the moment. We don't have to agree with each other about how things are. We just have to listen to each other and get how things are for each other, now. (Location 3426)