Betraying the self

Today I sat around a group of village elders who were all planning to ostracize someone by refusing to see, talk or listen to this person…one of them said, he deserves it for being so stubborn and set in his ways…another injected, this will teach him a lesson.

When I was asked for my opinion – I simply said, he might be stubborn…he might probably break under intense social pressure….but at least he has the truth on his side….and that is a very powerful force as it that means, this man has self respect and beliefs that he is prepared to stand by….no matter what the cost may be – I then turned to these people and told them all ‘the only reason why we have come to this end point is because none of you have the courage to take responsibility for your actions and apologize and to give this man the assurance the transgression will never occur again….I then when on to ask further of them all – ‘are you sure you all want to do this without the truth on your side?’

I wanted nothing to do with this.

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‘In order to make up for our emotional immaturity, and because of our fear of getting hurt, disappointed and let down – we all develop a denial system.

That’s a very natural response. I do it all the time, so do you do you…so let’s just call a spade a spade….otherwise this will just be a bull shit sharing.

In that process of transforming a lie into the truth, not only do we become perfect liars to ourselves and others….but we also betray the self….that to me is the real tragedy…we betray everything that is good, noble and worthy.

At times our lies are so well crafted that we even believe our own lies.

As time goes by, we don’t even notice we are lying any longer and sometimes even when we know we are lying, we continue to justify the lie by wordsmithing a counter narrative to the truth by convincing ourselves and others that we are righteous…justified and closest to the truth.

In truth, we lie only to protect our stunted emotional state so that we can continue to believe and project the illusion to others – we are emotionally mature and whole.

The denial system is like a magician that always finds a way to fool us us from seeing things, people and events for what they really are – for example, we spend a lot of time and effort to craft a near perfect social mask…why?

Because usually it’s too painful to see ourselves truthfully or to let others see who we really are…so we lie!

And by constantly betraying ourselves day in and day out, we choose willingly to live in that world of lies thereby becoming the assassins of the truth.’