Every one of us has an inbuilt lie detector … the heart. It’s an inherent energy sensitive organ that tells what’s true and what isn’t. Its response is instant.
It tells you what’s aligned with the flow of your energy … and what isn’t. It tightens in the presence of insincerity, deceit and general wrongness. It relaxes in the presence of truth.
I was encouraged and schooled to ignore this phenomenal device as I adjusted to the social imperatives of the culture I inhabit.
Like most kids I learned that telling the truth was a dangerous pastime. It provoked criticism, judgement, humiliation and punishment if I shared doubts about what those in authority said was true.
Adults around me would often go into melt-down if they were exposed to any truth that undermined their beliefs. So protecting them from that experience had an element of self-preservation for me.
This is one of the many ways we’re programmed to ignore the wisdom of our hearts. We learn to live IN our mentality, rather than FROM our hearts. Figuring out what the world insists we be, and appearing as just that is the dominant priority.
The conventions of the social order demand that we play along with its romance with itself … the fictions and fantasies that inform our reality. That process of playing along reassures our co-inhabitants that we’re compliant with the programme … part of the system, as they are.
But it seems to me this romance is coming to an end. The collective psychosis called normality is exposing itself through its increasingly obvious inconsistency.
Even so, choosing to follow the truth of our hearts takes courage … a considerable degree of courage. It can be such a radical decision that it generates a seldom recognised inner trauma.
This is why it’s vital to be gentle with ourselves. The magnitude of change required shocks our system … mentally, emotionally and physically.
We have to nurse ourselves into our truth, rather than berate ourselves for getting it so wrong for so long.
The system will challenge us to explain ourselves and defend our choices at every turn. Accepting any challenge of this kind implicitly keeps us defined by the system … defined by others.
In this process, just BEING our true selves is a spiritual practice. It’s what can be regarded as “Light Leadership”. It may be the most difficult practice of all.