Lies & Untruths

(c) 2011 Joan M. Newcomb

The other day I had lunch with someone who is charming and loquacious, and in the midst of telling a story, told a lie.  It was a simple choice of words that altered the truth slightly, gave them the entire credit for an action and made them seem magnanimous and kind.  Someone else I'd been with earlier in the week had talked about the same incident from my past, which I mostly remember myself, and I knew it had been entirely their idea.

It was really an interesting revelation for me.  I sat through the rest of the conversation viewing things in a new light.  I mean, I always knew this about this person, but I hadn't been caught up in the wonderful, warm feeling they projected where you most willingly believed what they said. 

Did they believe their own story?  I think so.  They've told themselves this version of their history that it is now their Truth.

And here I am in Washington, DC, where the Big News is this Crisis about the Debt Ceiling.  The thing is, it isn't one.  They'll raise the debt ceiling, as they always have.  It's a manufactured cause for alarm, detracting from the employment situation.  But it illustrates on a grander scale the distortions projected into the world.

I've shared that I'm here with my mother who has Alzheimer's, which affects the brain in multiple ways.  Sometimes the information or the exerience evaporates.  It's no longer there.  Sometimes facts are joined together with a distorted story.  I'll watch her make stuff up, to try to understand why something has happened, because she doesn't remember what she was told or what really occurred.

Alzheimers people aren't lying; they really believe what they're saying.

On the other hand, in order to get her to do something or go somewhere, I've had to lie to her.  In a caregiver's meeting, they called this 'fibology'.  Because she doesn't remember the diagnosis, she doesn't retain the information that she has Alzheimer's.  It just pisses her off to remind her, so now I'll soften things by saying we're doing such and such to prevent it. 

We tell ourselves lies all the time, and view the world through our distortions.  We can perceive the same situation as a victim, a hero, an innocent bystander, all depending on the lens we're viewing it through.  In order to program someone else, tell them truth with a slight distortion; it sticks in their reality that way.  In order to recover from trauma, you have to drain the emotion from the memory ...or another way is to rewrite the story about it.

"The world is an illusion" doesn't mean the world isn't real.  The world is energy, made up of layers of illusions.

The greater the lie, the greater the discomfort.  The more illusions you believe, the more disconnected from reality you are.

When you can look the distortion directly in it's face and tell the truth about it, it disintegrates. 

We're afraid to do that, because we believe that we'll die when all the illusions collapse.  And that's a lie.

In reality, the more we de-energize lies, the clearer we feel.  As we peel away the layers of illusion, we can get to the core.  And the core of the world is Love.

This week, notice the pictures you're viewing the world through.  Tell the truth about them (or at least question them).  Instead of running away from what is, stand and take a good look at it.  Brick walls will become the flimsy viels that they are.  Conflicts will become meaningless.

Try this for a week and see what happens!