Truthfulness will set you free

Truthfulness, and not the truth, will set you free.  Truthfulness starts with being truthful to one's self internally.

"the "unconscious" is the locus of the all the ways I have lied to myself…my unconscious is the locus of my insincerity, of my being less than truthful with myself, less than truthful about my subjective depth, my interior status, my deep desires and intentions.  The unconscious is the locus of the lie.

The example we used was "sad" and "mad" about an absent father. What that means is that at some point early in my life, I started interpreting anger as depression. Perhaps I was enraged at my father for not being around. This rage, however, is very dangerous for a child. What if this rage could actually kill my father? Perhaps I had better not have this anger, because after all I love my father. So I'm angry at myself instead. I beat myself up instead.  I'm rotten, no good, wretched to the core. This is very depressing. I started out mad, now I'm calling it sad.

One way or another, I have misinterpreted my interior, I have distorted my depth. I have started calling anger "sadness". And I carry this lie around with me. I cannot be truthful with myself because that would involve such great pain - to want to kill the father I love - so I would rather lie about the whole thing. And so this I do. My "shadow", my "unconscious", is now the locus of this lie, the focal point of this insincerity, the inner place that I hide from myself.

And because I lie to myself - and then forget it is a lie - then I will lie to you without even knowing it. I will probably even seem very sincere about it.  In fact, if I have thoroughly lied to myself, I will honestly think I'm telling the truth. And if you give me a lie detector test, it will show that I'm telling the "truth".  So much for empirical tests.

Finally, because I have misinterpreted my own depth, I will often misinterpret yours. I am cutting something off in my own depth - I am dissociating it, or repressing it, or alienating it - and so I will distort interpretations from that depth, both in myself and in others.  My interpretations will be laced with lies, nested in insincerity. I will misinterpret myself, and I will often misinterpret you."

- Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything. 2nd Edition. 2001

Shirk Alert: Pope's Brother Confirms Pagan Practices Widespread Amongst Catholics and Society

In a recent article quoting Monsignor Georg Ratzinger's new book, My Brother The Pope, he remarked that “an almost pagan way of life has taken root” amongst many of today’s Catholics and others in society.

The observation was that remembering and thanking God for His daily gifts were absent in most people’s lives today. “It starts with sitting down at table and beginning a meal without even thinking about prayer, an it ends with no longer coming to church regularly”.

The article includes another interesting personal fact that Monsignor Ratzinger and his brother grew up in a devoutly Catholic household where the family would pray daily to St Dismas, a “good thief” who allegedly died alongside Jesus on the cross, to protect their father, a policeman.  Praying to some other entity than God for protection is a clear instance of major Shirk.

Many of us are guilty of taking God’s daily gifts for granted. What does God have to do with getting paid for being smart and having a great life? We are blind to God’s mercy and grace in our success, much less be thankful to him.  Herein lies the path to minor shirk for the unaware.   

The illustration of a family praying to some other entity for protection, a former thief in this case, is an illustration of major Shirk and a clear violation of the First Commandment.  Many who pray to saints and entities other than God will not dispute the supremacy of God but argue that their lowly spiritual station in life as a result of sinfulness requires a spiritual intermediary who is a more keen and sympathetic listener than God and would make their case better heard with God. 

These beliefs assume that the once human saint’s spirit was conferred extraordinary powers by God to match the desires of the humans who conferred sainthood on him. The very idea of this is a clear example of major Shirk.

There is a place for great men and saints in our prayers. We ask God to bless them and have mercy on them and their families for the great and good things they did in their lives.  If those great souls are informed of our prayers, they may reciprocate a request to God in our favor.  

There is no disputing the good and great deeds of the saints or prophets and the desire to remember and honor them. The issue is not if but how it should be done in our prayers where the major caveat is to avoid committing shirk.

To those whose religious traditions include the mention of saints, prophets and holy men in your prayers, please take care of your intentions and beliefs before God. Beware violating the First Commandment.

Aspirancy, the Preliminaries of Spiritual Stuggle, and the Path of Discipline

“Be it known unto you that the man who has in all certainty beheld the harvest of the Afterlife with his heart must needs aspire to it, and must long for it and follow its ways, despising thereby the pleasure and delights which this world contains. For the man who has a bauble will lose all desire for it when he spies a precious gem, and will long to make an exchange. Lack of desire for the harvest of the Afterlife and the meeting with God (Exalted is He!) is the outcome of a lack of faith in God and in the Last Day. Now, I do not mean by “faith” the discourse of the soul” and the movement made by the tongue when pronouncing the Two Testimonies in a way which is devoid of any sincerity or single heartedness, for this would be equivalent to believing that the gem were better than the bauble while knowing its name alone, and not its reality. Such a believer will not renounce the bauble, having grown accustomed to it, and will harbor no passionate yearning for the gem.

The obstacle which bars us from attaining to God is therefore our lack of wayfaring, and this in turn proceeds from a lack of aspirancy, this being the result of an absence of faith, which is in turn the consequence of a lack of guides and of people who might remind one, and who know about God (Exalted is He!) and will lead one along the path to Him, who give men to realize the baseness and impermanence of this world and the great import and everlasting duration of the next. Mankind is in a state of heedlessness, having plunged into the desires of this world and fallen deep into slumber, and there is not a single scholar of the Faith who is working to arouse it from this plight.

Should anyone happened to awake he will find himself incapable of following the Path because of his ignorance, when he questions the scholars about it he finds them to be far removed from it and disposed instead towards their own whims. Thus it is that weakness in aspirancy, ignorance of the Path, and the self-interested discourses pronounced by the scholars, are the causes of the present absence of wayfarers on the Path of God (Exalted is He!). If the objective be veiled, the guide absent, worldly desire predominant and the seeker heedless, then attaining unto him is an impossibility and the Paths must needs fall into desuetude.

But should it happen that a man awake, either of his own accord or by virtue of the activity of another, and aspire to the commerce and harvest of the Afterlife, he should be aware that there are diverse requirements which must be observed at the outset of aspirancy, and that there exists a place of refuge and a fortress within which he must defend himself if he is to be safe from those highwaymen who would obstruct him, and likewise that there are duties which he must perform while on his journey without cease.

The requirements of aspirancy which must be observed pertain to the lifting of the veil and the barrier which lies between one and the truth. For mankind has been deprived of the Truth by reason of a successive establishment of veils and the presence of a barrier on the Path.  God (Exalted is He!) has said, And We have set a barrier before them and a barrier behind them, and have covered them so that they cannot see (Quran XXXVI:9)

Now the ‘barrier’ which lies between the aspirant and the Truth is constituted of four things: wealth, status, imitation, and sin. The veil of wealth can be lifted only by divesting oneself of it so that no more than the necessary quantity thereof remains.”

 ~ An excerpt from Al-Ghazali’s 12^th century treatise on Disciplining the Soul, 22.11, translated by T.J. Winter, University of Cambridge. 1995.