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