Before mastering the practice of inner warriorship, all practitioners have to be prepared to not only face the truth but give of it entirely. In this week’s Wild Minds guided soundscape, producer and lifelong meditation practitioner Howie B considers the ins and outs of our next quality of the mind: truthfulness.
Like a lovely flower,
bright and fragrant,
are the fine and truthful words
of the man who says what he means.
Truthfulness. Unlike honesty, which requires we speak no lies, truthfulness requires that we reveal all of the truth and facts without holding back.
We learn to apply truthfulness in identifying our emotions, to find the willingness to be vulnerable in our examinations of ourselves. Truthfulness extends to examining what we hold to be the truth, and asking ourselves why we believe it to be so.
We all know how lying affects our wellbeing. And if we are not aware, there is much to be learned from identifying and analyzing how much farther we may travel in life without relying on dishonesty. Lying reinforces emotions such as guilt, agitation, and fear. Further lying and unethicality to protect the original lie frequently follow, prompting a cyclical pattern or increasing severity.
The impeccable practice of truthfulness, on the other hand, serves many functions for the practitioner. It encourages ethicality, requires precise awareness of speech and motivation, enhances clear perception and memory of events which might otherwise be distorted by lying, frees the mind of guilt and fear of discovery, and reduces agitation and worry.
The fully enlightened individual, freed from greed, attachment, anger, and other unskillful mind states, has neither desire nor need to distort the truth or act unethically. Those who are fully ethical have nothing to hide.
Truthfulness, like all the other perfections, will become a spontaneous and continuous expression of the enlightened mind and its essential nature.
