Recovering a state of honesty
Once you lose awareness of lying, you have entered a state that will be very difficult for you to escape. As you dissociate from reality, you separate yourself from the information and feedback that God has designed to keep you in the path of greatest joy and away from unnecessary suffering.
It is highly likely that you are more deeply immersed into a state of dishonesty than you previously thought. No matter how seriously you are embroiled in dishonesty, there is a way back. While you can instantaneously decide to be completely honest, it will take time before you will be “perfectly honest and upright in all things.”1 The more dishonest you have been, and the longer you have been dishonest, the harder and longer a process it will be.
Some will be discouraged as they begin to see just how little they see. Recovery from involuntary lying is a process. You can’t directly act on what you can’t see. It takes time to develop or recover the ability to re-sensitize your conscience, perceive more information, and gain the wisdom necessary to process it into better decisions.2 The journey into honesty begins with whatever improvement is visible in your life. No matter how dishonest you have been, you will always be aware of some way in which you can improve. This glimmer of light, no matter how dim, is your lifeline to attaining the full benefits of honesty. As you consistently do everything you know is best, your ability to see what is best will expand, and you will grow more and more towards the benefits of full honesty:
9 And he said: Go, and tell this people to hear and actually understand, and to see and actually perceive.
10 For they have blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts to what I have shown and told them, that they cannot see with their eyes nor understand with their hearts, but if they turn to me, and see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, I will heal them. (Isaiah 6, Author’s Interpretation)
Returning from a state of involuntary dishonesty requires great diligence. While dishonesty is a state that is passively maintained, honesty is a state that must be actively and intentionally maintained. To escape a dishonest state, you must address all dishonesty in your life, as far as you can see it, and continue to do so continuously through time as you gain the ability to perceive more and reason better.
Honesty is a full-time affair. As you learn how to tell the truth, ensure you do it all the time. Exercising honesty unevenly works about as well as trying to be healthier only when you get sick. You grow more honest through being honest all the time, just as you grow healthier by being healthy all the time.3
The remaining chapters in the book will detail how to live with deep honesty.
Footnotes
- 1. And they were among the people of Nephi, and also numbered among the people who were of the church of God. And they were also distinguished for their zeal towards God, and also towards men; for they were perfectly honest and upright in all things; and they were firm in the faith of Christ, even unto the end. (Alma 27:27) ↩
- 2. A shorter path exists, but there are few who possess the wisdom and humility to take it. The shortcut for recovering from a state of dishonesty is to seek out and apply the advice of someone more honest than you. A person who is already living in a state of honesty can see flaws in yourself that you cannot, and if you are willing to honestly evaluate their criticisms and the reasons they provide for them, you can much more quickly recover from the state of dishonesty. ↩
- 3. “Men become builders by building houses, and harpists by playing the harp. Similarly, we grow just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising our self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage.” - Aristotle ↩