A Liar’s Punishment.
"Do not seek to do great things but small things with great love".
~ Mother Teresa
Lately, I’ve been searching for the Truth. I’ve been searching in the Commandments, in the Bill of Rights, in World History - in the Perennial Wisdom of the relationships each is pointing toward. No doubt we’ve been here before, at the junction of “good and evil”, at the tipping point of destruction, and, simultaneously, at the threshold of enlightenment. It took a while for me to remember, mostly because I was a child during the Cold War, an adolescent during the Vietnam War, and numbed out during the Afghan War.
It all depends on how old you were and how aware you were beyond your own wants and needs. Regardless, we all arrive the best we can when the diaspora of our soulful lessons pierce through the veil of reality.
The way we can all pinpoint where we were on 9/11. I was standing on the emergency shoulder of the NJ Turnpike in utter silence as the second tower collapsed into a plume. Matteo, just shy of 2, was in the back seat napping, and I was just weeks away from giving birth to Luca, hands on my belly.
I had more to think about than myself, from this there was no escape.
Terror descends upon us when we have called it near, opened the door, poked the bear, taken more than our share, ignored the truth, or awakened evil by justifying terror with the violent retribution for that terror. Each time we believe that we can judge another or are above the Laws of Man, put profit above humanity and dignity, and defend worship our idea of Love instead of acting in Love, we break our Covenant with God - we feed the wolf and the lie that we are more deserving.
Each time we numb out consuming the ideas, objects, and powers of this temptation - each time we are confronted with the history that we have yet to own, each time we are met with the dread of what happens when our attention reigns fear rather than love
— we turn away from the naked Truth of the cause of our despair.
Shame.
It’s vitally important to understand how much power a kazillion insults or lies can have when they expand exponentially - a bomb of psychic shrapnel that gets stuck in the body of experience until extricated with precision and intent; and, how falsifying the Truth makes it unbearable, keeps us from the Authentic.
It’s like that Victorian story about the Truth meeting a lie. One day, the Truth was walking in the forest and encountered the lie. “What a beautiful sky,” lie declared. Truth looked up, and, indeed, it was an amazing sky. Truth agreed with the lie.
As they continued to walk, they came upon a pond. The lie dipped their toes and declared, “The water is lovely. Let’s swim!” Again, Truth dipped its toe in the water and, indeed, it was tempting! So, they both undressed and stepped into the water.
Well, as you can imagine, once Truth relaxed and lost track of the lie, the lie ran out, put on the clothes of the Truth, and ran away. Truth, totally enraged, ran after the lie but the world, so uncomfortable with the naked Truth, kept turning away,
— while the lie now clothed as the truth had their full attention.
Well, there you have it - from what we turn away - the story of our predicament and the neurosis" of believing in these lies because of the rage and/or discomfort of meeting the naked Truth behind the lies … that all that preceded was just a lie.
… they way I felt when I was first introduced to non-duality and shared the book Buddhism Plain and Simple with many of my friends. Some read it and some did not. Eventually, someone called and I could hear the sadness, confusion, and suffering in their voice when they asked, “Annette, if I read this will it help me forget the past?”
Well, that froze me in my tracks. “I’m not sure,” I stumbled. All I was certain “of” was that a whole untapped Universe was waiting for me. I didn’t consider the possibility that everything before was a lie clothed as the Truth - that in some bizarre way, I had perpetuated it, stuffed it in a bag, and dragged it around with me like a dead horse?!! And, if I couldn’t believe in my lies, how could I trust anyone outside myself?
Down the rabbit hole, I went.
The next decade I took refuge in understanding that:
the past, present, and future are stacked vertically, however, we experience them horizontally
and how we respond to the past in this ever-present NOW is what will meet us in the future
and that compassion is what fuses the past with the present, what infuses the future with hope.
The goal of the lie is to rewrite our memories, to avoid responsibility and to inflame doubt. This fear becomes a paranoid despot trapped in states of predation - deceit, dishonesty, violence, and killing. George Bernard Shaw pinned it when he said, “The liar's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.”
Indeed, while I was bathing in lies, I turned away from the Truth of my power to heal from those experiences; and in being willing to do so, recognize the shame and fear that disallows us from learning from our mistakes.
There’s nothing you did to deserve suffering, loneliness, or shame as there is nothing you need to “do” to be a joyful, shining being. You are beautiful, loving, and worthy.
These moments are asking us to examine our process of trust.
Every single soul and generation from the dawn of man and the creation of time, has been telling and living the same story and myth – that of Adam and Eve, Satan and Jesus, Buddha and Maya, West and East. It is the temptation to abandon the posture of compassion at the very Heart of Freedom for the impassioned ideations of independence when interdependence is how we thrive and grow. And when we believe in this lie, then we can hope no more - we doubt what we see with our eyes or experience with our senses which is what we tend to project forward to become our truth in the future.
Here’s the gig: it is our True Nature to believe each other, otherwise what kind of world would we have?! The one we are experiencing right now.
We are tasked to be brave enough to challenge what we believe for the sake of the Truth, not our personal truth which is subject to shared validation and prudence.
How can we remember this Truth … that what you are is eternal and wise?
We must put down these recycled stories and give this moment a chance to remind us. This is the function of our relationship; it looks like I am someone separate from you, but I am a mirror of what you already know sharing ways that you can remember you are loved, for Love is our Truth.
It doesn’t matter how we wake up – sometimes it’s quiet and others loud. It just means that you can finally see things as they are – to be with life impersonally so that you can enjoy it personally.