Honesty is not the best policy – it is the only policy. Whether we believe in the laws governing karma or not, or get ourselves wrapped up in the popular concepts of the Law of Attraction, truth is always there ready to hand out consequences to us. It is truth and truth alone that judges outcomes. It will be truth, not our wishes and intentions, that will ultimately lead us to our rewards.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
Philip K. Dick
Let’s begin our examination of what we mean by truth with an examination of what we can call “the immutable laws of physics.” No matter how fast you flap your arms in imitation of the hummingbird, there are only two ways you are going to get your feet to leave the ground beneath you. One is temporary and requires you to jump up, the other is mechanical and involves the force called “lift” that is created by things like propellers and sails. All of the greatest forces of wishing or intention will not change that. No matter what you believe or what you have been told, no other result has ever been demonstrated.
But do not despair! There is a way to lift yourself upward into infinity if you so desire. It’s called, imagination! And if we want to, we can imagine any number of untrue things, but we do not want to confuse them with the things that really are and the things that really are not.
I’m not going to discuss the validity of the multi-verse theory, astral travel and spirit journeys. There are countless cases of anecdotal evidence supporting many of the claims demonstrating both subjective and objective realities in what for lack of a better term we can call, “other dimensions.” For the sake of argument we can assume these experiences to have validity; however, we must remember that in relation to our place here on Earth, these other experiences are greatly symbolic and representative rather than actual. Here in this article, though, I am going to discuss another dimension, or “plane,” that is actually closest to our physical Universe and has, as a result of this proximity, a great impact on us. This is the mental plane, or plane of intellect.
For humanity, nothing is possible until it first exists on the mental plane. No invention ever popped onto the Earth without first going through the mind of its inventor. No movement ever took place that didn’t first begin with a thought, a plan, and words. No offense was ever taken nor any praise ever fully heard that didn’t resonate in the mind of the ear that heard it. This should indicate to us how very powerful a place the mental sphere of existence is. We give the stamp decreeing something as either valid or invalid within our minds before we allow it to see the light of physical existence.
The concept that something comes into being because I think it so is a very important truth to keep in mind, as it is also the very core of how so many people attempting to manifest their desires into reality get it wrong. If it is true that nothing manifests until it is a thought first, then we must be very careful to keep our thoughts under control and in the direction that best suits our desires. We must be sure to be mindful.
What if your thoughts and words are bearing false witness? What if you go around slandering another because you believe it helps relieve emotional stress? Or, on a less assaulting note, what if you go around pretending to be what others ask you to be just so you can get their approval? According to the laws of the Universe, you have planted lies and will reap lies (being a false friend rewards you with false friendships). This isn’t a simple one-to-one equation, though. Just because you lied about someone, doesn’t mean that karma will enforce itself by having another tell lies about you. It is far more complicated than that, but a simple way to understand it is: now that you have gone around telling lies, the truth you believe you see from now on will be infected with falsehood.
Let me give you an example. You happen to know that your boyfriend is very sensitive about his chili recipe. But to be honest, you don’t like it. It’s way too hot – it isn’t five-alarm chili, it’s atomic chili! There’s no flavor to it, just the experience of fire and brimstone. But instead of telling him the truth, you tell him how fantastic it is. Well … unfortunately for you, you just manifested bowl after bowl coming your way for however long you can stand to lie about it.
This is a very simplistic example. It’s also called a “white lie” and some people will justify it to the ends of time as a good thing to tell someone in the name of so-called compassion (as if it were compassionate to allow him to continue to have guaranteed failures at the annual chili cook-off). Let’s look instead at another kind of lie – the blatant lie.
We’ve all heard the story of the boy who cried wolf. In this story, the boy yells out that he is being attacked by a wolf, even though there is no wolf. He does this as a sort of prank to gather attention from his village. He does this several times, the villagers come running to his aid and each time they learn that he has lied to them. Finally, a wolf really does attack him, and this time when he yells out his plea, he receives no assistance. Why did this happen? The simple moral of this story is, as we all know, “don’t go around crying wolf.” That’s very good advice indeed, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. What happened was that the boy manifested several simultaneous truths at the same time that in the end conflicted with each other, thus canceling out the very one truth he needed. He invoked the truth in his mind that wolves attack people. He invoked the truth that his townspeople will come to his aid. He also invoked the truth that he was untrustworthy and not deserving of aid. When the wolf he manifested eventually appeared, the consequences of his self-betrayal were devastating.
So am I saying that all our lies will become manifest? That if I lie to you and say that I am impervious to bullets that I will manifest myself into being The Man of Steel? No. But I am saying that you will reap the consequences of your lies, and if those consequences are contrary to the desires you seek, you will remove yourself from that which you seek. And this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the nature of truth. There are many avenues that must be explored to fully understand the idea that our thoughts, our words, our mind are the source of our results. There are questions to be answered such as, “Do you truly desire this?” “Do you truly believe you deserve this?” “Are you saying one thing but meaning another?”
To become truthful and mindful is quite possibly one of the greatest tasks we face as human beings. It isn’t an easy task once one has developed the habit of seeing falsely. But if I could give you one thing today that will help you set your life straight onto the path of your ultimate success, it would be this – don’t think of honesty as the best policy, think of honesty as the only policy – because honest or not, policy will be enforced.
