In Order To Be Truthful

A poem by
Michael Leunig

In order to be truthful

We must do more than speak the truth

We must also hear the truth

We must also receive the truth

We must also act upon truth

The difficult truth

Within us and around us

We must also devote ourselves to truth

Otherwise we are dishonest

And our lives are mistaken

God grant us the strength and courage

To be truthful

Amen

The Gifts of Truth

I’ve been feeling inspired lately, recognising that

Change is possible

There is a quiet joy and celebration in me, as I notice “Wow, I’m different”

These are little changes, but they inspire me forward.

I am steeped in the quiet knowledge that

Courage is required if we are to truly Change

This quiet mantra is with me now. Not as an overbearing demand “You must change! You must grow!”

The cries of “If you don’t grow you aren’t worthy, if you’re not perfect noone will love you!” that have plagued me in the past are gone or fading.

Instead there is desire to change and grow. A deeper knowledge of Grace. And an understanding that

When we live in fear we loose sight of change

When we substitute fear for Truth in our lives, fear becomes our ruler, it restricts us, controls us, and limits our capacity to change. In fact fear screams at us “It’s not possible!” and without Truth we have nothing to combat the command.

I can see that the changes in me are only happening because I am growing a sincere desire to not only receive Truth about all things in my life, but also the willingness to live in Truth and to honour Truth at all times. This is where the courage bit really comes in!

But as always, when we step into more harmony with God, there are gifts.

I am finding, through my living and not just my thinking, that

One of the gifts of Truth is trust.

When a person is loyal to Truth – always and no-matter-what – the people around them can trust their word and their actions. A gift is born – the gift of closer bonds and deeper intimacy.

When I have the courage to live in Truth I literally feel the warms of God’s Love and Laws supporting me. Our relationship – the magic connection between me and my Creator (how humbling it is) – can truly commence. It is enabled by my willingness to acknowledge that it is He, not I, that controls how this Universe and the course of my life runs.

Fear, that harsh tyrant, would have me believe that I must control and protect every aspect of myself and my life, or all will be lost. This position places me, not only in opposition with all of the Loving Laws that God has created to guide me home to Him and who I truly am. But it also, in its arrogance, says that I must be the creator of who I am and what I become.

The Truth is something far more magical.

The Truth is that a Greater Hand than mine created me. He imprinted within me the design for a creature that I, in my current fear bound state, cannot even imagine. I must only surrender to His Love and Laws to enable the more beautiful, creative and loving creature to be born. 

Or it would be truer to say

I allow myself to be born again.

All of this grows, this trust in my Father, the deeper intimacy in my relationships, through my honour of Truth and thus my refusal to accept fear as my ruler.

Trust can only grow as we live in Truth.

In this season when there is such an emphasis on ‘gifts’ my wish for you, dear reader, is that you may begin to receive the gifts that Truth can bring to your life and to know that all things are possible with the One Who Loves the most.

Self Punishment and Joy

I was chatting to our friend Joy the other day. We were discussing blocks, the things that prevent us experiencing our emotions and connecting to God.

I mentioned self punishment, the state of berating ourselves for not ‘getting it’, not being ‘good enough’, putting ourselves down and projecting anger at ourselves.

Joy said casually ‘Oh yes, self punishment, I tried that for a day. It was terrible! No wonder people feel like giving up on this path if they self punish.’

I burst into laughter. Self punishment is HUGE for me. I felt so happy for Joy that she could try it on and realise how damaging it was so quickly. If only I had just tried it out for a day, thought ‘this is ridiculous’ and given it up!

But seriously, self punishment is a big block for me for a reason. I wasn’t born with it – I was taught it in my childhood. If I blamed myself for how I was and what I felt, then no-one minded. If I spoke up, just to say what I felt, if I felt something was unfair, if I felt I was unloved, then there was trouble. I was blamed. The resistance in my parents to feeling their own emotions was so big that I got seriously 'guilted' and made to feel wrong if I triggered them. So I learned that I must be bad.

Right now, in my day to day life, it takes courage to stop self punishing. Underneath my self loathing and bashing lie the feelings of how much it hurt to be blamed, how unloved and alone I felt and how much I feel like a horrible person, completely unworthy of being loved. These are the feelings I must release.

Dr Susan Forward says “until you honestly assess who owns the responsibility.. (for the pain in your childhood).., you will almost certainly go through life shouldering the blame yourself. As long as you are blaming yourself you’ll suffer shame and self-hatred, and you’ll find ways to punish yourself” *

Shame, self hatred and self punishment have surely been my middle names.

The challenge for all of us, when we are finally brave enough to acknowledge what occurred in our childhood’s, is to grieve this treatment and not to go into blame, hatred and punishment of those who failed to love us. This is just another block and only damages us further.

To heal we must face the truth of what happened in our childhoods and grieve the lack of love. Only through the grieving can God reach us and teach us.

The fallacy that our parents did a good job only keeps us suppressing our pain and primes us to inflict damage on our own children when they arrive.

In my childhood I was ridiculed, treated condescendingly and laughed at for being my expressive, passionate self. My desire to punish myself now is only perpetuating what I was taught. It takes courage to cease punishing myself, to honour my own experience, and to submit to the pain. I am convinced however that this is the pathway to happiness and where I will uncover my joy.

little me!

Wishing you courage on the journey to find your joy,

Mary

* Susan Forward ‘ Toxic Parents’, pg 214