The Root of Fear

The Root of Fear

“Lying is the obvious form of dishonesty but, actually, making excuses is worse.  While falsehoods are usually noticeable, it can be a long time before I realize that I am making excuses.  A lot of life can be wasted by this deception.”

Dadi Janki

“Where there is honesty there is no fear.”  When I heard this point from a spiritual class, I thought, how true and deep.  I never quite saw the connection like that. We often don’t realize the deep correlation between honesty and fear.  But where does honesty begin?

And what if we were to turn this around.  What, if we were to look at some deep-seated fears, we have that we can’t seem to get to the bottom of?  Could the cause be that we have been dishonest in some way in our life?  Does that past untruth in some way carry a vibrational residue in our sub-conscious memory … creating some unknown fear?

Honesty really begins with our own self.  The conscience truly is our guide, and will protect us from future suffering if we listen to it.  When we are spiritually tuned in, and not distracted, then we are intuitively able to catch and detect when something seems to be ‘just off’ and not right.  When we are not honest with ourselves or hold onto some secret, or something hidden within, then there will always be some fear in us of being caught out.  Secrets obscure the truth, and stop us from being honest, with our self and then others.

Many people act against their conscience, and what they know to be better, simply because of the fear of being rejected, or of having a secret exposed.  Whether that relates to something of the past, their character defects or some ongoing misbehaviour. If we are honest, then nobody can apply leverage to coerce or intimidate us to do anything which is against our conscience.

I believe that the natural state of the soul is of transparent honesty. Let’s take a look at where the dishonesty may have occurred and what is the connection with fear.  The soul knows intrinsically that one bad deed will reap its consequences.  So, although it is not a conscious (bad) thought, the soul knows sub-consciously that a shadow is hanging over it.  This creates a cloud or blanket of fear in the soul.  Paralysing the soul to do again that which it did previously in a dishonest manner … indeed the soul becomes trapped by their own patterned habits.

So why do we do that?  We may sometimes come under the influence of name, fame or praise and kill our conscience for something temporary.  It could be, for example a habit of not telling the complete truth for fear of being shamed, punished or judged.  This will stop us from not being true to, or listening to our conscience.  This fear keeps us trapped in dishonesty. In this sense society does not reward us for being honest but punishes us for it.

I am reminded of a beautiful story of a reunion of students and teachers. Thirty years earlier, one of the boys’ watches had been stolen and the teacher had asked all the students to close their eyes and the teacher would walk past everyone in the class, and the student who stole it should hand over the watch to him.  At this reunion, the boy who had stolen the watch went up to the teacher and said, ‘Sir, I am so glad that on the day when the watch was stolen, you did not shame me by mentioning my name.’  The teacher looked at him surprised, and said, ‘but dear, I also had my eyes closed.’

Honesty pays.  Honesty brings strength to the soul. Take courage to be honest.

It’s Time … to live in the light of truth, rather than the shadows of dishonesty.