Being honest with yourself leads to a heavenly life experience. Lying to yourself and others leads to a hellish life experience.
It is so hard to be honest, even with ourselves. Much of society teaches us to lie to ourselves and to others. We call this process ‘believing’ and being polite, but it is just lying.
It took me years to break the habit of lying to myself, but when I did I experienced this world as heavenly, perfect. Even today, I am not always honest with myself and hence I have periods where I experience life as hell. But when I take the time to stop and get back to the truth, I again go back to that heavenly life experience.
Recently there was an election and the conservative political party lost. One of the things I find most startling about this is just how dishonest these conservatives were being with THEMSELVES leading up to the election. They were all so certain that their candidate was going to win by a landslide even though the polls were showing he was going to lose. But these conservatives wanted to believe their candidate was going to win so they lied to themselves saying that the polls were wrong or that the pollsters were all liberals and the liberal media was just trying to convince everyone their candidate was going to win so that the conservatives would be discouraged and not vote.
Anyway you look at it, the hell those conservatives experienced on election night and are now experiencing is entirely a product of their own self deception; nothing more.
The dictionary defines religion a a system of beliefs. If we were to be honest without ourselves we would have to admit that a belief is a lie we tell ourselves. For example, imagine I ‘believe’ that there is an apple tree around the corner with lots of apples on it, and I believe this because someone told me this, I am lying to myself because the truth is I do not know if there is a tree there or if I understood the person correctly or whatever. Such is the case with religion, for we really do not know what the writers of the scriptures meant by their words until we experience what they experienced, and that would only be in the present moment. By experiencing something in the present moment we are not longer believing in some words about something, we are experiencing it. Belief is gone. If we just believe we are saying to ourselves that we do not care enough to find out the truth.
Religious people experience this world as HELL because of their self deception. This is good for the business of the ruling classes, for they can hold out hope for a better future like a carrot on a stick and the gullible religious people will just keep chasing after that hope as they lie to themselves thinking that heaven is just around the corner.
Heaven is NOT just around the corner; it is here, AT HAND, as Jesus tried to tell people. The only requirement is that you STOP lying to yourself.
That is a tough requirement; it takes a lot of discipline to stop lying to yourself when everywhere you go the world is encouraging you to lie to yourself. Which is why some people encourage you to get away from society in order to find the inner peace and clarity that comes with it so that you can see what is real, what is true and you can be honest with yourself about it.
Yet who cares enough, even about themselves, to take the time to go off to a lonely place and find that clarity so that they can see the truth that will set them free to enjoy and love all that life has to offer? Really?
Is it that people do not care of is it that people do not know HOW to be honest with themselves, they do not know how to find that clarity, they do not know how to stop the lying?
I do not know the answer to this question. This has been the quest I have had for a long time, to find out the answer to this burning question. I am hoping that there might be some people out there who will read this with some thoughts and ideas they will share on this here.