Liar Liar Pants On Fire
I remember saying that phrase many years ago when I was growing up.
I love the old 1828 Webster Dictionary. One of the many definitions of the word "lie" is:
A criminal falsehood uttered for the purpose of deception; an intentional violation of truth.
I underlined the word "intentional" for the purposes of illustrating something.
When a 5 year old child is asked by her father "Did you break mommy's favorite vase?"....and the child responds "no" even though that child did in fact break it, did that child intentionally lie? Or....did fear lie for that child?
Would there be any need to lie if there wasn't a self that felt threatened in some way - that felt it would lose something if it told the truth?
No.
For those of you who are scripturally inclined "Sell all and follow me" applies here. What does that mean? Well, it doesn't mean to sell our physical possessions! Possessions that are spoken of in scripture are the images and ideas that we have about ourselves. In other words, in a moment where we are being asked a question and we know that someone may get upset, that we may lose our job or even our spouse, to sell all means that we tell the truth because ultimately, we must sell all in this world - each and every idea and belief that we have about ourselves, about this world and what everything means, including the imagined consequences of the outcome of telling the truth.
If we don't sell all, then there is no room for truth to be revealed nor any change to take place in our consciousness. We then end up living a life of continued nothingness believing it to be something of value, when it is simply a continued parade of lies that we were intended to rise above.
Let me ask you a question. When someone you know sees you in the grocery store and asks "How are you" - how do you typically respond? Do you typically respond with (an automatic) "I'm good, I'm well" or something to that affect? If so, when you respond with "I'm good", is that fully the truth in those moments? Well, perhaps one in a million times you are "good" in that moment...but if truth be told, are you really good? That is something that nobody cares to admit. And so fear lies for us.
Why?
Because telling the truth would threaten an image that we all unconsciously hold that believes we are supposed to be and feel good all the time and if we don't, the image we have of ourself would be seen as "inferior." We don't feel good most of the time, and we don't feel good most of the time because we have a strong unconscious relationship with fear, and that relationship causes all the pain that we carry from moment to moment. We carry fear and that's a heavy burden. Or, to restate it actually - fear carries us.
Fear lies for us in so many hidden ways.
What might our life be like if we were completely honest all the time? Might that lighten our load wherein truth would have room "at the inn" (again for those of you who are scripturally inclined). to show us a completely different way of life, a completely different way of living where we are shown there is and never was a reason to lie, to fear or to make up anything about ourselves.
Wouldn't relationship with that higher life be something worth selling all for and following it? We must pay for that understanding by surrendering our beliefs and ideas in favor of that relationship and understanding. It can be received in no other way.
"Selling All" sounds like it is a "major deal", like a huge request and sacrifice, but how can selling an image or idea that we have about ourselves or this world be anything major?
They are ideas. They are beliefs, and imagined ones at that.....and we didn't even give those ideas and beliefs to ourselves.
That being said, would we really then be selling anything of value? Can anything that has been imagined have any real value?
Encourage your child to tell the truth, no matter what the outcome may appear to be, because agreeing to let a lie speak for them instead, is the same as agreeing to add pain to their life. And once fear starts choosing to lie for them, it forms a habit that is very difficult to break.
Truth supports us when we agree to support it.
We can discover something that very few discover if we agree to sell all, and as Guy Finley puts it "You'll discover when you pay for the discovery and never before."
So, sell all, over and over again, right now.
Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/openclipart-vectors-30363/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=156596">OpenClipart-Vectors</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=156596">Pixabay</a>
