Living with Radical Honesty

Living With Radical Honesty by Brad Blanton
Re-posted from Charity Focus

I learned that the primary cause of most human stress, the primary cause of most conflict between couples and the primary cause of most both psychological and physical illness is being trapped in your mind and removed from your experience. What keeps you trapped in your mind and removed from your experience is lying and we all lie […] all the time. We're taught systematically to lie, to pretend, to maintain a pretense because we're taught that who we are is our performance. Our schools teach us to lie, our parents teach us to lie. We're all suffering from mistaken identity.

We think that who we are is our reputation, what the teacher thinks of us, what kind of grades we make, what kind of job we have. We're constantly spinning our presentation of self, which is a constant process of lying and being trapped in the anticipation of imagining about what other people might think. Our actual identity is as a present tense noticing being. I'm someone sitting here talking on the telephone right now and you're sitting there talking on the telephone and writing or doing whatever you're doing. That's your current identity and this is my current identity and when you start identifying with your current present-tense identity you discover all kinds of things about life that you can't even see or notice when you're trapped in the spin doctoring machine of your mind. So radical honesty is about delivering yourself from that constant worrisome preoccupation of, "Oh my god. How am I doing? How am I doing? How am I doing? How am I doing?" Then you can pay attention to what's going on in your body and in the world and even pay attention to what's going on in your mind. […]

Just look at what you notice in front of you right now, your environment, wherever you are in an office or wherever it is. Noticing is an entirely different function than thinking and what we do all the time is that we confuse thinking with noticing. When we think something we act as though it has the same validity as something that we see. I've got a bumper sticker on my truck that says, "Don't believe everything you think." It's like your thinking just goes on and on and on and on.

--Brad Blanton, Center For Radical Honesty

Self-Acceptance

A strong part of my journey lately (always?) has to do with self-acceptance. I relate to what Dan Oestreich writes:

There is so much hubbub around us about self-help and improvement that the key precondition of personal change — self-acceptance — often gets completely lost.

With all the books and tapes and learning groups out there, it is very easy to fall into the pit of constantly attending to the gap between the ideal and the real — what I should be rather than what I am.

I can easily “over-focus” on my own ideals, losing sight of the fact that human change is mostly not a linear journey, but an organic one that paradoxically begins with awareness and acceptance of the parts that are not changing.

With acceptance comes grace, comes healing, comes change into our lives, and they come from someplace beyond ourselves and yet in a way that is completely intrinsic to who we are.

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am,
then I can change.”

–Carl Rogers

I came up with a new practice recently to help curb this tendency of mine. When I notice that I'm being particularly hard on myself or focusing strongly on the what-I-should-be rather than the who-I-am, I make myself stop every hour and write down one thing that I've done well in the last hour. Sometimes it's easy and other times it's hard to find something that I feel proud of, something that I recognize as being good enough... or especially great! The things I've written down vary in scale from making a healthy lunch, stopping to breath or notice a bird, or doing something kind for another person.... or even doing something kind for myself!

I love to grow... and sometimes I over-focus on all of the parts of me that provide me with opportunities to grow! This practice helps me notice what I'm doing well just as often as I notice where I could improve. At times I recognize that the hour is approaching and think, "Oh, quick... I've got to do something that I value!" And then I get to celebrate what I've done!

Here are a couple of other posts on change from Paul Cooper and Chris Corrigan that have caught my attention recently.

Photo Source

Do You Like Me? (sigh and smirk!)

I had a great conversation with a friend last night about the energy I spend (people spend) worrying about whether or not people like me (us). I've also been swinging the tree-tops of my monkey mind wondering (worrying) if the heart of my intentions is felt by others. Oh the places I go when following the flow of insecurities!

I've been following a new blog, Dhrumil (thanks to CharityFocus) and this post has me smiling:

"You may be spending a lot of time thinking about what others think about you. But the truth is people are too busy thinking about themselves to be bothered. Even when they make comments or pass judgement, they’re just reacting to their own insecurities. Take comments or energy, that are other than love, as simply the byproduct of conditioning and nothing more. Most people are a pile of past conditions. Which means the real them is deeper waiting to surface. The less you react to their conditioning, the greater the likely hood their true nature will show."

May we continue to support and encourage one another, inviting our true natures to shine. May we also find fun and creative ways to practice random acts of contact in the name of kindness and friendship.

Brain Functioning and Body Awareness

I’m currently reading The Mindful Brain by Daniel Siegel. Last night I was reading about the functions of the left and right hemispheres of the brain. I’ll share what I learned with you in case you’re curious and then below are some fo my morning reflections.

Right hemisphere functions

• better at seeing context and the whole picture
• holistic
• nonverbal
• visuospacial
• integrated map of the whole body
• autobiographical memory
• raw, spontaneous emotion
• initial empathic nonverbal response
• stress modulation
• mediate distress and uncomfortable emotions
• nonverbal imagery
  
• somatic sensations

Left hemisphere functions

• linguistics
• linearity
• logic
• literal thinking
• detail oriented, detail monitoring
• in-depth
• analytic
• problem focused
• fact accumulating process
• mediate positive affective emotions
• conceptual facts

According to Siegel, creativity is the integration of the functions of the two hemispheres.

“With the left and right hemisphere physically separated and functionally differentiated, we have the opportunity to achieve more adaptive function if we come to integrate them into a whole. This is how, I believe, creativity emerges not from one side or another, but from their integration.”

At them moment I'm curious about the interplay between my "integrated map of the whole body" and "in depth, analytic, problem focused" awareness.

From this morning’s writing: As I sense into my body right now, my attention goes to all of the places that 'aren't right'. The soreness of my neck and back from sleeping with a pillow that's too big, blemishes on my face that I don’t know how they’re forming (and it concerns me that they are), etc. As I listen deeper, I feel other areas of my body, but without judgment. I notice strongly the areas that are not in balance but I don’t seem to register with emphasis the areas that are in balance. So I wonder:

How do I invite my attention to notice and feel the places that are alive, fluid, healthy?
What does aliveness feel like in moments within my self?"

I would love to hear any personal stories that you have to share on this:
What is your sensing feeling of your body like?
Do you notice patterns around what you do or don’t register in your body?
How do you recognize health, wellness, aliveness, clarity, congruency within your self?
Is it different on the physical plane than in emotional, spiritual, social, or intellectual realms?

Thanks... curious as ever....