No spirituality without integrity
I had spent most of my life lying. For as long as I have memories, I can remember lying.
Like many kids, the truth was unsafe when I was growing up. So, I used lies as a shield for my vulnerability. I used lies to make sure the people around me were calm and pleased with me. I tried (in vain) to use them to feel better about myself.
Lying helped me feel safe, and I became an expert at it.
When I was a small child, I would steal money from adults. I would use it to go to the milk bar every morning and eat mixed lollies for breakfast and lie about that. I would make up stories about my life to tell other children. I would tell adults my home life was different to the reality.
In my teenage years I would try to impress people by lying about what I liked and what I knew. I would lie to my parents about where I was going, what I was doing, and who I was. In my relationship I would lie about my feelings or gaslight.
I would lie to cover up mistakes and avoid accountability. I would lie when I told people what they wanted to hear. I would lie about substance use. I told big lies and small lies. And I would lie to myself constantly, often about how I was behaving. I lied to myself about what I was truly passionate about. I told myself I was passionate about the things culture told me I should be.
Lying resulted in actual physical illness. I gave myself a gastrointestinal disease – my stomach twisting in pain and nausea with the fear of exposure. Martha Beck noted in ‘The Way of Integrity’; “studies have linked deception and secret-keeping to elevated heart rate and blood pressure, increased stress hormones, high bad cholesterol and glucose levels, and reduced immune responses. The more significant our deceptive behaviour, the worse the effect on health.”
The more we lie, the further we get from our True nature – the infinite Oneness that connects all things and is the foundation of all spirituality. The closer we are to integrity, the closer we are to the fabric of reality. This is why truth telling and integrity is at the heart of all spiritual traditions. Indigenous Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people view truth-telling as a collective social responsibility. Some religions refer to lying as sin. When we lie, we create suffering for ourselves and others. We create hell on earth.
Our thoughts are great at creating this suffering. Our thoughts lie to us all the time (another good reason not to identify with them). The teachings of spiritual teacher Byron Katie can be summed up as truth telling about our thoughts. She teaches that whenever you have a thought you ask, ‘is this true?’ and then ‘can I absolutely know this is true?’ She wrote: “I discovered when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but when I didn’t believe them, I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. I found suffering is optional. I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment. That joy is in everyone, always.”
When we live in integrity, we help ourselves and the world by relieving suffering. We are healthier, happier and free from fear and shame. Vulnerability helps us to connect, creating stronger relationships. It can create systems change when we tell the truth about the harms of past policies.
After reading ‘The Way of Integrity’ I tried Martha’s experiment to never tell a lie. Not even a little one, or a white one. No lies, ever. It was incredibly hard, particularly in the beginning. It is an ongoing process, particularly with lies of omission. This self-destructive pattern has been one of the hardest things to heal, and I am still human. But I now consider myself a recovering addict of lying. I am hundreds of days sober from lying, and it is a spiritual practice for me. Living in integrity has improved my life in every possible way. But most importantly I am finally living a life that feels true for me. I now have solid spiritual foundation to stand on, and there would be no spirituality without my integrity.
“I spent a lot of my life lying to get what I thought I wanted. Until you’ve stolen money from your father’s wallet to buy heroin while he was sick in a hospital bed, you don’t know what it feels like to need to be forgiven. Here’s what I found out: if I live in the truth, I’ll always come out okay. The truth has legs. It always stands. When everything else has blown up or dissolved away, the only thing left standing will be the truth. You might as well just start there.”
The late Rayya Elias
Director, writer, musician and twice-recovered addict