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To be unstuck is to have a wary eye for impassioned speeches, trixters, and culture-bound beliefs and customs, even right at home. Think of shifts of belief with regard to medicine, education, and health, for example, in your own lifetime. When I grew up it was customary to put iodine on cuts, which painfully burned the skin. Babies were not to be held “too much” or fed on demand—every four hours was the rule—because it would “spoil” them. Today, with our better understanding of infant attachment, we encourage what women have known for centuries—we feed babies when they are hungry and hold them as much as they need to feel secure.

We bring our perceptual field to relationships as well. Sometimes when we perceive another person as angry or disapproving, we’ve attributed our feelings to them. At a Ken Keyes training, whenever we had a critical perception of another person we were taught to first ask ourselves, “Am I talking about myself?” One woman in an interview said, “I was sure that a certain woman in our church group was angry at me because of a conversation we had had. I’d find myself looking away from her, having a knot in my gut every time I saw her. After feeling upset about it for a year, I asked her if she was angry at me, and she didn’t even remember our little talk. She gave me a big smile and said she had been preoccupied.” We can always check out a situation to see if we’re misreading it.

I worked with a couple in which one partner kept insisting the other was angry. But, with exploration, it turned out that the stony face was about fear. The moral of the story: circle the situation, leave room for doubt, listen to others, put your feet in someone else’s shoes, then come to a possible conclusion . . . and be willing to change it!

27. Explore Your History of Truth and Deception

The little fleeting glimpses that I have been able to have of truth can hardly convey an idea of the indescribable lustre of truth, a million times more intense than that of the sun.

—MAHATMA GANDHI

Telling the truth is the sister of being in reality. Being truthful starts by listening within, then speaking honestly without gauging the reactions of others. Truth winds its way through our lives at many levels: from telling the truth about the facts of our daily existence—where we went, what we ate, how much we spent—to knowing what we are feeling and thinking, to understanding our motivations and reactions, to following our deepest leadings about our lives, to eventually finding out that at our essence we are one with the energy of the whole universe. Yet the truth is often very difficult.

Many people distort truth to gain approval, impress people, cover their shame, or avoid getting in trouble. Deception is often a bad habit that was modeled by our parents. We say we’re fine when we feel lousy. We say we don’t need help when we do. We dramatize a story to get sympathy. In other words, we get short-term gains but sustain long-term losses of integrity.

Not being truthful reflects fear and a lack of inner awareness, attunement to physical sensations, emotions, and self-acceptance. Indeed, being truthful is tantamount to self-acceptance. If I tell you who I am without exaggerating or diminishing anything, I am fully present to you. I am not ashamed, afraid, or needing to “buy” the relationship in any way.

Living close to the bones of truth is grounding, connecting, and relaxing—there aren’t any deceptions to catch up with us later. It may help to remember that while initially it may be scary to tell the truth, especially if you’ve been holding something back, with time truthfulness dispels fear—and makes room for love.

Scan your life history for vignettes or situations that relate to truth or dishonesty in your past. Are there scars from the deceptions and lies of others? Are there warm moments of remembering people you could count on to be honest and real with you? How did these experiences shape you as a child? As