Honesty

[dalin]

Monday, February 14, 2005
Honesty, open-mindedness, willingness (first of 2 parts) : Keys to recovery from drug addiction
By Vicente (Tico) G. Aldanese

After almost 30 years of active drug abuse and now having been in recovery from drug addiction for almost seven years, I know that I am very fortunate to have the reasonably happy life that I have today.

But before I could live that happy life, I had to learn three principles that are the foundation of my recovery. The first is honesty, then open-mindedness, and then willingness. Like most of us in recovery, my admission of powerlessness over my addiction was the first honesty I’ve been certain of in quite a while.

As I came to realize that I am loved and respected for my honesty, I opened myself to learn other truths about myself. Dishonesty gives others power over me. Honesty allows me to increase my personal freedom.

Certainly, any addict in recovery will go through a series of struggles to overcome the habits acquired in active addiction. Those of us who have achieved long periods of total abstinence and spiritual growth share the fact that each release from the chains of our disease places new demands for personal, spiritual honesty on us.

Each trust bond formed is a new chance to betray. That is one reason why we take our time in recovery. We want it to last. Like the other forms our disease takes, we learn to make the correct choice. Our choices bring us out of our fear, denial and hopelessness. None of us are perfect but by working our recovery program on a daily basis to the best of our ability, we are gradually able to face life on life’s terms.

Many of us have ‘traded off’ different forms of honesty. If we were sick and hurting inside, we might parade a great show of paid bills and cash to register honesty. We divert attention away from our emotional dishonesty and pain. Then we pretend the program has let us down! If we have been more open about our dishonesty, we may treasure certain rationalizations about why we do these things, exhibiting great care and dexterity to shift blame for our offenses onto someone else.

We only need to do this as long as we are helpless to change. As soon as we can admit our desire for change, we can begin to laugh at ourselves and stop pretending that we didn’t know what we were doing. Most of us knew, we just didn’t know any better.

Honesty, as a principle, tells us to turn away from lies and falsehoods; to turn towards reality and get used to using the new power recovery brings. If we honestly don’t like our jobs, we change jobs. If we have amends we need to make, we become willing and make them. If we’re not happy in our associations or relationships, we use the power of a loving God and find a way to become happy.


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[dalin]

Honesty
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"Honest" redirects here, For other uses, see Honesty (disambiguation)
Look up honesty in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.Honesty is the human quality of communicating and acting truthfully. It is related to truth as a value. This includes listening, and any action in the human repertoire — as well as speaking.

Superficially, honesty means simply, stating facts and views as best one truly believes them to be. It includes both honesty to others, and to oneself (see: self-deception) and about ones own motives and inner reality.

Contents [hide]
1 Western views on honesty
2 Studies of Confucius about honesty
3 Buddhist teachings on honesty
4 See also
5 External links



[edit] Western views on honesty
Quality of honesty applies to all behaviors, one cannot refuse to consider factual information, for example, in an unbiased manner and still claim that one's knowledge, belief or position is an attempt to be truthful. Such a belief is clearly a product of one's desires and simply has nothing to do with the human ability to know. Basing one's positions on what one wants — rather than unbiased evidence gathering — is dishonest even when good intentions can be cited — after all even villains could cite good intentions and intended glory for a select group of people. Clearly then, an unbiased approach to the truth is a requirement of honesty.

Because intentions are closely related to fairness and certainly affect the degree of honesty/dishonesty, there is a wide spread confusion about honesty. There is also a general belief that we always realize when we are dishonest. However, self-perception of our morals is non-static. It's often at the moment we refuse to consider other perspectives that there is a clear indication we are not really interested in the truth and therefore dishonest. Socrates had much to say about truth, honesty and morality, and explained that if people really understood that their behavior was wrong — then they simply wouldn't choose it. Furthermore, the more dishonest someone is, the less likely they are to understand honesty and characterize their behavior as wrong. Unfortunately, honesty and morality have been marginalized to specific lists of behaviors that change over time(like fashion). The understanding that honesty requires an unbiased approach to the truth and to evidence gathering at all times, collides with ideologies of all types. This would explain why honesty, although talked about a lot-- has failed to become a cultural norm. Ideologies and idealism inherently exaggerate and suppress evidence in order to support their perspectives. They essentially tell us that their way is the only right way to view the world. This erodes the practice and understanding of honesty and creates ongoing conflicts in all human relationships.


[edit] Studies of Confucius about honesty
Confucius recognized several levels of honesty, fundamental to his ethics:

His shallowest concept of honesty was implied in his notion of Li: all actions committed by a person to build the ideal society - aiming at meeting their surface desires of a person either immediately (bad) or longer term (good). To admit that one sought immediate gratification could however make a bad act better, and to hide one's long term goals could cloud a good act. A key principle was that a "gentleman" must strive to convey his feelings honestly on his face, so that these could help each other coordinate for long term gain for all. So there was a visible relation between time horizon, etiquette and one's image of oneself even in the mirror. This generates self-honesty and keeps such activities as business calm, unsurprising, and aboveboard. In this conception, one is honest because it suits one's own self-interest only.

Deeper than Li was Yi or righteousness. Rather than pursuing your own interests you should do what is right and moral - based on reciprocity. Here too time is central, but as a time span: since your parents spent your first three years raising you, you spent three mourning them after they die. At this level one is honest about one's obligations and duty. Even with no one else to keep you honest or to relate to directly, a deeply honest person would relate to ancestors as if they were alive and would not act in ways that would make them ashamed. This was part of the moral code that included ancestor worship, but Confucius had made it rigorous.

The deepest level of honesty was Ren, out of which flowed Yi and thus Li. Confucius' morality was based upon empathy and understanding others, which required understanding one's own moral core first, rather than on divinely ordained rules, which could simply be obeyed. The Confucian version of the Golden Rule was to treat your inferiors as you would want your superiors to treat you. Virtue under Confucius is based upon harmony with others and a recognition of the honest reality that eventually (say in old age) one will come under the power of others (say one's children). So this level of honesty is to actually put oneself in context of one's whole life and future generations - and choose to do or say nothing that would not reflect one's family's honour and reputation for honesty and acceptance of truth, such as eventual death.


[edit] Buddhist teachings on honesty
Thanissaro Bhikkhu taught: “Real honesty is being honest about what your possibilities are, what your potentials are. That's where true honesty lies. It stretches us. It’s not simply admitting where we are - that’s a beginning step, it’s not the end step. So be honest about where you are but also be honest about what your possibilities are. That keeps the challenge of the path always before us.” From “True Honesty”


[edit] See also
Academic dishonesty
Blame
Dishonesty for interpretation in law
Honor system
Plagiarism
Polygraph
Virtue

[edit] External links
Aspects of Academic Dishonesty
Dishonesty Bible Verses referring to dishonesty.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honesty"

[dalin]

To me today honesty is tempered with humility.
I had to learn the diferance between brutal honesty and spiritual honesty.
Its an ongoing process.

[dalin]

So what about you guys?

[dalin]

August 2 ---------- Practicing honesty

"When we feel trapped or pressured, it takes great spiritual and
emotional strength to be honest."

Basic Text, p.81

Many of us try to wiggle out of a difficult spot by being dishonest,
only to have to humble ourselves later and tell the truth. Some of us
twist our stories as a matter of course, even when we could just as
easily tell the plain truth. Every time we try to avoid being honest,
it backfires on us. Honesty may be uncomfortable, but the trouble we
have to endure when we are dishonest is usually far worse than the
discomfort of telling the truth.

Honesty is one of the fundamental principles of recovery. We apply
this principle right from the beginning of our recovery when we
finally admit our powerlessness and unmanageability. We continue to
apply the principle of honesty each time we are faced with the option
of either living in fantasy or living life on its own terms. Learning
to be honest isn't always easy, especially after the covering up and
deception so many of us practiced in our addiction. Our voices may
shake as we test our newfound honesty. But before long, the sound of
the truth coming from our own mouths settles any doubts: Honesty feels
good! It's easier living the truth than living a lie.

Just for today: I will honestly embrace life, with all its pressures
and demands. I will practice honesty, even when it is awkward to do
so. Honesty will help, not hurt, my efforts to live clean and recover.

pg. 224

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