Bonds that Make Us Free Part 24: The Truth Dispels the Lie

Bonds that Make Us Free Part 24: The Truth Dispels the Lie
by C. Terry Warner

"Might I Be in the Wrong?"
Calling a change of heart "a healing" captures something important about it. Like the body's healing, it's not something we make happen. And it's not something that happens to us, either. We might describe it best with terms like recovery and return and coming to ourselves. Healing comes about naturally, when the causes of disease have been removed. It is a self-mending or recuperation that brings a natural return of our being to its proper condition.

This means the healing of the soul cannot be forced. We can try very hard for a very long time to think better of an enemy and yet fail.

But does it follow that we can't do something to put ourselves in a better position for it to happen? No, it doesn't. There's much we can do. For example, in Part 21 I reported on a "reconsideration exercise" in which we make ourselves available to be affected by others and do so by thinking about them from an imagined I-You point of view. Effort and willpower cannot by themselves cause our heart to change, but that doesn't mean that we can't put ourselves in an optimal position for that change to happen.

A responsible step in loosening the grip of any lie we might be living is to ask ourselves, solemnly and seriously, this momentous question: "Might I be in the wrong?"

What gives this question its power? The answer can be stated very simply: Just to ask the question seriously, even without answering it, is already to undergo a change of attitude. A feeling of humility comes over us. Our focus shifts from the faults of others to the difficulties they may be suffering because of us. Our certainty of their guilt and our innocence is shaken.

To admit our errors or weaknesses in this fashion can bring us liberation and strength. It will seem ironic to say this, for facing up to the truth is usually what we most fear to do. Nevertheless, it's true. There is much transforming power in frankly acknowledging the truth about our own wrongdoing.

One of my associates, whom I'll call Alan, shared this story:

Not long ago I was given a wallet for Father's Day. It was not the sort of wallet I would have wanted. My wife, Shirley, picked it out for me. I understand now to what lengths she went to find just the right wallet, but when I opened the box and looked into it, all I saw was a not-what-I-would-have- wanted wallet. Nevertheless, I was too considerate to hurt Shirley's feelings, or at least this is what I was thinking about myself at the time. So I said, "Oh, thank you. I like this wallet very much."

She was looking right at me and she said right away, "You don't like it."

"Oh, yes I do. Why, look at the nice white stitching on the edge. And all the plastic windows where I can put my credit cards."

"You don't like it. I can tell."

The situation was embarrassing me. My cheeks were getting red. I shoved the wallet in the box in the manner of a man whose gratitude has been rudely rejected.

Alan resented being given the wallet; to him it felt as though Shirley was setting him up for humiliation in front of his friends. He did not express this resentment childishly. Instead he did the "right thing"—or, to speak more accurately, counterfeited the right thing—by acting politely and thanking her. But she could tell that his heart wasn't in it. As we discovered in Part 15 there's all the difference in the world between genuinely treasuring a gift and trying to show that you're treasuring it. So he responded to getting caught by taking offense and angrily shoving the wallet back in the box.

His story continues:

Shirley went into the kitchen. I began to think about what had happened. It came to me that in a certain very subtle way I had been putting on airs. I had been concerned about what my associates would think when I pulled such a wallet out of my pocket. I realized I had refused to see the wallet for what it really was—an expression of her care for me and a manifestation of considerable effort on her part.

Whereas I had been embarrassed and irritated before, I now felt sorry. What sorrowed me was not exactly the particular words I had said. Given what I was feeling about the whole affair, it was about the best thing I could say. I was sorry because of having those feelings. I realized I had actually been thinking that my wife was forcing something upon me that would embarrass me in front of my friends. And now it seemed incredible to me that I could have resented an act of genuine kindness.

I felt I ought to tell her forthrightly what I was feeling, and I did. By her look I could tell she forgave me without any reservation.

When Alan looked honestly at himself, he saw a man different from the considerate and grateful person he had been trying to present to Shirley. He saw a man annoyed and resentful and therefore far from considerate and grateful. The way he had been acting was not the truth. Contrary to what he wanted to believe, he had not been victimized by this woman who had worked hard to please him. He had victimized her.

The Astounding Act of Yielding to the Truth
We can spell out the things that happened within Alan when he truthfully admitted the wrong he had done. Listed below are some of them. Keep in mind as you read that they happened not in sequence, but all at once. In fact, it's most helpful to look upon them as just one event. The various points that follow are different aspects of that event.

First, Alan saw his fault.

Second, that meant he no longer thought of Shirley as the problem.

Third, his resentment of her evaporated. His accusing, victimized feelings were gone.

Fourth, he no longer felt helpless to deal with the problem he thought Shirley was causing him, because he no longer thought there was such a problem! What he had supposed to be the issue—her failure to appreciate and respect his taste—wasn't the real issue after all, only the apparent one. The real issue was his absorption in himself, which is the inevitable product of self-betrayal.

Fifth, he was able to see Shirley truthfully and to appreciate her feelings and needs. And when that happened, he told me, he felt flooded with feeling for her. "Suddenly," he said, "she took on the look of a woman who is loved." When he acknowledged the truth to himself, stopped nursing his identity as the Wounded-but-Valiant One, and let go of finding fault with his wife, she changed. His image of her untwisted itself. He saw her as she really was—and loved her.

Sixth, the opportunity to do the right thing reappeared in the world, whereas it had not been there before. At that moment, the right thing was to confess forthrightly to her what he had done. If he had tried to do this without first undergoing a change of heart, he would have done it for the wrong reason; his confession would have been counterfeit.

Seventh, he found himself at last able to influence her positively. She sensed his truthfulness and his sorrow and frankly forgave him.

In this list we can see the seven aspects of a change of heart that results from yielding to the truth.

Truth and Compassion
All of the elements listed above occur in the following story. I met the author, Cynthia, in one of my classes.

My husband, Shawn, and I are both writers. We have a baby. Shawn insists that I keep the house clean, prepare the meals, stay well-dressed and appealing, and, most of all, keep the baby absolutely quiet during his writing hours. I write during the baby's afternoon nap if I can, but usually late at night and early in the morning.

If there is any noise from the baby, Shawn is not patient. He bitingly asks whether I understand the importance of what he is writing for his career and our future. Until recently tears would well up in my eyes in response to this harshness. Sometimes I would protest that he had no right to speak rudely to me. A quarrel would ensue. But more often I would suffer this sharpness silently and bitterly. I could not understand why I had to suffer when I had done nothing wrong.

One morning I left the bedroom door ajar and the baby toddled out. She was scattering some of Shawn's pages when he saw her. He began to yell at me. I could feel the spray in my face. I began to burn with resentment and to search my mind for some way to respond in kind. But all of a sudden I thought, "It's a lie. What I am doing right now is a lie." I was doing the same thing I was imputing to him! My rage just melted. I was filled with compassion toward Shawn for the first time in a long time. In fact, all I could think of in that moment was how I could help my husband.

As part of her self-betrayer's lie, Cynthia perceived Shawn as a person hurting her feelings. Then, when the truthful self-confession came—"What I am doing right now is a lie"—she no longer believed that. She could see that her resentment and pain, which had come to an end, had been her doing. She now understood that he had not been hurting her at all. The only person to whom he was doing damage was himself. She saw a man making himself miserable, as part of an effort to feel justified in his anger toward his wife. He had been hurting himself, not her.

With the recognition of that truth came compassion and concern, which is what we would expect in a person who sees another person hurting himself. Cynthia's heart went out to Shawn. The same thing happens to any of us who acknowledge the truth as straightforwardly as she did. The emotion we experience in the presence of the truth is love.

We can give whatever name we want to Alan's fault—blaming Shirley when he was the one doing wrong, putting her on the defensive, thinking only of himself. Whatever we call it, the very instant that he acknowledged this fault, it no longer existed! Amazing! By seeing and freely admitting our fault, we are rid of it! We have only to confess to ourselves the truth about the wrong we have done and, by that very confession, we cease to do it. Why? Because when we are in self-betrayal, we are living a lie, and a lie cannot coexist with a full and free acknowledgment of the truth.

What we have just described is a man's change of heart toward his wife. Though not a full change in his way of being—that takes time, experience, and faithfulness—it can rightfully be called a good beginning. At that time, in that situation, Alan started to become a different man.

Counterfeit Honesty
Some people think they can admit to doing wrong and still keep doing it. But an admission that doesn't bring with it a softening of heart is a dishonest admission. What such people call "telling the truth" is a sort of intellectual game in which they rehearse to themselves some of the facts about what is happening while still hanging on to accusing, self-excusing emotions. Remember from Part 5 that a self-betrayer can be right about the facts of a situation without letting go of the accusing emotion, which is the biggest lie of all. Genuine admission of the truth must be done emotionally as well as mentally, for we can lie while sticking strictly to the facts because the facts can't cause us to do wrong or take offense. Honesty through and through requires giving up the accusing feelings that go with our accusing thoughts.

You can test this for yourself. Recall the feelings you had on some occasion when you "told yourself the truth" intellectually but not emotionally. (For instance, suppose someone pointed out that you treated a certain person unfairly and you responded, "Yeah, yeah, I know I'm wrong"—without allowing yourself to feel the least bit bad about it.) Compare whatever feelings you would have had on such an occasion with feelings when you confessed the truth with your whole being. You will find the difference striking. In the former case, none of the seven aspects of a change of heart came about. In the latter, they all occurred. Together with your sorrow, you felt relieved and even joyful because at last the lie had been put behind you.

We must take great care that we don't block our exit from the box by counterfeiting an admission of the truth.

Fear of What Will Save Us
When we are stuck in accusing thoughts and feelings, we are usually reluctant to face the truth because we fear that it will condemn us. The truth frankly acknowledged will turn out to be heaven, but in prospect it looks more like hell. In this you will recognize the mirror image of what we learned from C. S. Lewis's allegory, which is that we cling to the tormented condition of vengeance, spite, and criticism that deserves to be called hell—thinking that our vindictive attitude somehow points the way to a solution of our problems.

We learned in the preceding section that when we confess that we have been wrong—not just on an isolated point of argument but in the way we have lived our lives—we no longer feel a need to blame others and to defend ourselves against them. We become free of the accusing, anguished thoughts and feelings with which we have afflicted ourselves, free to let ourselves be touched by others' concerns and aspirations and joys, and free to stop worrying about protecting or polishing our self-image.

So it is blame that we must let go of. Blame is the lie by which we convince ourselves that we are victims. It is the lie that robs us of our serenity, our generosity, our confidence, and our delight in life.

A woman I will call Virginia shared this account:

A few months ago I was at dinner with my husband and three other couples. About the time dessert arrived, my husband turned and rebuked me for interrupting him. I reacted as if struck in the face, growing pale and rigid with shock and shame. Our dinner friends to a person witnessed the same thing: My husband had been an aggressive jerk, and I had been victimized by him. One friend was so upset by the incident that, when he saw me a few days later, he said he hoped I would seriously consider leaving my husband.

My friend's reaction was even more disturbing than the incident itself. His words reflected back to me a portrait of a helpless woman abused by her man. I struggled for days with this awful picture. Then, without warning, something strange happened. In a moment of epiphany, the perception I had of myself as victim shattered like a curtain of glass. With absolute clarity I saw that my "victimization" wasn't the result of something done to me, that instead it was willfully self-created. I even remembered the crossroad of choice on the night of the dinner: My husband made his remark, and I first felt wrongly accused and furious. Then I thought, just at the periphery of my consciousness: "You say I hurt you?! Well, honey, watch this! " And I launched into my act.

The scariest part of all was how skillful I had become at creating this image in the eyes of observers. If you had been there, you probably would have agreed that my husband was the beast and I was the innocent party. And, what is even trickier, until I saw this "victim form," I couldn't have stopped myself for love or money, because I "knew" that it was real, that I was right, that I was being mistreated.

The revelation stunned me. It had never occurred to me to see myself as a victim. My mother, now she was a victim. She had sacrificed her career ambitions to her family and to the cultural pressures of the day. And it was my mother who exerted control by saying that I or my father couldn't do this or that because it would hurt or scare her too much. I never acted like that! I was a strong, outspoken, liberated, self-sufficient, successful professional woman. I couldn't be a victim.

And then a realization slowly emerged from the shadows of my psyche. I had merely created a style that was different from my mother's, a style that I and my friends found acceptable. The mechanism itself, though, was identical.

My new vision proved itself right away. Once I began to act and perceive from outside the victim form, it had an astonishing effect on my marriage. If I did not become the victim, lo and behold, I no longer viewed my husband as the oppressor. In fact, his actions and intentions looked so different to me, it was as if I had placed a gargoyle's mask over his face, which I had now finally removed. Moreover, I saw in terrifying relief the damaging effect of my victim routine on him. In any fight, no matter how mutually precipitated, my husband came out the bad guy. And because we are both melodramatic by nature, much of this was played out in public. So, over a period of time, many of our friends had begun to view me as the Good Wife Who Puts Up With It All and him as the Bully.

And here's the thing: Since I chose to step out of this pattern of mine, except for the occasional squabble, my husband and I have stopped fighting altogether, a circumstance friendly observers might have thought as likely as hell freezing over. So who had been most in control of this situation, which had become so devastating to our marriage and to each of us personally? Who, indeed, had been victimizing whom?

As long as I could identify my husband as the monster—the one who prevented accomplishment, happiness, peace, creativity, etc.—then I never had to face the part of myself that actually prevented those things. As long as I could assign blame, I never had to face the monster in me and take responsibility for my own life and fate.

When I first saw this I became desperately depressed. I assumed that if I couldn't blame that which was outside myself, then I must be to blame.

And then the final piece of the puzzle appeared: Blame itself was the monster—a monster with which self-responsibility could not coexist.

So at last I faced that monster. And once faced, as monsters always do, it shrank and shrank until it was a tiny, squeaking little thing.

"Blame itself was the monster." Or more accurately, the act of blaming. For it's the act of blaming that "can't co-exist with self- responsibility"—or with freedom from inner agitation and strained relationships. Abandon the practice of blaming, and we see the fear melt away that we have associated with being honest about ourselves and taking the full measure of responsibility for our emotional and spiritual condition.

The blamer's lie is a work of darkness, and it disappears in the light of truth.

Next, we will start to examine what resources are at our disposal to break our thinking out of the box of blame and distorted perceptions...