Truthfulness is one of the harder Paramis to develop. It is very important and often very difficult. The mind likes to remind us of all the negative things that we have done, it tends to create an off-balance view that is very, very heavy on the negative side and doesn't like looking at the positive side because this is Mara working to make sure that we suffer.
To be more truthful to ourselves, we need to be more like a scientist or more like a judge in a courtroom. To have the evidence brought forward, to examine the evidence objectively and to see what is really there because when we are not truthful, we are not seeing a lot of who we are. Some people pick on all the negativities, they have a lot of self-hatred. Some other people like to hide the negativities and only grab on to their positive things and pretend that they are okay, but in reality they are not. So we can go either way at times but more often a person looks at their negativities and won't look at their positive sides.
In trying to be more truthful, you need to have more objectivity. What is it in our practice that helps us to have a lot of objectivity? The basic Mindfulness work, to see things and know that you are seeing, to hear things and know that you are hearing, tasting, touching, whatever it is. To actually knowing what you are doing at that moment and to be very objective with it.
The other day I was talking about objective awareness, looking at trees objectively. Everyone would see the same thing, there is color, there is form. We identify it as a tree. Those things are very objective especially for someone like me who lives in the forest. This can be very different for a person who grew up in an apartment building.
So there is objective awareness, being very objective with what's going on. That will help us to be more truthful with ourselves. For example, when you are eating, can you taste food and just taste flavors, and not get to hung up whether it is delicious or not delicious, just acknowledge, yes, it tastes pleasant or, no, it doesn't taste pleasant. The more objective you can be just with eating your food, then the more truthful you can be with your memories and self-identity.
The more that you can just grab a door handle, open it, walk through the door way, all of the basic mindfulness work helps us to be more objective. Sight: how often do you walk to lunch and the minute you see food that you like, it's, "Aaah", or if you don't like, its, "Ugh"? It is so quick, that our subjective perceptions immediately put us into a state that cannot see the reality of what we are actually looking at. So trying to be more objective will help us to be more truthful to ourselves.
Now you can also tie in what is it like if somebody lies to you and then you find out? It is really unpleasant, right? Somebody lies to us and we find out. Okay, how often do you lie to yourselves? And you actually know it, you don't even have to find out later, you simply know it anyhow. How often do you do it to yourself and how do you think about yourself? A lot of people who do this to themselves on a regular basis end up hating themselves which just drags them more and more down on the negative side. So to consider what you would like to do for yourself.
Some of you have heard me talk about understanding that who we are today, what you are doing today is actually going to produce benefit or non-benefit for who you will be become in the future. There is a person in the future that is not you. The person you are now is not who you were last week. The person you are going to be next week, if you are still alive, will be different to who you are now. What would you like to give as a gift to the person in the future? Is this not an interesting way of looking at how you want to treat yourself? How much do you want to be truthful to yourself? Do you want to lie to that person you are going to be in the future, so that that person has more regrets, has more self-hatred, has more deceit and dishonesty and so on? Or would you like to give the person you are going to become, the truth today, so the person in the future can actually grow out of truth, instead of out of lies. This is another way of looking at what do you want to give to who you are going to be tomorrow, next week, next year.