Exorcism.
I've been having this intense honesty marathon exorcising large portions of self-deception. It has been, and still is, incredibly giving and obviously confronting. I am getting a grip on some manipulative strategies I've been implementing mostly to justify my procrastination, avoidance, laziness or inability to admit my mistakes. I applied these strategies all over the place to manage my own image in front of myself. Blaming the other for something I don't manage to do seems to be one that occurs jute often. For example, blaming a person for restricting my freedom but actually, I am just flinching away from taking responsibility for my own choices.
This insight a recurring pattern that I have, came rather unexpected. Probably that applies to self-deception in general, part of the design is to have no idea it is happening. Diving deeper into my own honesty is slightly destabilizing. On one hand, it is empowering and brings lightness, on the other hand, the amount of confrontation is unsettling. I have to oscillate between excitement and the urge to give up and drift back into the comfort I've built for myself. I've been thinking about how self-deception is in some way a place of freedom. Nothing must connect to nothing, there is no truth or set of values, beyond fulfilling needs, which guide the process. The process is ignorant of methodology which takes into account, other people. It is manipulative and unpredictable. It grows sporadically and insistently captures the truth. I think it is in a way an ultimate manifestation of laziness, honesty is demanding and requires effort. Strong tentacles of optimization and laziness, manifesting as self-deception are gripping us every moment. Not surprising that shaking off some of the dishonest dust comes with the lightness. Honesty is less gripping, somewhat paradoxically, but based on my own experience, it is so.
I was thinking about different framing for honesty. For me, among other things, honesty is associated with shame and disempowerment. The connection is clear I think, the more I open up the more vulnerable I become thus increasing the chance of arising shame, imposed power and control. I think the problem is that I take responsibility for my honesty. So it is connected to a decision but maybe that is not necessary. What if I think of honesty as something which is in me that I didn't choose. Having this fear to e honest with myself, mixing it up with choice, caused guilt and shame, so naturally, I will deceive myself t avoid those. But if I think about it as something that I didn't choose, which is the case, I don't have to hide in anymore, neither from myself nor from others. Not needing to hide, opens up more spaciousness, and spaciousness is freedom of movement. I'll try to turn around the framing I have for the honesty and see what happens, I anticipate it is not going to be an easy one.
The amount of shame that I came across while exorcising self-deception is another big surprise. It is all over the place. I would do an intuitive guess and a big claim but I think the reason I self-deceive is to escape the shame. Wanted to write internal and external and then realised that there is no external shame. I'll explore it tomorrow. Today let's make honesty as something which is in me that I didn't choose the main gift that drift had brought.