They wanted Simone Biles to lie…
The Three Gates puts “Is it True?” first. So does Musashi. And the most important question in philosophy overall.
As a coach, I’ve noticed that OPTIMISTS tend to remember their pasts as better than they really were, with themselves more central and dynamic and positive. PESSIMISTS tend to remember their pasts as WORSE than they really were, with themselves more passive or negative.
It is entirely possible that it is impossible for us to remember reality as it is. It is a frequent thought that IF we knew ourselves, and told ourselves the truth about it….and IF we knew the world, and told ourselves the truth about THAT…that we would never take an unsuccessful action, never have a goal we couldn’t’ achieve. Why? Because we wouldn’t bother to set a goal that we KNEW we didn’t have the capacity to reach. So it is reasonable to ask: “what is a universal ambition among human beings?”
And if you conclude that that would be in alignment with animal behavior, psychology, AND spiritual teachings, that universal goal would be to “escape suffering, embrace joy, and be of service.” And if it is reasonable to assume that the more clearly we see ourselves, and the problem, the efficient and effective our actions will be, you can draw interesting conclusions about the degree of clarity (a nicer word for honesty, perhaps, and the one used by Brendon Burchard in his “High Performance Habits”) they possess. Are they healthy? Happy? Successful?
IF AND ONLY IF you apply this to YOURSELF first will you gain the clarity on the degree to which you distort and deceive, justify and hallucinate. You will gain empathy: this is what humans do. What is worse, is that the world will ENCOURAGE you to lie, caring nothing for its impact on your life and spirit.
Think of Simone Biles. She is the best of the best, with kinesthetic intellect that makes most human beings seem like morons in comparison. There is literally NO WAY she could do what she does if she didn’t have extreme knowledge of herself and her capacities, as well as the requirements of the judging committees and physics.
SHE KNEW SHE COULD NOT PERFORM AT THE PROPER LEVELS. But what happened? Think of how many people asked her to LIE TO HERSELF. “Ignore what you know to be true. Ignore the risk of catastrophic injury. Dance, monkey. Dance.”
Thank God she ignore them. Straightened out her “twists” and came back to beat the world.
She told herself the truth, and ignored the pressure to lie.
This is one of the reasons I dislike politics. It is the art of driving action, not determining or respecting “what is true?”
If you look at this, the difficulty of telling the truth EVEN IF YOU KNOW IT, and the difficulty of DETERMINING what is true, or the difficulty of creating a “consensus reality” about what happened, what it means, how do we use language, and on and on…it is obvious that the first and most rapid way we can lose our footing in life is RIGHT HERE.
Is It True? Has to be the first step. But every single morning in meditation I’m asking myself what is true about myself, and the world, and my interaction with it. Going over as many memories as I can, asking if I could have remembered that wrong, was I as honest as I could be, and continually questioning those things.
All I can do is commit, and try. I can NEVER be completely honest, have 100% knowledge of reality, or convince others of my perceptions. But I can try. In political seasons, because this is about creating large coalitions, you will see egos on full display, as well as “persuasive language” that focuses on “how can we win?” more than “what is true?”
If you think this is confined to politicians, you may not know yourself, or human beings, as well as you think. If it is what only human beings do, you’ve never had a dog or cat act innocent after a piece of food goes missing. What are the THREE GATE applied to the political arena?
- Love yourself. This gives you the courage to look deeply into who and what you are.
- Love one other person. Truly seeing the depths of your partner, believing they are doing the best they can, will teach you all the ways we lie to ourselves and others. How often do you have to correct them from catastropic thinking? How often do they have to correct YOU? How often do the two of your disagree about what happened in a specific instance? Get the joke, and move on.
- Understand history and humanity without guilt, blame or shame. Most of us are just trying to move away from suffering, embrace joy, and offer service. And yet we lie to ourselves and others, distort and omit and append. It is a miracle that we get it right as much as we do.
- Avoid sleepers and snakes, nurture your tribe. ESPECIALLY in politicized times, people will ignore ELEPHANTS in their own back yard, but blame you for MICE in yours. This is human. We excuse and justify those we love more than those we don’t know or dislike. The question isn’t going to be “does this or that statement pass the Three Gates?” as much as “Does this PERSON generally pass the Three Gates?” Everyone will have a different standard for this, a different sense of “how often do they have to make a distorted, mistaken, or dishonest statement before I conclude that their map is simply WRONG, or they are simply a LIAR? As long as you apply the same standards universally, not excusing the “beam” in your own eye while screaming at the “mote” in your adversaries…you are being honest.
- Win with integrity and compassion. Remember that we all do this. There is a damned good reason that “Is it true?” is the first challenge. It is HARD, terribly hard, no matter how hard you try. But it is hugely worthwhile. But begin with love, and seeing yourself in the rest of humanity. Look at yourself, the lies you tell and have told, the errors you made and the evidence you ignored because you went for “short term gain.” WHY DID YOU DO IT? Always, always, to try to escape suffering and increase joy. When you see how hard it is, how common the coping mechanism and how plastic human memory, you change, and your understanding of humanity changes.
Whatever standards you decide upon…be sure to apply them to yourself first. And especially in an election season, watch the distortions fly, realizing that in a very real sense politics is “war continued by other means”…and that the first casualty of war is Truth.
The problem is not “politicians.” The problem is in the mirror.
Namaste
Steve