Honesty

Rational discussions on metaphysical and abstract topics.
Fomalhaut
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Honesty

Post by Fomalhaut »

What is the importance of Honesty in your own Work?
"I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become."
— C.G. Jung
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Eradicatus
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Re: Honesty

Post by Eradicatus »

Honesty to me means being dedicated towards what you seek to fulfill, aiming to bring forth the effort to be succesful in the works to accomplish them.

Honesty can be applied to many things, I won't go exactly in depth because it be nice to give others the chance to share their views upon this subject.
Build not upon sand, but upon rock And build not for today or yesterday but for all time.
- Codex Saerus, The Black Book of Satan - Anton Long.
Wyrmfang
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Re: Honesty

Post by Wyrmfang »

Honesty is very important because I find it as a base for any spiritual working at all. You can (at first) lack will or love to some extent, but if you are not honest to yourself, you have no direction in what you are doing.

Another important point is that honesty towards oneself and towards others cannot be strictly separated. Even if you think honesty towards others is not important in itself, I believe you still must cultivate it for pragmatic reasons, because if you don´t, you will slowly corrupt the honesty towards yourself also.
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Aquila
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Re: Honesty

Post by Aquila »

I see honesty as a basic foundation for all self-development. You can't really develop if you don't acknowledge and recognize your own situation and possible faults within your personality, right? And true honesty towards others can only be achieved through honesty towards yourself. If not, you can't really be honest or you're "honest" in a way that you're rude and mean, and I don't see that as real honesty.

After all I think it's possible to find honesty only when you realize that you have not really been honest before and it's a painful way to begin with. Probably that's why it's not too popular. But I don't even try to say that I'm totally honest myself. There's still lot things that I find difficult to talk about. But becoming honest is more a process than a state that you easily reach when you choose to do so.
Wyrmfang
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Re: Honesty

Post by Wyrmfang »

Aquila wrote: After all I think it's possible to find honesty only when you realize that you have not really been honest before and it's a painful way to begin with. Probably that's why it's not too popular. But I don't even try to say that I'm totally honest myself.
This is a very important point too. I would also say that this is the point which separates mere intellectual sophism from true philosophy; honesty is not ready made, it is an ever-continuing task. So, thinking is also action; even theoretical thinking is (when it is honest) practical in the end.
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Nefastos
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Re: Honesty

Post by Nefastos »

In my opinion honesty is the most fundamental tool for an occultist. Only with it we can constantly bring ourselves to the fountain-source of wisdom. Without open-mindedness (an important aspect of honesty) there can be no real growth.

I think it is greatly underappreciated as a real, factual tool we can use. And it is a sharp tool, too, for with honesty we really must think what to speak & what not & how to say things. We might even become really acrobatic with words, if we want to load every word with as exact meaning and as correct nuances as possible... And words are logoi, the building blocks of thoughts. When we speak - honestly or not - we thus create a passway from ourselves to the world outside, and that same kind of influence will easily go on through in both ways, and affect our own thinking. A dishonest occultist dims his inner sight with those lies or half-truths he spreads.

Thus it's a very good everyday practice to try to speak as honestly as possible: it helps to clear the mind's eye for our own use, too.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Sebomai
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Re: Honesty

Post by Sebomai »

One other thought I had about honesty, specifically towards others but it also bleeds into honesty towards oneself. Many lies are told because of not wanting to admit to actions that are less than honorable, loving, charitable, SMART for crying out loud, all kids of reasons people lie! But... honesty, knowing you want to at least try to be honest at all costs in a practical sense can make you less likely to commit actions that you realize you would be inclined to lie about. It's a more pragmatic take on the morality of not doing certain actions. It's not just because they're wrong, it's because fundamentally, you realize you're building yourself a world of lies if you continue to act in ways that you would not want to admit to others or to yourself.
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Jiva
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Re: Honesty

Post by Jiva »

While it's important to be honest with oneself as has been covered by everyone above, a Kantian maxim of outward total honesty towards everyone else is an impossibility.

There is also the issue of deluding oneself, although still essentially being entirely honest with oneself and others. For example, although I have a massive respect for Julius Evola, his opinion regarding the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is something that confuses me regarding the subject of honesty. In summary, Evola believed that it was irrelevant whether the Protocols were real or a forgery; he believed that Jews were acting in the manner described in the Protocols and so, ultimately, its source didn't matter. Although I'm no scholar of Evola, I'm currently of the opinion that this was a result of ingrained racism rather than anything else. Evola famously didn't join the National Fascist Party and racism towards Jews in Fascist Italy didn't pick up until help was needed from Germany – Mussolini had a Jewish mistress after all. However, whether this affected Evola in any negative way is debatable and ultimately not really knowable as it depends on his personal knowledge of whether he believed he was being honest.
'Oh Krishna, restless and overpowering, this mind is overwhelmingly strong; I think we might as easily gain control over the wind as over this.'
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Nefastos
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Re: Honesty

Post by Nefastos »

Jiva wrote:While it's important to be honest with oneself as has been covered by everyone above, a Kantian maxim of outward total honesty towards everyone else is an impossibility.


I think that when one truly immerses oneself to contemplate the idea, it might be possible to live in absolute truthfulness. We just have to make it clear to ourselves what is honesty & what is being blunt.

For people usually think that "complete honesty" would be blatant, but why should it be? Even if we'd be totally honest, how or why should it affect the need of nuances in the ways how the things are told? Of course, this means that an honest man should also be intelligent. For without a great sense of nuances & contextual discrimination he'd end up hurting other people & their ideals, not to mention his own.

Also, keeping something to oneself, and telling it is so, is not lack of honesty - if the things in which we keep silent are in harmony with the things we say. To tell everything about everything to everyone is not only impossible, it's extremely egotistical.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Jiva
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Re: Honesty

Post by Jiva »

I should have mentioned that it is only my opinion that a Kantian maxim for truthfulness towards others is impossible, I obviously didn't proof-read my post very well.
Nefastos wrote:Of course, this means that an honest man should also be intelligent. For without a great sense of nuances & contextual discrimination he'd end up hurting other people & their ideals, not to mention his own.
This aspect of honesty towards others is basically what I was referring to in my post. I'm intrigued by what you mean when you say “contextual discrimination”? I am (probably incorrectly) interpreting this as similar to the English “white lie”. However in an earlier reply you stated that “a dishonest occultist dims his inner sight with those lies or half-truths he spreads”.

A personal example is when people ask me my religion: I always answer Atheist as I consider this to be true. However I also consider this a half-truth or white lie as there is obviously a psychological occult aspect to me that is significantly important, yet not typically associated with generic descriptions of Atheism. In your first post in this thread you referred to being acrobatic with words to portray exact nuances; this reply does the opposite and is as blunt and opaque as possible.
'Oh Krishna, restless and overpowering, this mind is overwhelmingly strong; I think we might as easily gain control over the wind as over this.'
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