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"The golden key to peaceful living 
Assignment Four
At this point, we are going to look at two, perhaps new concepts which may be foreign to you; they are self-honesty and fearlessness. Most of us consider ourselves to be honest and would be offended if anyone thought otherwise. However, this portion of the study will determine the degree of your honesty. That is, provided that you are honest in this assignment. We are generally what I will call "cash register" honest, meaning that we don't steal money or property, and when asked a question, we don't give a lie for the answer. This is basic, surface honesty, necessary, but far from being the end-all to real truth and honesty. The emotional lies, deceptions, and dishonesty most engage in are where our problems are rooted. Self-honesty means learning to examine your motives -- what you hope to gain or control by certain actions -- "why" you do the things you do. Honesty is about sincerety, which is why there is no such thing as so-called "brutal honesty." Telling someone the truth about something isn't necessarily being honest. Yes, it may be true, but what are your motives for wanting to tell something that will hurt someone? Because you think they need to know? What makes you the judge of that? Not a one of us has been assigned to the job of telling others things that will hurt them, just because it's true. And then there are those times that we don't tell something simply because we weren't asked, and it is something that the other party does need to know. The difference? It is usually the difference between telling something that would hurt someone else, and telling something that we fear might affect ourselves. In this instance, while we haven't lied, because we weren't asked, yet we have intentionally deceived the other person by concealing information which could change their mind about us. There are many, many layers to this thing called honesty, and the more honest you become with yourself, the more will be revealed.
 As for "fearlessness"... so many people confuse faith with emotion. Fear is an emotion, but faith is not. Faith is an attitude and an action, which is exercised in spite of emotion, not because of it. Take the actions and the feelings will follow. I have heard people say that faith and fear cannot occupy the same space; that either you have faith, or you have fear. This just isn't so. The only reason that we are ever in need of such strengths as faith and courage is because we are afraid. Without fear, we have no need for faith or courage. And we can't pray fear away, suddenly gain courage and faith, and then go about doing whatever it is that we were afriad of before we prayed. When I am afraid, I ask God for the courage I need to face whatever it is, to do whatever it is, and then I get up and do it as if I weren't afraid anymore. This is faith. I have the faith that God will help me accomplish the thing despite my fears. Trust in God and courage are both discovered only in retrospect, not in advance. When I have acted on faith, in the face of my fears, later I feel couragous and I realize that I trust God a little bit more than I did before.
Assignment four is taking stock of your assets and liabilities, much like an Accountant tallies up the profits and losses of a company. The success or failure of any business is largely dependent upon the management of the firm, and we must view the business of living in much the same manner. We research cause and effect, looking to see what has worked and what hasn't; what we have used successfully and which items we can no longer afford. We work to acquire more of what has increased business and to eliminate the items, services, and ventures which produced losses of income and/or public relations. With this concept in mind, we apply it to our own character traits and personal affairs.
This portion of the study involves a lot of writing and will take a while to complete. Unlike the previous writing assignments, this cannot be done in one sitting. If you are to make an honest and thorough appraisal of your life and your character, this assignment will require a week or two of your time. Don't get in a hurry with this one, and avoid the temptation to leave things out. The two key words are "Honest" and "Thorough". The end result of this assignment will be the cornerstone to the recovery of your spiritual health, your true and divine nature. It will also prove to be the first of two tests involved in this course which will seperate the men from the boys, so-to-speak. It will determine just how willing you truly are to change your life for the better. It is a test of your honesty and humility. It is a test of your sincere desire for character development and maturity. Assignment four is an "All or Nothing" matter, which is actually the case of this entire study, but I believe this portion to be especially so. It is so incredibly crucial to be entirely honest with yourself in this part of the study that even one matter left untouched will completely prevent you from receiving any profits from the entire course. It is not a matter of "give a little and get a little", nor "give a lot and receive a lot" ~ it is, rather, a matter of "Give all and receive all" or "Don't give all and receive absolutely nothing." This assignment involves list-making, and then you will go on to write in detail about various portions of these lists. But start with just making the suggested lists. I want to first advise you, if you have a spouse or live-in partner, please, please, secure a secret place to keep this journal. This is the most private and personal part of this entire course, and it should not be read by anyone who is emotionally involved with you in any fashion. This is about who you really are, what has made you think, feel, believe, and behave as you. This is a plunge into the sub-conscious, both past and present. Being that you will uncover all your secrets, no one else should have access to this journal. Do your writing in private, and conceal it in private. . . . And so, without further ado, I will present the assignments involved in this portion of the course.
...Everything ~ (person, place, thing, & situation) that you are afraid of, in any sense of the word. What is it that frightens you? Failure, success, large crowds, the future, death, a particular person or situation? Search your soul... ...Everything you presently feel guilty about. Are there things you have done in the past, be it many years ago or just yesterday, which you still feel ashamed of? Are you carrying the heavy weight of guilt? If you have a little trouble identifying this baggage, maybe this will help: Guilt, or regret, is all about "Should have's" and "If only's". Do you ever catch yourself thinking, "I should have said something differently..." or, "I should have kept my mouth shut!" And then, "If only I hadn't done such a thing..." or perrhaps, "If only I had done something!" For most, this will be the longest of your lists. Unfortunately, many of us hold grudges, born from hurt feelings, injured pride, abuse, injustice, and fear. Whether we've never expressed that anger, or if we have continual trouble with out-bursts of rage, most of us do not know how to free ourselves from emotional pain. Thus, we carry the weight of our entire lives into every relationship we form. Resentment is probably the most destructive force on our lives. It robs us of peace of mind, often preventing us from sleeping well. It dictates who will trust and who will allow ourselves to become intimate with -- if anyone. It causes us to lash out at innocent others, especially those who love us the most, or it causes us to live in fear that the pain we've suffered may occur again. As a result, we live and re-live, day after day, crimes against us which may have happened when we were children. It molds us and determines who we are and what we do. Resentment controls us, taking over more and more of our lives and our personalities, until we finally learn to let it go. That is a process we will look into a little later... for now, just make your list of names, be it individuals, groups, principles, or institutions. It is important that you name names here. Why? Because each individual you have had sexual relations with is a person, equal to yourself. Regardless of what you may think or feel that them, the fact remains: our sexuality is a highly personal and intimate part of who we are, and each person we have become physically, if not emotionally close to, has affected us in some manner, just as we have influenced their lives in one way or another. Many of our guilts, resentments, and fears will have their basis in sexual relations.
Having made such personal, self-searching lists, you should be experiencing a great many raw emotions by now, which are quite uncomfortable. You may be thinking this can't possibly be emotionally or spiritually healthy, or it wouldn't hurt so much. However, it is because it does hurt so much that you can know it is working. Many will be seeing things, remembering people and instances, and re-living old emotions which you have spent most of your life trying NOT to think about! We can sweep painful memories under the rug, but they don't dissolve -- they're just covered up with a fancy exterior, ultimately damaging the padding and then the very fibers of the lovely rug. The allegory I like best with Assignment Four is this: I equate painful memories to garbage. I open the trash closet, throw it in the can, and shut the door. It's out of sight and I can forget about it... for a while. And then something happens, or something is said which reminds me it is there. So I take it out of the closet, dump it all in the floor and dig through it ~ re-living and re-hashing every detail in misery.It starts to stink, so I stuff it back in the trash closet and shut the door. But things continue to happen in life which remind me of that garbage and I keep dragging it out, looking through it, and then hiding it again. After a while, the burden becomes too much to bear alone, and so I have to share it with someone else. That person sits patiently with me as I dump my garbage all over the floor, watching and listening with sympathy and understanding as I wallow in my heap of stinky garbage. They even offer to help me carry it out to the curb for the garbage truck to take away. But I insist that I can handle it myself, but all I do is stick it back in the closet and sink a little deeper into self-pity because my friend doesn't understand -- they think I can just carry it to the curb and be done with it, as if it's nothing, as if the thing never happened to me! And so, I have another piece of garbage to add to my collection in the closet. After a while, my friend, spouse or lover can't stand to be around me anymore because of the smell of rotten garbage, and so I have yet another injury to hang on to. Thus, we keep ourselves in the cycle of feeling victimized and misunderstood, miserable and wishing someone would make it magically go away. But no one can take my garbage out for me -- I am the only one who can choose to hang on to it or let it go forever. Most of us truly do want to be free of emotional turmoil and live in peace, yet we hang on so tightly to the very things which cause us to suffer. We are afraid that if we ever let it go, then we might let our defenses down and it would happen to us again. Or, we may feel that letting it go is the same as approving of what happened to us, and somehow saying it wasn't really significant. I assure you, neither of these are true. One of the promises within this assignment is that you will learn from your past experiences to recognize the warning signs which you previously over-looked, to become aware of the self-defeating attitudes and behavior patters which have led you into painful situations, and how your own choices along the way have determined your own fate. You will learn to stop setting yourself up to be used or abused, and to value yourself enough to choose solitude over any less-than-desirable union. You will learn to give yourself the permissions and approvals you desire from others, and to validate your own feelings and worth, rather than depending on another to do so for you. So often, fear tells us there is no good in drudging up the past, and it's just better left alone. On the other hand, pride often tells us that there's no need to look at the past, because any poor behavior on our parts could never compare to the injustices done to us by others. And yet, each of these attitudes is a sure indication that this assignment is exactly what you need to do! Such false-pride is merely fear which has found a coping mechanism, allowing us to claim our right to distrust and suspicion, bitterness and self-righteousness. No matter our own offenses, pride always tells us that we are better than those who have harmed us, and that we have certainly been justified in any harm we may have caused another. Either way, fear is at the core of our unwillingness to look honestly at ourselves. We fear being consummed by our painful memories, even to the point of losing control of our sanity, or we fear seeing ourselves in a light less appealing than that which we have convinced ourselves is the truth.
However, banishing false-pride does not mean we end up a ball of nothingness, feeling worthless. Humility is not the same as humiliation, though humiliating experiences can result in a true humble spirit, provided that we learn the truth of the lesson. Humility is nothing more or less than simply acknowledging that we are all equal in God's eyes, and realizing who we are in relation to our Creator. Period. This in itself gives us true self-worth, confidence, and value, as opposed to self-rightousness and arrogance. By the same token, looking our pasts squarely in the face will not cause us to lose control of ourselves, as many may fear. On the contrary, those painful memories are controlling your life now, and to be able to see them for what they are, put them in their proper perspective, and learn what they have to teach us will finally give us control of our lives! You will learn to be your own manager, to control your emotions rather than allowing them to control you. When we become free of our painful past, we become free of the pain, not from the memories. We are able to open the door to our past without fear, regret, or pain. We are able to see it for what it was, use it as a stepping stone to bettering ourselves and our future, and see how our experinences can benefit others who have had similar heartaches. The past, or even unpleasant aspects of our present which are beyond our control, are no longer something we try to escape nor conceal. It certainly doesn't become something that we share indiscrimanently at every occassion to open our mouths, but our life-experiences can be an open book to anyone who might be helped from what we have learned. Beware of the stranger, or mere acquaintance who openly and freely discloses intimate details of their painful past. Don't be fooled into thinking what an honest and well-adjusted individual they are! There is no need to go about disclosing the discolored or tragic details of our lives unless it is directly needed to show another how we have overcome hurt, resentment, fear, and shame, that they might gain hope of doing the same. Such a person who freely airs their tragedies or misfortunes is probably seeking to gain your trust through sympathy or false admiration, that you might become their next care-giver, enabling them to remain in their role as victim. They usually do not talk like a victim in the beginning, but rather sounding as if they are comfortable with the content of their lives. Yet, if you are drawn into an intimate relationship, whether it be sexual or a close friendship, chances are, the day will come when this person will begin to display dishonesty, suspicions, bitterness, possessiveness, or emotional isolation. You will then be met with the excuse of their misfortunes having made them the way they are. They do see themselves as victims, though they have become perpetrators, and they will demand your understanding and sympathy. This is exactly how so many of us find ourselves in abusive relationships and why it is difficult to leave. We are caught in a trap we cannot spring ~ one of compassion, guilt, and a feeling of somehow being responsible to make up for lack of love this person has had. We actually become the victims, though we are treated like a violater, and are caught between feeling like a savior and a disgrace. This is the insanity of abusive relationships. If you are one who now lives in an abusive relationship, or are fortunate enough to have gotten out of one, I suggest that you stop here and read the essay I have prepared
 Self-Honesty part two
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