Pragyan Maharaj Lecture 2

 I feel that, Honesty is not merely about speaking the truth, its more about the ability to see or perceive the truth, about yourself and about others, before you choose to speak it. And to be able to see the truth, you need to drop your prejudices, your  coloured glasses through which you look at yourself and the world at large. And to be able to drop your prejudices, you need to identify them as wrong and as obstacles and which requires *humility*. 

You need to face and accept the fact of your ignorance, your weakness, your failures and your vices alongwith your goodness and successes and virtues. You have to own up both positive and negative aspects of your personality. 

And when you do all this, you have to also drop the expectations that the world is gonna go mad and fall in love with you for being so honest etc. No. Contrary to it, they will hate you for your honesty and authenticity, because your truth makes them aware of their own falsehood, your honesty and authenticity makes them aware of their own dishonesty and fakeness and makes them fall in their own eyes. And nobody likes that. 

But you still need to persist in your honesty, because there is no other way. You have tried everything else, and nothing has worked.

And then there will always be those few who will be inspired by your example. There will be those, who are tired of the people wearing fake masks of goodness. And who want to meet you at the deeper level. They will be your friend. Your true friends. Because they see your truth. And are not repelled by it.

But that precious friendship doesn't come easily. You will have to pay the price. And the price is to loose the comfort of fake. You will have to face the wrath of truth before you get the sweetness of that friendship. 

That's the relation based on truth, on deep trust, on mutual respect and on honest open understanding and communication. 

May this truth and this honesty and this deep mutual trust be the *thread* that *binds* us together.

Happy *Rakshabandhan*.