116: Emotional Honesty
[b]عليكم بالصدق ، فان الصدق يهدي الى البر و ان البر يهدي الى الجنة [/b]
[i]”Being truthful is obligatory, for truly truthfulness lead to righteousness,[/i][b] [Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)][/b]
Honesty
Allah mentioned صدق sidq/honesty/truthfulness over 100 times in the Qur'an
[b]يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُواْ اتَّقُواْ اللّهَ وَكُونُواْ مَعَ الصَّادِقِينَ[/b]
[i]“O You who believe, heed God and be of those who are truthful” [/i][b][Q9:119].[/b]
[b]إِنَّمَا الْمُؤْمِنُونَ .... أُوْلَئِكَ هُمُ الصَّادِقُونَ[/b]
[i]“Believers are... those who are truthful.”[/i][b] [Q49:15].[/b]
[b]لِيَجْزِيَ اللَّهُ الصَّادِقِينَ بِصِدْقِهِمْ[/b]
[i]“So God may reward the truthful for their truthfulness”[/i][b][Q33:24]. [/b]
Emotional Honesty
Part of one’s ability in dealing with the world, is learning how to deal with one’s self; part of dealing with one’s self is [list][*]understanding one’s feelings[/*][*]one’s attitude[/*][*]and getting to know who you really are.[/*][/list]
Part of discovering who you really are is finding out who you are not.
and if we have any situation where we feel unsafe, unaccepted and misunderstood we could analyze why and how to deal with it.
So, being honest with ourselves includes being honest about what we feel.
Emotional Awareness
To be able to be emotionally honest we must first be emotionally aware.
Emotional - awareness => ability to recognize feelings and its consequences
Emotional dishonesty => a self betrayal which keeps us from healing emotional wounds and experiencing the inner peace of self-acceptance.
Emotional Honesty & Dishonesty
To reveal one’s true self one needs to unmask one’s true identity and get to know one’s self.
Know Thyself
To really “know oneself ” as the ancient philosophers urged and Imam Hasan al-Basri suggested
[b]من عرف نفسه فقد عرف ربه[/b]
[i](whosoever knows the self acquires knowledge of the Lord),[/i]
requires that we know how we feel in life's many situations.
When we know how we feel
[list]
[*]we know what we enjoy doing[/*]
[*]who we enjoy doing it with.[/*]
[*]who we feel safe with[/*]
[*]who we feel accepted by and understood by;[/*]
[/list] [list]
[*]Emotional Honesty entails being truthful with ourselves about what we feel, listening to the meaning of each major feeling, learning to accept our feelings and attending especially to the resulting distress that may occur. By naming and thus disarming emotional wounds, we do not accumulate and become infected with shame, fear, hate, anger and revenge. What tends to prevent awareness and acceptance of our true feelings is a prevalent cultural misconception that in close relationships, respect, love and care are assumed to be present and thus not easily communicated; while emotional pain is assumed shameful and “someone must be to blame if I’m in pain!” Being vulnerable to painful wounding experiences is seen as a weakness rather than a sign of being human.[/*]
[*]Emotional Dishonesty is a self betrayal which keeps us from healing emotional wounds and experiencing the inner peace of self-acceptance. Self-acceptance comes from honoring and accepting what we feel rather than blaming others or shaming ourselves.
[i]“If communication is to be successful, if love is to be successful, if relationships are to be successful, we must give up the absurd notion that there is something "heroic" or "strong" about lying, about faking what we feel, about misrepresenting, by commission or omission, the reality of our experience or the truth of our being. We must learn that if heroism and strength mean anything, it is the willingness to face reality, to face truth, to respect facts, to accept that that which is, is.”[/i][/*][/list]
It takes emotional awareness, self-confidence, even courage to be emotionally honest.
Emotional Message & Reality
Emotions are a guide to where we are in relation to the reality of the world we live in. Denying the emotion or misrepresenting to ourselves or others what we feel may in reality be suppressing the truth and could lead to a skewed perception of reality. Remember the Prophet’s prayer[b]اللهم ارنى الأشياء كما هي [/b][i]O Allah! Show me things as they really are. [/i]If we do not see “things” as they really are, then what are we seeing; if we do not realize refuse to acknowledge what we really feel then what are we feeling?