Honesty: Excerpt from Master Naba's Lecture

Honesty

Excerpt from Master Naba's Lecture

There are two different types of questions: what we call an honest question, and the opposite of that, which is a dishonest question. The spiritual life is not a place where you come to play mind games. We assume that everyone who comes to The Earth Center has deep fundamental questions that are left unanswered, and we are here to help guide their journey toward the answers they seek. But one cannot be guided towards the truth unless one asks honest questions.

What is an honest question? An honest question comes from a person who has been thinking about something and has put his mind to work on it. They might get stuck because maybe they don't have all the elements. If a person has done the preliminary work necessary and then asks his question or addresses his problem, we are then able to help. A dishonest question comes from a person who spends his entire life working against his own self... what this means is that he manages to allow his feelings, emotions, or beliefs to contaminate his way of thinking. Answering a question coming from this person will be problematic to answer because the person began by not being honest with himself, so his question is fundamentally not an honest one. This person will mostly introduce politics based on their beliefs, and his question will be based on what he believes rather than on reality. The Earth Center gives more strength to the thinking aspect of the human being rather than the emotional aspect because whatever anyone feels is a personal issue. One's feelings and emotions have nothing to do with others, and they have nothing to do with the world.

These are the two types of questions that the human being asks. The human who sets himself on the path of self-destruction will embrace dishonest questions because they manage to become very comfortable in their beliefs. A person who has a self-destructive attitude or behavior will replace his thinking process with his emotions. This is what we call a self-destructive being, and some people will even take it far enough to destroy the entire world just to prove a point (their belief). One will fight one's neighbor just to prove that the world he lives in is the only world that there is, that his religion is the only acceptable belief system and that his lifestyle is the only one that is correct. Meanwhile, we all accept that there is enough in this world for it to be a world by itself. One who manages to be on the path of self-destruction is not following the principle of spiritual honesty.

In a previous issue of The Rising Firefly, I wrote a story about a pot that dies. Can a pot die? A pot can break, but can it die? No, it cannot - a pot does not die. But we will try to see how a pot can die with this story. In that article, I was talking about two friends who made a bet with each other. One man turned to his friend and said, "You see that neighbor there? He has a big pot. But I have three small pots. You know what? I'm going to get this guy to trade his big pot for my small pots." The friend said, "You know he won't do that!" "Just wait and see!" The man started very simply. He went to the neighbor and asked for the big pot. "Of course!" the neighbor said and gave him the pot. Days went by. Then, when he thought that the neighbor might be wanting his pot back, he went to him with a very happy and joyful face. "Hey, Joe, you know what, you won't believe this! Your pot! I didn't know it was pregnant! It just had a baby! Look!"

Before the neighbor could say anything, the man said, "Well, since it's your pot and it had a baby, I think it is yours." The neighbor said "Really? My pot had a baby? Well, thank you!" and he took the small pot. The man left and the neighbor started telling his friends that the man was crazy. “I loaned him my big pot, and then he came with a small pot and told me my pot had a baby. Well, I just gained a small pot." he said. Time went by, and one day the man came again with another joyful face. "My brother! You are a lucky man. Your pot is so fertile, it just had another baby." "Where's the baby?" "Here it is, and it's yours!" The neighbor took the second pot, thinking the man was nuts. The man did it again a third time.

Then one day the man came to the neighbor with a very sad face. He was crying. He said, "My brother! Your pot just died! Your pot died. Oh, man, your pot just died." The neighbor got upset and said "Since when can a pot die! No way! I want my pot! A pot can't die! I want my pot back." The man said, "No, your pot died!" It became an argument that ended up in the house of the chief.

The neighbor told his story. The man told the story of the pot that kept having babies and got worn out from it and died. The judgment was for the man - if the neighbor accepts that a pot can have a baby, he accepts that a pot can die. So the man got a big pot exchanged for three small pots. (The full story can be found in Master Naba's new book, Initiatic Tales of Hej-Ptah, which is now available.)

This story is an example of corruption, and it illustrates how corruption works. From the very first time that the man said that the pot had a baby, the neighbor knew that something was not right, but because he was getting another pot, he ignored the truth that pots do not have babies. This is how corruption gets into a human being. This is also why everything that is poisonous has some sweetness attached to it - if something was poisonous and bitter, it would not attract its victim! This is how corruption works. If we want to destroy someone, we must put them in a position where they will shut out the honest part of themselves, and this is done by targeting one's emotions, greed, interests, etc.

The best example is that when we were in cotton fields working from morning to night for the white man, we called it slavery. Now we drive a car to work - we still work from morning to night, and we still work for the white man for mere pennies with which to meet our basic necessities, but we no longer call this slavery! That's how easily you can subdue the human being. Five hundred years ago, we complained because we were slaves and had to work in the cotton fields. Today, most of us are working for the white man. The only difference is, that instead of walking to the farm, we are now driving to the farm. (Just like the pot!)

As a people, we will not survive if we jump into every trap, especially those we see coming. In my village, we say that the unlucky man is the person who gets killed on the battlefield with the first bullet shot by the enemy. Apparently, human beings of today, especially those of color (whether black, green, or yellow), are the ones who are being hit by the first bullet in the first battle. It is one thing to say we don't know, but it's another thing to end up in a situation and realize that we have nobody to blame but ourselves. 

This is how you can turn a smart person, a person who has his whole world on positive ground, a person who went from building pyramids and the sphynx, preserving nature, prolonging life, to just a slave who does not know what to do with his life. When we read old books, sometimes they talk about people who lived 200 or 300 years - this is no longer a part of our reality. Self-destruction is a slippery slope. When you are heading down that slope, you feel there is nothing to grab onto. You don't know what is happening, and you won't be able to recover until you reach the bottom. Now the question is, where is that bottom?I feel that humanity has reached that bottom a long time ago. What is unfair is that now we are digging into the bottom so we can get even deeper!