Five Uncomfortable Truths About Me

By Aubrey Marcus July 29, 2019

My friend and medicine woman Wailana told me last night, “The world doesn’t need anything from you other than your truth.” Wow, what a relief. Seriously though! Because truth is something that we always have available. It doesn’t require trying, in fact, it’s the opposite. You have to try to express everything...but the truth.

Every lie takes effort. Every reach takes effort. Every spin on the white cue ball of honesty takes effort. Every justification, every flattery, every excuse...effort, effort, effort. Truth is effortless. It’s only our resistance to the truth that causes friction. Instead of letting truth slide out of our heart, radiate through our voice, or spill onto the page, we bottle it up. We’re afraid that our truth isn’t good enough. That if we speak our truth, someone will get hurt, or someone will stop loving us, or serving our needs. So we spin little lies like sorcerers casting spells to receive a desired action.

But all that comes at a cost. A cost that is far too great to bear. The effort, the stress, the exhaustion...for what? To coddle someone and enable them to stay in their delusions by shielding them from the truth? Or to gain a little bit of power? As I’ve said here before, power is the saccharine of love. It may taste sweet, but it isn’t love. Because any love we receive from a manipulation of the truth, or someone acting in fear, isn’t Love. Love is only Love when it’s a choice given freely in awareness.

But you might object that power can give us wealth. True. But any wealth we receive from a lie, we know we don’t deserve. So every thrill that this ill-gotten money provides will be soiled with guilt. We might all imagine that with enough money, no matter how ill-gained, we could drown our conscience in confetti and cocaine. Maybe for a moment. But our conscience is more tenacious than an 8-ball and a yacht party.

So why not tell the truth? Why not just be that one who always tells the truth? I’ll go first. Here’s five uncomfortable truths:

  • Sometimes I’m afraid that I’m going to go insane like my father.

  • I hear a lot of gratitude from people but I hardly ever let myself feel any of it. I’m afraid that if I feel the gratitude, I might also be susceptible to the blame if I fuck something up. Or maybe deep down I don’t feel like I deserve gratitude, because I’m not perfect.

  • I’m scared that I’m going to get sick. But I realized recently thanks to Paul Chek that some part of me wants to get sick, or get injured, so I don’t have to bear the responsibility of being ‘me’ anymore. Then I’m off the hook if I fail. Or maybe I just want people to take care of me, instead of me constantly taking care of people. Maybe subconsciously that is why I fell asleep and crashed my car, so everyone would take care of me for a little while.

  • Sometimes I feel like I’m not doing good enough at being the CEO of Onnit any more.

  • I’ve been addicted to sleep medication for over a year. I’ve tried to get off and failed. I’m going to try again at the end of the month, but I’m scared about how hard it’s going to be, and what productivity I’m going to have to sacrifice to do it.

There you go… Truth. It wasn’t that bad, was it? If this tarnishes some perception you had of me...well, sorry. If you can’t tell, I don’t entirely have my shit together. But I’m working on it. And aren’t we all just working on it?

Here’s another truth: the musician Nahko is a bad motherfucker. He’s hilarious, conscious and incredibly talented. Doing this week’s podcast with him was one of the highlights of my year. It’s worth the listen, and if you get a chance check the YouTube as well.

That’s all loveheads, have a beautiful week.

–Aubrey

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