Lies

In ancient Palestine, a Roman middle
manager dresses down a radical
“I have a backlog of so-called
prophets. You are of a multitude”
The offender said, “I witness truth”
Perplexed and filled with pique,
the jailer replied, “Truth, what is it?”

What is the cost of lies?

Every time you lie, you create a distance between who you are and who you pretend to be. That distance grows. It becomes a chasm. Eventually, you can’t remember which side of the chasm is real.

The authentic self begins to fade.

You’re at war with your own thoughts, constantly managing stories, remembering which version you told to whom, calculating each step you take into this minefield. The mental energy required to maintain these fabrications is staggering — energy stolen from creativity, from meaningful pursuits, from love itself.

Lies corrupt your ability to perceive reality. You begin to believe your own inventions. Your internal compass breaks. You lose touch with what’s actually true, and in that state. You become paralyzed and unpredictable at the same time. You’re walking a path towards madness. You become your own victim. The joker, strangled by their own joke.

Liars always think the next lie will fix everything, but lies only create more problems that require more lies. The best-case scenario is for your lie to be exposed quickly. This is a divine opportunity the universe is giving you to reconsider your path and get better. If you’re unlucky, your lie will endure, as each lie demands ten more to sustain it. A house of cards, waiting for the slightest wind to dismantle everything.

The people around you suffer too, but not in the way you might expect. They don’t just suffer from being deceived — they suffer from being in the presence of someone who’s spiritually fractured.

Healthy souls sense lies. They might not be able to name it. But they feel something is not right. After all, you see them as vehicles to achieve something else. How can somebody claim to love or respect somebody while deceiving them? Sooner or later, they will righteously reclaim their dignity by walking away. They are no longer part of your life.

Gradually, you find yourself surrounded by corrupted souls, like yours. You would think you have people and opportunities around you. Sure you do. Just with the same quality you now deliver. Honest people have also vanished from their lives long ago. Your selfish universe of lies becomes entangled with theirs, creating exponential complexity.

All that’s left are liars like you, each one convinced they’re smarter than the rest. You can’t see through their masks because you’re too busy perfecting your own. They can’t see through yours for the exact same reason.

Despair settles in. You lose hope for a better world and become a nihilist. Don’t be mistaken. It’s not the world. It’s the conditions you, and only you, had created because of your cowardice to confront your own shadows, which you mask with pitiful excuses that no one deserving of a minimal degree of respect will buy.

At this point, your life is done. You’re just unable to realize it because you’re busy fabricating a lie to tell yourself you have one.

The moment you commit to radical honesty, something shifts in the world around you. People begin trusting you in ways that feel almost supernatural. Beautiful opportunities appear. Meaningful relationships deepen. Your mind clears because you’re no longer managing a web of deception. You can finally sleep at night, truly.

What does this look like in practice? It means refusing to be submissive when expressing what bothers you. Silence is just another lie. It means admitting you’re lost instead of pretending you know the way. It means saying “you inspire me” instead of hiding your admiration. It means saying “I was wrong” before anyone proves it to you. It means confessing your darkness and your light with equal courage.

Radical honesty means, ultimately, to stop sabotaging yourself and follow what feels right in your heart. Not what’s convenient, not what’s expected, but what’s genuinely true.

Truth is liberation. It’s terrifying at first because it requires you to face reality without the buffer of comfortable fictions. But on the other side of that terror is a life where you can look at yourself in the mirror without flinching, where your words carry weight because they’re real.

No deceiver will be able to manipulate you because you know yourself too well. They won’t even attempt it: they recognize honest people are dangerous to their crystal castles.

You will inspire the right people, and they will inspire you back. You will hear them, and they will hear you back. Because every single one of their words means what it means. You don’t have to guess anymore. You don’t have to measure your sentences either. Life flows naturally, with plenty of creative moments and love to enjoy.

Stop lying. Not tomorrow, not next week — now. Your life depends on it. The cost of lies isn’t just what you lose in the world; it’s what you lose of yourself. And once that’s gone, there’s nothing to live for anyway.

Only in darkness
does the flower take hold
It blooms at night
it blooms at night