The character, Gregory House on the TV show HOUSE M.D. is known for saying, “Everybody Lies.” What is not specifically stated is what they lie about. It’s a planetary pandemic and we’re all infected.

We are born with fear, but not with the fear of being found out. That’s conditioned along the way.

Peoples’ phobias pale in comparison to the boot quaking they experience when on the verge of having their deepest secret revealed - being found out.

The lies we fashion to keep our façade intact are such a part of our makeup that we wouldn’t recognize ourselves in the mirror without them.

It’s TV and film fantasy that has us come to believe that people tell the truth on their deathbed or just before being put to death by lethal injection. Such is most often not the case. People are more afraid of being found out than they are of death. Their concocted image is worth more to them than their life.

I was talking with a friend the other day about intimacy, or rather the lack of it. I said, “What keeps us closed to the experience is the fear of being found out.” In essence we are saying, “If they knew who I really am, they wouldn’t want to be close to me.”

Think of people who are serial cheaters (think Tiger Woods) or those who continually marry and divorce (Think stereotypical Hollywood star or starlet) as text book examples of the fear of being found out. Once it becomes apparent that the jig is about to be up, they move on.

Your secret is not secret. The real secret is that everyone knows about you at some level because it reverberates with their own hidden agenda.

So how do we extricate ourselves from the sludge that keeps us fearing having our image smudged?

Tell the truth. It’s a direct path to intimacy.

Letting someone find out about you is a risk most people are unwilling to take. And this unwillingness to open up drives them further apart.

This goes way past letting others know your likes and dislikes. All that tells them is your list of rules and preferences - pretty superficial stuff.

We lie every day. What may not be as immediately apparent is that we have a choice just before letting it slip past our lips again. One choice is to tell the truth. What many of us do at this choice point is commit ourselves to omission - a lie by another name.

And lying to yourself is more widespread than cheating at Solitaire. We’ve told it to ourselves so many times that we become indignant when someone puts it under our nose for a proper sniff.

The prescription that leads to intimacy with yourself and others is choosing the truth. Every time you keep it muzzled, you put another coat of paint on your image keeping you yet another step away from your core intimate self.

There are no lies in heaven - only intimacy.

If intimacy continues to elude you, you now know how that happens. Your fear of being found out outweighs your desire for intimacy. To shift the balance, you have to give up your balancing act. It takes up way too much energy to manage the lies.

Once you tell the truth it’s all out in the open with nothing to protect any more. You finally find the freedom of intimacy.

All the best,

John