Illusive Secrets: Discovering the Power of Self-Honesty

By James Patrick McDonald

In Illusive Secrets: Discovering the Power of Self-Honesty, James P. McDonald demonstrates the power self-honesty has to change our lives, and he asks with tender compassion if we have the willingness to meet our true selves.

With each secret he discovers, McDonald inspires us to look inward as the means of transcending our fear-based state of consciousness. His candid demonstrations reveal thoughts and experiences we all have, but very few of us are willing, or able to explore. Each self-deception Jim uncovers empowers us to look at our own lives with transformative honesty.

Uncovering our own illusive secrets gleaned from his examples leads us to the realization that we are responsible for our suffering, and it is never the external causes we are taught to blame. We begin to understand that our thoughts, judgments, and need to control, are directly related to our personal happiness and sense of inner peace.

Illusive Secrets offers a doorway into our own self-deception. While our initial glimpses may be frightening enough to evoke steadfast resistance and blinding denial, each experience softens that resistance and intensifies our desire to continue. We grow in self-awareness with each step, coming ever closer to the happiness, joy, and freedom we long to experience.

llusive Secrets is a profoundly spiritual approach to a better way of life that facilitates our journey toward the expression of love on a daily basis. It teaches nothing directly. Instead, it offers examples that inspire those who are willing, to follow an honest path of self-awareness leading to one final destination: Our true self.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Patrick McDonald
• Release date: May 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781939337184

James Patrick McDonald

James Patrick McDonald is the author of multiple books.INTERFERENCE (coming soon)WHO WOULD I BE WITHOUT - Based on a True Story of a Little WillingnessILLUSIVE SECRETS: Discovering the Power of Self-HonestyILLUSIVE SECRETS 2: Embracing Your True SelfJames is a contemporary author and spiritual guide who does not align himself with religion or specific teachings. He offers a simple and accessible approach to finding harmony and inner peace through willingness, self-exploration and honesty.At the age of 30, James experienced a profound transformation of grace that left him in a state of complete and total surrender. That awakening experience propelled him on an intense journey of self-discovery allowing him to understand and integrate all aspects of the experience into is his daily life. In the years that followed he experienced a series of inner transformations that shifted the direction and purpose of his life. Each experience brought a deeper sense of peace than the previous and enhanced his devotion and willingness to share what he was experiencing with others.James' awakening has been a real-word process dependent upon the suspension of judgment by looking directly at the suffering our judgments bring us - an experience that emerges from willingness and self-honesty. He uses an enriching blend of teaching styles and traditions and draws on his education, skills as a training and development professional, personal experience and humorous insight as the foundation for his sharing and teaching.He offers himself as a guide to others ready to rediscover their inner peace through one-on-one mentoring sessions, books and audio, presentations, groups, and workshops.Visit his website http://www.jamespatrickmcdonald.com for more information.

Book preview

This book is not about enlightenment or becoming enlightened. Trying to understand enlightenment, or setting enlightenment as a state one tries to achieve, limits our experience of willingness and self-discovery. Instead, our purpose is to look at Self in ways we may have never looked before. It’s about finding the willingness to make a serious effort to look at oneself without judgment and to accept who we are at any and every moment. It’s also our purpose to unlearn our fear-based ways of being in the world and uncover the areas where we are less than truthful with ourselves so that we may experience the inner peace we long to know.

We can ask different questions. Rather than asking the same old questions that cause much of our suffering, we can ask questions that explore the nature of our daily experience. Willingness is all we need for this significant shift in awareness to begin, and willingness allows the healing powers of honesty to change our lives.

One day I began asking different questions. I began with the intent to explore myself. I set out to look inward each day to find just one thing about which I had not been completely honest with myself. Once found, I waited for the willingness to be honest. I put that intention in place when I realized that having the willingness to look at the areas I found uncomfortable offered the greatest opportunities for growth and the rediscovery of inner peace.

Two perspectives, or interpretations, are available to us at all times. There is an aspect within that thinks and is always reacting to the thoughts, and there is the aspect that is still, and quietly accepts.

For the purposes of this book, ego represents the aspect that thinks and reacts. It is the aspect based in form; the part that believes the world is all-important. It screams and shouts for attention and often gets exactly what it wants: fear, separation, anxiety, worry, incompleteness, reactivity, subtle discontentedness, and lots of doing. In simple terms, what it offers results in suffering and misery covered over by a thin veil of apparent happiness. Personally, that veil was all I was aware of for most of my life.

When we align with ego, we judge everything. When we align with ego, our sense of inadequacy is heightened; wanting increases in an unconscious effort to fill the hole that inadequacy creates. In those moments, life is all about me, and joy is obscured. Joy is not lost because we cannot lose what we are. It is merely covered over or blocked from awareness by a ubiquitous sense of guilt that rises to the surface when we believe we are vulnerable. I was unable to identify the guilt for most of my life as it hid behind restlessness, irritability, discontentment, fear, anger, worry and a whole host of surface emotions.

Essence is the aspect of stillness and quiet acceptance. Essence is the aspect based in the formless that lies behind the raucous shrieking of the ego. It knows that while the world might be important, it’s not that important. This is the aspect of peaceful acceptance, invulnerability, unconditional love, power, strength, and