Practicing Radical Honesty

Rating:
Summary: Take A Dive
Review: Have you read Brad Blanton's first book, Radical Honesty?
If you have not, get it today. We can cut through endless layers of complication and turgid self preoccupation with ourselves and our past simply by learning to feel what is, and to tell it like it is. Brad has made telling the truth into a spiritual discipline, a short cut to God. I have done little more than dicking around in the shallow end of the pool with what he offers, but it was enough to get wet, and its refreshing. It will probably take the rest of my life to get to the deep end. Radical Honesty, if we live it full on, is a way of life, a complete spiritual journey.
If you have read his first book, then you will love this very practical follow up. Here are nitty gritty devilish little tricks to crack through our shell of pretence, and then to squeeze our love through the crack. This book goes way beyond the first, and offers a vision of getting honest with yourself, with your life and purpose and mission.
Jump up on the board, and plunge in. It sure beats shivering on the side, waiting to live...

Rating:
Summary: Take A Dive
Review: Have you read Brad Blanton's first book, Radical Honesty?
If you have not, get it today. We can cut through endless layers of complication and turgid self preoccupation with ourselves and our past simply by learning to feel what is, and to tell it like it is. Brad has made telling the truth into a spiritual discipline, a short cut to God. I have done little more than dicking around in the shallow end of the pool with what he offers, but it was enough to get wet, and its refreshing. It will probably take the rest of my life to get to the deep end. Radical Honesty, if we live it full on, is a way of life, a complete spiritual journey.
If you have read his first book, then you will love this very practical follow up. Here are nitty gritty devilish little tricks to crack through our shell of pretence, and then to squeeze our love through the crack. This book goes way beyond the first, and offers a vision of getting honest with yourself, with your life and purpose and mission.
Jump up on the board, and plunge in. It sure beats shivering on the side, waiting to live...

Rating:
Summary: Honesty Begets Intimacy
Review: I read Practicing Radical Honesty after first reading Brad Blanton's popular "Radical Honesty". I expected it to be more of the same. Well, I should have known better. Brad connects with the previous book and then takes off beyond individuality, through community, even beyond our current existence. I found his style strightforward and clear. The content covered the "Great Work" - as told by Gurdjieff, Erhard and many others. I love his straightforward approach in explaining the synthesis of these formerly hidden ideas for every day use. I have no doubt that if you put Brad's ideas into practice,using his "Workbook for Life Design" chapter in the book, you will be clearer about your life's purpose and meaning.

Rating:
Summary: Big Words Much??
Review: The Idea behind this book, as I was lead to believe, was to instruct the reader to practice radical honesty. All it did for me, however, was reintroduce me to my dictionary. The author fills his writings with underlying put-downs and sarcasm, telling the reader that they are "pathetic" if they believe one thing and just plain stupid if they really believe the other. I didn't make it through chapter 3 and I loaned this book to a friend of mine who said she didn't get past the first. I waited for this book in the mail for three weeks (I'm in Germany), tore open the box when it arrived and put everything else aside to begin my "journey". I thought this book would be a great follow up the the Celestine series and "Heaven Within", but all it proved to me was that Mr. Blanton had a PhD and I didn't. How Pathetic of me.

Rating:
Summary: Big Words Much??
Review: The Idea behind this book, as I was lead to believe, was to instruct the reader to practice radical honesty. All it did for me, however, was reintroduce me to my dictionary. The author fills his writings with underlying put-downs and sarcasm, telling the reader that they are "pathetic" if they believe one thing and just plain stupid if they really believe the other. I didn't make it through chapter 3 and I loaned this book to a friend of mine who said she didn't get past the first. I waited for this book in the mail for three weeks (I'm in Germany), tore open the box when it arrived and put everything else aside to begin my "journey". I thought this book would be a great follow up the the Celestine series and "Heaven Within", but all it proved to me was that Mr. Blanton had a PhD and I didn't. How Pathetic of me.

Rating:
Summary: true enlightenment requires authenticity ...
Review: The introduction started with "We all lies like hell. It wears out. It is the major source of all human stress. Lying kill people."

On p,16 he has the correct interpretation of first time Enlightenment as "knowing unity, not being able to talk about it." On p.31 "Intense emotional attachment to any value, any virtue, any set of 'SHOULDs' is a disease, a mental illness, a condition of self-murder and cultural assassination."

On my birth page, Brad stated "about one out of six people leave therapy with me by quitting or getting kicked out. Sometimes kicking someone out of therapy is an effective therapeutic intervention. On 6/14/2000 I realized THERAPIST stands for "THE RAPIST" & this is what most of us-them have been performing.

As to why Brad is writing this book, it's on pp.76-79? On p. 87 he has "Words Are Labels for Pictures, and None of These are Real" and "Being ABNORMALLY HONEST" like Patch Adams' EXCESSIVE HAPPINESS in the movie by Robin William. And Bush and his cohorts lying about Weapon of Mass Destruction in Iraq can learn a lot from his next "Learning to LOVE INSECURITY":

"The person who learns to tell the truth is the most free, most alive kind of adult human being you'll ever see, but is more insecure than normal. The insecurity come from having fewer beliefs to rely on for security."

For me it doesn't mean insecurity at all, it's simply living in the 'present' and 'be present to' all the presents around oneself. Rather than guessing & insecure about some probable future that is going to happen, if one is stuck in fear, as Neale Walsch in his "Conversations with God" CwG series & Gerry Jampolsky of "a Course in Miracles" put it very clearly, what you fear attracts the wish or divine command that it's fulfilled so that you can experience your fear completely and fully. You attract what you fear.

On p.105 Brad wrote "NEUROSIS is essentially a refusal to accept what is happening in the present... A neurotic is a person who increasingly demands that life be other than it is." On p.118 "Many of us consider ourselves to be heroes and heroines when we are just damned fools"

Best of all is Brad's checklist for intimacy on p.167 which includes raw telling of past loves & current daydream & affairs and self-gratification which I did with all my lovers in bed. As on p.183 "Well-being is not taught in schools, by parents or by the church. Well-being is self-taught using guidance from people who don't know much more about it than you do." And p.223 "Having an image of who we are and how we should behave is a great constraint on us." with p.234 "Politeness and diplomacy are responsible for more suffering & death than all the crimes of passion in history. Suck politeness. Suck diplomacy. Tell the truth." And finally "You relate to God by becoming God." Which we can all be.

Although I give this book 5-star, I am still waiting for Brad's all truth bared naked feeling autobiography & that will be a best-seller in authenticity (unlike Neale Walsch & William Shad, author of a trilogy of the same CwG title with subtitles being "The Truth" "The Whole Truth" & anticipated "Nothing but the Truth".) Suck personal privacy which is pure cover-up & separation & simply lies. Tell the authentic truth to everyone as it happened, that's unity & true integrity.

This book can be made searchable like his "Radical Parenting".

Let me again lead from my own authentic examples of intimacy, continued from my "Honest to God" & "Miracle Made Possible" reviews. The lady who faked pregnancy, Lisa gave to me these numerous gifts:

I met Lisa on 10/19/1999 at a nightclub. She was 21 year-old & learning English at a college & was born the year of horse. At midnight I took her back to my office to meet some youngsters that worked with me. She said that my 2 years self-training in PC was too long. I let her sleep in the master bedroom, which I gave up to a couple who worked with me & they had gone home. I went to sleep in the small bedroom. After going to the bathroom, she opened my door & asked me if I wanted to sleep with her. Since I was single & without a girlfriend then, I happily joined her. She used the word 'beg' to entice me to join-in with her.

I never joined-in my previous girlfriend, who lasted one-year, although we did everything else in bed, and I was her 23rd man she went to bed with. With my first wife we had less than 10 times join-in in 22 years. I thought from her facial expression & sometimes tears that Annie didn't enjoy join-in. So we mainly mutually or self-gratified.

I'm eternally thankful to Lisa for introducing me to the joy of join-in without rubber & to experience infatuated love at my age. Once I left on our white board "to love someone is to be together instead of separate".

Lisa found her 'fall from heaven' story on 12/2/1999. When Lisa was in 1st year of junior-high, her English lady teacher wanted her to learn & smacked Lisa's face twice for not paying attention in class & Lisa got angry & spit on the teacher. Lisa ran home & threw her books on the floor & got scolded & beaten by her parents for being naughty. Her class rank fell from 8 to 20+ by the 2nd year & to 30+ in the 3rd year. Lisa swore to get revenge from the teacher. Lisa met the teacher twice later & the teacher said that she shouldn't have smacked her.

Lisa's self-definition is when faced with problems/difficulties she escapes & when assaulted she retaliates. On 1/22/2000 Lisa declared that she was born with 2 talents: liar and sexy. Right after she declared she was pregnant.

Rating:
Summary: Honesty Begets Intimacy
Review: What I have learned from reading Brad Blanton's Radical Honesty books is that we all lie - a lot - to create and maintain an image of who we want people to think we really are. The problems come when we discover that living within that false image - both personally and professionally - is very stressful and disconnecting. While telling the truth may cause some very big scenes in the beginning, it is a quick path to a powerful place of personal freedom.

I also read "Radical Honesty", which I think is the best place (other than a workshop) to learn about the basics of the high costs we pay of the "little white (and big black) lie." "Practicing Radical Honesty" coaches us through much the same information with practical suggestions on how to ease into a life of actively open transparency that is Radical Honesty. Both are inspiring books and will give readers a lot of compelling reasons to begin telling the truth with everyone with whom we would like to have a close and authentic relationship.

Rating:
Summary: Truely radical - this book helped me change my BEING.. ;-)
Review: When Radical Honesty was first recommended to me, I was quite surprised, because I had always thought of myself as an exceptionally honest person. While I was not a 'liar' - deliberately telling people what I knew was not the truth - I had never considered that witholding my thoughts and feelings was actually lying.

Brad Blanton, the author, clearly shows how witholding our thoughts and feelings, is a form of lying, which is very destructive to our mental, physical and emotional well-being. The book explains how lying or withholding our true thoughts and feelings is bred into us as moralists, the idea that we should be and act and say things as society expects us to.

We may never 'be' who we think we ought or should be, and so we lie (pretend) about it. Lying and withholding our thoughts and feelings from those we are close to, denies us the ability to BE who we really are, and so we run around in a whirlwind of always trying to be who we think we should be, which cuts us off from the 'nectar' of just 'being'.

Many people misunderstand the concept of 'radical honesty' thinking that if you are radically honest, then that means you just go around telling people what you think of them. Radical Honesty is NOT about simply going around sharing your judgements and assessments of other people. Radical Honesty is about sharing your thoughts, feelings and actions with others, and being committed to working through with the other person, until the anger or pain has gone away.

Radical Honesty is about taking responsibility for your feelings, your actions and your thoughts, and taking charge of your life as an intentional creation based on your preferences, rather than as a victim, blaming others for your pain, hurt feelings and reactive way of living life.

In the end the book is about freedom, about learning to be who you really are and really want to be, not who you think the world, your mother, husband, lover, etc. thinks you 'SHOULD' be. When we show all of who we are - the good, the bad, the nasty - and we can get over it, and people can learn to see us as fallible human beings, and we can relate to one another as human beings, without the expectation that people should be other than who they are, then we have a foundation where true initmacy, compassion and creativity blooms like flowers in the desert after rain.

Sometimes Radical Honesty is about anger. We all get angry, and we can all get over it. We can experience the anger and transcend it. It is when we suppress the anger, that it grows into a cancerous hatred inside us, that eats us up alive. I think we would all prefer to deal with someone's anger than become the object of their hatred.

The book helped me to realize how much of my life had been lived trying to be who I thought I should be. I had been living in my mind, instead of my heart, my thinking based on my expectations of what I thought were other's expectations of me, and who I should be.

The ideas in Brad Blanton's book have changed my life, like very few others ever have. I took his 2 day workshop, started some completion work with my family, then took his 8 day intensive workshop, and it is like I have finally found my 'being' independent of all those images I had in my mind about who I 'should' be. My relationships with my family, my husband and my friends are more intimate, compassionate and life is so much more worth living. And my sex life has dramatically improved, which I cannot complain about.

This book is not a 'gentler' self-help book, like many of the self-help books presently on the market. Do not read it if you want the author to be 'nice' to you. Blanton uses strong language, which some readers may be put off by.