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Read Summary of '''[[Sincerity Summary|Sincerity]]'''
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=What is Sincerity?=
There are several degrees of sincerity.
The most elementary degree is not to say one thing and think another, claim one thing and want another. For example, what happen happens quite often: to say, "I want to make progress, and I want to get rid of my defects" and, at the same time, to cherish one's defects in the consciousness and take great care to hide them so that nobody intervenes and sends them off. This indeed is a very common phenomenon. This is already the second degree. The first degree, you see, is when someone claims, for example, to have a very great aspiration and to want the spiritual life and, at the same time, does completely... how to put it?... shamelessly, things which are most contradictory to the spiritual life. This is indeed a degree of sincerity, rather of insincerity, which is most obvious.
And finally, if we go far enough, if we push the description far enough, so long as there is a part of the being which contradicts the central aspiration for the Divine, one is not perfectly sincere. That is to say, a perfect sincerity is something extremely rare. And most commonly, very very frequently, when there are things in one's nature which one does not like, one takes the greatest care to hide them from oneself, one finds favourable explanations or simply makes a little movement, like this (''gesture''). You have noticed that when things move like this you can't see them clearly. Well, where the defect is seated, there is a kind of vibrations which does this, and so your sight is not clear, you no longer see your defects. And this is automatic. Well, all these are insincerities.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/10-november-1954#p27,p28,p30</ref>
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=Why Sincerity is Important?=
Why do I insist on absolute sincerity?... You have all passed through childhood and you probably remember what you were taught, what you were told when you were young. Parents nearly always tell their children, ‘You must not lie, it is very bad to tell a lie.’ But the unfortunate thing is that they lie in your presence and then you wonder why they want you to do something which they don’t do themselves.
But, apart from that, why do I insist on the fact that children should be told from a very early age that it is absolutely necessary to be sincere? I am not addressing those who were brought up here, but those who were brought up in an ordinary family, with ordinary ideas. Children are very often taught how to outsmart others, how to dissimulate so as to appear good in others’ eyes. Some parents try to control children through fear, and that is the worst possible method of education, for it is an incentive to lying, deceit, hypocrisy and all the rest. But if you repeatedly explain to children something of this kind: If you are not absolutely sincere, not only with others but also with yourself, if at any time you try to cover up your imperfections and failings, you will never make any progress, you will always remain what you are throughout all your life, without ever making any progress. So, even if you only want to grow out of this primitive unconscious state into a progressive consciousness, the most important thing, the one absolutely important thing is sincerity. … ..
And don’t think that there are people to whom this rule does not apply, for you cannot live in the physical world without having a share in the physical nature, and physical nature is essentially a mixture. You will see, when you become absolutely sincere, that there is nothing in yourself that is absolutely unmixed. But it is only when you look yourself in the face, in the light of your highest consciousness, that whatever you want to eliminate from your nature will disappear. Without this striving for absolute sincerity, the defect, the little shadow, will stay in a corner biding its time to come out.
When one springs up into the higher sphere, into the world of Truth, one will be able to see things as they truly are, and seeing them as they are, one will be able to live them in their truth. Then all falsehoods will naturally crumble. And since the favourable explanations will no longer have any purpose, they will disappear, for there will be nothing left to explain. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/21-may-1958#p13,p14</ref>
Only those who are already very sincere know that they are not completely sincere. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/insincerity-pretension-and-self-deception#p14</ref>
==Prerequisite for Developing Sincerity==
The complete unification of the whole being around the psychic centre is the essential condition to realise a perfect sincerity. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/darshan-messages#p46</ref>
==Ways for Developing Sincerity==
===By Aspiration ===
Open with sincerity. That means to open integrally and without reservation: not to give one part of you to the divine working and keep back the rest; not to make a partial offering and keep for yourself the other movements of your nature. All must be opened wide; it is insincerity to hold back any part of you or keep it shut to the Divine. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/opening#p15</ref> <center>~</center> To the Divine Vision, all sincere human aspirations are acceptable, whatever diversity or even apparent contradiction there may be in their forms.[Based on Aphorism 473 — The Lord of Love has said, "They who follow after the Unknowable and Indefinable, follow after Me and I accept them." He has justified by His word the Illusionist and the Agnostic. Why then, O devotee, dost thou rail at him whom thy Master has accepted?] <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-473#p2</ref>
===By Rejection ===
There is but one remedy: that signpost must always be there, a mirror well placed in one’s feelings, impulses, all one’s sensations. One sees them in this mirror. There are some which are not very beautiful or pleasant to look at; there are others which are beautiful, pleasant, and must be kept. This one does a hundred times a day if necessary. And it is very interesting. One draws a kind of big circle around the psychic mirror and arranges all the elements around it. If there is something that is not all right, it casts a sort of grey shadow upon the mirror: this element must be shifted, organised. It must be spoken to, made to understand, one must come out of that darkness. If you do that, you never get bored. When people are not kind, when one has a cold in the head, when one doesn’t know one’s lessons, and so on, one begins to look into this mirror. It is very interesting, one sees the canker. ‘I thought I was sincere!—not at all’. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/1-april-1953#p8,p9,p10</ref>
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You feel uneasy, very miserable, dejected, a bit unhappy: "Things are not quite pleasant today. They are the same as they were yesterday; yesterday they were marvellous, today they are not pleasing!"—Why? Because yesterday you were in a perfect state of surrender, more or less perfect—and today you aren't any more. So, what was so beautiful yesterday is no longer beautiful today. That joy you had within you, that confidence, the assurance that all will be well and the great Work will be accomplished, that certitude—all this, you see, has become veiled, has been replaced by a kind of doubt and, yes, by a discontent: "Things are not beautiful, the world is nasty, people are not pleasant." It goes sometimes to this length: "The food is not good, yesterday it was excellent." It is the same but today it is not good! This is the barometer! You may immediately tell yourself that an insincerity has crept in somewhere. It is very easy to know, you don't need to be very learned, for, as Sri Aurobindo has said in Elements of Yoga: One knows whether one is happy or unhappy, one knows whether one is content or discontented, one doesn't need to ask oneself, put complicated questions for this, one knows it!—Well, it is very simple.
The moment you feel unhappy, you may write beneath it: "I am not sincere!" These two sentences go together:
"I FEEL UNHAPPY."
"I AM NOT SINCERE." <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/7-july-1954#p77,p78,p79,p80</ref>
===Will for Progress===
When I say, ‘If you are sincere, you are sure of victory’, I mean true sincerity: to be constantly the true flame that burns like an offering. That intense joy of existing only by the Divine and for the Divine and feeling that without Him nothing exists, that life has no longer any meaning, nothing has any purpose, nothing has any value, nothing has any interest, unless it is this call, this aspiration, this opening to the supreme Truth, to all that we call the Divine (because you must use some word or other), the only reason for the existence of the universe. Remove that and everything disappears. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/25-march-1953#p11,p12,p14,p15</ref>
<center>~</center>'''Bold text'''
''Sweet Mother, how can we make our submission gladly?''
It is perfectly true also that if a man is sincere, he will reach the Divine. But it does not follow that he will reach immediately, easily and without delay. Your error is there, to fix for God a term, five years, six years, and doubt because the effect is not yet there. A man may be centrally sincere and yet there may be many things that have to be changed in him before realisation can begin. His sincerity must enable him to persevere always—for it is a longing for the Divine that nothing can quench, neither delay nor disappointment nor difficulty nor anything else.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/patience-and-perseverance#p23</ref>
'''Curated by Prema'''
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