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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==
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>
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''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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