Sincerity is a Superpower

Nothing is safer, nor more essential to the spiritual path.

I have a cherished friend named Brad. When I was a sophomore in high school and Brad was a senior, we had a drama class together, and at that time Brad essentially decided he was my older brother, and then he stayed that way. I don’t see Brad very often at all. But when I do see him, I get the experience of a man about three years older than me treating me lovingly like an older brother for a couple of hours. For thirty-some years now, he’s been my (occasional) older brother. It’s really one of the sweetest things.

Ever since high school, Brad has thought of himself as a hardened cynic — which he isn’t. Or not to the extent that he thinks he is, I don’t think. But he said that he decided he wanted to be friends with me / take me under his wing because my sincerity unwound his supposedly frozen, cynical heart. “Sincerity is your superpower,” he has told me on more than one occasion.

This reflection has been a gift, because it’s helped me to see this in myself. I often feel pretty mediocre in a lot of ways. But to the extent that I have a superpower, I think sincerity is my superpower, for sure — when I’m at my best, anyhow. And sincerity is a superpower, without a doubt. That’s the point I really wanted to make.

Sincerity involves honesty, but the honesty must be seeking and vulnerable. It’s not just the leathery, self-approved attitude of, “I tell it like it is. “ It’s continually asking, of reality, “Please, tell me how it is.”

Also, sincerity must believe in the good, in grace. Cynical truth is just not whole, true truth, I don’t think. There’s still at least one more layer. (If you don’t think so, try letting go some pride, and I think you’ll find that layer and go beneath.) It all but goes without saying that sincerity is humble, because only a wee amount of truth-telling reveals how small and imperfect we are.

A few weeks ago, I was reading for a grad class the “shewings” of Julian of Norwich, a devout woman who became an anchorite in the 14th century — meaning that at some point she was voluntarily sealed in seclusion, to spend the rest of her life living in contemplation and prayer an a cell adjoining a church (in her case, St. Julian’s Church in Norwich). When Julian was thirty she fell seriously ill, and over the course of about a day she had sixteen visions which she described first in a Short Text and later in a more elaborate Long Text. The two texts are often published under the title Revelations of Divine Love, and they emphasize the love of God for all of creation. Julian is famous for conveying the message from God, “All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.” She also received the interesting idea that, for those who are or who will be “saved,” sin is not a mark of shame, but actually a mark of honor.

I like thinking about Julian’s ideas of salvation. Rabbi Hugo Gyn once said, “Spirituality is like a bird; hold it too tightly and it chokes, hold it too loosely and it flies away.” I think this is a good way to think about salvation. I recently read Handbook for William by Dhuoda, a wise, pious woman from the fifth century, and cringed a little when this obviously very careful, very devout woman said she was unsure that her salvation was assured. Martin Luther agonized over his salvation and more or less built the entirety of his theology on his struggle. Too much wrenching over whether or not we will be in the loving company of God is not a healthy thing, I feel. And I think it’s worth chucking the idea that hell is an eternal sentence conveyed at the moment of death, altogether.

But I don’t think it’s a good thing to fuss too little over salvation, either. I think it’s good to consider that we have two natures — or at least two directions — one pitted toward the world, ultimately in not-so-great ways, and one of them wedded to a deeper, more redeeming truth. Without too much care, the one can do real damage to the other — damage that can take a long time to heal. In many ways, I think we’ve gotten far too casual about this — and the effects, I think, are obvious.

Julian’s model is interesting, because she says that, for the “saved,” there is a part of the soul that has never consented to wrongdoing, and has never been touched by it. It’s this part that assures our redemption. Contrition is the way to salvation, because regret reveals the part of our consciousness that always intends to be in cooperation with God’s will.

I think this makes sense. The part of us that generates sincerity is the part that saves us. A deep, wholehearted, relentless commitment to honesty, combined with a searching will for the good. The starting point for our transformation must always be this deep well.

There are many positive spiritual concepts that are easy to ratify. Virtues are easy to ratify. Sincerity is easy to ratify, too. It’s easy to count things like this as the traits of “Camp Good Guy,” to locate oneself in that camp, where those traits are — and to enjoy this association, own it, and then move on without much thought. This is one of the basic tropes of Americanism, I think.

But most of these concepts that are easy to ratify also require a continual, deepening pursuit, without which the ratifying is ultimately not necessarily very meaningful. Sincerity is like this, I think. It’s not our top-layer honesty that is usually the most sincere; sometimes we have to drift down through many layers of mental habit — wishes, defenses, distractions, etc. — before we get to the most fundamental perception of reality. Some people are at that level all the time. For others — most of us, I would bet — sincerity is a deep, daily practice.

And nothing is safer than a state of deepening sincerity. Sincerity clears our clouds so that we can better see truth, and I’m under the impression that the truth is deeply good. I think the truth is that the universe is saturated with its own ground, which is God — and that ground is infinite, and personal, and loving. Sincerity is the clearing that enables the most effective cooperation with this Being. I think this is why Saint Paul enjoined the Thessalonians to pray without ceasing — out of the belief there’s no more effective way to live to live in deep, sincere communication with the conscious ground of everything.

A window on the Truth in us can then become a window for the Truth to shine into the world. I think it can’t be underestimated how disarming this is. Years ago, I was part of a weekly men’s group that regularly did surprisingly deep process work. Our group was an “open group,” which meant that a man in the group could bring any (male) guest to the group at any time, to see what they thought about the work. So every now and again a man more or less from off the street would come in and watch men in our group do very vulnerable process work. What struck me, invariably, was how totally these new men respected the work. It wasn’t woo-woo to them; it wasn’t weird. If a man was vulnerably speaking what was true for him, a man off the street just got it. To me, this is one of the testimonies to the power of sincerity. Ultimately, I think we’re all looking for our windows to a single, convergent Truth. When one of us cleans our window, on some level the rest of us just recognize it.

Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that through sincerity, we’re guaranteed to grasp capital-T Truth — or that I know what that is, or that anyone does. I’m just suggesting that we’re best poised to see reality if we’re deepening our sincerity. And doesn’t that make sense?

The giant of 20th century Vedic metaphysics, Sri Aurobindo and his spiritual companion, The Mother, also said that sincerity was essential to salvation, by the way. (Here are some great quotes from him about it, and here are some great quotes from her.)

If you think about it, why wouldn’t it be essential? Just because it’s so rarely practiced doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable.

Sincerity is a superpower. A deepening practice of sincerity saves us.