Getting Caught Out in an Untruth

Daily Insight from the Story of The Little Prince

Whenever we are caught out, such as being found making an egoic statement we can’t back up, we have a tendency to deflect the fact we've been caught out onto the person who caught us.

Until we are firmly grounded in consciousness, the state of presence that's our true being, it’s just not that easy for us to come clean and simply state, “I shifted into my ego. My true being doesn’t believe what I just said at all.”

The flower that’s the love of the Little Prince’s life began talking about where she had come from. Except that both the Little Prince and she suddenly realized she could know nothing about where she came from because she came as a seed, not as a fully developed flower.

Both of them knew she was in ego, but the flower was so attached to her ego as her indentity that she really had little or no awa
ess of her true self hidden beneath her ego.

Why did the flower sink to such egoic deceit? Simply because she wanted to make the Little Prince feel bad, then use the way he felt to control him. She wanted him to run after her every whim. This neediness was driven by her insecurity.

When the flower was caught out, she deflected her shame for being untrue to herself onto the Little Prince. This she did by changing the subject abruptly, focusing on the fact he hadn’t yet brought her the screen she needed to protect her from drafts.

In other words, feeling bad for being caught in an untruth because she was in her ego, she tried to vent her discomfort by making the Little Prince feel bad. People often do this, deflecting their pain onto someone else.

The flower was engaged in a game of manipulation, which is how so many of us function in our relationships.

Parents manipulate their children. Similarly, children manipulate their parents. Lovers manipulate each other. We manipulate on the job and in our social life too.

None of this is coming from who we are.

If we once realize this—if we once really “get it” that this is a product of our false self, the ego, and not coming from our authentic center—then we have no reason to feel bad and thus no reason to try to deflect our discomfort onto others.

We can just be straight up and admit we shifted into ego for a while.

It's not even embarrassing, but simply a fact of life—part of the process of growing into our essential, authentic self.

Each time we realize this is what has happened, and we fess up instead of trying to cover up the fact we slipped into ego, we deepen our awareness of the difference between being true to ourselves and being the fake person we are when we are egoic.

It's very important that we have the integrity to do this with our children, feeling no embarrassment but just being honest with them when we realize we have gone into our ego. Through this they will learn in their own life the difference between being true to themselves or putting on the act of a false egoic identity.

Authenticity is our true state. But we have been inauthentic so long—in most cases since we were little children who learned from adults how to wear a mask instead of being real—that we are unpracticed at being who we really are.