The inner you (your eternal Soul) is connected to the outer you (your temporal soul or your body, mind and heart) by virtue of a little understood and infrequently considered medium. That medium may be either calm and clear or turbulent and muddied.

To the degree that it is calm and clear or a “sea of glass, like unto crystal” as it was once described, the inner you can find outer expression. If that medium is turbulent and muddied, then the inner you is effectively veiled from the outer you. Whether you are conscious of it or not, the choices you make either clarify this all-important medium or they distort it. While not every choice might be a clear one, the majority of the choices you have to make in a day are pretty obvious as to which is the righteous option and which is the dishonest one.

It does not matter if your bad choices are made deliberately (e.g. out of selfishness, greed, rebellion, defiance, false humility, for a brief thrill, etc.) or inadvertently, bad choices are bad choices. It also doesn’t matter if you’ve rationalized the bad choice…a bad choice is a bad choice. And bad choices disrupt the connection to the wise one within you. That’s partly why worse choices tend to follow bad choices.

If you make a bad choice, it’s not the end of the world…usually. The important thing is that you not dwell in regret or remorse, but that you move quickly to repentance. It is also important to recognize (and hopefully not too late) that feeling you “got away” with something dishonest is a fleeting sensation. It leaves as quickly as it comes.

Honesty restores transparency to this intervening medium. Honesty repairs the connection between inner and outer. If that is important to you, then the choice is clear!