You are on the right track, clearly. Though I do think that the challenge can be expressed even more crudely: you must first and foremost stop lying to yourself. Modern man has the unique option of judging himself, but for the most part he deflects, buries, becomes deaf to his own questions, to preserve his intellectual comfort from a continuous assault of accusations about his bad faith and mendacity from within his own mind. You are right: it takes a lot of time and perhaps even quite a lot of suffering. But if I had to rephrase your advice, I would suggest: Each day, pick a lie you know very well you are perpetuating and try and deal with it. One lie (a prejudice, an unfounded opinion, your personal rewriting of the truth about something, whatever) at a time. I’ve written a novel about a man who did this, by the way, ‘Homo Conscius’, UWSP, New York.
