beautiful lies

On the yoga retreat I attended, we had a practice, to tell a randomly chosen person, the lies we have told in our lives, that have bothered us the most and the least.

After walking a few kilometres, and sharing our lives, we came to the conclusion, that the lies we tell other's are usually split into two types, 'white lies' to protect the feelings of others, and the 'self-deceits' which exist to protect ourselves, to strengthen the lie we live.

Personally, I think that we overuse white lies, I think we would live much less in self-deceit, if people around us were more honest to us, instead of worrying "will it hurt his/her feelings". Although I have no idea how to change this, normally I'd go with the "practice what you preach" thinking, but if I'm the only one doing it, I will come across as an asshole.


HAHA, almost got you there, I'm too blunt, I will tell my honest opinion of things, and I wish others would treat me the same way.


My pair for the practice was an older woman, she told me about the times she cheated on her partner's, and how it made her feel afterwards when coming clean or taking the lie to the grave.
What she, and I learned, was that the hardest part was accepting the behaviour oneself, realising that one is not the person one thinks;
And the anxiety from the insight that "Even I don't live up to my own values".

Does this mean that the moral principles we live by, are wrong, if we time and time again break them, or are the values self-deceits themselves?

How "we wish we would be", or "how we wish others would perceive us"

This can be thought upon from many perspectives, maybe the values one has is not one's own. Maybe they are inherited from family, or the culture one grew up in.

How many of us are even aware of the values that seem to control us? In many ways the remind of the so called 'social norms' that most people seem aware of, yet, if you ask them to list them; They are usually incapable of it unless someone breaks one of them.

I think this is a topic that should be discussed more, because, after all it often takes another person to open our eyes.