The talk focuses more on self-deception—not knowing we’re lying to ourselves—than on lying as intentional untrue statements. Little children do not lie to themselves. We learn lying from things society and our parents tell us that aren’t true. We may think our wants are needs. A lot of lying occurs because perception is limited. We selectively perceive things that have survival value for us and tend not to register other things that don’t have payoffs. The Work involves developing diffuse rather than selective attention if we gradually train attention to free itself from being magnetized by phenomena based on conditioning. Lies and self-deception are prevalent in relationships, business, medicine, school, sports, history, the news, politics, etc. Some types of lying include denial, exaggeration, minimization, restructuring, confabulation, paltering, and beliefs—which are ways of coping with mystery and uncertainty. A common belief is that we have free will, but we can consider the Buddhist principle of independent origination: the cause of any one thing is everything else. Comparison is an unconscious form of lying because everything is unique. Evaluative statements apply to a moment in time, but we’re constantly changing. The big lie is that we are separate independent entities. A way of working with kidding ourselves is to work with not drawing conclusions. We can see that our attention is scattered, return it to what we are doing, notice sensations in the body, and develop a witness function. We can have compassion for ourselves and others as we develop the capacity to meet others with greater honesty. Refining our attention will create greater self-honesty. Karl has been a spiritual practitioner for forty years. He lived in India for seven years and has a passion for considering the essential similarities of spiritual traditions.
Panel Discussion: Exploring the Depth of Spiritual Tradition (Barbara Du Bois, Carl Grimsman, and Vijaya Fedorschak)
What’s Love, and What’s Love Got to Do with It? The Eternal Questions and Easy Misunderstandings (Regina Sara Ryan)
Contemplation: Awareness and Presence in Ordinary Life (Angelon Young)
The Transformative Power of Guarding One’s Speech (Bandhu Dunham)
Living Life with Gratitude (Debora Hogeland Celebucki)
Can’t Get There from Here: The Overlay of Mind on Reality (Bala Zuccarello)
Deepening Compassion in Times of Groundlessness, Uncertainty, and Fear (Nachama Greenwald)
Dig into the Mud to Get to the Sky (Karuna Fedorschak)
Cultivating the View that Everything is in Transit: A Consideration of Death in the Spiritual Traditions (Vijaya Fedorschak)
Wonder and Radical Amazement: Relearning the Forgotten Language of the Soul (Regina Sara Ryan)
The Tyranny of the Past (Angelon Young)
There is a Crack in Everything—That’s How the Light Gets In: The Myth of Self-Perfection (Matthew Files)
My Body is a Temple: Creating a Life of Practice (Christina Sell)
Be Kind, Be Generous, Be Tender-Hearted (Rick Lewis)
Neither Attracted nor Repelled—The Value of Cultivating Equanimity (Nachama Greenwald)
Following a Path with Heart—Reflections on Castaneda’s Literature (Karl Krumins)
Traps on the Path (Karuna Fedorschak)
Confirmation Bias (Bandhu Scott Dunham)
The Possibility of Inner Freedom through Recognizing Ego Insubstantiality (Vijaya Fedorschak)
Tantra and Ordinary Life (Angelon Young)
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