By Ken Reed
As individuals, we live on the margins of our complete and integrated personal power. We are very conscious of physical fitness, for example, but pay relatively little attention to the other parts of our makeup and how they impact the whole of our existence. In this regard, I discovered that lying is one of the biggest detractors from our synchronized personal power of body, mind and spirit, and it keeps us from realizing our full potential as humans.
You may wonder how I came to this conclusion. During years of group meditation practice while living at an ashram in India, I recognized that this peaceful environment wasn’t giving me an opportunity to put the profound teachings of yoga to work beyond the rituals we practiced day after day. It seemed that if I was going to build on my dharma and sadhana work, I would now need to put them into action in the everyday world to gain strength and fortitude, while building virtue.
I didn’t just walk out suddenly, but I knew that the outside world would become my new proving grounds and gradually moved in that direction. I also knew that yoga was a discipline to help achieve goals, and when I realized that my life and personal power were being hampered by a conditioned tendency to address uncomfortable and stressful situations with lies, my new journey began.
Recognizing Our Own Lies
Let’s explore some examples of what I mean by recognizing lies. In the ashram, I was assigned to work in the beautiful, well-kept gardens. Although it was 95 degrees and the humidity of India was all-consuming, we worked joyfully as it was our seva or sadhana. One particular day, my assignment was to remove all weeds from the long-enclosed rose bed. After working my way along about 20 feet, pulling weeds and piling them outside the bed, I stopped for a moment to look back at the work I completed and BAM! The world stopped and the moment froze as I saw very small weeds I had missed. They were magnified. I realized that I had somehow concluded that the weeds were so small that nobody would see them.
What was so significant about this moment is that I manufactured and played out an excuse that I would use if anyone did see them and complain about my work. This was a lie, and I instantly saw that I did this constantly about other things, too! I was not present to the task of pulling all of the weeds, but absorbed in my mind, thinking up a lie for a moment that had not yet happened. It struck such a cord in my being that I became more and more aware of this tendency in my mind over the next few years.
Now let’s jump forward to a fine summer day after I left the ashram. I was back in California and sailing along in my car from Los Angeles to San Francisco on Interstate 5. I was alone and going to visit some friends. I had the windows up, the AC on, and the radio was playing some good tunes. I wanted to make good time so I was driving well over 80 miles per hour. While I was speeding, I imagined being pulled over and what kind of excuse I might give. After all, you have to be ready for such things!
Sure enough, while going up a long grade, I saw a California Highway Patrol car flashing its lights. I got out the registration and license and was ready with my excuse. As the patrolman approached, I rolled down the window and he said, “I’ve heard at least 20 excuses from speeders today, what’s yours gonna be?”Once again, that familiar frozen moment came as he leaned very close, removing his sunglasses to make eye contact. I fumbled and felt the lie wanting to spill out. But somehow in that moment I simply said, “I was doing 85 and over the speed limit for sure.”
He backed off, laughed and said, “Thanks for making my day, sooner or later I figured someone would be truthful. Ok, listen, take it easy through here, and watch those big trucks. They get pretty slow up the hill.” He left, and I sat there for probably 30 minutes reflecting on the motivation that absorbs us into inventing lies to avoid something that has not happened yet.
Consider the following facts: A national Wakefield Research Survey conducted with 1,000 adults revealed that 80 percent of Millennials (also known as Generation Y) find it acceptable to lie in order to avoid embarrassment, 46 percent fake cell phone calls to dodge awkward moments, and when caught in embarrassment, 44 percent blame someone else.
I mention my own experience and this research to illustrate the far-reaching nature of this lying mindset. At its core, I believe the biggest culprit is not so much the lying that we do to each other, but the lies that we tell ourselves and how they create internal conflict and interrupt the pace and synchronicity of our body, mind and spirit. In my case, meditation paved the way for seizing the opportunity presented in those frozen intervals, and my observations were the inspiration to develop a practice I call The Yoga of Lies.
Peace through Practice
The Yoga of Lies prompts us to recognize anxiety about moments that have not yet come to pass and to change our tendency to react to those situations with lies that we fabricate and later regret. It is a process of overcoming behavior that creates internal pain and conflict and helps us arrive at a place where we instantly have cognizance of any lies that we tell ourselves and others.
Moving from a purpose-filled life to a purpose-full life requires enduring honesty.
The lies we tell ourselves and others create conflict, a wedge between the body, mind and spirit components of our being—our “core.” These conflicts rob the power we inherently have when we are living in a balanced state. Overall, The Yoga of Lies sets up an atmosphere that fosters more acute watchfulness in our lives. This mode allows us to store enough personal power to collapse ongoing anxiety from moment to moment, allowing our all-perfect intuitive intelligence to emerge and bring the flow of life into balance. May you find peace in truth.
Ken Reed is a filmmaker, war-zone journalist, explorer, spiritual seeker, world traveler, developer of digital education systems, community revitalization leader, competitive distance runner and Tampa Bay-area family man. He draws on a lifetime of rich experience as an adventurer, as a man searching for meaning and willing to taunt life by living on the edge to share his conclusions. His second book is titled The Art of Falling Back Upon Oneself and The Yoga of Lies. His first book, The Silent Sage received many good reviews and is now in its 2nd printing. For more information visit www.wisdomgardeninstitute.com or email: events@wisdomgardeninstitute.org.