Thursday, April 2, 2009

65/92 - Riveting Truth?

Day off.

I'm a bit disappointed with myself for taking the day off today.  I was undecided about whether to go.  I didn't have the energy for it in the morning, and then I ate lunch too late to allow for a decent evening practice.  I have been telling myself that I'm going to start doing 3 days on/ one day off.  But telling myself and making myself seem to be two different things.

Yesterdays mediation was about truthfulness.  Gates says that self-study is an aspect of truthfulness.  I don't buy it.  Non-lying, or truthfulness, is one of the yamas.   It may be that in practicing truthfulness we will also be doing some self-study.  And conversely, it may naturally follow that any good practice of self-study will also involve not lying.  But I don't think this means that one is an aspect (which I take to mean a kind of subset) of the other.

The other idea that is very interesting is that listening to the truth is inherently interesting.  Here again, maybe that is so, but I think it also will depend somewhat on the truth involved.  Gates talks about his experience in 12 step programs.  There, I believe, the process is mostly confessional.  There is something interesting about that.  However, I've seen trials and depositions where people are sworn to tell "the truth."  And for the most part they do.  Also, for the most part, these proceedings are extraordinarily dull.  In the end, I think there's a difference between telling various bits of truth, and telling "the truth."  Maybe the latter is riveting, but the former can be as dull as it gets.


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