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*Lying & Killing

These two precepts are related in my personal explorations. Reasons behind my lying and killing are mainly fear and an unhelpful sense of ‘myself’. And my old friend ‘avoidance’ has been with me this week as well. -_-

My lies tend to evolve around avoiding something/someone etc. by holding back some of my feelings and thoughts. I think my intentional selection in what to say to avoid a particular situation is a form of lying. I examined a recent example of this and was surprised to find fear behind it. Well … I didn’t expect to find Reason behind it but still. Hm … “who is afraid?”

Sometimes I would also choose not to look at situations, for example “I don’t want to think about that now.” I’m particularly interested in seeing occasions when I am unaware of making such choices. I think this is what a friend called ‘lying to oneself’.

I’ve been also thinking about ‘aliveness’ discussed in one of the early workshops. This brought me to times when I was unhappy, for example during high school days because of bullies. I talk a lot these days … but back then I didn’t really want to talk about ‘stuff’ so I pushed those incidents aside and moved on. This probably is a form of killing as in disconnecting from the immediate experiences. I suspect that this has become an unhealthy habit, used in various situations without myself being aware.