truth and honesty

Who could imagine telling the truth could be such a sticky subject?


I hate to reveal such ugly sides of myself, well, actually that’s not true. I enjoy writing about myself. Narcissism at it’s best! No, that’s not true, it’s not really narcissism at it’s best, but a twinge of narcissism.

What does it mean to be truthful? What does it mean to be honest?

So, honestly, as I finished Ashtanga basics one Monday night I stayed for a few minutes and talked to other yogis, doing my best to answer questions. Then, I sat and talked to Judy, one of the new teachers. We spent a few minutes going over her class plans. I checked the bathrooms and began to leave. I saw a little (honestly it was tiny) pile of dirt from someone’s shoe on the tile-next to the rug. What did I do? Yep, I picked up the rug and swept the dirt underneath with my foot. It’s true. Can you believe I did that? Do I need to be this honest? Do you need to know how I function when I am tired and hungry. Really hungry. Do you need to know that I can act lazy and irresponsible. Do I need to admit, publicly, that I can shove things under the rug, both literally and symbolically? Is omitting this information being dishonest?

I swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth?
Hmm. Do we tell the truth most of the time? Some of the time? More often than not?

Recently, truth, actually, the meaning of truth, has been on my mind. As often happens, some idea will be floating around in my head and then Vince or our friend will also be thinking about it. So, anyway, I have been thinking about it and our friend (see picture) brings up that he is really trying to be more conscious about how often he omits the truth. Omits the truth….is that different than lying? If you know the truth but you don’t say it aloud is that being truthful?

I once saw one of those night time news shows where a therapist is working with a couple who is having marital difficulty. She was trying to convince them that always telling the truth aloud is a key ingredient to a successful marriage. Does anyone tell the truth all the time? Does anyone want the truth to be told all the time?

Would it be right to tell the truth when your friend asks if her new short haircut makes her face look fat?
Would it be right to tell your best friend that her brand new healthy baby looks like an alien from the planet Zornon? Would it be right to speak the truth to your boss when you are feeling like chopping her head off (please remember these aren’t all examples from my personal life)? What if you believe your friend would end up happier if they left their spouse-would being truthful be the right thing to do? What if you are breaking up with someone you have been dating because they always have spinach in their teeth. You know it’s ridiculous, but that is your truth. Are you going to speak the truth? Or are you going to say something less, well, something else?

Maybe we say we want people to be completely honest with us, to always tell us the truth. Maybe we aren’t being honest about whether or not we want people to be completely honest.

I once asked a friend to be truthful about their feelings about our friendship. I see now that my reasons for wanting to know were completely ego driven and truthfully, none of my business (I just said truthfully on accident). When their truth began to spill out from heart and mouth, I knew immediately it was wrong to ask and not helpful or useful for either of us to hear the answer aloud. My habitual need to feed the ego and the truth filled words shaped the friendship into a complicated, painful mess. The quiet, spoken truth eventually took a toll on the friendship. We have never recovered. Those spoken, truthful words couldn’t be taken back. It’s like trying to squeeze toothpaste back into the tube.

Maybe some truths need to be kept to ourselves. Maybe just knowing our own truth is enough.

Isn’t truth transient, ever-changing? What I believe to be true one minute, might not be true the next minute. It is true that right now I want to eat a giant chocolate cake. Is that going to be true in five minutes (okay, bad example)? It is true that right now I want to teach yoga the rest of my life. Will that be true five years from now, or five months from now, or five weeks from now? Have we all been misinformed about what truth means?

Webster’s says it is “the state of being the case” or “the body of real things, events, facts” or “fidelity” or “constancy.” What if there is no such thing as our own truth? What if there are only universal truths? If so, what would universal truths be in your mind? Can universal truths be different for different people? Would we agree about universal truths? If they are universal, wouldn’t that mean they would be the same for everyone? Hmmm.

How are truth and yoga practice connected? (This is ultimately the question that led me to decide that this should be a two part-off the mat). For starters, we know Patanjali includes truthfulness as part of the yamas- a part of the eight limbs of yoga. Maybe our yoga asana practice could be where we start to see clearly the meaning of truthfulness. This could be where we start to see the connection, the importance of living a life of truth. Our yoga asana (posture) practice can again be useful... yet another place where practice can help us unfold-both literally and figuratively.

Maybe our yoga practice can help us see more clearly what we believe to be the truth, what we honestly think. Maybe it can assist us in recognizing our internal weather. If we are practicing, we will more than likely come face-to-face with the truth of our own experience. In addition to my own experience, I have known people and have read articles about people who have continued their asana practice through some difficulty that arises. For instance, getting on the mat and practicing through a loved one’s illness, or following the death of a parent, or through a divorce. There is a common theme for people who keep getting back onto the mat…the practice allows for an opportunity to be present with experience. It allows us to honestly feel the pain, the loss, the sorrow, the disappointment, the confusion. I don’t know who this quote belongs to, but I once heard someone say “what we resist persists.” If we don’t allow ourselves to experience the truth of our experience the first time, it will keep coming around…knocking on the door, until we let it in. The practice affords us an opportunity to let it in and then let it out. We can recognize the experience for what it truthfully is and then we can release it. An opportunity to do something other than shove the dirt under the rug (so to speak).

Practice can certainly assist us in recognizing what is going on with our outsides, with the physical body.
Maybe we suffered an injury and we have been ignoring that the healing process has been slow- slower than we would have preferred. Maybe we have been trying to trick ourselves into believing that the body has healed. Then, we get on our mat. BOOM- there it is…the truth of our recovery can’t be ignored. We are reminded that the body needs time and compassion and care as it heals. It reminds us that we don’t get to decide how the body heals or ultimately how the body works or doesn’t work. We are reminded that truthfully, there is something bigger at work.

Maybe there are places in our body where we are holding onto stuff, like un-truths. Maybe we have been hiding from some truth and it has successfully lodged in our shoulders, or in our chest or our hips. Maybe we are saying to ourselves and others that we are over the breakup of a relationship. Then, we get on our mat and BOOM-a river of tears appears accompanied by an incredible twinge between our shoulder blades. Our bodies don’t lie. The rug becomes difficult to walk on if we keep storing things underneath.

We could also ask ourselves if we are being honest about asana practice itself. Honest with ourselves about whether our body needs more kurmasana (tortoise) or more urdva dhanurasana (backbends). Honest with ourselves about whether or not we are always backing away from our edge, or constantly pushing past our edge.

I suppose practice on the mat, being the little microcosm of our lives that it is, could be as good a place as any to begin noticing if we are being honest.
I think tomorrow when I practice I will be open to what my shoulder is telling me. I mean honestly…