We are all liars, pretending for survival    BeiYin

If we observe nature, that means plants, animals and ourselves, then we can see that to lie is a natural attitude that serves in the first place to survive. For example certain plants have a dangerous aspect but don't harm, they might have a bitter taste but are not poisoning, etc. The same applies to animals who often pretend to be  something that they are not. And humans? Since we have religious guidelines that probably are the cause for what is called 'moral' and out of this results guilt feelings and new kinds of lies, since then our behavior, our doing or non doing, our feelings and our thoughts are categorized into good and bad. There are implanted goals and images, as to how somebody must be in order to become the perfect and ideal person, to be rewarded from authorities during all one's life and from god after one has died. What a long story of manipulation, still going on! -
Humanity has tried to free itself, but has fallen into all kind of traps. There seems to be hardly any way to get out of it. -
We are all liars. This is built into our structure. We are not aware of it, because pretending is a natural behavior and this is sophisticated through our 'culture' and covered with various layers of varnish, to fulfill common images and self images. To give sense to one's life and offer the vision of 'higher' goals. The intention seems to be positive, but what comes out of it is the need to lie and pretend even more.
Is there somebody even being 'spiritual', who is not pretending? Not initially through their expression given to the outside, rather every body is pretending to oneself. They all want to complete a certain image they have of themselves, they call it 'self realization'. They believe they are on a 'spiritual' path and they argue about it and go into endless threads of spiritual nonsense or high pitched intellectual ejaculations. Is there much difference? They are all pretending and they all are looking for confirmation of their self caring personality.
Or is 'spirituality' not a way to survive? 
If a person believes to be in a growing process, then this process can only devellop in a conscious way, when this person has realized that he/she is in a game with oneself, by lying and pretending, trying to hold on a certain self image. If this step of self knowledge is not realized, then all one's effort to be 'spiritual' will only be a 'turning around oneself'.
I am not saying anything against the fact that people are liars, I am not judging at all, our sophisticated lies are just the result of our cultural development and the way we personally survive , that's part of our evolution as humans and shows in our daily reality. 
I am not going to convince anybody of anything, but it could be possible that there are a few people who really are looking for a solution and a way out of this constantly lying, that has brought us to the point that our systems may soon break down, personally, socially and on a big scale. But it seems that there is hardly any information available to get out of this dilemma. What is offered from ruminants of various belief systems, is to convince seekers into a specific belief system and trap them into being followers, devotees and members. 
I am not offering anything to survive, not even a technique, a method or whatever. I am not pretending to save someone, not even to make life easier, at least not before certain natural structures are cleared up...
I am not even pretending to have found something that I can give to you, at least there is nothing with shape and tangible form to give you security. So what?

Now you might have made the serious decision, as an honest and consequent seeker of truth, to abandon all lies and go to the bottom of your existence. Even with the danger of losing all that you have gained in so many years of investigation and immense effort to collect information, knowledge and wisdom.
What I am talking about here you will not like. Because it is touching your fragil security you built up during all your life and you are holding the image of your personality as some thing precious and of course you don't want that this is reduced in any way. You don't want, but what happens in your daily life? You have organized every thing as good as possible. Does it really work? No it doesn't. You are a 'strong personality' and you are used to fight, but again and again there comes the moment, when you get tired of all the resistance of people and their ignorance and again and again what you carfully have constructed is collapsing. Something doesn't work... You realize that the reason might lay in your expectations and you want to change something about it...
We can make a decision, but can we jump over our own shadows?
Of course not. Because we are identified with our self image and with what we know, it is an integrated part of our personality. There is no way to just leave it behind, no decision will make this happen. The built in defense and self containing mechanism makes it impossible to abandon even an insignificant part of what we are. We are using some effective suppressive techniques and ways to cover that which we don't like or want at this moment, so that it may stay under the surface of our awareness. But can we erase it from of our existence?
During the last two generations they have developed a number of methods to work on these fields of personality. Mainly to repair and balance extreme distortions and bring the individual back into a normal life functioning, because of one's adaptation and adjustment.
Manipulation is combined with gaining some kind of self-knowledge. During the last twenty years more impersonal aspects integrated with the psychological work, eastern relaxation techniques and meditation found their way into the consulting rooms of mental doctors. Workshops and seminars have become parts of the lives of growing numbers of people and during the last years the offer combined with integrated spiritual aspects have boomed. 
Although the consuming tendency is present and still dominating, the need for this kind of work shows that there is the urge to go beyond consumption and the needs of personality. 
Without doubt psychotherapists are nearly as stuck as their patients. But it happens, that they help to free some patients from the eggshells behind their ears. (I have often wondered how it is possible to clean something with a dirty rag. I am far from comparing a psychotherapist with a crummy disgusting rag, but I am still surprised!)
Well, the answer is: It is because whatever shows up in one's life, we can use it for our development, i.e.: our growing process. If our personality grows, then we certainly don't need to worry about it, we also will grow beyond ourselves. 
There may be just one condition with which this can happen: Our creative attitude. Is this possible or not, because of our narrow and limited personality, which is in the first place interested to save oneself and to enrich oneself, but only with the same stuff and in the same way as it is used?
As long as we are stuck in our games of self images and pretending to be these dreams, we may not even be able to start to make the first step out of it. We may at least  need to look through the keyhole of the door to freedom. Is this possible?
It seems that we are falling easily into the traps of the many techniques offered on the marketplace of psychotherapy and pseudo spirituality. 
There is a key to this door, and we don't need to ask anybody for it or to pay for it. We all own this key because it is offered freely to each of us: It is life itself. The way it is, and it comes to us, to each of us. Exactly in the right way, in the right quality, and quantity! This means that everything in our daily life, whatever this may be: persons, happenings, circumstances, encounters, reactions, etc. can be used to grow. Again: the condition to make this key work, is that we look and take life in a creative way. This may be possible when we accept things as a lesson, which doesn't mean that we take it with the attitude of a victim. We need to relate to what shows up and then we can make our individual decision. 
I admit, this is not that easy, especially when somebody is suffering. Even then, it is possible to make one step beyond, or at least beside, and not be pushed down into the attitude of a victim.
We are indeed the rulers of our own lives, if we are not sucked by those multiple games of personality with all its lies and pretending. But to be able to rule one's own life, there may be a long way to go. Let's make the first step, although this is further than the first step on the moon...
BeiYin