In this meditation, we apply the phrase מדבר שקר תרחק, “keep yourself distant from falsehood’ (Ex. 23:7) to our inner falsehoods, to the core false beliefs about ourselves that lie hidden and unquestioned inside us, things like: “I am not enough” and “I don’t matter” and “I need to do everything just right.” We work with breathing some air and some distance and spaciousness around these beliefs. Using a beautiful gemara about the Hebrew words אמת, emet, “truth,” and שקר, sheker, “falsehood,” we explore two dichotomies around these concepts — the stuckness of falsehood vs the spaciousness of truth, and the shakiness of falsehood vs the stability of truth. We bring these concepts inside and work on feeling our own core truth of strength and power, tasting what it might be like to begin to let go of some of these false beliefs.
Sources (in the order in which they appear in the meditation):
Byron Katie, The Work — Four Liberating Questions
Talmud Shabbat 104a
Pharaoh — Exodus 5:9
“Emet Mah Nehedar,” Yom Kippur Mussaf
Psalms 85:11
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