If I can't tell if I'm lying to myself because I am yet to gain insight or clarity, am I truly lying? There are moments of clarity that I have experienced in which I finally but truly gain a sense of knowledge and comprehension about ...something.... In those moments it is like I have changed at a cellular level and that which I understood before no longer made sense. Assumptions upon which I had based decisions, attitudes etc. have been adjusted somehow and the fabric of my life is different. In my new state of clarity it is like I had been deceiving myself about [whatever] and the cloud of confusion imposed by being embedded in that particular delusion has lifted.

So my question is ... Does this mean that before I gained some sense of insight I was deceiving or lying to myself and others? Sometimes it feels like it, so profound is the clarifying moment.
I think Christ or one of his disciples said 


  we are all sinners in the eyes of God.


While what I will suggest here isn't the TRUTH, it's a possible place to stand.  The ego tends to think it has improved when gaining insight into one's own self-deception.  And this is valid - if there were no short term accomplishments in a spiritual path, it would be a difficult path indeed.

However, it's this very sort of of short term gain that can inhibit spiritual growth.  We are prone to gain a greater sense of self-importance when proud or attached to our insights.  Yesterday's insight is today's ego trip.

My point is that given we are all - when measured against the background of who we really are - quite small; I think it would be safe to assume that yes - you were lying with no caveats.

That said, you are not now condemned eternally for your self deception, but it may be that you now feel obligated to make something right - to clean up actions you have taken in the past.

Taking it too an extreme example - I killed your dog yesterday, because I thought dogs were wicked.  Today, I realized that I suffer from paranoid schizophrenia and as such, I now know that dogs are not wicked.

It doesn't follow that I didn't kill your dog.  I still did, and even though my reasons for doing so were based upon faulty assumptions - there are a whole slew of consequences that flow from my action.

But perhaps most importantly is the label you have attached to what happened.  We as humans unfailingly deceive nearly every time we open our mouth.  When I say to my wife, "You make me so mad", that is a lie.  She didn't make me mad - I had a reaction to something and chose to blame her.  Variations on this abound.

So - a question - what do you care if your statement was a lie or not?  Telling the truth won't make you a good person; nor lying a bad.  What matters is not how you choose to view what you said - what matters is what you might now need to do because of what you said.  If there were consequences that you can in some way be responsible for and if need be, clean up, then it would be wise to do so.