On the Subject of Truth

As all your comments reveal, the subject to truth is gripping. So why do we struggle so much with telling the truth, hearing the truth, facing the truth, and understanding the deeper nature of truth? Why is it that some married couples in this society require the assistance of a counselor to communicate their “personal truth” to their spouse? It’s quite extraordinary to think that two people can share the same home, bed, bills, and family and yet need the help of a third party to speak honestly and openly to the one person to whom they have made a life long commitment.

Truth is powerful stuff. In fact, it’s the most powerful force we have flowing through our psychic veins. And we know it. We were born knowing this “truth” about Truth. For all the many ways that the spiritual path has been described, the path is actually learning to discern what is Truth in your life from what is illusion. And then incarnating each realization of Truth into your every day choices, no matter how big or small, personal or impersonal, private or public those choices are in your life. No small task, this business of living a truth-filled life. I offer you the world as proof we are not doing a good job at it.

I mean we had to incarnate a new archetype to represent someone who tells the truth these days – the Whistleblower. And that archetype represents someone who “exposes truth”, not lives by it. Furthermore, whistleblowing is now illegal! So, exposing the truth in a field of lies is now illegal! How’s that for a measure of the health of a society. Should that really surprise anyone these days? Really?

The nature of Truth as taught in Mystical Theology is actually one of the most intriguing of all subjects you can explore because it is like studying the nuclear power in your soul. For example, you carry within you “what is true” and you hold the potential for “what is Truth”. The “what is true” part of you is “exclusionary truth”, meaning that the beliefs are subjective and personal. The “what is Truth” is “inclusionary”, meaning that the beliefs include all human beings. For instance, Karma – What Goes Around Comes Around – in an inclusionary Truth. Every one is subject to Karma because it is a mystical law, not a “religious” one.

When people “speaks their truth”, however, they are sharing exclusionary truths because they are describing personal experiences. They are sharing “the world as they see it”, a world filled with memories and personal interpretations of experiences with people, places and things. These are the experiences of our individual lives, the ones that make us who we are. No one else shares these same feelings or experiences in exactly the same way. (Now that statement would be an inclusionary Truth, as it applies to all of us.) Said differently, the Truth is each of us sees the world our own way. How and why we see the world as we do is a matter of our “personal truths”.

I will be presenting an evening’s seminar entitled, “Recognizing the Truth Pursuing my Soul”, in my upcoming Reflections/Spiritual Direction class, Drinking From the Well. I chose to begin by delving into the mystical waters of Truth because there comes that moment in your life/spiritual path when you realize that what matters the most in your life are the quality of choices that you make each day: How you love, how you think, how you understand the world, what you belief, what kind of person you are, what you tell yourself about your own life and the lives of others. What you believe to be true – or the Truth – determines the answers to these questions.

The Truth is that circumstances do not determine the quality of your life; your choices do. Mystical Truth is the nuclear power of your soul. Personal truth is a stepping-stone, but it does not contain nuclear powered grace, so to speak. Why not go for the real thing when you know you have it in you?

Caroline