The Power of Speaking What’s True
It was years ago now that I stood in the truth of my knowing and said one small thing: “I need to live alone.” The context was my intimate relationship with my daughter’s dad and the cost to speak these words out loud felt like nothing less than everything I thought I had ever wanted and strived to put and hold together. And it was. Despite my desire to stay in relationship as I sought the space I needed, I could not control what he wanted and, thus, the relationship, as it was, ended.
In hindsight, it was in that moment, standing in a truth that made no sense to my mind and was inconvenient as hell in nearly every way, that the world righted itself. The intense inner conflict I had experienced for months subsided. I felt myself restored. I felt the ground under me. I felt sane again. And I had established a strong foundation for life going forward: the empty and naked ground swept clean of everything I had been attempting to build with my will.
There was no reason backing up this knowing. There was nothing in my mind or what I saw around me that said “This is a good idea.” It was a bodily sense that would not depart that kept insisting in a felt way, “Come this way.” It had no more detail than that, no rationale, no other instructions. It was as if my body was vibrating with “Get me into a clean space clear of anyone else’s vibe.” And what was riding on my words was immense to me at the time–not only the future of my relationship and the impact on our daughter, but also my ability to trust my own sense of what was right and good. The beckoning that I experienced was coming from a place other than the GPS I had used to navigate life until then, and I fought it until I could fight no longer.
To speak what’s true is to sever the roots of all worlds built from conditioning. If we have invested our time, our resources and our hearts in those false worlds, as they fall, chaos ensues as our world reorders itself and our debt to truth is repaid. What I borrowed from coping and wishful thinking, and from conditioned ideas of what would bring me happiness, and what pleased others, was repaid. And I was left standing on a small piece of honest and true ground: I am, and I need to live alone. And I know nothing further.
Speaking this bit of truth forced me to give up all other potentialities, to show my cards and let life find me. It delivered me naked and utterly dependent upon what was simply so in the moment. What we must speak can be a tiny bit of knowing, and yet it has the power to transform our lives, as we shift from conditioned belief to an openness to the moment’s pure creative power, and release our personal will to the will of the Holy and the power of nature and destiny. Standing behind the living word fills the moment with the potency of the emergent. We may have no idea what is next, but the feeling of congruence and rightness is a taste that we eventually discover we want more than any other savor.
One night I had a dream that a woman in the backseat of my car was ailing. Her name was Aletheia. Though I was not aware upon waking of having ever heard this name before, I had run across the alethiometer in Phillip Pullman’s novel “The Golden Compass” and knew it had something to do with the truth. With a little research, I came to understand that “aletheia” refers to a certain kind of truth-telling or unconcealing -- the willingness to speak what you know to be true in the moment and the power of that. This echoed the famous quote attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas: “"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." I needed to bring forth the truth within me and stand in it come what may, despite having no reasons other than “I feel to.”
It sounds like a no-brainer as I write these words, and perhaps as you read them. Sure, yeah, the truth, it’s good, speak it, no problem. But to speak a truth requires that you feel confident that it IS the truth, and that you have a sense that you are capable of facing not only the truth itself, but all the ramifications of that truth. It requires the giving up of a sense of control over your situation and being entirely vulnerable to the moment and what’s next. When the truth is counter to everything you thought you wanted, when it promises to wreak havoc not only on your life but on the lives of those around you, when you will have to answer to everyone who is affected, a bit of truth can feel like an impossible weight to bear.
I used to have my course plotted out before me. Now I listen deeply in the moment for the ring of the true in every step I take. I am careful now with what I enter into, especially relationally. It’s easy, in fondness for connection and company, and in relation to the desires and emotions of others, to lose touch with the quiet voice within that helps us remain true. Periods of solitude are necessary. Feeling the purity of one’s own energy field is key. Feeling through any fear of disappointing others or resistance to what we might lose is also important. We must be willing to offer up all desired futures for the congruence of standing in what’s true. To live true is to sacrifice the comfort of the predictable world in order to live in the world to which we belong–here, now, one true step at a time.