Love Note #8: What Is Truth Really?

Dear Heart -

As I witness the increasing polarization in our world, I’m clear that our deeply held unconscious notion that getting others to agree with our perspective is not the way to peace. Many of us believe that if we can just convince others of our truth and that our “truth” is the right truth, then harmony will naturally follow. The push to have others see things our way, validate our perspective, and adopt our viewpoint seems to meet a curious amount of resistance, no matter who we are or what truth we’re asserting.

This doesn’t even work at the level of personal relationship, never mind collectively. And the collective reflects how we each individually orient and operate. I am naturally drawn to inquire into the dynamics behind such things. We only have to examine a given experience of disagreement and tug-of-war with another to have all the raw material with which to explore the inner workings of our tendency toward this.

We have an entrenched system of conditioning in our dominant culture that encourages us to orient, think and function through the lens of separation–that there is one good, right way, and that all other ways are therefore, inferior, or downright bad and wrong. That we are either a good person or a bad person. We operate from here without even knowing we are. It not only isn’t effective, innocently, when we move from this orientation, we plant the seeds of division.

And we know this! We are sick to death of being steeped in it, and bone-tired of its results. We know at some level it’s obsolete–but how do we step out of it? How do we reach down into the soil that sprouts the seeds of division and somehow amend it so that what grows is nourishing, wholesome and inclusive, as opposed to the weeds of divisiveness and polarization?

The remedy I see is in something quite simple and humble: what actually is, and the bit that I can know in my bones in this moment. My experience. I was raised in a house and educated in a classroom where the virtues of the scientific method were appreciated–what Sherlock Holmes might call, “Just the facts, ma’am.” And it turns out humbly sinking down into just what we know in our experience, and seeking the same from others, can be seen as the offering that we have toward an understanding of the whole.

Actual truth does not consist of conceptual positions, or concepts at all. It bubbles up like a spring from the ground–natural, spontaneous, arising from a direct experience of life itself, rather than from our concepts about it. When we're rooted and resting in presence, what is actual flows through us like water, clear and without force. There's no need to convince or defend because it's not coming from a place of reactivity or the need to be right. It simply is what it is.

This truth reveals itself moment by moment through our direct experience–through the wisdom that lives in our breath, our bones, our beating hearts. Sometimes it comes as a soft "no" when everyone else is saying yes. Sometimes it's staying silent when others are rushing to speak. Sometimes it's standing alone while holding space for perspectives different from our own. Always, it arises from our embodied knowing rather than from our inherited beliefs or cherished ideas about how things should be.

While concepts like “truth, love, harmony, justice” point to the movement of Nature itself, we often champion these values from a place of righteous divisiveness while failing to enter the embodied reality they describe. We can feel vindicated that we are on the side of “love” while decidedly unlovingly designating others as “unloving.” And yet, in reality, love has no enemies or “others.” It is all inclusive of the actual experience of each. We might ask ourselves mercifully: how often are we toting the “truth” while actually inciting further division and wrong-making? And how often do we alienate ourselves from a direct experience of the wholeness to which we belong by clinging to our mind’s love for the fiction of right and wrong?

What I've come to see is that peace doesn't come from everyone agreeing with each other or from being on the “right side” of truth. It comes from recognizing that we belong to a multiplicitous wholeness in which all direct experiences have their place. When we're anchored in the ground of being, we can hold both our experience and the experience of others without needing to make anyone wrong. We can remain clear in our own knowing while staying open to the validity of others' experiences. When we all stay close to the actuality of our simple experience, no one is wrong.

This isn't always comfortable. It means developing an exquisite and embodied sensitivity to what's actually here, moment by moment, and a willingness to rest in and speak from the sufficiency of that, without embellishment. It means being willing to not know, to question everything, to feel the vulnerability of uncertainty. It means staying present with the discomfort that can arise when we don’t resort to making others wrong to feel right, and instead open in generosity toward the possibility that everyone’s experience is actually valuable data from which to move holistically.

Here’s a simple example. I am headed out on a walk with my sweetie. I say, “Wow, it’s cold!” He says, “No it’s not, it’s actually quite temperate.” We could go to war, or we could stay with just the facts, ma’am. “I’m feeling colder than I expected to feel!” I can further clarify. And he can then reflect and add, “Oh, I’m sorry, I was telling you that your perception was wrong because I didn’t share it. Actually, what’s true is that I’m feeling quite comfortable temperature-wise.” And voila! Peace and inclusivity. It’s 60 degrees out, and my somewhat cold-running body was surprised by the cold, while his warmer body was happily comfortable. At the level of personal and direct experience, there’s no conflict. At the conceptual level of positionality, we could have had a nice row over who was right and who was wrong.

When we are threatened by the experience of another, because it challenges our deeply held beliefs and identifications, we are more invested in denying that experience. When we are not defending being a “bad one,” we can simply be open together, curious about all the aspects of what’s real in the moment.

This is how we become clear vessels for love's intelligence to move through us. This is how we contribute to the healing of our world–not by adding more noise to the cacophony of opinions or by championing virtue while creating more enemies, but by embodying the clarity and simplicity that naturally arises from deep presence and being curious about what others are experiencing. This is how we find true common ground–not in the realm of concepts and beliefs, but in the shared space of our embodied humanity where each aspect of the moment is noticed, felt, and included.

With love and faith in your heart's knowing,

Jeannie

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