Knowing your personal truth can protect you from being bludgeoned by everyone else’s, but it takes a brave look at yourself to learn it.
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Imagine Fred Flintstone or Popeye’s face glowing a fiery red. Their cheeks blown wide as if they were sucking on the end of an air compressor, as the essence of every single past indignation erupts from deep within. The only available escape hatch for their steaming volcanic rage being their now jumbo sized ears…
For as long as I can remember, the idea of truth has been like a constantly tightening corset of pressure in my life.
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That’s what happens to me when I encounter a person or group who nominalizes an electrical firing in the brain. (Which I am, for the purpose of this piece calling a thought) then labels it as The Truth, and uses it to beat me into submission.
For as long as I can remember, the idea of truth has been like a constantly tightening corset of pressure in my life.
Corsets are designed to make waists look tiny and boobs look big while expertly restricting one’s ability to breathe deeply, be fluid or move quickly.
The Truth can be like that.
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Citing something as The Truth purposefully creates an exalted level of knowingness. It can squeeze and compress others into conformity through the cinching off of any other possibility — especially if that possibility doesn’t adhere to ones current truth stream.
If I had a favorite truth line it would be Jack’s version, “You can’t handle the truth”.
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The regularly unconsidered act of proclaiming something as The Truth sends a clear message. It tells others that the truth proclaimer knows best. It informs the receiver of The Truth that they’d better get with the program and reach for it, agree with it and swallow it — or else.
As for me, I’m done with the dogmatic game of trying to digest sweeping truth statements. I’m complete with chewing on the dried, mealy leftovers of others’ all too often un-digested, and less than practiced, truth nuggets.
To be frank, I find dining on the buffet of heavy handed and closed minded truth bullets to be clogging up my digestive tract, and I’m tired of being bloated and uncomfortable.
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Throughout my “awakening” process, and well beforehand, I have heard the word truth thrown around like a wrecking ball. Picture shorn-headed Miley swinging away on her round metal sphere while singing, “It is truth – I am truth – this is truth, I’m telling the truth,” or is it more like, “I’m selling the truth”? I get these two confused sometimes…
If I had a favorite truth line it would be Jack’s version, “You can’t handle the truth”.
I’d say he’s right on the money.
“If I am not guiding my own purposeful process of creation, inquiry and application, then who is?”
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I think that the truth most of us can’t handle is the fact that we have no idea what the %&$#@* is really happening in our own minds, bodies and relationships, let alone what’s up on this planet we call Earth. As a result, we disassociate from the truth of ourselves and delete the ownership and responsibility of using words like “me, my, and I.”
Now, I know that some schools of truth would have us believe that to include ourselves is an act of attachment or ego.
In response to that I ask, “If I am not guiding my own purposeful process of creation, inquiry and application, then who is?”
In the past, I too bought into the conventional truth of the ego and left myself out of my own equation. As time passed, I found myself wondering why I felt so victimized, powerless, and dependent on outside sources for direction and purpose.
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I know many of us desperately want to understand life. As a result, we make overarching claims about what we deem appropriate in order to feel some semblance of safety and control.
I suggest that the time has come for us to realize that what we call The Truth is merely the act of personifying a concept, idea and a belief.
Arriving at The Truth is a process that unfolds in our minds.
We employ varying submodalities of our human senses and choosing what we confidently call The Truth is based on a single unit of measure; it feels better. Better than any other choice we can immediately access through our imagination based on internal comparative outcomes.
Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact.
Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth. – Marcus Aurelius
When we find ourselves compelled to stand on a threshold of holier-than-thou truthmanship –- as we all do from time to time — let’s do our upmost to remember that what we suppose to be The Truth is fleeting.
The Truth that we so boldly clung to yesterday and used as a battering ram to negate others, or to platform ourselves as righteous, is often no longer true for us today. I know because I pay attention — to me.
That grudge that I held, including characteristics and agendas I knew as The Truth about another, has long since faded — yet it seemed so real at the time.
But when my belief in any thought or idea becomes more important than facing the reality of what is in front of me, it is time to re-evaluate what I stand for and who I have become.
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Then there are those healing modalities and their truth teachings that I shoved onto anyone who would listen, regardless of their interest. A few years ago they held sacred truths. Today, as much as I honour the lessons, they are a far cry from the panacea of all encompassing truth I believed them to be.
Perhaps in order to feel less alone on my island of awakening I signed, sealed and delivered an ideology as The Truth and became more like a spiritual salesperson than an authentic evolving version of myself.
I have learned that if I insist on clinging to The truth, even if it is My Truth, then I ensure that I remain bogged in the undertow of yesterday’s confusion in lieu of this moment’s present clarity.
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Like most people, I enjoy the skillful trickery of a good magic show. But when my belief in any thought or idea becomes more important than facing the reality of what is in front of me, it is time to re-evaluate what I stand for and who I have become.
If I continue to choose the illusion of my mind and see it as manifested reality — especially when it brings little, if no comfort — I am no more a messenger of truth and light than the Ginsu knife salesman, who at least has something tangible to offer. And lets face it, with him, no matter how much I pay I will always get more!
To name a thing is harmless.
To name ideas is to create a religion.
Don’t you dare! – Richard Bach
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Also by Jasmine Iwaszkiewicz – Love Out of Balance? 5 Ways to Get Back in Alignment
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Photo: Flickr/jintae kim