It is not often you come across a truly profound idea but recently I read this passage in a book called The End of Your World by Adyashanti and it has stayed with me since. It deals with what it really means when we tell the ‘truth’ :
“To tell what is true within ourselves is not to tell what we think; it is not to tell our opinion. It is not to dump the garbage can of our mind onto somebody else. All of that is illusion, distortion, projection…Truth is not telling our beliefs about things. That is not truth. Those are ways we actually hide from truth.’
This is the final rebuttal to all who think that telling the truth means to voice every thought that has ever popped into their head. That is not truth, that is illusion and projection, mere belief!
Most people are in fact afraid of the truth. That’s why Jack Nicholson’s famous retort “You can’t handle the truth!” in A Few Good Men had such a powerful impact on our cultural and social sensibilities. It articulated a fundamental truth about human nature.
We are afraid of the truth because we all use untruth to hide our innate sense of inadequacy and lack of worth. We feel such shame about parts of ourselves that we feel if people knew the truth they could not possibly like us or accept us.
So we are all comfortable with a certain level of dishonesty, with certain amounts of untruth. But the truth is absolutely necessary if we are ever to achieve a state of peace and love.
In fact truth is love and love is truth. There can be no love without truth. If truth does not exist then love can only be the mere appearance of love, a sham, and ultimately that facade must collapse and we are forced to face our true selves.
When we are unafraid of the truth we make true freedom possible. Not just for ourselves but freedom for all because when we claim the right to be who we truly are, we grant the same freedom to everone else.
If we stand in the truth, speak the truth, and live within truth there is nothing that can harm us, diminish us or destroy us. Or, as Adyashanti says:
“Until the whole world is free to agree with you or disagree with you, until you have given the freedom to everyone to like you or not like you, to love you or hate you, to see things as you see them or to see things differently - until you have given the whole world its freedom - you’ll never have your freedom.”
So be not afraid. Know the truth, speak the truth, and be free.
