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Absloute truth vs perceived truth - musings on spirituality

 

Truth is .......

"Truth is" a very simple phrase with a complex meaning which makes the subject of truth the most difficult to approach, simply because you might either be at a loss to put it into words or say too much gibberish and confuse the readers. One thing i know well about truth is that its not a one time discovery, your awareness of its existence is the first step in probably a life-long journey of discoveries through self reflection and parayer/meditation . In the first post about the royal level of life I explained the nature of absloute truth, here I will give examples of truth vs the percieved truth that we might have encountered already.

Observing spirituality from the standpoint of different religions, practioners often refer to god/the creator/the supreme entity as the first truth, sometimes the only truth, they came across when reflecting on their inner self. As for myself as a biologist, I could see that I wasn't, as a human being, the product of coincidences and selective evolution but rather a deliberate and well balanced creation so there must be a creator. It wasn't a question of existence as it was a curiosity to get closer to the creator and find a path/purpose that's solely mine so i'd never lose sight of it later on and go back to being lost in my own skin. Which led me to exploring the truth regardless of my previous perception of it, and because of my curious nature and research oriented thinking, I started testing the truth against my pervious perception of it. 

The first thing I did I guess was reinstilling important truths about life, like change. Life is in constant change so it wasn't logical to get too comfortable with what I have at this moment and think that my world might collapse without it, the fact is I change also and keep changing as time progresses, so why would I cut my own unlimited options for something I might not want in the future. This idea fostered letting go of material things and looking forward to the options I might have later. Imagine the things that you have now are lining a straight narrow road on which you are walking, once you walk past them all, you reach a huge crossroads with 100 different roads to walk and each of them is lined with things that are different from what you had but just as plenty. Only by walking willingly past all that you have, can you see the options and possibilities lying ahead in detail, so you can either choose a new road or walk back and forth between different roads because all of the new roads are interconnected. 

It's a liberating feeling and it's not imaginable either, I already proved to myself that I can give up almost everything and be perfectly fine. I was like someone dragging rocks tied to his feet thinking they are precious gems which made him constantly tired and worried they might get stolen, once he untied them and left them on the roadside he started to walk freely and found the road is lined with similar rocks that he can use without having to carry all that weight. He could always pick one rock to carry then leave it for a more interesting one, focusing all his attention on one rock at a time which made browsing through all of them faster and using them more effeciently. That's how focusing all your attention on the job at hand feels like, without worry of winning or losing, without pressure to hoard more while you have the chance because you know you have enough at any given time anyway so just enjoy what you do now, you do it for your own pleasure and sense of accomplishment only. 

The second truth I got was about people, it's a big misconception that if you do good or bad deeds you will get immediate gratification or punishment. Oftentimes than not, your awaited gratification is coming from your own desire and sense of entitlement while your expected punishment is coming from your own sense of guilt. The truth is you don't need the reward to feel gratified for doing a good deed because you did it in the first place because it felt good to you, you felt gratified already, you were giving yourself happiness through someone else's. It's like picking your favorite fruit from the tree with your friends, after filling your own pockets, you start giving to the guy closest to you to fill his pockets too while knowing you can enjoy all the fruits you put in both your pockets with him. 

The next truth I saw was our individuality, I'm unique in this world, there's only one of me and no one is exactly similar to another. It was not logical to accept the same things and make similar choices so I learned about real tolerance which was not only about me respecting the other's uniqueness and withholding judgments but also immunity to other's judgments and disrespect to my individuality. Because i can easily be dragged to doing a form of the judgments i'm advocating against. 

For example, i'm a believer who's moving in a journey of spirituality, when I met my athiest peers from the scientific community I was often on the receiving end of judgment and having to prove i'm truly looking byond our differences, while they were complaining of this exact type of treatment from society and lack of understanding.  But when they met an odd ball like me who thinks that specially in matters of religion and spirituality, it's the person's own journey of inner discoveries to make and trying to offer my unrequested guidance/advice/experience will definitely hinder this person's journey, so I think they are explorers just like myself but taking a different path and it's interesting to get to listen to their journey if they are willing to make friends with me, almost all were willing to make friends but at the same many of them were putting me on the block where they stepped down from without being aware of it. 

This experience was an eye opener for me, how many times racism for example led to counter racism, it's like an endless loop. Unless one party understands that adopting the same ideas that led to your suffering because you consider yourself deserving of compassion at the moment doesn't make you any different from your oppressor, The victims of today will likely be unconciously cultivating the tyrants of tomorrow. If you understand that every person is different you won't try to group people by ethnicity, color, gender, religion or region and you will be more open to observing their interaction with you as another individual of the same species. You will notice that their lives are just like yours, a series of choices, and because both of you are different with endless choices out there to pick from, you might end up choosing totally different things which is not right or wrong as long as it doesn't hurt another person.

If you want others to treat you with tolerance then demonstrate your own tolerance to them, give them an example to follow, treat people the way you want to be treated even if they wouldn't offer you the same kindness, at the very least you saved yourself from making their mistakes in the future. There are so many thoughts and example on what we think we see vs what's actually out there that's shocking in its disparity, while all this time it was right there in front of us but we can not see it, sometimes even when someone points it out, you'd still think you were on the "good" side because there are so many people around you who think the same. Remember always that discovering the absloute truth is a lonely journey that you have to make on your own, I can only show you glimpses of my own journey so far and my own understanding of it.

Based on this understanding of individuality, you can easily see that it's an impossibility for a group of people to agree with you all the time. People are more prone to emotional outbursts when they get into groups of similar views, especially if they enjoy the cover of anonymity like in cyber bullying. As long as you know these facts you will see the people that hurl insults at you for a certain disgreement, are in a weaker position than you because you know what they don't know. Any confrontation with them will be like the strong bullying the weak, from there their insults/opinions will never affect you anymore. You might even join the argument for fun to see how far you can test their level of unawareness without any negative feed back on yourself, on the contrary it will cement the idea of the discovered truth inside you with evidence from applying it to different people, it will turn stressful arguments into exciting experiments. 

Once your head is quiet and you pray/meditate and contemplate, you will discover that your time is not just linear. The time you use to work or relax is on two levels, one is the actual time in minutes and hours and another in the form of head space.  While your hours are limited per day, the space inside your head is constantly expanding with the added quietness, you can do a lot of things in 24 hours, and because you have a lot of space and your brain started to simplify tasks, you get to use a lot of brain power on each task which raises your effeciency and concentration. All of this leaves you an insane amount of free time and head space, even while working because it takes less effort now you find that you have free space to do other things too unless you can manage to do a few work projects at the same time to occupy your free time. 

This was part of cultivating strong mentality, let's talk next time about purpose and the link between religion and spirituality. 

From restlessness to stillness - reducing stress

 

From what we understand about the state of inner peace, it seems like it goes hand in hand with mental strength, Inner peace helps cultivate stronger mentality as you step further into it. In other words, all who reach inner peace are mentally strong individuals, but not all mentally strong individuals would achieve inner peace because abandoning attachments is an integral part of inner peace while most people would not be willing to give up attachments, on the contrary they tend to center their world around these attachments thinking they represent their purpose/calling in life. And that is probably part of the reason why when they describe the way to achieve inner peace, they describe going through a crisis/tragedy followed by feeling lost and separated from your material world. Because without this sort of forced separation due to pain/grief, you would never think that you can still live/function without the attachments that you had, be it to a material thing like a job or a person that you love. 

If you had not gone through a big crisis yet while still struggling with anxiety and trying to deal with it, it's likely that you thought of reducing the sources of stress around you so it will be easier to cope, then when you get better you might try to gradually increase your exposure to the sources of stress in a controlled manner. The first thing you do is categorising the sources of stress around you based on priority and duration, how long do I have to be with this source of stress, a job or a person, and how important it is to keep in contact with it. if it's a job oftentimes it will be top priority and it might come with a host of people that often add to your stress so if you pick dealing with this one source of stress you get the people related to it as a bonus. Which in turn reduces the space that you set for stress sources and limit your remaining options so when it comes to keeping some people that might cause you stress in the future you'd have to let go if it's long term and prefer the type of social relationships that gives you a lot of personal space where you choose when to get in touch with the person and when to leave so everything would be under your control, this sort of flexibility you'd often get from family and friends who know your situation and support you. 

In theory, this should work fine but in actual fact it doesn't help all that much, yes you feel better than before but deep down you feel like you have a time bomb inside of you that might go off any minute if something came up that wasn't counted for or something you can't control, which applies to a big part of our everyday life, so you'd always keep that fear inside of you while trying to enjoy the outward quietness. 

Looking at your life this way, it's far from normal. You keep trying but it's as though you are watching this life from the sidelines unable to step in and join. Cultivating new relationships is almost impossible no matter how hard your determination is, unless it's work related because you already limited their access to yourself to be only during work hours so the duration is relatively short. Your friends and family are getting further from you because while they are giving you the space you need it erects barriers that make you feel lonely while you are with them, it's hard to overcome this because you are the one who set the boundaries and you can't undo it yet. This is an invisible stress that makes you just feel a sense of loss even though you seemingly lost no one and even though your life seems to be under control, you are not living like everyone else. 

The question here is what's the alternative? What can you do to limit the sources of stress around you while living normally. You need to look inside you for the answer, manipulating the outside world so it seems controllable to you is much harder than manipulating yourself so you would be under your control. You are aware now that there are two parts inside of you, ego and self, so you need to use the part that was unaffected by the outside world (self) to protect and guide the other part that's causing you much grief because of his tendency to be easily affected by the outside world. You need to adopt some of the ideals of the guru (self) inside you based on truth, not your desires. 

For example, you have to work on a project and worried about your performance, like what if I did it wrong or poorly, what would my boss think or co-workers, etc.... Now you need to get a simple fact into your head and remember it at all times. when you start a project, you assess your skills based on actual numbers from previous projects you worked on then add to it how much effort you can give the new project so now you have the tools to start, so based on this you are giving it your 100%, if the result was poor there's nothing you can do about it because you already did your best. 

There's no purpose in worrying or comparing to others, the result you will get will give you an idea about what to do next, it will help you reassess yourself based on new information that was not available to you prior to working on this project, so you are able now to work on your weak points so you can do better next time and become more confidant in your skills. This new perspective cut down much wasted energy where you used to divide your attention between worry and work, now you are only focused on work and looking forward to the result so you can either succeed and gain more confidence or set a new goal for improvement and in turn gain more confidence as well. 

This is a step in giving up the attachment you have for your job, you created a chain of purposes that will turn your previous inflexible job to a more flexible set of things you can do either to improve or start over in a different way while doing the same type of work. Dealing with your top priority in this way should come naturally from then on so it will not seem like a source of stress anymore which will give you more space to deal with other people in your life and the events related to them. Dealing with people seems like getting in the middle of chaos, which is true. You can't control people's actions or responses but you can totally control your participation in this chaos. 

Inside your body there are the two parts, ego and self, controlling your actions and reactions to others, think of the self as the one who will guide and protect the ego. So now you carry your own protection with you, previously you sorted the people in your life in rings around you based on how close you keep each person. By close I don't mean their access to you but how strongly you feel about them, it's unrealistic to think that anyone can evoke strong emotions inside you. for example, you can argue with the guy that hit your car in passing until you are hoarse but you won't remember his face once you get home. Try to put the people that constantly cause you stress on the same level as this guy, engage with them on the outside while being detached on the inside because anyway they are not going home with you and they can't keep you if you decided to end your participation in their self made drama. 

Set a fixed schedule for prayer/meditation and try to reflect often on your own analysis of different situations in the past. You can do that in a place that makes you feel safe or relaxed, it helps when it's out in the open with nothing obstructing your view (seaside, mountain, meadow). Self reflection is not the same as prayer/meditation, it needs only a place where you can relax alone and start thinking on your past actions with people and the outcome based on your new perception of truth that's unaffected by outside influence. You can also reflect on your current interactions with people based on your new ideals, if you can let go of your expectations from the people around you it will be the first step in giving up attachments to people. You actually don't need anything from most people except for a small number of close family and friends who are already giving you support and love in their own way. Look past what you want them to give you and appreciate their willingness to give and be there for you, this idea will give you the feeling that you have their support even if their way of showing it is completely messed up. 

Intentionally setting up time to reflect and think with yourself will reduce the noise inside your head a lot while sharpening your focus when dealing with everyday matters because you already have an idea of what's going on inside your head and know what you need from each person so you become more objective and less emotional. You are certain now that all the space you need is just a few minutes of prayer/meditation throughout your day and maybe an hour or two of relaxation and reflection on the weekend, the rest of your time you can spend it with whoever without feeling pressured or restrained.

Let's talk next time about truth vs percieved truth and how to understand and control our response to it which will improve our mental strength.