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.
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