Today's Saying: Truth comes to us with its own authority. Truth witnesses to itself; it depends on nothing or no one to validate it. We feel and live into this truth; as we do, it manifests its singular, inherent beauty and worth.
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While others about you reinforce denial of reality, do not blame them for your lack of insight. Move beyond blame. Lean in toward the Light. Consent is the hinge allowing the door to open; truth responds to welcome.
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A seer lived near a village. His hut was up a nearby mountain. He enjoyed coming down to fellowship with the villagers. The villagers drank water drawn from a shared well, and the seer would enjoy some when among them.
The seer had a dream. A heavenly messenger told him the well would become poisoned, and anyone drinking from it would become insane. The seer informed the villagers. He invited them to walk up the mountain to a site to draw water, the spring he drew his water from.
The people decided the visionary had gone insane himself. They laughed at his warning and continued drinking from the village well. Soon, they were all insane. The seer came down and saw this. He returned to remain up the mountain.
After feeling lonely for many months, all alone, the isolation seemed unbearable to the seer. He went down the mountain to the village. He drank from the village well. He soon shared in the people's insanity.
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The Way of truth can set one apart from others. The consent to bear the cost socially of embracing truth is the ground for insight into the surrounding insanity.
One may feel the temptation to remain aloof in the sense of specialness. Yet, this insight and the consequent sense of apartness can be the ground for compassion. We remain faithful to the truth we have seen for this to happen, regardless of how it affects our relations with others. Living right view is our priority, not how others view us.
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How do we live with the sense of not belonging within the worldview of others? First, celebrate truth in all the ways it manifests. Do not be selective.
Second, be grateful you have seen, that you no longer walk about eyes-closed, chaperoned by the prevalent insanity. Do not deny the insanity around, as though it is unkind to admit the insanity. One knows truth by its contrast with what is not of truth.
Third, become intimate with the sense of apartness from others. This assent gets easier with time. At first, one may feel deep loneliness, of being looked at as leper-like. The apartness is not the opposite of oneness with others. Instead, you discover unity with all by accepting the apartness, not yielding to the deceit of a false fellowship unable to fulfill its promise of authentic communion of spirit. A togetherness based on denial of truth cannot escape its inauthenticity, regardless of how convinced it has become of its claims.
Last, your relationship with truth will deepen as you associate with it. Truth will take on a beauty captivating, speechless. You will realize insight is into truth as something alive, not merely a static idea. You will see truth is the fount of all truths.
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When Jesus speaks, in the Gospel of John 14.6, "I am... the truth," he is positing truth as living. Truth is not abstract, though it may be represented abstractly. Truth is alive. Truth appeared in Jesus as a flesh-and-blood expression of Reality. Of this, we read in I John 1.1-3 (NRSV) of the Formless assuming form, or Spirit dressing up in a body.
We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life - this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father [the Formless] and was revealed to us - we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
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Truth appears in many embodied ways, including Earth. When you align with truth, you can say, "I am the truth." When others meet you, they meet Reality. You have realized you, not you as a person, but you in union with Spirit, are already one with truth. That-of-God in every being is the Truth of truth.
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*© Brian K. Wilcox, 2021
*Story of poisoned well is adapted from Anthony De Mello, "The Narrow Path," in The Song of the Bird.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse. The book consists of poems based on wisdom traditions, predominantly Christian, Buddhist, and Sufi, with extensive notes on the poetry's teachings and imagery.
