Noticing lately how difficult the truth can be to find. It’s not that it’s so elusive, but rather I believe because we don’t really want to find it. I know that some people bristle a little when I say “the truth,” so I’ll attempt to provide a definition. I am defining “the truth: as “the reality of our personal experience when our personality/ego gets out of the way.” In other words, it’s not necessarily an objective truth, but rather a personal truth. Personal truth, though is not what we believe to be true but rather what we know to be true, and even then can only be a personal knowing. In other words, I don’t know that we can ever get to an objective truth of something outside of ourselves, but we can get there for what is inside ourselves.
So having defined what I’m talking about, let me start again about how difficult it can be to actually find the truth, our personal truth. What I’ve seen in myself and others is how little we actually want to get to the truth and how much more comfortable it can be for us to cling to what we already believe. And what I see often in myself when I look is that when I am more stubbornly not willing to see what’s actually true within myself, then there is usually something deeper happening that I would rather not see. I’m learning how incredibly powerful “curiosity” can be. It’s really a mind set designed to let the truth reveal itself to us. There is an old saying – “Curiosity killed the cat” – which may be true for the cat because she was snooping around her external world. The curiosity I’m talking about here is a curiosity of our internal world. What really is going on within me? Why am I so reactive? What is this really about for me? It’s an incredibly liberating posture, because then there’s simply a freedom to uncover the truth. It’s really quite liberating. I’m far from being there on a moment to moment basis, but it only takes a simple reminder for me to say to myself, “oh yah, what really is the truth here?” The real truth, perhaps the scary truth, the I-don’t-want-to-know-that truth, the lurking-in-the-dark-chasm truth. It can be awful but it’s always liberating when attended to.
As you may have been able to gather from my recent postings, I’ve recently gone through a somewhat dark and difficult period. That period was extended in a way because I chose to go into it and explore with curiosity. I didn’t like what I was finding at all: a deep deep lack of trust (very surprising to me), and a horrendous void of an internal sense of support. Very difficult places within which to just sit. In fact, as you’ve read here too, at the time it was much more difficult for me to actually sit on a cushion and meditate. Something inside which was brewing was just too uncomfortable for me to be freely and naturally open to allowing it to arise and take form. It was, and always seems to be, much easier to distract myself with computer, business, television, movies, exercise, eating, music, projects, phone calls, organizing, etc. When I say that the period of darkness was “extended” by going into it, I also truly believe that unless we do go into it, whatever it is, it ends up staying with us and undermining our entire lives.
As to my recent experience, I realize I haven’t written about it in awhile. Basically I’m doing much better. Through some very deep work with my teacher and on my own, I found some of the dark places and went a long way towards metabolizing them. I feel much stronger, much more internally grounded, and have a much more confident sense of internal support. It’s hard to describe these things, but here’s a way you might be able to know more what it feels like: stand up and sense your body for about 30 seconds. Once you are done with that, ask yourself how strongly you feel rooted to the ground through your feet. Most of us feel very disconnected from the lower half of our bodies. Next stand there and let the weight of your belly drop through your legs, spread your toes a little and really ground your stance. Sense this posture. This is more like what it feels like internally now, a feeling of being much more grounded and connected to the earth, more trusting of and supported by the earth.
All that I’m writing about here and discovering is still quite fascinating to me, which supports this continuing feeling of curiosity. As a result, I am eager to continue seeking the truth, understand it, and to let that continue to deepen, gradually(and hopefully) allowing myself to get out of my own way.