Higher Truth Versus Truth of the Moment

I’ve written a lot of blogs, but I don’t think that I’ve delineated this concept about truth. As always, categorization that I do is done so loosely, but I see two key types of truth: higher truth and truth of the moment.

Knowing Truth Intrinsically

Higher truths are the big ones like:

• All is love.
• All is one.
• Everything is connected.

This is profound stuff, and in awakening, you come to fully understand and embody those feelings. From that space, killing because impossible or close to it. You can feel your connection to other people, animals, and beings. When you hurt another, you feel hurt yourself. When someone is upset, you can feel the pain that they’re feeling. When there is great joy around an occasion or person, you feel like you’re surfing through the upper atmosphere. When higher truth is awake in you, you really feel it and know it in a whole body way. It’s not just an idea.

Truth of the Moment: Ever Changing, But Often Practical

However, we live in an imperfect world where there are demands that get placed on us that are contradicting or difficult. Sometimes, we don’t see a clear way through the mess. Higher truth embraces that mess. All things are equally beautiful from the midnight rape to the loving embrace, and this is really hard for people to understand. In the space of higher truth, you can see the beauty of the unfolding that’s happening. But you are always aware of what is true to the divine plan. It doesn’t make you complacent or passive, but you are much clearer about when or when not to act. The decisions won’t be coming through rational reason either. Awakening to higher truth wakes up your inner knowing, and you know when you need to intervene. You also know when some things just need to happen because a greater good and intelligence is at work than you can see.

With that said, we do the best we can. The decisions you’ll make will make sense to you in a deeper way, but perhaps not initially when you make them. We also do the best we can to understand the truth of the moment. The truth of the moment is subjective. There is good and evil. The midnight rape is evil, and it should be stopped. The holocaust was evil, and it had to be stopped. Hugs from relatives are good. Falling in love together is good. People’s truths of the moment may vary, but there usually is some kind of consistency to it.

Jumping to Higher Truth Too Soon

I remember reading in the Shambhala Sun about people using higher truths as a kind of rose-colored glasses to life. Many people start saying things like “Everything is beautiful” before they really understand what they’re saying. When you say, “Everything is beautiful,” you’re saying that EVERY thing, action, and being is beautiful. All of it. You can’t make exceptions. I’ve heard people in awakening say this, and when they do, the deeper awareness that is present really brings this truth home. I know that they get it. I know that they understand what they’re saying.

I’ve also had other people say this who really don’t know what it means, and I can hear the naivete to it. I can hear the avoidance of reality. “Everything is beautiful,” someone might say as they try to avoid how they’re feeling bad about their life, relationships, or job. In those instances, I consider the person to be practicing. They’re practicing a different mode of thinking, but they don’t understand what that means yet. When every bomb blast and murder is understood to be part of that deepest unfolding of beauty and discovery on this plane of existence, that’s a profound understanding. And that’s understanding what higher truth is about.

Higher Truth Spurs Us to Action

But even as mentioned earlier, higher truth isn’t complacent. You may now see the beauty in all things, but you are also intensely aware of what the divine plan really is. A bomb blast may be beautiful, but you are clear that this is not what we’re here to do. You’re clear that the midnight rape is awful, and you’re also clear about all the little things that people argue about that aren’t real issues. There are plenty of small fights and bickerings that have nothing to do with anything but ego. These won’t draw you in anymore. Where before correcting someone’s English or math was part of helping people “get it right,” you may have no interest in it because it may not affect anything of real importance.

You truly understand what is real. Now that you know what is real and important, you will act towards bringing light and consciousness to those things. In no way, does higher truth make us impassive and aloof to the world around us. However, we do become very nonchalant and disengaged from the squabbles of the ego. That’s not being disassociated with life; that’s understanding what is real.

Higher Truth and Truth of the Moment Align

There’s a phrase that says we learn to live in this world, but not to be of it. To me, this is the return from awakening. This is the space after rebirth. As Easter Sunday nears, we are coming upon one of the great examples of dying to one life and fear of death and then being reborn into that space where the troubles of life can no longer touch us. Truly, the example of Jesus is amazing. He is one of our greatest teachers about embodying higher truth. Where many people in his time were lost in religious rules, he brought in light to the people who really needed it.

In that way, that’s what everyone is learning to do as they wake up and move into a place of embodied enlightenment. They see suffering, and they are moved to alleviate it. They see a place for a kind word, and they offer it. They see a way to bring joy, and so they share it. It isn’t actually a very hard thing to do to be kind. All the ego stuff that has gotten in the way has blocked the higher truth that life is actually very simple. In many ways, I describe the awakening process as a major yard sale or going out of business sale: everything must go. Only the important stuff will remain.

When you know what is important, you know what’s really good or evil. You know that both are equally important parts of the divine plan, but you also know when it’s time to act. You can’t save the world by yourself, and the only way to save the world is by saving yourself. The many paradoxes align in this space of awakening, and you are truly who you are meant to be.