What is Truth? Our conditioned impulse from years of schooling is to answer that question. But anything we think or try to say about Truth is one-step removed; it is an abstraction. No word or concept can begin to capture the wholeness and the immediacy of this ever-present, ever-changing reality.
But if we remain with that open question, not answering it, but simply listening openly, wondering silently, then perhaps we will recognize the truth, not as something that we can grasp and pin down and possess, but as the living reality that we are.
Truth is simple. It is effortlessly always already the case. We could say that it is simply present moment experiencing, just as it is — this ever-changing, ever-present happening that has no beginning and no end, for it is always Here / Now.
Apparent complication arises when the thinking mind tries to make sense of this inexplicable happening and take hold of it conceptually. To some degree, this kind of conceptual thought is functionally necessary. It works very well in a practical sense as long as we don’t forget that the conceptual pictures it generates are only relatively true, but never absolutely true.
For example, “the earth is a planet orbiting the sun.” This is a relative truth. It is functionally useful. But in the absolute sense, there is no such thing as an “earth” or a “sun,” for these are conceptual abstractions of what is actually ever-changing, inconceivable, seamless flux.
When we try to come up with a conceptual understanding of Totality, or the ground of being, or the nature of reality, we inevitably end up frustrated and confused. Any conceptual picture of reality is always subject to doubt, and no conceptual picture ever satisfies our deep longing for Truth.
What satisfies that deep longing of the heart is the falling away of the attempt to make sense of everything. Of course, that doesn’t mean we don’t still make sense of things in a functional way in daily life. But we stop trying to take hold of the Totality, or to grasp the ground of being, or to figure out the nature of reality. Instead, we relax into simply being it. We begin to recognize (to see, to sense) when we’re grasping, and in that recognition, quite naturally there is an ability to relax and let go. When we simply stop trying to figure it all out, we discover that it doesn’t need to be figured out, and in fact, it never can be figured out!
Relative truths can all be doubted. But absolute Truth is not a relative thing that can be separated out and pinned down. It is not something to believe in or to doubt. It is rather the utter simplicity and immediacy of Here / Now.
Joan is a non-dual writer and teacher who points directly and simply to the living reality Here /Now. She lives in southern Oregon, USA
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