The Truth

Following your Heart is something you know how to do but may not always do because something else very compelling, which you are programmed to pay attention to, grabs and keeps your attention. That something is the egoic mind. You are programmed to give your attention to your mind. This causes you to identify with your mind and believe what it’s saying to you. You assume that voice inside your head is your voice and those thoughts are your thoughts. This identification causes you to disregard other input that is coming to you from channels other than your mind and senses. nnThere’s so much more to this moment and to you than what you are thinking, feeling, and sensing with your five senses. You build an identity from your thoughts and your emotional responses to these thoughts, but you are so much more than this artificial and limited identity. This is the false self, and you are fooled (programmed) into thinking this is who you are.nnThe programming that keeps the illusion of this false self going and the illusion that you are separate from All That Is rather than one with it creates a limited experience of reality. So much is left out. Your oneness with All That Is, with the Source, with the Divine—call it what you will—is obscured by this artificial reality, where this you that you think you are is central and where your thoughts and feelings take on a greater reality than they actually have. nnWhen spiritual teachers talk about the Truth, they are talking about the truth that you are not this false and limited self but the greater Self that gave birth to this illusion. This truth isn’t something you can understand with your mind because the mind is designed to bring you a different story, which is not about oneness but separation. To experience the Truth, you have to turn to something other than your mind. In fact, you first have to turn away from the mind—the great obscurer—to that which has been here all along. Like the sun is hidden behind the clouds, the Truth is obscured by the mind and the sense of separation it generates. To find the Truth, you have to look somewhere else besides the mind and stop listening to what the mind says is true. nnTurning away from the mind is not natural and not particularly easy because you are programmed to turn to the mind for answers, not only to simple things but to the deepest mysteries of life. Only by first seeing that the mind doesn’t have these answers and by following your longing to understand the Truth is the spell broken. When the time comes for you to awaken to your true nature, you become disillusioned with the mind, the longing to know the Truth becomes stronger, and you begin to look for answers, perhaps through books or teachers who claim to know the Truth. nnAll along, you have had the ability to experience the Truth; however, you usually overlook the oneness that you do experience because you are programmed to experience separation, not oneness. Your senses experience objects and people as being separate and distinct, and your mind is designed to notice and analyze the differences between objects and people. It automatically assumes that these differences mean that these objects and other people are separate from you. In addition, your thoughts and feelings seem real and meaningful, and they seem to belong to you. This is how you are programmed to experience life.nnThe deeper reality in which these seemingly separate objects and people arise and appear is the oneness that you are. All of this seeming separation arises from one substance, you could say, from an underlying substrate that is the real Reality. This reality never wavers or changes. It is ever present, but your experience of it comes and goes: Sometimes—usually only briefly—you are aware of it and sometimes you aren’t. Your awareness of it depends on what you are putting your attention on in the moment. Since, in most moments, your attention is on your mind, you experience separation; however, when your attention is on the deeper reality—the Truth—then you experience that.nnThe trouble is that the egoic mind doesn’t love the Truth. It becomes uncomfortable in the presence of it and draws you back to it, or tries, as soon as you begin to step into the greater Reality. For this reason, many never get beyond dipping their toe into it. The experience of the Truth is barely felt by most. Even so, even a brief experience is rich and full and serves to begin to free you from the egoic mind’s hypnotic trance. The more you dip your toe into the Truth, the easier it becomes to do it again and to stay there because it’s so rich and rewarding. Nevertheless, it can take many, many brief experiences of the Truth before you commit yourself to experiencing the Truth for longer periods of time. n