I recently participated in a virtual discussion in which several people were asking questions centered around, “What is Truth?”
I couldn’t help but feel these questions were entirely off point. It was like asking, “Why is red?”
In reality, “truth” is relative to “what” you’re talking about.
If you put your bare, unprotected hand in a fire, it’s the physical truth that you will be burned and, most likely, feel it is unpleasant, unless you don’t have the common mental receptors. If, however, you’re inquiring about the point of existence, truth necessitates a more complex definition. However, it, also, has to do with feeling and your mental receptors.
So, there are Relative Truths and there are Higher Truths.
To get at the latter, requires, starting at the beginning…
Each of us comes into this world at a different place under different circumstances and at a different time. Depending on how we’re being nurtured or treated, we develop particular coping or defensive methods to deal with our situation in order to make it pleasant or, if failing at that, to react to our degree of suffering.
Our starting point defines the direction in which we head.
And, if ours is an unhappy or unfulfilling start, at some point we may question our initial perceptions and change direction. In this case, and, if free to do so, we will tend to gravitate toward what is safe, pleasing, enjoyable. But, even then, as a result of how we go about pursuing our desires…whether through selfish greed or shared kindness…, our satisfactions may be temporary or unenduring.
Why is that?
Some feel we are here to suffer, because we were born “sinful” and deserve it, unless something or someone absolves or releases us from our condition. And, even those who feel we are here to enjoy our stay seem to continually go through degrees of enjoyment, seeking higher levels of vibration, in order to reach an ultimate sense of contentment or peace.
But what is peace to you, may not be peace to me. And, even that may be temporary, anyway.
So, is there one Truth…one reality in which we all would find a common, ultimate satisfaction?
Well, I may have found the clue painted on a rock in, of all places, the front garden of a building on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, off 10th Street. It read, simply, “Beyond Peace is Bliss.”
It made me realize that, in a state of bliss there is no thinking, no wondering how I’m doing, no questioning whether I need anything more. I am, simply, blissful. I feel I have reached the ultimate satisfaction…the All.
Subsequently, I discovered a Hindu mantra…Sat Chit Ananda (Existence, Consciousness, Bliss) and realized that is the base, common path on which we are all embarked. Existence came into being, Consciousness evolved in humans and obtaining Bliss is the unifying essence of it All.
In meditation, this mantra has become the only thing that moves me from thinking into just being.
And, my work has become helping myself and others on our way to Bliss.
The key is this acknowledgment…
We are not here to suffer.
We are here to enjoy.
That is the Truth.
IMAGINE!