Perhaps there has never been a more convoluted notion than that of “truth,” so let’s dive right into it so we can stop wasting time on this issue.

What is truth?

Truth implies the embodiment of pure consciousness. It is a connection with this fundamental quality of awareness that underlies all of our thoughts and actions. It is a conscious alignment with the immediacy of felt experience.

When we live in this state, which is to say when we sink below the thinking mind and rest in pure and unadulterated experience, then our lives flow with a sense of grace and abundance. Everything works better, whether it be our relationships, our pursuits and endeavors, our capacity to learn and adapt, and so on and so forth. This is the case because we are operating on a much higher frequency.

When we are present, which is to say, when our attention is directed solely upon the felt experience of the here and now, our lives feel more fluid and effortless. We feel strong and connected.

This is the essence of a truly spiritual life.

Truth is nested in our capacity to be present, to live fully in the here and now.

Going into my late teen years, I really had no sense of truth. I saw life almost purely through a Darwinian looking-glass, in that it really was only a matter of how much I could get, win, attain. It just seemed to me that life was mostly a power play, and with that mindset, there is little room for any sense of truth or goodness.

If we are only good to people because we think we will get something out of it, then it is not real goodness. Goodness, truth, and righteousness do not have a cause. They are entirely authentic manners of being insofar as they don’t need any kind of incentive or prerequisite to flourish.

So, I didn’t believe in any of that. I was being silly—that is, until I fell ill with a deeply rooted chronic infection which resulted in extreme debilitation and discomfort.

The tremendous suffering I experienced through my illness implored me to dig much deeper into my own psyche, to delve into the very depths of my being, simply to stay alive.

I’ve never been a particularly moral or courageous person, and if I’ve exemplified any of these qualities through these past few years it has been purely a matter of necessity. I was forced to go beyond thought, beyond knowledge, beyond intellect, so these tools became entirely useless to me. I could hypothesize and intellectualize all damn day, but at the end of it, I was still suffering immensely.

This is where I started to explore meditation practices, and I found that simply through tuning into the felt oscillations of my breath while observing the movements of my mind, something quite beautiful occurred. For moments at a time, I was entirely without my ego, which came with an overwhelmingly positive sensation. Through this practice, I cultivated an entirely different relationship with myself inwardly, one that became characterized by a deep sense of peace and fulfillment, even amidst my physical agony.

So, what does this have to do with truth?

Well, it seems to be that this state I was tuning into, this egoless and deeply intuitive quality of being, made me much more capable of navigating my way through life. I felt much better inside, and found myself much more capable of inducing the qualities of love, compassion, joy, strength, and peace, which, as far as I can tell, are the most valuable manners of being.

There doesn’t seem to be any kind of truth in an absolute sense, or some absolute fact of our existence, but there is a kind of intelligence that lives deep inside of us that could be qualified as truth in the sense that when we move in accordance with this intelligence, we come to live rightly.

The ability to live rightly happens as far as we can discern truth, and we live rightly when we cease to be wholly identified by our minds and act out of the pure movement of fundamental awareness. We live rightly when we are connected with the intelligence within us that is not made up of thought.

It is important that we find out what is true within ourselves, to discover how we are to live rightly. We can do this through introspection, through observing ourselves, through looking at life through the lens of pure awareness.

I found this through meditation, but there are many modalities to be implemented here, and I highly suggest exploring all possibilities and finding what works best.

We are not perfect. We will never be perfectly righteous and autonomous human beings, nor will we ever induce a completely utopian society, as far as I understand it, but we can certainly work on ourselves, sort out our own damn lives and straighten ourselves out as much as possible.

That is all I am advocating.

~

Author: Samuel Kronen
Image: Waylon Lewis
Editor: Catherine Monkman