We all self-praise and shout loud and clear that we want to know the truth! Are you sure you want to know the truth? Are you sure you can understand it? Are you sure you can handle it? How does knowing the truth help you? Will knowing the truth make you a better person, will you have a better relationship, will your life improve? What will you do with that truth? Will you use it to hurt someone? Will you use it to help someone? Are you sure that the truth you find out is also your truth?
“And you will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free”
Don Miguel Ruiz, in his book The Art of Loving, makes a comparison between the wounds of the physical body and the wounds of the emotional body. He says that just as a doctor, to heal a wound, opens it, cleans it, applies a remedy and then keeps the wound clean until it heals, so we must do the same to heal our emotional body. First we have to open the emotional wound. “But how can we open these wounds? We will use the Truth as a scalpel. The truth is like a scalpel, for opening the wounds and uncovering all the lies is a very painful process. The wounds of our emotional body are covered by our system of denial, the system of lies we have created to protect these wounds. If we look at our wounds through the eyes of truth, they will eventually heal.”
We should not demand the truth from others. The most and biggest lies are the ones we tell ourselves. “When you are honest with yourself, you begin to see things as they are, not as you would like them to be.” When we are worked-up that we want things to be like we want, we tend to deny the truth, to distort it. Because things are in a certain way, that’s the truth, and we want it to be different, and then we force, manipulate, threaten, harm (others and ourselves), sometimes go to superhuman lengths to support the lie we believe in. And that lie we believe with all our might is our truth at that moment.
Are you sure you can understand the truth?
“In the world we live in, truth is relative. It changes all the time, for we live in a world of illusions. What is true now need not necessarily remain so later. It may not be true for a while, only to become true again later. Moreover, in the world of hell, truth is often just another concept, another lie that can be used against us. Our denial system is so strong that everything becomes very complicated. Truths are mixed with lies, and lies with truths.”
Don Miguel Ruiz says that almost everything in this world is a lie. Therefore, to find out the truth we should follow three rules: don’t believe the Master, don’t believe yourself, and don’t believe anyone.
Do not believe in the Master. He is responsible for what he says, not what you understand from his words. The important thing is to think and make the necessary choices. Even if what he states is perfectly true for him, it is not necessarily true for you. Replace the word Master with whatever you want: guru, doctor, influencer, coach, spiritual guide…
Don’t believe yourselves. “Don’t believe all the lies you tell yourself, all those lies you didn’t personally choose, but were programmed to believe. Don’t believe in your own limits. Don’t believe in your own existential drama. Don’t believe in the Judge or the Victim in your mind. Don’t believe everything your mind says, because 80% of the beliefs you have are lies that have been inoculated into you, they are untruths.”
Don’t believe anyone. Just as we are hurt and try to protect ourselves from the pain with lies, so do others. They may mean well, but they are lying to themselves, so their lies spill over to you. Or they use your unconsciousness to manipulate you.
How does knowing the truth help you?
“When your emotional wounds are completely gone, when you no longer feel the need to believe people just to be accepted, then you will see everything much more clearly.” When you no longer act out of fear, hatred, jealousy, intolerance, when your mind is freed from all negative emotions, then you will see the truth. In fact, then you will no longer seek and franticly ask for the truth. Because “everything that exists is as it is. Truth does not need to be justified or explained. It doesn’t need to be defended.”
“Only what is true survives, and that includes our own views of ourselves”
“What is not true cannot survive skepticism. Only truth can survive skepticism. What is true remains true whether it is believed or not. For example, our body is made up of atoms. It doesn’t matter if we agree or not, the body is still made up of atoms. This is a truth whether we believe it or not.
When we were children we did not have the opportunity to choose what to believe and what not to believe. Now things have changed. We grew up and we have the opportunity to choose. We can believe it or not. Even if something is not true, we can believe it for the simple reason that we want to believe it. We can therefore choose how we want to live our lives. If we are honest enough with ourselves, we will quickly understand that we are perfectly free to choose.
When we choose to look through the eyes of Truth, we can bring to light some of the lies we live in and open the wounds caused by them. But these wounds are poisoned.
Having opened the wounds, it is necessary to cleanse them of all this poison. How can we do this? The same Great Master who lived 2000 years ago gave us the solution: Forgiveness.”
Are you sure you want to know the Truth?
