Truth is Different, But Familiar

         In my last few articles, I’ve tried to convey how close truth (love, liberation, wholeness) is, and how, without ego to bloat it into something special, it is wonderfully ordinary. I often tell my clients and readers not to look for a “burning bush” moment, that when you experience truth, it is often subtle and unrecognized. They have often experienced truth but not given it the correct label. These experiences aren’t dramatic but slip in among the myriad experiences of ego and are lost in that cacophony. Truth shows up as the “still, quiet voice”—not necessarily an actual voice, of course, but an inobtrusive experience that stands out in contrast with the rest. It is the quiet child on the playground, the one who doesn’t demand your attention, but who gets it for that reason. But then it is lost again in all the noise, often forgotten.

Another way to put this is that truth is different from the usual ongoing experience of ego, but it is also familiar. It is discovered in contrast to ego, but it is often dismissed because it is not different enough because despite ego it is always here. And you don’t expect to find that it is always here because ego’s denial of truth implies truth is other; it is distant, lofty, a “god”, and unobtainable unless you are especially “good”, especially blessed, or simply special.

And, indeed, if truth pushes up toward your conscious awareness, it will feel “other” at first because ego will still be the center of your consciousness. But if truth persists in your conscious awareness, its familiarity, its all-pervasiveness, may replace ego’s denial and the sense of “otherness”. And when you look back, you may find truth was with you in the past, just unrecognized because unremarkable but for its unobtrusiveness.

You can cultivate your awareness of truth by taking time each day to open to it. It is quietly here, behind the busyness and noise of your mind. You do not have to make your mind quiet to find it, because you are not seeking to make truth, you are seeking the quiet truth that is already here. You just want to touch it. Into the quiet, then back into the noise, into the quiet, then back into the noise… You do not have to be perfectly quiet to be aware of the perfect quiet right here beyond ego. 

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