Lately, I keep thinking about how I give my power away. A couple of years ago, I had an astrological reading and the person told me I would likely move in March, April, or May of this year. Starting in January, I was so nervous I would have to move unexpectedly because I wasn’t making enough money to move into the sort of place I want to live. (Nor do I feel pulled to move out of the Bay Area where the cost of living is lower.) I worried I’d find mold or a meteor would hit my house, or some other catastrophe would befall me that necessitated a move.
You know what happened instead? I spent more time out of my house and in other people’s homes either locally or because I was traveling. In that way, I did have more space but not because I moved. Yet I spent nearly six months worrying about it because I gave too much weight to something a random astrologer said. (For the record, this is why I like archetypal astrology because it’s not predictive and instead presents ends of a spectrum.) It’s not only astrologers that I imbue with too much power, it’s almost anyone in a position of authority. My therapist can make the most off-handed comment like, “It will be a fun June,” and I’ll latch onto it like she said the Gospel truth.
Call your power back from all dimensions of time and space. Photo by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash
That’s a real example and I mention it because parts of June were fun but parts of June were terrible. My inner kid was so confused because she really thought June would just be fun because of that one comment from my therapist. The issue is I keep making other people omniscient and omnipotent because I’m not remembering the answers are inside me. I don’t know everything, I can’t predict what will happen six months from now, but my body tells me things.
In July, I was super nervous to meet up with some new friends, which didn’t make sense because I don’t get social anxiety. I kept feeling like I’d meet someone or run into someone with a romantic component to it but I wasn’t excited about the meeting. Lo and behold, I ran into an ex that I hadn’t seen or spoken to in seven years. I share this not to demonstrate my psychic prowess but to emphasize that I don’t need to perpetually ask other people to tell me about my life. My body tells me about my life. Spirits tell me about my life. My higher power tells me about my life.
I am a powerful person in my own right and you are too, which I think is important to remember. In my spiritual tradition, we say that every person is a reflection of the Cosmic Consciousness. We are all mirrors, showing the same image but some mirrors are more warped, dirty, and pockmarked than others. Meditation is an act of polishing that mirror so the Cosmic Consciousness can be more clearly reflected. What I’m doing when I give my power away is wandering around, wondering if your mirror is cleaner than mine. It would be far more fruitful if I focused on my own mirror. In that way, I would take back my power.
I dream of a world where we understand other people are people, just like us. A world where we stop imbuing other humans with magical powers. A world where we remember we can trust ourselves and listen to the wisdom of our bodies. A world where instead of giving our power away, we take our power back.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
We humans like simplicity. We want an easy-to-tell story and we want it to be logical. But the thing is, real life is rarely like that. Real life is complicated and hard to turn into a soundbite, no matter how much we try. For instance, the common explanation for Juneteenth is it’s a day to celebrate when slaves learned they were free. However, that’s whitewashing the truth.
Robin Washington reminds us in Forward.com the tale we’ve been told isn’t accurate. The story goes like this: Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, to inform enslaved African Americans they were free. As if they didn’t already know. However, historian Gregory P. Downs has firsthand accounts from people demonstrating they did know. Galveston’s Blacks knew they were free and so did their slaveholders, who nonetheless kept them in bondage using brute force.
That means General Gordon Granger didn’t read off from a scroll and let slaves know they were liberated. No, Granger and his soldiers let the slaveholders know the slaves were liberated – at the barrel of a gun. They used force to say, “Let these people go.” Not only that, June 19, 1865, isn’t when all slaves were officially freed. In October of that year, white Texans in some regions still claimed and controlled slaves as property, according to Downs.
The truth matters even when it’s bruised and battered. Photo by Michael Carruth on Unsplash
Why does the true account of Juneteenth matter? Because the sanitized version doesn’t acknowledge how people actually behaved and continue to behave. The truth matters because without it we can’t do anything to change it. In 12-step communities, we say the first part of overcoming an addiction requires awareness of the addiction. Truth is awareness and truth ultimately leads to liberation.
As much as people like to say we live in a “post-truth” world, I don’t think we do. I think we live in a world where we want to have masks and create neat and tidy narratives but the truth always comes out. In Sanskrit, the unchangeable entity is Sat. The external manifestation of Sat is satya, or benevolent truthfulness. My spiritual teacher said, “Only satya or truth triumphs and not falsehood. Whenever there is a clash between truth and untruth, truth’s victory is inevitable. … Untruth, being a moving phenomenon, may attain a temporary victory on its march, but never a permanent one. … Falsehood does not win because it is relative, it is ever-changing.”
Sticking to the truth means a victory in the long run. It means liberation in every sense of the word for everyone, no matter the color of their skin, immigration status, gender, sexual orientation, or anything else. The truth is more stable than a lie. And the truth is worth sticking to, even if it’s messy and uncomfortable.
I dream of a world where we value truthfulness. A world where we remember as much as many would like to say the truth doesn’t matter, it does. A world where we understand that truth always triumphs in the end. A world where we stick to the truth because the truth means freedom, for ourselves and others.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I’m recycling this post from November 2009 so a lot has changed in my life since then but I think the message is still a good one. Enjoy.
There is a quote that says, “Even if a young boy says something logical, it should be accepted, and if the Supreme Creator says something illogical, it should be rejected as rubbish.” It’s a good point. As a friend says, the truth has a ring to it. There’s a resonance when someone speaks the truth and that can come from any source, including yourself! However, before this week I really wanted to follow someone blindly. I wanted to be shrouded in ignorance and let someone else discern the truth for me. I wanted to be led and not have to worry about anything. I wanted someone else to know all the answers and to just tell them to me.
As a child, the people I followed blindly were my parents. It was painful when I learned my parents are indeed human and thus make mistakes. After I learned I couldn’t follow my parents blindly I turned to spiritual teachers. Spiritual teachers must know everything and thus I can accept whatever they say, right? The thing is, the spiritual teachers who encourage blind faith, who encourage their followers to never question anything, have a tendency to be the “drink-the-Kool-Aid” variety, meaning the kind that swindles people or abuses them. Yet, a part of me really wanted that. Not the abuse, but rather really wanted someone else to come along and fill my brain so I didn’t have to think at all.
Trust your small truth. Photo by Alex Shute on Unsplash
I don’t know for sure why people join cults but I think it might be so they don’t have to discern anything for themselves. It’s so tempting to surround one’s self with someone who speaks with conviction and confidence. Someone who claims to know all the answers. Someone who talks about the future and seems to know things. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of, “So and so said” to give authority to a statement. “Well, if so and so said it, it must be true!” I think most people long for an ultimate authority, an ultimate truth, and that’s why people quote sacred texts like the Bible or modern sources like Google.
I am no different. But this week I painfully learned no person speaks the Truth for all people at all times. The guiding principle I must rely on is my own higher self. If I think something is wrong, then it’s wrong for me. No one else has all the answers because everybody is just trying to figure out things for themselves. Besides the fact, as far as I know, all spiritual faiths say divinity resides within. How can I truly honor that notion if I think someone else will be able to tell me how to run my life? Or that someone else knows better than I do what’s in my best interest?
The entire point of the spiritual path is to find God within me, and that means looking to myself for answers. It means tapping into my higher power to learn my own Truth. It means living awake, it means discerning for myself what is in my best interest and what is not. It means trusting myself and also taking what other people say with a grain of salt because I recognize there is such a thing as a small, personal truth and that varies from person to person.
I dream of a world where we honor the God within us. A world where we trust in ourselves and our intuitive ability. A world where we look internally for the answers to our questions while also recognizing consensus reality exists. A world where we allow for multiple small truths, realizing that looks different from person to person.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I had an interesting dream the other night. I was on a spaceship and due to a setting, some people saw an illusion (luxury furniture, plush rugs, a tidy space) while others saw reality (cheap furniture, threadbare rugs, a mess). It was like a movie scene that magically changes an Ikea chair into an upscale-designer one with the wave of a hand.
The dream got me thinking about reality and perception. How do we know what we’re sensing is the truth? Humans only perceive a tiny fraction of what exists when it comes to our senses. For instance, we only hear sounds in the 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz range but as we know, sound exists above and below that level. Similarly, of all the possible photon wavelengths available, our cone cells detect only a small sliver: the 380 to 720 nanometers range.
Why then do we act with such assurance about the reality we perceive? Why do we insist on our version of the truth when it could be less than accurate? A dog has a far different version of reality than I do because a dog can hear a lot more than I can. Is my reality any more true or less true than the dog’s? If my senses aren’t 100% reliable, what can I trust?
Perception can be so easily skewed. Photo by nine koepfer on Unsplash
In this day and age, we’re encouraged not to trust anyone, especially mainstream media, the government, or anyone in a position of authority. I understand the impulse because journalists make mistakes sometimes and the government can withhold information from the general public. On the other hand, what makes a random person on the internet trustworthy?
I just read an article on Elle.com about Bay Area mom influencer Katie Sorensen who falsely accused a couple of abducting her children. To be clear, there is no evidence that crime took place. Sorensen made the whole thing up to attract Instagram followers, which is exactly what happened. Her account ballooned after the fake video was viewed 4.5 million times. And if you’re wondering, yes, Katie is an attractive, white, blonde woman and yes, the couple she accused are brown.
People believed Sorensen’s story because she made an emotional video. They were moved by her sentiment. My spiritual teacher says, “One races after the idea that has come into one’s mind like an unbridled horse, without considering its good or bad consequences. The horse may move along the right path, or it may fall into a chasm. One cannot be certain.”
We’re living in a time where sentiment is being exploited and rationality is on the decline. There are YouTube videos galore extolling various conspiracy theories: that furniture and home goods company Wayfair trafficks children, the Earth is flat, the government is run by reptile people, COVID-19 is a sham, etc. People prey on our emotions and also our skepticism. They either tell lies or ask questions that are seemingly unexplainable: “Why did the government do XYZ?” and then answer the question by saying, “They’re lying to you.”
If only our noses grew like Pinocchio’s when we lied. Photo by Florencio Rojas.
It’s easy to say someone is lying and significantly harder to prove the truth, as evidenced by the Sorensen tale. The police had to investigate her story, interview the couple she accused, and use numerous resources to determine Sorensen lied. Instead of immediately buying everything presented to us, whether it’s a mainstream media news article, YouTube video, or Instagram post, how about asking some more questions; like, “How do I know this source can be trusted? What is the evidence?”
Talk is cheap and people are lazy. It takes a lot of effort to pull off a conspiracy. Have you ever worked on a group project? Then you know it’s next to impossible to get every person on the same page and carry through with a plan. Yeah, it can happen, but in all likelihood what we view as a conspiracy is actually incompetency and fallibility. People make mistakes. They change their minds. It doesn’t mean there’s a cover-up.
My spiritual teacher says, “Rationality is a treasure of humanity,” and I’m seeing just how true that is.
I dream of a world where we ask more questions. A world where we don’t immediately accept whatever is told to us, no matter who is telling it. A world where we practice discernment to determine whether something is real and true or merely playing on our emotions. A world where we develop a rationalistic mentality and put it to good use for the betterment of all.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I find it telling that when Trump announced he has COVID-19, many people assumed he was lying. I realize that’s because he’s a compulsive liar, but I think it also speaks to the larger milieu we find ourselves in – we don’t know what’s true anymore. And what’s so chilling is the inability to distinguish truth from untruth is by design as I learned recently from watching the documentary/drama The Social Dilemma. I’m going to quote from the film so if you’d rather be surprised, stop reading here.
An idea I hadn’t considered before watching The Social Dilemma is people are making money off of disinformation not only on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, but also the supposed repository of truth, Google. If you google “climate change,” you’ll get different answers depending on where you live and what you searched for previously. That’s scary. It means we don’t have shared reality with one another anymore, as we’ve seen, and that creates division. There are “sheeple” and “idiots” and “people who haven’t done their own research.” There are people who’ve been “red pilled” and are “still living in the matrix.” How did we get here?
The truth is boring and doesn’t encourage engagement, whether that’s clicks or likes or comments or reshares. Misinformation spreads about six times faster on Twitter than the truth, according to a study from MIT. If Twitter cares about increasing the number of users, of getting more eyeballs to view an ad, what incentive does it have for shutting down fake news? It doesn’t. The same is true of Facebook and also YouTube. What’s even scarier is it’s easy to get brainwashed on YouTube. If you watch one conspiracy video, YouTube will recommend another and then another and then another until you’re convinced that the world really is flat. That’s exactly what happened to basketball player Kyrie Irving. He publicly said the Earth was flat and then later apologized, offering this explanation: “You click a YouTube link and it’s like how deep does the rabbit hole go? You start telling all your friends, ‘Did you see that? Watch this video.’”
We don’t know what’s true because there’s so much disinformation flying around and it’s easy to fall for fake news. I know I have. For instance, when the pandemic first hit, I saw a picture floating around saying dolphins returned to the Venice canals and repeated that to a friend. However, it wasn’t true – the picture came from the coast of Sardinia. Yes, sharing that fake news didn’t hurt anyone, but we’re not always so lucky. Early investor in Facebook Roger McNamee said, “If you want to control the population of a country, there’s never been a more effective tool than Facebook.”
Y’all. That’s scary. And we’ve seen this already in the U.S. with the role Facebook played in the 2016 elections. It also happened in Myanmar with the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims. The U.N. said Facebook had a “determining role” in whipping up anger against the minority group.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, all of it, are directly affecting our lives: how we think, how we vote, and also how we behave. That’s a lot of power in the hands of companies that are unregulated. Clearly the tech giants need government oversight but also, we can mitigate some of the effects by turning off all notifications on our phones so that we’re not constantly checking them. A former YouTube employee also said don’t watch YouTube’s recommendations and instead search for and choose videos yourself.
Lastly, I think something needs to be said about the mind itself. Many spiritual people think they know “the truth” because they meditate, they’re tapping into their intuition, they’re aligned with the source of all knowledge. According to my spiritual philosophy, there is such a thing as immutable truth, as absolute truth. That “thing,” or entity really, is Brahma, which is a combination of the consciousness that pervades the universe as well as the creative force that pervades the universe. Everything else is a relative truth.
What is often missing among spiritual people is the understanding the mind has layers, or filters. This post is already quite long so I won’t go into it today but even without launching into an in-depth explanation this makes sense. We filter everything we hear, everything we learn through the lens of our perception. We compare it with what we’ve heard before, what we’ve been exposed to, what we’ve experienced in the past. All of which is to say we’re not imbibing a perfect, unadulterated truth.
The best I think any of us can do right now is practice some humility and recognize we may not actually know everything, that our sources are flawed, and we don’t know the absolute truth. The best any of us can do right now is to cultivate healthy doubt and skepticism while also recognizing some things are truer than others: for instance, the Earth is round.
I dream of a world where we realize lies spread faster than the truth. A world where we realize the truth is relative and can change depending on time and space. A world where we leave room for being wrong while also recognizing there is such a thing as consensus reality. A world where we seek to find that consensus and remember some companies profit off of sowing disinformation.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
A few weeks ago I flew back to North Carolina. I visited the place of my childhood and found everything to be slightly familiar, but altogether vastly different. My childhood home burned down and in its place stood tall trees, grass, and shrubs. My elementary school also no longer exists. My favorite place (the library, of course), closed and moved to a new location. Walking around I couldn’t comprehend all the changes because in my mind, things stayed exactly the same. It’s a dangerous thing to only live in your head and not see reality for what it is.
I think part of what we’re experiencing here in the U.S. is the dichotomy of delusion and reality. On one side, we have people (like those in power) who lie ceaselessly, who convince themselves something is true when it’s false. My sister reminded me during our North Carolina visit that we live in a post-truth world. That’s why we have such a thing as fake news. It’s nothing new, propaganda has existed for ages, but now we’re seeing it more and we’re fighting it more. It’s important for me as a journalist and a yogi to stick to the truth as closely as possible.
Searched for “truth” and this is one of the pix that came up. Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash.
In Sanskrit, the unchangeable entity is Sat. The external manifestation of Sat is satya, or benevolent truthfulness. My spiritual teacher said, “Only satya or truth triumphs and not falsehood. Whenever there is a clash between truth and untruth, truth’s victory is inevitable. … Untruth, being a moving phenomenon, may attain a temporary victory on its march, but never a permanent one. … Falsehood does not win because it is relative, it is ever-changing.”
I bring this up because I think it’s important to acknowledge a truth about the United States. With every atrocious thing spewing from the current administration, people say, “This isn’t the real U.S. This isn’t the U.S. I know and love.” Oh, but it is my friends.
As much as we don’t like to admit it, the United States was founded on horrors similar to what we’re seeing now. We decimated Native American tribes. We regularly separated black people from their families under the guise of economic progress. Our country, the land of the free and the home of the brave, always carried a footnote, which is those things were true only for some. Our current president is carrying on the imperialist tradition. That’s not to say all Americans feel the way he does. It’s also not to say the U.S. hasn’t made great strides in equality for people of color, for women, for various sexual orientations, etc., because it has. But it would be disingenuous to say the behavior of the people in power in the current administration is “un-American.”
What does this have to do with my visit to North Carolina? Being there I gained more perspective of my past and was able to see a fuller picture. I finally saw the truth, and as the saying goes, the truth set me free. I’m grieving all that I lost, but first I had to see it. Until we collectively recognize our country’s racism, sexism, and prejudice, we’ll never be able to move forward. Until we see our true selves, our true past, we’ll never be rid of it. We’ll never be free.
My spiritual teacher is an optimist, and so am I. I know one day we will all be free. That no matter our immigration status, the color of our skin, our gender, our sexual orientation, or anything else, we will receive equal treatment. But first, we have to tell the truth.
I dream of a world where we remember the truth will prevail. A world where we stamp out falsehood and come to grips with reality. A world where all people are treated with love, kindness, and respect. A world where each person is valued for the beautiful and precious beings they are.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I am obsessed with “the truth.” Maybe it’s a hallmark of being a journalist, but I’m constantly searching for “the Truth” with a capital T. When people throw out platitudes like “the truth is relative,” and “everybody has their own truth,” I’m unsatisfied because why? Why is the truth relative? Why does everyone have their own truth?
Last week, I wrote about logic versus intuition, and defined intuition as a reflection of consciousness. I also said perhaps the reason why intuition can be wrong is that the reflection isn’t clear and maybe it’s like smudges on a mirror.
Being outside in nature also calms the mind down and allows for intuition to come through.
This week I did some more investigation because I wasn’t fully satisfied with that answer. My spiritual teacher says there are “layers of the mind” and this affects the different ways in which humans operate. One layer is responsible for satisfying what we sense through the body. So, for instance, if I’m cold and reach for a blanket, that’s one layer of the mind. Another layer of the mind deals with conscious thought like problem-solving and intellectual reasoning.
The layer I’m interested in at the moment is the layer where intuition comes in. My teacher uses a Sanskrit word that I am sure to mispronounce, but the English translation is “supramental” or “higher mind.” This is the layer responsible for scientific discoveries and creative insight. When the lower levels of the mind are quiet, the higher mind comes through. This is what Michelangelo is referring to when he likened the creative process to “a seizure of the soul” or when Albert Einstein said in reference to discovering relativity, “There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition.”
So what happens after the message gets delivered, if you will? When a person gets an intuitive hit, it still has to filter through their mind and sift through biases and experiences, aka, the smudges on a mirror. That explains why the truth is relative – because each person has their own experiences and biases the intuitive message is coming through. For each person, the reflection of consciousness looks a little bit different.
That means there is an absolute truth, but I am not able to access it because my mirror is too dirty. The quickest way to clean the mirror, according to my teacher, is to meditate because meditation silences the lower layers of the mind and allows a person to access the higher ones. If you can believe it, the layer where intuition lives is not the highest layer of the mind! The higher layers are ones where duality ceases to exist and a person sees everything as an expression of Spirit. But that is perhaps another post for another time.
I dream of a world where we all quiet our minds and allow something greater than us to come through. A world where we understand that behind the relative truth is an absolute truth that maybe we can’t quite see. A world where we each seek to know that absolute truth and arrive at those higher layers.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
What I’m realizing is this whole doubt thing is the universe’s way of trying to get me to trust myself. I’ve written before about realizing the truth lies within, but getting rid of doubt is an application of that realization.
Last night a friend of mine said, “I can see this as the future or I can see this as the future,” and I got so upset. I felt upset because she wasn’t telling me what I wanted to hear or what I felt intuitively. Also I realize I felt upset because I was afraid the outcome she predicted would come true. In that moment I realized I’ve been letting other people’s opinions sway me. I’ve been letting what other people think guide me and that is not what self-realization is about. It’s just not. The whole point of a spiritual path is recognizing the truth lies within. How can I believe that yet also look to other people for answers and validation? How can I believe I already know the truth when I get so upset by someone else’s comments?
I share this because I think many of us live in fear of the future or doubt what will come to pass. That’s probably why fortune telling and seeing psychics is so popular. I’ve done it too. Who doesn’t want to hear from somebody else the future is bright and all your dreams will come true? What I’m coming to realize though is I can do all that for myself. Lately I’ve been in a state of wanting constant validation. I’ve been wanting God/the Universe/my friends/family to tell me, “This is what your future will look like,” because I don’t believe my intuition, I don’t believe my own feelings. It’s easier for me to hear it from someone else. Last night though felt like the end to all that. Felt like my higher power saying to me, “When are you going to start trusting yourself and your own feelings about the future? When are you going to stop letting yourself be swayed by others?” Right now Lord. Right now.
I am a manifestation of God, of love, of light. I already know the truth. I already know what will come to pass. My life is my life and no one else’s. No one else knows the answers to my life and what my future holds nor do I know the answers for anyone else. I depend on myself and my higher power for guidance. Everyone else does their own thing and I do mine. I release all doubt because I also realize things change.
Another moment of profundity for me yesterday was understanding nothing is set in stone. And even stone engravings eventually fade. I may think getting from point A to point B is impossible right now and it probably is. But that’s the kicker: right now. It doesn’t mean this moment is how things will always be. While I may think it’s impossible for me to cross a river, at some point my higher power is going to build a bridge. Or send me an airplane. So I don’t need to worry about it. I don’t get to see my entire future, I only get to work toward it. God shows me little snippets of my life so I may continue to put one foot in front of the other and eventually arrive at point B. All the naysayers can just step aside because I have somewhere to be and something to work toward. And from this point forward I will not be deterred.
I release all fear, I release all doubt. I recognize only I can know my future based on the strong desires my higher power instilled within me. I recognize things don’t happen on my timeline but that eventually they do happen. I recognize the Universe guides me in a certain direction and its time to look inward for my compass. Other people can’t possibly know about my life and my future because they are too busy dealing with their own. All we can do for each other is offer love and support as we all figure out how to navigate through the jungle.
I dream of a world where we trust ourselves and our intuitive ability. A world where we all turn inward for the answers we seek. A world where we release all doubt, all fear, all resistance. A world where we recognize things change and nothing lasts forever. A world where we let other people live their lives and we live ours. A world where we know the things we desire most will come to pass if we let them.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
Before this week I really wanted to follow someone blindly. I really wanted to be shrouded in ignorance and let someone else discern the truth for me. I wanted to be led and not have to worry about anything. I wanted someone else to know all the answers and to just tell them to me.
As a child the people I followed blindly were my parents. It was painful when I learned my parents are indeed human and thus make mistakes. After I learned I couldn’t follow my parents blindly I turned to spiritual teachers. Spiritual teachers must know everything and thus I can accept whatever they say, right? Except the spiritual teachers who encourage blind faith, who encourage their followers to never question anything, have a tendency to be the drink-the-Kool-aid variety. Yet, a part of me really wanted that. Really wanted someone else to come along and fill my brain so I didn’t have to think at all.
I don’t know for sure why people join cults but I think it might be so they don’t have to discern anything for themselves. It’s so tempting to surround one’s self with someone who speaks with conviction and confidence. Someone who claims to know all the answers. Someone who talks about the future and seems to know things. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of, “So and so said” to give authority to a statement. “Well if so and so said it, it must be true!” I think most people long for an ultimate authority, an ultimate truth, and that’s why Christians quote Bible verses and Jews the Torah and Muslims the Qua’ran. People are looking for a lasting and inarguable Truth. A truth above all other Truths.
I am no different. But this week I painfully learned no person speaks the Truth for all people at all times. The guiding principle I must rely on is my own higher self. The divinity within me. The only voice I must listen to is my intuition. If I think something is wrong, then it’s wrong for me. No one else has all the answers because everybody is just trying to figure out things for themselves. Beside the fact, as far as I know, all spiritual faiths say divinity resides within. We don’t need to go outside ourselves looking for answers. How can I truly honor that notion if I think someone else will be able to tell me how to run my life? Or that someone else knows better than I do what’s in my best interest?
The entire point of the spiritual path is to find God within me, and that means looking to myself for answers. Tapping into my higher power to learn my own Truth. It means living awake, it means discerning for myself what is in my best interest and what is not. It means trusting myself.
And so while learning the lesson of self-discernment was painful, I see now I am walking toward enlightenment. And enlightenment means knowing truth resides within me.
I dream of a world where we honor the God within us. Where we trust in ourselves and our intuitive ability. Where we seek within for the answers to our questions. Where we become self-discerning and autonomous knowing the truth within us is authority enough. I dream of a world where we allow for multiple truths, realizing the truth looks different from person to person. I dream of a world where we wake up our minds and bring our God-hood to the surface.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.