The Truth Ain't Sexy!

"Truth is as poor as Job, as barren as the desert sand, and as boring as an old second-hand bookseller.

-- Hjalmar Soderberg

No wonder the truth has so few friends! It's redeeming qualities are hidden, and it's got no voluptuousness or virileness to attract people to it. The truth stands alone.

As well it should. The truth has not entered a popularity contest. The very fact that most people coldly ignore it, is, to paraphrase the Tao Te Ching, a sort of proof that it is indeed the truth!

Seekers of the truth, and to an even larger degree, speakers of the truth, are reviled, laughed at, and even pitied in most cultures. Dreamers philosophers and mystics, are assumed to be effete and less involved in life than your average Joe Six Pack. Nothing could be further from the truth.

To engage life at its deepest levels, the levels where ultimate truth resides, requires a certain spiritual musculature that makes Arnold Schwarzenegger look downright wimpy. The truth both requires and elicits strength, even more so because it has no natural sex appeal. Seeing truth is like seeing the incredible beauty in the homely girl at the high school dance rather than merely being dazzled by some Barbiesque bimbo and her silicone sisters.

So, don't expect truth to find truth standing provocatively on the street corner whispering, "Hey philosopher, want a date?" The corner is home to all flash and no substance.

Truth will never seduce you; you must seek it out with both insight and perspicacity. And in your search you'll fall asleep reading, fall in love with illusion, and fall for demigods and drag queens. Just keep on keeping on. Somewhere, hidden in the poverty, bareness, and boredom, truth will indeed be found.

Daily Re-Creation

"What endures needs to be created daily in different ways for people to be aware that it is always there."

-- Carol Hendrickson

We have really short memories. Especially concerning the ultimate and important stuff in life. Sure, we can usually remember the name of our favorite beer or the lyrics to a song we loved in high school, but we forget the BIG things, like we're all One, God is love, and each moment of each day is unique and irreplaceable.

There is a whole lot of redundancy in the wisdom shared on these pages -- planned redundancy. A few major themes, a few huge truths are repeated over and over because they're extremely important and they tend to get buried by the minutiae of life.

On a personal level, each of us needs to recreate our connection to, and expression of the love that always lies dormant deep in our hearts. We need to sit in silence and reconnect. We need to discover and grow new ways to express that love to others and to the world. The love endures at the core of life, but we need to remind both ourself and others, on a daily basis, that it is indeed always still there.

And that is our charge, our mission -- to let our true Self shine through our unique, individual selves. To create acts, expressions, and vehicles for love and wisdom to enter people's consciousness again and again and again.

And if you're really present, really living in the now, it never gets old, never seems boring or stale. Truth blossoms anew every day, in each moment in a different way. And you are reincarnated in each expression of these loving truths. No need to wait for death. Reincarnation is real and now. You both new and eternal -- all ways.

Truth Mountain

"Truth is an icy mountain that must be climbed anew everyday."

-- John Fowles

Sometimes I wonder why I bother. Why do I write these short e-pistles to myself on an almost a daily basis? Because I forget. I forget all about the simple truths that I expound upon here, and I awake in the morning worrying about finances, or bitching about the weather, or ruminating about some crazy ass shit that has nothing to do with me, instead of being present, loving and strong.

It would be great if we could learn something once and then live it forever. But that's not how it works, at least not with anyone I know. Instead, each day we're slipping and sliding all over Truth Mountain, like some sick Disney one-person show, Sisyphus on Ice. Just when I think I've finally reached the pinnacle of truth, I find myself making really, stupid, unenlightened decisions again, sliding right back down to base camp.

And so it goes. Each day a new climb. And so I write myself reminders over and over again -- be here now, all you need is love, this too shall pass -- fortune cookie wisdom whose triteness does not diminish its truth. Certain themes emerge, and my challenge is to speak those perennial truths in new ways, ways that nudge me or jar me or give me a mini-satori, a lightning bolt across the dark sky of my mind.

And then I go on about my day. Forgetting, remembering, forgetting again. Slipping and sliding all over Truth Mountain. Climbing through familiar terrain, and yet, each day is new. Might as well smile. What else is there to do?

A Storytelling Problem

"We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don't really have an explanation for."

-- Malcolm Gladwell. Blink, p. 69.

I understand very little. I drive, and I have no idea how the car works. Everytime I fly, I marvel at the fact that 200 overweight people in a big metal cigar can get stay aloft at 33,000 feet for the time it takes to get from here to there. Hell, I don't even have an inkling how my body works, but that doesn't stop it from working just fine, most of the time.

And yet many times we are seduced, both by our own ego and by others questions, into explaining many things about which we really don't have a clue. We think we know, and that's half the problem. In the strictest sense, "knowing" is not even possible because much of what we're explaining to each other takes place on a non-cognitive level.

Why are you attracted to the people that you're attracted to? You think you know. You can give us a laundry list of reasons, and yet none of them get at the heart of the matter. The secret of attraction is hidden somewhere the rational mind can't reach, which, if you think about it, or especially if you don't think about it, is just fine.

Which is also what most people say when asked "How you doing?" "Fine," they say, whether that adjective matches their current emotional state or not. But what about those friend, those annoying, nosy, really caring friends, who aren't satisfied with a "fine," but really want to know how you're doing. For them we make up a story to justify whatever our assessment of our current emotional state is. Most of the time, we could, without too much effort, come up with stories justifying any adjective that we choose, from super to shitty. There's no right answer to the question "How you doing?" there are just alternative stories. Instead of participating in the story-as-truth subterfuge, my favorite answer these days is the honest, but semi-belligerent sounding, "How the hell should I know?"

Stories are great! Stories are entertaining. The only problem is that stories, many times, make bad explanations. Tell them, share them, laugh at them. Whatever you do, just don't believe them.