"I’m Just Speaking my Truth."
Truth can be defined as “the true or actual state of matter.” My favorite definition is “actuality or actual existence”. What we are really getting down to here is something much more “real” than mere personal experience. Now when I say mere I’m not denigrating personal experience, it is all we have, in any real sense, to go by. That is how life is lived. Even our ideas and our theories are formed by personal experience. Quantum Physics, General relativity are abstractions of reality, descriptors limited by human experience. They are not truth in any real way: they describe truth.
If “your truth” is true only to you, why share it? Don’t you want to be understood? If one can understand your truth, doesn’t that make it true to others who are understanding? If another is capable if understanding it, it is no longer yours.
If you are somehow in possession of truth, that makes truth into an object. Truth is not an artifact. It is not a limited entity which an be passed around. If that is so it fails to be true, it merely participates in the metaphysical state of truth.
Truth is pre-existent, eternal, unchanging, not subject to personal whim or intellectual fashion. I cannot say “share my truth” and be accurate in any way. What anyone is saying, when they say that, is they are sharing their experience of truth, which may or may not reflect reality in any real way. It could be clouded by delusion: personal or societal. Or it could be a deeply insightful description of eternal truth. This is often referred to as Wisdom. Religions seek to describe this as God, or the Word of God, prophecy, Buddha nature, the great story, what have you. Problems arise when these descriptions become codified and warped by human ambition bent on being the sole possessor of truth and result in war and death over the details.
How many among us have been so certain of something, so positive that we knew the truth only to have our worldview shattered when some piece of information came to light we hadn’t seen before?
How many people heard somebody say, “Real estate prices can’t go down.”
How many have been devastated when our trust in someone is wrecked by news of infidelity or our faith shaken by the revealed hypocrisy of a spiritual leader? How would that change our version of “my truth”?
Truth is not relative. Experience of truth is by its very nature relative. If we imperfect human beings could loosen our grip on our experience of truth, maybe we could open ourselves to a deeper enfolding by what is most real, most true. Our world is flooded with delusion masquerading as truth. Self-interest and human ambition drive the demonic desire to be god and to be the arbiter of truth. It is a story as old as humanity itself. That’s what Adam and Eve feasted on in the garden. Knowledge of good and evil. They wanted to posses truth. And we fell.
We live in a world of constant flux. The human condition is such that our perception is limited, finite, defective, colored by the sum of our experiences, memories, beliefs and prejudices. Even this article is colored by the sum of my life thus far. I claim no special possession of truth. My only claim is that the truth cannot be possessed by any of us, we are simply blessed to be possessed by truth.
If we weren’t, we would simply cease to be.
Definition of truth According to Dictionary.com
Origin:
before 900; Middle English treuthe, Old English trēowth (cognatewith Old Norse tryggth faith). See true, -th1
