I’ve been wildly afraid of and sweetly comforted by this idea – All Things Are True.
Afraid is easy. All Things Are True – stinks.
Who can live this willy nilly view of life? Are there no curbs? How do we know we’ve reached a goal? Does it excuse behavior? What a mind mess to clean up.
Sometimes ambiguity strains our belief that everything makes enough sense to be ok – or more specifically – that we will be ok.
A sage woman shared this – All Things Are True – idea with me. She sat across from me after saying it peacefully smiling. She said nothing else. I felt anger well up inside of me. If All Things Are True then nothing is fair. There is no order and where does that fit into spiritual striving to be a more whole person? What’s the incentive to care?
How then – could a person find comfort in the very idea?
It took me time and a willingness to not understand. I mulled it over and shunned it off and on. I paid attention to my thoughts and what was happening around me as I searched for examples of this certainly flawed notion.
People who are contrary can be fun to have around, but it gets old – so I was concerned the idea would have me running around in cynical circles in my head.
…and I did that for a while…knowing I could not live there. That’s not my life quest.
Eventually, when I let go of needing to pin it all down to make some kind of sense of it, it made perfect sense.
I realized it’s one of the main reasons why we get frustrated as human beings. Things don’t seem fair to us – while others think something is perfectly fair.
Does it reduce accountability to those around us to believe this idea? No. It becomes easier to hold.
What shame and fear is there when all things are true? None.
What is the beacon we latch on to without clear rights and wrongs? Our own truth.
We are each a truth walking around. We are millions and billions of truths with a yearning to connect and live.
How do we know our truth? We know when we get clear about our values and operate from those. Those are what our personal truth is built out of and each is put together a little differently. It’s about keeping our thoughts, words, and actions aligned to our values.
The goal becomes honoring the truth in ourselves by requiring what is around us to feed that truth in life-giving ways. It starts in us, ends in us, and is held together by our mutual need for each other – which builds our mutual accountability.
Are there those among us who cannot achieve this clarity? I don’t doubt that. I just happen to believe there are more of us who can and that is what can tip the scales to a kinder, more love-centered experience for all of us.