Much as we may feel we are able to discern the truth and authenticity it can sometimes become blurred through our own desires and perceptions. If we are looking rather more to our own needs then we are not so clearly attuned to the emotional truths of situations. It can only be when we are able to stand back or detach ourselves that there can be some independence to the truth.

If we are presented with some truth outside of ourselves we can see that truth is in itself true – it cannot be regulated, but sadly it is our human nature to adjust oneself to requirements that truth discloses and so sometimes adjust the truth.

One example from the external world: The gospels are clear about what needs to be done about compassion and caring for those who have very little, but it’s sometimes really hard to hear it:

‘They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’  …. As I cross the road to avoid the Big Issue seller I am turning away and I know it…but perhaps I don’t have the right change. If I give a voucher for food to a homeless person I can feel pleased with myself, but deep down I know it’s only 50p …but if everyone gave 50p… or if I gave to everyone I’d have nothing myself…why don’t the rich give more…it’s the government’s fault…and so the thinking helps me rationalise and turn away.

I’m seeking to influence the truth in what one might call ego desirable directions. The gospel is counter cultural but I know where I feel safe…So the ultimate reality is cut down to ego size…the truth is blurred and so diminished. Although I know it I shall go on doing it because often truth demands a complete reorientation and that might/would be too much.

If it happens in the external world then does the same thing happen in the inner world? Does faith in the truth, in ultimate reality, in O, in the Divine – how much is that adjusted by my expectations, projections and so on, so that what I might experience becomes diluted and blurred. After all, it might otherwise completely reorient me and then where would I be…

It is all a struggle not only to know but in some way be one’s true self, to take up the journey with all that one is and may become, and to encounter through oneself the Ground of one’s being. The undertaking itself involves one in continuous re-creation.

So looking to the New Year:

“And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.” 
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910