The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference.
—Elie Wiesel
After seeing the above quote recently, I got to thinking about it in the context of truth. I was reflecting yesterday about when I first worked with Piers Thurston and heard him say “it feels real and isn’t true”.
I considered how this phrase can get a reaction from egoic thoughts, self-referential thoughts, or what I call sandbank thoughts.
When we think we’re being told that something that’s happened in our life isn’t true – in fact that everything that’s happened in our life isn’t true – the automatically assumed implication (at that level of egoic thought) is that we’re lying.
I guess in some ways it is a lie we’re telling ourselves if we believe something absolutely definitely happened the way we think it did. But it also occurred to me that the opposite of Truth isn’t actually a lie – there is no opposite to Truth, not when we’re talking capital T Truth. It just is.
No opposites, no opposition, no for or against, no sides that can be taken, no differing perspectives of it.
Therefore anything that happens in this world of form isn’t True. By definition, it can’t be, because every ‘thing’ has at least one opposite, a duality. No ‘thing’ is 100% agreed-upon by everybody, therefore no Truth can be found.
So then what are we arguing for?
Next time you say ‘it’s true, they really did do x, y, or z’. Is it true? Really? Is there no different perspective on it at all? Or next time you think someone’s lying…I wonder who would decide whether it’s a lie or not. Who could determine that absolutely definitely, lying was happening?
And if Truth isn’t the opposite of lying, what is… Is there one? Maybe lying is a temporary experience in the presence of opposition to my own, or your own, (little t) truth in that moment. And in the next moment, something changes — one of us changes our view — and then lying doesn’t exist anymore.
Seems to me there are a myriad of perspectives on any thing in any moment, and which can change in any moment, so maybe let’s stop pinning our well-being on trying to find Truth in this world, and realise the only constant, non-opposed Truthful experience is that of Awareness.
Have you ever known anything else absolutely definitely than the fact of Awareness? Has anyone ever had a different experience of it than anyone else?
If you think you have, please let me know in the comments, I’d love to explore that with you.
With love, Helen
