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The ONE Truth

We all have something which we believe in, something that we hold as true to us, something that gives our life a meaning and a structure that we can hold on to. As spiritual seekers or seekers for deeper meaning in life we may have many beliefs and theories, which structure our life, our world view and our spiritual understanding. As seekers we seek for understanding and knowledge that can give a new foundation to our growth in spirituality with whatever that means to each of us – for some it means to know spiritual or philosophical topics, for others it means to be vegetarian and live a healthy, organic lifestyle, and for some it means to be open to love, compassion, joy and happiness, and for most it is a mixture between many different aspects.

From one point of view we can say that we each have our own truth, which is right for us, and which may not be shared by our friends and family because they have their own version of the truth. These are the days where we are able to have each our own truth without being judged, ridiculed or prosecuted. The modern world we live in have much more space for individuality and people are living their lives as they want to a greater degree than what was socially acceptable 50 years ago. The development from a culturally restricted way of living and perceiving the world, to an ability to express individuality is very important, and our culture is slowly adapting to this, making it easier for each new generation to be themselves.

From another point of view there will come a time in our development, where believing a truth is no longer enough, where theorizing and philosophizing becomes a new limit, and the need to actualize the theories will become of major importance, simply because there is a growing dissatisfaction with our current structure of belief. This happens because of a growing and deepening of our consciousness and because the old structures has become ridged and we no longer see the deep value in the structures of our old philosophies and theories.

In the practice of Dzogchen in Tibetan Buddhism part of the spiritual path of awakening is by a teacher to get an introduction into “The View”. The teacher introduces The View to the student when the student is ready and has undergone a preparatory practice, which involves moral practices (right behaviour), study scriptures (the philosophy of the tradition) and meditation (practice to see or experience the moment directly), and when the teacher finds that there is a proper foundation The View is introduced. The View here refers to a much deeper underlying truth, which goes beyond what words can convey and describe. The View is a direct experience, which the student has yet to describe in words and finds that it is impossible to fully describe. From there on the practice is to deepen and integrate The View into the normal life.

In our western culture and especially for those people who has already embraced various spiritual theories, philosophies, understandings and practices, there are many people who now are ready to get an introduction into The View or The Truth. We can also call it The ONE Truth, which signifies that here it is not about having the freedom to believe in any sort of truth that we feel “fits” with us, and frames us into our understanding of who we are as a separate entity or ego, but it signifies that there is an underlying truth, which is the same for all human beings, a truth which does not separate us from each other, making us special, but on the contrary unifies us, and brings all manifestation into one big whole – a living organism, unified by the power of Love – the great attractor!

In our western culture the preparatory work to embrace The One Truth would, to a great degree, involve the practice of meditation, since both knowledge and behaviour around other people are quite dominant factors in the modern life – not that we are perfect in knowledge and behaviour, but the modern life is activating us to a degree that it is keeping us away from the essential truth that is waiting to be discovered.

An important point here is, that a lot of people are now ready to take a deeper look into themselves, and to figuratively take off the old overcoat to reveal something new and tender, which is hiding underneath.

Through the practice of meditation we pacify the body and the mind for a little while, to allow stillness and presence into our experience, and through a regular, continuous practice we will discover something – something that has always been there, but has been unnoticed by us because of all the activity in our life.

Effort and Grace

Another important point is that this kind of spiritual awakening requires some effort and discipline, because it is challenging to sit down and become passive, especially when we are alone without support to this kind of practice. This is why it is very important to have a connection to a skilled teacher or a group of people who are practicing in the same way. This is one of the factors of Grace, grace being the other half of effort. To be with likeminded people is grace in itself, but to personally make a true effort to grow spiritually, grace will come at some point – often unexpected because that is the nature of grace.

To find the One Truth the first thing we must do, is to be honest with ourselves. As long as we fight for our mere beliefs, theories, philosophies and truths, as long as we want to glamourize our life, rather than seeing it as it is, we are veiling the One Truth and it remains unknown to us, and therefore we have to look very carefully and deeply into ourselves, in order to see underneath the limited views we have as a functional ego. Now, ego is not a bad thing and something to eliminate or suppress! Rather it is a concentration of misunderstandings or contractions of fears and anxiety, hopes and failures, happiness and sadness, love and hate, all qualities that indicates that we do not embrace our true nature, with which the pure ego can be free and great without any contractions or limitations, when we see life from the view of The ONE Truth.

This is where honesty is very necessary, because we often tend to want to be good at something before we actually got there! Many spiritual seekers stop seeking because they believe that they have found the truth and found who they really are, whereas what they found was a belief, a theory and they settle with that. At that point the growth stops because we freeze our mind into the belief that the truth is already found, or that, what we have found is “good enough for me!” We need honesty towards ourselves because The ONE Truth is not just yet another fancy idea, and it cannot truthfully be embraced and lived, unless we give up the misperceptions and misunderstandings, under which our ego is dictated to live accordingly. The narrower the perception, the more suppressive we become – towards ourselves and others – and the wider and more open our consciousness becomes, there more we are able to accept, forgive and let go of misperceptions about ourselves and people around us.

In meditation we can practice to let go of our misperceptions, and, for a little while, try to look into ourselves without prejudicial attitudes – just relaxing, being aware and conscious about was is going on inside of us.

A meditation practice does not have to be religious, and The ONE Truth is not belonging to any one religion – rather it belongs to all religions and all people regardless of race, sex, colour or creed. For a person who is ready to embrace a deeper part of him/her, meditation is a natural step to take in order to befriend the sub- and un-conscious parts of us, which has been neglected for so long, and which is waiting to be noticed and accepted by the conscious part of us.

This is not easy though, and that is why practice is needed because looking deeply and honestly into ourselves takes time. It takes time before the defence mechanisms and the contractions melt before the light of our awareness, but our awareness have that power! If only we utilize it in the right way, without an agenda to become more or better. Spiritual growth is not about enhancing or improving ourselves. Spiritual growth is to let go of our own limitations, letting our inner light shine naturally. The Truth is bound to be realized when the ground is fertilized properly. When there is right attitude, right understanding and right effort, we cannot remain with our misperceptions and illusions.

May the Truth prevail
May all rejoice in honesty and happiness
May the Truth set you free

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