Our thoughts and actions are driven by either one of two intentions—to be right or to know the truth. I believe there’s no middle ground. We are either open to knowing the truth or we’re closed to it.
Most people, deep down, want to be right, including when they say otherwise. Surrendering to not knowing is scary. We enter uncharted territory, there is uncertainty and we are afraid of what painful truths we may discover about ourselves, life or others. What if it was our fault? What if we are terrible at doing something? What if they don’t care about us? What if we aren’t good enough? These potential discoveries scare us, and the more afraid we are of the answers, the more effort we put into avoiding them.
Opening to the truth takes courage. And it takes as much courage as anything really. But I find that not knowing the truth is much scarier. Ironically, it’s when we’re invested in being right that we give up our autonomy. In conflicts, we make ourselves dependable on having to control people and circumstances in order to maintain our rightness. In our own self-inquiry, we work hard to distract ourselves from facing certain questions. That “work” often includes addiction, unhealthy habits and self-sabotaging behaviours. Ultimately, when we prioritise being right over knowing the truth, we become subservient and prisoners to our own fearful thoughts about life.
The hide and hide from the truth is motivated by an attempt to not feel pain.
We’re trying to protect ourselves from our feelings—from the pain of potentially having to take a difficult decision, change our career, end our relationship, move cities.
But however painful that pain, I’ve found that avoiding it is more painful. The highest price, I find, along with the harm to our physical and mental health, is not being true to ourselves. Living a life that’s not authentic and abandoning ourselves over and over and over again.
Counterintuitively, however, in my experience and as many nondual teachers attest, what we are afraid of is the gateway to our liberation from it. When we go into our fears and are willing to experience them, they open to an expansive sense of fearlessness. Feeling our pain dislodges the lump from our throats. In the midst of uncertainty, there’s a sense of ground. And the deeper I’m prepared to feel my feelings, the more quickly and easily they pass through me.
Radical honesty might feel akin to jumping off a cliff into the abyss. But rather than a plunge into pain and darkness, that jump actually is the most liberating and self-caring act we could afford ourselves.