Within the spirituality movement, there is a lot of talk about “living our truth.” And there are a lot of people who think that simply by making this statement, they are actually accomplishing it. But how can people live their truth if they know not what truth is?
Three Levels of Truth
So let’s clear this up. First of all, there are basically three levels of truth: God’s Truth, our truth, and human fact (that we often assume are truth but usually are not).
Ideally, it’s great when we can get all three truths to align—meaning to have the Truth of God anchored into us, and into the details of our lives. But this is rare indeed. Instead, most of the time, God’s Truth is completely forgotten and our truth is tainted by incorrect or inaccurate facts—human facts. And somehow, most people are okay with that.
Dare to Live the Truth
The old saying, “truth or dare,” needs to be changed to “dare to live the Truth.” And it’s true that it takes daring or courage to do so, because it’s simply not the way the rest of the world operates.
We have to accept some uncomfortable realities about the truth, and one of them is that the opposite of the “truth” is a “lie”—at least in standard vocabulary. And although a lot of “spiritual” people find the word, “lie,” to ruffle their auras, it’s the word that represents the opposite of the truth. If this is correct, it means that when we are not living the truth, we are living a lie. It’s not that we need to beat ourselves up for it, but it helps to accept this. And it doesn’t help (nor go over well) if we walk around calling anyone a liar. But it does help if we can catch ourselves living out of alignment with truth and call it what it is.
Another term for living out of alignment with the truth is “hypocrisy.” And, as we know, Jesus was not a big fan of hypocrisy. It’s not that he was being harsh on the actual people who were hypocrites as much as he was pointing out that it murders our soul when we live outside of truth.
Although human versions of “the truth” are often merely our ego’s truth, we can rise to a level of consciousness wherein our human truth is a reflection of God’s Greater Truth. When this happens, we live a life of love and inspiration.
All too often, however, we live a life of lies and hypocrisy, and allow others around us to do the same. Some of the most tragic examples of this are found within churches and spiritual teachers–of every kind—from guru to televangelist to New Age teachers.
Hypocrisy in the Form of Gossip
Most people don’t know that it was neither the Romans nor the Jews that killed Jesus. It was hypocrisy—in the form of gossip (which is usually founded on lies or variations of un-truth)—that brought about his death. And it was the so-called religious leaders of the region that spoke the lies, thus making them hypocrites. This is what Jesus called them and they obviously didn’t like it.
Most people think that we can only kill someone with weapons such as guns and knives. But, the reality is that gossip also kills. It murders the soul—the soul of the person doing it. And with it comes terrible karma. Gossip comes from evil minds committing evil actions. Of course those who gossip aren’t truly evil, but their behaviors are. They, themselves, are merely insecure and try to compensate by trying to knock others down.
When we commit the act of hypocrisy in the form of gossip, we are always trying to lower someone else in an attempt to raise ourselves up. But it never works—even when it looks like it does.
What To Do When Encountering Gossip
What’s really tragic, is that when we listen to gossip, we tend to absorb it, and then spread it. We may see ourselves, simply as “passive participants.” But really, when we allow ourselves to listen to gossip, we are enabling and contributing to the gossip. This means we are also contributing to hate, which means we are also contributing to evil. And this means that we too are then part of that evil.
And, although it hurts, when others (family, so-called friends, etc.) gossip about us, it’s important to remember that Jesus warned us that when we hold the light, it tends to disturb those who live in the dark. So it behooves us to not see ourselves as victims and instead, we should see this as a means of building our muscles so that we can hold that light a bit longer and higher.
It’s also important to remind ourselves to not assume that just because people gossip about us, it means they are terrible and we are perfect. Instead, we should still look for any lessons we might learn from the experience. Also, their comments might help us do some soul-searching and personal inventory to make sure we are as clean as possible of anything of the things we are accused of.
Lastly, we need not only remember how to conduct ourselves when people are gossiping about us (or others), we also need to develop a lot more courage when it comes to “calling people on it.” But it’s very simple, really: if we hear someone gossiping, we need not wrong them or shame them. Instead, we can tactfully redirect the topic or add some light to it. But if they persist, OR if what they are saying is extreme or has a dark tone to it, we need to consider asking them why—if what they’re saying is not true or loving—are they saying it.
It really has a great shocking effect to ask questions that make someone have to look at themselves with more honesty and truth. It also lets the person know that we refuse to live in the darkness of hate and lies, and instead, insist on living in the light of truth.
