Truth Comes From Within

No person is your enemy, no person is your friend, every person is your teacher. – Florence Scovel Shinn

From the time I was very young, I have had difficulty trusting people.  The phrase, “Just trust me,” would set off fire alarm bells in my head – yes – that loud.  Sometimes that mistrust was misplaced – with my family, for instance.  For the most part, however, starting from a place of mistrust has been beneficial for me.

You could definitely say that I had no fear of arguing.  However, you could also say that I had no fear, or qualms with, flying off the handle.  I angered pretty easily – I am sorry to say, that I still do.  However, my spiritual journey is really in its infancy right now.  While I may have spent half my life learning the spiritual truths that bring me to where I am today, applying them has been a different story.  I thought it was pretty easy for me to act spiritual, but I have been finding that many people have been reading right through that act.  Where I thought maybe I seemed holier than though, I probably seemed really quite arrogant. 

In truth, there has only been a short time in my life when I felt like I was in a spiritual place relatively free of anger.  This was over a decade ago.  It lasted about two years.  Why I ended that period of contentment to return to my former ways, I sort of understand, but that is a blog entry for another time! 

One thing that has been cemented in my mind since I first started “searching” is that for something to be true, my body, my energy, has to have a positive reaction to it in some way.  If something doesn’t feel right from somewhere within my own body, then there is something wrong with what I am being told.  Some people call this a “gut reaction.”  I think of it more as a soul reaction.  I think this not because I don’t get a feeling deep in my gut; I certainly do.  But because that is not the only place I feel such reactions.  I feel them in my neck, my jaw, my shoulders, my lower back, and my head.  But the place I feel them the most, is in my bowels.  While these reactions have been, at times, painful, I consider them gifts.  If I didn’t have this painful physical reaction to outside sources of information, I wouldn’t necessarily have wanted to fight them off.  Because I did have painful reactions, however, I started to do the things it took to avoid such pain. 

The one thing that has come through quite clearly for me is that your soul, your body, and your mind will tell you all the truth you need to know.  Sometimes, it means tuning yourself to your body.  Now, I happen to be tone deaf when it comes to hearing and singing, no one has been able to help me change that.  My singing sounds perfectly fine to me, but those around me end up rolling on the floor laughing at my attempts to sing.  I have no idea whatsoever what “singing out of tune” means.  My six-year-old son was asking me about the “Star Spangled Banner” yesterday.  He didn’t remember how it went, so he asked me to sing it for him.  I have brought my own mother to tears of laughter with my rendition of the “Star Spangled Banner,” so I fully expected the same from my son.  But when I finished he wasn’t laughing, he just had a puzzled look on his face.  I said, “I may have sung that wrong because I can’t keep a tune.”  He nodded and said, “Yeah, that was kind of scratchy and yucky.”  He said it with such seriousness that it brought tears of laughter to my eyes.

Why do I bring that up?  Well, it kind of makes me wonder if it is possible to lack the ability to have this kind of inner soul reaction.  Frankly, I just can’t imagine it.  However, if you do have this inability – or at least you think you do… oh geesh, I just can’t bring myself to blog about this yet!  This is just going to have to wait.  Let’s just say that I am a big believer in healthy poop.  Healthy poop leads to greater spirituality!  That’s all I will say about it at this point!  I just know it is true because the healthier my poop the happier I am!  If you really want me to say more on this, you’ll really have to convince me you want to hear it. 

Suffice to say, that while it may be difficult for me to learn to sing in tune, I can still tell that I am not succeeding in that.  How?  By the reactions on the faces of those around me!  The same is true with listening to your body.  While you may not be completely in tune with your “inner voice,” there are ways that you can tell that something is not right by taking a close look at your own body and what comes out of it. 

I do, however, happen to be in tune with my body. (No pun intended)  If something doesn’t feel right to me, regardless of what I am hearing with my ears, I tend to go very strongly with how I feel – what my inner reaction to outer stimuli is.  Now, I like to stay in tune with these feelings, so every once in a while, I will actually test my soul reaction.  I can easily do this by listening to some particularly wretched national and local radio talk shows.  Hint:  Anyone who centers their discussions around fear, fear, and more fear = wretched.  Now wretched talk radio has its place, don’t get me wrong.  If it didn’t, then I wouldn’t be able to continue testing my own intuition on a regular basis as easily as I can now!  This kind of radio reminds me that, in spite of how far we have come, we still have far to go – and that is actually okay – everything is happening the way it is supposed to be. 

When you are in tune with your body, it truly tells you everything you need to know.  It tells you the truth.  Now, I am not saying that you should never listen to another person proselytize again; far from it.  Actually, having an open mind when it comes to religious discussion is just about the healthiest thing you can do.  Just listen to others from within.  You don’t have to agree or disagree with them, you just have to listen.  You don’t have to trust your reaction in the moment, you can contemplate what you were told for as long as you wish – long after any conversation has concluded.  If something doesn’t ring true with you, then it is probably not “truth.”  You don’t even have to know why at the moment, you just have to trust how you feel.  The more open-minded you are spiritually, the more you will hear, and the stronger your own beliefs in what rings true within you become.

There is no more peaceful feeling than knowing that you can trust the truth that comes from within.  Knowing that I do not have to place my trust in a so-called “man of God” who tells me to “just trust” him frees my soul to attain greater heights.  Do not be in awe of others.  It is okay to admire them, but do not be in awe of them.  They are human just like you.  No matter how incredible you may think they are, you have the same ability that they have – it is just a matter of working in that direction.

Truth comes from within.  Remember that, and you will be free.

Namaste