Truth as Sword & Shield in Meditation & Life
Context ·An important aspect of meditation practice is cultivating your sense of Truth. It’s one of the foundation stones of your practice and a discerning factor needed to foster a stronger connection to your Higher Self.
We have spoken about the Higher Self in previous articles. It’s also important to understand your spiritual anatomy as a pretext to understanding yourself and your life. A pretext is a purpose or motive alleged, or an appearance assumed in order to cloak the real intention or state of affairs. And isn’t that a great allegory for human life where we got so caught up in the affairs of the world that we forgot the important things about life?
My teacher, Samuel Sagan, while he was alive wrote and spoke millions of words in his teaching career. I’ve taken these quotes from his first book, ‘Awakening the Third Eye’, Chapter XXI[1]. I consider this chapter to be his most important writings out of all his written works. He writes:
“You may have mastered the most sophisticated techniques on energy. You may have spent half your life studying occult science. You may live in the company of great masters. If you are not after Truth, your protection is nothing more than an illusion. Sooner or later, it will fall”.
Samuel also comments:
“In the distant past of humankind, humanity had reached an extraordinary level of understanding of the different fields of consciousness. However, because the quest for power and manipulation superseded the quest for Truth, the civilisation ended up being destroyed”.
This strangely reminds me of humanity’s current predicament - the coronavirus pandemic, where scientific materialism and the promotion of humanity to unprecedented levels of wealth, age, health and materialism has made us potentially more fragile as a species. Look at how dependent we are on the internet, fossil fuels, mass monoculture forms of agriculture. Yet in the push for greater wealth and better health, our fragility confronts us. Because in reality our fragility can lead to our undoing.
Until we can come to rest on the formless part of ourselves, we are open to being smashed on the ground. Part of the issue stems from the fact we have largely forgotten that our roots are spiritual. We place personal safety before the freedoms and sanctity of our individual human sovereignty. Yet we all die anyway. The essence of who we are is formless, to which we return soon enough and that this material body we inhabit in this material world is an illusion.
Samuel adds:
Truth as Your Shield
“You would be very much misled if you believe that the same laws do not apply to you, here and now. For, you see, you may not be a passionate lover of Truth, but your Higher Self is. Always. You may play games in your life, you may seek power for childish motivations, you may cover yourself with mud – your Higher Self will still be yearning for Truth, and Truth alone, in the background of yourself. It does not matter where you, as an individual, may choose to go, your Higher Self simply cannot move towards any other direction than Truth, that is it’s imperishable nature.
"So if you are not after Truth, your Higher Self will start working against you, to allow a return to the direction It has forever chosen. We could call this Self-sabotage. And it is supremely efficient. If you go astray from your Truth and try to deny it, your own Self will undermine any of its attempts, any of your constructions, and will start preparing your fall. Sometimes it takes a long time before the blessed hand shatters all your defences. But all you had patiently built on a wrong basis will be destroyed, and you will have to start again in the nakedness of the Spirit”.
“Ultimately there is no other real protection than the power of Truth. If you are after Truth, then Truth will look after you. But if you come from the wrong space, you may apply all the techniques recorded in the archives of nature, your achievements will always be of a precarious nature”.
Growing Your Sense of Truth
“You may think that the concept of Truth is a bit vague, and not directly applicable to your daily reality. Actually before you can grasp Truth with a capital T, you have to start with being true to yourself. That is something simple, which can start here and now. There are few things you know you really should do and yet you are not doing: decisions to make, unavoidable transitions to go through, etc. Maybe, there are a few things that you know you should not do and that you keep on doing, through weakness but also often just by habit”.
“Please understand clearly that I am not referring to any moral concepts. The problem has nothing to do with what is labelled good or bad, or with any other mental construction”.
Sincerity
“Sincerity is of another nature. Deep inside some things feel right, and some others feel wrong. It is the knowingness of the Spirit and that is what you have to tune into. It does not scream inside like certain desires. You have to listen to it carefully. It is like an inner sense, the embryonic version of what will later become your capacity to know ‘the Truth’. It is faint in the beginning, so you have to take care of it. The more you listen to it, meaning the more you put into action what you know to be right, the more the knowingness grows. The more you ignore it, the more it fades. And if you really don’t know what is right or wrong, then tune inside and ask for help. You will be surprised how swiftly Truth can come to the rescue of those who seek Truth without compromising”.
Learning
“It does not matter if you make some mistakes while following your truth. What is a mistake anyway? The white line that leads you straight to the Divine is full of meanderings, when seen from the eyes of a non-initiate. But to the vision of Truth, certain detours and failures appear as the surest and most direct way to the Goal”.
Following Truth
“If you consistently follow your truth, your capacity to discern will grow like a Banyon tree and your sense of what is true or untrue will become more tangible than your perception of hot or cold. Even if the sense of Truth is faint in the beginning, you should cherish and nurture it as the most precious quality that may ever been given to you. For, ultimately, there is no real protection but the power of Truth”.
Not only is Truth an important guiding principle in meditation practice but an important guide to living your life. Using Truth as your sword and shield becomes your greatest protection and discernment to a good life based on principle, integrity and discernment.
References
[1]: Sagan Samuel, Dr: Awakening the Third Eye, 1990.